Before I Say Good-Bye (32 page)

Minutes, an hour, an hour and a half went by as he sat immobilized, straining for every memory of her, however vague, he could recall.

Oh, Quinny, why did you have to die like that? he asked.

And why, Mother, did you blame yourself for what happened to me? It wasn’t your fault.
I
was the stupid little kid who caused the accident.

But it turned out all right, actually better than all right. I wanted you to at least know that, he thought.

The doorbell rang. He ignored it. It rang again, this time persistently.

Damn! Leave me alone, he thought. I don’t want to have a drink with the neighbors.

Reluctantly, he got up, walked across the room and opened the door. Nell MacDermott was standing there. “Mac told me,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Dan.”

Wordlessly he stepped aside and let her in. He closed the door, put his arms around her and began to cry.

Friday, June 23

seventy-four

O
N
F
RIDAY MORNING,
a messenger was sent to collect tape cassettes of the September 9th, late-evening newscasts from each of New York City’s six major television stations. Once gathered, they were to be delivered to the district attorney’s office.

Detectives Sclafani and Brennan were waiting for the messenger, and when he arrived they took the tapes to the tech room on the ninth floor. Making their way through the maze of equipment and wires, they selected a VCR and television off to one side of the room. Brennan pulled up chairs, while Sclafani dropped the tape from the CBS station into the player.

“Showtime,” he told his partner. “Get out the popcorn.”

The lead story was about the fire that had engulfed the landmark Vandermeer mansion on Twenty-eighth Street and Seventh Avenue.

Dana Adams was the CBS reporter on the scene, broadcasting live at the time. “The Vandermeer mansion, erected on one of the oldest original Dutch farms in the city, and a landmark building that had been standing empty for the past eight years, was engulfed in
flames tonight. The fire, which was called in to the local fire station at 7:34, spread rapidly through the building, at one point engulfing the entire roof. On reports that homeless people had occasionally been seen in and around the premises, firefighters risked their lives to search the structure. Tragically, in an upstairs bathroom they discovered the body of a homeless woman who apparently had died of smoke inhalation. She is believed also to have started the fire that consumed the building. Authorities say they have made a tentative identification but will not release the victim’s name until it has been confirmed and the next of kin can be located and notified.”

The news segment ended and a commercial began.

“The Vandermeer mansion!” Sclafani exclaimed. “Lang owns that, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, and Cauliff owned the property next to it.”

“Which means they both stood to make a buck on that fire.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, let’s watch the rest of the tapes just in case there is something else that might possibly have been tied to Jimmy Ryan’s big payoff.”

Almost three hours later, they had found no other story on any of the stations that in any way could conceivably concern Jimmy Ryan. The destruction of the old mansion had been covered extensively on all the stations, of course.

They turned the tapes over to technical support to be copied for backup security. “And run the six Vandermeer segments together,” Sclafani directed the technician.

They went back to Sclafani’s office to review what they had learned. “What have we got?” Brennan asked.

“Coincidence, which we both know is a dirty word, and the opinion of a ten-year-old girl that Daddy got upset while watching that broadcast. Maybe after a couple of beers, Daddy was just feeling down on his luck.”

“Lisa Ryan said that his story at the time was that the ‘cancel the job’ phone call related to extra work he’d already taken care of.”

“That’s easy enough to check out, I guess.” Brennan got up. “We’ve seen cases of homeless people accidentally setting fires in abandoned buildings,” he said thoughtfully, “and other people losing their lives because of it.”

“Take it from the other angle,” Sclafani suggested. “When a homeless person is known to be squatting in a building that burns down, it’s easy to assume that’s who caused the fire.”

“I think we both agree it’s time to take a good look at exactly what happened on September 9th in the Vandermeer mansion.” George Brennan took out his notebook. “I’ll start digging on that end. Let’s see. That’s Twenty-eighth Street, on the east side of Seventh Avenue. The 13th Precinct would have the file.

“I’m going out with bag lady Winnie Johnson’s key again,” Sclafani said. “We need to find the bank where she had that safe deposit box.”

“Unless it’s too late.”

“Unless it’s too late,” Sclafani agreed. “If an eight-year-old kid from Wilmington is right, someone got off that boat before the explosion. My guess as of now is that the person he saw was Winifred Johnson. In which case, even without the key, she could have gotten into the box.”

“Do you realize that right now we’re following up leads provided by a farsighted eight-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl who keeps a diary?” Brennan said with a sigh. “Mother told me there’d be days like this.”

seventy-five

O
N
F
RIDAY MORNING,
Nell phoned the Old Woods Manor nursing home and inquired about Winifred Johnson’s mother. She was switched to the nurse’s desk on the second floor.

“She’s really quite depressed,” the nurse told her. “Winifred was a
very
dutiful daughter. She came up here for a visit every Saturday, and sometimes in the evenings during the week as well.”

Winifred the faithful daughter. Winifred the swimmer. Winifred the bag lady. Winifred the lover of Harry Reynolds. Which one
was
she, Nell wondered, or was she all four of those people? And was she now in South America or on one of those islands in the Caribbean that wouldn’t send her back to the U.S. even if authorities located her there?

“Is there anything I can do for Mrs. Johnson?” she asked.

“I think the best thing you could do would be to pay her a visit,” the nurse said frankly. “She wants to talk about her daughter, and I’m afraid the other guests here avoid her. She is a bit of a complainer, you know.”

