Marcia Talley - Tomorrow's Vengeance

‘“The tragedy of growing old is that I’m a young person in an old body.”’

‘Oscar Wilde?’ I wondered.

‘No. Christie McSpadden.’

I thought about Nancy Harper, living in her eighteen-year-old mind with no more worries than whether Frank was going to ask her to the prom. ‘Well, on that cheerful note…’ I began.

‘Yeah, I know. It’s almost time for lunch. I wonder when they’ll have Raniero back? That mac and cheese yesterday. Bleah. Mother wanted me to join her today, but nuh-uh.’

‘He might never be back, Angie. Last I heard he was working with a deal lawyer from Skadden Arps, trying to keep his restaurant plans from falling through.’

‘What happened?’ Angie asked.

‘When Lawrence Levine found out it was being partially financed by the sale of artwork stolen by the Nazis, he decided to pull the plug.’

‘Levine? Larry Levine the Quik Loan King? That Levine?’

‘That’s the guy.’

‘No kidding. Figured it’d be bad for business?’

‘That, too,’ I said. ‘He’s Jewish. Lost his father and two sisters at Bergen-Belsen, so it’s not surprising he wants to revisit the arrangement he made with the Bucchos.

‘Hutch tells me that the project is pretty far along. The Bucchos bought an old warehouse on the waterfront in Canton near the Boston Street Pier. The architectural plans had made it through the Land Use and Urban Design division of the Baltimore Planning Commission, no mean feat that, so they were good to go. Filomena knew that if Levin found out about the investigation into the provenence of the art stolen from Izzy’s father the deal might unravel. And once the press got ahold of the story…’ I paused. ‘She had to do something to shut Masud Abaza up. He knew about the paintings, of course, because of Safa. And she actually saw one of them in Izzy’s scrapbook when Izzy foolishly brought it into the dining room. But Masud had something else on Filomena, apparently.’

‘The whole thing with the meat inspections?’

‘Yes. It was simple, really. He wanted to have sex with Filomena. She wasn’t going to have it with him indefinitely.’

‘There’s one thing Raniero’s gonna have to do for sure,’ Angie said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Change the name of the restaurant.’

‘Why? What was he going to call it?’

‘Filomena’s.’

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he long’d to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

‘Requiem,’ Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894

Izzy and I were enjoying our ice-cream cones in our favorite spot on the front porch of Blackwalnut Hall when a Crown Vic pulled up along the drive. I thought we’d seen the last of Detective Powers, but to my surprise, an officer I didn’t recognize climbed out of the driver’s seat.

And he was not alone.

When I saw who he had with him I handed my cone to a startled Izzy, skipped down the steps and raced along the drive to meet them.

‘Jerry!’ I said, laughing. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

Dressed in a blue-and-gold navy tracksuit, Jerry was grinning like he’d just won the lottery. ‘Out and about, out and about.’

‘So, he does belong here,’ the officer added, chuckling.

‘Oh, yes,’ I fibbed. ‘There are people here who’ve really been missing this guy.’ I took Jerry by the hand and tucked it into the crook of my elbow. ‘How…?

‘Somebody spotted him wandering through Quiet Waters Park, looking confused. So they called us. He couldn’t tell us his name or address, and he had no wallet or anything on him, but… you know those little laundry labels?’

I nodded. Oh, yes. Mother had sewed the embarrassing tapes that practically screamed ‘Hannah Alexander is a bay-bee’ into my camping clothes every summer.

‘Well, we ran the name through DMV, checked him against the picture on the driver’s license we found, got the address and brought him back here.’

‘Thank you. Everyone will be so relieved.’

‘He’s not still driving, is he?’ the officer asked, his face a mask of concern.

‘Oh, no. He hasn’t driven for ages, not since…’ I tapped my temple. ‘You know.’

‘I heard the security around here was pretty tight,’ the officer said as he accompanied Jerry and me up the sidewalk. ‘I’m kinda surprised the old guy got away, you know?’

‘I have a Hyundai,’ Jerry said. ‘Don’t know where I parked it.’ He patted his pajama pockets. ‘Key’s here somewhere.’

‘He must have slipped out of his tracking device,’ I said, tap dancing as fast as I could. When we reached the steps, I turned. ‘Is there anything we need to do?’

‘No, no. Just glad we have a happy ending here.’ He gave me a two-finger salute, climbed back into his squad car and drove away.

I walked Jerry inside, heading straight for the memory unit where I knew Heather would be on duty. Holding firmly to Jerry’s arm, I stuck my head around the corner of her door. ‘Look who I have here!’

Heather shot out of her chair as if she’d been spring loaded. ‘Oh my God! Jerry!’ Even as she was hugging the prodigal son, she shot me a conspiratorial glance over his shoulder.

I nodded. We were in this thing together.

Heather held Jerry at arm’s length, grinning. ‘You are a sight for sore eyes. And I know someone who is dying to see you.’

Dying . I felt a pang. That was quite literally what Nancy Harper was doing. Dying. Wasting away of a broken heart.

‘Where is she?’ I whispered.

‘Watching TV.’ Heather bobbed her head in the direction of the unit’s lounge.

As we walked Jerry into the lounge, I held my breath. What if he didn’t recognize her? Or she him?

I needn’t have worried.

‘Frank!’ Nancy shouted when her boyfriend’s solid shape loomed between her and the image of Jack Lord on the oversized television screen. She rose from her chair, clapping her hands. ‘Frank, Frank, bo brank, banana fanna ro rank, fee fie mo mrank, Frank !’ she sing-songed, seamlessly regressing to a schoolyard chant.

‘Hey, Toots,’ he said. ‘What’s cooking?’ He folded her into his arms, rested his chin on the top of her head and patted her playfully on the bottom.

When Jerry finally released her she looked into his eyes and touched his face gingerly with her fingertips again and again as if to convince herself that he was real.

‘Is his room still available?’ I asked Heather.

‘As far as I know.’ She winked. ‘I’ll get someone to make up the bed. And in the meantime…’ She paused, letting me fill in the blank.

My stomach knotted. ‘I’ll need to tell Tyson.’

‘Right. Let him work something out. That’s why they pay him the big bucks.’

‘Frank,’ Nancy was saying as I turned to go. ‘That show you like is on.’

When I left, Nancy and Jerry were cuddling on the sofa and watching Hawaii 5-O , as if he had never left.

‘If the United States ever needs someone to negotiate with the North Koreans or solve a debt ceiling impasse with Congress, I’ve got the man for the job,’ I was saying to Paul several days later. He’d returned from the sea and was dumping the contents of his laundry bag into the dirty clothes basket when I cornered him.

‘Who?’

‘Tyson Bennett, that’s who.’

‘Have I met him?’ Paul wanted to know, holding up a pair of socks and studying them critically. ‘Dirty or clean?’

I snatched the socks out of his hands and tossed them in with the rest of his stinky laundry. ‘You sold beer at the Rotary crab feast together. There’s a Labor Day party at Calvert Colony and we’re invited, so you’ll see him there.’