The Altar Girl: A Prequel

CHAPTER 11

I slept fitfully and woke up the next morning with that dread in the pit of my stomach, the one that reminds you something horrible is going on in your life even before you’re alert. Then I remembered my abduction, Donnie Angel’s champagne wishes and caviar dreams, and breaking his leg like a paint stick. My hunger pains vanished in a blink, and I found a moment of joy amidst the misery. If nothing else good came out of it, my current predicament was going to help me lose those last seven and a half pounds.

Even before downing the second of three glasses of wine the night before, I knew exactly what I was going to do next. I’d become a competent financial analyst because of my detailed approach to understanding a business and its financial statements. One of the ways I dissected a complex holding company with a myriad of subsidiaries was to draw a picture. It helped me visualize what was going on among the individual entities, if money was being borrowed or lent to support one at the cost of another, or if funds were being siphoned off at the top to pay the owners. I spent the morning visualizing my godfather’s life the same way, and plotting the course of my investigation. Then I placed a phone call to an old friend.

After lunch, I arranged for one of the doormen to walk me to my parking garage. His shift ended at 3:00 p.m., which worked out perfectly. I drove my usual route along the Hutchinson River Parkway, keeping a sharp eye on the rearview mirror, but darted onto I-684 at the last second. The entrance ramp twisted and turned onto a straightaway. I gunned the engine on my vintage Porsche 911 through the curve and then ducked into the right-hand lane and slowed down to fifty-five. Every single car passed me for the next ten miles. I didn’t recognize any of them, and I didn’t see anyone following me either.

Not that it mattered. By now it was early rush hour. Cars hugged each other’s bumpers while cruising at the speed limit. Donnie may have gotten away with lifting me off a dimly lit New York street at midnight, but he wasn’t going to be able to pull it off on the highway. The streets of Hartford would be an altogether different matter. It was going to be up to me to be prudent and cautious.

I knew he would be informed of my arrival because he somehow knew the details of the questions I’d asked Roxanne Stashinski at my godfather’s funeral reception. Word would get around that I was back. It was a small community, and people talked. There was always the possibility that Roxy herself had betrayed me to Donnie Angel, or gossiped innocently to someone about the questions I’d asked her. But I doubted it. She had no motive, and I’d known her my entire life. I trusted her as much as anyone outside my family, though that wasn’t saying all that much.

Roxy was my godfather’s niece. She was also my best friend growing up. We’d gone to summer PLAST camps together, and attended Ukrainian School at night until she quit after the seventh grade. Her mother had studied ballet and she’d inherited her long, lithe frame and feline features. As a kid, I’d wished I looked more like her, but mostly I wished I’d fit in as well. Everyone thought Roxy was cool, at Uke camps and at American school. It helped that she was thin and did the kinds of things cool girls did, like smoke cigarettes and experiment with drugs.

Her popularity with boys, in fact, was the beginning of the end of our childhood friendship. During our last PLAST camp together, she turned cold and stopped being friends with me. Something had changed but I didn’t know what, until I caught her giving a blow job to a sixteen-year-old boy from Brooklyn in the tall grass behind the propane tank. We were fourteen at the time.

Twenty years later she had the life every immigrant coveted for his child. She was married to a full-blooded Ukrainian and had two kids. He was a contractor, she was a homemaker, and when they went to church on Sunday, they were the envy of every parent whose children had either left or married outside the culture.

We’d rekindled our friendship five years ago when I’d married her brother.

I picked her up at a car wash two blocks away from the Ukrainian National Home, where she’d been cooking with the other Uke ladies in preparation for bingo night. She was frowning even before she pulled the passenger door open. She still sported killer legs in tight jeans but her face resembled a shrunken raisin. It reminded me of what some famous actress had once said: that as she aged, a woman had to decide whether to preserve her ass or her face. She couldn’t keep both. I guess that’s one of the things I’d always liked about Roxy. We were both flawed. Neither of us was pedestal material.

“The car wash? Really?” Roxy said.

“I’m sorry. I’ll explain. Get in. Quick.”

I looked around to see if my favorite van had arrived, or if a crazed man in cleats was running toward me with a mallet in his hands. Such was my state of mind since last night.

Roxy threw her bag in behind her and climbed in the car. She held what looked like a plate covered by a paper bag in her hands. The delicious smell of fried potatoes and onions hit me. I didn’t wait for her to put her seat belt on. Instead I slammed the car into first and took off.

