The Hard Way (11 page)

“Had you noticed him before Mr. Redstone fell?”

“No. I wasn't looking at anyone.”

“Then how did you know he was so tall? And that he was wearing a hat? Isn't that what you told the detectives, that he had a hat on and you couldn't see the color of his hair?”

“After he pulled me back, he ran away. I saw him running. I watched him go up the stairs.”

“And you didn't remember this when you talked to the police?”

His eyes going every which way.

I reached out and touched his arm. “Everything you tell me, it's between us. You're safe talking to me. I promise you that.”

“I was scared.”

“Of the detective?”

He swallowed and looked very small. Dashiell inched closer.

“There were two of them and they kept saying, ‘Did you see who pushed Mr. Redstone, son?' But it was different, the way he said it. When the tall man said it…” He paused looking away now. I waited. “It was, it was like…” Looking me right in the eye now but not continuing.

“Like when your dad calls you ‘son'?”

Dustin nodded. “He cared. I know he did.” He got up and stood in front of me, nervous, twitchy. “I don't care if anyone believes it or not. It's true.”

“Who didn't believe you?”

“He wouldn't have. So I didn't tell him.”

“The detective?”

Dustin nodded. “When he called me ‘son,' the detective, his face was right in my face and his breath was making me feel like I was going to throw up. I asked him to call my father and he said he would but he didn't do it, not for a long time. He kept after me and I thought maybe I was in trouble.”

“What else did you think?”

“That
he
was in trouble, too. But…” And now there were tears.

“He could have done it by accident, couldn't he?”

I took Dustin's free hand and pulled him back to the bench, his face against my duffle coat now, feeling his skinny shoulders shaking underneath his parka. I put my face near his. “He could have,” I whispered. “Someone could have pushed
him
.”

Dustin lifted his face. “He was kind to me.”

“I know.” Wiping his cheeks with my gloved hand.

We sat on the bench saying nothing for a few minutes. Dustin was petting Dashiell. I was looking out at the snow.

“I have one more question. Is that okay?”

He nodded, still looking at Dashiell and not at me.

“Did you see who was standing behind the tall man?”

Dustin shook his head.

“You've been a great help to me, Dustin. I can't thank you enough.”

This time he looked at me, a question in his eyes.

“No, no. I didn't forget my promise. Here's my plan. I'm going to speak to a friend of mine at the precinct and ask him to invite your whole class for a tour. I'm going to ask him to say it's because of you, that you're his buddy. What do you think?”

“Wait till Howie Sternberg hears that,” he said, eyes wide.

“A good plan?”

“A great plan. Will you come, too?” he asked. “With him?”

“I will. I'll do a demo of Dash's search work. How about that?”

“And some tricks?”

“Absolutely. In the meantime, if you should think of something else, it could be the smallest thing, you'll call me, right?”

“I will, Miss Alexander.”

“Rachel.”

He nodded.

I watched him walk away. He looked so small with the heavy book bag on his back, the skateboard under his arm. He turned once and waved. I waved back. Then I sat there thinking about Eddie, how his backpack, too, was mostly filled with books, wondering where he was, wishing I could tell him what I'd learned about Florida, and what I'd learned about him.

I sat there for a long time, until my feet got numb, until I had to wiggle my fingers in order to feel them. Then I pulled out my cell phone and called Brody again.

“Can you talk?”
I asked.

“Rachel?”

“Yes. I have another favor to ask.”

“Shoot.”

There was a silence on the line after that. Shoot, I thought. Wasn't that what I'd done that put all this space between us? But of course he hadn't meant shoot a gun just now. I knew that, but still felt tongue-tied.

Or was it just that it was Michael that made it difficult for me to talk? Was it that something started between us and we never got the chance to see where it might go?

“I've been interviewing the witnesses from the Redstone case,” I said, wishing I could be lighting a cigarette to buy time, the way he always did, wondering if he'd chime in with a comment, like, “What on earth for?” Or, “We're handling it, Rachel.”

But he didn't. Maybe he wasn't the problem. Maybe it was me after all. Maybe it was what my mother used to call my overactive imagination.

“And?” he asked.

“I met the kid this afternoon. Dustin Ens. Sweet boy. Rather troubled. He lost his mom to cancer.”

“I recall,” he said.

I waited, remembering that waiting for Brody to open up would be like trying to get the sidewalk to recite poetry.

