The Altar Girl: A Prequel

CHAPTER 16

The neon sign on the outside flashed “Brasilia,” and the New Hampshire license plate nailed to a wall on the inside foyer read “ASS4U.” My brother had built custom motorcycles for twenty-one years until Hartford real estate took a dive and never fully recovered. I’d heard he’d bought a bar but this was my first visit. It was located in a seedy section of Willimantic on the outskirts of the University of Connecticut, twenty-five miles east of Hartford. When I first learned Marko had bought a bar, I expected it to be a bare-bones watering hole consistent with his biker sensibilities. But I wasn’t prepared for a strip joint. It’s hard for a woman to imagine her brother making a living by serving up naked portions of any kind of ass to anybody.

Brasilia reminded me more of a bar in Deadwood than a beach in Rio, and the woman on stage looked more like a refugee from Woodstock than the girl from Ipanema. A wave of nausea washed over me while she gyrated to Joe Cocker singing God lift us up where we belong. As she arched her skinny-fat hips toward her sole pair of customers, the older one said to the younger one, “Pay attention, son. This is a preview of hell.”

My apprehension about seeing Marko for the first time in six years exceeded any anxiety I’d experienced visiting my mother. In her case, I took some comfort in my sense of self-righteousness that she was a worse mother than I was a daughter. In his case, I could find no such solace. In his eyes, I’d become the opposite of the little sister he’d loved as a child. He considered me trash and he’d disowned me, and the sad thing was I didn’t disagree with his decision. I thought he was fully justified in doing so because I’d done something unforgivable.

The place was cavernous, with two bruised and battered wooden bars and a dance floor big enough for a Hells Angels’ convention. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, which explained why there were only twelve losers in the entire place, human stools with shot-glass hands and thirsty stares. I pulled my jacket tight and lowered my head as their cumulative eyes fell upon me. I guessed that was to be expected in a strip club, but I still hated them for it, almost as much as I hated myself for not looking as good as I wished I did.

A waitress whose figure could have turned ketchup into Tabasco told me Marko was in the back. I found him and his wine barrel of a body aging in his office, nursing two bottles of Mickey’s Big Mouth beer and watching a Red Sox game on a big old square TV. As a young man, he’d seduced women on sight. Now he looked like a cautionary tale to high school heroes who lived in the past, except he’d never even been all that.

He did a double take when he first saw me. I held my breath as I sought evidence of residual affection: a raised eyebrow, a curl of the lip. A few choice Ukrainian obscenities would have sufficed. After all, why swear at your sister if she doesn’t matter to you? But he bestowed no such gifts upon me, the undeserving. Instead, he inflated his cheeks with apathy.

He looked out the window at the parking lot as though it were a portal back in time. “What do you want?”

He asked the question as though I were the last person on Earth he expected to see, and that my arrival necessarily meant I needed something from him, which of course, it did.

I could barely look at him. Sadness over his physical deterioration and guilt over our recent past left me in a constant state of melancholy whenever I thought of him, let alone was in his presence. If I tried to ease into the conversation, we might never get started. I couldn’t even imagine him pretending to have small talk with me. To get his cooperation, I had no choice but to provoke him.

“I saw Donnie Angel the other day,” I said.

It was a cheap shot of a greeting, and I almost felt guilty about it. Marko’s head turned on a swivel. His expression didn’t betray his emotion, but the turn of his neck made my heart sing. No matter how much he hated me, the thought of me anywhere near Donnie still infuriated him. He’d left the house by the time the Grantmoor incident took place, but I’m sure my mother had told him about it, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d confronted Donnie and threatened him without telling me anything about it.

“Why are you going anywhere near that psychopath?”

“It wasn’t planned. Our circumstances collided in New York.”

“Do yourself a favor. Next time collide with someone else.”

“Why?”

It was pathetic, I knew, trying to provoke him into another display of affection, but I couldn’t help myself. Marko realized it immediately. He contemplated saying something — probably a scolding for being so obvious in my search for a kind word — but turned to look out the window instead.

“Do you know anything specifically about what he does for a living?” I said.

“Sure. He’s on staff at Hartford Hospital on the cutting edge of medical research. Is that why you’re here? To talk about Donnie Angel?” He added a sarcastic ring to his pronunciation of the name.

“I saw Mama this morning.”

He barked a laugh. “Good for you, Saint Nadia. What are you doing, some sort of lost-cause tour?”

“Thought I’d swing by and see your place.”

“You are doing a lost-cause tour. Lucky me.”

“What’s with the name? Brasilia? I didn’t hear any Portuguese out there.”

He rolled his eyes as though the answer were obvious. “It sells. You take any product, mix in the Brazilian theme, and men eat that shit up. Now answer the question. Why are you here?”

I walked farther into his office, lifted a stack of fliers promoting some XXX-rated movie star’s appearance at the club, and sat down. He grimaced as I approached, no doubt wishing I’d jumped out the window rather than made myself at home.

“You weren’t at my godfather’s funeral,” I said. “Or the panakhyda, or the reception.”

