The City When It Rains (33 page)

“Z-E-R-0, Corman,” Lang said, his teeth already sinking again into the Danish.

Corman grabbed a hot dog outside the precinct house and strolled south, ending up across from the burn-out in which Sarah had lived the last days of her life. He sat down on the stoop, his eyes staring up at the fifth-floor landing. For a moment, she must have lingered at the edge, stared down into the blowing rain, tried to find the right sound, then settled on a final silence. He thought of how few facts he'd accumulated on what she'd done in the years before that moment, how little he had to give Julian. He knew the kind he needed, hard, brutal facts that sank deep then rose up to save the day, combined to make a story with a beginning, middle and an end. The end was directly in front of him, a slender line of vertical space from the window to the street. Everything else was considerably less defined, and he suspected that it always would be, not only in Sarah Rosen, but in everyone. A mystery of genes at the very start, and after that, only a slightly less consuming mystery. He thought of Lucy, saw her in a food store squeezing tomatoes while someone watched her from a few feet away, calculated the chances, made his move:
Nice tomatoes, huh?
Not to answer was to live in fear. To answer was to put your whole life at risk.

He was still considering it all when he heard voices down the street, and turned to see a group of children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. There were two girls and a boy, all of them about the same size, with nut-brown skin and gleaming black hair. A break in the rain had released them, and they were taking full advantage of it, leaping happily in the moving slants of sunlight that periodically swept the street like enormous prison searchlights.

They laughed brightly as they played together, and after a moment Corman found himself inching toward them as unobtrusively as he could. He was almost upon them when a large woman came out of the building, sat on the stoop and watched quietly as the children played. She wore a flowered dress, and her hair was held tightly beneath a dark red scarf.

Corman smiled quietly and nodded toward his camera. “Photographer,” he said.

The woman smiled back. “Nice now, the sun.”

“Yes.”

The woman nodded. “Very nice.”

He pointed toward the abandoned building a few yards away. “A woman was living there.”

The woman said nothing, and watched the children, a small smile playing fitfully on her lips.

“The woman,” Corman said, “the one in the building. Do you remember her?”

The woman nodded and continued to watch the children. “Skinny woman,” she said. “Didn't look too good. Jumped out the window.” She turned to face him, twirled her finger at the side of her head.
“Era loca.”
She returned her eyes to the children. “How come you talk about her? You her brother, somesing like that?”

“No.”

“No blood?”

“No blood,” Corman said. He let his eyes drift over to the children. One of the girls was skipping rope while two of the other children twirled it furiously. “Would you mind if I took some pictures of the kids?” he asked.

The woman smiled brightly. “No, that's good to take the pictures. They like that.”

Corman moved a few feet away, then turned and began walking forward slowly, focusing on the children, taking a shot every few steps. Through the lens, he could see them caught forever in their play, held together and kept safe by the protective walls of the frame. Inside the camera they could be animated, yet suspended, full of life, yet shielded from it, forever clothed, fed, sheltered, with everything they needed … but a life.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

C
ORMAN HAD BEEN WAITING
for over an hour before he saw Dr. Samuel Rosen come out of his apartment on East 68th Street, then head west, toward the rainy borders of Central Park. He looked as if he'd aged somewhat since the funeral, his white Vandyke just a bit whiter, his face slightly more lined. He was dressed in a long black coat and dark fur cap, his shoes carefully protected by glistening black galoshes as he moved forward determinedly, the wind whipping relentlessly at his umbrella.

Corman waited until he was a safe distance away, then reached for his camera and took a few shots of Rosen's tall, retreating figure. Then he returned the camera to his bag, walked into the vestibule of Rosen's building and pressed the buzzer.

“Yes?” It was a woman's voice, black, with a faintly Southern accent.

Corman leaned forward and spoke into the wall speaker. “My name is David Corman. I have an appointment with Dr. Rosen.”

“Dr. Rosen's not here.”

“I know,” Corman told her. “I saw him on the street. He asked me to wait for him.”

“And you're who, now?”

“David Corman. I'm an old student of his.”

“Well, okay,” the woman said reluctantly. “I guess so.”

The buzzer sounded. Corman stepped into the building and headed up the stairs to Rosen's apartment.

The woman was standing in the door, eyeing him from a distance.

“Hi,” Corman said as brightly as he could. He slapped a few droplets of rain from his jacket. “Looks like it's going to go on forever.”

The woman nodded. “Worst it's been in a long time,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, step inside,” the woman said. “It's dry in here.”

Corman walked into the foyer, then followed the woman into the living room. It was elegantly arranged, but with a dark modesty that resisted showiness of any kind. There was a baby grand piano with a marble bust of Socrates on it. Other busts were scattered around on slender wooden pedestals. Corman recognized some of them: Johnson, Wordsworth, Shakespeare. Others were more obscure figures, medieval thinkers, poets, gathered together as if in silent enclave, mutely watching the rain trail down the large French windows at the back of the room.

“I dust them every day,” the woman said. “Dr. Rosen likes them polished up.” She stepped over to a bust of Erasmus and began wiping its surface with a white cloth.

Corman hesitated a moment, then launched in, because he had no choice but to move quickly. “Well, I guess they're his life,” he said, “especially since Sarah.”

The woman's eyes swept over to him. “Terrible, what happened to that child,” she said darkly.

“Yes. Did you know her?'”

The woman shook her head. “Seen her a few times, that's all.”

“What was she like?”

“She was shy. Always. You know, like lots of people are. Off in the corner, that sort of thing.”

