Shamrock Alley (14 page)

“There,” Kersh said, pointing to a gold and white awning. “Find a spot down the street.”

“Some neighborhood.” He could see chrome finish around the ground-level windows and a monkey-suited doorman beneath the awning. “How the hell you think our guy’s mixed up with some old woman here? Think maybe it’s her son, grandson, or something?”

Kersh bit at his lower lip. He wasn’t looking at John, wasn’t looking at Evelyn Gethers’s building anymore, either. His eyes were set straight ahead, as if some answer lay unfurled in the street before him. He said nothing.

Five minutes later, after a slow elevator ride to the top floor, John was knocking at Evelyn Gethers’s door. The hallway—white, meticulously clean, minimally yet sophisticatedly furnished—was a museum.

The door opened and an urgent, severe-looking man in shirtsleeves and a bow tie stood opposite them. His face was ruddy, his nose large and blunt, like the stop on a roller skate. The dome of his head was enormous and absent of even a single hair, his scalp reflecting both John and Kersh. When he spoke, his tone suggested mild irritation and a disinterest in all things living and breathing.

“The police,” he said, seemingly addressing himself over anyone else. “The doorman phoned just a minute ago.”

John and Kersh introduced themselves and held up their badges.

“Come in,” said the butler. He opened the door and stood beside it, emotionless, as John and Kersh entered the apartment.

The place was like something out of a Fitzgerald novel. The main foyer was a massive expanse of herringbone parquet floors and lofty, high-beamed ceilings with crown molding. To the west, a bank of lancet windows looked out upon similar buildings and, beyond those, the colorful, burgeoning ribbon of Central Park. The decor suggested a certain sentimentality toward the forgotten Golden Age, and the walls bled with the colors of exquisite paintings framed in heavy bronze or lacquered mahogany.

“Mrs. Gethers will be down shortly,” the butler said. He was standing beside a marble statue of some Greek warrior, the butler’s stoic, unenthusiastic posture almost mimicking it. “Is there anything I can get for you two gentlemen in the meantime?”

“We’re fine,” Kersh said. He was moving slowly around the room, admiring the paintings. “These are—”

“Impressionists,” said the butler. “Cézanne, Manet, Monet …”

“Are they
real?”

The butler did not humor Kersh with an answer.

“Mrs. Gethers lives alone?” John asked, watching the butler work. “I mean, aside from you. She have a husband? Any kids?”

“Her husband was C. Charles Gethers, and he is dead. Mrs. Gethers never—” There was a slight hiccup in the butler’s speech here as he searched his vocabulary for the most insipid response. He decided on: “Mrs. Gethers never
had
any children.”

Who the hell is C. Charles Gethers?
John thought but did not ask.

Kersh approached a wall of books and slid one from the shelf. He cracked open the cover and glanced at one of the pages. When Evelyn Gethers spoke from the top of the winding staircase, Kersh jumped and nearly dropped the book to the floor.

“Company!” she crooned. “This is such a treat!”

John looked up, also startled, and saw the woman standing on the landing directly above a white Steinway piano. She was a slender old thing wrapped loosely in a silk, mint-green gown and matching feather boa. Her hair was perfectly white and glistened with the soft lights of the tremendous crystal chandelier that hung just above her head. Her face heavily made up, her thin arms poking from the fabric of her costume, she stood beaming at them from the landing. Then, slowly and deliberately, she began descending the stairs like an actress making her grand entrance.

Jesus Christ, it’s Katherine Hepburn
, John thought.

Kersh, too, watched the woman descend the stairwell. He smiled unevenly and presented her with a half-nod as she reached the floor.

“Morris,” Evelyn Gethers said, “please see to some coffee. The Caribbean beans, not that imported Mexican garbage.”

“Ma’am,” Morris the butler said, nodded once, then vanished into another section of the apartment.

“Well,” the woman said, moving herself to the center of the room where she could get a better view of her guests. “Isn’t this nice?” At this distance she looked her age, and the lights from the crystal chandelier were rather unflattering. Her face was caked with makeup and her eyes were large and colorless, piercing out from behind lashes thick with black clumps of mascara. She’d apparently applied fresh red lipstick, and it was a job poorly done. When she smiled, she exposed a row of teeth that jutted from the gums like villagers fleeing from a plague.

