Killer Smile (8 page)

She took a right onto Nutt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been east of Broad Street, but she knew it didn’t used to look like this. Many of the rowhomes were shells, their front doors boarded up and nailed fast against the urban version of a hurricane. Rusted tin sheets covered punched-out windows, graffiti marred the red-brick facades, and discarded trash lay strewn on the pavement. It made Mary feel sick inside. City Hall was only ten minutes away on foot. How could this happen? By the third block, she had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the feeling wasn’t I-Hate-Change. It was a bad enough feeling to have passed I-Hate-Change three feelings ago. It was what loss felt like. Just plain loss.

Two teenage boys slumped toward her on the street, oversize T-shirts flapping like flags, hands shoved into the droopy drawers of the Hilfiger generation, and superwide pant legs overflowing identical Iverson’s. The boys were Asian, their jet hair spiky and gelled, and as they drew closer Mary could hear them speaking to each other in another language. When they reached her, they looked her up and down, this white lawyer bearing a stiff briefcase and a pastry box. They sniffed at her best navy suit and her matching pumps, gritty with pavement dirt. When they had passed her completely, they burst into laughter. She was the foreigner on this block.

Nutt Street, which Mary knew used to be solidly Italian, was evidently Asian now. She passed a corner store with a sign of bright yellow plastic, bearing what she guessed were Korean characters, and on the corner across from it sat a wig store, featuring platinum wigs on featureless Styrofoam heads, behind hand-lettered signs in Korean characters. Mary fought a politically incorrect urge to miss the Italian bakeries and grocery stores that used to anchor the streetcorners, then realized the obvious: Asians were the new immigrants, coming over for the same reason as her own ancestors. For the same reason as Amadeo. That was the part of change that stayed the same. And in the next minute, she found herself standing across from 630 Nutt Street.

Amadeo’s house. She examined the house from the opposite side of the street. It sat in the middle of the north side, illuminated by the morning sun. It stood two stories tall, and the bay window in front was covered by tattered sheers. The two windows on the second-floor bedroom had venetian blinds with slats missing. The brick facade needed repointing, its mortar crumbling like sugar, and black paint blistered off the front door, which showed two deadbolts above the regular door lock. A spongy black rubber mat sat on the front stoop.

Go inside,
something told Mary.

Mary stood on the welcome mat, and an older Asian woman peeked from behind the peeling black door, blinking against the sun shining in her face. The woman’s aged hand fluttered to a thin housedress of incongruously cheery red checks, and Mary introduced herself, then said, “I was wondering if I could come in for a minute, to see the house. I know someone who used to live here a long time ago.”

“Come, come,” the woman said softly, with a thick accent. Her onyx hair had dulled to steel gray at the temples and was scissored unevenly in a short, homemade haircut. Her dark eyes were hooded, and the parentheses from her nose to her lips deeply fissured. Still her small mouth curved into a remarkably kind smile as she bowed slightly, opening the door wide. “Come.”

“Thank you so much.” Mary crossed the threshold, feeling intrusive, but not intrusive enough to back out again.
Amadeo’s house.
“I just wanted to look around, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Come, come,” the woman repeated, then closed the front door and locked the two deadbolts.

Mary glanced around. The living room was about twenty by fifteen feet, a skinny rectangle roughly the dimensions of her parents’ rowhouse. The layout would be the same, too; living room, dining room, and kitchen strung out in a line, like beads on a rosary. A staircase to the second floor sat along the east wall; it must have been the stairs where Theresa had fallen to her death. Mary suppressed the twinge of sadness and looked away. The living room was neat, clean, and simply furnished with an old couch, two velour side chairs, and an oak coffee table. Wafting from the kitchen were familiar odors of strong coffee and scrambled eggs, but there the similarities between this house and her parents’ ended. The living room ceiling sagged in the center, and the thick plaster walls had cracked, with jagged lines running down the walls like bolts of lightning. The wallpaper was a faded gold floral, its colors bleached by the room’s southern exposure. Mary flashed on what Frank had said about his office:
This place hadn’t been touched in years.
Ironically, it made it easy to visualize the way the house had been when Amadeo and Theresa had lived here.

Mary gestured toward the dining room. “May I go in there, too?”