“I had intended to come up to see her next week,” Nell said.
She wants to talk about her daughter,
she
thought. Was it possible that Mrs. Johnson might be able to tell me something that could lead to Winifred’s whereabouts, assuming she is still alive?

“But I’ll come today instead,” she promised. “I can be there around noon.”

She put the receiver down and went to the window. It was a gray, rainy morning, and when she had awakened, she had lain in bed for a long time, her eyes closed, reviewing everything that had happened in the last two weeks.

She had imagined Adam’s face, painting it in scrupulous detail. On that last morning there had been no trace of the smile that had captivated her on their first meeting. He had been edgy and nervous, so anxious to get away that he had walked off without his jacket or briefcase.

The jacket with safe-deposit key number 332 in it.

I should turn the key over to the detectives, Nell thought, as she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I know I should.
But not until . . .
She did not finish the thought.

A possibility, both grotesque and bizarre, had been forming in her mind—a possibility that by keeping the key she might be able to confirm or refute.

Having the second key won’t help them find the bank any faster anyhow, she reasoned, as she stepped under the steaming water.

She had almost confided to Dan what she was planning and why it was necessary, but last night had not been the time for that. That was the time to let him talk out his own grief and pain. In halting, broken sentences, he had told her about the accident that drove his mother away, about the long months in the hospital
when he had kept praying that the door to his room would open and he would see her standing there. Then he had talked about how the devotion of his grandparents had helped him to heal both physically and emotionally.

Finally he said, “I know that once I’m able to move my mother to the family burial plot in Maryland, I’ll start to have a feeling of peace about her. I won’t wake up in the middle of the night wondering if she’s out on the streets somewhere, cold or hungry or sick.”

I told him that I truly believe the people we love never really leave us, Nell thought as the pelting water coursed over her face. I told him about Mother and Daddy coming to say good-bye to me.

He asked me if Adam had said good-bye in the same way. I just shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about Adam last night.

At ten o’clock she had gone into his kitchen and poked around, looking for the makings of dinner. “You’re obviously not one of those bachelors who’s a gourmet cook,” she had told him with a smile.

She found eggs and cheese and a tomato, and was able to put together an omelet and toast and coffee. As they ate, he even had been able to joke a little. “Are you able to make yourself invisible, Nell? I’ve been trying to figure out how you got past my doorman. He’s worse than a prison guard. You practically have to give a blood sample to get in if you’re not a tenant.”

“Somebody in the building is having a party. I joined a group of six or seven people, then when they got off on the fourth floor, I told the elevator operator I was visiting you. He let me off here and pointed to your apartment. I was afraid if I was announced, you either
wouldn’t answer the intercom or would turn me down.”

“Well, there your precognition was wrong. I would have said, ‘Come up, Nell. I need you.’ ” He gave her a steady look.

It was almost midnight when Dan had gone downstairs with her and put her in a cab. “l won’t be able to meet Mac at Bellevue until about noon,” he had told her. “I’m scheduled for a couple of surgeries in the morning.”

Fifteen minutes later, when Nell arrived home, there was a message from him on her answering machine: “Nell, I don’t think I thanked you for coming to be with me tonight. It made me feel the way I would have felt as a kid if the hospital door had opened and the beautiful lady I loved was there. I know I have a hell of a nerve talking like this, and won’t again for at least another six months, I promise. I do realize you’ve been widowed for only two weeks. It’s just that I’m so thankful that you’ve come into my life.”

She had taken the tape out of the machine and put it in one of the dresser drawers.

Nell thought of the tape again as she stepped out of the shower this morning, toweled herself vigorously, dried her hair and dressed in light-blue gabardine slacks and a blue-and-white, man-tailored shirt.

She was tempted to go to the drawer, get out the tape and play it again. It was at least a hint of a future that might be happier. But she knew that the special, almost magical feeling hearing it had given her last night would not be there today.

In fact, she had a feeling of dread about the day ahead of her. She sensed that something terrible was
going to happen. She had known it when she first opened her eyes this morning, after a fitful and dream-filled sleep. There was a catastrophe hovering in the air around her, in much the same way a tornado’s spiraling black cloud hangs from the sky before touching ground and obliterating everything in its path.

She sensed all this, but felt powerless to prevent it, whatever it might be. She was
part
of it, an actor in an inevitable scene that had to be played out, that could not be avoided. Through her own experience over the years, and also because of Gert’s influence, she had come to understand that what she was experiencing was precognition.

Precognition: The knowledge of a future event through extrasensory means.

Gert had explained it to her. It had happened to her a few times.

As Nell touched her lips with gloss, she tried to reason with herself. I thought it was precognition the other day when I experienced that sense of heat and burning and gasping for air. But when Dan’s mother suffocated in that fire, that’s what she must have been going through. Did I pick up some vibrations from her?

Only time would tell.

Once again, the questions that had haunted her dreams all through the night echoed in her mind.
Did
someone really get off that boat? If someone
did
escape that explosion, was it Winifred? Or was it perhaps a paid assassin who had been hiding in the engine room?

Or was it Adam?

It was a question she had to have answered. And if she was right, she knew how to find that answer.

seventy-six

A
T NOON,
Dan Minor pushed open the door of the medical examiner’s office on Thirtieth Street and First Avenue. Mac was waiting for him in the reception area.

“I’m sorry to be late,” Dan said.