“Very observant.”

“Why not?”

“Because your godfather was an asshole.”

His characterization shocked me. I didn’t remember him holding any animosity toward my godfather growing up. If anything, they’d been closer than Marko and my father, not that this was saying much. My godfather’s presence seemed to mollify my father, which was reason enough for all of us to love him. But my godfather also had taken a special interest in Marko, buying him baseball cards, offering him a sip of Narragansett when my father wasn’t looking, and making fun of his sideburns when he came back from a PLAST camp looking like Elvis.

“Why would you say something like that?” I said.

He chugged from one of the beer bottles. My eyes went to the grotesque middle finger of his right hand. It looked as though it had fallen off and had been reattached by a sleepy child. The digit protruded at an odd angle from the hand. He appeared to have two knuckles on that finger instead of one, and they both pointed sideways. I suppressed the gut-wrenching memory it summoned and tore my eyes away. That finger defined our childhood, the effect of our parents’ childhoods on them, and always left me wondering what it would have been like to have had a normal American upbringing.

Marko put the bottle back down and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “Because it’s true. Your godfather was not a good guy. But I believe in letting the dead rest, so let’s not talk about him anymore. Let’s talk about what you want so you can get out of here and leave me alone.”

“No. You can’t make a statement like that and not back it up. We will discuss it some more.”

He bored into me with a toxic gaze that reminded me that no one told him what to do, let alone his no-good, ungrateful, bitch sister.

“Please,” I said. “He’s the reason I’m here. The faster we talk about him, the faster I’ll leave you alone.”

“You do know how to bribe a guy. Like I said, the guy was an asshole. Pick your poison. For one thing, he tried to get with Mama after our father died.”

The image of my godfather making a pass at my mother flitted through my mind. It was grotesque. He was like a brother to her, or so I’d thought. “What?”

Marko nodded firmly.

I laughed. It was an uneasy nervous laugh, the kind that escapes your lips when the foundation of your life teeters and you question everything you’ve ever believed. “She told you that?”

“Not only did she tell me that, your godfather confirmed it when I had a discussion with him about it.”

Another vision flashed before my eyes. This time it was Marko pushing my godfather down the stairs. But that was ridiculous. If Marko had wanted to intervene, a few choice words would have delivered the message to stay away. There would have been no need for violence.

“He tried to romance her,” Marko said. “He took her out for the best veal on Franklin Avenue. She thought it was just a dinner with an old family friend so she said sure. She said it was real nice, mixing pasta with the past, talking about old times and all that. After dinner they stopped at Mozzicatto’s to get some pignole cookies and baba al rum, and she wasn’t suspicious about his motives at all. But then he tried to slip her his cannoli from behind while she was making espresso in the kitchen.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Lines sprang in Marko’s forehead. “Who would make stuff up like that about his mother?”

“He must have been drunk—”

“He wasn’t that drunk. He was just an old lecher. He fooled me for the better part of my life. Fooled you your entire life. Why do you think he never married?”

“I used to think it was because he never found anyone. Then as I got older, I started to think he might have been gay.”

“Wrong on both counts, though I wouldn’t put it past him to have been some kind of bisexual deviant.”

“Marko!”

“The guy was a swinger in his younger days. Trust me. We were naïve. He belonged to a sex club in Hartford. Used to go to orgies and shit. In a Victorian house right next to the building where we went to the dentist. What was that guy’s name?”

A wave of nausea left me weak. “How do you know all this?”

“Once he hit on Mama, I asked around.”

“Asked around where?”

“I asked an old friend in the Uke community. One of the guys I grew up with. He pointed me in the right direction. When you work on bikes, you get to know a certain clientele. You get to know the right people to ask about something like this.”

“So what did you do?”

“I paid him a visit and told him to leave our mother alone. That I knew all about his lifestyle and if he didn’t, I’d expose him for the pervert he was. Ruin his reputation in the button-downed Uke community forever, and possibly kick his ass all over town to boot.”

“And I assume it worked?’

“Of course it did. Would you want to mess with me when I’m pissed at you?”

“You ever talk to him again?”

“I did a job for him.”

“A job? What kind of job?”

“That’s when I found out what a real scumbag he was in business, too. That’s the other poison.”

“Marko, what kind of job?”

He appeared to choose his words carefully. “He was doing a deal. He needed someone to watch his back.”

“Watch his back? What does that mean?”

“What do you think it means? You’re the college graduate. You need me to write you a definition?”

“Was it dangerous?”

He pressed his eyes shut and shook his head with disgust. My interpretation was that I should have known better than to have asked. If it hadn’t been dangerous, there was no reason to inquire. If it had been risky, he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about any details.

“At least tell me what kind of deal? What was he into?”

“His business. The antique business.” He pronounced it “an-ti-q.” “He was delivering a big package to a client at midnight. I met him at his house. He rode shotgun. A few of my boys went ahead to the delivery address and had the place staked out ahead of time.”

“Where was the delivery?”

“Avon.”

Avon was one of the tonier suburbs west of Hartford. Not a place dealers typically needed protection, or one where deliveries were made at night.

