The Lonely Witness E-Book

William Boyle

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 387

Beschreibung

Amy was once a party girl, but now she lives a lonely life. Helping the house-bound to receive communion in the Gravesend neighbourhood of Brooklyn, she knows the community well. When a local woman goes missing, Amy senses something isn't right. Tailing the woman's suspicious son, she winds her way through Brooklyn's streets. But before she can act, he is dead. Captivated by the crime she's witnessed and the murderer himself, Amy doesn't call the cops. Instead, she collects the weapon from the sidewalk and soon finds herself on the trail of a killer. Powerful and evocative, The Lonely Witness brings Brooklyn to life and exposes the harsh realities of crime and punishment on the city streets.

Leseprobe

THE LONELY WITNESS

Amy was once a party girl, but now she lives a lonely life. Helping the house-bound to receive communion in the Gravesend neighbourhood of Brooklyn, she knows the community well.

When a local woman goes missing, Amy senses something isn’t right. Tailing the woman’s suspicious son, she winds her way through Brooklyn’s streets. But before she can act, he is dead.

Captivated by the crime she’s witnessed and the murderer himself, Amy doesn’t call the cops. Instead, she collects the weapon from the sidewalk and soon finds herself on the trail of a killer.

Powerful and evocative, The Lonely Witness brings Brooklyn to life and exposes the harsh realities of crime and punishment on the city streets.

About the Author

© Katie Farrell Boyle

William Boyle is from Brooklyn, New York. His debut novel, Gravesend, was published as #1,000 in the Rivages/Noir collection in France, where it was shortlisted for the Prix Polar SNCF 2017 and nominated for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. Boyle is also the author of a book of short stories, Death Don’t Have No Mercy, and of another novel, Tout est Brisé, recently released in France by Gallmeister. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Praise for WILLIAM BOYLE and GRAVESEND

‘Boyle’s writing is raw, poetic, unflinching, nostalgic, and perverse. Urgency inhabits his pages, and the characters live on weeks after you put the book down. Gravesend is a novel read in a day, and then again, slowly’ – LA Review of Books

‘Like all the best crime writers, Boyle is both a masterful storyteller and a powerful stylist… He has a sense of humour and a sense of place. Most of all, though, he has the true novelist’s true feeling for his characters’ – Alex Shakespeare, North Dakota Quarterly

‘Gravesend is a taut exploration of the ways we hurt and save (or try to save) one another. With unforgettable characters, a fist for a plot, and a deeply evocative setting, Boyle navigates alleys and streets with the best of them, Lehane, Price, and Pelecanos’ – Tom Franklin, bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

‘William Boyle has created intensely tangible characters, their voices, thoughts and feelings almost become physical, touchable, and are so very, very believable’ – Liz Robinson, LoveReading

‘Gravesend is a book that hits you in the guts the same way David Goodis or Charles Willeford’s books do. Boyle’s mining that dark edge of America where no one is safe, not even from themselves. A dark ride but a seriously great ride’ – Willy Vlautin, author of The Motel Life, Northline, Lean on Pete, The Free,and Don’t Skip Out on Me

‘Gravesend kicks ass! An irresistible combo of an insider’s tour of Brooklyn and true and authentic 21st Century Noir. Boyle is one to watch’ – Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Fallen and Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies

‘William Boyle has written a terrific novel for the new millennium of Noir. A beautiful actress returns to her Brooklyn neighborhood where she finds the dark world she left has gotten worse. Peopled by ex-cons and ex-cops, teenage gangsters and Russian mobsters, Gravesend creates a claustrophobic intimacy as it moves swiftly to its shocking end. I finished the book grateful for release from its relentless grip, and admiring the guts it took to write such a brutal story’ – Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, and The Good Brother

‘William Boyle’s Gravesend is a bruiser and a heartbreaker of a debut. With echoes of Lehane and Pelecanos but with a rhythm and poignancy all its own, it’s a gripping tale of family, revenge, the strains of the past and the losses that never leave us’ – Megan Abbott, author of Dare Me, The Fever, You Will Know Me, and Give Me Your Hand

‘Boyle understands blood in all its meanings. He’s a dark poet who knows how to draw you close so he can slip the knife into your heart. Gravesend is deeply felt, brutal, tragic, personal and beautiful. You won’t forget it’ – Jack Pendarvis, author of The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure, Your Body is Changing, Awesome, and Movie Stars

‘Gravesend plops you down in the midst of a tragedy waiting to happen, and as the story rumbles toward its shattering conclusion, you’ll find yourself digging in your heels against the terrible inevitability of it all. William Boyle lays bare a seedy corner of Brooklyn and the tortured souls who inhabit it in his debut, and in so doing stakes out his own turf among up-and-coming two-fisted writers’ – Richard Lange, author of This Wicked World, Angel Baby, and The Smack

