Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories, Volume 3 Read online

  If they steamed up to her on the street outside the townhouse, they attached themselves like leeches and no amount of “Better be going” or “Have a good day now” could dislodge them. She stopped inviting them into her own two-story apartment—the top two floors of the townhouse—but when they tracked her down outside they would simply walk in with her when she returned.

  Miriam would take her groceries and put them away and John would sit forward on the couch with a glass of water his mother brought him and grin in that got-you way of his. Miriam sat down with tea or coffee for the ladies and inquired how Sarah was feeling, did she ever go out of town, did you read about that man a few years ago, Bernie Madoff? Are you careful about things like that, Sarah? I certainly am.

  Oh, Lord, leave me alone…

  Sarah spoke to the lawyer and real estate management agent and learned there was nothing she could do to evict them.

  And the matter got worse. They’d accidentally let slip facts about Sarah’s life that they shouldn’t have known. Bank accounts she had, meetings she’d been to, boards she was on, meetings with wealthy bankers. They’d been spying. She wondered if they’d been going through her mail—perhaps in her townhouse when John was sitting on the couch, babysitting her, and his mother was in Sarah’s kitchen making them all a snack.

  Or perhaps they’d finagled a key to her mailbox.

  Now, that would be a crime.

  But she wondered if the police would be very interested. Of course not.

  And then a month ago, irritation became fear.

  Typically they’d poured inside after her as she returned from shopping alone, Carmel Rodriguez having the day off. Miriam had scooped the Food Emporium bags from her hand and John had, out of “courtesy,” taken her key and opened the door.

  Sarah had been too flustered to protest—which would have done little good anyway, she now knew.

  They’d sat for fifteen minutes, water and tea at hand, talking about who knew what, best of friends, and then Miriam had picked up her large purse and gone to use the toilet and headed for Sarah’s bedroom.

  Sarah had stood, saying she’d prefer the woman use the guest bathroom, but John had turned his knit brows her way and barked, “Sit down. Mother can pick whichever she wants.”

  And Sarah had, half thinking she was about to be beaten to death.

  But the son slipped back to conversation mode and rambled on about yet another real estate deal he was thinking of doing.

  Sarah, shaken, merely nodded and tried to sip her tea. She knew the woman was riffling through her personal things. Or planting a camera or listening device.

  Or worse.

  When Miriam returned, fifteen minutes later, she glanced at her son and he rose. In eerie unison, they lockstepped out of the apartment.

  Sarah searched but she couldn’t find any eavesdropping devices and couldn’t tell if anything was disturbed or missing—and that might have been disastrous; she had close to three-quarters of a million dollars in cash and jewelry tucked away in her bedroom.

  But they’d been up to no good—and had been rude and frightening. It was then that she began to think of them as the He-Beast and She-Beast.

  Sycophants had given way to tyrants.

  They’d become Rasputins.

  The Beasts, like viruses, had infected what time Sarah had left on this earth and were destroying it—time she wanted to spend simply and harmlessly: visiting with those she cared for, directing her money where it would do the most good, volunteering at charities, working on the needlepoints she loved so much, a passion that was a legacy from her mother.

  And yet those pleasures were being denied her.

  Sarah Lieberman was a woman of mettle, serene though she seemed and diminutive though she was. She’d left home in Connecticut at eighteen, put herself through college in horse country in northern Virginia working in stables, raced sailboats in New Zealand, lived in New Orleans at a time when the town was still honky-tonk, then she’d plunged into Manhattan and embraced virtually every role that the city could offer—from Radio City Music Hall dancer to Greenwich Village Bohemian to Upper East Side philanthropist. At her eightieth birthday party, she’d sung a pretty good version of what had become her theme song over the years: “I’ll Take Manhattan.”

  That steely spirit remained but the physical package to give it play was gone. She was an octogenarian, as tiny and frail as that gingko leaf outside the parlor window. And her mind, too. She wasn’t as quick; nor was the memory what it had been.

