“Mmm.” Barf. “What’s a good entrée?”
“The ishi yaki burl bop.”
Mary wondered what language Jason was speaking. She squinted at the menu but couldn’t read it in the orange haze emanating from the table. “What is whatever you said?”
“It’s yellowtail on rice, and it’s great. And for dessert, I’d have the togarashi.”
Mary blinked.
“Japanese sweet potato cake.”
“Great. I like cake. Cake, I understand. Cake is great.” Mary closed her menu, and Jason closed his.
“Great.”
Now that everything was great, Mary wanted to leave, but she knew she was expected to Make Conversation. “So you went to Stanford Law, with Anne.”
“Yes, how is she?”
“She’s on vacation, in St. Bart’s.” Having just opened the subject of her fellow associate, Mary realized that she had to close it right away. Anne Murphy was the hottest girl ever to earn a J.D. degree. No guy who was thinking of Anne would want to be in a multi-colored restaurant with anyone else. Mary tried to think of something else to say. “You were on Law Review, right?”
“Yeah, until I quit to spend more time with my band.”
Mary blinked. The only thing cooler than making Law Review was quitting Law Review. “You had a band? What kind of band?”
“Beginner Foo Fighters. I still play a little, with a pickup band. On a good day, we sound like Wilco.”
“Wilco?”
“Spoon?”
“Got one, thanks,” Mary said, but when she peered at the table setting through a now-yellow cloud, only chopsticks were there. “Oh, I guess I don’t have one.”
“No. Spoon is an indie rock group. Like Flaming Lips, ever heard of them?”
“No.” Mary didn’t know what he was talking about and found her thoughts straying back to Amadeo. Where was his file? Then she stopped her train of thought. It’s not a hot date if you find yourself fantasizing about work during it. She was pretty sure it was supposed to be the other way around.
“How about Vertical Horizon?”
“Huh? No.” Mary was worrying that she would never find anything of Amadeo’s, that there was nothing he had left behind. Why did it bother her so much? Then she knew. Because it made it seem like Amadeo didn’t matter, and he did. Everybody did. Mike mattered, even though he was gone. She loved him still. She had learned a long time ago that you don’t stop loving somebody just because they die.
“What kind of music do you like, Mary?”
Huh?
“Do you like music?”
“Sure.”
“What kind?”
Mary was too preoccupied to think of the right answer, so she told the truth. “Sinatra,” she said, and she could see Check, please flutter behind Jason’s eyes.
“Frank Sinatra?”
The question was so absurd, Mary didn’t know what to say.
“I heard Frank Sinatra sing a duet with Bono, and it was great. Bono is great, don’t you think?”
Bono wishes he were Sinatra.
“I heard there was a mural of Frank Sinatra, somewhere in town.”
“There is, at Broad and Reed.” Finally, something Mary knew about. “It’s almost seven stories tall. It’s a painting of that photo where he has his jacket slung over his shoulder and his hat is tilted. It’s really amazing.”
“I don’t know that photo.”
“Oh.” Great. Maybe it wasn’t a good time for Mary to mention she was the only member of the Sinatra Social Society under age sixty-five, now that Yolanda had passed.
They fell silent.
Mary said, “Mario Lanza is on a mural, too, at Broad and Dickinson.”
“Mario Lanza? Who’s he?”
Ouch. Mary felt stupid for knowing, which seemed somehow ironic. “Mario Lanza was a great tenor and he was born in Philadelphia.” She didn’t add that Mario Lanza was her mother’s favorite. Or that Vita played his classic “Be My Love” on a continuous loop every Sunday, after Mass. These were colorful details Jason Pagonis would never hear. He was missing the best parts of the conversation. “They even have a new museum to him, on Montrose.”
“Montrose, where’s that?”
“In South Philly.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Jason said, his tone surprised. “When did he sing? Or perform?”
“In the forties.”
“The nineteen forties?”
Again, Mary didn’t know what to say. Yes, Frank Sinatra.
“That was a long time ago.”
That’s what makes it classic. Mary broke into a sweat. She couldn’t relax. She needed a drink but she didn’t drink, especially not Japanese sake, which tasted like warm balsamic and came in ceramic thimbles too small for Italian noses.