‘There’s a natural, forthright style here that seems born of this writer’s sense of duty to his characters, these denizens of non-hipster Brooklyn living out the dooms they were born to, nurturing their vices, the hours of their lives plaited masterfully together, their lusts and regrets interlaced. The novel unspools without hurry but also without an extra line, giving neither the desire nor opportunity to look up from it. There’s an exhilaration that accompanies seeing a place and its folks this clearly and fairly, feeling at once that the writer is nowhere to be found and also working tirelessly to show you the right things. Boyle arrives in thorough possession of his seedy yet venerable world, this low-roofed urban hinterland. I can’t remember being more convinced by the people in a novel. Boyle’s characters, each in his or her own way, are accepting the likely future – with violence, with sex, with resignation, with rebellion, by being upbeat. You’ll be grateful, and it won’t take long, to be in this writer’s hands’ – John Brandon, author of Arkansas, Citrus County, A Million Heavens, and Further Joy

Books by William Boyle

Gravesend

Death Don’t Have No Mercy (short stories)

Everything is Broken (Tout est Brisé)

The Lonely Witness

for Katie Farrell Boyle

It’s a wonderful life that you bring

Life is a series of obsessions one must do away with. Aren’t love, death, God, or saintliness interchangeable and circumstantial obsessions?

– E M Cioran, Tears and Saints (translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston)

I don’t know what the chords are. They keep changing all the time.

– Nick Cave in One More Time with Feeling

Around here it is not a matter of finding the truth but of deciding which lie you live with better.

– Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters

One

When Mrs Epifanio opens the door, Amy can tell right away that something’s wrong. Monsignor Ricciardi had told her a few months ago, when she started doing this, that Mrs Epifanio was prone to fits of dementia, that some days she’d probably seem very confused about where she was and what year it was and who was dead or alive. But Amy’s only seen that side of Mrs Epifanio once or twice. She’s usually cheery and bright-eyed in the morning, so lively for a ninety-year-old, standing with her shoulders hunched, her bobby-pinned, rose-colored hair wild, her taped-on-the-bridge-of-the-nose glasses hanging recklessly around her neck.

She’s wearing a housedress now, which isn’t normal. Amy knows she likes to get dressed up for communion. Usually, she’s in a floral-print blouse and slacks. Her eyes are almost quivering, as if she’s on the verge of tears, though it’s sometimes difficult to tell with an old woman. She looks over Amy’s shoulder, out at the street, glancing up and down the block.

‘You okay, Mrs E?’ Amy asks.

‘I’m sick over here,’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You know Diane, the woman from church who sits with me four days a week?’

‘A little bit.’

‘Last two days, her son comes in her place. Vincent. Real creep. I sit at my kitchen table, playing solitaire, picking at my Meals on Wheels; he goes into my bedroom and starts digging around. I call into him, I says, “I’m gonna call the police!” He says, “Don’t worry, Mrs E,” like we’re pals. “I’m just cleaning up a little.”’

‘You sure?’ Amy asks.

‘Of course I’m sure.’

‘Maybe you imagined it.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What’s Diane say?’

‘He says she’s sick with the flu. I can’t get through to her.’

‘What time’s she usually get here?’

‘Ten.’

‘And you’re worried he’s going to come again?’

‘Yes.’

‘How about I hang around and we straighten this out?’

‘Oh, that’d be wonderful. Thank you, dear.’ Mrs Epifanio looks relieved.

Amy motions to her bag. ‘I’ve got communion for you.’

‘Come in, come in,’ Mrs Epifanio says. She points down the narrow hallway, where a door opens on her small kitchen.

Amy crosses the threshold.

‘You know, I was just telling my grandson Rob all about you on the phone,’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘Rob is Elaine’s son?’

‘Yep. They live over in Metuchen. Supposed to come visit again on Sunday, but we’ll see. “Amy Falconetti,” I says to him. “Originally from Flushing. Brings me communion. Such a nice girl. Pretty. Dark hair. Tattoos, just like you,” I says to him.’

‘That’s really nice to hear.’

Amy’s not sure how Mrs Epifanio knows about her tattoos. They’re all on her back and thighs, traces of her old life. Word gets around, she guesses. Someone found out, saw her in the summer with a tank top and shorts on and spread the word. She’s not embarrassed about her tattoos, and she doesn’t regret them. It just feels like they belong to someone else. It’s also still weird to her that she has dark hair. It’s been a few years since she dyed her blond hair eerie black, and she’s never quite adjusted. She sometimes looks in the mirror and can’t recognize herself. But it felt like a necessary change.

‘Just the truth. Last one who brought me communion, Immacula, you should’ve seen her.’ Mrs Epifanio puts out her arms like a zombie. ‘Walking dead. Kill you to have a little enthusiasm? I mean, I know it’s not the most exciting thing in the world, bringing communion to an old lady who can’t leave the house, but I think you’ve gotta carry yourself with grace. And you do.’

‘Thanks, Mrs E,’ Amy says. ‘I try. And I always look forward to seeing you.’

‘I’m better than all the other ones, right?’

‘All the other what?’

‘All the other old bags you visit.’

