The City When It Rains (24 page)

“Is this a common practice?” Corman asked. “Doing so many background checks?”

“Well, it's not uncommon,” Maddox said. “But I'd have to say that Dr. Rosen was a little excessive.”

“In the number of people he had checked?”

“That, and in the depth he wanted. You couldn't just come up with a quick fact-sheet, born here, worked there, blah, blah, blah. He wanted more than that. He wanted to know about what was going on inside of them, in their heads, what their personalities were like, that kind of thing.” He smiled broadly. “And that was okay with me. It took a lot of time, and I worked by the hour.” He shrugged. “Of course, I never really came up with all that much for him. The business with Bernice Taylor, her record, that was about it, and he didn't even use that.”

Corman looked at Maddox intently. “Didn't use it? What do you mean? He fired her.”

Maddox shook his head assuredly. “No, he didn't.”

“She said he did.”

“Fired her?” Maddox asked wonderingly. “When?”

Corman flipped back through his notes. “November 1973.”

Maddox shrugged. “Well, he must have fired her for something else, then,” he said confidently. “Because I had that report on Rosen's desk a long time before November.” He thought about it again, as if checking his facts, then shook his head determinedly. “No, believe me, if he had fired Bernice Taylor for having a criminal record, he would have fired her in August. That's when I submitted the report.”

“Before she was hired,” Corman said.

“Of course,” Maddox replied. “That's the way Rosen always worked. The background check was what cleared the way.”

Corman nodded.

“Have you spoken to anyone but Bernice?” Maddox asked off-handedly, as if trying to test Corman's investigative skills gently, without accusing him of not having any.

“No,” Corman admitted. “Who do you suggest?”

“Well, are we talking about a quickie here?” Maddox asked. “Cut and paste?”

“I'd like to get some information as soon as possible,” Corman told him.

“Then if I were you, I'd start with her husband.”

“She was married?”

“As far as I know,” Maddox said. “Rosen asked me to do a background on him before they were engaged. I did, and after that I assumed they got married. Anyway, it. was the last business I got from the old man.”

“Do you remember the fiancé's name?”

Maddox smiled confidently. “Of course. Oppenheim. Peter Oppenheim.”

“Does he live in New York?”

“As far as I know.”

“What did you find out about him?”

“Very much a steady type,” Maddox said. “All the right schools. Andover. Yale. Good family, lots of connections. A dream come true as far as Rosen was concerned. They were colleagues, you might say. Both of them at Columbia.”

“Oppenheim teaches there too?”

“He was when I did the background.”

“When was that?”

“Five years ago,” Maddox said. “And everything was fine as far as Rosen was concerned.”

“He seemed pleased? I mean, with Oppenheim?”

“Pleased?” Maddox said. “As pleased as he ever got. I think he actually smiled when I told him his future son-in-law was about as clean-cut a guy as God ever made. And to tell you the truth, Dr. Rosen didn't exactly have what you'd call a smiling face.”

Corman regretted that he didn't have a picture of that face. He glanced at his watch, and realized that he still had time to get one.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

O
NCE IN POSITION,
Corman took one picture, then another. After that he simply watched the entrance to the Tomlinson Chapel on East 68th Street. It had a small arched doorway with modest stained-glass windows and two marble columns on either side. Corman kept a close eye on it as he waited across the street, lingering under the awning of an apartment house while the rain swept up and down. He'd already been there for several minutes before the doorman approached him.

“Excuse me,” the doorman said. He straightened himself slightly, showing off the buttons of his uniform. “May I help you?”

Corman continued to watch the front of the chapel. A limousine had pulled up in front, and he could see a man in a black raincoat as he got out and headed into the building.

“Excuse me,” the doorman repeated. He tapped Corman's shoulder. “I asked you a question.”

Corman looked at him. “What?”

“This is not a bus stop,” the doorman said. “Are you waiting for someone who lives in this building?”

“No,” Corman said. His eyes drifted back toward the chapel. The long black limo had already pulled away from the curb.

“Then I'd like for you to move on,” the doorman said firmly.

Corman glanced at him. “Move on?”

A thin smile slithered onto the doorman's face. “It makes people nervous.”

Corman looked back toward the chapel, its door now tightly closed.

“I said, it makes people nervous,” the doorman repeated emphatically.

Corman looked at him. “What does?”

“People just sort of hanging around the building. People they don't know.”

“I'm a photographer,” Corman told him.

The doorman chuckled. “Is that supposed to impress me?” He placed his hand on Corman's shoulder and squeezed very slightly. “No trouble, please. Just move on.”

Corman felt like resisting. He didn't move. “What's wrong with me standing here?”

The doorman looked surprised by the question. He gave him a very small shove. “I mean it.” He was an overweight, middle-aged man with wispy strands of gray peeking out from under his cap, but he looked hardened rather than weakened by his age, the sort of man who'd been pummeled, come back for more, then taken it again on the chin, the jaw, the eyes, until all the features had finally merged into a kind of doughy mass, slack and puffy, but still strong despite all that. Corman had met such people before, the type who knew exactly where the line was in them because they'd faced so many others who'd crossed it without a thought.

