First Avenue (47 page)

“In Anchorage, with my stepfather. She got married when I was four.”

“Does he know about this? Is this okay with him?”

“Yes.”

“Did he treat you well?”

“Yes,” she said more cautiously. “He was nice to me. I’m supposed to call him.”

“We’ll both call him. Would you like to visit my father sometime, your grandfather?”

“Oh yes. Very much.”

“Sometimes he doesn’t know who I am. I have to tell him I’m his son. I’m afraid he won’t understand who you are.”

“That doesn’t matter. I’ll know who he is.”

“I hope so. You can look at his finger, too. I’ll tell him, ‘Dad, this is Maria, my daughter, your granddaughter, and she has a finger just like yours.’“

“You’ll tell him that?” she asked.

“Yes. My god,
Maria
,” he said as he cupped her hands, crooked finger and all, into his, “I’m so glad you found me.”

She pulled her hands away sharply and threw them around his neck. Her face bored into his chest as she cried again with all her heart. She felt his hand patting her back the way her mother used to do. She could not imagine what would come next. He seemed as overwhelmed as she, maybe more. She had been thinking about this most of her life, but it had landed on him all at once. They would have to figure it out, she thought. A little at a time. Her hand began imitating his, imitating her mother’s hand. She was sure eighteen years could not be patted away. Still they patted on, soothing each other, trying not to be frightened, just holding on while it lasted.

Katherine rolled down her car windows and turned the radio on loud. The outside air was not quite warm enough to be comfortable, and she turned the heater on. When she glanced at her speedometer, she saw she was twenty miles over the speed limit. She slowed a little but then forgot the speedometer again as she cruised through midmorning traffic.

She pushed the radio button to avoid a sales pitch and was blasted with a screeching song. She pushed the button again and then again. What happened to the good songs?

What was happening with
Maria
? She could still see the girl’s expression the night before when she had mentioned the name of the kayak—
Gloria
. It had come in the middle of the story, but it had stopped the story flat.

“He calls the kayak
Gloria
?“ the girl had asked.

“Yes. What’s the matter?”

“That’s my mother’s name. He must remember her then.”

“Of course he remembers. He loves that old boat better than anything.”

Katherine had blurted the words out before thinking—for the girl’s benefit—but it was true, wasn’t it? When the girl smiled,
Katherine
saw the first likeness of
Sam
.
Sam
,
Maria
,
Gloria
—names that went together, that had history. When the link with those names was conceived, she had been a little girl a thousand miles away watching the moon with her father.

No moon now. No boat either. And why couldn’t she find a radio station that played something decent? In disgust she turned off the radio.

Rather than scour streets a mile away for a free parking spot, she pulled into a lot across from the police station. The attendant, a young boy with bright red pimples, strutted around as if the money that went into the register was his. He told her to leave the keys and he would park the car. She had no intention of leaving her keys with him and parked the car herself. It made his surly attitude surlier. She couldn’t decide which of the two, strut or attitude, was more appealing. She slammed her car door and dared him to say anything as she walked past him. He stepped back into his little shack but called out as she passed, “Have a nice day.” Let it go, she thought. Let it go.

She walked into the police garage and took the stairs to the fifth floor.
Markowitz
was at his desk. He looked exhausted. She wondered if he had even gone home. A man and a woman, lawyers, were sitting at the desk next to him.

“Hey, Murphy,” he said. “Good timing. I was just going to call you and Wright and see if you were up. This is
Paul
Evans
, prosecutor’s office, and
Judith
Wilson
, public defender.
Officer
Murphy
is the original investigating officer.”

“One of them,”
Katherine
said.

Wilson got out of her chair and extended her hand. “I’m representing
Richard
Rutherford
.”

“
Rutherford
is the puke that worked the girl over in the basement—got us started on this merry chase,”
Markowitz
added.

Wilson, her smile not faltering, seemed used to a lack of appreciation. “It’s all part of the job,” she said.
Katherine
smiled as they shook hands.

“I’m the guy on your side,”
Evans
said. They shook hands, too, but
Katherine
wished the two had opposite jobs.

“We’re moving right along here,”
Markowitz
said. “This morning,
Judith
’s boy got the feeling that the jailhouse was getting a little crowded. Word travels fast up there, you know. It seems he wants to tell us a story.”

“What story?”
Katherine
asked.

“He says he knows where we can find
Alberta
—the body, that is.”

“He may know something about it,”
Judith
Wilson
corrected, emphasizing the word “may.” “Detective
Markowitz
likes to walk on the edge,” she continued. Her voice was controlled just enough to show she was not fooling around. “You should know, Detective Markowitz, that if you try to talk to my client again when he wants his lawyer present, I’ll have this thrown out faster than you guys can type up the release.”

