"How's things at 'Eats'," I asked teasingly.
"Don't be a jackass," she rasped back into the telephone. "You left a message on my machine that you needed to see me."
"Yeah...," I began slowly trying to recover gracefully from her verbal assault. "I have a picture of a guy named Brian Ryan McNulty that I want you to look at to see if he is the same guy we think he is. And I need to ask you a few questions about some of Gershom's business dealings."
"Look," she rasped again. "I don't know nothing about his business. He told me that the less I knew, the safer I would be. So don't expect me to be of much help."
"Well," I conceded. "Just tell me what you can. Anything you can tell me will help me sort things out. It is your money that I am trying to save, you know."
"Of course, I know that." Her voice softened a bit and she said. "And I appreciate it. You learn to be on the defensive in my line of work. I'll help out with anything that I can."
I wanted to ask exactly what her line of work was, but decided to let it slide.
She gave me very specific directions to get to her place. I was to show up at exactly 4:30 p.m., park at the end of the block, walk into the building at the corner and go through a covered walkway to her building. 4:30 was fine with me. I would ask a few questions and be out of there by 5:30 while there was still plenty of light. I thought about what Gita had said and I was starting to get a little nervous. I wasn't sure whether I was more nervous about what McNulty might do or what Gita would say when she found out that I had gone. I decided to defuse the situation a bit so I called Gita's answering machine and left a message explaining where I was going.
At 4:28 I pulled up to the curb at the end of the block just as I had promised. I got out of my car and headed to the building at the corner. Leaning up against a tree a couple yards off of the side walk was the most nondescript looking black man I had ever seen. His sports jacket, slacks and shoes were conservative without being austere and his demeanor suggested that he was neither looking for trouble nor looking to avoid it. He would have been equally as invisible at a shopping mall or an expensive restaurant or a rodeo. If I were to have seen him leaving a bank after a robbery I wouldn't be able to provide a description that would have been of any use to any one trying to find him. I must have been staring because he smiled and nodded at me. I nodded back still unsure at to whether or not I had really seen him.
At exactly 4:31 pm I knocked on D.J.'s door. She opened the door almost immediately as though she had been waiting behind it and asked me to come in quickly. I was not at all prepared for what I saw and stood there with my mouth agape. As though the door of her apartment were some sort of a portal into another world, I passed from a neighborhood of poverty and despair into a world of old money elegance. The hallway outside stunk of mold, urine and vomit. Inside, it was like a clearing in a forest - cool and serene with a very faintly floral air. The walls were outlined in polished mahogany and painted in subtle abstract custom patterns reminiscent of woodlands. There was a couch and two stuffed chairs made of English saddle leather. On each side of the couch was an antique end table with a Louis the Sixteenth style lamp. Heavy drapes with the same patterns as the walls covered the windows. Overlooking the sitting area was a large portrait of a Celtic warrior from around the time of the Roman invasions. Below the portrait, was another small antique table with a leather bound book of some kind. The portrait was in a frame that appeared to be several hundred years old. On the bottom of the frame was a brass plate that said "Darmuid the Preserver 431 - 475 AD"
D.J. had washed off her blue mascara and had changed into a gray sweat suit with a Ralph Lauren polo pony over her abundant left breast. Her hair was combed out and pulled back in a silk scrunchy.
"Can I get you something to drink?" she asked in an accent that was quite different from the one I heard the other day. It was like a Boston Irish accent with the edge polished off in finishing school.
"Sure, I'll take a beer, if you have one." I said trying to not feel too outclassed.
"I have Newcastle or McEwan's Scotch Ale, if you'd like something with a little more kick," she offered.
I just looked at her, unable to get my thoughts together with all this new information.
"At the bar the other day you asked if they had anything interesting. I figured you must like good beers so I pick up some on the way home. My family owns a large interest in the McEwan's brewery so I figure that I could give them that much loyalty." With that she went into the kitchen and brought out a frosted pub glass filled with nut brown ale.
It was too much to take in at once so I shifted the burden of sense making to D.J. "Don't you think you have some explaining to do?"
"Sit down and drink your beer," she said, "gesturing toward one of the overstuffed leather chairs. "It's a long story. But it would probably be best if you knew the whole thing."
I sunk into the chair, took a sip of my beer and looked up giving her my full attention.
"My mother was a woman of passion and breeding. Unfortunately, her passion got the best of her breeding and she was pregnant with me at the tender age of seventeen. My father came from a similarly well-heeled family and simply left the country rather than deal with the ensuing scandal. Abortion was out of the question for religious reasons so my mother was sent away to a very expensive home for wayward girls were she lived out the term of her pregnancy. When I was born, some poor cousins, who were encouraged to take me in along with a health monthly annuity, immediately adopted me. I, of course, knew nothing of this when I was growing up. My stepfather was a nasty, lowborn brute who abused me physically until I reached puberty and then began abusing me sexually. By the time I was fourteen, I couldn't take it any more and I ran away. As a runaway living on the streets I found that I had some unique assets that would help me survive. Being a great deal more clever than most of the other girls on the street, I also realized I could leverage my assets into a comfortable living if I were smart and careful."
I sipped my beer again and tried not to look at her assets as she said this. Instead, I pretended that there was something of great interest in my beer glass.
"My God! I hope there isn't something floating in your beer?" she said, horrified by the idea that she might have served the beer in a dirty glass. I though about that huge greasy thumb print on my glass at the bar and how it seemed a million miles away now.
"No." I said, stalling for time. "It's just that…. Well, nothing. Please continue with your story. No. Er, that is, I'll have another beer if you don't mind."