“Yes, yes,” the woman answered, soft as a whisper.

“Thank you.” Mary couldn’t deny the tingle inside her. She could just imagine Amadeo’s compact but powerful form crossing into the dining room. It was another skinny rectangle, but it wasn’t being used as a dining room. Against the wall where Mary’s parents had their dining room table was a single bed, its worn chenille coverlet neatly tucked in on all four sides. A cardboard box served as a nightstand for a yellow lamp and plastic alarm clock. Mary’s heart went out to the woman, who touched her elbow.

“Come, come,” the woman whispered, leading Mary on as eagerly as a realtor.

They went into the kitchen, which was dilapidated. Brown water spots stained dingy ceiling squares, and the linoleum floor tiles had been ripped out, revealing a grimy subfloor and sticky brown glue squeezed out in serpentine lines. A plastic table sat in the middle of the room, accompanied by only one chair, a red plastic stool. Even so, Mary could picture Amadeo sitting at a different table, wearing a fresh white T-shirt, sipping a tiny cup of espresso and talking to Theresa as she stood at the stove. Mary could almost feel his presence.

“Come, come,” the woman said, motioning Mary excitedly to the back door, covered with black security bars. She followed, and the old woman pressed open the rickety back door, revealing the backyard.

Mary gasped at the sight. Suspended over the backyard hung a network of weathered ropes, strung together in an elaborate crisscross pattern, making a ceiling of twine diamonds. Laundry hung from the rope canopy on old-fashioned wooden clothes-pins; thin white socks, floppy panties, blouses in different patterns, pajamas, and a series of cotton hand towels. It was the most unusual clothesline Mary had ever seen.

“Wonderful!” she said. The woman nodded happily and shuffled to the side of the backyard. A rusted metal crank Mary hadn’t seen before had been screwed to the fence, and the woman turned the handle.

Suddenly, shirts, undies, and black socks moved over their heads, traveling this way and that on the old ropes, following a map only they understood, directed by a series of pulleys. Water sprinkled from the moving canopy, and Mary couldn’t help but applaud. The old woman laughed and sped her cranking, making the laundry go fast, then fly. Droplets sprayed everywhere, and the clothes zipped back and forth in all directions. It wasn’t laundry, it was magic, and the old woman laughed in delight. Mary did, too. And then it hit her.

The ropes. She watched the whirring laundry and the whizzing ropes, blinking at the droplets that sprinkled her cheeks. The pattern wasn’t diamonds, but squares. It didn’t look like a canopy, it was more like a net. Like a fisherman’s net. Remade, restrung, and redesigned on pulleys to make a wonderful clothesline. Was it possible? From so long ago? It looked old enough, considering the thinness of the weathered ropes and the rust caking the metal crank.

Suddenly Mary wasn’t laughing. How many people had owned the house since Amadeo? It couldn’t be that many. People down here didn’t get off the couch, much less move from their family home. Mary’s parents were typical of South Philly; the house she had grown up in on Mercer was the very house in which her mother had grown up. Even if the house had changed hands a bunch of times, who would cut down a contraption like this? It was useful, unique, and fun.
Amadeo made this for Theresa.
Mary knew it; she felt it
inside
. She was about to ask the old woman when a shout came from the door.

The cranking stopped abruptly, the laundry came to a halt, and Mary turned. A young man of about twenty-five, his dark hair disheveled from sleep, stood in the doorway shouting in Korean at the woman, who cowered in the corner. He was lean and bare-chested in low-slung gym shorts, but he was oblivious to his own nakedness. His angry glare turned on Mary.

“What are you doing with my mother?” he demanded. “You woke me up!”

“I’m so sorry, really sorry. Really sorry.” Mary was on an apology roll. Hey, maybe she did have a forte. “I just wanted to see the house and ask a few questions about a former owner, named —”

“Oh, you’re the one!” The young man threw up his hands. “They were asking have you been here! You know that jerk with the zits?”

Mary felt a chill. Jerk with the zits. The Escalade driver. “No, not at all. My name is —”

“I don’t care, I need my sleep, I work all night. Get out of here!” The young man faced his mother and began yelling again, but Mary couldn’t shake that chill. What was going on? And what about the clothesline? The laundry still dripped from its merry trip.