Kersh introduced himself and then John, who nodded without sound. The old woman nodded twice in response to each introduction, the smile never leaving her face. “This is an amazing place,” Kersh said, genuinely appreciative.

“This room,” began Evelyn Gethers, “is a
duplicato
of our room at the Hotel Lungarno in Florence, where we used to vacation quite often in the winter months. Splendid. Really splendid. Florence. You’ve been, Inspector Kersh?”

“To Italy? Sadly, no.”

“Tristemente
, it is no longer as it was. No place is. We spent months in Paris as well, stamping down the stones of the Rue Mouffetard, and that, too, has changed. Even the artwork. You’ve seen my artwork?”

“Very impressive, yes.”

She sighed and closed her large eyes, the lids of which were painted an electric blue. “Some things better left to the imagination, but they are not the same. Not for us, anyway.”

“Us? You’re speaking of your husband?” Kersh said.

“You mean Charles?” She laughed, her throat constricting under the force like a deflating hose.
“Charles
loved the artwork, loved the cities. But Charles was arrogant, even on his deathbed, and cursed like a sailor drunk on rum. But he fit in and loved Paris.” She shook her head, her smile faltering, and suddenly looked quite lost. “You’ll have to forgive me,” she apologized. “My memory isn’t what it used to be. It’s been a long, long time.”

“It’s all right,” Kersh said.

“Mrs. Gethers,” John began, “you’re the owner of a red 1979 Lincoln Towncar?”

She blinked once, twice. “The Lincoln,” she muttered. Then: “Yes, yes. I own a red Lincoln. It was Charles’s car. Temperamental as he was. Won’t you both sit down?”

“I’m all right,” John began.

“Come,” Evelyn Gethers insisted, moving to her sofa. She made room for Kersh, who sat beside her awkwardly, still holding the book from the woman’s bookshelf. John remained standing across from her.

“Your car was impounded several days ago, Mrs. Gethers,” he said. “What exactly happened?”

“Impounded?” She folded her bony hands into her lap. Her wrists glittered with an impressive selection of diamond bracelets. “You mean, by the police?”

“Does anyone else use that car besides you?” Kersh asked.

“The Lincoln? I don’t use the Lincoln.” A small, pink tongue darted from her mouth and worked at her lipstick-encrusted lower lip. “I haven’t driven in many years. My eyes have gone bad, I’m afraid.”

Kersh rephrased the question: “Who usually drives the Lincoln?”

“Oh, that’s Douglas,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Douglas?” John said. “Who’s he?”

“He drives the Lincoln,” the woman said.

“What’s his last name?”

“He …” The woman paused, seemingly lost on the surface of thought. She smiled almost apologetically at John, then turned to show Kersh her smile as not to leave him out.

Morris entered the room carrying a tray of coffee. He stopped just before the granite table and, still holding the tray, cleared his throat several times. John felt like knocking the butler square in the nose, but settled for shooting him a sideways glance. Kersh, on the other hand, thanked him for the coffee.

“Drink, drink,” Evelyn Gethers said, reaching for her own cup. Her hand shook, and John was amazed that she managed to bring the cup to her lips without spilling any on herself. “Thank you, Morris.”

Morris turned and stalked out of the room like someone suddenly accosted by a great idea.

“Clifton,” she said. “His last name’s Clifton. We’re going to be married.”

John shot Kersh a glance, which Kersh returned from over the rim of his coffee cup. “He lives here? “John asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “Well, no. Not all the time, not really. He has a room upstairs, but he rarely stays. He keeps very busy.”

“How old is he?”

“Oh, twenties, thirties … fifties. I’m not quite sure.” She rubbed the corner of her mouth with a crooked yellow thumb, smearing lipstick. “I don’t believe I’ve ever asked him.”

“Where is he now?”

“Now? Well, I believe he’s ill. He’s sick. This is good coffee.”

“He’s not here now?” John asked.

“Not now. He’s sick. He’s in the hospital.” The woman nodded toward the coffee tray. “There’s another cup, Mister—Inspector?— Mavio. Won’t you have some?”

“He told you he was in the hospital?” Kersh asked from beside her.