“So.” Jason cleared his throat. “Anne tells me you’re working on a really interesting case. Wanna tell me what it’s about?”
No. “Sure. It’s to get reparations for a man who was interned during World War II and committed suicide.”
Jason’s eyes flared. Suicide didn’t get guys hot, and Mary tried to recover.
“I went to the National Archives and saw all these documents that were typed on real typewriters. The documents are from 1941—”
Jason laughed softly.
“What?” Mary asked, interrupting herself, which had to be a first.
“You have an old soul.”
“I do?”
“Listen to yourself.” Jason paused. “You love old things. Old music. The past.”
Is that bad? Mary wanted to ask, but she couldn’t because her throat constricted. She felt tense and, suddenly, sad. Sad that she was here with Jason, and sad that since Mike had died, she didn’t belong with anyone. She had stopped fitting in anywhere. She wasn’t a member even of her own generation; somehow she felt older and younger at the same time.
Mary thought unaccountably of the Venn diagrams she had studied in grade school, and how they overlapped. But she didn’t overlap anybody, anymore. She remained in her own circle, and she couldn’t seem to change that, turn it around, or make it better in any way. All she knew was that she wished with every cell of her being that she could go home, take out her contacts, and lie down.
“You two ready to order?” asked the waitress, appearing at the illuminated table.
Five
WORLD WAR II ROOM, read a paper that Mary had taped to the conference room door, and she and Judy had spent all Sunday searching the remaining documents from the National Archives for Amadeo’s file. By nightfall, twenty cardboard boxes full of USELESS documents lined the wall, and at dead center of the table rested a single white memorandum.
“We found something!” Mary said, leaning over the document.
“One lousy page? St. Anthony slacked off.” Judy sank into a swivel chair, crossing her legs in jeans and a striped tank top. Cirque du Soleil meets the Freedom of Information Act.
“No, he didn’t. You wouldn’t let me pray while we were looking, and that’s the only way his prayer works.”
“He’s picky.”
“He’s a saint.”
Judy sniffed. “I’m still mad at you for not marrying Jason. Anne said he was really nice.”
“Let her date him.” Mary picked up the document, feeling a tingle of excitement. Not only that History Channel thing, but what her mother had said. A new suspicion that there was a reason Amadeo’s file had gone missing. She reread the document for the tenth time:
CONFIDENTIAL
MEMORANDUM BY THOMAS WILLIAM GENTILE, Pvt. 4433366698.
On March 22, 1942, the undersigned monitored a conversation between MR. JOSEPH GIORNO, GIORNO & LOCARO, Columbus & South Broad Streets, Phila., Pa., and Internee AMADEO BRANDOLINI, ISN 3-31-I-129-C1, at Area “B” of this Internment camp.
MR. GIORNO took out a Mass card and asked permission to show it to SUBJECT. MR. GIORNO then informed SUBJECT that his wife Theresa died when she fell down the stairs at home. MR.
GIORNO informed SUBJECT that his son, PVT. ANTHONY BRANDOLINI, had been so informed by mail. MR. GIORNO explained that they hadn’t told SUBJECT of the death earlier because this was the soonest he could make the trip.
Mary felt a spike of anger. She couldn’t imagine Amadeo hearing such awful news this way, and she wanted to know more about Joe Giorno. The name of his law firm was Giorno & Locaro, which must have been an earlier incarnation of Giorno & Cavuto, the firm that represented Amadeo’s son, Tony. The address was the same, too. The lawyer for Tony’s estate was Frank Cavuto, and he had brought her the case because he knew her from the neighborhood.
MR. GIORNO then asked SUBJECT how they should dispose of the house and the car. MR. GIORNO said that the car contained four gallons of gas, which should increase its value. SUBJECT rubbed his hands, then started to cry. MR. GIORNO said, “Don’t do that.” SUBJECT’S nose ran as well, and the scene was unpleasant.
Per request, a copy of this memorandum was forwarded to Director, Military Intelligence Division, and Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Signed, Pvt. THOMAS WILLIAM GENTILE, Pvt. 4433366698.
