“But when it rains, you wouldn’t have to get wet,” I said.
“Ah, but the rain is a special friend, Jonah. It has such a soft voice, and if you talk to the rain, it always agrees with anything you say.” He hissed like falling rain does, but he made a word of it: “Yesss, yesss, yesss, yesss. It cannot make the sound of no. The rain is a most agreeable companion.”
Mrs. Lorenzo clapped her plump hands quietly, quickly, as might a delighted little girl. “That’s such a lovely thought.”
Mr. Yoshioka was excited to hear about my mother’s new job, and he said that he would like to see her opening-night performance.
“You best wait a week,” Mother told him. “My rehearsal with the band is tomorrow. The first week, we’ll be on a kind of shakedown cruise, finding our best sound together.”
After dinner, Mr. Yoshioka hoped that I might play the piano, but I pretended that the discomfort of having the sutures removed would prevent me from being my best.
The pedals worked as well by foot as they always had, and Grandpa Teddy played three of his favorite Jimmy McHugh tunes, while Mom stood by him to sing them: “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and “I Feel a Song Coming On” and finally “I’m in the Mood for Love,” all with lyrics by Dorothy Fields.
Mrs. Lorenzo and Mr. Yoshioka sat on the sofa during that little performance, and the tailor’s dark eyes shone with enchantment.
After the third number, he said to Grandpa, “If I cannot see your daughter tomorrow night, then I must come to see you.”
“I’d love to have you as my guest,” Grandpa said. “But next week or the week after. This week, there’s a big convention, the hotel’s very busy through Sunday. Already a month ago, the restaurant where I play had booked every reservation available.”
Later, after I had gotten into my pajamas and then into bed, my mother came to say good-night. “That was a lovely evening. I’ve become quite a fan of your friend, Jonah.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“And you’re a brave one. I’m sorry the sutures hurt.”
“Well, they’re out now. Just a little tender. I’ll be okay.”
“You will be okay,” she agreed. “You always will be.”
“Your first day off, can we go somewhere in the station wagon?”
“That would be Monday. Where do you want to go?”
“Somewhere really cool.”
She smiled. “It’ll be so cool, your breath will fog up.” She leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Sweet dreams.”
After she left, I switched off the lamp. Lying in the dark, I took the penlight from under my pillow.
Malcolm had found it at a five-and-dime. He’d not been willing to tell me how much it cost. “Maybe I shoplifted it. How do you know? If you’re going to switch it on after your mom says lights out and then write symphonies when you should be sleeping, don’t tell her where you got it.”
Maybe the dream about being trapped somewhere with a dead woman would come true, and maybe it wouldn’t. But if I woke up in pitch blackness with rushing-water sounds all around, I would not want to be without a source of light.
When I tried the penlight, the narrow beam didn’t travel far, but farther than I had expected. It painted a pale ring of light on the ceiling, the center darker than the periphery. Kind of like an eye staring down at me.
92
Joe Tortelli spent a week in Vegas, living in a complimentary suite at a major hotel, where he was a valued “whale,” a high-roller. It happened to be the week of the First National bombing. After Las Vegas, he took a showgirl to San Francisco and later south to a resort in Newport Beach, a honeymoon without benefit of marriage. During this period, he had no interest in the news.
He returned to our city, sans showgirl, on the afternoon of the day that I had my sutures removed. His trusted right-hand man, Tony Urqell, had known better than to disturb Tortelli when he was engaged in such a romantic adventure. But upon his boss’s return, Urqell informed him that a manager of various Tortelli properties believed he might have rented a building to one of the men wanted for the bank bombing and the Colt-Thompson heist.
Joe Tortelli owned a great deal of real estate in our city: apartment buildings, office buildings, parking garages, and more. Among the things he owned were several large, rusting, and mostly unrented Quonset huts in an old manufacturing district slated for redevelopment. One of these Quonsets was the building in question, which had been rented out for six months, supposedly to supply the lessee with much-needed temporary storage.