“Uh-huh. And you believe her, huh?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“Have you talked to Augusta about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
‘What am I supposed to do? Ask her if there’s some guy she’s been seeing? Suppose she tells me there is? Then what? Shit, Steve...”
“If I were in a similar situation, I’d ask Teddy in a minute.”
“And what if she said it was true?”
“We’d work it out.”
“Sure.”
“We would.”
Kling was silent for several moments. His face was beaded with sweat, he appeared on the verge of tears. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at his forehead. He sucked in a deep breath, and said, “Steve... is it... is it still good between you and Teddy?”
“Yes.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
“In bed, I mean.”
“Yes, in bed. And everywhere else.”
“Because... I, I don’t think I’d have believed a word that blonde was saying if, if I, if I didn’t already think something was wrong. Steve, we... these past few months... ever since June it must be... we... you know, it used to be we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, I’d come home from work, she’d be all over me. But lately...” He shook his head, his voice trailed.
Carella said nothing. He stared through the windshield ahead, and then blew the horn at a pedestrian about to step off the curb against the light. Kling shook his head again. He took out his handkerchief again, and again dabbed at his brow with it.
“It’s just that lately... well, for a long time now... there hasn’t been anything between us. I mean, not like before. Not the way it used to be, when we, when we couldn’t stand being apart for a minute. Now it’s... when we make love, it’s just so... so cut and dried, Steve. As if she’s... tolerating me, you know what I mean? Just doing it to, to, to get it over with. Aw, shit, Steve,” he said, and ducked his face into the handkerchief, both hands spread over it, and began sobbing.
“Come on,” Carella said.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, come on.”
“What an asshole,” Kling said, sobbing into the handkerchief.
“You’ve got to talk to her about it,” Carella said.
“Yeah.” The handkerchief was still covering his face. He kept sobbing into it, his head turned away from Carella, his shoulders heaving.
“Will you do that?”
“Yeah.”
“Bert? Will you talk to her?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I will.”
“Come on now.”
“Yeah, okay,” Kling said, and sniffed, and took the handkerchief from his face, and dried his eyes, and sniffed again, and said, “Thanks,” and stared straight ahead through the windshield again.
2
The neighborhood had changed.
He hadn’t expected it to look the same, not after twelve years, but neither had he expected so overwhelming a transformation. He got off the elevated train at Cannon Road, and then came down the steps onto Dover Plains Avenue, called simply and familiarly “the Avenue” when he was still living here. The area then had been a peaceful mix of Italians, Jews, Irish, and blacks, but as he walked up toward Marien Street, he noticed with a fleeting pang that time had passed him by, all the familiar landmarks were gone.
What had once been an Italian latticini was now a Puerto Rican bodega. What had once been a kosher butcher shop was now a billiard parlor; through the open door of the place, he could see clusters of teenage Puerto Ricans holding pool cues. The pizzeria on the corner of Yardley was now a bar and grill, and Harry’s candy store — where he used to take the kids for ice-cream sundaes — was now a shoe store, a huge sign lettered Zapatería across the front of it, a plate-glass window replacing the open counter over which Harry used to pass his egg creams. All gone, he thought. My two youngest kids living in Chicago with Josie’s mother now, and my eldest, my daughter — ah, my daughter.
He was back here today to find his daughter.
He had last seen this neighborhood when he was twenty-seven years old. A young man. Twenty-seven. He would be forty in November, twelve years of his life blown in prison. Moira had been six when they sent him away, she’d just turned eighteen this past June, he hadn’t seen her in all that time. He wondered if she would recognize him. He was a tall man — they didn’t shrink you up there at Castleview, though they did just about everything else to you — and still muscularly built, thanks to workouts in the prison gym, never missed a day of lifting those weights, except that time he was in solitary for a month, that was after the stabbing that cost him a sure parole and an additional two years of time.
He’d been away for twenty-to-life on a Murder One conviction, which meant he’d have been eligible for parole in ten if it hadn’t been for D’Annunzio starting in about his nose, greeting him every morning with “Hey, Schnoz, how’s it going?” or “How’s the Schnozzola today?” Trapped up there where you can’t avoid somebody who’s bugging you, man keeps calling attention to the fact you got a big nose, there’s only so much of that shit you can take. Grabbed a fork off the mess hall table one night after D’Annunzio made some crack about guys with big noses having tiny little cocks — which was wrong, anyway, it was supposed to be the other way around, a big nose meant a big cock — and went at his face with it, tore D’Annunzio’s face to ribbons with the fork, would’ve blinded the son of a bitch if three of the pigs hadn’t clubbed him to the floor. Spent a month in solitary and then heard the good news that his parole request was being denied. Later, the state added two years to the obligatory ten he had to serve. The pigs were fond of saying “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” He had done his time — twelve long years of it — and now he was out.
And now he wanted to see his daughter again.
This was Saturday, the neighborhood seemed drowsy and peaceful in the blistering midday sun. He walked up Marien to the house they used to live in, a two-family, clapboard-and-brick building with a low picket fence around it. The house and the fence used to be painted white; the new owner had painted them green. There were two mailboxes side by side at the curb, one with the name JOHNSON on it, the other with the name GARCÍA. A black man was in the big front yard, hunkered over an azalea bush, pulling weeds from around it. Halloran stood staring at the house for a moment, remembering, and then turned and walked back toward the Avenue again.
He had never been a drinking man, even before the trouble, and drinking was one habit you couldn’t pick up in stir. But his lawyer had told him that his daughter had come back from Chicago and was living someplace in the old neighborhood, and Halloran hadn’t been able to find a listing for her in the Riverhead directory, so he figured maybe the best place to start was one of the bars, ask if anybody knew where Moira Halloran was living these days. Puerto Rican and black neighborhood like it was now, an Irish girl had to stand out, right? Irish girl with blonde hair and blue eyes like her mother’s — Ah Jesus, Josie, I never meant to do it.
He went into the bar that used to be a pizzeria. Made good pizza back in the days before he got sent away, used to take Josie and the three kids there all the time. Used to think a lot about Josie up there at Castleview. In bed alone at night, he thought about Josie. Even later on, when he found himself a punk who’d do whatever he was told to do or else, it was Josie he thought about during the sex act. Always Josie. Josie he thought about, Josie he imagined. Josie who he’d killed with a hatchet.