  What could she do about the Beasts?

  Now, sitting in the parlor, she dropped her hands to her knees. Nothing occurred to her. It seemed hopeless.

  Then, a key clattered in the lock. Sarah’s breath sucked in. She assumed that somehow the Beasts had copied her key and she expected to see them now.

  But, no. She sighed in relief to see Carmel return from shopping.

  Were tears in her eyes?

  “What’s the matter?” Sarah asked.

  “Nothing,” the woman responded quickly.

  Too quickly.

  “Yes, yes, yes…But if something were the matter, give me a clue, dear.”

  The solid housekeeper carried the groceries into the kitchen, making sure she didn’t look her boss’s way.

  Yes, crying.

  “There’s nothing wrong, Mrs. Sarah. Really.” She returned to the parlor. Instinctively, the woman straightened a lace doily.

  “Was it him? What did he do?”

  John…the He-Beast.

  Sarah knew he was somehow involved. Both Miriam and John disliked Carmel, as they did most of Sarah’s friends, but John seemed contemptuous of the woman, as if the housekeeper mounted a campaign to limit access to Sarah. Which she did. In fact several times she had actually stepped in front of John to keep him from following Sarah into her apartment. Sarah had thought he’d been about to hit the poor woman.

  “Please, it’s nothing.”

  Carmel Rodriguez was five feet, six inches tall and probably weighed 180 pounds. Yet the elderly woman now rose and looked up at her housekeeper, who’d been with her for more than a decade. “Carmel. Tell me.” The voice left no room for debate.

  “I got home from shopping? I was downstairs just now?”

  Statements as questions—the sign of uncertainty. “I came back from the store and was talking to him and then Mr. John—”

  “Just John. You can call him John.”

  “John comes up and, just out of nowhere, he says, did I hear about the burglary?”

  “Where?”

  “The neighborhood somewhere. I said I didn’t. He said somebody broke in and stole this woman’s papers. Like banking papers and wills and deeds and bonds and stocks.”

  “People don’t keep stocks and bonds at home. The brokerage keeps them.”

  “Well, he told me she got robbed and these guys took all her things. He said he was worried about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Sarah. And he didn’t want to make you upset but he was worried and did I know where you kept things like that? Was there a safe somewhere? He said he wanted to make sure they were protected.” The woman wiped her face. Sarah had thought her name was Carmen at first, as one would think, given her pedigree and appearance. But, no, her mother and father had named her after the town in California, which they dreamed of someday visiting.

  Sarah found a tissue and handed it to the woman. This was certainly alarming. It seemed to represent a new level of invasiveness. Still, John Westerfield’s probing was constant and familiar, like a low-grade fever, which Carmel had her own mettle to withstand.

  No, something else had happened.

  “And?”

  “No, really. Just that.”

  Sarah herself could be persistent, too. “Come, now…”

  “He…I think it was maybe a coincidence. Didn’t mean anything.”

  Nothing the She-Beast and the He-Beast did was a coincidence. Sarah said, “Tell me any
way.”

  “Then he said,” the woman offered, choking back a sob, “if I didn’t tell him, he wouldn’t be able to protect you. And if those papers got stolen, you’d lose all your money. I’d lose my job and…and then he said my daughter might have to leave her high school, Immaculata.”

  “He said that?” Sarah whispered.

  Carmel was crying harder now. “How would he know she went there? Why would he find that out?”

  Because he and his mother did their homework. They asked their questions like chickens pecking up seed and stones.

  But now, threatening Carmel and her family?

  “I got mad and I said I couldn’t wait until the lease is up and he and his mother went away forever! And he said oh, they weren’t going anywhere. They checked the law in New York and as long as they pay the rent and don’t break the lease they can stay forever. Is that true, Mrs. Sarah?”

  Sarah Lieberman said, “Yes, Carmel, it is true.” She rose and sat down at the Steinway piano she’d owned for nearly twenty years. It had been a present from her second husband for their wedding. She played a few bars of Chopin, her favorite composer and, in her opinion, the most keyboard-friendly of the great classicists.