Amy laughs. ‘You’re great.’

They’re in the kitchen now: Mrs Epifanio settling onto her padded chair, Amy sitting across from her. The table is strewn with scratch-offs, church bulletins she’s brought over the last few months, word-puzzle books, prescriptions, junk mail, and pillboxes. Amy always takes in the picture on the wall: Mr Epifanio as a young man, standing in a subway tunnel with a clipboard in his hand. Amy’s not sure what exactly he did – it’s tough to get straight information from Mrs Epifanio – but she’s pretty sure he worked for the MTA. He died back in 1986, right after the Mets won the Series, which Amy will never forget, because she was in first grade and Queens was rocking. That was more than thirty years ago now. Crazy how time moves.

Amy’s always listening to Mrs Epifanio tell stories about her husband. Mostly they seem to revolve around his clowning around in bars or staying up all night to hunt a little mouse with a BB gun.

‘You doing okay with your pills, Mrs E?’ Amy asks.

‘My pills,’ Mrs Epifanio says, waving her off. ‘Who knows anymore? Half of me’s going this way; half of me’s going that way.’

‘The visiting nurse is still coming?’

Mrs Epifanio nods into her chest. ‘She comes. I can’t hardly understand her with that Russian accent.’

Amy welcomes this opportunity to transition into administering Holy Communion to Mrs Epifanio. She’s supposed to hold off on any conversation until after the parishioner receives, but that’s awfully tough to enforce, especially with Mrs Epifanio, who is starved for company. Amy uses the short-order rite that she uses for all lonely widows. She takes the Bible, the cross, the candle, and the white cloth out of her bag. Then they go through their prayers.

The reverential attire Amy’s wearing – blue slacks and a white blouse – is a far cry from how she used to dress. For years, she had pretty strict fashion rules: rockabilly-girl hair, sometimes with a bandanna, paired with pencil skirts, swing skirts, cropped trousers, swing trousers, short-sleeved shirts, vintage sweaters, sarong dresses, and halter-necked tops. Everything was red, white, black, and navy, with polka dots, stripes, checked gingham, or leopard-print patterns. Acceptable motifs included cherries, skulls, anchors, horseshoes, dice, bows, and pin-up girls. She wore flats or pumps on her feet. It was like she was always dressing to go see Social Distortion or serve as an extra in a John Waters movie.

Memories of her past life – past lives, really – come only in flashes now, a haze of bars and music and tattoos and drugs and booze and women. Things getting dark with Merrill, her gutter-punk girlfriend with scabies and a mean dog on a frayed rope leash. Meeting Alessandra at Seven Bar, where Amy worked for years, and then moving here, to Gravesend in Brooklyn, to live with her. That was five years ago. Alessandra hated the neighborhood and had spent her life trying to escape it or stay away, but she’d been filled with guilt about leaving for Los Angeles after high school. She’d wanted to make it as an actress and hadn’t been around when her mother got sick and died, so she’d decided she should stay for a while and tend to her father. Like almost everything with Alessandra, the decision was more a projection of who she thought she should be rather than who she was.

They were happy for a bit. Amy took the train into the city to pour drinks at Seven Bar, while Alessandra stayed with her father and got a little extra work in movies here and there. When Alessandra’s father died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism, she ditched Amy and moved back to Los Angeles without much notice. Amy sank into a big, black depression after that. She thought about chasing after Alessandra but didn’t. She sold all her records for cash, quit her job at Seven Bar, ate cheap, lonely meals at Liu’s Shanghai on Bath Avenue, her favorite Chinese place. She stayed behind. Staying behind was what she’d always been good at.

She went into St Mary’s one day, when she thought she was being followed by a man after getting off the train at Bay Parkway. Her childhood church in Queens came back to her in an instant. The organist was practicing in St Mary’s. She was beautiful. Her name was Katrya. She was Ukrainian. Amy felt safe. She started going to church weekly again for the first time since middle school, since before her mother died.

She liked Pope Francis. He seemed to reflect everything good about Catholicism. She decided she wanted to do something useful. She wanted to help. She’d spent enough time not helping. She became a Eucharistic Minister, went around and brought communion to old people, mostly old ladies like Mrs Epifanio. She liked hearing their stories and making them smile. She liked that they thought she was so young, even though she was in her mid-thirties now and was starting to feel old.

After she receives, Mrs Epifanio closes her eyes and prays quietly. She crosses herself and then uses a toothpick to dislodge some of the wafer from between her teeth.

When they’re done with the rite, Mrs Epifanio says, ‘Can I get you anything? Coffee? I have some delicious seeded cookies. Some good rolls, too. I’ve got a hundred of those little cartons of orange juice from Meals on Wheels. You like orange juice? Take a few. Take them all. I don’t drink orange juice.’

‘I’m fine,’ Amy says, looking up at the clock. Ten to ten. Diane – or her son – is set to show up soon. Amy wonders if Mrs Epifanio is just dreaming it all up. What she’s fully expecting is that Diane will show, Amy will ask about Vincent, and there won’t even be a Vincent.

