Part 6 (2/2)
”So many beautiful pieces. Worth a fortune! And then the paintings, I thought I would just cry, when the paintings-”
”She didn't like them either.” With every answer, he sounded like he wanted to take a hit off that beer bottle, but she wasn't giving him an opening.
”Your inheritance, it was all your inheritance, gone-that's what she wouldn't have liked. Your father should be ashamed of himself.”
”Yeah, well, he never was.”
”G.o.d rest his soul, you got that right. And he never asked me if I wanted them. I thought, at least ask, I would have been happy to step in and keep them in the building. I would have done that for your mother, G.o.d rest her soul. I told him! But you couldn't talk to him. Well, you know that.”
”Yes.” He s.h.i.+fted on his feet, and for about fifteen seconds I got a better look at the woman, who had an intelligent face underneath that big messy head of hair. I wasn't liking her much until I saw her face, then I wasn't so sure, because she seemed sort of sensible, even though she was saying slightly dotty things and clearly was cranky that she didn't get her hands on those paintings and all that furniture. She had on some kind of silk robe, sage green with a burnt-orange stripe, and the bit I could see hanging off her shoulder suggested it might be spectacularly beautiful if I could get a better look at it. Drinan s.h.i.+fted again, and I lost the sight line.
”Well, thank you for your thoughts, Mrs. Westmoreland,” he started. The hand holding the beer was getting a little slippery, plus I could see from the way his shoulders were scrunching together that he was getting pretty desperate for that drink. Before he could take a step backward and turn to take a fast hit, she touched him on the sleeve and held him there. Ai yi yi, I thought, this is getting interesting.
”But these people-who are these people?” she asked, all concerned. ”Coming and going, acting like they own the place, Frank says one of them has moved in. I'm horrified.” I went back to not liking her. What on earth was she complaining about, she was ”horrified” about me living in an apartment I had every legal right to live in? She was just an Upper West Side sn.o.b who had the hots for a dude half her age, I decided, on the basis of hardly any information at all.
”It's something to do with Dad's will,” he told her. ”He left everything to Olivia.”
”You're kidding!”
”Look, it's fine, it's going to be fine.” You could hear that he was already kicking himself for telling her that much. And it did seem to be a terrific mistake.
”He left everything to Olivia? He barely knew her!”
”They were married two years,” he corrected her.
”Did you know he was doing that? Did you agree to it?”
”He didn't actually ask us to agree,” Pete said. His voice sounded really uptight. ”He told us. Doug tried to talk him out of it. He wanted to do something for her.”
”But why?”
”He was worried that she wouldn't have anything if he died. That's what he said.”
”She didn't deserve anything!”
”Well, that's what he felt, anyway. He, you know, he knew he was dying, and he wanted her to have some security after he was gone.”
”Surely you could have put a stop to this.”
”We had a big fight about it. Doug, you know, he pretty much felt the way you do, and Dad got real mad. It wasn't ... we didn't really talk much after that.”
This was so much more information than I'd ever had about Bill and his marriage to my mom that I was momentarily thrilled. I had forgotten how useful snooping at doors could be. I was also happy to have a shred of good feeling for the guy, since he had tried to do the right thing by Mom in the face of opposition. He was instantly transformed in my imagination from a selfish drunk into an eccentric recluse who had lousy kids.
”But Olivia is dead now. And these other people, what rights do they have?”
”I don't know. Honestly, I just don't know.” Pete trailed off, clearly wanting to get out of this conversation. But she was a sharp one. And she was as fascinated by what he had told her as I was.
”He didn't even know them, he refused to meet them!” she told him. ”He was afraid of just this scenario, that complete strangers would come after his property-that's why he told her they were never to set foot in the building!”
”She told you that?”
”She did! I asked her one night. She had just come back from having dinner with them apparently. It was so rare that you ever saw either of them leave the apartment, so when I saw her in the lobby, I said, this is a treat! You and Bill don't go out much, do you, and she said, I was having dinner with my daughters, and we rode up in the elevator together, and I said, are we going to meet your daughters? She said, oh no, Bill prefers to keep me all to himself! And I said, well, that hardly seems fair, you must miss them a lot. And she said she did, very much, and that she had tried to speak to him about it but he was very worried-those were her words-he was worried that other people were after his property, and he had to protect it. Those were her exact words. And then I saw him one day not long after that-I actually saw him putting trash in the bin, which he never did-and I said, why Bill, there you are! He looked terrible, I don't need to tell you that, he was sick for a long long time and I know he refused to see a doctor-”
”Yeah, but you said you talked to him?”
