Night Secrets (20 page)

“Yeah, I seen her,” Betonni said lightly. “I told the cops all about it.”

“When was that, do you remember?”

“I told them that, too,” Betonni said. “It was three
A.M.
sharp.”

“You can be that precise?”

“Cause my shift ends at three, and Felix was late relieving me. He's a real fuck, that guy. Never on time.”

“So you saw the woman pass in front of the store,” Frank said. “And you glanced at the clock.”

“Yeah.”

“Did she come in?”

“No.”

“Was she carrying anything?”

“She had a bag with her,” Betonni said. “I don't know what was in it.”

“What kind of bag?”

“Like a shopping bag, something like that,” he said. “With handles.”

“Did it look like she had groceries in it?”

Betonni shook his head. “There was cloth sticking out of it,” he said. “Like a sleeve or something.”

Frank took out his notebook and wrote it down. “Do you remember the color?”

“Red,” Betonni said. He smiled proudly. “I got a good memory, don't I?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. He looked up from the notebook. “So you saw her pass by,” he said. “Then what?”

“What do mean, then what?”

“Where'd she go?”

“Right across the street.”

Frank glanced out the front window. The small light-blue
FORTUNES TOLD
sign was blinking softly. “Over there?”

“Yeah.”

“And she went directly inside the building?”

“That's right.”

“And you didn't see her go out again?”

Betonni shrugged. “I left a few minutes later.”

“How about the guy who replaced you,” Frank said. “Did he see her go out again?”

“That fuck?” Betonni screeched. “That fuck never did show up that night.”

“So no one took over your shift?”

Betonni shook his head. “No. So I waited till around three-fifteen, then I just fucking closed the place.”

Frank glanced back at his notebook, wrote it down, then returned his attention to Betonni.

“The woman,” he said, “did she shop in here much?”

“We're still talking about the sizzler, right?”

“Yeah.”

Betonni grinned. “Sometimes she did. I kept hoping I'd get lucky.”

Frank let it pass. “Did the other women shop here too?” he asked.

“Yeah, they all come in once in a while.”

Frank took a chance. “And the man?” he asked casually.

Betonni went blank. “Man?”

“Yeah,” Frank said as offhandedly as he could. “The guy who was living with them.”

Nothing registered in Betonni's face.

“You must have seen him,” Frank insisted.

Betonni shook his head. “I don't remember no guy,” he said. “Young or old?”

Frank tried to judge from the color of the hair. “On the younger side.”

“Younger, huh?” Betonni said. “So he'd be the one slamming the sizzler, right?”

Frank could feel his eyes narrowing. “You see a guy or not?”

Betonni shook his head. “I don't think I ever seen no guy around.” He smiled playfully. “That's why I kept hitting on her.”

Frank felt one of his hands ball up into a fist. “You were always hitting on her?”

“Sure, it don't cost me nothing,” Betonni said airily. “And shit, man, maybe one time in ten, I actually hit the jackpot.”

Frank swallowed hard, then forcefully drew his eyes away from Betonni. “When she came in to buy things, what sort of stuff did she buy?”

Betonni's eyes roamed the store. “Odds and ends, mostly. Soap, paper towels, that sort of shit.”

“How about shaving cream?”

Betonni looked at Frank curiously. “Shaving cream? Why would a bunch of …” He stopped. “Oh, I get you. You're after that guy again.”

Frank smiled thinly.

“Shaving cream,” Betonni asked himself thoughtfully. “Shaving cream …”

“Cigars?” Frank added. “Pipe tobacco?” For a moment, he balked at the last item, then decided to go on with it “Prophylactics?”

Betonni smiled. “Rubbers, yeah,” he laughed. “That would be a sure sign, wouldn't it?” Again, he thought it over. “But I don't remember any of that kind of thing,” he said finally. “It could have been they bought stuff like that, but I don't remember any of it.”

Frank put away his notebook. “Thanks, anyway,” he said.

“Hey, no problem, man,” Betonni said. He looked him up and down. “You guys always carry a piece with you?” he asked. “I mean, like cops do.”

“Not always,” Frank said as he stepped to the door. When he glanced back, Betonni had shaped his hand into a pistol, his thumb used as a cock, his index finger a long, fleshy barrel. Slowly, the thumb fell forward. “Boom,” he said playfully, as Frank turned back toward the door.

*     *     *

Once outside, Frank drew in a deep breath, then headed north toward Toby's. It was nearly two in the morning by then, and the avenue was entirely deserted. As he walked, he tried to imagine where the Puri Dai would have gone on the avenue at about the same time several days before. Betonni had seen her walking south hastily, carrying nothing but a single shopping bag.

He stopped and stared up the avenue. It was a long dark corridor of closed shops, their protective shields of corrugated tin securely in place over their glass storefront windows. Still, far in the distance, almost to Fiftieth Street, he could see a single lighted space, and he made his way toward it quickly.

It was an all-night laundry, and it was almost entirely deserted except for an old woman who sat near the back, idly thumbing through a magazine.

She glanced up listlessly as Frank approached her.

He nodded, then took out his identification and showed it to her.