‘I’m not imagining this,’ Mrs Epifanio says, as if reading her mind.

‘I believe you,’ Amy says.

‘It’s too bad this Vincent’s such a creep. He’s about your age.’

So many of these old ladies feel the need to try to hook her up with their grandsons, nephews, guys from the block, anyone they can think of. Amy always shakes it off. Most of them she doesn’t even consider telling the truth. You can only explain so much to a ninety-year-old who has spent her whole life thinking one way.

‘Yeah, doesn’t sound like my type,’ she says to Mrs Epifanio.

‘He’s got these nasty eyes.’

‘I don’t know, Mrs E. Maybe it was just a nightmare.’

‘You’ll see.’

The door opens a few minutes later. She does see. The man she assumes is Vincent walks in. He’s got the key. He’s at least five years younger than she is, maybe not even thirty. He does have dark, unsettling eyes, with dark hair to match. He’s wearing a black trench coat, looking like one of those Columbine shooters from back in the nineties. He’s skinny. He’s got a dirty smile.

‘And who are you?’ he says, coming into the kitchen and sitting across from her at the table.

‘See?’ Mrs Epifanio says. ‘What’d I tell you?’

‘Why do you have a key?’ Amy asks Vincent.

‘It’s my mom’s. She’s sick with the flu. Asked me to come over and sit with Mrs E in her place.’ Vincent waves at Mrs Epifanio like she’s blind or an infant, raises his voice to talk to her. ‘How you doing today, Mrs E? You remember me from the last couple of days? Vincent.’

‘Go shit in your hat,’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘She doesn’t like me much,’ he says to Amy.

‘She says she called your mother and can’t get through,’ Amy says.

‘My mother can’t even get out of bed. Who are you, you mind me asking?’

‘I’m from church. I bring Mrs E communion.’

‘Okay, well, we’re all good here. ’Less you got one of those little wafers you want to throw my way. I’m the only one I know loved the taste of them as a kid. Like licking a nun’s armpit. Hey, you’re not a nun, are you?’

‘I’m not a nun.’

‘All I’d have to do is lick your armpit to find out if you’re lying.’ That smile. Yellow teeth. Foul breath she can smell from where she’s sitting.

‘Who talks like this?’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘Mrs E doesn’t need you today,’ Amy says. ‘I’ll be sitting with her until your mother gets better.’

He rubs his hands together and doesn’t respond.

‘Have you been back into her bedroom?’ Amy asks.

He exhales, as if he’s exhausted with this line of questioning. ‘My mother told me to dust in there.’

‘Mrs E isn’t comfortable with that.’

Vincent stands. ‘Look, lady. I’ve got better things to do. I’m trying to do my mother a favor here, that’s it. You don’t want me around, I’m out.’

‘Leave the key, okay?’

‘I’m not gonna leave the key. It’s my mother’s.’

‘It’s Mrs E’s house.’

‘I am most definitely not leaving the key.’ Vincent starts to walk down the hallway, then pauses to turn back and address them. ‘I don’t know what the fuck this is about. Try to do something nice and you get treated like a thief. Diane’s not gonna be happy.’ He goes out through the front door, leaving it unlatched and slightly open.

Amy gets up and goes over to close the door behind him. ‘Jeez,’ she says, as she comes back to the table and sits down again. She’s been trying for a while not to curse so much.

‘I told you I wasn’t imagining it,’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘Maybe we should call the cops.’

‘They won’t do anything.’

‘I don’t like that he has the key.’

‘Me neither.’

‘I’ll sit with you awhile longer. We’ll figure out a plan. Do you have Diane’s number handy? Let’s try her.’

Mrs Epifanio leans on the arms of her chair and rises to her feet slowly. She makes her way over to a pantry on the far side of the refrigerator. She comes out with an ancient green address book. ‘Her number’s in here somewhere,’ she says. On the way back, she stops to open the refrigerator and grabs a few small cartons of orange juice, cradling them against her chest. When she gets back to the table, she pushes the address book and the orange juice in front of Amy. ‘Have an orange juice,’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘Oh, I’m okay,’ Amy says. ‘Really. Thanks.’

‘Have one.’

‘Maybe in a bit.’ Amy flips through the address book, all yellowed pages and Mrs Epifanio’s nearly illegible script. Lots of names and addresses and numbers are scratched out. A stack of Mass cards is stuck in the middle of the book.

‘Probably ninety percent of the people in there are dead,’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘That’s sad,’ Amy replies.

‘It’s sad to think that I’m in someone else’s address book and they’ll just scratch me out when I croak like I scratch them out when they croak.’ Mrs Epifanio laughs.

‘What’s Diane’s last name?’

Mrs Epifanio thumbs her chin. ‘What is it? I say her last name so rarely. Grasso? No. That’s her neighbor Edna… Marchetti. It’s Marchetti. Same last name as my cousin Janet.’

