VINCENT DROVE TO LONGPORT in the rain, down-beach to the bottom of Absecon Island. Big money, big homes, but it looked barren to him; there were so few trees. He was used to the Florida coast. Here were weathered frame beach homes out of the past next to white modern ones with round corners, as different as privies and spaceships. Maybe it would have more of a seaside resort look with the sun shining. He found Donovan’s address and was surprised to see one of the old, old ones, with peaks and gables and a porch sitting on brick stilts that circled the entire house.
He recognized the maid, the same one who opened the door in Isla Verde. She recognized him too, he could tell. But he said, “Remember me?”
Dominga smiled, shy, touching her chin. “Yes, by your bear’ you have.”
“My beard,” Vincent said. “Yeah, I’m glad I kept it. It keeps my face warm. You cold?”
“Yes, I’m cole all the time I’m here.”
She asked him to come in, please, and Vincent told her he wished he was down in Puerto Rico right now. She asked him if he wanted to see Mr. Donovan.
“I’d like to.”
“You having a har’ time to see him.”
“Not home, uh? How about missus?”
Dominga shook her head. “I think you see them at the hotel today.”
It was so quiet in the house. Still, it had a comfortable, lived-in look, bright colors in the living room, a gallery of paintings, a Taino Indian jar on the mantel. It was like an urn, or how he pictured an urn. This morning he had spoken to Linda on the phone. They had to decide what to do with Iris’s remains. Linda said, her ashes. A stainless steel urn would be thirty-nine dollars. Or they could pay up to nine hundred for solid bronze.
He said to Dominga, “I wonder if you could do me a favor,” taking a small notebook from his raincoat pocket. “Call a number for me here in Longport, Mr. Garbo’s home. You know him?”
“Mr. Garbo, yes.”
“Here’s the number. Ask for LaDonna Padgett. The name’s written there.”
“Yes, I see it.”
“If you could say to her, ‘Mr. Mora is coming over from Mr. Donovan’s house to talk to you.’ Just like that. You think you could?”
“I know how to speak on the phone,” Dominga said. “ ‘Mr. Mora is coming there from Mr. Donovan so he can talk to you.’ “
“Perfect,” Vincent said.
LaDonna said, “Is that what Tommy’s worried about? I told Jackie-he musta asked me a hundred times, ‘You sure you didn’t leave anything?’ I said, well, what would I have left? I didn’t take any my clothes off. I guess I did take off my pumps, I always do that if I’m just sitting around. You know. But I surely wasn’t gonna walk out of there without my shoes. He musta asked me a hundred times. You know, after it was in the paper and we heard what happened.” LaDonna shook her head. “Boy, I’m telling you, it’s scary.”
She had told him to hang his coat on the door of the fronthall closet so it would dry, said he could take his shoes off if he wanted, she had hers off-leading him barefoot in a heavy fisherman’s sweater that almost covered white shorts that showed about an inch of each cheek, leading him into a room of summer furniture and a wall of humid glass against the weather, a wall of gloom today, the room dim, silent.
Vincent said, “Iris was the only one took her clothes off? Nobody else?”
“I didn’t go for that one bit,” LaDonna said, “it was embarrassing. I mean since I was the only other girl, you know, that was there. Iris, she could care less. She walked around stark naked, it didn’t bother her at all. That age, you can get away with it, not worry about your butt looking like a bowl of cottage cheese. I do exercise-you ever try to lose weight off your butt? It’s impossible. I keep telling Jackie he has to lose weight-you know how he eats, and he drinks way too much… You want another Bloody? I think I’m ready.”
“Let me do it.”
“No, sit still.” She pushed up from the couch with an effort. “This weather, I wish I could find something to do besides watch soaps. I watch ’em with the maid but she’s off today. You like my Bloodies?”
“You make a good one.”
“Jackie taught me.”
“I think I’ll switch though, if you have scotch.”
“We have everything, crème de menthe, Southern Comfort. You like that Amaretto? It’s good.”
“Scotch’ll be fine.”
LaDonna Holly Padgett, one-time Miss Oklahoma, slipped on tinted, heavy-framed glasses, a tall girl made taller with all that blond hair piled up. She stared out at the gray mass of sky and ocean, stared for several moments, then seemed to come awake. Vincent watched her cross to the elaborate bar: her bare feet in deep shag, long white legs reaching to the shapeless fisherman’s sweater. Her thighs looked fine, dimple-free. She was still a great big Miss American beauty. He could see her up on the pageant stage telling how she loved democracy and small animals and believed in the fellowship of man. Vincent believed she’d had at least a couple of Bloodies before he arrived.
“Were you there both nights?”
LaDonna used a shot glass to measure exactly an ounce and a half of vodka. “I don’t know what you mean.” She poured it carefully into her glass, deliberated and added a quick splash from the bottle.
“At the apartment.”
“Oh, you mean with Benny? Sure, well, you know Jackie had to wait on his beck and call, go everyplace with him.” She put in three teaspoons of Lea & Perrins, hunched down close to the rim of the glass to shake in one, two, three drops of Tabasco.
“Tommy didn’t say too much.” Vincent watched her add tomato juice and stir. “I wasn’t sure which night he was there.”