“I mean it,” the man repeated.

“I was just watching the chapel across the street,” Corman said innocently.

The doorman didn't feel like discussing it. “Look, pal, when you pay rent in this place, you can stand here till hell freezes over, but until then …” He gave Corman another small shove.

Corman thought of Lucy, Lexie, and his picture in the paper, sprawled across the sidewalk, the doorman grinning above him. He could read the caption: News stringer roughed up by doorman. He stepped away from him and put up his hands. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I'm going.”

The doorman eased off slightly. “Good.”

Corman nodded, strode out from under the awning and headed across the street to the chapel. He could feel the doorman staring at him all the way, watching for a quick move, the pistol that might come from nowhere and turn his big hard fists into paper cups.

Once across the street, Corman took a few close-ups of the chapel's stone facade. He focused on the small details, the carvings on the wooden doors and the swirling pastels of the stained glass windows. Then he took a few more shots of the entire exterior.

Inside, the chapel was modest, and as he stepped into its small dark foyer, he was struck by how slightly seedy it looked. There was a small square foyer, decked with slightly faded flowers, a brown wooden table with a few assorted vases and a signboard which listed the various rooms, along with the people who were in them. The memorial service for Sarah Rosen was scheduled for Room Four.

Corman glanced around, found the stairs and headed up them. There was a wooden lectern just outside the room. Someone had placed a leatherbound register on it. Corman searched his pockets for the little notebook which seemed to be a part of him now, the one in which he could write down the facts, then hand them over to Julian or Willie Scarelli. He quickly opened the register. The page was blank. He sank his notebook back into his jacket pocket and stepped quietly into the room.

Sarah Rosen's plain mahogany coffin rested in front of a short wooden altar. It was closed, and someone had laid two sprays of red roses on top of it. The man in the black raincoat sat alone in the front pew, his head erect, facing the coffin.

Corman took a seat in the back and waited for the ceremony to begin. Several minutes passed, then suddenly, as if on a signal, the man in the raincoat rose silently and began to make his way down the aisle.

Corman stood up and watched him approach. He could tell that Dr. Rosen's eyes had fastened on him, but it was too late to retreat, and so he simply stood in place as the old man made his way up the aisle.

Dr. Rosen's head was lifted high, chin up, his face strangely shadowed, as if stage makeup had been applied to darken the deep furrows of his brow. He stared intently at Corman as he approached, then stopped dead in front of him.

“Who are you?” Rosen asked.

His face was so near to Corman's that he could gather its details immediately, the white, carefully trimmed Vandyke, the goldrimmed glasses that looked as if they'd been imported from another age, the dark, hooded eyes. In a modern version, it was the face of Lear, Creon, King David's face when he first glimpsed Absalom hanging by his hair.

“Who are you?” Rosen repeated, when Corman failed to answer him.

Corman lifted his shoulders nervously. “Nobody,” he said.

“Nobody?” the old man said. One of the hoods lifted. “You don't have a name? I made it clear that this was strictly a closed memorial.”

Corman glanced away, then said, “My name is Corman.”

“Did you know my daughter?”

“No.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I'm a photographer.”

“A photographer? Why are you here? What was Sarah to you?”

Corman realized he couldn't exactly answer that question, but struggled to do it anyway. “It's just that … that I was there the night she …” He stopped.

Rosen's body stiffened. “You took pictures of her?”

“Yes.”

“On the street?”

“It's my job,” Corman said weakly.

Rosen looked at him hatefully for a moment, then suddenly his hand shot up and slapped Corman's face.

Corman remained before him, frozen, his face still hot and trembling from the blow.

Rosen lifted his hand again, then held it trembling in the air, its gray shadow resting like a veil over Corman's face.

“I'm sorry,” Corman sputtered. “I didn't mean to …”

Rosen's eyes narrowed spitefully for an instant, then darted away. For a moment he stood entirely still. Then he bolted forward abruptly and fled the room.

Corman sank down in the wooden pew, felt himself give over to the inevitable, rose again, walked into the street and headed east, toward what he thought now the only opportunity he still had.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

T
HE CONCIERGE
was smartly dressed, and he did everything but click his heels as Corman walked through the large glass doors.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“I'm here to see Harry Groton,” Corman told him.

“And your name?”

“Corman.”

The concierge began to finger the buttons of the console behind his desk. “That's 20–B, isn't it?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Corman said, glancing back outside. The bare limbs of the trees weaved slowly as the rain and wind lashed them. They looked forlorn, forsaken, forest exiles walled in by the cityscape, their slender uplifted branches entangled in a net of rain.

“Mr. Groton?” the concierge said into the black receiver, “Mr. Corman to see you. Yes. Thank you.” He looked at Corman. “You may go up: 20–B. Turn to your right when you step out of the elevator.”

Groton's apartment was near the end of the corridor and Groton himself was already standing in the door, his body wobbling slightly as he offered Corman a quick wave.