A Cruel Season for Dying (43 page)

The lineup room was a glassed-in stage, fronted by a dimly lit hallway. Gil Avery stood waiting in the corridor-shaped room
with Detective Walter Talbot. Avery’s attitude was sullen, but an improvement on his mood when picked up earlier in the morning.
It was Avery who had discovered Pinot’s body, and Talbot who had interviewed the eighteen-year-old after his roommate’s murder.
He well remembered the boy’s creepy self-possession at the time, a feral aplomb that held no quarter.
Jude is dead. I’m alive. So…?

Avery had been told nothing about why he was here now, or who he was expected to identify. Their best bet for an honest reaction
was to maintain the element of surprise.

“Here they come,” Talbot said unnecessarily as a door opened and five men walked onto the stage. Four were civilian clerks
or cops, commandeered this morning for the lineup.

“See anybody you recognize?” Talbot searched Avery’s face.

“Is that what this is about?” Sullen had become bored. “You gonna bust this guy for taking pictures?”

“Which guy are we talking about?”

“Number two.”

No surprise. Graff was number two. The boy had verified what they knew.

“What are you saying exactly?” Talbot tied it down. “Where have you seen number two before?”

“He took pictures of me. Nude shots. But it wasn’t my dick that got him going. The freak had some kind of weird thing for
this.” Avery fingered the birthmark at the side of his neck. He looked back at Talbot. “Since when is taking pictures illegal?”

“Is that all that happened?”

“You mean, did he ask me to suck him off?”

“Was there any kind of contact, sexual or otherwise?”

Avery shook his head. “He never even said much. Paid good and never touched me.”

“Did this guy photograph Jude?”

Now Avery smiled, tight-lipped and self-satisfied that he’d finally gotten the point. He looked back to the lighted box, to
where Graff still stood. The smile widened. “No way,” he said.

“Number two didn’t photograph Jude?” Talbot asked now.

“I don’t know about that. I’m just telling you that nutcase didn’t kill him.”

Avery was taken away to an interrogation room for further questioning on what exactly had taken place in that photographic
session. But it didn’t seem now that they would be able to establish anything more than an indirect link between Graff and
Pinot.

It was Tiffany Jameson’s turn now. The waitress looked even thinner to Talbot than she had in the bistro, balancing on her
thick high heels and wearing some skinny little dress. She fidgeted with her ponytail as she glanced around, all doe-eyed
and anxious.

“That’s my lieutenant down there,” he explained Sakura’s presence at the end of the hall. “He’ll be observing…. You ready?”

“Sure.” The ponytail got a tug.

He reached up and pressed the button on the intercom. “Send them out.”

The five men walked out for a second time on the stage. All five wore dark outdoor jackets now.

In her high heels Tiffany shifted nervously.

“Take your time,” he said to her. “And don’t forget, they can’t see or hear you.”

“I know. But it’s just … they seem so close.”

“That’s so you can really get a good look,” he explained. “We can ask them to step forward or turn…. Whatever you think will
help.
And if you need to hear a voice, we can get them to say whatever you want.”

She nodded, then surprised him by walking right up to the glass. She moved the length of the line, one through five, and back
again. He remembered she had told him she’d seen this
on the cop shows.

“You know, I never actually saw his face.” She had turned to him.

He nodded and hit the button. “Hats and sunglasses, please.”

The men had been instructed on this earlier. In order to insure due process, no subject in a lineup could favor a witness
description more than any other. All five took Yankees caps and sunglasses from the pockets of their jackets. Put them on.

Tiffany worked her way down the line again. “You said I could ask them to say something?”

“That’s right.”

“One and four,” she said to him. “‘Just a cup of coffee.’”

He hit the button again. “Numbers one and four. Step forward and say the phrase:
Just a cup of coffee.
”

“Could they say it with their jackets off?”

He nodded and relayed the instructions. Her face was completely earnest now, scrutinizing the two men.

“Let’s hear that phrase again,” he said, directing the men to repeat it a third time.

She listened with her head cocked, the ponytail swinging, then walked back over to him. She really was model tall, and the
silly shoes put them on a level, eye to eye. Hers registered disappointment.

“I’m awfully sorry, Detective Talbot,” she said to him. “I really wanted to help. I mean, it
could
be one of them … especially number four. But his voice doesn’t sound right.” She shook her head for emphasis. “I just can’t
be sure.”

He smiled. “It’s okay, Ms. Jameson. We appreciate your coming in. Detective Johnson’s out there. She’ll see you get downstairs.”

She smiled back at him, and the midwestern wholesomeness showed through the trendy clothes. “It’s Tiffany,” she said. The
doe look widened in her eyes, and then she was gone.

Sakura walked over.

“Sorry, Lieutenant.” He shook his head.

“You did a good job, Walt. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen.”

Kelly poked his head in. “The bartender’s here.”

“I’ll take it,” Sakura said, “but stay here, Walt.”

Jack Trehan walked in with an attitude, like the hallway was the real stage. He glanced briefly at the five men who were still
in the box, then back to Sakura. “Hi, Lieutenant. Glad to be of service.”

“This is Detective Talbot.” Sakura introduced him.

A quirk of the smile. “These the guys?” Trehan was looking at the men now, still in the caps and dark glasses.

“Number four,” he said, even before Sakura could answer the obvious.

