Chapter Fifty
Fifty
Edward Piro had asked if I could get to his apartment by ten a.m. I’d said I could, even though it meant I had to leave Boston by six a.m. at the latest. After driving all over Connecticut the previous day, I couldn’t imagine pressing an accelerator for four hours.
So I’d asked Blake to drive me to New York.
I’d promised him overtime. He’d said no to the overtime, but I insisted.
You’re missing leg day, I’d said. It’s the least I can do.
So now the two of us were in my car, driving along Park Avenue at nine-forty-five. We’d made good time, despite my insistence on checking the entire car for trackers every time we left a rest stop, and Blake’s lengthy search for a keto-friendly breakfast sandwich.
Until today, I’d never fully realized how much Blake’s life revolved around food.
It was like a religion with him, the whole keto thing.
Right now, he was eating a venison sausage, which he’d informed me was “low in energy-draining carbs and high in essential nutrients,” like a contestant on one of those survive-in-the-wild shows. I hadn’t asked.
He’d bought the sausage at a rest stop farmers’ market along the New England Thruway.
As he drove, he was cutting off slices of venison with his pearl-handled pocketknife—an incredibly inappropriate gift from his lowlife father.
“He gave it to me when I was, like, three,” Blake was saying now.
“If my sister hadn’t taken it away from me and hid it till I turned fifteen, I probably would have cut my lips off. ”
“Jesus,” I said.
“I know, right?” He sliced off two more slices of sausage, popped one into his mouth, and offered me the other.
I took it. It wasn’t half bad. Blake was steering the car with his knees, but I managed not to backseat-drive about it.
Spike would have been shocked. “At least the knife comes in handy now,” Blake said.
“How do you live with somebody like that?” I said.
“Especially when you’re small and vulnerable?
” I was thinking about Teddy Piro’s Porsche parked in Leila Donnelly’s driveway, of the way Tommy had screamed when he’d seen that same Porsche outside his grandmother’s house. He kept repeating it. “Bad, bad, bad.”
“You must have been in a constant state of terror,” I said.
“You want to know the truth?” Blake said. “I don’t remember him at all.”
“You don’t?”
“Not from when I was little.” Blake sliced off another hunk of sausage and shoved it into his mouth.
Then he put the rest back into the bag, dropped it on the backseat, and returned his hands to the steering wheel as he finished chewing.
“It’s funny,” Blake said. “People always say little kids are resilient, but it’s just that their brains aren’t fully formed.
They can’t remember shit, which is a blessing. ”
I looked at him. “I bet you’re right,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure I am.” Gently, he placed the knife on the dashboard. The sun glinted off the blade. “Resilient,” he said. “That’s just a word to make bad parents feel better.”
—
Piro’s apartment building was a creamy wedding cake of a prewar structure, on Park and 74th. “Nice,” I said.
Blake nodded politely. I knew it wasn’t his taste.
He liked brand-new buildings—the kind with giant signs out front, advertising for customers.
“I like to be the first person to live in a place,” he’d once explained.
Blake had a lot of peccadilloes, I was discovering.
One of them was that he believed older buildings were unsanitary.
Blake dropped me off in front of Piro’s building. He put the hazard lights on, jumped out of the car, and wished me luck. I thanked him. “I guess I’ll explore the city while you’re up there,” he said.
“Don’t explore too far,” I said. “We can’t stay here all day.”
“I won’t. Don’t worry.”
Just as he was about to open the car door, I got a call from Spike. I put him on speaker.
“Melanie Joan was denied bail,” he said.
“What?” Blake said.
“Oh, no,” I said.
Blake shook his head. “Crap.”
“On the plus side, she’s made some friends in prison. For instance, her cellmate thinks her Book Babe comment was iconic.” I could hear the cringe in Spike’s voice.
“We’re getting her out of there,” Blake said.
“We are,” I said. “And Edward Piro Senior is going to help us.”
“Good luck,” Spike said. “It would be nice for a change.”
We both thanked him. After we hung up, Blake threw open the car door and grabbed the pocketknife off the dashboard. He dropped it into my purse. I smiled at him. “What’s that for?”
“Luck.”
“The pocketknife your father gave you? Before he went to prison?”
“That’s not the knife’s fault.”
“True.” I told him I’d text him when I was done with Piro.
“Should we do, like, a code? So I know right away whether you’ve got answers or not?”
“Sure,” I said. “If I’ve got answers, I’ll say something literary.”
“Cool,” he said. “And if not?”
“I’ll say something about food.”
“Awesome,” Blake said. “We should do codes more often.”
“We should.” As I watched him get back into my car and drive away, I hoped for something literary.