Seven Minutes to Noon (24 page)

“Oh, I’m just fine!” Judy said dramatically. She walked over to a couch against a brick wall and crumpled onto the soft cushions. Alice remained where she was but her eyes stayed with Judy. Poor woman. It was always the ones with the tightest surfaces, the highest sheen of control, who contained the most turmoil.

“Something happened,” Judy sobbed into her hands, “and now it’s all over.”

“I’m sorry,” Alice whispered. And she was, though she didn’t know what for. She stood there waiting for an ebb in the tide so she could say good-bye and leave.

Glancing around the pretty, disheveled room, Alice saw the true impact of the handiwork samples she had noticed around Judy’s desk at the office. The woman seemed to have crafted every soft surface in the room except the rug and possibly the sofa’s silver jacquard upholstery. The seats of two antique armchairs were meticulous canvases of needlepoint gardens. The chairs straddled a small, scallop-edged table holding a framed eight-by-ten photograph of Judy and a man who looked vaguely familiar to Alice. They both smiled broadly, arm in arm, linked together in a happy moment like an old couple. But nothing else here spoke of marriage; it was so completely feminine a room. An antique hutch was draped with an elegant, hand-sewn runner with midnight-blue tassels at either end. On the couch where Judy sat was a collection of needlepoint and bargello pillows, all but one with symmetrical patterns of minute flowers creating the effect of a kind of garden fireworks. The exception was a single pillow whose minutiae had in effect been reversed. Instead of an abundance of flowers, it showed a single bloom in perfect detail, with the tight focus and burgeoning sexuality of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting.

Alice must have been staring at it because Judy’s sobbing eased suddenly. “It’s supposed to be a peony,” she said, “but like everything else I probably got it wrong.”

Now Alice saw that it
was
a peony.

“It’s beautiful,” Alice said.

Judy picked up the pillow and ran her shaky fingers on its nappy surface, keeping her eyes on Alice. “It was the French girl’s idea.” Her voice was rough from crying. “Sylvie. She told me about the woman who loved peonies, the one they found in the canal. A woman thrown away like garbage.” Judy began to weep again. “Here.”
She threw the pillow to Alice. “Sylvie told me the woman was your friend. This means more to you than me.”

Alice caught the pillow. “I can’t take this.”

“It doesn’t matter to me.” Judy took a deep breath in an effort to control herself. She lifted her rheumy eyes to Alice in what looked like both abandonment and plea. “I only make them because I need something to do with my hands. Sylvie backs them for me and takes them over to the Women’s Exchange. I sell them because they mean nothing to me. I don’t need the money. Take it, please.”

Judy got up and walked over to the divan. She stooped down for her mug and immediately drained it, her eyes avoiding the newspaper.

“Thank you,” Alice said. “I know just where I’ll put it.”

Judy waved her off with a nonchalant wrist flick. Holding Peter’s fire truck and the pillow, Alice found the front door.

As soon as Alice got home, she slid that day’s newspaper out of its plastic sleeve and spread it out on the kitchen table. She flipped directly to the Metro section and quickly found the photo of Julius and his cohort on page three beside the headline
BROOKLYN SLUMLORD INVESTIGATED IN BROKER ATTACK,
Realtor in Coma, Possible Connection to Missing Pregnant Women,
by Erin Brinkley.

Alice was amazed at the speed with which Erin Brinkley had discovered Julius Pollack. Recently it seemed as if the reporter was reading Alice’s mind. The man in the photograph was identified as his partner, Sal Cattaneo. He was in his fifties, Alice guessed, with a tousled halo of prematurely white hair, and smile lines extending from his eyes. He looked friendly, unlike Julius, who even in this picture, with his smile, appeared hardened. Alice took another look at Sal Cattaneo, the man Pam, with all her connections, had tried and failed to unearth.
How had Erin Brinkley discovered him so easily? Sal Cattaneo. Both the name and the face were familiar to Alice but she couldn’t place either.

Sitting at her kitchen table, she read the article.

