Shadow Dancers (27 page)

Mr. Pagano sat behind a desk stacked with little hills of invoices, paper coffee cups, and unemptied ashtrays reeking of dead cigar stumps.

“And it was a two twenty,” Pickering went on. “Right. A two twenty.”

“You’re sure?”

“Course I’m sure,” Mr. Pagano snapped. “Pretty sure, anyway.”

“What color did you paint it?”

Mr. Pagano’s eyes closed and his head tilted back slightly. “Lemme see. It was green when he brought it in.”

“What shade of green?”

Pickering tried to control his excitement. This was the ninth auto body shop he’d been to that morning. He’d visited nearly a hundred over the past several days, with no luck whatsoever.

By that time he was tired, and there was a conviction deep in his bones, going back to boyhood, that overenthusiasm for anything leads inevitably to disappointment.

“It was dark green.” Mr. Pagano snatched some color swatches down from the pegboard and pointed his paint-stained finger at one. “That’s a basic Mercedes color. What we call your basic forest green.” Beyond the glass wall, masked and suited figures drifted phantomlike through steamy clouds of vaporized paint hissing under great pressure.

“And the color you painted it?”

Pagano’s head rolled backward again. The eyes closed. “Now, you gotta remember this is like four, five weeks ago. I paint maybe a hundred cars a week.”

Pickering’s brow started to lower.

“But this one,” Mr. Pagano continued, “I got a distinct impression we sprayed gray.”

“Yeah. How come?”

“How come we sprayed it gray?”

“No. How come you remember this one especially? What was so special about this one?”

Pagano turned to watch the ghostlike figures of his painters drifting beyond the glass partition. ” ‘Cause of the guy,” he remarked distractedly. “It was the guy. Something about him.”

“Strange?”

“Not at all. Friendly. Pleasant. Chatty, you know. Spoke in a low voice. Kind of dignified. Knew a lot about cars.”

“Did he say why he wanted it painted?”

“There was this rust, I told you. And I guess he figured if he was gonna spring for that, he might as well go all the way with a paint job. Car’s nearly twenty years old, don’t forget.”

“This was the first paint job it’s had in twenty years?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?” Mr. Pagano was irritated by the question. “As a matter of fact, when we scraped it down, there must’ve been four, five layers of paint. All different colors. A regular fucking rainbow.” Pagano beamed amiably. “That’s how come I recall this car. You don’t see that too often. People spray a car, they generally spray it the same color.”

Pickering had been sitting there spinning his thumbs. Over the past several minutes the speed of his rotations had steadily increased. “If your memory’s so great,” he taunted, “I bet you don’t recall this guy’s name.”

Mr. Pagano’s caterpillar brows furrowed. For the first time during the course of questioning, he appeared distressed. “What d’ya want him for? What’d the guy do?”

“Maybe something. Maybe nothing,” Pickering replied evasively. “Who knows? That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Look,” Mr. Pagano proclaimed, “I run a respectable place here. Everything on the up and up. Never had no trouble with the law. I’m a good neighbor. Ask anyone on the block.”

“Who’s talkin’ about you?” Pickering shot back. “You’re clean. We know that. I’m just asking, do you know this guy’s name, is all.”

Mr. Pagano seemed offended. “Sure I know his name. Not off the top of my head. But right here in my file.” Pickering waited, slowly tapping the arm of his chair, scarcely breathing as the boxy little Italian man rummaged through his file. It was no ordinary file, not the sort of thing one finds in a well-organized, well-run office. Items here were filed according to no discernible system — not alphabetical by name, not by category, or by date in time, but rather by some system, internal and mysterious, consisting wholly of a series of tiny abstruse symbols known only to Mr. Pagano himself.

Even from where Pickering sat across the desk from the file, he could view the turmoil within those drawers. They bulged and spilled over with stacks of tatty, dogeared invoices, yellow and dusty with age.

From beyond the plate glass, a figure like a fish in an aquarium tank floated up to the glass pane and peered out at them incuriously through goggles. Great gusts of hissing air whirled all about him. The haze of paint fumes hovering above the outer office made Pickering’s eyes burn and his head throb.

“I got it right here somewhere.” Mr. Pagano ransacked his drawers, waxing more furious by the moment. He could sense the growing skepticism of the detective sitting, waiting there, before him.