Amy finds Diane’s number in the last column on the M page. She goes over to the rotary phone on the wall and dials it. She lets it ring ten times before hanging up. ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘For a second I thought Vincent might pick up.’

‘I appreciate the company. I really do, Amy.’

Amy walks down the hall and peeps through the curtained window in the door. Vincent is in front of the apartment building across the street, vaping, pacing through his cloud of smoke. He seems to be talking to himself.

She goes back to the phone and dials the rectory. She tells Connie Giacchino, the secretary, that she can’t do any more home visits today. She explains that Mrs Epifanio needs her help. Connie says Monsignor Ricciardi will certainly understand and maybe Immacula will be willing to step in. Amy thanks her and returns to the table.

‘I’ll get out the cards,’ Mrs Epifanio says. ‘We can play Rummy 500.’

‘Sounds good.’

Something about Vincent has Amy extra uneasy now. It occurs to her that he reminds her of someone. When she was a sophomore in high school and living full-time with her grandparents, she watched from her bedroom window as their neighbor Bob Tully strangled a man to death in his driveway and then dragged him into his garage. The man’s face was red, his eyes were popping, he was gasping for breath. Bob Tully’s hands were monstrous. He was thick-necked and so strong and seedy-looking. Amy often saw him from her window, because she had just started smoking and she spent a lot of time blowing smoke out over the fire escape. He looked up at her as he was dragging the man to the garage and smiled. Did he really look like Vincent, or is she just conflating their faces in her mind now?

Bob Tully must’ve seemed old to her then, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight or twenty-nine. She didn’t call the cops, didn’t say anything to her grandparents. She closed her blinds and wondered if she’d actually seen what she thought she’d seen. The next day, Bob Tully came out as she was walking to school. He was peeling an apple with a pocketknife, smiling, saying she didn’t see what she thought she saw, and she should just forget anything she thought she saw, and if she didn’t, there’d be a lot of trouble, because girls with big mouths sometimes wound up hanging from trees. He showed her the knife. She’ll never forget his thumb on the knife. She saw Bob Tully around a lot after that. He’d wave to her from his stoop. The more she stayed quiet, the nicer he was.

One day, she followed him as he bounced from the garage where he worked to the bar where he drank to the house of the woman he was seeing. She searched the newspapers for a sign that someone was missing – a husband, a son. Nothing. She never knew the identity of the man Bob Tully strangled. She started to consider she’d imagined it. And she continued to follow Bob Tully. She got to where she looked forward to following him. She wondered if he knew she was following him. Catholic school was boring. The nuns were boring. Her grandparents were boring. Smoking was boring. She wasn’t sure if she watched Bob Tully in the hope that he’d do something else terrible, or that he’d be caught, or that someone would come to avenge the murder of the man he’d killed.

When Amy was nineteen, done with high school and working at a bakery in the neighborhood and thinking about how to get out of Queens, Bob Tully got drunk and drove his car head-on into a fruit truck. She wasn’t there to see it, but she heard the story. Bananas and apples everywhere in the street, and Bob Tully ejected through the windshield, splattered on the sidewalk outside a barbershop.

He couldn’t have looked as much like Vincent as Amy thought he did.

Two

Vincent’s still standing across the street when she goes back to check forty-five minutes later. Amy can only figure that he’s waiting to confront her about something, or maybe he’s just dumb enough to think that she won’t see him when she leaves. She sees less of Bob Tully in him now that she’s studying his awkward posture.

She wishes she had someone she could call as backup. Her life in the neighborhood is pretty small. It says a lot that the only people she can even think of to call are Monsignor Ricciardi, Connie Giacchino, and her landlord, Mr Pezzolanti.

Back at the table, Amy reports that Vincent is still out there.

‘Real creep, I told you,’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘Who can I call? Maybe Elaine?’

‘Don’t bother Elaine.’

‘Mrs E, I’m a little worried here. I leave, he’s got the key, and he can waltz right in. I have to leave at some point.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m going to go out and talk to him.’

‘Be careful.’

Amy leaves her bag behind and walks outside. It’s hard to go from the bottled-up feeling of the house to the bright world outside. It feels a little warmer than when she headed over. Unusually warm. Very little winter weather this winter. She’s surprised to find that Vincent is gone. She looks all around and doesn’t see him.

Mrs Epifanio’s block, Bay Thirty-Seventh, is like many of the blocks in the neighborhood: newish condos next to her old, green frame house on both sides, the apartment building across the street, lots of other three-family houses. New trees have been planted by the city, with their sad little white tags and mounds of mulch. On a February morning like this, the kids in school, Amy can hear buses on Bath Avenue and the traffic lights clicking. She walks to the front gate. Vincent has left it open, pointed out to the sidewalk. She pulls it closed and latches it and takes another good look around for Vincent.

She goes back in and tells Mrs Epifanio he’s gone.

‘That’s good,’ she says.