“Who?”
“Tommy.”
“You want that on the rocks?”
“Please.”
She brought him a generous scotch, started toward the couch and stopped. “What do you mean, which night? Tommy wasn’t there either time.” She frowned, “Or was he? Now you got me confused.”
Vincent sat in a deep, slipcovered chair, ashtray on the arm. He lighted a cigarette, watching as she sat down on the floor, careful of her drink, and leaned back against the couch.
“I think I’m safer here,” LaDonna said. “Can’t fall off, can I? I been feeling kinda fuzzy, like I’m coming down with the flu or something.”
Vincent told her he was supposed to check on everyone who was at the apartment either night, make sure they hadn’t left anything. Not even hotel matches. Tommy didn’t want it to get back to him. LaDonna said she imagined not, it could sure put a monkey wrench in his business. Vincent said, well, let’s see, there was the dealer… Two dealers, LaDonna said, and Benny and the other creepy guy, Ching. Actually he wasn’t as creepy as the guy from Colombia. He was kind a nice. But he still scared her… Vincent said, Ching? LaDonna said, don’t tell me you haven’t met Chingo, the Wheel? Where’ve you been? And the Moose was there, of course. Thank goodness for the Moose. He’s fun to talk to ’cause he’s so cool but has a really good sense of humor too, like he says things without smiling or anything? But you know he’s being funny. He’s nice. Jackie doesn’t laugh at him ’cause he’s jealous. But, boy, he wouldn’t go anywhere without him. Moose says he didn’t think it was anybody in our crowd had anything to do with it, Iris getting killed. Vincent listened. Unless it was Ricky, another one of the greasy creeps; ’cause Ricky wanted to go up there, Moose says, but Ching made him stay outside. Moose says Ricky was the only one he knew crazy enough or would do it for fun, to see her fall. Moose doesn’t like Ricky at all ’cause Ricky refers to him, like he’s talking to Jackie, as Jackie’s pet nigger. Vincent listened. LaDonna said, if I didn’t have him to talk to… boy, I don’t know. I mean Moose. She said, hey, who’s ready?
Vincent made the drinks. LaDonna rested her Bloody Mary on her chest and stared at it, her head low against the front of the couch. He asked her if she had talked to Iris much. She said Iris was the kind only talked to men. She had known girls in the pageant that way. Most of them were real friendly and sincere, but there was a few snooty ones in every pageant she had ever been in. She said it felt really weird to be back in Atlantic City. God, time went so fast. It seemed like only about a year ago.
“I was voted Miss Congeniality.”
“I can see why,” Vincent said.
“You better be congenial, try and get along with somebody like Jackie. He’s so… God, he’s so full of himself. I can’t stand the way he talks, his language. Can you?”
“Why do you stay with him?”
“We’re out, he talks all the time. We get home, he doesn’t say a word unless he’s swearing at me. Frances says if she was me she wouldn’t put up with it. I’ve talked to her-well, I’ve known her ever since Vegas. She’s really smart, you know, to get where she is. Up there in the Eye in the Sky. You know what? I think she likes him and she’s trying to get us to break up. She says to me, why the hell do you put up with him?”
“Why do you?”
“Well… Frances says he’s really good at how he knows how to run a casino and all. You know, and he’s funny. He can be real funny when he wants to. He used to be, when we were in Vegas he always swore a lot, use terrible language but, God, he was funny. He always had people laughing, so he must a been. Now… I think he’s scared but he won’t admit it.”
“Scared of what?”
“Those guys-what do you think? See, then I get scared. You know what I’m scared the most of? We’re having dinner at Angeloni’s or one of those places and somebody comes in with a machine gun to kill one of those guys like you see in the paper? You see ’em lying on the floor with blood all over? And Jackie and I get killed because we happen to be having dinner with him. I think about it, I get petrified.” Vincent said he didn’t blame her. “I don’t even like Italian food anymore. You just, like all you have to say is mention fettuccini with clam sauce I start to feel sick. I never even heard of fettuccini with clam sauce before. I never had clams. I mean in Tulsa. Boy, I don’t know… I went to Wilson. I never heard of fettuccini, you probably never heard of Wilson, huh? There was a girl when I was going there, she was my very best friend in the world name Melanie Puryear? She had a really sensational way she wrote her name. So I copied it, LaDonna Holly Padgett, till my arm almost fell off. LaDonna Holly Padgett, I’d fill up sheets of paper with it. She wrote in my yearbook… No, my God, it was Marilyn Grove wrote in my yearbook… Yeah, it was Marilyn. She wrote, ‘Twinkle, twinkle Wilson’s star, LaDonna Padgett is going far.’ See, ’cause I’d already been Miss Tulsa Raceway, you know, to present trophies. I remember one time, oh God, I thought I was gonna have to kiss this old guy had won a race? But he just shook my hand, I couldn’t believe it. Then, I’ll never forget, Corky Crawford grabbed me and gave me this terrific kiss square on the lips, everybody screaming and yelling…”
Vincent could hear the rain coming down.
She said, “Yeah, I was voted Miss Congeniality.” Her eyes raised and she said, “I work my fucking butt off trying to be congenial. Look at me.”