Chapter Text
Hopewell, New Jersey, Christmas Eve 1944
From the outside the Franchitti house always looks like a church. Something about that runny old glass and the candles Mrs. Franchitti puts in the windows and the Franchitti boys and the Franchitti girl cousins ages five through twenty, running up and down the stairs in their creamy holiday collars like a bunch of Botticelli angels. All that noise and merriment but the house is as peaceful as a cathedral tonight, especially tonight, with the snow coming down.
Frank crumps down the street softly singing “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.” Under one arm is a paper-wrapped painting, a present for Mrs. Franchitti, and under the other is a bottle he stole from his daddy when Oreste wasn’t looking. Shining far through shadows dimmed…
Frank and Oreste don’t get along so good, and his mamma, well, Frank loves his mamma but he don’t like her most of the time. He eats his supper at home and that’s it. He’s scared to stay longer, because he thinks she might curse him, Cadenza Columbo with her pointing witch-finger and her narrowed eyes. She wouldn’t do it on purpose but she would do it just the same: she got that kind of leaky unhappiness Frank suspects might be more contagious than the ’flu that killed his Uncle Francesco in ’18. So he takes the bottle and he takes the painting and he takes the clothes on his back around the corner to the Franchitti’s, singing: Shine on, shine on.
Corrado Franchitti answers the door. “Jeez Louise,” Frank says, pretending to stagger. “When ya gonna stop growin’, huh, Corey? How old are ya now, thirteen? Gee, thirteen and tall as the whole damn house. What’s she feedin’ ya? Yer puttin’ the rest of us ta shame.”
“Hiya, Frank,” Corey says, standing even taller, shy-proud, and there’s a chorus, all the Franchitti angels calling his name, running to him on winged feet. Bella, Mrs. Franchitti, gives him a kiss. He gives her the painting. Oh, it’s perfect, she says, and she hasn’t even ripped off the paper. Bellissimo, perfetto, raining compliments down like hot little sparks, and then she gasps, and then she’s crying.
The younger kids start to cry with her. The older Franchitti kids are whoopin’ like wolves. Corey, born in the middle of the day in the middle of the year in the middle of the bunch, can’t decide which way he wants to go; his mouth wobbles up and down. Frank nudges him to the side and sees Geno standing in the family room in lipstick and paste pearls and a pink taffeta gown.
*
The day Frank Columbo met Eugenio Franchitti was a day blessed by God: God and all the real angels and saints, specifically Adjutor, Philip Neri, and Barbara. When Frank thinks about it the voice in his head takes on a rapturous tone: Summer of ’41. Atlantic City. God and all the angels. The war was going full swing and if it wasn’t it was about to, winding up for the punch. On the beach there were the leftovers, the women and boys and girls, and the oldest Franchitti kids who hadn’t shipped overseas, Geno and Cecilia, first cousins. Frank was eating an ice cream and watching the sea; he hadn’t noticed ’em at first, either of ’em, the tall and lanky boy and girl with skin like gold and eyelashes like fringed velvet burlesque fans, physical traits the magazines said you could shell out for but the Franchitti kids had ’em in spades all natural; but once he had he couldn’t stop noticin'. He thought they looked like a pair of purebred racehorses, the Arab kind. Long faces, long noses, and flighty. The girl had a big black ponytail and the boy could have had one if he’d wanted to, his hair was so long.
“Quit starin’ at my girl,” the boy had said to Frank, and Frank had said, “Huh? What? I ain’t starin’.”
“Yes you are,” the boy had said, “and if ya don’t quit I’m gonna come over and put my fist in yer eye.”
“Don’t do that,” Frank had said. “You’ll cut yerself.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, stop it, Geno,” the girl had said, tugging at him, “stop it, quit it, pick on someone your own size for once, God damn it.” She had slipped out from under the boy’s arm and introduced herself to Frank: I’m Cecilia, this crazy fool is just my cousin Eugene, we’re not stepping out together.
“You’ll cut yerself because it’s a glass eye,” Frank had said to Geno, and he had noted that when he pulled it out to show them they both squealed.
“What’d ya do,” Frank asks Geno in 1944, “lose a bet?”
Geno’s mouth is blood-red and droopy. “Thought it’d make her laugh,” he says, sour.
Oh tesoro mio, Bella had said, you look so pretty, I wish…
“Well, it sure got everybody else goin’.” And Cecilia boundin’ out afterward, lookin’ like Charlie Chaplin, that got a roar, that got the girls clappin’ their hands. Anty Bella, no, Cecilia had yelped; Anty Bella, what’s wrong?
Geno: “Don’t see you laughin’.”
“Ain’t nice to laugh at a lady.”
“Fuck you.” Geno wrestles the string of pearls over his head and hurls ’em at the bed. “Ceece and me, we just wanted Mamma to smile. She been actin’ like it’s a funeral ever since I told her. She’s all smiles when you come over, Frank, but you should see her durin’ the day, cryin’ more tears than the nymph Peirene—”
“Can ya blame her?” Frank says, thinking, who’s Peirene; thinking, my ma’s been acting like it’s a funeral since the day I was born. “First your daddy, then Americo, then Rocco and Luca…” Sure, yer brothers ain’t dead, he says, but they ain’t never gonna be the same. My daddy…
“War’s almost over,” Geno says, hot. “I ain’t gonna miss my chance to fight for my country.”
“Me either,” Frank says.
Geno stares at him. “What?”
“I joined up too. I’m seventeen on Wednesday.”
“I know that.”
“Yeah, so. The Merchant Marine. We ship out next week. Outta Perth Amboy. Jimmy Perez is goin’ too. Botha them Perez boys.”
“Jesus Christ. How’d yer ma take it?”
“Been cryin’ over me like I’m already dead.”
“Jesus. And yer old man?”
