CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) (15 page)

I nodded.

“Those kids have nothing,” he said. “No families, no future. Think about that. The world—our world—tells them they’re garbage. That gang is all they have. They’ll do anything they have to do to be part of a group that wants them and tells them they’re worth something.”

In the warmth of the late-afternoon sun in Riverdale I thought of the chill dusk on a cracked-asphalt playground, and a fourteen-year-old ready to blow me away.

“If they’d had someone reaching out to them,” Chaiken went on, “maybe they’d have turned out differently. Maybe just one of them would have. Just one. But that would be worth the whole thing, don’t you think? And that’s what I’m trying to do.”

I drank, to soften the memory. “What would it be worth?” I asked.

“Andy …” Chaiken murmured, stopped. Then, as though coming to a private decision, he finished his scotch, put the glass down on the table, looked at me squarely. “Andy’s not a philanthropist, though he is a patient man. He has ambitions and he’s a natural-born planner. We have a private arrangement.”

“Which is?”

“As each property hits the end of its cycle, we will either sell it for its fair market value, with the profit going to Andy, or we will ourselves effectively buy it from him for the same amount.”

“How will that work?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t just hand over a large chunk of cash to him. Doesn’t anyone examine your books?”

“Oh, I see. No, that’s not a problem. You’re right, our books are audited constantly, but there are a million ways around it. We could, for example, pay Andy as a consultant—maybe a real estate consultant. There’s an irony to that that I rather like.”

“That would work? It’s that simple?”

“This sort of thing is done in the not-for-profit world all the time, Smith. There’s a lot of money floating around, and it’s not terribly well tracked. For everyone in this business for my naive, bleeding-heart reasons, there are half a dozen people here because they make a good living.”

Dr. Madsen’s sardonic smile flashed into my mind. I heard his voice, bitter with irony:
It’s a growth industry
.

“So Helping Hands is an investment for Hill? His private real estate trust?”

Chaiken nodded. “That’s correct.”

“How does he know it’s worthwhile?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What if those buildings don’t appreciate?”

“They’re almost bound to. Real estate tends to, in the long run.”

“There are a lot of abandoned buildings in that area. They were bad investments for someone.”

“That’s true. But the neighborhood seems to be coming up a little now. There’s building going on. The Bronx Renaissance is investing there heavily.”

“Jesus,” I sighed. “I’m out of my depth.” Maybe, I thought, I should get Lydia’s brother Ted to introduce me to his realtor friend. But Ted was one of the Chins who didn’t speak to me if he could avoid it.

The air in Chaiken’s study, warm and welcoming when we’d come in, now seemed a little close, a little stifling. With regret I put my unfinished bourbon on the coffee table. Chaiken had poured one damn big drink, and I had some plans yet for today.

“Well, thanks for your time,” I said. “I’d better go and see if I can find something easy to do.”

“Wait,” said Chaiken. “You said you were investigating murder,
but all you’ve asked me about is real estate. This arrangement I have with Andy—it’s improper, I know, but it would be difficult to prove it’s exactly illegal. And how would it connect to the deaths of those two men—two security guards? What would anyone gain?”

“So far,” I answered him, “I haven’t found anyone who’d gain by those deaths. All I’ve found is loss.”

I stood. The dog lifted his hairy head, waited to see whether this was going to develop into something of interest to him.

“But someone is gaining something,” I said. “When I find out what, I’ll know who.”

Chaiken stood too. That decided the dog, who scrabbled to his feet, slipping on the smooth stone. He barked, then shook himself vigorously, but he was as hairy as ever when he was through.

Chaiken walked with me to his front yard, where the long shadows of the spruces lay heavily on the golden-orange light.

“If I can do anything else,” he said, “be sure to ask. And keep me informed, all right?”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks again.”

I drove away in the opposite direction from the sun, which was preparing to slip behind the Palisades, turning the river crimson as a parting gift.

