“I saw you as I was driving past,” he said; jamming his hands into the pockets of his blue blazer.
“Where’s your coat?” I began cleaning the front windshield.
“In the car. It gets in my way.” He hunched his shoulders against the cold, raw air. “If you ain’t thinking about stopping these rumors, then you’d better start thinking about it.”
I irritably returned the squeegee to its container of cleaning solution. “And just what do you suggest I do, Marino? Call Jason Story and tell him I’m sorry his wife and unborn child are dead but I would certainly appreciate it if he would vent his grief and rage elsewhere?”
“Doc, he blames you.”
“After reading his quotes in the Post, I suspect any number of people are blaming me. He’s managed to portray me as a Machiavellian bitch.”
“You hungry?”
“No.”
“Well, you look hungry.”
I looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“And if something looks a certain way to me, it’s my duty to check it out. So I’m giving you a choice, Doc. I can get us some Nabs and sodas from the machines over there, and we can stand out here freezing our asses off and inhaling fumes while we prevent other poor bastards from using the self-service pumps. Or we can zip over to Phil’s. I’m buying either way.”
Ten minutes later we were sitting in a corner booth perusing glossy illustrated menus offering everything from spaghetti to fried fish. Marino faced the dark-tinted front door and I had a perfect view of the rest rooms. He was smoking, as were most of the people around us, and I was reminded that it is hell to quit. He actually could not have selected a more ideal restaurant, considering the circumstances. Philip’s Continental Lounge was an old, neighborhood establishment where patrons who had known each other all their lives continued to meet regularly for hearty food and bottled beer. The typical customer was good-natured and gregarious, and unlikely to recognize me or care unless my picture regularly appeared in the sports section of the newspaper.
“It’s like this,” Marino said as he closed his menu. “Jason Story believes Susan would still be alive if she’d had another job. And he’s probably right. Plus, he’s a loser – one of these self-centered assholes who believes everything is everybody else’s fault. The truth is, he’s probably more to blame for Susan’s death than anyone.”
“You’re not suggesting that he killed her?”
The waitress appeared and we ordered. Grilled chicken and rice for Marino and a kosher chili dog for me, plus two diet sodas.
“I’m not suggesting that Jason shot his wife,” Marino said quietly. “But he set her up for getting involved in whatever it was that precipitated her homicide. Paying the bills was Susan’s responsibility, and she was under big-time financial stress.”
“Unsurprisingly,” I said. “Her husband had just lost his job.”
“It’s too bad he didn’t lose his high dollar taste. We’re talking Polo shirts and Britches of Georgetown slacks and silk ties. A couple weeks after he gets laid off, the jerk goes out and buys seven hundred bucks’ worth of ski equipment and then heads off to Wintergreen for the weekend. Before that it was a two-hundred-dollar leather jacket and a four-hundred-dollar bicycle. So Susan’s down at the morgue working like a dog and then coming home to face-bills her salary won’t put a dew it”
“I had no idea,” I said pained by a sudden vision of Susan sitting at her desk. Her dally ritual was to spend her lunch hour in her office, and on occasion I would join her thereto chat. I remembered her generic-brand corn chips and the sale stickers on her sodas. I don’t think she ever ate or drank anything she had not brought from home.
“Jason’s spending habits,” Marino went on, “leads to the shit he’s causing you. He’s badmouthing you like hell to anybody who will listen because you’re a doctor-lawyer-Indian chief who drives a Mercedes and lives in a big house bi Windsor Farms. I think the dumbass believes if he can somehow blame you for what happened to his wife, maybe he can get a little compensation.”