This is justa like you, Oreste had said, a-gallivantin’ off when yer mamma needs ya. Gonna play sailors, huh? Playin’ sailors in sissy white while the real men are on the dam’ beaches a-bleedin’ and a-dyin’?
“Don’t tell me you went ta enlist in that getup,” Frank says, and Geno chuckles. He tries to put his hands in his pockets, but he doesn’t have any: his palms skim down taffeta, down the slim lines of his body. “How’s Cecilia feel ’bout it, you fittin’ so nice inta her party clothes?”
“I don’t fit,” Geno says. A turn and a gesture: at the zipper stalled halfway up his tawny golden back. Teeth and taffeta stretched to the brink. “Fuckin’ thing’s jammed.”
The fingers of Frank’s right hand close around air, looking for the neck of the bottle he left in the Franchitti kitchen. The bottle, liquor, water, whatever. He swallows. “Cecilia’s in the kitchen,” he says—in the kitchen with the bottle he wants, in the kitchen wipin’ Bella Franchitti’s eyes, plating the pasta ca muddicata, boyish and nimble in Geno’s Sunday best; “I’ll get her,” he says.
“Damn it, man,” Geno says. “Stay here ’n’ help me. Ceece’s gonna kill me for wreckin’ her dress.”
“All due respect,” Frank says, “she shoulda thoughta that before she stuck you in it. All right, c’mere, Miz Geno, lemme take a look.”
Up close he can see the bumps of Geno’s spine and the mole on his left shoulder blade. The boning nips him in nice and tight, and the broad gold of his back sinks into an hourglass. Poor Ceece, Frank thinks, how’s she breathe in this rig? Frank thinks, he’s bloomin’ out like a goddamn rose, oh Geno, that mole, that tiny splotch of ink, I could touch it, I could put my thumb on it.
“Whatcha got under there,” Frank says, hoarse, “Ceece’s drawers too?”
“Shut up,” Geno says.
The zipper is warm and damp and all of a sudden Frank’s hand is sweating. When Frank breathes out he can see the tickle of it on the nape of Geno’s neck.
“Frankie?” Geno’s voice is low, so low. Ain’t nobody breathin’ now, Frank thinks.
“Just a sec.” He inhales. It’s a gasp. “Jesus. I gotcha. Just a sec.”
Frank puts a hand on Geno’s waist and a hand on Geno’s zipper. He slits Ceece’s dress back to ass and peels Geno free.
*
The Franchitti family lines up for midnight Mass. Baby Matteo too, although he’s seven now, not a baby no more, swaying half asleep between the hips of two tall teenaged Franchitti girl cousins, left and right like a pendulum.
Frank says goodnight: he’s no apostate but midnight Mass ain’t for him anymore; he’s gonna get some sleep and make his way to the Perezes’ in the morning.
Lover-like, Geno walks him to the door. He’s a boy again, wearin’ his daddy’s coat, and his lower lip is a smeared red blur. Padre Giuseppe won’t notice, he’s too near-sighted, but them sharp-eyed sharp-tongued nonnas of the neighborhood are gonna start whispering: there he goes, Bella’s Eugenio with his mouth like a cherry. Who’s he been kissin’ on Christmas Eve?
“Well,” Geno says. “I guess—”
“Don’t you get blown up,” Frank blurts. “My old man got blown up in the Adriatic in ’17 and that’s why he don’t like the beach or fireworks or amusement parks with all the screamin’, and I would like ta go ta Atlantic City with you again when all this is over, so. Not every weekend like we used ta, not if yer busy, you got better things ta do, just once in a while. So.”
“Same to you,” Geno says. “Don’t drown or nothin’.”
“Don’t you worry ’bout me.”
Geno mutters, “Can’t believe they let you join up in the first place.”
“Why,” Frank says. “’Cause I ain’t a big beautiful specimen like you?”
“On account of yer goddamn eye.”
“The Merchant Marine don't care if yer blind or not. Only one on a ship who has ta see is the captain. And in the case of the Titanic, he couldn’t see very well, neither.”
“Jesus, just be careful, will ya?”
“I will,” Frank says. “I will.”
“Well,” Geno says again. “Well, arrivederci.”
Frank throws an arm around Geno’s neck and drags him down. Ceece’s perfumed him, Frank realizes; he sure smells good. Yer a brother to me, he mumbles into the cloud of candy pink sweetness, I ain’t got no brothers and sisters besides you so you better come home safe. Okay, Geno? He feels the bob of Geno’s throat as Geno gulps. He feels the swipe of Geno's mouth over his cheek. Do my damndest, Geno says, and Frank lets go.
They straighten up without looking at each other. All right, Frank says. I’ll see ya.
’Bye, Frankie, Geno says, real quiet, and if Frank had known that’d be the last time he’d see Geno for fifteen years he wouldn’t have moved a muscle off the front step, he woulda stood there until they both froze or fell down or turned to stone, but because he hadn’t known he had gone home. Behind him, muffled by the snow that was falling harder and harder, he had heard Geno shut the door.
Los Angeles, California, 1960
How’d it happen, Frank asked Cecilia in 1951. By then she was married, kid number two on the way, number one clinging to her legs. The happy father was Mrs. Marino’s boy Enrico, had a leg shot off in Brignoles but that hadn’t slowed him down none. From now until the diabetes got the other leg you would find him stumpin’ around the grocery on his crutch, beaming, prosperous, always ready to talk tomatoes.