“Hey,” Roxy said, her head snapping back from the torque. “What the…” She whipped her seat belt across her shoulder and snapped it in place. “I need to be back in an hour but you’re taking that way too seriously.”

I took off down Wethersfield Avenue and veered right onto Brown Street. The tires screeched. Roxy gripped the overhead handle. “What’s going on? Am I missing something?”

“Yeah.” I hammered the throttle. The engine sang and the car flew. “This morning when I called you. I didn’t tell you everything.”

I had told Roxy I was coming back to Hartford and that I needed to meet her. I hadn’t given her any details because I didn’t want to listen to her try to stop me. I also didn’t like the idea of speaking to anyone on the phone about what had happened to me or about my godfather’s death. If I were asking any questions about either subject, I wanted to be able to shine a flashlight in the other person’s eyes so I could see what was going on behind them.

I gave her an abbreviated version of the previous night’s events. She interrupted with a series of mild exclamations but otherwise listened until I was done.

“And that’s it?” Roxy said. “That’s everything?”

She asked the question in a tone that suggested I’d failed to mention something obvious. I quickly replayed what I’d told her in my mind.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s everything.”

“No. It’s not everything. What you haven’t told me yet is that you called the cops. If not last night then this morning. Tell me you called the cops, Diana.”

Diana was an anagram for Nadia. Roxy had figured it out during PLAST camp and decided it would be my nickname. I secretly loved it at the time. It made me feel popular and glamorous. It made me feel that I was more assimilated and American, which I wanted above everything else.

Now I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was a sweet reminder of the times Roxy had been nice to me when we were kids. On the other hand, I felt hopelessly unworthy of sharing the name of an immortal princess. The thing with nicknames, though, is that once they stick, there’s nothing you can do about them.

“No,” I said. “I did not go to the cops.”

“Why not?’

“That would be the wrong thing to do. Come on, Rox. You know that.”

“If you report it, they’ll arrest Donnie. They’ll get him off the street. Otherwise, that sick bastard is coming after you. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know that. I also know that it’s not only Donnie I need to worry about. I doubt he’s in this alone.”

“Have you talked to your mother or brother about this?”

“No.”

“Did you at least call them?”

I tried to look cool, but I swallowed before I could form a single word. “Of course I called. The question isn’t whether I called them, the question is whether they picked up or called back.”

“And did they?”

It was my turn to fire Roxy a disapproving glare for even asking. Of course they hadn’t called back. They both hated me.

Roxy shook her head. “You’ve got to go to the police. You’ve got to go now.”

“The number one rule is to stay inside the community,” I said. “You know that. The minute I go outside the community for help all bets are off.”

“But what if all bets are off already?”

“If Donnie wanted to kill me, he would have done it in the van. All he was doing was scaring me.”

“Yeah. By breaking your leg. Except now you broke his. And what exactly do you think he’s going to do next time?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Do you want to die?”

“I didn’t mean it doesn’t matter in the sense that I don’t care if I get hurt. I meant it doesn’t matter what Donnie’s planning. It’s better than if I go to the cops. Then I’m threatening his entire organization. Then there’s not even a debate my life is in danger.”

Roxy stared out the windshield and took a few audible breaths. I waited for her to calm herself down before lobbing the questions I’d been waiting to ask.

“Did you see Donnie at the memorial service or the funeral?”

“God no,” Roxy said. “Why would he be there?” Roxy was implying that he wasn’t a relative or a close friend of the family.

“Exactly. That means someone must have told him I was asking questions. That I may have appeared suspicious about the circumstances of my godfather’s death.”

“Yeah. Obviously. I did.”

I assumed she was joking until I glanced in her direction and saw her striking a defiant pose, looking straight ahead at the windshield, lips pressed tight, jaw elevated a few haughty inches. Then all my insides seemed to slide up into my throat. “You did what?”

Roxy turned toward me, tilted her head and widened her eyes. “You’re kidding me, right?”

I took a deep breath and exhaled. I felt horrible for even contemplating my best friend had ratted me out. I waved my hand as though surrendering. “I wasn’t suggesting that you talked to him—”

“Yeah you were. But that’s okay. I understand. You’ve always been a cold psycho-bitch. I still love you. In fact, that’s probably the reason I love you…”

“I’m just asking. How did he know what I was thinking? Did you mention our discussion to anyone?”