“And she stayed that way?” Corman asked casually, trying to suggest no more than ordinary interest.

She thought about it for a moment. Her hand stopped dead in its rhythmic sweeps across the marble surface of the bust. “She wasn't fit for nothing.”

“Fit?”

“For living,” the woman added. She started polishing the marble again. “Dr. Rosen done his best for her. But Sarah, she just wasn't fit for nothing.”

“How long had she been gone?”

“You mean from here?”

“Yes.”

“Since she got married,” the woman said. “Then something happened, and that was the end of her.”

“She just disappeared?”

The woman nodded. “Hadn't nobody seen her, far as I know.”

“That must have been hard on him,” Corman said.

The woman finished polishing the bust and moved on to the next one. “I got to do his office now,” she said when she'd finished it. “You want to come in?”

Corman got up immediately. “Sure.”

The woman headed down a short corridor, past the closed doors of the bedroom and into Dr. Rosen's office at the back of the apartment. “He stays here most all the time now,” she said as she led Corman into the room.

Corman glanced about. “It's a nice room.”

“He likes it dusted every day.” She stepped over to the large wooden desk and began straightening the few papers that were spread out across his work. “He does all his work in here.”

“He's a great scholar,” Corman said.

“Don't keep things messy, that's for sure,” the woman told him. “Always pretty much keeps things nice.”

“I guess he likes things to be in order,” Corman said.

“Neat and clean. That's the way he likes it.” She leaned over and began dusting a tall stack of reference books which rested at one corner of the desk. “I dust and polish everything in here once a week.”

While she worked, Corman let his eyes roam about the room. A large bookshelf rose all the way to the ceiling along the right wall. It was filled with books, papers and a scattering of professional journals.

“You a teacher, too?” the woman asked, as she finished the last of the books and started wiping the top of the desk.

“Not anymore,” Corman said.

The woman pulled a bottle of lemon oil from her apron, poured some of it onto her cloth, took one of the paintings from the wall to her left and began polishing the frame. The odor of the lemon oil filled the room immediately.

“Got out of it, huh?” the woman asked.

Corman nodded. “Yeah,” he said, as he glanced at the wall behind her. It was covered with various framed documents, honors, diplomas, most for Dr. Rosen, but several for Sarah, certificates of mastery from her many tutors. And just beneath them a single empty square.

It was only a short subway ride to Midtown North, and Corman made it in only a few minutes, then headed into the building and down the stairs to the basement. He lifted the frame from the box, sniffed it quickly and drew back slightly from the heavy lemon odor.

“Still chasing ghosts?”

He turned toward the door.

Lang was standing massively within it, tiny streams of rain still pouring off the hem of his coat and gathering in small translucent pools on the basement floor. Something in the way he slumped against the doorjamb made Corman want to snap up his camera and take a picture of the sinister hunter in the darkness of his lair.

“You in love with a corpse?” Lang asked. His eyes settled on the diploma. “What's on your mind, Corman?”

Corman tried to look casual, tucked the frame back inside the box, then closed it silently.

“You solve the mystery, Corman?” Lang asked with a sudden, hard-edged tone. “Because if you did, I'd like to hear it.”

Corman picked up the box and returned it to its place on the shelf. “I'm just a shooter,” he said.

“With an eye, so they say.”

“No better than most.”

Lang watched him closely, inching himself up slightly, his shoulder crawling up the side of the door and leaving a wet streak behind it. “What do you see, Corman?” he demanded. “With your eyes?”

Corman drew the camera bag over his shoulder and headed for the door.

Lang blocked his way. “Don't fuck with me,” he warned. “If you got something, you give it to me first.”

Corman looked at him evenly, and decided he would bring it first to whomever he damn well chose. “No.”

Lang's lips parted wordlessly in surprise as he stepped out of Corman's way.

Corman could still smell the lemon oil on his fingers as he walked slowly across town toward Groton's apartment. In his mind, he could see Julian leaning toward him from the other side of the desk, his wolfish eyes staring intently as it was laid out for him, the freshness of the oil, the fact that Sarah had not been in Dr. Rosen's apartment for months before her death. Julian would know exactly what he had, a blood offering, Dr. Rosen's body greased and ready for the fire.

The doorman at Groton's building nodded politely as Corman came into the lobby.

“I'm here to see Mr. Groton,” Corman said.

“I remember you,” the doorman said. “You can go on up.”

Corman walked to the elevator and rode up smoothly, his mind still trying to go through all the possible scenarios for how the diploma might have ended up on the fifth-floor landing, its frame shattered and glass cracked, all of it as broken as Sarah's body must have been a hundred feet below.

At Groton's door, Corman knocked, waited and knocked again. There was still no answer. He waited a moment longer, knocked a third time, then a fourth. Inside, a radio was playing softly, but otherwise there was no sound, and after a moment, Corman pressed his ear up against the door. “Harry?” he said. He rapped at the door a final time. “Harry?”

The door opened slowly, and Corman could see Groton staring at him, his large swollen face slightly pink in the dim light of the room.

“Didn't know it was you,” he said grimly.

“We have a shoot,” Corman reminded him.

Groton stepped back and swung the door open. A severe smile spread across his lips. “You probably thought I was dead. Either that, or drunk.”

Corman walked inside and said nothing.

“The job's yours,” Groton said as he closed the door. He nodded toward a single swollen suitcase which rested heavily at the end of the bed. “I got a flight. That's what I decided a few hours ago. That I was going home.”