The usual goddamn way, Cecilia said. The girl got pregnant and off they went. He meet her in the war? Frank asked. No, last year. She was driving down from New York. Crashed her Cadillac on Greenwood, right in fronta the shop, of all the rotten luck. Rich bitch, her people were in Beverly Hills. I woulda liked ta see the look on her daddy’s face, Cecilia said, when his pretty Protestant princess turned up with a goddamn Catholic guappo on her arm. As for the Franchittis, Cecilia said, we didn’t even have a chance to make faces. No note, no nothin’, just a telephone call in the middla the night from the middla fuckin’ Ohio. Broke his mamma’s goddamn heart. And mine. And you, Cecilia said, grabbing the kid and making it squeal by holding it upside-down, you stayin’ or shippin’ out again or what?
When the war had ended Frank had come ashore in Calais. From Calais he had gone to Italy, to the toe of the boot, or just about: Calabria, where Franchittis abounded. Palmi, Trebisacce, Catanzaro, those towns were full of Franchittis and Franchettis, full of boys and girls with dark hair, with the golden skin that he dreamed about the way some people dream about the sand and the shore. But their eyes were hollow and their faces gaunt; everywhere there were people missin’, men and boys, gaps in family photos, absences like outlines chalked onto the medieval walls. He had floated back eventually, not to New Jersey but to New York. Then, finally, one autumn morning in the Bronx, still coated in the leftover ash of an arson investigation, he had felt the hook of Cadenza’s witch-finger in his collar, over the miles. It was time to return. All right, he had said to his mamma in his mind, all right, mamma. But I ain’t comin’ back for long.
He had arrived at Franchitti Auto on Greenwood yesterday, seen the banged-up lamppost where a car had jumped the curb, seen the boys, gangly Corrado like a scarecrow in his daddy’s beat-up coveralls, little Matteo all greased up. Aw, Frank, Corey had said, Geno don’t live here no more. Nobody tells me nothin’, Frank had said. Well, we ain’t no snitches, now are we, Officer, Matt had said.
Shippin’ out, he told Cecilia. I gotta job offer, L.A.P.D.
I would just like to know, Cecilia Marino said, putting the kid down, lighting a cigarette, what is so goddamn great about goddamn California.
*
Frank had written Geno letters during the war, though he’d never known if Geno had received them or read them because he’d never gotten a reply. It was the women who wrote him: from Cadenza, one letter a week, and when the stacks reached him he’d hold ’em in his hands and think fervently about droppin’ ’em overboard, but when he finally worked up the nerve to tear one open it had read like a prayer, and all the rest were in the same vein: God bless you and keep you. Every so often Cecilia also wrote him, on behalf of herself and Bella Franchitti, but all she talked about was Enrico Marino, what a good boy he was, how pale and sick he’d been when he shipped back, and Carolina Marino was sick too, sick to death, so they was takin’ over, Ceece was gonna fatten him up real good, nurse him back to health.
He had written Geno: We are on shore leave, I cannot say where. I made pals with some boys from California. I like the Atlantic fine but they have lit a fire in me to see the other side.
Now he’s in it, he’s done it, he’s there. He’d considered Hawaii but decided it was too far, best to stop on the mainland. Most days his beat keeps him in the city but some mornings he takes a little stroll along the shoreline, just himself and a cigarette and a cup of coffee and the seals and seagulls and the smog broiling the city behind him, rising behind him like the ghost of an angry orange, and he thinks, I think this is the life. I think this must be the place. Every now and then he would remember Cecilia’s furious cry and he would think, there’s plenty great about California, and he would wonder, had Geno read that letter?
Had he read it, and where had he gone?
*
On New Year’s Day, 1960, a man turns up dead on the coastline with green glitter on his decomposing cheek and a black card in his wallet readin’ SANREMO, and that evening, the hazy purple first evening of the year, the L.A.P.D. sends Frank to a transvestite bar at the corner of Griffith Park.
His first year on the force every assignment was a hazing; nine years on the force and tonight it’s a question of who’s gettin’ hazed, Sergeant Columbo or the poor transvestites of Hollywood who got no idea what’s about to descend upon ’em. Aw, naw, them ladies like me fine, Frank tells his detectives. Liddle ol’ Frank, they see me and they wanna put me on their laps and rock me like a baby.
Rock-a-bye, baby, Det. Strider says, snorting.
Sir, with respect, they gon’ eat you alive, Det. Freeman says.
But the ladies at SANREMO ain’t recovered their appetites. A girl in blue fishnets and feathers is languidly sweeping the floor, kickin’ up sticky green sparkles, the same sparkles, Frank observes, that were embedded in the dead man’s face like fish scales. We’re closed, she barks at him, can’t you read?
He flashes the badge. He don’t like to do it but sometimes it’s necessary. The girl drops her broom and breaks a glass. She grabs her wig off the counter and puts it on the way a man might fix up his collar and his cuffs, twitching it into place as fussy as she can to give herself some time to think. Her manager oozes from a back room, a rumpled Viking-sized queen with a real mane of silver-blond hair, hungover but indignant, as glass crunches underfoot: what are you doing, what gives you the right?
Hey, take it easy, Frank says, take it easy. “Now I ain’t here to arrest nobody, ma’am. I just need to ask a few questions about Donald Malloy.”
Don’t you ma’am me, the manager says. I’m Victor in the daytime and your majesty after dark. He laughs and then he winces at his laugh. In his office, he locks the door and pours himself a Scotch.
“Want one?”
“Thank you kindly, no. About Donald—”
“You mean Myrna?”
“Myrna?” Frank says. “Gee, Myrna, that’s a classic. Myrna Malloy, ha, I get it.”
“The family hire you to track her down?”
“The family?”
Well, yeah, Victor says, sipping. Myrna comes from money. Gold or emeralds or some shit. “Old man’s on his deathbed, wants to make amends. We had a P.I. here a couple weeks ago sniffin’ around. Myrna told him to piss off.”
The Malloys were in metals. Malloy’s Alloys, of all the damned things. “He leave a card, this P.I.?”