  Carmel continued, “When he left he said, ‘Say hi to your family for me, Carmel. Say hi to Daniel. You know, your husband, he’s a good carpenter. And say hi to Rosa. She’s a pretty girl. Pretty like her mother.’” Carmel was shivering now, tears were flowing.

  Sarah turned from the piano and touched the maid on the shoulder. “It’s all right, dear. You did the right thing to tell me.”

  The tears slowed and finally stopped. A Kleenex made its way around her face.

  After a long moment Sarah said, “When Mark and I were in Malaysia—you know he was head of a trade delegation there?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Sarah.”

  “When we were there for that, we went to this preserve.”

  “Like a nature preserve?”

  “That’s right. A nature preserve. And there was this moth he showed us. It’s called an Atlas moth. Now, they’re very big—their wings are six or eight inches across.”

  “That’s big, sí.”

  “But they’re still moths. The guide pointed at it. ‘How can it defend itself? What does it have? Teeth? No. Venom? No. Claws? No.’ But then the guide pointed out the markings on this moth’s wings. And it looked just like a snake’s head! It was exactly like a cobra. Same color, everything.”

  “Really, Mrs. Sarah?”

  “Really. So that the predators aren’t sure whether it would be safe to eat the moth or not. So they usually move on to something else and leave the moth alone.”

  Carmel was nodding, not at all sure where this was going.

  “I’m going to do that with the Westerfields.”

  “How, Mrs. Sarah?”

  “I’ll show them the snake head. I’m going to make them think it’s too dangerous to stay here and they should move out.”

  “Good! How are you going to do that?”

  “Did I show you my birthday present?”

  “The flowers?”

  “No, this.” Sarah took an iPhone from her purse. She fiddled with the functions, many of which she had yet to figure out. “My nephew in Virginia gave it to me. Freddy. He’s a good man. Now, this phone has a recorder in it.”

  “You’re going to record them, doing that? Threatening you?”

  “Exactly. I’ll email a copy to my lawyer and several other people. The Westerfields’ll have to leave me alone.”

  “But it might not be safe, Mrs. Sarah.”

  “I’m sure it won’t be. But it doesn’t look like I have much choice, do I?”

  Then Sarah noticed that Carmel was frowning, looking away.

  The older woman said, “I know what you’re thinking. They’ll just go find somebody else to torture and do the same thing to them.”

  “Yes, that’s what I was thinking.”

  Sarah said softly, “But in the jungle, you know, it’s not the moth’s job to protect the whole world, dear. It’s the moth’s job to stay alive.”

  PRESENT DAY

  YOU WANT ME TO FIND SOMEBODY?” the man asked the solemn woman sitting across from him. “Missing person?”

  The Latina woman corrected solemnly, “Body. Not somebody. A body.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A body. I want to know where a body is. Where it’s buried.”

  “Oh.” Eddie Caruso remained thoughtfully attentive but now that he realized the woman might be a crackpot he wanted mostly to get back to his iPad, on which he’d been watching a football—well, soccer—match currently under way in Nigeria. Eddie loved sports. He’d played softball in his middle school days, Little League and football, well, gridiron, in high school and then, being a skinny guy, he’d opted for billiards and pool in college (to raise tuition while, for the most part, avoiding bodily harm). But the present sport of his heart was soccer.

  Okay, football.

  But he was also a businessman and crackpots could be paying clients, too. He kept his attention on the substantial woman across his desk, which was bisected by a slash of summer light reflected off a nearby Times Square high-rise.

  “Okay. Keep going, Mrs. Rodriguez.”

  “Carmel.”

  “Carmel?”

  “Carmel.”

  “A body, you were saying.”

  “A murdered woman, a friend.”

  He leaned forward, now intrigued. Crackpot clients could not only pay well. They also often meant Game—a term coined by sportsman Eddie Caruso; it was hard to define. It meant basically the interesting, the weird, the captivating. Game was that indefinable aspect of love and business and everything else, not just sports, that kept you engaged, that got the juices flowing, that kept you off balance.