T
WENTY
-S
IX

B
y the time I got to Norwood it was dark, dark enough to be driving with lights. I checked out the lights as they came and went in my mirror, detoured out of my way once or twice to see what would happen, but nothing happened. The guy had stayed lost, it seemed. Well, fine. For now, fine.

Norwood was an old neighborhood of dark-brick apartment buildings, solid and substantial. Mature trees grew on the verges of wide sidewalks, corner stores sold newspapers and milk, and the lit rectangles of apartment-house windows glowed softly.

I found Henry Howe’s street and I found his building. I parked around the block, strolled back and watched the lobby from a distance until I caught the rhythm of comings and goings. There was no doorman, but this was the hour people came home from work, did the shopping, walked the dog. It was a large building; the lobby wasn’t empty for any long enough stretch to make me confident I could get in unnoticed.

I was considering two fallbacks—coming back later, or finding a service entrance with a lock I could pick in private—when a bicycle with a big aluminum carrier on the front bounced onto the sidewalk. I was across the street before the guy piloting it had gotten it locked to the tree in front of the building.

“Hey, my friend,” I said as I came up next to him, “that going in there?”

He looked at the square white pizza box he was removing from the carrier, back at me, and shrugged.

I took a guess and repeated the question in Spanish.

“
Sí
,” he nodded. “
Anchovies y pimentos verdes
. Yecch.” He made a face.

I told him in Spanish I’d take it in for him. He laughed, suggested I come on down to the pizza parlor and get whatever I wanted.

“
No, no,
” I said. “
Esa pisa. ¿Cuanto es?
” This pizza. How much?

“
Cuesta diez dollares, pero va al apartamento 6D
.”

I pulled a ten out of my wallet, added a pair of twenties to it.

“
No te apures.
” Don’t worry about it. “
Yo te lo llevo a 6D.
”

The pizza smelled great as I carried it into the building. You’re interested in an anchovy pizza, Smith, I thought, you must be hungry. 6D was happy to hear his pizza had arrived, and I was happy to get buzzed into Henry Howe’s building.

I made ten of my bucks back, plus a dollar-and-a-half tip, and then took the stairs down to the fourth floor, where Howe had lived.

The hallway, gray-blue patterned carpet against gray-blue textured walls, was empty. Howe’s apartment door was close to the stairs, looked as peaceful and domestic as any of its neighbors. Well, I thought, it probably was peaceful. Probably nothing much had happened in there these last few days.

As it turned out, I was wrong.

I took my tension bar and a likely rake from the set I’d brought.
Apartment doors tend to be tougher than the type of locks I’d whizzed through at the Bronx Home, so I was prepared.

This one, though, wasn’t tough at all. It opened as soon as I touched the knob.

I stepped back quickly, flattened myself against the wall, waited. Nothing.

Okay. This was no place to hang around. I slipped my gun loose, pushed the door open, went in low with it.

Inside was darkness, tense and silent. Evening sounds came from beyond the windows: a car horn honking, heels clicking on the walk.

I stood, shut the door, strained, listening. The place felt empty, but I’ve been wrong before. I surveyed the room. The drapes weren’t drawn and the streetlight’s pale glow eased in through the windows. I didn’t need to turn on a lamp to see what had happened here.

Someone else with the same idea, but, I liked to think, less finesse, had been here first.

Another step inside the door and I risked drowning in a sea of paper, of books and glass and sofa stuffing. Upturned chairs had been disemboweled, shelves swept clean of highball glasses. From the living room, where I stood, I could see the kitchen to my right and the bedroom down a short hall to the left. They didn’t look much better. The kitchen drawers had been yanked out and emptied, knives and forks and spoons mounded on the floor like floating piles of seaweed. I could see open cabinets, cereal spilled from boxes. Cans and jars and bottles lay stranded on counters, on the floor, in the sink.

