“Please, guys. Don’t embarrass me in front of Ned, okay? I’m trying to make a good impression.”
My father smiles, and my mother gives me a shove. “You. Always with the jokes.”
The cab pulls up and Ned opens the door for them. I lean down and give them both a quick kiss. Ned helps my father into the dark cab, but my mother is tougher to shake. She grabs me by my coat and whispers, “Call me. I want to talk to you about this young man.”
“Okay, I’ll call you.”
She whispers loudly into my ear. “It’s good to see you with someone. You’re too young to put yourself up on the shelf.”
“Ma…”
She looks at Ned sternly. “You take good care of my daughter. Or you answer to me!”
“I will,” he says, surprised.
“Time to go, Ma.” I fight the urge to push her into the cab.
“We love you, doll,” says my father, as my mother gets in.
“Love you too,” I say, closing the heavy door with relief. I feel like I’ve tucked them into bed. I wave, and the cab pulls away.
Ned gives me a hug. “They’re wonderful,” he says happily.
“The Flying DiNunzios. They’re something, aren’t they?”
“You’re lucky, you know.”
“I know, but let’s not get into it now. Help me find Lombardo.” I squint at the crowd coming out of the building’s narrow front doors.
“I don’t know what he looks like.”
“Fred Flintstone.”
Judy comes out with Kurt, who has managed to find a suit jacket for the occasion. She waves good-bye over the sea of people. I wave back.
Ned points over at the far edge of the crowd. “Is that him?”
“Yes!” Sure enough, it’s Lombardo. I flag him down and he finally spots me. Even from a distance, his expression tells me he wishes he hadn’t.
“Don’t get upset, Mary.”
“I’m already upset. I feel like I want to break his face.” I plunge into the crowd of people, with Ned beside me. Lombardo threads his way toward us, and we meet in the middle.
“Drunk driver, Lombardo?” I say to him. “You have to be kidding!”
Lombardo looks around nervously. “Mary, settle down.”
“That’s almost as absurd as gay-basher!”
Lombardo takes me aside, and Ned follows. “Look, Mary, it’s just a preliminary finding, we haven’t stopped the investigation. You said the car was driving crazy when it left the sidewalk. It crashed into the sawhorse. We know it was driving crazy to go up on the-”
“Bullshit!”
“Mary, don’t play cop. I’m the cop.”
One of the gay men in the crowd glances back. On his short leather jacket is a pink button that saysACT UP; they tangled with the police at a demonstration last year. There’s no love lost between the two groups. Lombardo says, “Let’s take it out of here.”
We regroup at the entrance to the Barclay Hotel, next to the Art Alliance. The canvas awning snaps in the swirling winds around Rittenhouse Square. “Aren’t you gonna introduce me to your friend?” Lombardo asks.
“I’m Ned Waters, Detective Lombardo.” Ned extends a hand, but Lombardo hesitates before he shakes it. He’s remembering that Ned’s is one of the names I gave him in the hospital as a suspect.
“He’s okay, Tom,” I say.
Lombardo looks from me to Ned. Whatever he’s thinking, he decides not to say it. “Mary, I followed up on what you told me about your husband. I looked up the AID file on his accident. I even talked to one of the men who investigated. Your husband was hit on the West River Drive, going out of town, at that first curve.”
“I know that.”
“It’s almost a blind curve, Mary. I went out and checked it myself. I found out your husband’s not the only bicycle rider to be killed at the same spot. There was an architect, three months ago.”
“I read about him. He was only twenty-six.”
“Your husband and the architect were killed at about the same time-Sunday morning, bright and early. Probably by someone who’d been out partyin’ the night before and was drivin’ home to the subs.”
“But-”
“Wait a minute.” Lombardo pulls out his notebook and flips through it in the light coming from the hotel. “Wait. Here we go. A doctor was killed there too. An internist, who lived in Mount Airy. The guy was fifty-eight. Two years ago, the same curve. Now Brent was hit at a whole ’nother time and place. So I-”
“Isn’t that a distinction without a difference?” Ned asks.
Lombardo looks up from his little book. “What?”
“Does it really make a difference that one is in the morning and one is at night? Just because they happen at different times and places doesn’t mean it can’t be the same person.”
“Listen, Mr. Waters, I’ve been a detective a little longer than you.”
“I understand that.”
“My gut tells me it ain’t the same guy.” He turns to me. “I ran down your lead, Mary. I treated it serious, because I admit it looks strange, the two incidents bein’ so close together like that. But I gotta go on what makes the most sense, and it’s not homicide. I see two accidents, both involving booze. It’s too bad that one of them was your husband and the other was your secretary, but it’s just one of those coincidences. At least that’s what I think so far.”
“But, Tom, the license plate.”
“Half the cars in this city got no plate. The crackheads take ’em off to sell; the thieves take ’em off for the registration stickers. Look, the way I see it, the guy who killed Brent jumped the curb, trying to avoid the construction. AID told me they had two fender-benders on Walnut Street the same day, all on account of the construction.”
“Then why did he drive away?”
“Happens a lot, Mary. More than you think. Somebody’s drinkin’ a little too much, especially on a Friday night, and before they know it-boom-they’re up on the sidewalk. They’re juiced, they panic. We usually catch up with ’em in a couple of months. Some of ’em even come clean from a guilty conscience. That’s what happened with the architect.” He pauses and returns the notebook to his back pocket. “AID don’t have that many open fatals, you know. The doctor, a kid in a crosswalk in the Northeast, and your husband. He’s one of three.”
I feel numb again. Mike’s a fatal. An open fatal.
“What about the calls?” Ned asks testily.
“You get any more over the weekend, Mary?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been home yet.”
“And what about the notes?” Ned says.
Lombardo glares at him. “I’ll come by and get ’em from Mary. I’ll look ’em over and send ’em to the Document Unit, but I don’t think they have anything to do with Brent. They don’t sound like the kinda notes you see with a killer.”
“What do you mean?”
“The notes don’t say ‘I’m gonna kill you,’ ‘I’m gonna mess you up,’ ‘You ain’t gonna live another day,’ like that. That’s the kind of notes you get from a freak who kills. A freak withcipollines. You know what that means, buddy?”
“Educate me, Detective Lombardo.”
I know what it means, little onions. But the connotation is-
“Balls!”
“Tom, Ned, please.”
Lombardo hunches to replace his raincoat. “I want to see the notes, Mary, but I gotta tell you, I think they’re from some weak sister who’s got a thing for you. Could be someone you used to know, could be someone you know now. It could even be somebody you don’t know at all, like a guy in the mailroom at work. Some jerk with a crush. That’s the pattern, especially with ladies like yourself, career girls. Their name’s in the paper, they’re on this committee, that committee. You on committees like that?”
“Some.”
“This kind of guy isn’t a fighter, he’s a lover. He’s at home, swoonin’ over your picture, tryin’ to get up the nerve to talk to you. So don’t worry. Call me tomorrow and we’ll set up a time.” Lombardo’s attention is suddenly diverted by Delia, who appears out of the darkness, followed by Berkowitz.