“You kidding?” Victor says. “Couldn’t get outta here fast enough. You know how they vaporize people, on TV?” It was like that, Victor says; he vaporized himself. Look, Victor says, what does it matter? “She’s a grown-up. You could come back with the National Guard, the fucking President of the United States of America, and Myrna would tell you all the exact same thing and there would be nothing you could do. The old man has his answer.”
“I’m afraid he doesn’t,” Frank says. “I talked to him this afternoon. And the brother. You see, I’m from Homicide.”
Oh, Jesus Christ, no, Victor says, tearing up. Sweet Jesus, no.
Frank don’t turn his back but he gives him a minute, watchin’ from the corner of his eye. I admit, I didn’t know her that well, Victor says eventually. The family history stuff, I didn’t get it from Myrna, I got it from the P.I. before Myrna told him to pound sand. Is it stupid of me to cry about it? But she was a bright kid, a good dancer. I love my girls, I look out for my girls and it’s hard out there, it’s scary. You understand? You must understand, being from Homicide.
From Homicide, Frank thinks: we say it like Homicide is another planet, and sometimes I guess I do feel like I’m from Pluto. Even here, in the land of the fairies. “I’m very sorry,” he tells Victor. He volunteers, as far as we can tell, it was Veronal. She wouldn’t have felt a thing. “She was here last night?”
“Thank God for that.” A sigh. “Yes, yes she was. Why do you ask? Do you think it was someone at Sanremo? A customer, or—or—” Victor stops, drinks, murmurs to himself, or one of us? Well, I suppose you would.
“Actually, sir, the way we figure, the way I figure, it was someone she knew personal. I’m guessin’ she hadn’t worked here long enough to make close friends. I’m right, aren’t I? How many weeks was it, three?”
“How’d you know? It was just under three. I don’t know where she was before, she didn’t say.”
Victor is rubbing his eyes. His fingertips are covered in sparkle, but that don’t mean anything; it’s everywhere: when Frank is done here he’ll be sparklin’ too. About that P.I., Frank says. Are you absolutely, positively sure Myrna told him to pound sand? Victor supposes he isn’t positively sure. It probably ain’t important, Frank says. Just an idea of mine, a tickle. Do you often get these tickles, Victor asks, smiling.
“I’ll get outta yer hair in a sec,” Frank says. “I just need to collect some statements. Build a timeline, of, of…”
“Myrna’s last night on earth.”
“Something like that, yessir.”
Well, Sergeant, you can start with me in here and Lucinda out there, Victor says, and for the rest, I’ll give you their names and addresses, and on the second page of Victor’s little black book Frank sees it, “Rosemary” – Ceece Franchitti, 206 Camarillo, second floor. I hope you catch the son of a bitch, Victor says, and Frank says, dreamy, oh, believe me, sir, I will, I’ll catch him, and boy does he burn up his engine, tearing across those hills.
*
When Geno opens the door Frank thinks he’s gonna die on his feet. “Oh, jeez,” he says, “it’s really you, look at you.” Look at you, he repeats, even though it’s midnight and the streetlight’s out and he can’t hardly see.
“Frank?” Geno says.
“Oh, you know me, you remember me,” Frank says. “You know my voice.”
“Jesus Christ, of course I know you,” Geno says. “I moved away, I didn’t get knocked on the head. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Doing here? I live here,” Frank says. “Well, not here but here. Way down in San Pedro. I got a little apartment, I got a little car, I drive to work every day. Ceece didn’t tell ya? I been here since ’51, same as you. Boy! am I glad to see you. Didn’t mean ta show up so late, but I been workin’ a tough case, and, forgive me, I couldn’t wait another day ta see ya. Ask me in, will ya? If the missus don’t mind?”
“Frank,” Geno says, “you’re a goddamn bloodhound and you know as well as I do that there ain’t no missus.”
“Really, no missus? But Cecilia said…”
“I know you didn’t get my address from Cecilia.” Geno’s hand is clamped around the doorknob. Frank’s breath spirals into taut little corkscrews, seein’ that, remembering: shine on shine on and the snow and Geno shuttin’ the door and the light of the Franchitti house dimmin’ behind him, dimmin’ forever, it feels like now. Geno says tightly, “Cecilia’s news is nine to ten years out of date.”
“You mean ta tell me you ain’t talked to Ceece in ten years?”
“How’d you find me?”
Well, now, tell you the truth, I didn’t, Frank says. It was an accident. I happened across ya while I was flippin’ through that little black address book that belongs to Victor Kristianssen, you know, the Madonna of Club Sanremo? I guess you ain’t talked to Ceece because you ain’t needed to, she been right here all along. Am I right about that, Ceece Franchitti? You can slam that door if you want but I’ll be back tomorrow with a warrant. ’Cause I’m a cop now, in case you didn’t know, L.A.P.D. Department of Homicide. I came here investigatin’ a murder.
All right, Geno says. All right, come in.
*
Geno says, I don’t know nothin’ about a murder.
That’s what they all say, Frank says. Turn on the light. Geno does. Frank says, I’m gonna sit down. You mind if I sit down? He don’t wait for an answer; he puts his hand on the arm of the sofa and sinks into it, and Geno sits with him, tall gorgeous Geno, his eyes all dark, paste pearls glowing in his ears.
“Whadda I call ya?” Frank says. “Not Ceece. Miss Franchitti? Since you ain’t married after all?”
Don’t fuck around with me, Frank, Geno says. What’s this about a murder?
I’m serious, Frank says. Your Sanremo name? Rosemary? Eugenia?
Geno swallows. In the lamplight he looks pure gold and stunned; stunned and so lovely: like a painting, Frank thinks, and he thinks of the Franchitti house, Christmas, the angels. Sure, Geno croaks, Eugenia.