In the living room, pictures were down, their backs ripped off. The sofa and stuffed chairs had been gutted, and most of the rest of the furniture was capsized, open, or fractured somehow. Next to the sofa lay the kitchen knife that had been used to dispatch it to the next world.

What the hell, I could walk on water. I strode through the mess, first in here, then the kitchen, the bedroom. The scene was eerily calm and colorless, pale gray where the streetlight reached, darker gray in the shadows.

Henry Howe’s bathroom had no window; here, for the first time, I risked a light.

I’d have known the bottle of aftershave was broken by the
scratching of glass on the tile under my feet and the reek in the air. I’d already guessed the contents of the medicine cabinet would be strewn around the room. The surprise, sudden and sickening, was in the bathtub: Dr. Reynolds, bloody, staring, and dead.

T
WENTY
-S
EVEN

I
looked at him. I think it was for a long time. He didn’t care. He was looking at something else, something the rest of us don’t know anything about.

Eventually, without moving, I started looking other places, working my way out, slowly, from the doctor’s blind eyes. The doctor’s chest had a hole in it, a small, wet, dark one in the center of a saucer-sized red stain. He was jackknifed in the tub, in the position of a man who’d fallen backward. Well, that could happen, if somebody shot you. I found myself zipping my jacket. I wanted a cigarette badly, the comfort of that, but I just stood there, looking.

Why were you here, I wondered. What had you been looking for? And were you killed because you found it, or because you didn’t?

Two things were sure: the search had been thorough, and it had been amateur. No pro would make this kind of wild mess; it makes it hard to work, to tell where you’ve been. But someone desperate might, tearing things apart, trying to bully and beat a place into giving up its secrets.

But what secrets? The person who had done this knew. I didn’t. I had come here out of instinct, on the chance that if Henry Howe had been killed not randomly but for a reason then I might find the reason here.

I looked back at Dr. Reynolds. His round, soft face was expressionless, as though he had bad news to deliver but wanted to choose his moment carefully. Blood splattered his slacks and his well-polished, comfortable shoes. One arm angled stiffly out of the tub, fingertips
brushing the toilet tank. Fuentes’s voice, quoting Howe, echoed in my head.
Got to keep the toilets flushin’
. A wild impulse to laugh grabbed hold of me. I forced myself calm. Dead bodies throw you, Smith? Too bad, isn’t it. Let’s get out of here, go have a drink. Toilets flushing.

Toilets flushing.

I looked at the doctor again. Then I scanned the bathroom floor, stepped carefully. At the toilet I lifted the top from the tank. The overhead light cast a shadow; I saw nothing but black water. I pushed up my sleeve, stuck my right arm in, felt around. Slime, cold and wet. What the hell did you expect? I felt around some more. More slime.

Then, different slime. Plastic, and tape. What did people do before duct tape? They didn’t hide things in toilet tanks. I peeled back the tape, lifted out the flat plastic-wrapped square. It dripped loud drops back into the tank, and cold water ran up my arm into my pushed-up sleeve. I stared at the dripping thing. It was an envelope, very carefully wrapped in heavy-gauge plastic, taped around, wrapped again.

I was willing to bet there were some important things in it.

I dried my hands and the plastic-wrapped envelope on my pants. It occurred to me I might be happier doing this with my back to Dr. Reynolds, but then it occurred to me that I wouldn’t. I tore some toilet paper, because I had no gloves, and used it to handle the tape and the plastic.

The thing inside was a nice, normal, white envelope. It was sealed; that was too bad, but I’d have to risk it. I tore it open.

It held an index card, neatly lettered, and photographs.

On the index card was a name—Margaret O’Connor—and an eight-digit number with the letters “ES” after it in parentheses.

I didn’t understand that. I couldn’t even concentrate on trying.

I turned to the photographs.

Those, I understood.

Some were fuzzier than others; all had the distortion, the flattening of perspective, that you get when you use a very long lens. I get it all the time when I do a surveillance. But even distorted, photos like this are readable enough. You can understand activities, make out faces.