In a convergence of three unsolved cases, local police have begun to scrutinize notorious slumlords Julius Pollack and Sal Cattaneo, longtime partners in Metro Properties, in connection with the death of Lauren Barnet and the disappearance of her full-term, unborn baby. The two men are also under investigation in connection with the disappearance two years ago of Christine Craddock, who was also pregnant. Ms. Craddock vanished on her baby’s due date. Both Ms. Barnet and Ms. Craddock were Metro Properties tenants who, at the time of their disappearances, were fighting Metro’s efforts to evict them from rent-stabilized apartments in the Carroll Gardens–Cobble Hill area. In addition, sources report that police have questioned Mr. Pollack and Mr. Cattaneo about the recent attack on Pam Short, a Brooklyn realtor who may have uncovered information about Metro Properties that put her at risk. Ms. Short remains in a coma at Long Island College Hospital.

According to the police, previous suspects, including Ms. Barnet’s husband, Tim Barnet, and Ms. Craddock’s boyfriend, David Jonstone, are no longer considered lead suspects. When the three cases appeared to be connected, it was necessary to broaden the search.

In an investigation rampant with theories ranging from a lone serial killer to a real estate conspiracy to a black market for babies, there appears to be a growing sense of puzzlement.

“It’s starting to seem obvious someone out there is playing with us,” said Detective Francesca Viola of the Seventy-sixth Precinct. “We’re looking at all the common denominators, and right now they’re
two pregnant women who went missing, their landlord Metro Properties, and a real estate broker who may have been onto something.”

Alice read the article through two more times. There was still no mention of Andre Capa; Frannie and Giometti were holding tight on to that piece of information. But
why
? For a moment Alice was tempted, again, to contact the reporter herself, fill in a few blanks. But as before, she decided against it. She had promised Frannie not to tell.

As if the brief temptation to betrayal had summoning powers, the phone began to ring. Caller ID announced the Seventy-sixth Precinct. Alice reached to pick up the phone when something else became clear to her.

She remembered where she had seen Sal Cattaneo before: it had been just half an hour ago, in Judy Gersten’s apartment, in the eight-by-ten frame on the pretty table. Standing by Judy’s side with the complicity of a husband or partner or lifelong friend.

And then Alice remembered where else she had seen the smiling man in Judy’s photo; suddenly she knew exactly who he was.

The dear friend of Judy Gersten and partner of Julius Pollack was also the local butcher. In Alice’s mind she saw the blue awning over his Court Street shop announcing
CATTANEO & SON
in white script. Only there never seemed to be a son. And now, there were at least three Sal Cattaneos. The one she knew was always so nice and friendly, but what about the other two?

She picked up the phone, hoping to catch Frannie’s call before she finished her message. A long dial tone told her it was too late.

She pressed the down arrow on her caller ID to recall Frannie’s number and was just dialing it into the phone when she heard the first crash.

Someone was standing outside her door, pounding it with tremendous force.

“You!” Julius shrieked. “You fucking bitch, open the door or I’ll break it down!”

“Stop it, Julius!” Alice screamed back.

She brought the phone with her through the kitchen to the garden door, just in case she needed to escape, though once she was out there, she didn’t know where she could possibly go; she’d be trapped. He slammed the door again and again. The wood vibrated, then seemed to bend inward.

“Stop it! I’m calling the police!”

The moment she said it, the banging stopped. It was suddenly as if he wasn’t even there.

“Seventy-sixth Precinct,” the receptionist answered.

“Fran Viola, please. Tell her it’s Alice Halpern.”

She waited. The kitchen seemed to fill with quiet. She began to feel dizzy and realized she was hardly breathing. She took a deep breath, then another, listening to Julius’s heavy footsteps plodding up the stairs.

“Alice,” Frannie said.

Alice quickly explained what had just happened.

“Where are you now?” Frannie asked.

“In the kitchen.”

“Is he still outside?”

“He just went upstairs.”

“Stay where you are. Don’t answer the door and don’t even answer the phone. We’ll be there in two minutes.”

Time stretched long and thin as Alice waited, frozen next to the garden door. Julius must have thought she had something to do with the article in the newspaper. Had he connected her with Pam Short? Did he know Pam had been digging around on Alice’s behalf? Did Andre Capa work for him? Had Capa reported back before being arrested?

Alice remembered the old man with the foil cross, saw his bright insistent face and heard him telling her,
Take a deep breath lady, one, two, three.
Standing there now, pressed against her kitchen door, Alice rubbed her belly and breathed.
One, two, three.
Her heart was still racing but she could feel a trace of oxygen entering her brain. The deep breathing was working.
One. Two. Three.