Several times he pulled out invoices, apparently forgetting what it was he’d been looking for, then proceeded to read them to himself. Then he would place them carefully off to the side as if he intended to return to them at some future date. Then he’d turn back to the chaos of his files. “Don’t worry. It’s here. It’s right here.” Pickering’s burning eyes rolled heavenward in silent, long-suffering despair.

‘Now where the hell is that invoice, anyway?” Mr. Pagano banged the file drawer shut and started to rummage through the wire out box on his littered desk. ‘Let’s see now. What do we got here? Mercedes. Mercedes. Everybody owns a fucking Mercedes …” He whistled breathily while papers flew through his hands. “Mercedes.” He plucked an invoice out of the pile. “Here’s one.” His eyes scanned quickly over the yellow sheet, the smile on his face fading as quickly as it had appeared. “Forget it. It’s a four fifty SL. A nineteen eighty—five. Foster. I remember that guy, all right. A stiff. Still ain’t got my money.”

The harried, overworked man pressed on. “Jesus, I know I got it. It’s right here someplace.”

“I can come back,” Pickering said, anxious by then to depart the place himself.

“No, no. You stay right there. It’s right here, I tell you. Right under my nose. I can almost smell it. It’s right…” Suddenly his face lit up and he was flapping a yellow carbon sheet about over his head. “Briggs. Donald Briggs.”

Pickering rose and moved quickly around the desk. “You got it?”

“Sure I got it. I told you, didn’t I? Nothing in these files I don’t keep a record of right up here.” His thick, paint-spattered fingers tapped the side of his head for emphasis.

“Briggs. Donald. I even got a copy of the registration, if you want.”

Pickering gaped back at him. Can this be me? Rollo Pickering? he thought. Can I be so lucky? “You’ve actually got a copy of the registration?”

“Course I do. I always make a copy of the registration. Specially with these fancy cars. Most of ‘em are hot, you know.”

“Briggs, Donald.” Pickering’s eyes swarmed over the invoice. The pale Xerox letters wavered like objects under water beneath his burning eyes. The registration number was perfectly clear, but some of the computer generated letters and numbers of the address were either faded or had not reproduced at all. He held the sheet away from his eyes, squinting to decipher the address. “Hey, what’s this look like to you?”

Mr. Pagano craned his neck and peered over the detective’s shoulder. “What’s that, a
b
?”

“Yeah. But the next letter is missing. Then you got an
i.
Then the next two letters are missing.”

“What’s that at the end? Looks like an
e.”

“Yeah. That’s an
e,
all right. Can you make out the number?”

“Looks like a fourteen.”

Pickering looked at him skeptically. “You could’ve fooled me.”

“Zip’s pretty clear, though: one-oh-oh-one-four. That’s way downtown, ain’t it?”

“From the Village on south,” Pickering said to himself. “It figures then he’d pick your place to have his car sprayed. Must live right around here somewhere.” Pickering had scribbled out onto his pad a diagram of the letters he had available to him with a series of short dashes in between to indicate those letters that were missing.

B — I——E Street

New York, N.Y. 10014

Together the two men puzzled over the acrostic … to no avail. Nothing whatever came to mind. Mr. Pagano slapped his knees and sighed ruefully. “Listen, I gotta get back out there.” He indicated with his head the two priestlike figures floating behind the glass partition.

Pickering regarded him with sympathy. “Can I borrow this here?” He held up the invoice.

“Be my guest.”

“Thanks. I’ll send it back. Oh, listen. One more thing. Is it okay I use your phone for a minute?”

“Sure,” Mr. Pagano mumbled sadly. “Just don’t call China.” In the next moment he passed through a side door and suddenly reappeared as one of the rubber-shawled moonwalkers on the other side.

Pickering snapped up a nearby telephone directory and flipped quickly through the pages. Under the section devoted to federal departments, he quickly located the number for central headquarters of the New York City Post Office. He dialed and asked to be connected with their special tracking unit. He identified himself to a Mrs. Sternhagen, informed her that he was a New York City detective, and gave her his shield number. Then he explained his problem, provided her with the letters he had, and gave her the zip code.

Mrs. Sternhagen sounded maternal and concerned.

“Will you be there a few minutes?” she asked.

“If you say so.”