She brought another Newcastle in fresh frosted glass. She put it on the table next to me on a wooden coaster with a fabric center. She poured herself a small glass of cognac and continued.
"Working the streets is a high risk low pay way to earn a living. Working the clubs is just the opposite. Your can gross a thousand tax free dollars on a good day and half that on a bad day. Most of the girls have no sense of money so they give it all to their men or piss it away on drugs. I was smart enough to save my money and began investing it in some of the clubs that I was working in. Over the years I bought out my partners and became full owner of several of the strip clubs on 14th street. Life was comfortable and predictable until one day about five years ago a woman came into my life and turned everything upside down."
She paused as though she were reliving the moment.
"Who was that woman?" I prodded.
"My mother." She said simply and almost inaudibly.
D.J. was clearly struggling under the emotional weight of those two words so I took a drink of my beer, shifted my weight and waited for her to continue.
"It was like looking in a mirror. She looked almost exactly like me. Even though she was seventeen years older than me the combination of her pampered life and my life in the clubs made us look like twin sisters - Lady and the Tramp."
"She stayed with me for a week. We talked and argued, fought and cried. Finally, she said that she couldn't give me back my childhood but she could give me back my heritage. That picture you were looking at when you came is Darmuid the Preserver, Celtic warrior chieftain and Druid Priest. During his rein he harmonized the competing political forces of the soldiers and the scholars. The leather-bound book under the picture is a genealogy chart that traces my ancestry all the way back to Darmuid."
"I didn't think a Druid could be a warrior. Weren't they sort of opposing political forces?" I asked, more to keep the story going that to explore history.
"That's the point." She said. "My ancestors have a history of living dual lives. Sometimes hidden lives. My mother knew that I would never be accepted by her family, nor by my father's family. She also knew that if I cleaned up my act and started acting like a lady, nobody in my current life would have anything to do with me either. Besides, if I were to start throwing around money, I would attract too much attention. Some of those cash transactions I made getting control of the clubs weren't strictly above board. So I started leading a dual life. In public I was queen of the clubs. In the privacy of my own home I was a lady, a modern day princess complete with a royal heritage. I started building my new life by making investments in more legitimate enterprises and started taking classes to become more refined. My mother sent me that picture of Darmuid and every time I look at it I think it's O.K. to lead two lives and in the fullness of time I will become a lady again."
"So how does Gershom fit into all this?" I asked being careful not to call him anything disrespectful.
"It must have been destiny." She said with a far away look in her eyes. "We first met about three years ago in the diner."
"About that diner." I interrupted. "Why do you work as a waitress there, if you have all this money and a desire to become a lady?"
"Oh, I own that diner," she laughed and delicately waved away my silliness with her hand. "Of course nobody knows that except for my accountant and my business associates. The diner is a front. I play the role of a burned out ex hooker who waits on tables and lives in this crummy neighborhood. I can't very well have an office on Connecticut Avenue, so my associates meet me at the diner. If anybody is being watched, it just looks like they stopped in for lunch or dinner. While I take their orders we discuss business. Sometimes I'll scoot into a booth for a few minutes to discuss things and the cook will holler at me to quit flirting with the customers. He actually thinks I'm still trying to do tricks. He must think I'm pathetic, but it just adds to the credibility of the role."
She smiled as she thought to herself about how the cook played right into the role that she was playing.
"And that's how you met Gershom?" I prodded again.
She became serious. "Yeah, he was a regular at the diner. He came by every evening for the special. He always sat at the same booth and always ordered the same thing - Monday, meatloaf; Tuesday, macaroni and cheese, Wednesday, chicken fried steak, and so on. We would talk, joke around and eventually started warming up to each other. One evening he came by just as I was locking up and asked me if I felt like stepping out. He was wearing khaki pants, and white shirt and a string tie. His hair was combed and he was wearing cologne."
There was a far away look in her eyes and a smile on her face. It was a retreat to an oasis of fond memories.
"He wasn't used to wearing cologne," she laughed, "and he had on a bit too much. His collar was sticking up on one side and and one of his shirttails was about to come out. But I didn't mind. He was my knight in shining armor, my ride out of low rents and cynicism."
"It's amazing what a tie and a little cologne will do." I joked. But she ignored me.
"We went to suburbs and saw a Disney film. After the movie we went to an ice cream store and had malteds. It was like we had both gone back to high school for the evening. It was wonderful. It was fun. It was romantic. It was the most special moment of my life."
The cynicism, anger and low self-esteem had drained from her face. In its place were optimism and dignity. As she reminisced about Oxenstein I could see how in another place and another time she could have been a Celtic Princess.
"Outside of the mall was a lake with a walking path around it. We walked around the lake in the moonlight and held hands. Then we sat on one of the benches and he told me about his life."
Again she had that far away look in her eyes and I envied the comfort and joy of the moments she was reliving.
"His father was a Rabbi and he was a student at the Yeshiva." She began.
I almost blurted out "Oxenstein studied at the Yeshiva?" But I caught myself in time. She looked up and I asked for another beer instead.
"He dropped out about a month before his Bar Mitzvah because both of his parents were killed in a terrible car accident," she said getting up to go into the kitchen. "It's hard on a boy that age to loose his parents."
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. This was getting a little close to home. I was already feeling more personal responsibility in this case than was appropriate. "I think I'd like one of those scotch ales, if you don't mind," I said as she entered the kitchen.
The scotch ale was sweet, complex and heady. The chair was comfortable and the story was getting interesting. I looked at my watch. It was six thirty and would be dark in an hour. But the time didn't register. I had forgotten all about what dangers might be waiting in the dark. And waiting they were.