The memorandum ended there. The bottom of the page bore no number, so it was probably the first and last page of the memo. It raised more questions than it answered, and Mary’s thoughts churned. “Judy, don’t you wonder why they monitored Brandolini’s conversation?”
“No, I’m too tired.”
“In the individual files, only a few had memos of monitored conversations, and they were of internees the government actually believed were dangerous, like that guy who ran a fascist newspaper. Why would the FBI care about a fisherman from Philly?”
“Let’s call it a day, Mare.” Judy smoothed her bangs back but they popped forward again.
“Why did they keep the FBI informed? It says ‘per request.’ ” Mary couldn’t stop looking at the document. Oddly, she’d found it among correspondence from the camp commander’s office about coffee rations, milk orders, and laundry schedules, the quotidian business of running an internment camp during a world war. “Aren’t you curious why this page was stuck in the correspondence file?”
“You’ll figure it out. We’re tired. Very tired.” Judy patted Penny, who had curled into a neighboring swivel chair and fallen asleep. Dogs were allowed up on the furniture at Rosato & Associates, which was the sort of thing that happened at an all-woman law firm. That, and the refrigerator was full of Lean Cuisine.
“And think about what we learned from the files of the internees who died in the camps.” Mary reached for the three files of deceased internees and stacked them in front of her on the table. “Each one has a death certificate and burial arrangements. These files are thicker than the others, that’s why I noticed them. So where is Amadeo’s death certificate?”
“What a good doggie you are,” Judy cooed to the drowsy retriever.
“Like you said, it’s a big deal when someone commits suicide in federal custody.” Mary opened up the second and third folders and laid them side by side with the first. On the top of each was a letter that read LEGATION OF SWITZERLAND. “All three of these files are the same. When an internee dies, a letter gets written to Geneva informing them of the death. So where’s Amadeo’s letter?”
“Don’t know.” Judy stroked the dog’s smooth head. “Maybe Penny knows. My smart Penny—”
“Amadeo would still be covered by the Geneva Convention, he was a prisoner of war.” Mary was freewheeling here. International law wasn’t her forte. Unfortunately, she lacked a forte, which was part of the rationale behind that college refund business.
“Such a good doggie.” Judy petted the dog, whose tongue had slipped from her mouth in a stupor common to golden retrievers and crack addicts.
“Also, the internees who died in the camps were buried locally. I found a file of one other internee who died at Fort Missoula, and he was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Missoula. He died of colitis, and his file had a death certificate. So where is Amadeo’s death certificate?” Mary shuffled through the file again, then realized something. “I wonder where Amadeo’s buried. I don’t even know. I never thought about that before. If he committed suicide, they might not let him be buried in a Catholic cemetery.”
“I love you, Penny.”
“All this time, I’ve been concentrating on his business. What happened to his body? Is it in Missoula or Philly?”
“I love you, yes I do.” Judy lapsed into a continuous loop of pretty dog, smart dog, good dog, and soon Mary would have to barf.
“His son was in the army when he died, so he couldn’t have had the body sent back, and his wife was already gone. Amadeo had no other family in the area, and I have no idea if his wife’s parents were still alive. But still, would his in-laws send for a body all the way across the country, during wartime? When their daughter was already dead? I doubt it. It had to be expensive, and a pain in the ass. What do you think, Jude?”
Mary looked over but Judy was resting her forehead against Penny’s while she baby talked to her, the two of them floating on a cloud of girl-and-dog love. Mary checked her watch. Almost ten o’clock. Maybe it was time to go home. “Okay, you two, you win.”
“Woohoo!” Judy got out of the chair and stretched. So did Penny, climbing out of the chair and extending her forelegs until they lined up almost even, which made Mary smile.
“Thanks for helping, Jude. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Of course you couldn’t.” Judy finished stretching, lowering her arms and rubbing her slim tummy. “I’m the one who found the memo.”
“Lucky.”
“Ingrate.”
“Freak.”