Especially if you know them. I had no trouble picking out
Snake LeMoyne in some photos, Skeletor in others, in the doorway of a building down the street from the Bronx Home. And going in the doorway, or sometimes coming out, was a figure I could easily identify as Dr. Madsen, clutching his black medical bag.

I listened at Howe’s door, heard nothing in the hall. But it’s carpeted, Smith. Probably the entire Major Case Squad is out there waiting for you.

On the other hand, the NYPD didn’t seem to consider the deaths of Mike Downey and Henry Howe major cases.

I slipped out the door into the empty hall, the single photograph I had taken from the plastic-wrapped envelope feeling cold in my shirt pocket. The envelope was in another pocket, crumpled to garbage. The rest of the photos, and the card, were rewrapped in plastic and sunk to the bottom of the toilet tank.

I took the stairs down, strolled casually through the lobby trying to be unmemorable to dog-walkers. Back in the car I drove a few blocks along the main drag until I found a Dunkin’ Donuts with a phone booth in its parking lot. I called 911, reported a prowler in Henry Howe’s apartment.

Then I ambled into the Dunkin’ Donuts and got myself a cup of coffee. The place was very bright, full of a greasy, sugary deep-frying smell. The big cheery brown-and-pink clock on the wall told me it was almost six. Thank you, I thought, and so what?

In the car I lit a cigarette—my third since I left Howe’s building—and drank my coffee. I stared at the photo. Then I went back to the phone and called Lydia.

The machine answered. I started to leave a message, but Lydia cut me off. “Hi,” she said. “Hold it. I’m slicing scallions. Let me wash my hands.” The phone clattered down, there was silence, and then she came back. “I’m here.”

“Sounds domestic,” I said to her.

“I decided it was time I learned to cook. Where are you? What have you been doing?”

“Talking. Sneaking around. Do any of the bad guys in this case drive green Chevys?”

“How can I tell who the bad guys are?”

“Good point. What about the Chevy?”

“I’ll have to go back to the files and look. Do you have a plate? Why do you want this car?”

“It wants me. It followed me, from the courthouse to Arthur Chaiken’s. The plate has L’s and threes in it.”

“I thought you taught me when someone tails you, always let him get close enough so you can see his plate.”

“He must have read that chapter too.”

“Was he a pro?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe just a gifted amateur. Lydia, listen, there’s a problem. I’m going to tell you what happened, but you don’t know this, okay?”

“Are you in trouble?” Her voice quickened. “Do you need help?”

“I always need help, but right now the thing for you to do is to go on with what you’re doing. I’m just buying time, though I don’t know for whom and I don’t know why.” I told her where I’d been, what I’d found.

“Oh, my God, Bill,” she said softly. “Are you okay?”

“If I had a drink I’d be better. But I’m all right.”

“Dr. Reynolds.” Her voice was low. “He was the one who showed me around this morning.”

“At the Home?”

“Uh-huh. I wanted to tell you about it. I was waiting for you to call.”

“You found something?”

“I don’t know. Do you really want to talk about that now?”

I want you to keep talking to me, I thought. I want you to talk about anything, just stay with me. “Tell me. It might help.”

I think she knew what I meant. Her voice took on a very normal tone, just a report, one investigator to another. “It was all pretty standard,” she said. “It seemed like a good place, as those places go, but God, how awful to be stuck there the rest of your life. I can’t believe that’s good for anybody.”

“I don’t think it is. It’s a bad answer to a bad problem.”

“Ummm,” she said, agreeing. “Anyway, the only peculiar thing was after the tour, when we were talking in Reynolds’s office for a few minutes.”

I heard her voice quaver slightly at the doctor’s name.

“What happened?”

“He asked how soon my mother would need to be accommodated at the Home. It seems they have a long waiting list. I said I
hoped it could be soon, and was there anything that could be done about shortening her wait.”