The woman stared at it a moment, then glanced up at Frank. “I don't read so good since I broke my glasses,” she said. She lifted the magazine slightly. “Even this, I just look at the pictures.”

“I'm looking into a murder that took place down at Forty-Seventh Street a few days ago.”

The woman nodded. “Yeah, I heard something about that.”

“It was a Sunday night, actually,” Frank added. “Is this place open Sunday nights?”

“It don't never close,” the woman said. “I'm here seven nights a week.”

“So you work here?”

“Every night, 'cept on Christmas.”

Frank glanced about. “Is it usually this deserted around this time?”

“Yeah. We don't do much business past two in the morning.”

“Do you happen to remember if anybody came in last Sunday night around this time?”

“Some old geezer come in,” the woman said. “Had palsy in his hands.” She laughed hoarsely. “He'd pull a pair of shorts out of the drying, and Christsake, it looked like he was waving bye to the Queen Mary, you know?”

Frank smiled. “How about a woman?”

The woman giggled. “I'm more interested in men, myself.”

Frank allowed himself a small laugh. “I mean that night,” he said, going on quickly. “Did you notice a woman come in here Sunday night?”

The woman thought about it. “Like a model, almost?”

Frank felt his breath stop. “Yes.”

“In a costume?”

“A Gypsy.”

“Yeah, I seen her,” the woman said.

“What was she doing?”

The woman shrugged. “Just doing her clothes, like you'd expect. You know, wash a batch, then dry them.” She thought a moment. “She just had one load.”

“Did you notice what kind of clothes they were?”

“Kind? What do you mean, kind?”

“Men's clothes?”

The woman shook her head. “Women's I think. Bright colors. The only thing I really noticed was that they was still sort of wet when she pulled them out of the dryer.”

“Wet?”

“Yeah, they needed another spin.”

“But she didn't do that?”

The woman shook her head. “She was in a hurry, I think. She didn't look like she had the time.”

“Did she say anything?”

“No.”

“Was anyone else with her?”

“Anyone else?”

“I was thinking, perhaps a man?”

“No, I didn't see nobody else,” the woman said. “Just that woman in a costume, you know.” She smiled. “Like she was trying to be something that wasn't really her.”

Frank walked directly to Toby's after-hours joint after leaving the laundromat. He took his usual table at the back of the room and ordered an Irish from Teague, the waiter-bouncer whose name he'd only recently learned.

The drink came fast, but he didn't drink it that way. Instead, he sat back and sipped slowly, while his eyes perused the place through its perpetually shadowed light.

Toby was behind the bar, silently serving drinks to the few people who sat slumped over it. She looked a bit tanned by her trip, but otherwise she appeared the same, utterly silent as she dried glasses or mopped the nightly spill from the top of the bar. Farouk had not spoken of her very often, except to say, long ago when they worked the Covallo case together, that he'd married her “to keep her from oppression.” He'd never said what he meant by that, and Frank had never asked.

After a while, Toby wandered over to his table and said the first words he'd ever heard from her. “Farouk, he no here.”

“I know.”

She stared at him with dim, unblinking eyes. “Farouk, he no come tonight.”

“You mean, at all?”

Toby continued to stare at him while her hand massaged a glass with a white cloth. “Farouk, he no come tonight,” she repeated. “Farouk say, he no here.”

Frank nodded. “Okay, thanks.”

Toby finished the glass, then returned to the bar, plucked another one from a tray and began drying it.

Frank leaned back, edging his chair against the wall behind him, and closed his eyes. For a time, he saw the Puri Dai as he imagined her in the laundromat, hastily, perhaps frantically, doing her clothes. Then he recalled that Betonni had said that she was moving quickly down the avenue as she'd passed the bodega only a few minutes later, that she'd moved very quickly across the street, the single shopping bag dangling from her hand, and disappeared into the building. It was as if that particular night had demanded nothing so much as speed, and as he thought about it, it seemed to Frank that everything was connected to this speed, this accelerated pace, as if she were falling through some kind of vertical space, plunging toward murder at a steadily increasing velocity.

He closed his eyes more tightly and kept them closed, breathing more slowly, trying to get what rest he could. But as the minutes passed, he could see that the world beyond his eyes was growing brighter and brighter, that the day case was now breaking over him like a wave.

H
e rubbed his eyes wearily as he took up his usual position outside the Phillips brownstone about four hours later, edging his shoulder up against the brick wall, his eyes peering steadily at the little wrought-iron gate, and then the building which rose behind it.

Mr. Phillips left first, moving obliviously down the street, his eyes never once darting toward Frank as he headed for work. For a time after that, the door to the browstone remained closed. Then suddenly, it opened, and Mrs. Phillips made her way to the gate, opened it and stepped out. She was dressed in a long blue coat, and wore black high-heeled shoes. Her hair was drawn back and curled into a tight bun at the back of her head. She wore the same gold-framed dark glasses, but there was no hat, as there had been on Tuesday. For a moment, she stood very still, as if taking in the early-morning sunlight, then she turned right, as Mr. Phillips had, and walked eastward.

Frank shoved the bagel he'd bought a few minutes before into his jacket pocket, then took out his notebook and scribbled down the time: 8:37
A.M.