“Geek,” Judy said, and the women continued to trade pleasantries as they gathered their bags, papers, briefcases, and backpacks, then walked to the elevator, with Penny trotting behind them, her tail wagging.
Mary hit the button for the elevator, inwardly elated. The memo was safe in her briefcase, and though it raised more questions than it answered, she couldn’t wait to get it home.
With her secret stash.
Six
At her apartment, Mary downed a bowl of Special K, slipped into an oversized McNabb jersey, and piled her hair on top of her head in a Pebbles ponytail. It was almost midnight but she felt oddly energized, sitting cross-legged on her puffy blue comforter with her newfound FBI memo and Amadeo’s personal effects spread out in front of her. She had gotten them from Frank Cavuto, the estate’s lawyer, who’d gotten them from Amadeo’s son, Tony. She had seen the effects a hundred times, but the FBI memo had got her blood going, and she looked at Amadeo’s things with new eyes.
On her left sat three photographs. The first was of Amadeo, bending over in a fishing boat and evidently doing something to one of the nets that lay in ropey piles on the deck of his boat. Mary squinted but couldn’t see what he was doing. Repairing the net? The deck? Either way, he focused intently on his task and didn’t smile for the camera. It told her that he wasn’t a vain man; he was a little shy. Mike had been like that. She set the photo down on the bed.
The next photo was a wedding portrait of Amadeo and his wife, Theresa. He stood stiff as a toy soldier with his bride, and Theresa’s dark eyes shone behind the gauzy veil. Her hair curled to her shoulders, and her dress was frilly in an appealing, old-fashioned way. Mary found herself drawn back to Amadeo. His eyes, brown-black but so animated, had been joyful on his wedding day. Again, it reminded her of Mike, on their wedding day. He had teared up at the altar, and his frat brothers had never let him forget it. Mary smiled at the memory, then remembered something Judy had said, in her office:
It’s like you have a crush on him or something.
Mary set the photo down. The next was of Theresa and Amadeo holding a baby boy with dense, black curls; their son, Tony. The end of the photo was tattered, as if it had been torn from a booklet. Mary turned it over to read JULY 4, penciled in a woman’s flowing hand. There was no notation of what ye
ar the photo had been taken, but if the baby was Tony, it had to be around 1920; Tony grew to be old enough to enlist when World War II came around. But in the happier times of the picture, they were all dressed up to celebrate the birth of their new country. Mary couldn’t ignore the irony, as bitter on her tongue as broccoli rabe.
She set the photos next to the last item, a flimsy black wallet with a cheap fake brass snap. It was made of black plastic and inside were three clear photo compartments, now cloudy with age. She flipped to the first, which held a black-and white picture of a woman’s face, cut out in the shape of a circle. Mary slid it out and flipped it over, the paper thin and pulpy in her hands. The writing on the back was printed Italian, cut off where the circle was, but the name was visible. Francesca Saverio. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants. Mary should have recognized her. Cabrini’s face was typically framed by a black veil and graced with a sweetly melancholic smile; her story was that she was a quiet, withdrawn child. Her symbol was a boat. It made sense that Amadeo, an immigrant and a sailor, would have adopted Cabrini as his patron. And if his suicide was any indication, he had been the melancholy type, too.
Mary went to the next envelope, which contained a lock of dark hair pressed within the dusty plastic. It had been snipped crudely and curled into a question mark about an inch long. She pried open the envelope and caught the lock as it came sliding into her hand. It felt soft, fine, and seemed to have almost no weight in her palm. She prodded the strands with an index finger, as if the lock were something alive, then held it under her bedside lamp, watching the filaments catch the light. The hair wasn’t as black as it looked in the envelope, but was a deep brown, shot through with russet highlights. Whose hair was it? Amadeo’s son’s? His wife’s? Mary held the hair to the heads in each photo, like a fright wig. Funny, but not good detective work.
Mary fingered the lock. Amadeo’s effects only reinforced her sense of him. He was a simple man whose world was small, yet perfect. Wife Theresa. Son Tony. Growing business. Three boats. He had his family and his fishing. Love and work. Rich by any standard, even Freud’s. She opened the billfold in the wallet, where money would be kept.