“I was trying to charm him into talking to me,” I told him.

“Did you succeed?”

“He asked if I had a gun. He was very interested in that. I told him I did, but that I didn't usually carry it. Anyway, even talking to the kid without his father's permission was an iffy thing to do.”

“Iffy successful or iffy unsuccessful?”

“The former.”

“Then iffy doesn't count.”

I smiled.

I heard him strike a match. I heard a phone ringing in the background.

“Are you at work?” I asked. Calling people on their cell phones, you never know, do you? I once heard this guy on the street telling someone, his wife, I guessed, that he was at the airport, emergency meeting in Columbus, Ohio, one of those things that sometimes crops up, and that he'd be home in two days. She must have asked him about clothes because then he said he'd pick up a couple of shirts, some socks, underwear, shaving things. The redhead hanging on his arm smiled. He'd smiled back at her. Sometimes I hate cell phones.

“Yeah, I'm at the house,” he said. “And you?”

“Out in the snow,” I told him. “I'm walking along the river, heading back toward the Village. I interviewed the kid at Chelsea Piers. Here's the thing, Michael, I know the precinct does public service, right?”

“It's all public service,” he told me, “every last bit of it.” I had the feeling he was smiling as he said it. But maybe not.

“Well, I thought it would be way over the line for me to show the kid
my
gun, so…”

“So you offered to show him mine?”

“Sort of.” My hood had blown off but with the phone in one
hand, the leash in the other, I didn't have a free hand to pull it back up. “I told him I'd ask you if you'd invite his class to the station house for a little talk, you know, like you guys do at the open house once a year? Fingerprint them, lock 'em in a holding cell, talk about gun safety?”

“I can do that.”

“I said I'd come with Dashiell, too, show them a little search stuff.”

“Will you be needing any body parts for your demo?”

I laughed. “They're only twelve, Michael. I don't want to gross them out.”

“Twelve? They'd love it.”

“I thought I'd have Dustin hide and let Dash find him, make the kid even more of a hero.”

“Well, if you change your mind, I can get you some bones,” he said, “no problem.”

A gust of wind practically blew me off the walk. There was ice along the shore but out toward the center, the river was moving, heading toward the ocean. A little weather wasn't going to stop that.

“It's the Howe School, on Seventeenth Street. I doubt his class is very big. It's a special school.”

“I'll take care of it. Just make sure Dash is in top form.”

“Will do,” I told him.

I thought that would be the end of it, but the line was still open.

“You speak to any of the other witnesses yet?” he asked.

“A few. Their stories are an interesting exercise in fantasy, for the most part.”

“Fear does that to people.”

“But the kid told me something interesting.”

“What was that?”

“That he was at the edge of the platform and someone pulled
him back, to keep him out of harm's way. He said it was the homeless man.” Hoping for a reaction.

“He's sure?”

“He is. He said the man even said something to him.”

“And that would be?”

“‘Be careful, son.'” I waited a moment, but he had no comment, at least not one he wanted to share with me. Maybe he was writing it down. Maybe when he got information like this, he had to make a report, file it in triplicate, get the chief to approve it.

“You looking for him, Rachel? For the homeless man?”

I hesitated, not sure if I should tell him what had happened, thinking if I did, he'd tell me to lay off the case, to leave it to them, the way cops always did.

“He could be anywhere by now,” I said.

Another silence. A long one. Had he gotten up, walked over to the windows that faced West Tenth Street? Was he looking across the street at the gate that led to my cottage, remembering what had happened there?

“I'll call you with anything I have, once I'm sure.”

“Even before you're sure—that would be okay, too.”

I opened my mouth to respond but before I got the chance, the line went dead.

I headed back downtown, walking along the river despite the snow and the bitter wind. I had been thinking that circumstances—the fact that I had saved Brody's life rather than it happening the other way around—had led to the abrupt cessation of what had started with him, that it was pride, his, keeping us at a distance. Now, looking out at the ice that was accumulating along the shore, I wondered if it was something I had caused, my own pattern, not his. I drew strangers in close. That was part of the work, I told myself. And I was good at it, too. But when it was something personal, that was another story. When it was personal, when you couldn't write it off as part of the business, that's when you could get hurt.
Badly. Was that what this was all about, not what
did
happen, but what
didn't
? Had I put up a wall so that Michael couldn't get close enough to hurt me?

