And Sometimes I Wonder About You

37

At an art store on Grand I spent two hundred sixty-four dollars and forty-seven cents for a beginner’s set of oil paints and brushes, an eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch canvas stretched on and stapled to a sturdy wooden frame, and a spindly easel made from uncured pine.

I set myself up on Ninth Street just past Avenue C at a spot down the block and across the street from a row of low-income housing bungalows, each of which had doors that opened onto the sidewalk. Instead of having screens, each of these doors was protected by a gate of heavy bars — each of these gates was equipped with a heavy-duty lock. The entrance of unit 4A was visible from where I stood in front of my future masterpiece. I had also purchased a folding blue-canvas stool that I could sit on to appreciate my work and keep an eye on the barred door.

Once I had read the only other name on Bea’s visitors’ list, I knew my next step. I couldn’t find a listing for Violet Henrys but Violet Trammel lived in 4A on that block of Ninth. I knew the units because Alphabet City is full of the lowlifes and grifters that are my stock-in-trade.

I didn’t want to knock on the door because Bea had probably warned Violet that I was looking for Paulie. So I decided to wait until either she came home or went out before settling on how to make contact. If I was lucky Paulie might be with her. If I was very lucky Celia would be there too.

My disguise consisted of a Red Sox baseball cap that I’d found in a trash can on St. Mark’s Place and the fact that I had doffed my jacket, folded it, and placed it under the stool. I had it in mind to try to re-create the haunting stare of the Rembrandt Girl I so loved. After maybe two hours I had a graded gray-blue background and one eye. A few people stopped to watch me but nobody said anything except for a homeless woman that looked familiar. She was older than she should have been, clad in a dress that was a step down from being rags.

“Got a cigarette, mister?”

“Sorry, honey, I quit.” I gave her a dollar. But now that cigarettes cost a baker’s dozen times that, I didn’t know what she’d do with it. Maybe she could buy a loosie from someone. The police had laid off killing men for selling loosies for the time being — bad publicity.

Watching her shamble off, I was reminded of Twill and the way he dressed down to join Jones’s crew.

“Hello?” he said, answering his private line.

“Where are you?”

“At Uncle Gordo’s.”

“Mardi?”

“Her and Marlene are here. I called Liza and she said that she and Fortune were okay but then Hush got on the line. He said that he saw some people walk past his place three times.” Hush had surveillance cameras all around the outside of his house — professional necessity.

“Did he want help?”

“He didn’t say so.”

“I want you to keep it close, Twilliam.”

“I know, Pops. I know.”

“I know you know,” I said. “What I want is for you to do.”

“Yes sir.”

I raised my head at that moment, relieved because Twill usually stuck to his word. There at the door of 4A stood a woman twenty years older, and quite a bit blonder, than the woman in the photograph with Paulie. There was still hatred woven into her expression but this time she wasn’t smiling.

Violet Henrys a.k.a. Violet Trammel.

“I got to go, son. They just called my number.”

“Talk to you later, Pops.”

In those few seconds Violet had unlocked, opened, passed through, and closed her barred gate and door.

She was Paulie’s wife pretending to be Paulie’s mother’s daughter so that she could take over Bea’s low-income home. It was part of a scam that a local contractor, who built that housing for the city and state, used to sell to qualified grifters. Crooks need a place to live too.

At any other time I would have played a waiting game. Sooner or later either Paulie would come to see Violet or she would lead me to him. I could spend a few days working on my painting, waiting for the fly to come to me. But on that particular day I had people from DC to Beantown wanting to kill either me or mine.

I needed to speed up the process, so, abandoning my art materials, I went to a local bodega and bought a small box of envelopes. I wrote a simple note on the front of one, sealed in a hundred-dollar bill, compliments of Josh Farth, and slipped the packet through the bars and under Violet’s front door; then I fast-walked down to the corner of D and waited.

Usually I would have charged that hundred dollars, plus the cost of my artist’s disguise, to my client; but my client was dead and so I spotted him.

It took seventeen minutes for her to call.

“Hello?” I said to what my phone told me was an unknown caller.

“Did you put this note under my door?” Violet Henrys-DeGeorges-Trammel asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’d really pay a thousand dollars just to talk to Paulie?”

“That’s what I wrote.”

“But you’d really do it?”

“I will.”

“Were you the man who went to Bea’s place today?” she asked.

“I sure was.”

“And did she tell you how to get to me?”

“No. You signed the visitors’ clipboard and I knew that Paulie is married to a woman whose first name is Violet.”

“Were married,” she corrected. “We cut the knot just before the last time he was sent up.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“No need,” she said; I could almost hear the sneer. “People get divorced because they want to.”

“And why do they marry?” I asked.

“Because they’re fools.”

“Nine hundred dollars for me and your ex to talk.” I had already started walking back toward her door.

“I thought you said a thousand.”

“You got a hundred of that in your hands.”

“That’s just for the call,” she said.

“How do we work this?” I asked. I was only a few steps from her address.

“You pay me and I get Paulie to call you.”

I was about to say that that was a bad deal for me when I noticed the man walking toward me.

I disconnected the call and said, “Hey, Paulie.”