“I wouldn’t think of doing such a thing. If you don’t want him talking to us, you just tell him that.”

“I have. Now let’s lay this out and see if we have anything. We’ll agree to misdemeanor assault, nothing more.”

“No way, counselor,”
Markowitz
said. “We’ll drop the assault I charge, but he still takes a felony.”

“Your ‘assault with intent to kill’ is bogus, and you know it. You won’t even go to trial with that.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,”
Evans
said. “He wasn’t playing games. He said he would kill her, and he hurt her seriously. I think we can convince the jury of his intentions. Besides, if we find
Alberta
ourselves, and we will sooner or later, he’ll go down for murder.”

“Second-degree assault,”
Judith
Wilson
said.

The two men looked at each other and
Evans
nodded. “We’ll go for that, provided your client takes us to the body, and the evidence doesn’t lead back to him.”

“You have to be more specific than that,”
Wilson
said. “Obviously if somebody knows where the body is, that person may have had some role in the death.”

“If that somebody killed the girl,”
Evans
said, “the deal is off. If he stood by and watched or just helped stash the body, the deal is on.”

“We agree to that,”
Wilson
said. “Now, if you have a typewriter that we can use, Detective Markowitz, we’ll write this up. I think everybody wants this over.”

“You can use this one if you want to,”
Markowitz
said as he pushed away from his desk.

“How’s your typing,
Evans
?”
Wilson
asked.

“First in my high-school class.”

“Good,” she said. “I was dead last.”

As the two men busily changed seats and set up the typewriter,
Wilson
winked at
Katherine
.

With
Evans
ready to type and
Judith
Wilson
looking over his shoulder,
Markowitz
motioned with his head and walked away from the lawyers.
Katherine
followed him. He stopped beside the windows facing west. For a moment he seemed particularly interested in the view of
Third Avenue
below them, but then he turned and faced her.

“I want to thank you for putting us straight last night. We were so impressed with ourselves about our big drug bust that we forgot what we were supposed to be solving. The mother and the baby are the important people here. I don’t know how we forgot that.”

“You would have remembered soon enough.”

“I’m not so sure. All that brass here, from the chief on down. Getting the divers out to look for Fisher. I don’t know.
Alberta
and
Olivia
kind of got lost in the commotion. Glad you set us straight. Anyway, I paid a little visit to
Wilson
’s client early this morning. He didn’t need a lot of encouragement to see that it might be a good time to save his scrawny neck. If we had waited, somebody else might have gotten to him first and settled him down some. I’m not sure how much he knows, but I think he knows plenty. I’ve got him downstairs in a holding room.”

“Did you get any sleep last night?”

“I took a nap in the lounge while we were waiting for
Wilson
. I’m surprised
Wright
isn’t here. Do you want to give him a call?”

“I think we’ll leave him alone today,”
Katherine
said. “He’s got quite a bit on his mind right now.”

“Am I supposed to understand what you mean?”

“No. Nobody could understand. And don’t ask me any more about it. It doesn’t have anything to do with this. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

She looked out to the same street that had drawn
Markowitz
’s attention. There were trees on both sides, and their green leaves broke up the dismal black asphalt. A single bird darted from one branch to another, and she wondered what it was doing. It seemed to pay no attention to the traffic or to the people on the sidewalks. It had its own business. She wondered what the business of that busy little bird was.

Markowitz had become silent, and she saw his dark eyes within his glasses. With
Markowitz
, she had her own business, too, but she wondered if she would not prefer to be the little bird in the top of the tree.

“You don’t look like it’s real good news about
Sam
,”
Markowitz
said.

“Oh, it’s hard to say,” she said, then looked back outside. “What do you suppose that bird is doing?”

Markowitz moved closer to the window.

“I don’t know. Building a nest, maybe.”

“It’s almost fall. It wouldn’t build a nest in the fall.”

“City bird, you know. It might have things mixed up.”

She smiled with that observation. It did look as if it were building a nest. Transporting leaves and twigs in its beak, it moved so rapidly that it was difficult to follow. Finally it flew off, and the tree seemed much less alive.

“Do you like this job?” she asked.

“I guess so. Why? Having second thoughts?”

“I’m not sure I ever had first thoughts.”

“I’ll be glad if we find out what happened to
Alberta
. So will you.”

“Yes. I will. I don’t know why, but I will.”

“Animals like
Pierre
and
Rutherford
shouldn’t be on the street.”

“No, they shouldn’t. It’s just that I hate knowing how many there are.”