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Overview
Still coping with the death his wife and infant son—and still obsessed with finding the madman who killed them—Terry Orr has kept busy raising his young daughter and working as a private investigator known for solving some of New York City’s most baffling cases.
Now, at the behest of his housekeeper, Terry is searching for one Sonia Salgado, recently released from prison after serving thirty years for murdering a diamond dealer. Unfortunately, when he finds the woman, she’s been murdered herself. Now Terry is determined to discover why. But someone else is determined to stop him no matter what . . .
In a mystery hailed as “a winner on all fronts,” Jim Fusilli pulls readers into the dark streets of a city dealing with the tragedy of September 11, and the mind of a man determined to find justice amid the chaos (Booklist, starred review).
A Well-Known Secret is the 2nd book in the Terry Orr Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504053884 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 10/09/2018 |
| Series: | The Terry Orr Mysteries , #2 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 309 |
| Sales rank: | 942,714 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Among his novels are Closing Time, A Well-Known Secret, Tribeca Blues, and Hard, Hard City, about New York City private investigator Terry Orr and his young daughter, Bella, who Orr is raising in the aftermath of the murder of his wife and infant son. Narrows Gate is an epic set in the first half of the twentieth century in the Italian-American community of a gritty waterfront city based on Hoboken, New Jersey, Fusilli’s birthplace.
Fusilli has published many short stories including “Chellini’s Solution,” which appeared in the 2007 edition of the Best American Mystery Stories, and “Digby, Attorney at Law,” which was nominated for the Edgar and Macavity Awards.
In 2005, Fusilli wrote Pet Sounds, his tribute to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys’ classic album. Described as “an experiment in music journalism,” the book combines the rhythm and emotional weight of his fiction with the often-unorthodox observations of his music criticism for the Journal, for whom he began writing in 1983. Pet Sounds was translated to Japanese by the novelist Haruki Murakami.
Fusilli is married to the former Diane Holuk, a senior global communications consultant. They reside in New York City. For more information, visit www.jimfusilli.com.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Her name was Dorotea Salgado. Our housekeeper called her a friend.
She was sitting in a two-seat booth with her long, crinkled hands folded on the tabletop, and as I approached her she looked blankly at me, then returned to staring into the distance, toward the dappled sunlight and budding trees in Union Square Park. Her hollow, angular face was scored with wrinkles and dark lines, and her skin sagged slightly from the jaw. She wore a modest dress, burgundy with a paisley print, over her thin frame. Strands of gray, standing in contrast to her black hair, rested above her ears. At her side near the window sat a square pocketbook that wasn't new. It matched her brown belt and sensible shoes.
The old, '40s-style clock above the entrance to the kitchen read DIAMONDS, but if that was the name of the place, no one used it: The red-neon sign out front saidCOFFEE SHOP and nothing more.
At 11 on a Monday morning, black stools waited for customers at the Formica counter, and the small dining room to my right was empty except for a man working a laptop, nursing a mug of coffee.
I was in here once on a Sunday morning at about eight and was the only one who hadn't been out all night.
"Mrs. Salgado?"
She looked at me and blinked her sad eyes and said, "Yes."
I told her I was Terry Orr. She slid out of the booth and stood. She was of average height and that made her much shorter than me.
She had a faint accent. Mrs. Maoli had said she was Cuban.
"Please," she said as she gestured to the booth.
I waited for her to sit. When she did, I squeezed in across from her, leaving my legs in the aisle.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
I nodded.
When the waitress appeared, I ordered coffee black.
"An espresso, Mrs. Salgado?" I asked.
"Yes, please."
In here, espresso was as close as we'd get to café Cubano, which had the viscosity of Brent crude and enough caffeine to jump-start a slug.
I waited for her to doctor her drink with sugar. Her teaspoon clinked the sides of the tiny cup.
She wore her gold wedding band on her right hand.
"You're looking for your daughter," I began.
"Yes," she said, "Sonia."
"Where did you last see her?"
"In Bedford Hills."
"You haven't seen her since her release?"
She shook her head.
"Do you know where she went?"
Again, no.
"I see." I went gently. "You're not close ..."