‘But I’m still not sure he’s gone-gone. I’ll probably leave in a little while, but I’m going to write down my number.’ She takes out her old Samsung flip phone. She’s about the only person she knows of who doesn’t have a smartphone. It’s hard to even get these anymore, but they keep them on the market for senior citizens and technology-averse people like Amy. ‘You can call me whenever, day or night. If he comes back, let me know. I only live a few blocks away.’

‘That’s so kind.’

Amy finds a scratch pad and a black Sharpie and writes her name and number in big, blocky letters. ‘Do you want me to leave it here on the table, or should I post it on the fridge?’

‘Table’s fine.’

‘Okay. Do you feel a little better?’

‘Sure.’

‘Did Vincent touch anything in your bedroom?’

‘Nothing I noticed.’

‘You checked the drawers?’

‘I didn’t see anything missing.’

Amy goes back into the bedroom. It’s dark. She feels around on the wall just inside the door and finds a knob to twist. Three lights in the brass chandelier overhead flicker on. Everything is out of time. A bed with a chenille spread from the fifties. Swag flowers. Fringes. Penny-flat pillows. She looks up. Popcorn ceiling. A simple gold cross on the wall next to her. Under that, an antique Singer sewing machine with its original desk and bench. She runs her fingers over the scuffs on the desk. A clay-colored French provincial dresser with nine drawers runs along the far wall. Propped on top of it is a framed picture of Mr and Mrs Epifanio on their wedding day. She can’t imagine what Vincent was doing in here. It doesn’t look like anyone has so much as sat on the bed in ages. She knows that Mrs Epifanio, like many of the old people she visits, sleeps in her recliner in the living room with the television on.

Her instinct is to go through the dresser. She stops herself. She wouldn’t even know what might be missing. She hopes that Mrs Epifanio doesn’t have envelopes of cash stuffed in the drawers – another thing these old folks tend to do – that she doesn’t remember putting there. One woman, Mrs DiPaola, once asked Amy to go down to the basement and put her laundry on the line after communion. What Amy saw down there was an open cigar box on the table next to the washing machine, so much money inside. At least ten thousand dollars. She closed the lid of the box, hung the clothes on the line, went upstairs, and told Mrs DiPaola it was a bad idea to leave so much money sitting out like that.

She sits on the bed. Something reminds her of her father – the ceiling. The apartment her father lived in after he’d left her and her mother had ceilings like this. Amy was only there twice before he stopped coming around to pick her up on weekends. She was twelve. Her mother died the next year. That was when she moved in with her grandparents, next door to Bob Tully. She never heard from her father again. He left Queens and moved to Poughkeepsie, and then her grandmother found out he was on the skids in Kingston and Hudson and all over upstate. But Amy remembered ceilings just like this in his apartment in Pomonok. She remembered staring up at those ceilings while he went out to the bar.

She stands and smooths the wrinkles out of the bedspread.

Back out in the kitchen, Mrs Epifanio has opened a large-print sudoku book and is struggling with a puzzle.

‘Didn’t see anything unusual,’ Amy says, returning to her seat at the table. ‘Maybe I’ll try Diane one more time.’ Address book in hand, she dials Diane’s number on her cell phone, since it’s out already and she doesn’t feel like dealing with the rotary again. After six rings, she’s about to drop the call, but then someone picks up and doesn’t say anything. ‘Diane?’

‘Diane’s sick,’ a man says. Vincent.

Amy pushes the end button with her thumb and folds the phone shut. She’s immediately sorry that she called from her own number. ‘It was Vincent,’ she says to Mrs Epifanio.

Mrs Epifanio shakes her head and looks down at the table. ‘I sure hope he didn’t kill his mother. Happens all the time. Guys like him, they come home to rob their mothers. Mother’s got nothing to rob and ends up with her throat cut. Poor Diane.’

‘Jeez, Mrs E. You don’t really think that, do you?’

‘Who knows anymore? This day and age.’

‘Where’s Diane live?’

‘Second floor of the little brick two-family across from that house with the lions out front.’

‘I know that house.’

‘Giorgio Gianfortune. He owns the fish market. Thinks he’s a big shot.’

‘I’m going to walk over there.’

‘That a good idea?’

‘I just want to see if there’s anything unusual.’

* * *

Amy packs her bag and tells Mrs Epifanio to close and put the slide lock on the kitchen door. Because there’s a vacant apartment upstairs – Mrs Epifanio stopped renting it after Mr Epifanio died – the kitchen door has its own lock. Amy is thankful it’s there. Mrs Epifanio says she’ll lock it. Amy points to her phone number again and tells Mrs Epifanio to call for any reason. Really. But she also says that if Vincent comes back and starts knocking on the door or anything, Mrs E should absolutely call the police. It’s not okay for anyone to enter her house without asking, no matter his intentions.

Amy walks into the hallway and waits for Mrs Epifanio to close and lock the kitchen door. Mrs Epifanio struggles over to the door and shoulders it closed. The sound of the slide lock being engaged on the other side follows.

‘Okay?’ Mrs Epifanio says.

‘Good. I’ll call you after to check in.’