“Okay, Eugenia, thank you.” Frank finds his notepad and his pencil and taps ’em together. “What can you tell me about a Miss Myrna Malloy?”
“Myrna? The new girl?” Geno frowns, purses his lips. They got the barest whisper of color on ’em and the lids of his eyes are shimmerin’ over his irises like the edge of dawn creeping up on a night-black sea, and Frank’s at sea again, heavin’ and yawin’. He’s got a feelin’ in his stomach vergin’ on sick. “Don’t think I can tell you much of anything about Myrna,” Geno says.
“I know you weren’t workin’ on New Year’s Eve. Didja stop by Sanremo to say hello?”
“No, I was here.”
“By yerself?”
“If you’re asking if I have anyone to corroborate my version of events,” Geno says coldly, “I don’t.”
Frank scratches his cheek with the eraser end of the pencil. “I guess I was askin’ more for me.”
Geno stares. “Come again?”
“You don’t got a girlfriend or a boyfriend or nothin’?”
“Is that relevant to the investigation?”
“What about the kid?”
What kid, Geno says. Myrna had a kid? The kid, Frank says, Ceece said the girl was pregnant. Oh, Pat’s baby? Geno says. It wasn’t mine. What? Frank says. Geno says, I’m dark but I ain’t that dark, you’d hafta dip me in molasses to pass that baby off as mine. But that don’t matter. I knew it wasn’t mine from the beginnin’, I didn’t care about that.
“If you knew it wasn’t yours, then why’d you—”
“I wanted to leave and it was an opportunity. When you see a chance you take it.”
“Without even tellin’ yer mamma?”
I waited ’til after the wedding, Geno says, defensive, I walked Ceece down the aisle, just like I always said I would. Then Geno looks at him, sooty eyes and long lashes and tender pink lips: what’d break their hearts more, the look says. Pat wanted to keep it, Geno goes on, the baby, but who knows what happened? Mother and baby had been disappeared behind the big imposing ivory doors of a Beverly Hills palace.
I could find her for ya, Frank offers.
“Jesus, what for?”
“What for? Ya loved her, didn’t ya?”
“You got two glass eyes now, Frank?” Geno says. “You saw my name in Vic’s book. You see how I’m living, what I’m doing.”
The thing about a broken heart, Frank has learned, is that it has shards and them shards is sharp, they splinter the voice and sound an awful lot like anger. Wounded pride, too, it shows up in the voice all jagged. It sure does hurt to see Geno curling in on himself like a bleedin’ fox. He says, “I do see.”
“You get it?”
“I get it.”
“Good. If you get it and I’m not under arrest for murder or indecency then get lost.”
“Okay,” Frank says. But at the door he turns around. “Just one more thing,” he says. “If I may. I ain’t never forgot how nice you looked that Christmas and I hope I never do. In that moment you were the prettiest gal in Hopewell to me, in all of Hopewell and Amwell too. Yer still the prettiest gal, no other gal can hold a candle to ya, and baby, I know you been takin’ the West by storm.” He holds up his hands. “You want me to go, I’ll go. But it’s gonna eat me up inside, sayin’ goodbye to you again, not knowin’ the next time I’ll get ta see ya. I know back then I said you was like a brother to me. Well, back then I didn’t know all the ways people could love each other, but now I been around and I do. At the time all I knew was how my mother was, half a person ever since her brother left her, half a person for the resta her life. All right, I said my piece.”
Frankie, Geno whispers, what are you sayin’? He touches Frank’s arm, as sweet and tentative as Mrs. Van Leuwen last week: furs up to her creped old neck, that tremulous old hand creepin’ out from under a pile of mink to grip him—Sergeant, you don’t truly think I murdered my husband? Sergeant, I simply loved that man to death. Please tell me you believe me. Frankie, Geno whispers: Frankie, Jesus Christ. Are you tellin’ me, are you sayin’…
That I love ya? Good sleuthin’, Frank says. Though I guess it don’t take a prize detective ta figure that one out.
*
You know, Frank tells Donovan Malloy, it didn’t really click until I found out you was identical twins. Sitting in the Malloy family room, Donovan stares out the oceanside window, unspeaking; it’s okay, sir, Frank tells him, you don’t have to say anythin’, just listen.
“Myrna and your papa,” he says, “they had that bust-up ten years ago, on account of Don Sr. not wantin’ a daughter. She ran away and he cut her out and for ten years you were the only Malloy in the will. Supposin’ she listened to the P.I. and came back, made amends? Then you’d be down to fifty percent, maybe less. There, I thought, motive. But then I find out she told the P.I. to get lost, she weren’t interested. Poof, there goes the motive.”
“As I’ve told you.”
“Just like you told us about her boyfriends and those creeps that were botherin’ her at the club. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker: you gave us so many leads, so many people ta chase, this big ol’ spider’s web, I started to wonder…”
“I wanted my sister’s killer caught, Sergeant,” Donovan says dully.
“In the end I knew it hadta be someone she knew and knew close and personal. Someone who could fix her a drink that she’d down without thinkin’.”
“She was a showgirl,” Donovan says. “It was her job to drink what people handed to her.”
“But y’see, Mr. Malloy,” Frank says, “she wasn't killed at the club. We’ve established that, we know that now. In fact, we know that by the time New Year’s Eve rolled around she was already dead.”
Donavan closes his eyes.
“Gee, this sure is a big house,” Frank says, looking around. “A big old house fulla big old empty rooms.”
“Damn it, Columbo, I loved my sister!”
“Yessir, you did.” Frank puts a hand on his shoulder, the hand of the man from Homicide, the man from Pluto, and feels him shudder. “Some might say ya loved her ta death.”