”I did. I took the opportunity. I said, Bill-Olivia tells me you've never even met her daughters, aren't you curious to meet them? She's your wife! I was reluctant to say anything to him at all, I couldn't believe he brought another woman into your mother's apartment. It's the Livingston Mansion Apartment, it is a historic property! He should have let it go, is my opinion, when your mother died. He should have sold it to someone who would take care of it, someone in the building who would appreciate it. He never appreciated it. She was the one.”
”But he said something? About these daughters?”
”Yes, he said they were trash. He said, those daughters are trash and I'm not meeting them. That's what he called them. Trash. And he said all they wanted was his money.” At which point old Bill went back to being an alcoholic a.s.shole in my mind.
Pete Drinan thought about this. It was not an uninteresting bit of information to him. ”Was he drunk?” he finally asked.
”Well, I only saw him for a moment, so I couldn't really say,” Mrs. Westmoreland admitted. ”I know he did like to drink.”
”Yes, he did,” Pete sighed, his hand still curled around the beer bottle behind his back. ”Listen, Mrs. Westmoreland-would you be willing to talk about this? To our lawyer?”
”Oh, a lawyer ...” she sighed, all worried but excited too, like she was secretly happy to be asked. ”You mean, officially?”
”Well, yeah,” said Pete. ”It might make a difference-that you spoke to him directly and he told you he didn't want the property going out of the family. That that was his intent?”
”That was my understanding. But if this is an official situation-I don't know. I want you and your brother to have your inheritance. But obviously I don't want to get into some complicated legal mess. I did love your mother. Maybe you'd like to come in and have a cup of tea?”
”Oh,” said Pete, his fingers twirling around the neck of that beer bottle. I thought about how the beer was getting all warm and flat, and I guessed he was thinking that too. And sure enough, he leaned back on his left leg, ready to edge away again. But she was not letting go. She actually had her fingers twisted in his jacket sleeve now. Her door had swung completely open, and what little I could see of her place was gorgeous.
”Your mother was my neighbor for thirty years, this whole story breaks my heart,” she explained, leaning up against the doorway.
”Mine too, Mrs. Westmoreland.” He nodded, leaning back.
”Good heavens, Peter,” she sighed. ”After all this time I think you could consider calling me Delia.”
”Yeah, well ...”
”Come in, let me get you that tea. Or a drink! Maybe a whiskey-that sounds like a policeman's drink!” she said with a smile.
He turned, finally, planning to get a hit off that beer bottle, and saw me looking out through the crack in the door. He looked tired. And then he remembered what was going on and took a fast step in my direction. I remembered too, and I slammed the door and slid the bolt back in place. I thought he was going to start pounding again, but he just waited. I could hear the woman in 8B start to gripe about how awful it all was; I couldn't really hear the words, but the tone of her voice was not complimentary. He didn't say anything back to her. I stood at the door and listened, but he didn't say anything at all. I wasn't sure what was going on. Finally Mrs. Westmoreland stopped talking, and it got really quiet. I thought maybe he was gone. And then a little white card was slid under the door. At the last second, it kind of wafted, like he had pushed it. I picked it up. It was a really plain business card, with the NYPD s.h.i.+eld, and his name, Detective Peter Drinan, right in the middle, and a cell number. On the back, in little block letters in ink, it said, CALL ME WHEN YOU'RE READY. I thought about that for a second, as I kept listening at the door. He was still out there; in fact, from the shadows it looked like he was sort of hovering down near the floor to see if I had picked the card up. So I took the paper bag from the hardware store, and I looked through my backpack, which was still right where I had dumped it, for a pen, and I ripped a piece off the paper bag and wrote: OKAY. I shoved that through the door, And then I watched through the bottom of the door while he picked it up. And then I heard him laugh. The lady in the other apartment asked some more questions, and he said something to her, but then I heard the elevator ding, and the door close.
And when I went in the hallway in the morning, he was gone.
7.
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