Had I done that with Jack, too? By allowing him to determine what my role as his wife would and wouldn't be, hadn't I had an equal responsibility for the inevitable demise of the relationship? If he had unrealistic notions about my life, shouldn't I have told him so?

I'd come to the cold little dogleg where Eddie sometimes slept, where I'd met Florida, stone on two sides, the rest of it open to the river and the wickedest weather we'd had in years. I'm not sure what I expected, but there was no sign of recent occupancy. The box was gone. The plastic, too. And any detritus that might have remained was buried under at least a foot of snow. I leaned against the wall and felt the cut of the wind in my face. The Jersey skyline was streaked with orange, the sun's last hurrah of the day. But there was no warmth, only color, and even that for only a moment. Why would anyone be here now?

I kicked away the snow in the corner and uncovered a shoe. Was it Eddie's?

I'm not sure why, but I kicked some snow back over the shoe before leaving. I'd always wondered about things I'd see in the street, a single shoe, underpants, someone's jacket. I always wanted to know the circumstances, the story, wanting to know how the item had been discarded, how someone had walked home with one shoe, no underwear, without a jacket.

I walked along the river as far as West Twelfth Street, then crossed the highway and headed toward Hudson Street. I thought I'd pick up something for dinner, go home, make a fire, take a hot bath, let all this go for the evening. But when I got close to home, I didn't stop for anything to eat. I didn't stop at the gate to my cottage either. I walked a bit farther down the block, until I was standing across the street from the precinct, and leaning against a slim
tree; I looked up at the light in the windows on the second floor. The detectives' squad room faced front, but I couldn't see much of anything. Even if Michael had been standing at the window looking back down at me, I wouldn't have known for sure it was him, not with the haze of smoke and grime on those windows, not with all that snow.

Elizabeth Mindell
had said she'd talk to me at home. She lived in one of those apartments everyone in New York has lusted after at one time or another, an Upper West Side classic seven, with three bedrooms, three baths, a huge living room, a full dining room, a study and a kitchen big enough to eat in. I only know this because moments after I rang her bell, she was showing me her apartment, as if she was a realtor and I was a buyer with a preapproved mortgage.

“Tell me about the tattoo,” I said as we finished the loop and ended up back in the living room. She pointed to the couch. I sat. Elizabeth sat across from me on a comfortable-looking leather club chair.

“I think it might have been a heart with initials in it,” she said.

“It's hard to be sure, because he was dark, well, not dark dark, not like an African, more like a mulatto. That made the tattoo more difficult to see. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I see a knife there. And sometimes a bird or some other small animal. Do people do that?” she asked. “Do they tattoo animals on themselves?”

“I've seen snakes, tigers, an eagle once,” I said. “I suppose anything you want, there's someone out there who can do it, so, yes, it's possible.” Thinking a cop I once knew said that anything you could think of, no matter how strange, preposterous, unlikely, it's happened, words to keep in mind in my line of work.

“Well then, there you have it.”

“Have what?”

“It was either one thing or another.”

I nodded, as if what she'd said had made sense, as if it had been worth coming up to West Ninety-third Street to see her apartment and hear the mishmash she was telling me about Florida.

She was more East Side than West Side, despite her address. She appeared to be in her thirties, though she might have been older and had work done. She was small and thin, one of those women who could shop in Soho or on West Fourteenth Street and actually find her size. Her hair was blond, with a little help from a high-priced salon. And she was wearing more makeup than I'd had on in the last couple of years. The effect was stunning, if you liked that sort of thing.

“Where were you standing, Elizabeth? Do you recall?”

“Oh, yes. I was right next to him, to Mr. Redstone. I was on his left.”

“I see,” I said, picturing my diagram but not taking it out of my pocket just then, Dustin on his right, Elizabeth on his left, Florida behind him. “And after he pushed Mr. Redstone,” I said, “by the way, did you see the push? Were you looking that way?”

“Well, no, of course not. The train was coming from the left. Everyone was looking that way.”

“Right. So after the push, you told the detectives that the homeless man, the tall,” pulling out my notebook now, as if I were reading notes to refresh my memory, “a tall, thin man bumped into you, is that correct?”

“Yes, as he was fleeing.”

“And he knocked your shoulder bag to the ground?”

“Yes. I've been wearing it the way you're supposed to since then,” her hand starting at her shoulder and crossing her chest toward her waist. “The detective said it was much safer that way. He said not to use a backpack, because someone could open it and take your wallet and you might never even know it.”