She looked down into the cup. "It is difficult. Mistakes were made, and, no, she didn't want me to come see her."
"'Mistakes?'"
"I — I was very angry," she said, "and then maybe it was too late." She hesitated. "In time, I visited, but she preferred not. Maybe so I would not see my daughter grow old in prison."
Our housekeeper Mrs. Maoli told me Sonia Salgado had been in Bedford Hills, a maximum-security facility up in Westchester, but between her wobbly English and my poor Italian she hadn't been able to give me much more. Her friend Mrs. Salgado was "a good woman, not young now — she must not work at this age. She has many problems. Her grandson is not well." Urging her to tell me more, I learned that the Italian word for a woman who murdered is assassina.
Mrs. Maoli mimicked downward strokes with a knife.
"Even after thirty years, she is my daughter," the old Cuban woman said.
"Did she have any plans? A job?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I have no information."
I sipped the bland coffee. "Is it possible she wanted to disappear?"
"Possible, yes."
"Is there a reason you need to find her?"
She frowned quizzically. "Did Natalia tell — Do you know about Enrique?"
"Is he the grandson?"
"He's very sick. She should see him."
"Mrs. Maoli said the boy has never seen his grandmother. Is that —"
"No. We would not take him to prison."
"How old is the boy?"
"He is three."
I found myself sketching invisible flow charts with my finger on the tabletop, avoiding the coffee-cup rings. "I'm trying to understand: You haven't seen her since —"
"Not in five years. This Christmas, five years. For a few minutes only."
"Does she know she has a grandson?"
"I wrote to her, yes."
I leaned forward. "There's no easy way to say this —"
"I understand, Mr. Orr, that Sonia does not want to see me and she does not want to see Enrique. I understand. But the situation has changed."
"Perhaps not for Sonia, Mrs. Salgado."
She stopped, then she shook her head. "I cannot explain. She is my daughter. I am seventy years old. And Enrique is sick."
"Sure," I nodded, "and you want to make things right."
"I think it is too late to make things right. But she was my little girl," she said without a trace of sentiment, without anger. "Then she was lost to me. I cannot explain. The newspapers said she was a monster. No."
Thirty years in Bedford Hills made it Murder One for Sonia Salgado. There was no sense asking her mother why she'd done it. A premeditated killing meant money or revenge.
"Perhaps she's hiding, Mrs. Salgado. That may be why she can't be found."
"I have thought of this and this is why I ask you and I do not ask the police. You can find her and you can give me the information. No one will know."
"You expose her and you may put her — and yourself — in danger."
"Mr. Orr, I just want to see my little girl. I want her to see Enrique. I want to see what is possible now."
"I understand, but —"
"And you help children, Mr. Orr. We know this."
On the north side of Union Square Park, they were cleaning away the debris from the Farmers' Market: Rotted fruit that had escaped the homeless lay in a pile near the curb. A city dump-truck moaned and wheezed as it backed toward 17th Street.
"Sure, Mrs. Salgado. Why not?"
She smiled, not in triumph but as if to signal that a burden had been lifted, a milepost passed.
"Give me a call in a day or two," I added.
"Thank you."
"No thanks yet," I said. "Let's wait until something gets done."
She reached for her handbag, but I dug out a five before she could get her money to the table.
"No, Mr. Orr, I insist." She pulled out a small brown wallet and dropped two folded singles between our cups.
That wasn't enough to cover my coffee, but I said nothing. I shouldn't have asked the proud old woman to meet me at this place, whose high prices paid for a hip cachet rather than customer satisfaction.
But since Mrs. Maoli said she knew Dorotea Salgado from the Farmers' Market, I thought it might be convenient for her.
What kind of people charge $3 for coffee?
I told her I was going to have another cup. She thanked me again, and I waited until she was halfway to Lex before I asked for the check. I left her two singles as a tip.
The New York County District Attorney's office is about a two-mile walk from Union Square. The best way to get there on a mild April morning is to cut through the park and stay on Fourth until the Bowery meets up with Park Row; or just take Lafayette through Little Italy toward the construction near Paine Park. Either way was faster than a cab, especially today: Somebody'd been given a big enough bag of cash to let Tim Robbins take over Spring near Balthazar for his latest flick, and traffic on Broadway had slowed to a dribble. Or so said WNYC before I left the house.
