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

on my nightstand. No word from Robby at the Lifecodes lab up in Westchester.

And no leads at all to Mikey’s whereabouts: he wasn’t at home in his fifteen-room Tudor in Glen Cove, in Nassau County, or at Terri Noonan’s apartment in Queens, or at the Sons of Palermo social club in Little Italy. I asked. What about that bar in the meat district where he hangs out, Rosie’s? Thighs said; I asked the bartender if Mikey LoTriglio was there, and he said: Mikey who?

“Rosie’s?” Bonnie repeated when I hung up. “I re-386 / SUSAN ISAACS

member hearing about Rosie’s.” She picked up the phone, got Manhattan information and asked for the number of Rosie’s Bar and Grill on Ninth Avenue. Then she dialed and asked for Michael LoTriglio. I shook my head sadly, as in Pathetic. She was clearly hearing the same “Mikey who? ” that Thighs had got. But she cut the guy off. “You may not know Mr. LoTriglio,” she said into the phone, “but he comes into Rosie’s every now and then.” She sounded commanding, secure, the way a good cop has to sound. “I’d like you to do your best to get a message to him. Tell him that Bonnie Spencer—S-p-e-n-c-e-r—called and said it’s urgent that she speak with him.” She gave him my number and hung up.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Thanks.”

I told her I was going to go to the set in East Hampton to try and harass Lindsay into cooperating, and tie up a few other loose ends. I started to enumerate them when the phone rang. I recognized the voice, gravelly, tough. “Get Mrs. Spencer,” it ordered. I handed it over to Bonnie.

“Mike?” Pause. “Fine.” Pause. “I’ve missed you too.” I stood beside her, tilted the receiver and put my ear right next to hers. “Actually,” she went on, “I’m not so fine.”

“What’s the matter, Bonita?”

“I’m the major suspect in Sy’s murder.”

“What? ”

“They issued an arrest warrant for me.”

Mikey laughed. Not amused. An incredulous snort. “That is so stupid it makes regular stupid look smart.”

“I know. But, Mike, let me tell you what happened.”

“You don’t need to give me no explanations.”

“I know. But see, I was sort of keeping company MAGIC HOUR / 387

with Sy again. And the police found evidence of my being at his house right before he died—and we weren’t downstairs having tea. So they have this physical evidence from a bedroom, and they have this theory that Sy rejected me or my new screenplay and that I shot him. And that’s another problem. They know I can handle a rifle.”

“What can I do?” Mikey asked. “You got a blank check with me. You know that. Want me to find a nice, quiet place for you where you can not get noticed? Need money? Want me to…Listen, I would never talk to you this way, but what we have here is not your standard situation. So you want me to say abracadabra? Make some rabbit disappear? Name it. You’re a sweet girl, a lady, and you were a good friend to my Terri.”

“Terri’s a lovely woman,” Bonnie said. I couldn’t believe this conversation. “You’re lucky to have each other.”

“Thanks,” Fat Mikey said. “I tell her she’s too good for me, but she don’t believe it.”

“Mike, let me tell you what I’d like you to do, and please, feel free to say no. You know me. I don’t live in a world where people call in IOUs.”

“I’m listenin’.”

“There’s a detective on this case, Detective Brady.”

“I met him.”

“He’s on my side. He’s trying to help me.”

There was a long pause where Mikey contemplated the alternatives, including, if he had half the brains Bonnie credited him with, a setup. But he trusted Bonnie. He had to, because all he did was ask: “What makes you think he’s on your side?”

“He knows it’s a weak case, and he thinks he can make a better one.” There was silence. “And he’s in love with me.”

I stepped away from the phone and

388 / SUSAN ISAACS

stared at her. She just continued with the conversation, so I stepped back and kept listening.

“The cop’s in love with you?”

“I think so. So this is what I’d like, Mike—if you can see your way to doing it. I’d like you to talk to him. Anyplace you say. He seems to feel you might remember something now that slipped your mind during your interview.” Mikey gave another one of his laugh/snorts. “He’s sworn to me this would be off the record.” I grabbed her shoulder, shook my head, but she just kept talking. “If you feel this would compromise you in any way, please don’t do it. I know how it feels to have the police after you, and it’s not something I’d want for you or Terri or your family. It’s a horror.”

“Where are you now, Bonita? The truth.”

“He’s hiding me, Mike. I can’t tell you where.”

“Tell him to meet me at the Gold Coast restaurant on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset in an hour.” I shook my head, made a stretch-it-out signal with my hands.

“I think it will take him more than an hour to get there,”

she said.

“An hour and a half, then. Tell him to meet me in the parking lot in the back. Get out of his car, walk away from it and just stand there. Got it?”

“Thank you,” Bonnie said. “I won’t say I owe you one, Mike. But I will say I appreciate this from the bottom of my heart.”

“I know you do, Bonita.”

“I love you?” I said.

“I had to say something.”

“Do you honestly think I love you?”

“Yes. Not that it means anything. You’ve decided you need a life with a Ford station wagon and kids with freckles and trim-a-tree parties and intercourse MAGIC HOUR / 389

every Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. It’s preventive medicine, something you have to take to keep from self-destructing. I think you’ve convinced yourself that passion is a dark side that’s too dangerous for you. Well, maybe you’re right. Look