Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

he was convinced I didn’t have the foggiest notion about how the real world worked.

He became very protective. Asking, ‘Sy treatin’ you good?’

I was always taking these ten-mile-long hikes through the city, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. He told Sy a husband shouldn’t let a wife do things like that. But when he decided Sy couldn’t stop me, he bought me a map. He marked all the neighborhoods he thought were dangerous in red. Oh, he called me Bonita. For some reason, he’d decided I was a classy dame, and he couldn’t accept that I didn’t have a more dignified name. When he heard we were splitting, that I wasn’t asking for alimony, he called me up and gave me advice. I was so surprised to hear from him.”

“What did he say?”

MAGIC HOUR / 347

“He told me he admired what I was doing but that this wasn’t a movie. It was real life, ‘and in real life, Bonita, ladies whose husbands take a walk got to get lawyers.’ See, Mikey was Sy’s friend. His loyalty should have been to Sy. That’s the way people in his world operate. But he went out on a limb for me, tried to get me to go to a matrimonial lawyer he recommended. And the reason he did it was because he liked me a lot. And I liked him. I mean, he was a man. The men I met in New York, Sy’s friends…they could get destroyed by a four-foot-two maître d’ with bad breath and nose hair who sat them at a wrong table. Not Mikey. He was bad, but he was real.”

“Have you seen him or spoken to him since the divorce?”

“No.”

“Did Sy tell you he’d invested in Starry Night? ”

“Yup.” Casual, relaxed, as if I’d asked if she wanted ketchup on her hamburger.

Except I’d asked her about Sy’s investors before, and she’d given me some crap about his being edgy about “the boys.”

But she’d denied any knowledge of who they were. I blew up. “I asked you about Sy’s meat buddies before, goddamn it, and you told me—”

“Stop yelling.”

“I’m not yelling!” I banged my fist on the dresser. I hit my loose-change dish, and a dime jumped onto the floor. “I’m talking loud.” I stopped, until I could regulate my voice. “Tell me, Bonita, is there anything you don’t lie about?”

“I didn’t tell you about Mikey because he’d had a lot of trouble with the police in the past.”

“Do you think there may have been a reason for the trouble?”

“Oh, stuff it. Of course there was a reason for the 348 / SUSAN ISAACS

trouble. He’s a criminal. Just because he wears zoot suits and sounds like Sheldon Leonard in Guys and Dolls doesn’t mean I don’t know what he is. He’s morally reprehensible—but he’s not guilty of Sy’s murder. If I’d told you about his investment it could have meant big trouble for him, and I know he didn’t kill Sy.”

“Why? Because you did?”

“Yup.”

“Listen, honey, why don’t you do Mikey a favor? Confess.

Say: ‘Sy made me get rid of my baby, cheated on me, gave me the clap, burned out my tubes…’” No reaction. I could have been reciting my multiplication tables. “‘…and dropped me like a hot potato. Then he came back into my life and turned it upside down. He didn’t love me, never has. He just used me. Over and over. And here I am: not getting any younger, lonely, broke. So I got out my .22 I brought back East from Daddy’s store and shot the bastard.’ That would give Mikey a real alibi.”

“Stop babbling,” she ordered. “Start thinking. Does Sy’s murder sound like any kind of Mafia hit you’ve ever heard of?” It didn’t, but all I did was shrug. “It couldn’t have been Mikey LoTriglio. There was no way Sy would have let things get to the point of offending Il Tubbo; he was afraid of him.”

“I thought he and Mikey were friends.”

“They were. Sort of. See, part of Sy, the cosmopolitan part, loved knowing someone who was connected, who could tell stories about how Jimmy the Nunz put Tony Tomato and his Lincoln Continental in the East River to see if they would float. And the ruthless part of Sy…well, having a boyhood friend like Fat Mikey was a potential business asset. But Sy’s New York nervous-Nellie part was afraid of being with a man who carried a gun, someone who could order men hurt or killed. Sy was as afraid of

MAGIC HOUR / 349

potential violence as of real violence. He was the ultimate urban neurotic; he couldn’t distinguish between a threat and an act. So no matter what it was, Sy always deferred to Mikey. I mean, we’d go out to dinner with Mikey and his wife or Mikey and his girlfriend, and Sy, who was the world’s biggest, pickiest pain in a restaurant, would let Mikey order for him. He’d wind up eating what must have been fried goldfish or lard in marinara sauce because Mikey said, ‘You’ll love this, Sy.’ So trust me on this one: If Mikey was upset that his investment was going sour, Sy would have taken out his wallet and paid Mikey back right then and there. Double.”

“We’re talking a million-buck investment.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem for Sy. He was probably worth ten or fifteen million.”

I shook my head. “Forty-five big ones.” Bonnie looked astonished. “You could have had a nice chunk.”

But she didn’t seem interested in history. “Who inherits his money?” she asked. “His parents both died.”

“No one. He has some sort of charitable foundation set up. For the arts.”

Bonnie got up off the bed and lay facedown on the floor.

She started doing push-ups, counting softly to herself. “I don’t like your list of suspects,” she said after forty-five. She wasn’t at all winded.

“Why should you? You’re on it.”

Maybe she and I were doing business, but I still wanted to keep my business private.