“You need to be positive, Mr. Trehan,” Sakura said mildly. “In your statement you said that you’d only seen the man who sat
next to Westlake for a very short time. The bar was not well lit …”

Trehan turned away from him, looking back at the lineup. “Number four,” he insisted.

This second time out in the lineup, position four was Graff.

Celia Mancuso was a ball of misery. She sat straight enough on the cold cement bench. But in her mind she was coiled tight,
head down, legs drawn up to her chest, arms wrapping beneath her knees, hands anchored and clutching at her elbows. It was
the posture she’d adopted for the last five days. As a physical fact within her room. Inside herself when anyone could watch,
like this morning at Lucia’s funeral.

What she wanted was to disappear. Or at least to be invisible.

“CeCe … CeCe,” her cousins were calling. “Come on, CeCe. We’re going high!”

Laura and Julia, bundled in their thick quilted jackets, were moving in tandem on the swings. Twin heads dipping and rising,
their dark bobs flying out behind them, then parting and rushing like tasseled silk to sweep against their faces. Across the
park her aunt Roslyn was occupied with the baby, that and gossiping with some friend.

“Be careful,” she heard herself calling to the girls, and felt the black twinge inside. Stupid to be sent here to help watch
her cousins. She hadn’t saved Lucia.

“Hi.”

She hadn’t seen the girl approach, but she hadn’t been paying attention. Seeing, but not seeing, as if the world, not herself,
were fading.

“Hello,” she answered to be polite. The girl, in jeans and jacket over a neighborhood high-school sweatshirt, was older than
she’d thought at first.

“I grew up right down that street,” the girl said, pointing. She sat down with her on the bench. “You live around here?”

She shook her head. “I’m visiting my cousins.” She looked over to where the girls were still playing on the swings. Come to
earth now, but twisting the chains and spinning.

“They’re cute.”

She smiled. The girl beside her was beautiful. She could look like a movie star, dressed right. “Your hair’s really pretty,”
she said to her. It felt good to say something nice like that.

“Thank you. Yours is pretty too. In fact, you’re pretty …?”

“Celia.”

“Neat name. But you look sad, Celia. Is something wrong?” The soft eyes probed her face.

She started to say no, that there was nothing, but the lie stuck in her throat. She didn’t answer, looking over at her cousins
instead. They were on the slide now. Laura climbing. Julia, already at the top, arms pointing straight, poised for the rush
to the ground. Aunt Roslyn, still chatting away, was changing the baby.

She turned back to he girl. “Do you have a boyfriend?” The words came out of her mouth.

“I did.” The girl’s lips twisted. “We broke up…. What about you, Celia? I’ll bet you have a boyfriend.”

“Kinda …”

“What’s his name?”

“Pete. Pete Fazio.” And then without meaning to at all, she told the girl everything. About Lucia. About the necklace and
how she had lied. Because Pete had given
her
the locket. The locket she had lost before she’d even had a chance to put his picture inside. Lost it the day they’d left
the playground to sneak into the basement of the rectory.

It wasn’t a sin, the girl said, if you really loved the boy to let him kiss you. And if Pete had tried to feel her up—well,
that was just the way guys were, and she’d been exactly right to push him off and run away.

But what about the lie she had told the police? Saying that the necklace was Lucia’s, to keep her papa from finding out about
Pete. Her sister was dead, and she couldn’t stand for Papa to hate her any more than he already did for catching the flu and
letting somebody get Lucia.

The girl had been really nice and it had been good to cry. The girl had cried a little too and had said it was okay. And that
she was sure that her papa loved her and didn’t blame her at all for what some sick man had done to her sister. Only she hadn’t
said
man,
but a bad word. But that was okay too, because what had happened to Lucia made you want to say bad words like that.

The girl had hugged her before she left. And looked so pretty with her blond hair bouncing as she walked away, that for a
little while she forgot to be sad. And only later felt guilty.

“Yes?” Adrian Lovett smiled vaguely at the stranger standing on his landing and watched as he shook off the rain that had
just started to fall outside.

“Adrian Lovett?”

“Yes. May I help you?”

“Detective Pete Handy.” The man flashed his NYPD badge. “I see you’re headed out.” He motioned toward the jacket he was holding.
“Can I have a few words with you first, Mr. Lovett? I’ve missed you several times.”

“Sure.” He stepped aside, letting in the short stocky policeman, the wet still peppering the shoulders of his ancient overcoat.
“I was just going out to pick up something to eat.”

“This is some place you’ve got here.” Handy moved in, looking in all directions at once. “I’ve never been in one of these
renovateds. Do the work yourself?”

“Most of it was already completed before we moved here.”

“We?”

“My wife and I.”

Handy nodded, walked up to one of the walls that split the large loft into a maze. “This wouldn’t be her?”

“Actually, yes.”

The cop’s pug eyes traveled over the black-and-white photograph. The naked woman appeared to be flying, her long legs split
into a dancer’s arabesque. Her arms, tangled in long curling hair, rose over her head in the unfinished circle of a half-moon.

“Beautiful woman.”

“Yes, she was. She died some time ago.”

“What a waste. Beautiful woman like that.”

“Did you want to ask me something?”

“Oh … yeah.” Handy turned from the dead wife’s image, extracting a small notebook from the inside pocket of his coat. He flipped
open the pad and pulled out a ballpoint. “This the kind of thing you show at the Milne gallery?” He pointed back at the portrait.