Cemetery of Angels Read Online Free PDF Page B

glancing around the front hall and moving behind Essie toward the living room.
    “Nickels, The Lawyer,” Essie said. “His real name is Ted Nickels. But ‘Nickels The Lawyer’ is what I call him.” She mouthed his name with growing venom, as if she had been dealing with a Bensonhurst wise guy: Vinnie “The Hammer” or Patty “The Torch.’”
    Nickels The Lawyer.
    She paused for a moment. There was a resonance of the Grand Concourse in her pattern of speech.
    “Lawyers,” she said disgustedly. “I hate lawyers. My late husband was a lawyer. Nickels is a cheapskate. That’s the problem. They’re all cheapskates. Democrats and cheapskates. Tell me how I can show a house without electricity? How can my customers see?” Essie wrote herself a note. “How can I sell real estate in darkness?” she pleaded.
    The Moores smiled, their only response to Essie’s rhetorical flights.
    “If the electricity’s a problem we could come back” Rebecca Moore offered.
    “Not a chance,” Essie said. “I wouldn’t waste your time. Ignore the electricity. It’s bright outside. We’ll open doors. We’ll pull up shades. I’ll light a torch. We’ll start a religion. You’ll be able to see perfectly. Let me show you the house.”
    Bill and Rebecca Moore already knew a few things. They knew, for example, what their eyes had told them on arrival.
    For starters, this particular house was the eyesore of an otherwise genteel block. It was a rambling, wooden dissolute Queen Anne seven-eighths dead, not from old age but from neglect, and it was looking for a final shot at resuscitation. It was the most downtrodden building in a neighborhood of gorgeously restored Spanish, Victorian, and Queen Anne homes nestled among the generous trees and plush lawns.
    Its entrance featured seventeen uneven flagstones traversing an untidy front lawn, which was brown with dead grass. There should have been nineteen flagstones, but two near the sidewalk had either been stolen or had walked off by themselves. There was also a front porch that sagged painfully, the one upon which they had stood to enter. Upon it, stood the skeleton of a torn apart cane rocker.
    And beside the front door there was a sign that read, rather wistfully, “FOR SALE.” The sign had been put there by the late Mrs. Dickinson. She had actually never wanted to sell the place, Essie explained as they walked through, but she had enjoyed the company of people coming to the door to inquire.
    The sign had also been there for a while, though only a fraction of the time as the house. Like the paint on the wood of the dwelling, the sign was faded and peeling.
    Mrs. Dickinson had lived with nine cats, the aroma of which kept the visiting time of callers at a minimum. Even Nickels, the cheapskate lawyer, had agreed to invest a few bucks to have the joint fumigated after Mrs. Dickinson’s earthly departure.
    On the ground floor there were some boarded front windows. And on both sides were their companion pieces: windows with glass so filthy that they looked tinted. Broken green shades hung unevenly on the inside of each. As the Moores discovered when Essie gave them their tour, the windows looked even dirtier from the inside.
    Strangely enough, the house wasn’t really a monstrosity. It only looked like one. But initially it didn’t look promising, either. In fact, Bill Moore’s first impression was one of menace. What made it worse was that as Bill Moore stood in the living room, and as Essie set down her notebook and her glasses on a small table — the sole remaining piece of furniture in the living room — he could have sworn he heard a voice.
    Or a thought. Somewhere.
    Who are these intruders?
    But then the women came back from the kitchen.
    “You know, Bill,” Rebecca said, “like Mrs. Lewisohn said, if you use your imagination…”
    “It will take a lot of imagination,” Bill Moore said. “And a lot of money. And a lot of scraping and painting. Which doesn’t rule it