“Give me your number. I’ll get right back to you.”

She was as good as her word. In five minutes she rang back. “The only thing we’ve got in that postal zone with six letters looking like what you’ve got is either Beaver or Bridge Street. Both are down around the financial district. But since Beaver ends with an
r,
not an
e,
offhand, I’d say what you’ve got looks more like Bridge.”

“Offhand, I’d say you were right.” The detective scribbled both street names on a scrap of paper before him. “God bless,” he said and hung up.

In the next moment he was lunging for the front door. Half in, half out, he stood straddling the threshold, peering back into the shop as if he’d forgotten something. He lunged back into the shop and tore open the door leading into the painting area. He poked his head in, then snatched it back at once. It was like entering Hell. Gales of atomized paint drove him backward, leaving behind a thick dusting of gray spray on his collar and sleeves. He ducked back quickly, closing the door partially for protection. “Hey, Pagano,” he shouted above the roaring compressors.

Attired in overalls, mask, and goggles, the beleaguered Italian shuffled toward him, ghostlike, seemingly from out of nowhere.

“It’s Bridge Street,” Pickering bellowed at him, his voice rising above the gale from within. “Fourteen Bridge Street.”

THE MOMENT SHE SAW THE UNMARKED CAR
turn the corner and cruise into the street, Suki Klink knew it was the police. Years of staying out of the path of the law gave her long antennae and keen instincts. She watched the car from her kitchen window and knew that something was up. Even unmarked cars driven by the police had a certain unmistakable swagger to them. They never had much chrome on them, either.

The car crept slowly down the street so that she could see the people inside, their heads swiveling about, as if they were looking for something in particular. An address. She didn’t have to be told. She knew it was 14 Bridge Street. She had that sort of prescience one associates with the old, the deranged, and the persistently hunted.

Even before the car drew to a halt at the foot of the weedy old brick walk, she was up the stairs, skirts flying behind her, flinging into Warren’s room and shaking him wildly. He’d come in early that morning and had slept through most of the day.

“Get up. Get up,” she hissed, spittle flying from between her teeth. “They’re here, for Chrissake. They’re here.”

Wound in his sheets, Warren turned, cocking a bleary eye up at her. “What?”

“They’re here, for Chrissake. The cops. The goddamn cops.”

She started to haul him up and had him halfway out of bed before he came fully awake.

“Who?”

“The cops. I told you to lay low, didn’t I? Christ, you never listen, do you? You always know better than anyone. Go down now. Quick. Quick, goddamn it. Into the tunnel.”

By then he was wide awake, grabbing trousers and struggling into shoes. He stumbled as she pushed him out the bedroom door and down the stairs. Outside, she could hear voices on the walk as she whirled backwards into the little turret room, bowing, stooping, lunging, and whisking away every sign of its occupant strewn carelessly about.

The way down to the basement was through a small door behind the stairs. No sooner had it closed behind Warren than the rusty old cast-iron knocker clanked hard against the front door.

Suki stood at the cellar door, her back to it, halfcrouched in the shadows, waiting several moments until she heard the sound of Warren’s scurrying steps receding back into the farthest reaches of the cellar.

“Coming. Coming,” she hollered at the knocker as it sounded again. Even as she approached the door, her step slowed and her shoulders stooped as she underwent the miraculous transformation of aging in the course of a few moments.

The two plainclothesmen standing out front on the porch were detectives. She knew that at once. They were of a type she knew all too well. This was no social call. She knew that, too. They were not out there raising money for the policeman’s ball. “This fourteen Bridge Street?” the younger man asked, but she was looking at the tall, white-haired one, peering down at her disapprovingly.

“Says so right out front on the mailbox, don’t it?” she snapped back.

“You Mrs. Klink?”

“I go by that name.”

One of them flashed a shield. “My name’s Sergeant Pickering. This here is Detective Lieutenant Mooney.”

Suki’s gaze traveled slowly up the big, steeple-like figure. Its shoulders blocked the sunlight from her doorway. The face she saw at the top of the shoulders wore a pinched expression, as if its owner smelled something disagreeable.

“May we come in?” Pickering asked.

She chewed on her tongue, stalling for time and hoping that Warren was already out and into the abandoned sewer line beneath the house. “Suit yourself,” she muttered, none too graciously, and stood aside.