“Big estate,” Marko said. “Lots of stone. Pool, vineyard, the works.”

“Vineyard?”

“Maserati in the driveway, though. You can’t trust anyone that drives a Maserati. It pretends to be a Ferrari but it’s not. What does that tell you about the owner?”

“What was being delivered?”

“Big crate. Don’t know what was inside. I assume it was some sort of antique.”

“Big like a table, or an old piece of furniture?”

“No. Big as in the shape of a mirror.”

I pictured the wooden box. “Or a painting.”

Marko shrugged.

“Did you see the man who took delivery?”

“What makes you think it was a man?”

“It was a woman?”

“In tights, boots, and a ski jacket. Tights. In the dead of winter.”

“And this was a one-time thing?”

He nodded. “Never heard from him again.”

“Then I don’t get it. Why do you say it proved my godfather was a bad man in business, too?”

“I didn’t say he was a bad man in business. I said he was a complete scumbag in business, too.”

“I got that. Why?”

“He tried to sell me on stealing Mama’s jewelry box.”

His mere mention of the box turned my body temperature up. I pictured its rubies and emeralds. They’d been the catalyst for my trespass against my big brother. My face burned.

His didn’t. Instead he sat looking out the window again with puffy indignation. That mollified me a bit. Much as my act was unforgivable, his face should have turned an even darker shade of red.

“That I do not believe,” I said. “There is no way he would have asked you to steal from our mother.”

“Call it what you want. He took a picture of it when he was visiting her. Must have shown it to a client or something. Said to offer Mama twenty grand for it. Said he’d split the profit with me fifty-fifty. You know he was lowballing. Thing was appraised twenty years ago at what… seventy-five grand?”

“That’s disgusting.”

The thought occurred to me that my godfather would have made such an offer to my brother only if he thought he was a kindred spirit, someone with the same ethical makeup. But I decided to keep that observation to myself. I also wondered how I could have been blind to my godfather’s true character all those years growing up. But I guess sometimes parents depict a person to be a certain type, and by the time we’re capable of forming our own conclusions, we’ve lost touch with that individual.

“You ever hear him call someone DP?” I said.

Marko appeared genuinely flabbergasted. “DP? You mean by someone’s initials?” His frown intensified and his tone took on a note of extreme incredulity. “In English?”

“Wouldn’t matter if it was someone’s initials…”

“I can’t even remember hearing him speak English. Whenever I was around him it was always Ukes…”

“… or if the letters meant something else entirely.”

“I heard him say hello to that woman that bought the crate, but everything else was hush-hush in the corner — Wait. You mean DP as in Displaced Person?”

Hearing those words roll off his lips made the hairs on the nape of my neck stand up. “Why? Does that make more sense to you?”

He burst out laughing. It wasn’t a complimentary chuckle in appreciation for having been entertained. It was a derisive sneer intended to insult and belittle. “Nothing you’ve said since you so rudely walked in here has made any sense. Just as nothing you’ve done in the last ten years has made any sense to me.”

That made two of us. I felt some pressure behind my eyes and jumped to my feet. It was an instinctive move. An act of emotional preservation. Apparently, my brain was telling me that there was no information worth the humiliation of having Marko see tears in my eyes.

“Did you ever hear him call anyone by that nickname?” I said. “Could have been a Uke.”

Marko turned pensive for a moment, as though he were contemplating my question. Then he drained the rest of one of his beers and lit a cigarette. As a plume of smoke twisted into the air, he regarded me with contempt.

“Ten, twenty years ago, I would have asked you what you’re up to. I would have gone back to your first comment and wondered if Donnie Angel is involved in whatever it is you think you know, and what some DP might have to do with it. I would have wondered if you’re playing Nancy Drew and sticking your nose where it might get cut off. But now, I honestly don’t give a shit.”

I felt hot and thirsty, as though I might faint any second.

“No. I never heard him call anyone DP,” Marko said. “Now I’ve done you the favor of answering your questions. Can you do me a favor in return?”

A ray of hope. Of course I would do him a favor. Short of breaking the law — and even that might not have stopped me — I would have done absolutely anything for him at that moment.

I tried to form a word but couldn’t. Hope overwhelmed me. The best I could do was nod in the affirmative.

“Fuck off,” he said.

Leaving was an out-of-body experience. I didn’t feel any of my limbs. The only sensation I had was of my brain instructing me to put one foot in front of the other, to lift my hand and grasp the door handle, to get out into the parking lot.

But before I could make my exit, the bitter stench of cigarette smoke filtered through my nostrils. It reminded me of summer camp when I was eight and Marko was a fourteen-year-old counselor. There were rumors that the counselors snuck out to the lake to smoke, but I didn’t think my brother was one of them. One day he returned with the others, and when he put his arm around my shoulders, I smelled the nicotine on his breath. I had to fight back the tears. I assumed that even one cigarette would cause lung cancer, and the thought of my brother dying was unbearable. I walked around depressed for days.

I never thought I could have felt worse.

But now I did.