Maria looked away. Know her? Oh my God! I was all but a mother to the girl. Honey, when you gonna get outta this business?…Just a little longer, Maria, don’t worry…But I do worry. So many things can happen…. And those nights when Karly would call her late. Maria, I hurt so much. Could you come up here for a few minutes?…Oh, Dear God, it’s happened again. What’ve they done to you this time? I’ll be right there, Honey…. And that apartment deal with Frank! Karly, don’t be afraid to ask. Frank’s a businessman. He may give it to you. But, oh God, listen to me now. Here I am helping you do something I don’t even approve of… Oh, Maria, God knows where your heart is. He’s not going to punish you, too…. And those times when Karly wanted to talk. Maria, listen to what happened with this dude last night… Oh, Honey, I shouldn’t! But I guess it’s okay to listen to part of it…. And there was that Washington Big Shot she was seeing. Honey, that man’s trouble and you’re seeing too much of him… Oh, Maria, Jag’s the best thing I got going… Yeah, but he’s too powerful. Something tells me you should leave him alone… You sound like my grandmother, sometimes, Maria. Stop worrying so much…. And then there was Karly’s retirement plan, that 401-Karly, or something like that. It’s not right, Honey, and besides that you’re playing with fire. You know how I worry about you with that man, anyway…. All that had been — what was it now? — six or seven years ago.
She made a sign of the cross in her mind as she answered Magliacci. “May have heard of a Karly. That was a long time ago.”
“You know she was murdered?” Magliacci said.
Murdered! Maria had her suspicions but had never been sure. When she had asked Gallardi about her, he said he figured she moved on, like girls of her trade do. No ties to anyone. Those hookers, they lead a helter-skelter life, he’d said. Maria had never mentioned to anyone, not even to Frank, that she had seen that high-powered boyfriend of Karly’s entering her apartment that day, that last day she occupied it. What good would it do? She couldn’t prove anything. Besides that, Frank didn’t miss much. He knew it when anything was wrong, and she wasn’t about to question what he decided to do or not do about it. Besides, the big-shot boyfriend was someone she was sure Gallardi knew. So Maria decided then to keep her mouth shut.
“Murdered?” she said.
“Looks like Frank, uh, knew her pretty well.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Mr. Magliacci.”
“How else could he have gotten the things she was wearing when she died.”
Maria erupted. “If you’re saying Mr. Frank had something to do with Karly Amarson’s dea—?” Maria swore at herself, realizing what she had done.
“Amarson! Thank you for her name, Ms. Sanchez.”
His sarcasm on top of her own blunder was more than Maria could take. Job or no job, she wasn’t putting up with this ass. “Go now. Get out of here you disrespectful pig!”
Magliacci tried to stand up but realized he was stuck and started wiggling himself out of the chair as he spoke. “You’ve been very helpful, Ms. Sanchez, giving me Karly’s name, but you’ve done nothing to convince me that my uncle didn’t kill her.” He’d ignored her insult.
“Mr. Frank didn’t kill her!” Maria said in near hysteria. Her employees in the outer room looked around to see what was going on.
Lenny was standing now with his hands resting on his hips. “Well then, if you’re so sure, you must know who did, Ms. Sanchez? You can help me clear my uncle’s name!” His voice was becoming more and more intimidating.
Maria buried her face in her hands. Frank Gallardi hadn’t killed Karly, but what if Big Lenny had found something that made it look like he did? A dead man couldn’t defend himself and she didn’t believe for a second that Lenny was trying to clear Frank. If Karly was murdered, the killer had to be the man Maria saw at Karly’s door on the day she disappeared — the pompous bigwig Maria had warned her about. Jag, Karly called him, but Maria knew his real name. And if he didn’t do it, well, he’d have to take care of himself now. But she wasn’t about to let Big Lenny drag Frank Gallardi’s name through the sewer. When she looked up she was sobbing, but calm. “I will talk to you.”
Alicia Fraser knew it was going to be another unusual call. It had been a zoo around her office all week. The girl who usually took the boss’s calls was on vacation and Alicia was covering for her as well as trying to corral her own out of control cubicle. Alicia was reprimanded for mishandling calls once before and uncertain what to do with this one. She put the caller on Hold and pressed the intercom.
“Sir, I have a man on the line who insists you will want to speak with him. His name is, is…Magliacci.”
“Don’t you know how to handle my calls?” he demanded. “I don’t know any damn Magliacci. How’d he get through?”
“Sir, it sounds like he convinced the central operator you’d want to know about some person named Karly. Karly Amarson, I think he said.”
He closed his eyes briefly in reflection, then told Alicia to put the caller on Hold and walked over to the window. He suddenly realized how hot it was in his office and loosened his necktie. Millions of unwelcome memories flashed across his brain in the two minutes that passed before he went back to the phone.
“Put him through.”
He flipped on the voice recorder and picked up the flashing line. “Mr. Magliacci?”
The caller cleared his throat and said, “I’ll get right to the point. I have some things that may have belonged to Karly Amarson. I was hoping you could help me identify them.”
“Amarson?”
“Karly Amarson. You knew her, didn’t you? And Jag?”
There was a pause, then, “Come to my office tomorrow at ten.”
Magliacci was surprised how easy it was the next day. The guards checking his I.D. at the security points called him Mr. Magliacci, and if he was self-conscious about his old car, no one else seemed to pay it any attention. The young man who escorted him inside the building called someone to announce his arrival and showed him to a room where he was to wait for another escort to take him to his host. He declined the offer for coffee and flipped through the pages of a Time to keep his mind off his anxiety.
He wondered if he had made a mistake by agreeing to meet here. He could have named the place. Any place. After all, he was in control, or would have been elsewhere. He thought casinos had pretty good security but this place put them to shame. Maybe he should’ve handled it another way — sent a note demanding what he wanted without identifying himself. But he had taken steps to protect himself and now he had no choice but to trust in them.
A woman in her twenties showed Magliacci into a large office and he was standing at the window when his host walked in a few minutes later. He shook Magliacci’s hand and spoke with a sunny smile. “Leonard, I’m glad you’re here. It’s great to see you. Sit anywhere you like. They offer you something to drink? Pastries?”
Magliacci glanced around the room as if to see whether anyone could overhear him, although he knew that what he was going to say would never be heard by anyone outside this room even if it was taped. He took a long breath.
“Let’s just do our business. You do know Karly Amarson?”