The house with the gaudy cement lion statues at the driveway entrance is only a few blocks away, Bay Thirty-Fourth between Bath and Benson. There could be other houses with lion statues, but she knows this is the one Mrs Epifanio is talking about.

Amy pauses on Mrs Epifanio’s front stoop and then walks slowly to the front gate, keeping an eye out for Vincent. She exits through the gate, closing it carefully behind her, and then crosses the street and turns right onto Bath Avenue. She stops at Augie’s Deli to get a coffee. She wonders if Vincent stopped here on his way home.

Bath Avenue is quiet this time of the morning. She passes the recently sold lot where Flash Auto once was. When she and Alessandra briefly had a car, they took it there for repairs. Having a car turned out to be nothing but a pain – parking, winters, maintenance. Alessandra was a terrible driver. Amy wasn’t great either. She preferred walking and taking the bus or subway when she needed to go into the city, anyway. She would walk for hours, if she could. She often took long walks to Bay Ridge and Sunset Park, to Coney Island and Brighton Beach, listening to music. She’d sold all her records, but she’d held on to her childhood Walkman and some tapes she’d made in high school. Liz Phair, Tori Amos, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Hole, Sonic Youth, L7, the Breeders. The stuff she listened to as she smoked out her window. She could’ve gotten an iPod touch or something like that pretty cheap, she guesses, but she likes her old Sony Walkman, which fits so neatly in her palm. The battery cover kept in place with duct tape, the headphones stiff. It’s a tank. She likes the act of flipping the tape, too. She likes to measure time by the sides of a tape.

She wishes she had it now. Instead, she’s carrying her communion set, wanting so badly to ditch it back at the church, anxious because she’s about to do surveillance on Diane’s apartment. A hundred what-ifs run through her mind. What if she bumps into Vincent going up the block? What if he walks out of the house and sees her? What if he leans out the window while he’s vaping and yells down to her? What if he calls the cops on her? Officer, there’s this girl outside being awfully suspicious. What if she sees something that leads her to believe that Diane’s been killed?

By the time she turns onto Bay Thirty-Fourth Street, her heart is racing. An old woman pushes a shopping cart along on the cracked sidewalk just ahead of her, its wheels clattering. The woman is out collecting bottles and cans. She stops in each yard and goes through recycling bins. She’s wearing rubber gloves. Amy says hi as she passes.

She stops in front of the house with the lion statues, turning to look across at the brick two-family house Mrs Epifanio identified. Second floor, she said. It’s a small, boxy house, with three windows on the second floor facing the street, shades drawn, and a bay window on the first floor. Plants on the sill. A white cat sitting there. Only one door, which must be the entrance for both apartments. A small garden out front with a statue of St Francis of Assisi and a line of withered tomato plants. The fence is painted red, a beware of dogsign hanging crookedly from the gate with a twist of wire.

She’s ambivalent about just standing where she is. She walks up and down the block a few times. Nothing changes. She gets tired and leans against the chain-link fence of a house a little farther up the street, putting her communion set down on the sidewalk, keeping one eye on Diane’s place.

When Vincent emerges a few minutes later, dragging on his vape pen, he doesn’t notice her because she’s behind a parked car. He walks past her on the other side of the street, headed for Benson Avenue. She’s torn about what to do. Go to the house and ring the second-floor buzzer and see if Diane answers? Or follow Vincent? He could be going back to Mrs Epifanio’s, though he doesn’t seem to be headed in that direction.

She makes a snap decision to follow him, that old Bob Tully thrill coming back.

It becomes clear to her – as Vincent makes a left on Eighty-Sixth Street under the El – that he’s not returning to Mrs Epifanio’s house. Amy continues to follow him anyway, staying half a block behind. She followed Bob Tully from this same distance, ducking behind telephone poles and trees.

Vincent rushes across Eighty-Sixth Street at a green light, holding on to whatever’s in the pockets of his trench coat so it doesn’t fall out. He’s still got the vape pen in his hand. He stops in front of the HSBC on the corner of Twenty-Third Avenue and takes a drag. Amy crosses over once he starts moving again. She looks over at the liquor store where she used to go with Alessandra to buy wine and gin. Nothing special as far as liquor stores go. She hasn’t been back in since Alessandra split town. She’s mostly given up drinking.

Vincent passes in front of St Peter Catholic Academy, once called St Mary’s. The church – still St Mary, Mother of Jesus, as it has been for more than 125 years – is right up the block. Amy’s apartment is a few doors down from the church. She’s tempted to give up and just go home. She could drop the communion set back at the church and have the rest of the day to herself. Go get lunch at Liu’s Shanghai. Talk to Xiùlán. Read. Listen to her Walkman. Whatever.