There was no reunion, Frank says. As far as the old man upstairs was concerned, Donald was dead, he only had one son and that son was Donovan. “You were the one who hired the P.I.,” he says. “We have the telephone records, and having met your papa I know he’s too weak ’n’ palsied to shake hands, let alone walk down the hall to his office and pick up the ’phone. You impersonated him and you called up Mr. Jacob Sullivan and you asked Jacob to find Myrna and tell her it’d be any day now. You asked him to tell her to come home, you’d split everything fifty-fifty. All that money, all hers, for whatever she wanted! For the hormones, the surgeries. You were gonna make her dreams come true.”
“That’s no crime, inspector,” Donovan says. “That’s called looking after family.”
“No, no crime,” Frank says. “No crime yet. And Mr. Sullivan tracked her down, didn’t he, and she did come home, didn’t she? You arranged to meet on the evening of December 30, 1959, which was coincidentally the same evening you gave the housekeeper and the cook and the chauffeur a hundred bucks each and told ’em to go home and relax, you didn’t wanna see their faces ’til after the New Year.”
“That,” Donovan says, “is called being a good employer.”
“But that’s where it all started goin’ wrong. Myrna showed up just ta tell ya she didn’t want any part of it. The money, the house, none of it, nada, zilch! As dead as she was to the old man he was even deader to her. And as long as you stayed under his thumb you were too.”
What an atrocious jumble of falsity and speculation, murmurs Donovan.
The seawater and the seabirds, Frank says, watching Donovan blanch, had done a number on the body. The coroner couldn’t get an accurate read on the time of death, so he based his assessment on a statement made by Victor Kristianssen and corroborated by just about everybody else who had been at SANREMO that night: Myrna had danced until one and left the club around one-thirty, effusively kissing all and sundry goodbye.
“I know, I know,” Frank says. He holds up a hand: hang on a minute, I ain’t finished. “You had an alibi. At two in the mornin’ your papa had an attack and it was you who called the doctor. The good doctor lives five minutes away; he drove right over, and he confirms that you let him in and stayed with him at your papa’s bedside until dawn.
“But where were ya before two?”
“As I’ve told you time and time again, Sergeant, I was in bed,” Donovan says. “You might be unaware, but it’s brutal, exhausting work, caring for an ailing parent, and—”
“Here’s my theory,” Frank says. “It wasn’t Myrna at Sanremo on New Year’s Eve: it was you. In her wig, in her clothes and shoes, getting’ green sparkle all over your skin.” He tuts. “Boy, that sparkle sure gets everywhere. I was in that club two hours, tops, and I’m still trackin’ it all over my apartment.”
But Inspector, Donovan says, my hands are clean.
“I ain’t overlooked the fact that Myrna’s dancin’ costume came with gloves,” Frank says. “Kidskin, weren’t they? All the way to the elbow. Anyway—when the festivities were over ya made sure everyone saw ya leavin’, bright and cheery and very much alive, then ya drove your sister to the seaside in your trunk and ya laid her there and ya petted her hair and her cheek and said goodbye. And that’s why we found sparkle on Myrna, sparkle on your driver’s seat and no sparkle in the trunk.
“Of course, what I still don’t get,” Frank muses, “what I still don’t get is, why the beach? Why not Griffith Park? It woulda sealed the deal: someone associated with the club had taken her into the hills and killed her.”
“She loved the ocean,” Donovan says. “I don’t know what she was doing at the beach the night she died, the night someone else killed her, but it was her place, the place she went to swim and be happy.”
With the rest of her body underwater and her head free to swivel around in the salt air, her eyes filled up with blue. She used to pretend to be a mermaid. She didn’t feel herself on land, on those legs, in that body: it was a dead giveaway, that body in daylight, it told every hostile stranger within eyeshot that the girl before their eyes was a sea-creature and not the human girl she wanted to be.
Ah, jeez, Frank says, pained, smacking his head with the heel of his hand. Donovan says, silk-soft, are you finished now, Sergeant? May I call my solicitor?
“Almost,” Frank says. “The Veronal for which you have a prescription, the relocatin’ of the body and the plantin’ of the Sanremo card, that makes it seem premediated. That makes it look not so good for you. But I know it wasn’t premeditated, Mr. Malloy. I know. I know everything. You panicked. In that kitchen downstairs with Myrna tellin’ you ta hell with Pops, ta hell with you, she was gonna disappear and this time nobody from her old life was gonna be able to find her…you panicked and you took your nightly dose of Veronal and you dumped it in her glass.”
Frank had been picturin’ it for days, those twin white Irish hands meetin’ in the midnight gloom of the Malloy study, transferring a glass of somethin’ between ’em, whiskey or gin. Just a little cloudier than usual, a little grittier, a little more bitter.
Had she noticed? Had she winced? Or had Myrna Malloy grinned a warlike grin: bottoms up, Donnie!
“You didn’t mean to kill her,” he tells Donovan. “You just wanted to stop her. A crazy plan flashed into your head: you could drug her and keep druggin’ her, hide her upstairs until the old man finally kicked the bucket. It wouldn’t be much longer. Maybe a week, maybe two. Everyone was saying that, all the nurses, the doctors; heck, even the old man, he knew the Reaper was outside a-tappin’ on his window. You knew she’d forgive ya once she got the money. But, then, whaddaya know? It was Myrna whose heart stopped while the old man’s kept on tickin’.
“I told ya, Mr. Malloy, ya don’t need to say anything. But any minute now, my boys are gonna come downstairs with the second will. The second will that you forged, that you couldn’t bring yourself to destroy; the second will that invalidates the first and gives Myrna Donald Malloy fifty percent of everythin’.”
Donovan’s weeping, his head in his hands. Later on his attorney will say it was pure physiology, a natural consequence of strain, of the terrible physical and emotional strain, but for now he’s sobbing in open heartbreak: wailing, gasping, beating the windowsill.