With shaking fingers she dialed Mike’s cell phone. After three rings, voice mail answered; he must have been sawing, or instructing Diego, or maybe he was blasting music through the workshop as she knew he often did. Frustration clumped in her throat. “Mike!” she whispered on his voice mail. “Julius was trying to get in! Come home!
Please!”

Alice listened as Julius’s footsteps thumped back down the stairs. She clutched the phone so hard her fingers went numb. Where were Frannie and Giometti? As he reached the foyer, just outside her door, she dialed
911 and listened to the phone ring and ring. Then she heard Julius open the building’s front door.

She crept across the kitchen, into the living room. He was talking to someone. Pressing her ear against the door, she felt the vibrations of his voice, its low pitch, its arrogance. Then she heard a higher, more insistent voice. A voice she recognized.

Frannie.

A tinny, distant voice beckoned from the phone in Alice’s hand: “Hello? Hello? Is there an emergency?” Alice pressed the
END
button.

Julius was arguing with something Frannie was saying, arguing but managing to hold his temper. The next voice to speak was Paul Giometti’s and whatever he said seemed to rein Julius in. Alice held her breath. They were negotiating something. She heard Frannie’s voice rise with the words “restraining order.”

“All right,” Alice heard Julius say. “How much?”

There was a hushed conversation that ended with Julius’s voice tightening, getting higher. “You do that and you’ll regret it.” He marched back upstairs with crisp, angry steps.

Alice waited where she was and kept listening. Quick footsteps told her Frannie and Giometti were approaching her apartment. At the first knock, she swung open her door. They stepped inside and shut the door behind them. Both the detectives’ expressions were taut, concerned.

“You okay?” Giometti asked Alice.

“Just scared, but I’m okay.”

Frannie angled her sunglasses off her face and used them like a headband to push the dark hair off her forehead, which was misted with sweat. “We want you to file a restraining order.”

“But he lives here.”

“Yes, he does.” Giometti’s voice was gentle, in contrast to the sharp squint of his eyes, holding her to a simple certainty: “But you don’t. Not anymore.”

He was right; she couldn’t stay here with her children.

“But he’ll find me, won’t he?” Alice said. “He’s angry about the newspaper article this morning. He thinks I had something to do with it. Won’t a restraining order make it worse?”

“We don’t know,” Giometti said.

If they said
we don’t know
to her one more time, she would scream.

“Listen.” Frannie stepped close to Alice. “If he does it again to you or anyone else, it’s on record, that’s all. It doesn’t mean he’ll stop, but it gives us a paper trail. It helps the lawyers if he ends up in court one day.”

“If he hurts someone,” Alice said. “If he hurts me.”

Frannie looked steadily into Alice’s eyes. “That’s right.”

“Let’s go.” Giometti put his hand on the doorknob.

“Wait,” Alice said. “I need to get a few things first.”

She hurried downstairs, where she packed an overnight bag for the family. They didn’t live here anymore, after fifteen years. Just like that.

Giometti drove the car. Frannie, in the passenger’s seat, twisted around to face the back. Alice told them all about her visit to Judy Gersten, and the prominent photo of Judy with Sal, and Judy’s anguish. Frannie and Giometti had already seen the
Times
article but apparently hadn’t been surprised by anything they had read. They pulled into one of the precinct’s parking spots. The detectives got out of the front seat and Frannie opened the back door for Alice.

She was taken to a room behind the reception desk. Giometti and Frannie stayed with her while she answered questions to an officer who filled out a harassment report on the spot. There was an air of seriousness in the room, with both the questions and answers simple and direct. It took only about ten minutes. Alice was asked to sign the bottom of the report.

The detectives then drove her to the courthouse, where they double-parked their blue sedan on Adams Street with an assumed immunity that Alice found
strangely thrilling. It was a gesture of power, of protection. They hurried up the courthouse steps, ushering Alice through a revolving door and down a long, drab hallway. They veered into a room sectioned into judges’ chambers. It looked nothing like the courthouse dramas on TV. Instead of a lofty dais, each judge occupied a grim cubicle in which a battered wooden counter separated them from the complainant. Alice’s judge was a woman in her sixties with the restless air of someone who had waited too long for promotion, or retirement, or any transfer out of here.