Read Online A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul - Free Book Online Page A

old.
    â€œGer- ee !” Amato called. “Perhaps I come help you down the stairs?”
    Not quite yet , she thought, straightening her shoulders. “We’ll be right there!”
    â€œâ€˜We’?”
    Gerry had invited Amato to dinner; the cook could stretch it to include one more. “Rosa, come dine with Pasquale and me. Unless you have plans?”
    â€œNo plans. Thanks, Gerry—I really don’t want to go home.”
    Gerry had thought not. “Let’s go before Pasquale has a fit. My limousine is on Fortieth. You didn’t ride your bicycle to a performance, did you?” The younger woman shook her head. “Come along, then.”
    Amato’s face broke into a broad smile when he saw he would have the company of two beautiful sopranos at dinner that evening.
    Mrs. Bukaitis had turned in her mop and pail early, collected her day’s pay, and left. The fancy folks wouldn’t be using their opera house that night.
    She headed east on Thirty-ninth Street, taking no pleasure from the store window displays she passed. These Americans, how they wasted money! They had no sense of proportion. And there was no making them understand the war was not really over.
    A man with a red mustache tried to sell her a roasted chestnut from his cart; she ignored him, in spite of being tempted by the smell. That was the trouble with New York City: too many temptations. How easy it would be, to give in to capitalistic self-pampering and forget about those at home. Mrs. Bukaitis was disgusted with herself.
    The Third Avenue line had recently added an express track to its elevated train; Mrs. Bukaitis boarded and took a seat among a crowd of talkative and laughing passengers. She hadn’t completely gotten over her nervousness at riding the el. It wasn’t the noise and the speed—that was something you adjusted to quickly in New York. But it just didn’t seem natural to be riding in a train way up there above street level. But then, nothing about this country was what you would call natural .
    She stared out of the window, trying to shut out the loud voices around her as well as the clang-rattle-screech-thunk of the train itself. Mrs. Bukaitis let herself slip into a favorite fantasy: What if an elevated train ran right through the center of Vilnius? How startled and amazed everyone would be! It might even scare those accursed Poles right out of the city.
    This would be Mrs. Bukaitis’ third Christmas away from Lithuania’s capital city. Mrs. Bukaitis and her husband had had to leave first the city and then the country, only a few steps ahead of their pursuers all the way. Mr. Bukaitis had openly opposed the foreign occupation of Vilnius, derailing trains and raiding arsenals and doing anything else he could think of to make clear his disapproval. Then someone in their little band of saboteurs had betrayed them, and the Bukaitises had had to flee for their lives. Their second day in America, Mr. Bukaitis had fallen off the roof of their tenement building and broken his neck. It was sheer carelessness; he had leaned out too far, trying to see all of New York at once.
    The farther downtown the el traveled, the less English Mrs. Bukaitis heard spoken around her. Now the voices were talking in Russian and Polish and Italian and Yiddish. The train screeched to a halt at the station built in the middle of the Bowery at the corner of Canal Street. Mrs. Bukaitis got off and walked back uptown one block to Hester Street, then west one more block to Elizabeth.
    She passed the corner saloon (now closed) and the Elizabeth Street Pawnshop and entered the third building. Up five flights … not easy after a day spent on the knees scrubbing floors. Mrs. Bukaitis was short of breath, but not just from climbing the stairs. She was excited. She was excited because Antanas had promised the man would be there to talk to them this time.
    She knocked four times, waited, knocked once more.