  People had Game or they didn’t. And if not, break up.

  Jobs had Game or they didn’t. And if not, quit.

  Another thing about Game. You couldn’t fake it.

  Eddie Caruso had a feeling this woman, and this case, had Game.

  She said, “A year ago, I lost someone I was close to.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The iPad went into sleep mode. When last viewed, a winger for Senegal had been cutting through the defense, trying to open a way to goal. But Caruso let the sleeping device lie. The woman was clearly distraught about her loss. Besides, Senegal wasn’t going to score.

  “Here.” Carmel opened a large purse and took out what must’ve been fifty sheets of paper, rumpled, gray, torn. Actual newspaper clippings, too, which you didn’t see much, as opposed to computer printouts, though there were some of those, too. She set them on his desk and rearranged them carefully. Pushed the stack forward.

  “What’s this?”

  “News stories about her, Sarah Lieberman. She was the one murdered.”

  Something familiar, Caruso believed. New York is a surprisingly small town when it comes to crime. News of horrific violence spreads fast, like a dot of oil on water, and the hard details seat themselves deep in citizens’ memories. The Yuppie Murderer. The Subway Avenger. The Wilding Rape. Son of Sam. The Werewolf Slasher.

  Caruso scanned the material fast. Yes, the story came back to him. Sarah Lieberman was an elderly woman killed by a bizarre couple—a mother and son pair of grifters from the Midwest. He saw another name in the stories, one of the witnesses: that of the woman sitting in front of him. Carmel had been Sarah’s housekeeper and Carmel’s husband, Daniel, the part-time maintenance man.

  She nodded toward the stack. “Read those, read that. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

  Generally Caruso didn’t spend a lot of time in the free initial consulting session. But then it wasn’t like he had much else going on.

  Besides, as he read, he knew instinctively, this case had Game written all over it.

  * * *

  HERE’S EDDIE CARUSO: A lean face revealing not-unexpected forty-two-year-old creases, thick and caref
ully trimmed dark blond hair, still skinny everywhere, except for a belly that curls irritatingly over the belt hitching up Macy’s sale Chinese-made somewhat wool slacks. A dress shirt, today blue of color, light blue like the gingham that infected the state fairs Caruso worked as a boy to make money for cars and dates and eventually college.

  Rhubarb pie, cobbler, pig shows, turkey wings, dunk-the-clown.

  That was where he came from.

  And this is where he is: not the FBI agent he dreamed of being, nor the disillusioned personal injury lawyer he was, but a pretty good private investigator, which suits his edgy, ebullient, Game-addicted personality real well.

  The actual job description is “security consultant.”

  Nowadays, everybody cares about security. They don’t care about investigating. Why should they? A credit card and the Internet make us all Sam Spades.

  Still, Eddie Caruso likes to think of himself as a PI.

  Caruso has a scuffed, boring, nondescript office in a building those same adjectives apply to, Forty-sixth near Eighth—decorated (office, not building) with close to twenty pictures he himself has taken with a very high-speed Canon of athletes in action. You’d think he was a sports lawyer. The building features mostly orthodontists, plastic surgeons, accountants, one-man law firms and a copy shop. That’s one great thing about New York: Even in the Theater District, the Mecca of all things artistic, people need teeth and boobs fixed up, their taxes paid and résumés exaggerated. Next door is a touristy but dependable restaurant of some nebulous Middle Eastern–Mediterranean affiliation; it excels at the grilled calamari. Caruso, who lives in Greenwich Village and who often walks the three miles to work (to banish the overhang of gut), likes the five-story bathwater-gray building, the location, too. Though if the city doesn’t stop digging up the street in front of the building Caruso may just write a letter.

  Which he’ll never get around to, of course.

  Now, Eddie Caruso finished reading the account of the murder, well, skimming the account of the murder, and pushed the material back toward Carmel.