“And?”

“Then he asked if my mother had any assets.”

“What did you say?”

“I said she had about seventy-five thousand dollars in the bank.”

“You’re kidding. Your mother does?”

“Chinese people are big savers.”

“Maybe I’ll marry you for your money.” I was sorry as soon as I said it. I’d forgotten I wasn’t supposed to talk that way to Lydia anymore. I expected anger; but she laughed.

“That would be a motive she’d understand from you.”

“Would she respect me for it?”

“She’d hate you. So: then I said that of course my brothers and I would expect to be paying for my mother’s care, and he didn’t have to worry about that.”

“Had he been worried about that?”

“No. This is the part that’s peculiar. He smiled and said that wasn’t the way it works. ‘Medicaid,’ he said. ‘Medicaid pays most medical costs directly related to resident’s needs. Once your mother moves in that won’t be a problem. Of course, sometimes relatives give gifts, out of gratitude or whatever—’ he smiled again then—’and we
never
turn them down. That’s how we got our piano, for example. But,’ he told me, ‘the system is peculiar. Medicaid doesn’t kick in until the patient’s assets are exhausted. Then the patient is considered medically indigent.’ He was apologetic about that—he didn’t want me to think he
really
thought the Chin family was indigent.”

“Considerate of him.”

“Very delicate. Anyway, then he got a little gloomy. ‘Well, Miss Chin, I’d love to tell you we could take your mother right away, because I know what a burden this must be to you and your brothers—’ ”

“Good thing your mother didn’t hear that.”

“No kidding! Anyway, he said, ‘But there is the waiting list. Now, unfortunately, we have an entire wing of empty rooms on the third floor that need to be renovated. We could accommodate a good number of new residents up there; but we haven’t got the funds to do the work.’ ”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Oh, let me guess. They estimate the cost of the renovation at seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“Uh-huh,” Lydia said. “Yes.”

We were both silent for a few moments. Then she said, “Bill? What was Dr. Reynolds doing in Howe’s apartment? Do you think he was looking for what you found?”

“If he was, it was altruistic of him. Unless he’s mixed up in whatever Madsen’s doing.”

“Which is what? Selling drugs to the Cobras?”

“That’s what it looks like,” I agreed.

“Have you told Mr. Moran?”

“No.”

She said nothing, waited.

“I want to sit on it for a little,” I told her. “I don’t know why.”

“A hunch? Like you tell me to play?”

“Not even. But I want to sort some things out. I want to find out what the card means. I want to go over with you what else I did today, see if we can put some things together.”

“I … I have people coming over,” she said. “To eat my scallions. Should I cancel that?”

“No.” A gust of wind raced across the parking lot, chasing leaves and trash. “The cops are on their way over to Howe’s now, but it’s way out of the Home’s precinct. It’ll take them until morning to make the connection. I’ll call you later. Do you think you can look into the card in the morning?”

“You mean, try to find out who Margaret O’Connor is?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Go on back to your scallions. I’ll call you.”

Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe we should have gotten together, tried to make something out of the pieces we had. I would have liked that. I was tired, cold, alone in a street-lit parking lot in a place I didn’t know. I would have liked to be with Lydia.

But Lydia was young, in a bright, crowded kitchen. She was cooking for other young people, who would bring wine and laugh and talk about their careers, their friends, their plans. I thought of Paul Kao, the photographer, the friend of her brother Andrew’s. I wondered if he was coming to dinner.

I would have liked to be with Lydia, but Lydia had another life in which I had no part.

And even now I think it wouldn’t have mattered. It would have made me feel better, talking with Lydia that night; but it wouldn’t have helped us find our way out of the swamp this case had become. The paths were too dark, too shadowed, not blind but serpentine, twisting back on themselves, always leading to where you’d been. Finding the answer at the center would not have been enough, any longer, to lead us to the way out.