I nodded. “And you mentioned an attaché case, which Mr. Redstone had been carrying.”

“Yes. He dropped it when he fell. Or it got knocked out of his hand, one or the other. I saw it when I picked up my purse. It was lying there, on the edge of the platform.” Shaking her head now.

“Poor man.”

“But the homeless man, he didn't try to take it?”

“Sorry?”

“The attaché case. The homeless man didn't attempt to steal it, did he?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“You said it was there after he ran off.”

“Yes, after he ran away. That's when I saw it.”

“And did you notice the boy who was standing on the other side of Mr. Redstone?”

“The boy?”

“A twelve-year-old. He was wearing a baseball cap.”

“No, I didn't see him,” she said.

I began to wonder what Elizabeth Mindell might be taking, perhaps something to help her sleep after the terrible thing she'd seen. Maybe something for her anxiety, too. Because something was working overtime, chilling her out almost to the point of coma. I wondered if I should even bother to ask anything else.

“One more thing,” I said, figuring in for a penny, in for a pound.

“You had a good look at the homeless man, is that right? The one you said was of mixed race?”

“Oh, yes. A good look.”

“Did you happen to see who was standing behind him?”

“Behind him? Well, no. He was so tall.”

“So you didn't see anything then?”

“I couldn't,” she said.

“Is there anything else you remember, anything at all? Even the smallest detail can sometimes…”

She shook her head. “No, nothing more than I've already told you.”

I thanked her, handed her my card, just in case, and picked up my coat. At the door, Elizabeth standing there waiting for me to button my coat and go, I thought of one more question I wanted to ask.

“Do you still take the subway?”

“Of course,” she said. “What are the chances of something like this happening to me again?”

I nodded and headed for the elevator but heard her call out my name before I got there.

“I saw one of those water bottles you can drink from.”

“You mean with a squirt top?”

She nodded. “Yes, that's right. That kind.”

“Who had it, Elizabeth?” Wondering why she was telling me this. Who
didn't
carry a water bottle in all that heat?

“Whoever was behind the homeless man had it.”

“Really? So when did you see it? Before or after Mr. Redstone got pushed?” Because, I was thinking, after he got pushed, Florida was on the move, so whoever had been standing behind him would have been visible.

Unless
everyone
was on the move, one way or another.

“When he bumped into me, the homeless man, he spun me around. I was facing the other way then, toward the local track, toward where he had been standing.”

“And that's when you saw the water bottle?”

She nodded.

I took a few steps back toward her apartment.

“And who was holding it?”

“Oh, no one. It was on the platform. Someone must have dropped it.”

She waited for me to comment. I didn't.

“I guess that's not the kind of detail you're after,” she said.

“You never know,” I told her. “I'll make a note of it.”

When I got back outside, the snow had stopped and the temperature had taken a dive. I headed for the subway, ducking quickly down the stairs, waiting for the downtown express. Standing on the platform, I looked at the other people. It was Saturday, late morning. There were only seven of us waiting for the train. I wondered, under normal circumstances, how much I could recall about any of them, the heavy Hispanic woman with the little boy who kept taking his hat off and putting it on again; the young man in his twenties who had a cast on one foot, crutches under each arm; the old man with his newspaper folded and tucked under one arm; the two girls, maybe thirteen or fourteen, giggling and shoving each other. Did they know how close they were to the edge of the platform? Or was I feeling overly cautious now with the fact of Gardner Redstone's death not just something I'd read about but something all too real?

A water bottle, I thought, waiting for the train. There were two Coke cans near but not in the trash. There was a candy wrapper, an empty pack of cigarettes, three containers that had once held coffee. There were spills and stains of every description, and in the middle of a large puddle, a Metro card was floating.

I had an appointment with Lucille DiNardo on Monday, the earliest she said she could see me. Sitting on the train as it roared downtown, I tried to think of the best way to approach the last witness, the only one I hadn't been in touch with as yet. Willy Williams had had a hard time with the police. I didn't think questioning him in a straightforward way would work for me either.

When I got out of the train at Fourteenth Street, I took the stairs up to the street and punched the number of Willy's employer into the phone, wondering as it rang on the other end if they'd be there on Saturday, getting a message telling me they were closed until nine on Monday morning. Plan A would have to wait. It was time for Plan B.