I went toward Fourth, stopping briefly by the melted candles, weathered fliers and inexhaustible well of sadness at the makeshift tribute to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks that stood sentry to Brown's statue of Washington on horseback. As I walked along the wide avenue, passing a Salvation Army thrift store, a year-round costume shop dubbed the Masters of Masquerade and the elaborate and decidedly English architecture of the Grace Church School, I called Sharon Knight, the best known and perhaps the best of Morgenthau's army of assistant district attorneys. A secretary with a Jamaican accent told me she was in court, so I asked for Julie Giada and got her voice mail. The clock in the musical quarter note on Carl Fischer's building told me a lunch recess wasn't too far off, so I kept going and arrived at Hogan Place just short of 45 minutes later: If Julie got my message, she'd help.
If Sharon was the star in the D.A.'s office, Julie was its angel. Julie, Sharon once said, had "a big, big heart," and added that "it's too bad she's doesn't check with her head now and then." Julie was plenty smart, but I knew what her boss meant: She liked to dig through the system to find lost causes — a bag lady who didn't want to move off a grate in Sutton Place, a wizened old man set up to take a fall by his pinstriped nephew and trophy wife, a wide-eyed yet insolent kid caught playing lookout for the neighborhood drug dealer. Julie had interned in the Brooklyn D.A.'s, then joined full-time after graduation from Penn Law. She spent a year in private practice, but jumped at the chance to come into Sharon's small group. "She really should've joined the Legal Aid, ACLU, something," Sharon laughed. "If I didn't trust her with my soul, I'd think she was working us from the inside." Maybe Julie's compassion would extend to the mother and grandson of a murderer.
I breezed through the first metal detector, then another, and I took the elevator upstairs. The receptionist was a cop who long ago had been taken off the streets and given a job that kept him warm and relatively safe: He still carried a service revolver. His family name was Casey, and whenever I came up here, perhaps 50 times in the past four years, he reacted as if he'd never seen me before.
"Officer Casey," I said with a nod.
He pushed aside his copy of the Post. "What'll it be?" he asked blankly. The thin black man had pale blue eyes and a long chin.
"Julie Giada, please," I said.
"Are you somebody by the name of Terry Orr?"
"Terry Orr," I replied, surprised.
"You have some ID?"
I dug out my wallet and showed him my P.I. license.
He handed me a white envelope that bore the New York County crest. "Julie's still out."
I nodded.
"You can call later if you want."
"OK."
I tore open the envelope and slid out a single sheet of paper.
Sonia Salgado's address. St. Mark's Garden in the East Village.
I stopped at Bazzini's, grabbed a salade niçoise and a
half-pound of raw pumpkin seeds for lunch and brought it in a sack across Greenwich Avenue to my house. As I punched in the security code, I looked west to the river and watched it roll by for a while, its narrow ripples undisturbed by ocean-bound boat traffic or heavy winds, its scent barely discernible in the warm spring air. But at that moment the light scent was as fragrant as the saltiest sea, because its presence meant that the oppressive odor of toxins and death had finally been vanquished.
With the door open a crack behind me, I sat on the front steps, a mere eight blocks from where the World Trade Center had stood, and looked up at the wooden water tanks and ornate acanthus leaves in the fading green copper edging high on the buildings on Greenwich and Hudson. Bathed in sunlight, they seemed fine now, crowns on vital, broad-shouldered homes brimming with activity — creativity, housework, children playing, music, laughter — or quiet, as people slept off long nights of work and pleasure. But I knew that tomorrow these buildings might once again seem fragile repositories of gloom and sorrow, sagging remnants of a once-thriving neighborhood hit by an inglorious attack, by a stunning loss of life and the overwhelming aftermath: police sirens, a din of whirling helicopter blades, panic, crippling fear, brilliant klieg lights, expressionless soldiers in high boots and khaki carrying M16s, firemen in uniform staggering away from their 12-hour shifts (opposite raccoons, Bella called them, their faces black with soot and their eye sockets unmarked thanks to protective goggles), horrified tourists slowly approaching the burning chasm in the city, the nation. Neighbors lost in grief. The smell of death, the eerie silence.
