Night Passage

Chapter 59

Tammy Portugal’s maiden name was Gennaro. Her mother and father lived in a small ugly house that had once been a summer cottage, facing a swampy saltwater estuary which the local kids called the eel pond. The process of converting the cottage to a full-time home had been apparently a slow one. The rear wall of the kitchen above the sink was still unfinished, the area between the studs filled with the silvery foil backing of the fiberglass insulation.

The kitchen table where Jesse sat was made of metal covered with white enamel. There was a small fold-up leaf at either end. The mug from which Mr. Gennaro was drinking instant coffee was formed in the shape of a gnomish-looking man with a beard, Mrs. Gennaro, in a flowered housedress and white sneakers, was at the stove boiling water, in case there was a call for more instant coffee. The sneaker on her right foot had a hole cut to relieve pressure on her small toe. She was a sturdy woman, not fat, but wide in the hips and shoulders. She had white hair which she wore in a tight perm, and rimless glasses.

“You sure you won’t have coffee?” Mrs. Gennaro said.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” Jesse said.

Jesse hated instant coffee. Across the table from him, Mr. Gennaro put a spoonful of Cremora in his coffee and stirred. He was a wiry little man, no taller than his wife. He worked sometimes as a fisherman, and sometimes as a landscaper, and in snowstorms be drove a plow for the town.

“How are you both doing?” Jesse asked.

Mr. Gennaro shrugged.

Mrs. Gennaro said, “We get through the day.”

“It’ll get better,” Jesse said. “I know it doesn’t feel like that now, but in time, it’ll get better.”

Neither one said anything. Probably didn’t want it to get better right now, Jesse thought, probably were so into the grief that it was their life, and without it they wouldn’t have anything at all.

“I see you have your daughter’s house on the market,” Jesse said.

“Yeah,” Mr. Gennaro said. “No sense paying for an empty house.”

“You selling it furnished?” Jesse said.

“No,” Mrs. Gennaro said. “We got a man to come in and take everything out. He paid us for the furniture.”

“That’s good,” Jesse said. “It would be painful doing that yourself.”

Mrs. Gennaro nodded. The steam began to spout from the kettle. She turned the heat down beneath it and came to the table.

“I hope you were able to keep some memories,” Jesse said.

Mr. Gennaro shifted a little in his seat.

“What do you mean,” Mrs. Gennaro said.

“You know,” Jesse said, “pictures, letters, diaries, stuff like that.”

They were silent.

“She keep a diary?” Jesse said.

Simultaneously, Mr. Gennaro said “Yes” and Mrs. Gennaro said “No.”

Jesse smiled politely and didn’t say anything. The Gennaros looked at each other. Jesse waited. No one said anything. Jesse could hear the hot water in the teakettle stir restlessly on the stove over the low heat.

“If she kept a diary it might help us find who killed her,” Jesse said.

The Gennaros looked at each other and back at Jesse. Still they didn’t speak. Jesse knew they were silent because they didn’t know what to say. He needed to get them started.

“I want to punish the man who killed your daughter,” Jesse said.

Silence. Mr. Gennaro shifted again in his chair. Mrs. Gennaro’s face was clenched like a fist. Her cheeks were red.

“I know there are diaries,” Jesse said.

Mrs. Gennaro shook her head.

“I need to see them.”

Still she shook her head. Jesse looked at her husband.

“You want the man that killed your daughter?” Jesse said.

His voice was still quiet, but, the pleasantness was gone.

“You embarrassed by what’s in there?” Jesse said. “What would she say? Would she say, ‘Cover up for me and let the man who killed me get away’? Would she say that?”

“No,” Mr. Gennaro said.

“Eddie,” Mrs. Gennaro said sharply.

Gennaro stared at the tabletop, shaking his head slowly.

“No,” he said again.

Then he stood and walked into the next room.

“Eddie,” Mrs. Gennaro said again, louder, and sharper.

Gennaro came back into the kitchen with a cardboard beer case filled with small books covered in red imitation leather, each little book with a brass lock. Gennaro put the diaries on the table in front of Jesse and went back to the other side of the table and sat down.

“This is them,” he said. He nodded at his wife. “She got the keys.”

“I won’t give them to you,” Mrs. Gennaro said.

“You don’t have to, ma’am,” Jesse said.

“I raised a decent girl,” Mrs. Gennaro said. “She was a decent girl until that Portugal...”

“She was decent anyway,” Gennaro muttered.

“I don’t want him prying into those books, Eddie,” Mrs. Gennaro said.

“He’s going to,” Gennaro said and kept his eyes on the table. “I want him to.”

“Don’t you care what I want?” Mrs. Gennaro said.

“I want the guy caught,” Gennaro said.

Jesse picked up the beer case with the diaries carefully stacked in it.

“How you going to open them without the keys?” Mrs. Gennaro said.

“Probably pry them open,” Jesse said, “with a screwdriver.”

Mrs. Gennaro looked at the diaries without speaking for a moment, then she said, “Wait a minute.”

She left the kitchen. Jesse waited. Gennaro sat silently staring at the kitchen tabletop. After a moment Mrs. Gennaro returned and gave Jesse a collection of little brass keys tied together with a red ribbon.

“I want them books back,” she said, “with no damage.”

“I’ll get them back to you, ma’am,” Jesse said.

Neither of Tammy Portugal’s parents said anything else as Jesse carried the diaries from the house.