“Am I okay? What about you? Joe, I’m so sorry.” She frowned up at him, the frown making her lower lip push up and purse. It was an adorable expression, the kind that got Halle noticed everywhere she went. She opened her arms. “Come here.” They hugged, and now the feel of her body, the generous flesh of her arms and shoulders and the smell of her jet-black hair, had him feeling faint.
“What . . . what is this? I mean, it’s great to see you, but . . .” Now her arms stiffened, and she pushed away from him.
“Oh, Joe.” Her face darkened. It was a lovely face, heart shaped and inviting. She had strong southern Italian looks, thick brows, deep brown eyes, a large, well-formed nose, and a luxurious mouth with full lips. Her skin was pale and smooth, her body full and voluptuous. Joe couldn’t help but take all of her in whenever she appeared. Now she seemed shy and tentative as she folded her arms across her chest.
“‘Oh, Joe’ what?” he asked. “Come in.” She followed him through the foyer into the kitchen. He stopped at the fridge, wondering if there was something he could offer her. She was a coffee drinker, and he still didn’t have a coffee maker. “Sit down, please. Tell me what’s going on.”
“You called me last night. This morning, really. You wanted someone to go with you to the morgue.”
“The morgue?” His hand froze on the fridge door handle. He pictured the card on the nightstand. Slowly, he turned back toward her. “What about the morgue?”
“Jesus,” she said with exaggerated awe. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” A feeling of defeat and fresh dread shot through him.
She shook her head and sat down at the bare kitchen table, crossing her legs. Below a Mets T-shirt, she had on gray yoga pants and cross-trainers. “I shouldn’t even tell you.”
“Please tell me. What happened?”
“Your mother, Joe,” she said, and the sharp rebuke in her voice, that Italian edge, was gone. “NYPD found her on the beach, on Coney Island. I guess that was Thursday night. You called me last night. Told me you’d probably have to ID her. You didn’t want to go alone.” Halle used the term “NYPD” rather than “the cops” or something more civilian-like because she was also in the business. She had gone to St. John’s University School of Law in Queens and had met Joe through an internship with Joe and Jack’s law firm when she was a second-year student. The two didn’t become involved until later, when Joe ran into her outside a courtroom one afternoon in Brooklyn. It was 2015, and Joe had just started working for the attorney general. Shoptalk that night turned into drinks, which turned into raw, wild sex at her place in Sheepshead Bay. At twenty-six, she was a little more than half his age.
“My mother?” he asked. Joe couldn’t know it, but he uttered those two words in exactly the same way he had to Zochi and Len when they had found him at Greeley’s.
“That’s who they think it was. It looks like she was homeless. They . . . they think she was murdered.”
“Oh God.” Joe dashed back upstairs for the business card. A few flashes of memory were popping into his brain, but they were only images. He was picturing a small but sturdy female detective with big eyes and short black hair. Another guy with her, big guy with kind of a moon face. He pictured them at a bar, probably Greeley’s, although he wasn’t positive, sometime late. But that was it. He couldn’t recall anything they had told him. His heart pounded. When he returned to the kitchen, he looked at Halle with a grim mix of guilt and frustration. “She was homeless? On the beach at Coney?”
“You told me they’re not sure if she was homeless.” Her voice started to break. “Joe, I hate this! I hate having to repeat this to you!” She started to cry, and he fell to one knee and took her right hand in both of his.
“I’m so sorry, Halle. I can’t make this right, but I am so sorry.”
“No,” she said, forcing tears away. “No, don’t be. This isn’t . . . it isn’t about me. It’s just frustrating, you know?”
It’s what broke us up, he thought. Of course he knew. His mouth was dry. It seemed as if he had just dreamed about his mother and brother, earlier while he was in the gray area between drunk and hungover, when sleep was fitful and thin. The anniversary of that night had just passed, and it had been haunting him all week long. “I’m sorry I called you in the first place. Afterward, I just . . . forgot.”