All I Did Was Shoot My Man

47

I reached an address in Bayside, Queens, a little after four. There were children moving about the streets and sidewalks on skateboards and bicycles, in-line skates, and even on foot. It was summer and everyone was home except those parents who were still at work, trying to make the rent or mortgage.

The house I had come to visit was small and yellowy with a large yard all around it. Surrounded by bushes and trees, it was the perfect setup for a burglary. But I wasn’t there to commit a crime; not even to investigate one, not really.

I knocked on the front door. It opened immediately, a small redheaded girl child, barely in grade school, standing there behind the screen. The image made me think of Nova Algren; she had once been a child — still was one when she committed her first homicide.

The little girl in front of me wore an orange-and-blue swimsuit.

“Hi,” she said, looking up in stunned surprise.

“Is it Mrs. Braxton, honey?” a man called from inside the house somewhere.

“Uh-uh,” the little girl said.

I was prepared with a story. My name was Farthing, Mr. S. Farthing, and I worked for the adoption agency that helped Sydney and Rhianon Quick get the little red-haired girl standing behind the screen door.

I smiled at the child while footsteps sounded on a carpeted floor behind her.

When the man appeared behind his daughter my lie faded away.

“Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?”

“Hello, Harry,” I replied. “I’m here for Zella.”

“That’s me,” the little girl said a little dismayed.

“Not you,” I said to allay this fear. “It’s somebody else with the same name.”

Harry Tangelo, aka Sydney Quick, exhibited the same surprised stare that plastered his daughter’s face.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I need to talk to you about the other Zella.”

“I don’t understand. How did you find me?”

“I’m a detective. Finding people is what we do.”

“Um.”

“Can I come in?”

“What do you want?”

“My client, the woman with the same name as your daughter, has gotten her sentence overturned.”

“She’s out?”

“And very sorry for the things she’s done.”

Harry Tangelo’s mouth gaped open. His eyes were looking far beyond me.

“Daddy, can I go swimming?” the child asked, already bored with adult gibberish.

“Um, uh... Sure, honey. Sure. What was your name again, mister?”

“McGill. Leonid McGill.”

“Would you like to come out in the backyard, Mr. McGill? I was just filling the little pool for Zell.”

It was just an inflated red rubber tub, fed by a green hose, with water cascading over the side.

Screaming Zella the Second ran and jumped into the man-made puddle with a great splash.

It felt like I had just jumped into the deep end myself. While Harry went to the spigot at the side of the house, to turn off the hose, I watched and wondered what to do next.

“Have a seat, Mr. McGill,” Harry said, waving at two redwood chairs that were set in permanently reclined positions.

I lowered into one and he took the other.

We were both a little wary, like boxers in the first round of an out-of-town fight.

Tangelo would have been called cute if he’d been a woman. He had black hair, heavy lips, and eyes that seemed in turn sympathetic, then sad.

“Look at me, Daddy!”

“What does Zella want?” the adoptive blood father asked.

“To see her daughter and apologize for what she did.”

“The heist or the shooting?”

“She’s been exonerated for the Rutgers thing,” I said. “The DA admitted that he would have let her off on the shooting for diminished capacity.”

“I thought they found part of the money in her storage unit?”

There was a huge elm standing at the corner of the pine fence that separated the Quicks from their neighbors. The shadow that tree threw was like a stain across the green lawn. This darkness seemed appropriate.

“Hello,” a woman called.

“Mrs. Braxton!” the child screamed.

She jumped from the pool and tore out toward the back of the house. There, emerging from the sliding glass door, was a middle-aged woman wearing a violet dress and a white sweater in spite of the heat.

Harry stood up, following the girl toward the house. He spoke to the gray-haired white woman, gesturing toward me.

“Nooooo!” the child complained.

Then little Zella lowered her head and followed the babysitter into the house.

When Harry returned I was ready to engage him in our awkward contest.

“I don’t understand what Zella wants, exactly,” he said.

“I was hired by an attorney named Lewis to investigate the evidence in her conviction,” I said. “What I found proved that she had nothing to do with the robbery. We got her out of prison and the only thing she wanted was to find her daughter and make amends to you. But honestly, I came here today expecting to meet Sydney and Rhianon — not you.”

My words had the ring of truth to them. Harry grimaced and bit his lower lip.

“I changed my name after getting out of the hospital,” he said. “You know, I was adopted and so it wasn’t my real name, my birth name anyway. And because I was adopted I paid a lot of money to get little Zella. She’s my blood and I won’t have her be a ward of the state like I was.”

“Her mother would love to see her.”

“Her mother shot me three times.”

“That’s over with, Harry,” I said.

It felt good to be involved with a clear-cut element of the case. Zella wanted to see her child. The father had said child and was raising her in comfort and safety.

“Hi, honey,” a woman called from the glass door.

“Hey, babe,” the man known as Sydney Quick said.

I looked up and there, walking across the lawn toward us, was Claudia Burns, aka Minnie Lesser, now aka Rhianon Quick.

I stood up.

She stopped in her tracks, glowering at me.

“What?” Harry/Sydney asked.

The woman wanted to turn around and run — I could see that clearly.

“I’m already in your house, Minnie,” I said. “I’m already here.”

If epilepsy was in her DNA, she would have succumbed at that moment. She took in a deep breath and approached us.

“You two know each other?” Harry asked.

“Mr. McGill was at the office today,” she said. “He was talking to Mr. Brighton.”

“What for?”

“Even though the courts exonerated your ex-girlfriend it seems that Rutgers is not so easily convinced,” I said. “They’re hounding my client and I was there to try to get them to lay off.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry muttered. “Are you here looking for Zella’s daughter or because of the robbery?”

“I want you out of this house,” Minnie said to me.

“And I will leave just as soon as I’m satisfied that you and Harry here don’t have anything to do with Brighton, the heist, and the people who tried to kill me a few nights ago.”

“Kill you?” Harry said.

“Give me fifteen minutes and I will be happy to leave.”