Roxy laughed. “You’re officially on the verge of pissing me off. Yes. After you left the memorial service, I walked to the front, stood by the casket, and made an announcement to the general public. ‘My psycho-bitch former sister-in-law thinks my uncle was murdered!’”

I shook my head and muttered a few Ukrainian obscenities under my breath, the kind that used to sneak past my father’s gritted teeth whenever his family disappointed him, which was pretty much all the time. Roxy knew the same obscenities, I was sure. It was the order and cadence of delivery that distinguished one frustrated parent from another.

“There had to be two hundred people at the memorial service,” Roxy said.

I nodded. “Anyone could have overheard me.”

“Just because Donnie wasn’t there, doesn’t mean he didn’t know half the people who were.”

“True that,” I said.

“Why are you doing this, Diana?”

“Because I loved my godfather and someone killed him. I want to find out who and why.”

“Oh yeah? Diana the noble warrior, since when?”

I shrugged. “Since now.”

“Come on. What’s this really all about?”

I saw the logic in her question, but I didn’t have the time or desire to contemplate it. “This is just something I have to do. That’s all I know.”

Roxy sat quietly for a moment. “So what’s the plan?” She infused her voice with a note of determination.

“There’s obviously a link between my godfather’s business and Donnie Angel. I’m going to start there and see what I can figure out.”

An incredulous laugh burst from Roxy’s mouth. It sounded more like a bark. “Sure. Of course you are. Piece of cake. And you’re going to do this all alone?”

“That’s right. I do all my best work alone.”

“It’s good you’re driving around in an old Porsche. You’ll blend right in wherever you go.”

“It is what it is.” The truth was I had no choice. I couldn’t afford a rental.

“Don’t you think he might be waiting for you? At my uncle’s house? Right now?”

“Highly unlikely. He expects me to stay in New York or go somewhere else to hide. The last place he expects me to go is to his turf in the Hartford area. And the absolute last place he expects me to go is the scene of the crime. That’s why, for now, this is as safe a place as any for me to be.”

“Yeah. For now.”

“And by the way… After tonight, I don’t want you involved. I don’t want you in harm’s way.”

I needed Roxy tonight to get access to my godfather’s house. As his niece, she had been his emergency contact and had a copy of the front door key.

“Yeah, yeah. Poor Diana. Doesn’t want to be beholden to no one. Always the loner. Didn’t have any friends growing up. Doesn’t have any friends now. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Spare me your martyr complex. I brought you potato pancakes, you know.”

She lifted the paper from the plate. I caught another whiff of fried potatoes and onions. Under less urgent circumstances, it would have dissolved my morning willpower.

“Smells like heaven. You didn’t tell me you were moonlighting at the Uke National Home.”

“Money’s getting tight. Our savings are tied up in a condo complex and my husband the real estate mogul can’t move the units. He built them high-end in a middle-class neighborhood in New Britain, genius that he is. But that’s not what irks me. One day he tells me to stop spending, and the next day he comes home with four hundred dollars worth of parts for his vintage Mustang.”

“Ouch.”

“You make your own money. You don’t have to depend on a man. Don’t ever give that up.”

I thanked God it was dark in the car so Roxy couldn’t see me blushing. This was a perfect moment for me to tell her I’d been fired six months ago during the latest round of job eliminations and that I was unemployed, but I nodded instead. I told myself I didn’t want to distract her from the topic at hand but in truth I was too embarrassed to be honest with her. Roxy looked up to me because I had a career. Other than my job, I had nothing else. I knew it, and she knew it, too. I couldn’t stand the thought of her thinking I was a failure.

We enjoyed some silence until we got to East Hartford. My godfather’s house was an old multifamily home off Burnside Avenue. When he’d bought it in the seventies, it was probably a purely residential neighborhood. Now it was a mishmash of body shops, ethnic restaurants, and housing projects. I circled around the block and passed two tricked-out Honda Civics idling by the curb. The windows were tinted, but I could see smoke pouring out the driver’s side of one car and the passenger side of the other.

“We were so worried about Donnie’s crew,” Roxy said, “we forgot about the natives. Not the best time to come here, when the sun goes down.”

A flash of indecision washed over me, and I wondered if I was an idiot for being here. I took a deep breath and waited for the sensation to pass. “Look at the bright side.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s dark out. It’s an iffy neighborhood. Skulking around, we’ll fit right in.”

Roxy chuckled. “True that, Diana.” She took a deep breath, fixed her jaw, and set her eyes on the house. “True that.”