“No idea,” the man answered without breaking stride or further conversation, and Mary growled under her breath and backed out of the space. She drove around reading tulips and with only three missed turns, asked five more people where Saracone Investments was. None of them had any idea. It was getting weird. After another wrong turn, she found a gardener in a yellow jumpsuit with a red Lehigh Valley patch and she jumped out of the car and accosted him.
“On the end,” he said, pointing, and she went back to the car and drove to where he pointed. Then she understood why she hadn’t seen it before. The last brown building had a tiny tulip bed in front and the smallest sign of all, with an array of company names in smaller fonts: Rate Foods, Inc, The Steingard Foundation, Francanucci Insurance, Ltd., Juditha Corporation, Simmons Partners, and Saracone Investments. The pocket lot was empty even though the others had been filling up. Why? She’d see for herself; she had found Saracone’s office. Mary felt a tingle of fear but chased it away.
She got out of the car, her jacket suddenly sticking to her back. She had dressed in her favorite nondescript beige suit, had her hair pulled back, and was wearing her glasses, so Justin wouldn’t recognize her from the newspaper photo. It was an abundance of caution, because she doubted that he’d be back at work so soon after his father’s death, but maybe she could sweet-talk the receptionist and get into his office. She walked up the elegant flagstone walk, past the evil tulips, and reached a brown door, hoping it wasn’t locked. She pulled on the door, and it opened into a hallway with a panel of mailboxes. Each one was labeled: Rate Foods, Inc, The Steingard Foundation, Francanucci Insurance, Ltd., Juditha Corporation, Simmons Partners, and Saracone Investments.
No! A mail drop? She had driven all the way out here to find a mail drop! She went to the Saracone Investments box, which was stainless steel like the others, and locked, with a little clear window in the top. No mail showed in the window, so it must have been empty, saving both the decision of whether to break in and Mary’s immortal soul. But she couldn’t be stopped now. A dry hole!
She hit the mailbox in frustration. She couldn’t believe an empty mailbox was all there was to Saracone Investments. Where did Justin go to work, and Giovanni before him? Did they work at all? She had seen something like this only once before in her life. At Grun amp; Chase, her old law firm, she had met a client whose father had made money in the stock market in the early 1950s. The children and grandchildren spent their lives investing and reinvesting the money he’d earned in the fund but were never employed in real jobs. Was that what she was seeing with the Saracones, and Justin? Where had they earned all that money? She couldn’t just give up and go back to the office. She had forgotten how to be a lawyer. And just when she started to like it, too.
Ten minutes later, Mary had successfully located the management office of the industrial park and was standing before a reception desk with a cardboard box she’d had in her trunk. She placed it on the reception desk next to a nameplate that read TONI BRUNETTI and waited for the receptionist to get off the phone. It didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon. Toni, a young woman with spiky black hair and a fake-diamond stud pierced through her left nostril, had flashed Mary the one-minute sign five minutes ago.
“And then I find out, just this morning when I get his email, that he was seeing her and her friend and all the chicks from the chat room. All of them. Even hillbillygirl!”
Mary averted her eyes but there was nothing to see. A plain office with white walls, furnished with a tweedy sofa and chairs, a whitish laminated coffee table, topped off with a dreaded vase of company tulips.
“How could he do that? Hillbillygirl? Who knows what you could catch from a hillbillygirl?” Toni tore a Kleenex from a gaily patterned cube on her desk and dabbed at her nose with it. Mary wondered what the deal was with that nose pierce. Did it get in the way of heartbreak?
“I knew he was fooling around. He started working out and he got his eyes lasered and his teeth whitened. Since when did he ever care about his eyes or his teeth? Until February, the only thing he cared about was basketball!”
Mary tried not to eavesdrop but she couldn’t help it. The woman’s voice bore the unmistakable inflections of South Philly – adorably warped o’s and deliciously nasal a’s, and with a name like Brunetti, she was clearly a paesana. And unwittingly, Toni was giving Mary a better idea than the one she’d had.
“Oh, yeah, and he bought an Ab-Doer, can you believe that? An Ab-Doer? How could I have been so stupid?” Toni gritted her teeth without smearing her lip liner. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll call you back, I have to help someone here. Thanks. Bye.” She hug up, sniffed hard, and looked wetly at Mary, who felt a tug for her.
“You want to go freshen up?”
“No, I’m fine.” Toni blinked back tears. “I so wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”
“I so understand,” Mary said, ramping up her accent, which had barely survived an Ivy League law school. “You’re from South Philly, aren’t you?”
“You got it. Sixteenth amp; Wolf.”
“Get out!” Mary grinned. “St. Monica’s? I graduated Goretti, too. What year were you?”
“We moved to Delco for high school. I went to Interboro.”
“It’s all good.” Mary smiled. Having traded both high schools and parishes, the two girls had just transferred billions of information-bytes faster than any Pentium chip. They had learned that they had everything in common, and in fact, might be the same person. “So what are you doin’ out here?” Out here could be west of Fifteenth Street, or Montana.
“My loser boyfriend was from out here.”
“He’ll get his,” Mary said, with a twinge. She felt bad, but she had a mission to accomplish, and she was hoping another white lie wouldn’t hurt. It was a venial sin, at worst. She summoned the frustration of her morning, her newfound hatred of tulips and a pathetic frown. “I can’t believe this, you and I have so much in common. More than you think. I’m in the exact same situation as you, with your boyfriend.”
“You are?” Toni’s damp eyes widened.
“Yes. That’s why I’m here. I’ve been seeing Justin Saracone, from Saracone Investments. The rich family with the mail drop here, at the end?”
“My God!” Toni’s manicured hand flew to her mouth. “I know that turd! He hits on me every time he comes in – and he’s married! He thinks that smile will get him anywhere.”
“I’m not surprised. He told me he wasn’t married when I met him, so now I’m dumping him.” Mary moved her empty box forward on the counter. “This is his stuff.”
“What is it with men?” Toni asked, bewildered.
“Don’t ask me.” If I knew any, I’d tell you. “He’s a pig.”
“A tool.”
“A dog.” All this name-calling was making Mary feel unaccountably better. But back to the point. “I came to leave his stuff in his mailbox, but I had a second thought. I want to take it to his house. And deliver it to his wife!”
“What a great idea!” Toni clapped in delight, as Mary had hoped she would.
“Why should these guys get off scot-free?”
“They shouldn’t!”
“We’re not gonna let them treat us this way, are we?”
“Hell, no!”
“We don’t have to take their crap!”
“No way!”
“We can fight back!” Mary raised her palm, and Toni slapped her five.
“We will fight back! Do it! Do it! Do it!”
“I don’t have his home address!”
“I do, it’s in the file!”
“Let me have it!”
Suddenly Toni’s triumphant smile faded and she lowered her hand. “I can’t. Saracone signed up for the lockbox and he pays the bill, but I can’t give you his address. I’m not allowed.”