Everywhere, every day, I see signs of hope, and of distress and defeat. A new restaurant opens on Harrison to rave reviews, Windows on the World is gone forever. A bustling crowd at a five-and-dime on Chambers, a shuttered storefront on Reade. A red carnation in a flower bed high on a ledge on Warren, and sidewalks still covered in a gray sheet of ash. American flags that have fallen from cars are now soiled rags in black water pooled in the gutter. ("Bella, I'm not sure you're supposed to put a flag in the washing machine.") On Duane, a Champagne party celebrating the anniversary of a shop that sells tchotchkes from England. On Duane, a man sitting on the steel steps of an old egg depot, his head buried in his hands as he sobs uncontrollably.
I believe we will be all right. We are resilient. We are strong.
We will never be the same. Something in us has been altered forever.
I've heard both sentiments expressed by the same people, unaware they had said the opposite moments earlier.
What can I say? I know what it's like to be caught between echoes of death and the possibility of recovery.
It takes a boundless courage to hope.
I mean, why should we bother?
Because we are inexorably driven toward life, even in the darkest hours. We must accept this. Failing to do so, we are fighting our best angels. We are defeating ourselves.
And when we smile, we are asking the dead to forgive us. When we laugh, we know they have.
That's what I say. Now, regarding what I believe ...
I stood up. Under white streams of light, thin branches of trees on Harrison had spawned delicate yellow-green leaves. Someone — not me; Bella? — had sprinkled potting soil in the small squares of earth amidst the concrete and slate, as if store-bought nutrients would ward off ash, asbestos and fiberglass particles to help these slender trees grow strong. Nice gesture, I thought; futile? Who knows? Things continue to grow here and no one can explain it.
I went inside, dropped the lunch sack on the kitchen table and bent down to pick up the mail that had scattered after a short fall through the slot. The copy of a music magazine from the UK, a Janus statement and three junk fliers went on the table near Bella's neatly stacked manuscript.
As I slid out of my jacket, I noticed a note on the refrigerator, pinned under a rubber magnet from Sam Flax. M. Orr, Ispeak to Dorotea. Grazie tante. Natalia Maoli.
On the stove, my reward: two jumbo artichokes, spiked with garlic cloves, expertly trimmed, were in the steamer. I'd bet rolled thin slices of veal were in Tupperware in the refrigerator to complete the meal.
Neither Bella nor I could convince our housekeeper that artichokes and messicani di vitello constituted not one but two meals for us.
I hung my coat on the back of the laundry-room door and went to the phone. Since Mrs. Maoli wouldn't make a call without permission — a formality she insisted upon despite her years of service and Bella's unconditional, if occasionally bemused, love — I knew Dorotea Salgado had contacted her. I tapped *69 and was given a 10-digit number; since all of Bella's friends were in school, I figured the number belonged to Mrs. Maoli's Cuban friend.
Outside, it was mild enough to eat in the backyard, to linger over the Times book review, to listen to Sheila Yannick, who lived behind us, run endless scales on her Amati cello. But I wanted to wrap up the favor to Mrs. Maoli, so I washed my hands in the kitchen sink, picked up the sack and took it and a small bottle of Badoit to the back of the house.
Mrs. Maoli had expressed her gratitude by feather-dusting Marina's scene of Lake Occhito. I stopped, tapped the frame and centered it on the brick wall.
As I sat behind my desk, I tore open the lunch sack and inadvertently toggled the mouse. With a shudder, the screen saver, a quote from Poe, kicked in: "All that we see is but a dream within a dream." I watched it scroll by as I dialed Julie Giada's number and used a paper napkin to wipe off a plastic fork.
On the third ring, I got voice mail again.
"Julie. Terry. Thanks for the address," I said, talking to the tape. "I'm thinking maybe you'd better give Salgado's parole officer a heads-up, just in case. She ought to know someone's looking for her, even if it's just her mother."
I thanked her again and cut the line. I logged on as I picked a plump caper from the salad.
"It's up to you," Bella said coyly as she dipped an artichoke leaf into the garlic butter I'd prepared.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Well-Known Secret"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Jim Fusilli.
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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