“Not a thing,” Mitch answered curtly. “I spoke my piece, Tito spoke his.”
“Sure you don’t want to take a poke at him?”
“What do you say, Tito?” another paparazzi called out.
“Get your own damned life,” Tito snarled, instantly tensing all over again. “Stop living off of mine, hunh?”
“All right, let’s go!” Des said, herding them away.
The scene was over. The cameramen headed for the doors, anxious to run with what they had. The shoppers dispersed.
“Hey, Chrissie!” Jeff called out to the publicist, who was fending off the autograph seekers in Esme’s face. “Can I have a quick word with you?”
Chrissie shot an impatient glance his way, then a slower double take. “Wait, I know you…”
“I’m Jeff Wachtell, better known as Mr. Abby Kaminsky.”
Chrissie smirked at him faintly. “Oh, sure, and I should be standing here talking to you because…?”
“I was just wondering if you could convince Abby to swing by for a signing at the Book Schnook,” Jeff said, sucking his cheeks in and out. “She’ll be coming right past Dorset on her way to and from Boston, and it sure would help me out a lot. What do you say, will you ask her?”
Chrissie raised her jutting jaw at him. “This is like a joke, right?”
“No, I’m perfectly serious.”
“Jeffrey, let me see if I can draw you a picture. My client wishes to see you stripped naked, hung by your thumbs-actually, not your thumbs but a much, much tinier part of your anatomy-and slowly pecked to death by hungry birds.”
“Does that mean no?”
“It means,” Chrissie replied, “that she thinks you are the lowest, most contemptible creature on the face of the earth. If I so much as mention to her that I bumped into you today she’ll need a cold compress and a Valium. You ruined her life. She detests you. Am I getting through to you now?” And with that she turned on her heel and ushered Esme toward the door.
“Maybe this is a bad time,” Jeff hollered after her in vain. “Could we talk about it later?”
Tito made a point of hanging back, sidling his way over towardMitch with the predatory stealth of Jack Palance in Shane. Des was about to intercede but Mitch held up his hand, stopping her. He did not want her fighting his battles for him.
“Just one more thing, critic guy,” Tito said to him, his voice low and murderous, blue eyes boring in on Mitch’s. “I don’t want to see you in here again. If I do, I’ll mess you up for real. And I don’t care if your bitch is around to protect you or not, understand?”
It had been a long time since Mitch had been in this position. But as he stood there in The Works, nose to nose with Tito Molina, Mitch was right back in Stuyvesant Town all over again, a porky twelve-year-old going jaw to jaw with Bruce Cooperman, the playground bully who wouldn’t let him pass through the gate to the basketball court. Mitch had known what he had to do then and he knew what he had to do now. He stared right back at him and said, “This town is where I live, and you don’t tell me where I can or cannot go. If you want to fight, we’ll fight. But we won’t do it in front of the cameras. We’ll do it somewhere quiet. You’ll probably win, since you’re such a tough guy, but I do outweigh you and I promise you that I’ll put every pound I possess into messing up your precious face. By the time we’re through people won’t know you from Hermione Gingold, understand?”
Tito glowered at him in lethal silence for a long moment-until he broke into sudden, side-splitting laughter. Uncontrollable hysterics. “God, that was so cool,” he finally managed to say, gasping. “Thanks for that moment, man. I’ll have to use it in a scene someday.”
“It’s all yours,” Mitch said, wondering just how much of Tito’s erratic behavior was for real and how much was simply designed to keep people off-balance and afraid. He couldn’t tell. Could Tito?
“Tito?!” Esme called out to him from across the food hall. She and Chrissie were waiting at the door. “Come on, let’s go!”
Tito waved in acknowledgement and started toward her.
“One more thing,” Mitch said, stopping the actor in his tracks.
“What is it now, man?” Just like that he’d switched over to irritation.
“This kind of stuff is really beneath you.”
“You know dick about me, man.”
“I know you’re better than this. Much better.”
Tito considered Mitch’s remark for a long moment, tugging thoughtfully at his lower lip. Then he abruptly spat on the floor at Mitch’s feet and stormed off.
“Then again,” Mitch said to himself softly, “maybe you’re not.”
CHAPTER 4
The Citgo Minimart was three miles down Old Shore Road from the village, past McGee’s Diner, past Jilly’s Boatyard, just before the turnoff for Peck’s Point. There were some summer bungalow colonies clustered another couple of miles down the road, so the Citgo usually did a thriving business this time of year. Right now, Des found only a couple of pickups parked outside as she pulled up in her cruiser and got out. Right now, she found trouble.
Their big plate glass window had been smashed to bits.
Most of those bits were scattered inside all over the floor, Des discovered as she strode through the open door, crunching them under her feet. Some pieces remained framed in place, their sharp jagged edges exposed. A young workman was using a rubber mallet to tap them onto a tarp he’d laid on the pavement outside.
The owners of the station, the Acars, were visibly upset. Behind the counter, Mrs. Acar, a tiny woman in a headscarf, was trembling, her dark eyes wide with fright. Her husband was busy sweeping up and acting extremely brisk and take-charge. Also really unhappy to see Des. He wouldn’t so much as look at her.
It wasn’t either one of them who’d placed the call to her. It was the young workman, a customer.
“I got me some plywood I can let you have, Nuri,” he said. “Until you can get a new piece of glass, I mean.”
“That would be very kind of you, Kevin,” Mr. Acar responded, glancing up at him. Which meant he could no longer pretend that Des wasn’t standing there in the doorway “Good afternoon, Trooper. How may I help you?”
“You can tell me what happened here.”
“This happened,” Mrs. Acar responded, placing a smooth, round, granite stone on the counter. It was about the size of a man’s fist. In her tiny hand, it looked huge. Someone had painted 9/11 on it in red paint. “It struck very near to my head,” she said, pointing to a dent in the Sheetrock wall behind her. “It was fortunate we had no customers in line at the time or they might have been hit, with dire consequences.”
“As you can see, no one was hurt,” Mr. Acar spoke up, forcing a tight smile onto his face. “The window is easily replaced. So there is no trouble.”
“Did either of you see who threw it?”
“We saw nothing,” he replied crisply. “It was one of our quiet moments. I was in the back room replenishing some supplies for the men’s lavatory. And Nema was-”
“Where were you, Mrs. Acar?” Des asked, not liking the way he was trying to stampede her. The man was a bit too anxious for her to pack up and go.
“Restocking my case,” Nema replied, indicating the glass case next to the cash register, which was filled with exotic homemade pastries.
“You didn’t see it happen?”
“I heard the crash of broken glass. And I ducked. I saw… nothing,” she said, glancing meekly at her husband. “Then I heard a car pull away very rapidly, a screech of tires. That is all.”
“Did you get a make or license number of the car?”
“No, this was not possible. It was gone before I could get a look.”
“Which way was the car heading when it left-back toward town?”
“The other way, I believe. I am not positive.”
Des went to the door and glanced outside. On this stretch of Old Shore there were no businesses on the other side of the road, just an overgrown tangle of vines, creepers, and wild berries. About a hundred yards past the Citgo, heading away from town, there was a sharp left turn onto Burnham Road, a narrow, residential lane that snaked its way through some old farms and ended up back in the village. Whoever did this most likely turned there and was gone in aflash. Probably two kids in a pickup-one drives, the other crouches in back and throws the stone. Swamp Yankees, if she had to guess. Indigenous lost boys with a hate thing for immigrants. Especially immigrants who were operating a successful new business.