She turned a smile on him—all teeth and gums and lipstick—and nodded once, blinked her massive eyes. “He called me yesterday,” she said. “From the hospital.”

John asked her which hospital.

Lips together, she looked up at him as if he’d just asked her what color underwear she was wearing. All of a sudden she looked very hurt.

“There’s something you need to know,” she almost whispered. “I don’t like people passing judgment, so I’d rather just come out and say these things, have the words come from my own mouth to their ears so there’s no miscommunication. Do you understand?”

John nodded.

She spoke her words slowly, trying more to convince herself than anyone else in the room: “I loved my husband. I was a good wife. I never complained. Never. Do you understand me? It’s important that you understand me, that you understand that. Do you?” But no one answered, and after several moments of silence she straightened her back and sipped some more coffee. “Ah, I remember the place now,” she said, suddenly just as cheerful as she’d been when she first greeted them at the foot of the stairs. “The Palazzo. Grand-grand-grand Palazzo.
Spettacoloso.”

There was a creaking of floorboards just down the hall, and John turned his head in time to see a shadow drift slowly across the wall of an adjoining room. Morris, he assumed, listening in.

“Would you like to see his room?” the woman said suddenly. “Douglas’s room?”

“That would be wonderful,” Kersh said, and stood.

They followed the woman up the winding staircase, John lagging behind and peering into every partially opened door. He was already starting to form an impression of the situation in his head. The woman was old, delusional, eccentric, and most likely not without a touch of Alzheimer’s. He had little hope that the name she gave them was even real.

She led them into a small, empty room with blue walls and a single window overlooking 72
^nd
Street. In the room was a single bed, made and probably not slept in for some time, a cardboard box beside the bed, and a hand-carved dresser with brass handles and gold-plated molding against one wall. That was it.

“When was the last time he was here?” John asked, bending over and peering into the cardboard box. It was empty. With his foot, he lifted the corner of the bedspread and crouched to peer beneath the bed: nothing.

“Oh, my. Not for some time. I can’t remember.”

Kersh asked the woman if she could recall what hospital Clifton had called from, if he had said why he was there and what had happened to him. Kersh’s lilting voice must have resonated better in Evelyn Gethers’s head, for she did not sink back into herself as she’d done when John had asked the question downstairs.

However, Kersh produced no results. Perhaps, the woman suggested, he never even mentioned it to her. “I’m pretty certain I would have remembered, had he told me,” she said.

John opened the drawers of the dresser. Empty. Empty. Empty. In one, a half-empty pack of Marlboros.

“His cigarettes are here,” he told Kersh. “Same brand.”

There was a closet beside the bedroom door. Kersh slid it open and peered inside. Aside from two very expensive suits and a collection of mismatched hangers, the closet was empty. Kersh wasted no time searching the pockets of the suits, plucking them one at a time from the closet and holding them at arm’s length to get an idea of Douglas Clifton’s build.

“I bought those for him,” the woman said with some despondency. “Smell them. Don’t you just love the way a new suit smells?”

“We’d like to leave a phone number with your butler,” John told the woman. “In case you happen to see or hear from Douglas again, he could call us, let us know.”

“Oh.” She was watching Kersh hang one of the suits back up in the closet. “Is he in some kind of trouble?” It was a little late in the game for that question to make its first appearance, John noted, but then again, Evelyn Gethers wasn’t shuffling a full deck.

“We just need to ask him a few questions,” Kersh said, knowing he needn’t go into anymore detail than that.

Evelyn Gethers led them back downstairs where Morris was busy collecting the half-empty cups of coffee off the table. He looked at them through narrow, distrustful eyes, careful to keep his presence at a minimum.

Evelyn Gethers led John and Kersh across the room toward the front door. Kersh, who had also noticed the butler’s subtle interest in their activities, presented himself to the man in an amiable enough fashion and produced a business card. Morris stared at it for a second before pinching it between his pincer-like fingers, like someone suddenly unaccustomed to the conventions of the Western world. Kersh made brief mention to the butler about the situation, remaining as vague as they’d been with the old woman.

Morris’s eyes shifted toward Mrs. Gethers, then returned to Kersh. “I don’t really know him. He just comes around the house sometimes. Not in a while, though.”

Kersh nodded and requested that Morris phone them without haste if Clifton happened to show up again.