“You knew she’d been drinkin’ but you didn’t know how much,” Frank says, gentle. “On the night of December 30, you carried your twin up to bed and tucked her in and in the mornin’ you discovered she’d aspirated, and that was that.”
I understand you, Frank says. You think nobody understands you and the desperation you felt then, the pain you’re in now, but I understand.
*
He takes Geno out for Chinese. It ain’t an appetizin’ subject, murder, but this is a case Frank’s boys won’t understand, not even Det. Simon Wasserman who wears a gold band but goes home to the same Oliver Chiu he met on base in Honolulu in ’43. In post-war Geno Frank has found or re-found the perfect Venn Diagram: here’s someone who knows Frank to his core, who knows the sight of blood and guts and Frank’s empty socket and don’t squeal away from any of it, at least not anymore, who knows the agony and the ecstasy of a life like Myrna Malloy’s.
Jesus, Geno says, in neat summary: poor Myrna.
But I guess I’m glad, Geno goes on, faltering—I guess I’m glad she wasn’t robbed or raped or strangled, like—
You and Vic both, Frank says, and me. “Are ya gonna go back?”
“To Sanremo?” Geno don’t answer. I got the weekend off, he says instead. Me and my girls was gonna drive north.
Oh, Frank says, that’s fun. That’s a treat, what a treat.
Geno’s in what Frank calls his civvies: his Oceanside Engine Repair boiler suit, open to the navel, greasy white t-shirt underneath. He eats a dumpling and wipes his fingers on his sleeve and says, you can tag along, if ya want.
Ventura, California, January 15-16, 1960
Geno’s girls ain’t girls at all, ’cept for Harriet. Their names are Marty, Rico, Harriet, and Frog: Marty a round-faced studio photographer who supplements his income with a roaring trade in male nudes, Rico a construction worker and part-time poet, Harriet a bottle blonde and sometimes auto parts dealership receptionist with no profession and no aspirations who declares frequently and happily that she is merely a good Midwestern girl who has fallen in with the wrong crowd; finally, Frog, so-called, Rico explained, because once upon a time he was dating a truly repulsive specimen with warts in unspeakable places. They weren’t warts, Frog had yelled from the backseat at a stoplight, they were penis pearls Gregor had had implanted on purpose and boy did they feel good! And what is Frog when he ain’t accompanied by Toad? Frank had inquired politely.
Frog, Frog had said, is lonely!
They had piled into Geno’s refurbed 1949 Coupe on Friday afternoon and motored up to Ventura on the shining black tar of the brand-new US 101 freeway, depositing themselves in an updated oceanside bungalow that belonged to Marty’s grandparents, Texans who had moved even farther West after drilling their money out of the ground in the oil fields of America. As soon as they had arrived Frog had wandered off: in search of a new Toad, Harriet had said benevolently; then she had applied some red lipstick and a real diamond and hooked herself on Marty’s arm to pay a visit to his kin. This was customary, a condition of bungalow usage: Marty’s grandparents thought their grandson was all sunshine no shadow, and here was the sunny blonde fiancée to prove it and, more crucially, to keep him in the will. Don’t know about you, but I call that a profession, Rico had said. Hare, can I book you for my sister’s quinceañera? Then he had sauntered to the pier: to catch their supper, he said, waving a two-handed goodbye, nightcrawlers in one hand and a joint in the other.
Put that away, God damn it, Geno had snapped at him. I told you Frank’s a cop, for fuck’s sake.
Oh, I ain’t on duty, Frank had said, I ain’t seen nothin’. He had added, did Rosie tell ya I got a glass eye?
That old chestnut, Geno had said, and Frank had said, deliriously happy, Rosie baby, how many times do I gotta tell ya, this ain’t no chestnut, it’s made of glass.
He had followed Geno into town to do some grocery shopping, smiling at their reflections in all the store windows, and now he was leaning against the counter with a beer in his hand watching Geno rinsing bell peppers in the sink.
“You know I was a mess cook for the Merchant Marine,” he says, “but all I learned ta cook was pig slop.”
“Don’t sell yerself short,” Geno says. “If it was edible—”
“Debatable—very debatable and in fact hotly debated—”
“If it was edible, ya did yer job.” My patriotic duty, Frank says. Precisamente, Geno says, never breaking rhythm, julienning carrots, slicing butter radishes into semi-translucent coins. Thump-skid-thump-thump goes the knife: thump-skid-thump-thump goes Frank’s heart. Still chopping, Geno peers in the direction of the pier. “It’s been three hours. I hope he ain’t fallen in.”
“Someone’ll fish him out.”
What a catch, Geno says drily. The little mermaid, Frank says, chuckling; then he remembers Myrna and the laughter stops: poor gal’s only seafoam now, no more sparkle. But meanwhile in the land of the livin’ there’s sparkle everywhere: the sun on the waves and the sun on them crazy chandeliers in Geno’s earlobes; the sun on Geno, golder than gold. Frank, Geno says, putting the knife down, and God it’s practically a purr and inside the shaft of taffy-stretched sunset light Geno’s eyes are the color of honey and Geno’s bendin’ toward him with those chandeliers a-tinklin’, a noise like windchimes, and Rico bangs into the kitchen, stoned but excitable, drippin’ seawater everywhere, danglin’ a line of perch.
*
A fire, a supper of chopped salad and charred fish, a bonfire; an avant-garde ode to oil and water and San Buenaventura, performed by Rico and applauded with snapping fingers. No sign of Frog—maybe he found a crane this time, Rico says, and got eaten up, snap!—a full sky of stars—the girls dancin’ drunk and drugged around the dyin’ flames and Geno on the front step of the bungalow in a filmy white number, whispering to Frank with a mouth as red as cherries: forget the dishes. Come inside.
