Your father. Did she mean Anthony Marchetti? She dropped the words so casually.
“Why would you assume that?” I stuttered. “I don’t know anything.”
“This is my favorite space,” Rosalina said abruptly, as we stepped into the colorful chaos of a small Mexican garden. Bright blue tile covered the ground, overflowing Mexican pots held lemon trees and wildly colorful flowers. A parakeet cackled and swooped by several inches from my face. Two green-striped padded lounge chairs were neatly divided by a small green table that held a green pot of tea and a basket of scones. I guessed we stood on the south side of the maze, but who knew?
“Sit down, dear,” she said abruptly. “I’m not your mother, of course. Surely you never really thought that. You’re the spitting image of Genoveve. I always found that pretentious of her. Her name was probably something perfectly ordinary. Jenny with a J.”
I clung to the important part.
Rosalina Marchetti was not my mother.
My mother was the one who tucked me in at night like a burrito. Who had closed her eyes and held her breath every time I threw my body on top of a bull.
My mother was lying in a hospital bed in Texas, her mind wandering through a demented dream of her own.
“You don’t need to look at me like that,” Rosalina said haughtily. “It was just a little white lie. I wanted to present my case in person. You wouldn’t have flown all this way to see me otherwise; you would have simply tracked down Anthony. I figured you’d be curious. You’re a psychologist. You help small children. And this is all about a small child. My daughter. I need to know what happened to her. And I know Anthony knows. I want you to get him to tell.” She swatted at a wasp with a wrinkled, French-manicured hand. “Surely he can’t pass up a plea from his long-lost daughter.”
I was thinking, yes, Anthony Marchetti definitely could. I was thinking I wasn’t about to accept a word Rosalina was saying as the truth.
“You owe me.” Her face revealed a disconcerting glimpse of the stripper, the Mafia hooker, the survivor. “You and your mother owe me. My daughter is gone because of you.”
“Tell me. Please.” I barely got it out, but it was all the encouragement she needed.
“I was Rose Red,” she said proudly. “No other stripper pulled them in like I did. Anthony and his boys showed up almost every night. I dated one of his bulldogs. Arturo.”
She took a dainty sip of tea and crossed her legs primly.
“If alcohol and drugs in exchange for blow jobs counts for love,” she continued drily, “then Arturo and I were in love. Anthony was the stud, of course, but he was out of my league. We spent a lot of time over at a Rush Street piano bar, where your mother played and sang after ten. Anthony would listen to her and drink martinis until the garbage trucks rolled.”
She gazed at me with a mixture of jealousy and fascination.
“It’s eerie how much you look alike. That hair, the way you move. Anthony and your mother fascinated each other. She couldn’t resist him. All that darkness and charm.” Her voice grew heavy with sarcasm. “Thus began their great romance. The story goes to hell from there. I got pregnant. Your mother got pregnant. Difference was, one of Arturo’s buddies raped me in the alley behind the bar. Every which way, if you know what I mean. Arturo wouldn’t even look at me after that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “What happened to my mother?”
“Anthony went down for a hit on an FBI agent. It was ugly. He shot the man’s whole family. Somehow, your mother was mixed up in it. Anthony pled out to get her protected. Kind of a grand gesture for someone with Anthony’s résumé. To plead, I mean. I figured he’d just threaten a jury and get off.”
How, how, how could Mama be mixed up in this?
She paused, looking satisfied. “But there Anthony sits, more than thirty years later.”
“I don’t understand,” I stuttered. “You said you and Anthony weren’t… a thing.”
“He brought me an offer right after the murders. If I married him, my baby and I would be taken care of for life. But he made no bones about it: I’d be the new target for his enemies while your mother and his unborn baby got out of town. She already had an older boy. She never said who his father was. Not as pure as she put on.”
She was playing the role of martyr and enjoying every minute of it. I held back angry words because I didn’t want her to stop.
“Anthony always called me Red after that. But as in red herring, not Rose Red. I can’t say that he wasn’t straight about the risk in marrying him. I just never expected anything to happen to Adriana. You know that whoever took her had to think she was you. Anthony’s baby. I’ve been watching my back ever since.”
Something about this part of the story rang false, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was schooled in the facial tics of a liar, but she displayed none of them, her eyes focused on me, never darting away.
She gestured to the house. “That’s my prison. My fortress. I can flip a switch in any room and see every corner of the house and grounds. I think my security boys like to watch me in the shower sometimes, but”-she grinned-“that’s the price I pay. Every now and then I’ll do a little striptease around the four-poster. That’s just a bonus. They’re well paid.”
I brushed aside this image. “I still don’t understand. Why now? How did you find me?”
“Do you believe in Fate, Tommie?”
I thought about Granny and her cards, about how I sat smack in the middle of a tangled garden that was a metaphor for my life.
“Well, I believe that Fate brought you to me,” Rosalina said.
“Someone told you where I was,” I said flatly.
She turned coy. “I really can’t say.”
It suddenly occurred to me that I’d brought a tape recorder and never once thought about turning it on. I reached into my bag, ostensibly for a tissue, and flipped a switch and the direction of the conversation.
“So you don’t know what my mother knew about those murders?”
“Not a clue.”
“What makes you so sure Anthony Marchetti is my father?”
“I’m sure. Track him down. And while you’re at it, ask him about my Adriana. Beg him to give me some peace.”
I looked at my watch. I’d been there an hour. Screw subtlety. I just wanted answers. “Do you know why Anthony Marchetti has been moved to a Texas prison nearer my family?”
“I didn’t know that.” Rosalina seemed authentically surprised.
“I feel like my family is being threatened, but I don’t know where it’s coming from.”
“Maybe you should ask the Feds who are trying to peer over my wall right now.” Rosalina let out a snort of laughter. “Actually, honey, you can’t believe a word the FBI says. Of course, you can’t believe Anthony, either. He’s the master of illusion. The FBI guys, though-they lie, lie, lie to get what they want. Try to make us nervous. They’ve been bugging my phones for a decade. Don’t they think I know? They want to track all that money still drifting here and there.”
She brought the teacup and a flash of diamonds to her pale glossy lips, and I thought how her striptease was probably still worth watching.
I didn’t care what else she had to tell me. I desperately needed to get out of there. As I pushed myself out of the chair, she tugged me back down.
“Not yet,” she said, glancing around. “I want you to have something.” She reached into her pants pocket and placed a small red jewelry box in my hand, the elegant kind with the spring catch on the back.
The kind that promised something good.
It seemed odd that Rosalina would want to give me a gift-maybe something Anthony Marchetti had bought her once upon a time? Whatever it was, I didn’t want it.
Rosalina quickly shattered that sentimental thought.
“My daughter’s finger is in there.”