[Chapter 3: Daisy Cuomo]
They watched Daisy Cuomo's pretty blue Dodge pull away from Barreto Point Pier Park and head south toward the city.
Emily and David looked at each other.
"Let's go. Back to the precinct first," David said.
"All right..." Emily agreed.
They didn't talk again until they were inside the patrol car and the engine had started. David couldn't help himself. "Unbelievable. I never would have guessed Ms. Cuomo would be involved with that kid..."
Emily nodded.
She drove carefully and she had been just as stunned.
Daisy Cuomo was thirty years old and she had been married once.
Her husband had died five years earlier.
She had been a widow for years.
But Emily, who had become something like a friend to Daisy Cuomo, knew more than David did.
Before she married, Daisy's family name had been Morgenthau.
Cuomo was her late husband's surname.
Either way -- Cuomo or Morgenthau -- Daisy came from old money on the East Coast.
She was high-born, elegant, and holding a promising mid-level post in the Northern District of New York's judicial system.
And she was somehow involved with a kid who had nearly landed in jail.
Even if Emily admitted he was handsome, lots of New York cops still found it hard to believe.
But facts had a way of speaking for themselves.
Daisy Cuomo didn't bother hiding it in public.
This couldn't be fake.
"By the way, Emily, do you think what that guy said back there was true?" David asked.
"What do you mean?" she replied.
"The stuff he said before he got in Ms. Cuomo's car -- about tonight, about those guys."
"You mean Al and that crew of his?"
"Yeah."
"Maybe we could try. After all, he used to be in Al's crew. If we really nab someone, that would be our contribution too."
"All right, I'll call a few more people to stake out tonight."
"Okay..." David said.
---
Daisy drove Orlando into the Manhattan traffic in her deep-blue Dodge. Skyscrapers blurred past the windows.
Orlando propped his arm on the window, chatting with the woman beside him and thinking back on what he had pulled off since he had been transmigrated a month and half earlier.
As Emily and David had seen, he had gotten involved with Daisy, a woman much older -- he had definitely made the first move.
"...Seymour was pretty much retired. He'd sold his record company to Warner," Daisy said inside the car in a clear, bright voice. "He owed me a favor. When I first came to New York five years ago, I helped him with that lawsuit against Warner..."
Daisy Cuomo was beautiful and in great shape. The pretty widow had a head of chestnut, wavy hair and she had come from one of the city's established families.
Being with her had mainly come down to Orlando getting the right breaks.
"You've got a great voice. That song you wrote -- I'm not an expert, but I thought it was really good," she said.
They stopped at a red light. Manhattan had the most traffic lights in the city, and at dusk they seemed to stay red forever.
"Like I've said before, darling, the glamorous life of a star isn't easy," Daisy told him. "You needed more than talent. You needed stamina, discipline, judgment, and constant watchfulness. Otherwise you could go broke or get ruined -- or worse."
She parked at the light and turned to the young man in the passenger seat.
He leaned in and kissed her for a few seconds, then murmured, "You're so beautiful, baby."
Daisy bit her lip in resignation. God, how had he known she'd wanted a kiss right then?
Her eyes went soft as she looked at Orlando -- the young stud was handsome and thinking about him made her weak in the knees.
Maybe -- just like he said -- they were on the same wavelength.
Orlando smiled to himself. It wasn't that they were magically in tune; it was that he could read her mind.
---
Starting a month and half ago, Orlando had shamelessly used his looks to edge closer to the beautiful, long-widowed probation officer. At first she had been dismissive.
But just as men found it hard to resist an attractive eighteen-year-old woman who seemed to understand them, women had a hard time rejecting a handsome, well-built 18-year-old when he knew how to reach them emotionally.
And Daisy had been widowed for years, after all. Rich men keeping younger lovers was common enough, and rich women keeping handsome young companions wasn't unheard of either.
Bit by bit, Orlando opened her up.
Then, three nights earlier on a rainy evening, the handsome young man called the woman who had been looking after him and said he'd been down on his luck -- no money for food, no rent, no options in the Bronx except to sleep on the street. He said he was cold and starving.
Daisy's heart softened. She took him to her Manhattan apartment.
That night, half pushed and half willing, she let him have her.
That opened up a whole new world -- this young stud had an electric presence.
It was the real kind of spark.
Three days had passed.
For three nights in a row, Daisy couldn't sleep enough.
From the end of her shift until she ate dinner around eight, he kept at her until the apartment turned into their private playground.
She didn't get to bed until two or three in the morning and she was back up by eight for work.
No wonder she had dark circles under her eyes.
Yesterday, Orlando had surprised her.
He said he'd written a song and already recorded a demo. He wanted to be a singer and he wanted her help.
Daisy hadn't refused or agreed right away. She had listened to his demo first.
That demo changed her opinion of the kid again. She hadn't expected he could do that -- the song was pretty good.
Daisy decided to use her contacts to try to help him.
That led to tonight: the two of them out in lower Manhattan, going a restaurant to introduce him to Seymour Stein.
---
They reached a steakhouse near Wall Street.
Daisy led Orlando to a window table where someone was already waiting -- Seymour Stein had arrived earlier.
Seymour was a plump, white-haired old man with heavy bags under his eyes and half his hair gone, the rest almost all gray.
Seeing her and her young companion, the old man smiled and folded his newspaper. "Good evening, Ms. Cuomo. Is this the surprise you mentioned?"
"Good evening, Mr. Stein. This is Orlando Keller, a young musical talent. He's only 18 and he just wrote a song. Orlando, go ahead and play it -- Mr. Stein is the real expert in this field," Daisy said, patting Orlando on the arm and pointing to the Sony Walkman on the table.
On the way over, Daisy had said that since Orlando wanted to pursue a career as a singer or a star, they should keep up appearances and act like ordinary friends in public.
After all, whether for Daisy Cuomo herself or for a would-be rising star like Orlando, a thirty-year-old judicial official in New York getting romantically involved with an eighteen-year-old performer wasn't something either of them wanted making headlines.
*****
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