*
There’s a kinda magic timelessness to the moonlight in the master bedroom. Frank looks at Geno movin’ Marty and Harriet’s things off the bed in the silver-white drift and thinks, we’re like we always been. Me and Geno in a busted-up treehouse, me and Geno in a dirt lane pinched between fall-down clapboard houses talkin’ about God knows what, me and Geno in a broken-down shack off the coast, makin’ believe, makin’ eyes at each other while the other kids was kickin’ a ball or wrestlin’, buildin’ sandcastles; while Ceece was outside, pickin’ flowers, pickin’ up shells. Me and Geno in 1944: that snow, that parting, that melancholy holy night. But he don’t wanna remind Geno of the things that are past. He says, “Gimme a spin, baby. Didja stitch this up yerself? Gee.”
Do ya like it? Geno asks.
I like it, Frank answers, and I like you in it. But it’s so pretty, I don’t wanna get it wrinkled. What’s it got, a zipper? Clasps? Come here, baby. But Geno says, if you like me in it let’s leave it on. I want you to mess it up. I want you to ruin it. I want—
On the bed they’re the same height, lyin’ eye to eye. Frank kisses Geno on the forehead and cheek and ear, on the throat and collarbone and shoulder: on the mouth, fervent, and he can’t stop himself groaning when Geno opens up, when Geno’s tongue slides over his own, when he pulls back for breath and catches, black in the moonlight, that lipstick smeared across Geno's cheek. He had shuffled home that Christmas Eve in Hopewell with his own cheek so hot and red it had looked bitten open and from that night on just the smell of cheap perfume was enough to get him going: not much of a danger in the Merchant Marine, but afterward, jeez, every department store, every crowded plaza, every unguarded crosswalk moment…the world was chockablock with landmines. But tonight Geno don't smell sweet: tonight, Geno smells like salt and sweat and tonight Geno tastes like heaven.
I could kiss ya forever, Frank says. With Geno’s arms around his neck and the dress whisperin’ between ’em he reaches up and under all that lace and up a hard burning thigh: oh, baby. Geno rocks into him, moaning. You’re so wet, Frank says. You’re so wet for me, baby, do you feel that?
Yes, Geno says. Yes I do, yes, yes.
In the moonlight Geno’s body is a blur, Geno a water creature. The dress is made of the same stuff Frank sees in rich people’s houses, those airy billowing under-curtains that let in the sun and turn the world outside to gauze, and he runs his hand over it and imagines it in daylight: Geno, sunlit, naked under the dress like a girl naked under a sheet, nipples and pubic hair and cock soft dark shadows. And in his mind’s eye Frank looms over the girl and yanks the sheet away, lays her bare to the morning sun, and in the Ventura bungalow he pulls at one strap and then the other and tugs Geno’s bodice down.
Inside the dress Geno’s flat and narrow and bare, no bra to stuff, but Frank cups the muscle freed from its wire cage as if it’s round and heavy and full; he lowers his head and cements his mouth to Geno’s chest and suckles. Oh Frankie, Geno mumbles. Frankie, fuck. When Geno puts a hand on his leg he bats it away. You just lie back, he says. Lie back and gush, baby, get everythin’ wet. Sweet girl, I love ya, and Geno’s thrusting into his fist, against his mouth, wriggling, writhing, whimpering—gonna make a mess, ain’t ya, Frank rasps, make a mess in those petticoats, get ’em sticky? I wanna see your legs stick together with the mess you make, I wanna see you stand up and drip. Every time you put on this dress I want you to remember tonight and the things I did to ya inside it; Geno, a Greek chorus singin’ through clenched teeth: oh fuck Frankie oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.
The shipwrecked maiden: black hair in her eyes and those eyes rolled up to Heaven and her gown around her waist, white froth, her naked breast wet with Frank’s spit, droplets of creamy seawater shining on her lace and legs. Then the maiden gasps, agonal: Geno sits up and rolls over and crawls face-first into his lap.
Rosie, Frank says, breathless, and Geno says, Eugenia: I want you to call me Eugenia from now on. And damned if Frank don’t almost embarrass himself, right there in his pants. Jesus, he says, and with her fingertips on his buckle Eugenia says, Frank, yer piety is a credit to ya, but that ain’t what I asked. Eugenia, Frank says, prayerful as that smeared red mouth opens and descends, Eugenia, Genie, Genie baby.
*
In the morning, pain perdu; in the morning, coffee in the percolator and champagne in the refrigerator and Frog asleep or dead on the settee. In the morning, Eugenia: in slacks and a polo, her hair all mussed, talking shop with Marty’s grandpa who came walking up the beach at seven with a bag of tangerines. Harriet appears in a clatter of crystal and makes a grand show of floating around with her hand on her belly. Well I’ll be! cries Marty’s grandpa. Why’d you have to go and do a darned foolish thing like that, Marty says later. Is it foolish if it’s the truth? Harriet says, and Marty looks at her gob smacked: Lord a’mighty, Hare, who the hell’s the father?
I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Harriet says primly. None of my business, Marty says, goggling and incredulous, for Pete’s sake, Hare, you’re my gosh-darn fake fiancée!
Phew, Frank says to Eugenia. Never a dull moment with this bunch, I can see.
Shut up, please shut up, Frog groans, comin’ back to life like a jolted Frankenstein. My head’s in pieces. Here, have some a this, Rico says, passing him a joint. Smoke o’ the dog.
Chrissakes, Eugenia hisses.
I got my eyes covered, Frank says. I ain’t noticed nothin’, I’m goin’ outside. He goes and Eugenia goes with him and they drink their coffee by the sea.
Harriet’s ring glints through the window. The Pacific glitters. Genie, baby, Frank says all wistful, I would love ta cover ya in diamonds. Diamonds would be nice, Eugenia says, but I don’t need anythin’ but you.