The Nest(63)

“I’m going to have to take my ideas elsewhere.”

“Be my guest. Just don’t ever drop my name again.”

“Fuck you, Nathan.”

“Right back at you, mate.”

Leo watched Nathan make his way out the bar. He sat back down and took a deep breath, trying to process what had just happened. His phone on the bar started vibrating. He looked at the incoming call display and at seeing the name, his heart nearly stopped. Matilda Rodriguez.





CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR


Before he’d stupidly let Jack Plumb inside his house, Tommy had had only one scare concerning The Kiss. An FBI unit had knocked on his door one morning when he still lived out in the Rockaways, wanting to talk to him about a missing object from the World Trade site. He’d almost passed out until they explained that they were investigating reported thefts at Fresh Kills and just wanted to know if Tommy remembered seeing the Rodin and, if so, where he’d seen it last. Tommy assured the investigator that he’d delivered it to the Port Authority trailer just like he had with countless other artifacts and left it with someone there whose name he didn’t remember but who had said she’d take care of it.

“That’s the last time I saw it. Sorry, guys,” he told them. “Wish I could be more of a help. It looked like a banged-up piece of crap, to be honest.” The investigators shook his hand, told him how sorry they were for his loss, and that was the last he heard from anyone.

At first, Tommy kept the statue hidden in his bedroom closet in the house in Queens, covered with a pillowcase. He didn’t want his daughters to see it when they visited, approximately a thousand times a week. “Just checking in!” they always said in chirpy voices he’d never heard them employ until he was a widower. But having his wife’s gift in a closet like a shameful secret bothered him. He started to think about moving. The house he’d shared with Ronnie, where they’d raised their children, where they’d had family movie night with popcorn every Friday and had managed to make love every Sunday even when the girls were little, sometimes having to fit it in between commercial breaks on Nickelodeon—but they did, they always did—was too empty, too lonely.

His old friend Will from the fire department told him about Stephanie needing a new tenant. He’d always liked Stephanie. She was a good egg—funny and smart, a hard worker and completely down-to-earth. “What they used to call a real dame,” Ronnie had said, approvingly, when Will brought her to one of their legendary holiday parties and Stephanie had charmed the entire room by singing “(Christmas) Baby Please Come Home,” Darlene Love style, into the karaoke machine they’d hooked up to their TV.

The garden apartment was a little run-down, but he didn’t need much. He just wanted his own place where he could keep the statue and see it every day, somewhere far enough from the Rockaways so his kids wouldn’t drop by without calling first, where he wouldn’t have to answer a lot of questions. The statue had been his well-kept secret. Until Jack Plumb walked into his dining room.

Having Jack Plumb inside his house, walking in circles around the statue like he was evaluating a used car, had caused an unpleasant shift in Tommy. Maybe it wasn’t only Jack, maybe it was the passing of time, the nature of grief, but when he took the statue out of its hiding place now, all he could hear was Jack Plumb saying, Where did you get this? For years, Tommy had worried about somebody seeing the statue, his daughters mostly. And now that someone had, he started to think more clearly about what might happen if he was caught. He hadn’t looked at the statue in more than a week.

Today, two of his three daughters were visiting. He almost always went to them, but a few times a year they planned a trip into “the city” and would detour to Tommy’s place first, delivering bags of groceries they imagined he needed.

His family never managed to hide their dismay at his living conditions and as Maggie and Val barged through the front door, five grandchildren between them now, he braced himself for their familiar complaints and pinched mouths.

“This place could be nice, Dad,” Val said for the hundredth time, “if you’d put in a little effort.” She was unloading groceries onto the kitchen shelves, opening up a package of bright green sponges and using one to wipe down the cabinetry.

“You don’t have to do that,” Tommy said. “Sit.”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“Why don’t you get some furniture that actually fits in here?” Maggie said. “We could go look for a new sofa today if you want. We could help you pick something out.” She was right. The sofa he’d kept was meant for a much larger room, not the narrow proportions of a brownstone parlor.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m not expecting Better Homes and Gardens to drop by and take photos.”

“Why is this locked?” Val was standing now in front of the built-in china cabinet in the dining room. The top half was meant for display and Tommy had put a few pieces of their wedding china on the shelves, his one attempt at “decorating.” The bottom half of the cabinet was meant for storage. He’d removed the interior shelves and the bottom baseboard but left the doors in place to conceal the cavernous interior, which neatly fit the statue on its dolly. He could wheel it in and out when he wanted. The doors were padlocked now.