Amy feels like she’s doing something she can’t come back from. Maybe it’s a bad decision to resume this behavior. A stupid decision. Say she follows Vincent into a scary situation. But that old thrill pushes her on. After Bob Tully died and she got her own apartment in Queens and started working in the city, she’d chased the feeling of purpose she’d had following him. She dated a dominatrix who liked Amy to watch her sessions with doughy businessmen. She dated a trapeze artist who felt alive only in the air and once got drunk and scaled the Brooklyn Bridge for kicks while Amy shook nervously on the walkway below. Vincent’s a creep, wearing that trench coat on this nice warm day, rummaging around in Mrs Epifanio’s bedroom. Those eyes. She wants to understand him. She wants to see what his life is like.

Twenty-Third Avenue to Stillwell to Kings Highway. Vincent never once looks over his shoulder. The routine comes back. It’s easy to keep him in sight, to linger just far enough behind that nothing looks unusual. Bob Tully lumbered along with his head down, but Vincent is a dramatic walker. He throws his arms back and forth a lot. He dances over cracks in the sidewalks. He takes out an iPhone and almost trips looking down at it. He stops to take a picture of some graffiti on a telephone pole.

On Kings Highway, between West Ninth and West Tenth but closer to the corner of West Tenth, Vincent ducks into a bar called Homestretch. Amy’s been there twice, both times with Alessandra. From what she remembers, it’s a divey little sports pub with Quick Draw and darts and a horse racing mural. There was a ravioli buffet one Saturday night they were in there. Lots of old, grizzled regulars. From outside, it’s the kind of place tourists to the neighborhood take pictures of. Hand-painted sign: homestretchin meticulous white script over a background of red, bar & grillin neat black lettering over white. A black awning runs overhead, with homestretch bar printed in white paint, off-center, and a series of harness racer reliefs on a white strip under that. There’s a Budweiser sign in the window and blue-and-orange flags advertising Quick Draw hang from the awning. A lonely bench sits out front. Delis on both sides, shabby-looking apartments upstairs with battered window air conditioner units.

Amy crosses Kings Highway and Quentin Road and stands on the corner of West Tenth, outside 3 Stars Laundromat.

There aren’t many bars left in the neighborhood. She doesn’t go to bars anymore, though she and Alessandra spent many nights looking for something to do that wasn’t just pizza or Chinese food. Alessandra talked about the Wrong Number, but it was closed by the time Amy moved here. There were a couple of others that had come and gone, but she can’t remember the names. On Eighty-Sixth Street and Bay Thirty-Second, there’s a new Georgian bakery she really likes; she’s pretty sure there used to be a bar in that spot. Once she stopped working at and going to bars, she mostly stopped thinking about them.

She’s not going in after Vincent, that’s for sure. She checks her phone for the time and can’t believe it’s only just noon. She wonders if Vincent will spend all day in Homestretch. When she worked at Seven Bar, there were regulars who would come in around noon and stay until they closed at four in the morning. Some would stay past close, if she let them. A few nights, Amy was drunk enough that she locked the door and whoever was in there kept the party going with shots and pool and everyone just wound up sleeping in the booths. She’d actually met Merrill on a night like that.

She feels silly standing there. Every car that passes, she thinks the passengers are looking at her, accusing her of something. The family that comes out of the Laundromat, hauling bags of clean clothes, they give her a onceover. A bearded guy with untied shoelaces and a steaming deli coffee passes and winks at her and says, ‘How much?’ She looks away. He laughs. In the old days, she would’ve gotten in his face, said something like, ‘Who the fuck you think you’re talking to?’ In the old days. There’s no peace in that. The guy’s inconsequential.

How long to stand there? That’s the question. With Bob Tully, there had been a sense that something might happen at any moment, but Vincent seems more and more like a neighborhood weirdo with nothing better to do than make an old lady uncomfortable. And she’s so different now. Too old to be guided by mere curiosity.

Vincent comes out. He sits on the bench, vaping. Another guy follows fast on his heels and sits down next to him. This other guy is pasty, wearing red, low-hanging basketball shorts, flip-flops, and a plain softball T-shirt with black sleeves. He and Vincent are talking. Vincent looks mad. Amy can’t hear anything. She moves around to the side of 3 Stars, afraid she’s right in Vincent’s sight line. She leans against the glass window. Her feet are getting sore. She should leave. She wants to leave. But she’s glued there.

Vincent is motioning wildly with his hands. He stands up suddenly. Amy thinks he might throw a punch. He doesn’t. Instead, he storms back into Homestretch. The other guy follows him.

Amy stands there for another forty-five minutes. A little girl in the Laundromat makes faces at her. Amy curls her tongue and crosses her eyes. The girl laughs. Amy decides it’s time to go. Seeing the little girl has set off something in her. Vincent’s a waste. Creepy, sure, but that’s it. She leaves, taking a different route back to the church. She turns around a few times to make sure Vincent’s not following her now. She thinks she sees him once and then realizes it’s someone who doesn’t look anything like him.

Three

Amy drops the communion set back at St Mary’s and stops to light a candle on the way out.

She lights a candle at least once a week, always under the stained glass St Thérèse. Therese was the name she chose for her confirmation. When you grow up and move away from the church, you forget about things like confirmation names.