“I’m sorry, I’ll leave right now,” Mary said again. “I just need to know if you made this clothesline.”

“No!”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Seventeen years, eighteen, none of your business. Listen, I worked all night. I have to go back to bed. Leave now. Go!”

“Was the clothesline here when you got here?”

“Leave, I said! You want me to call the cops?” the man shouted, then turned on his mother.

“Wait, stop!” Mary interrupted, raising a palm. She couldn’t stand him treating his mother that way.
Her
mother would have beat him senseless with a wooden spoon. “Calm down. Please. I’m sorry, and I’m leaving.” She turned toward the door, then had a second thought. She pivoted on her pumps, bowed to the older woman, and handed her the box of pastry. “Please take this, with my thanks. You’re very kind.”

The woman accepted the box and bowed back, with a shaky smile.

“What’s in the box?” the young man demanded.

“
Sfogliatelle
,” Mary answered, and because he hadn’t translated his language, she didn’t translate hers. “If that guy with the zits comes back, tell your mother not to let him in.”

“Why?”

“He’s dangerous,” Mary said, without knowing why.

Philadelphia’s City Hall was under renovations that hadn’t yet reached Room 154, the Registrar of Deeds. Dingy tan linoleum with blue streaks covered the floor, lights in the vaulted ceiling hung by a twisted wire, and rosy brown marble ran partway up walls that needed fresh blue paint. Mary sat with the rest of the citizenry in a bank of padded chairs, waiting to be called to the counter, where boxy computer monitors stood in various states of swivelhood. Deed clerks helped people at the counter, and chatter filled the room, interrupted by the ringing of phones, the squeak of the heavy door, and an office radio tuned to Power 99. Eminem and 50 Cent.

Mary fingered the thin pink slip bearing number 82, then glanced up at the deli-style
NOW SERVING
sign. Its red numbers blinked 81. She should have gone straight to work, but she couldn’t help but take a quick detour after what she’d seen at Nutt Street. She wanted to know if that clothesline was Amadeo’s.

“Eighty-two! Number eighty-two, please!” a deed clerk called out, and Mary went to the counter. The clerk was a well-built black man, with bright brown eyes and a ready smile. “How can I help you?”

“I need to trace the chain of title to a house.”

“No problem, let’s get the plot number,” the clerk said, turning the monitor toward him with a strong hand. Mary gave him the address, and he called it up on the bright screen and wrote a number on a pad. “How far back you want to go? Last year, year before?”

“I need to know from around 1900 to the present.”

The clerk arched an eyebrow. “Most people, they want a copy of the current deed.”

They’re the sane ones.
“This is a research thing.”

“Leave your driver’s license,” the clerk said, and soon after Mary produced it, he returned with a jacket of microfilm no bigger than an index card, containing two rows of tiny black and white windows, preserved in plastic and bound at both ends. He pointed to the far corner of the room. “Viewers are over there. Turn off the light when you’re finished, please.”

“Thanks,” Mary said and hurried past the counter to the microfilm viewers. There were two, large blackish boxes, each bearing a proudly oversize label that read EYECOM 3000, which had probably sounded futuristic thirty years ago. She dropped her stuff on an empty chair next to her, switched on the light, and slid the microfilm into the grimiest viewer tray in existence. It took her three tries, wiggling the sticky handle back and forth, until she got something besides blinding light on the screen. Then she turned a gummy little dial to focus and zoomed in on the first deed in the top row.

THIS INDENTURE, read modern, matter-of-fact letters that Mary translated as Deed, made
this 19th day of December, 1986.
She skimmed to the name of grantor,
LEE SAM
to the grantee,
MI-JA YUN.
So it was the most recent deed, and Mi-Ja Yun had to be the older Korean woman’s name. Mary read the property description, just to make sure, and it was the right house. The sale price came next:
sixty thousand and two hundred and thirty dollars and no cents
.

Mary moved the tray to the right to move the screen image left, hoping it would be the second most recent deed. It was, and she sharpened the focus.
This Indenture
, began the first line again, and the date of the deed was November 2, 1962. She skimmed along to double-check the grantor,
LI-PAK
, to the grantee,
LEE SAM
, and the sale price was thirty-two thousand dollars. Two owners down.