The Hard Way (23 page)

When I got to Greenwich Street,
I pulled out the little notebook, found a clean page and wrote down the things Lucille DiNardo had said. Then I flipped back to the notes I'd taken when I'd first talked to the witnesses, hoping something would pop out at me, that something insignificant would suddenly be laden with meaning. Standing on the corner, I read everything I had and the only thing I came away with was that all the stories changed. In Willy's case, his story changed because he'd lied. In other cases, people remembered things they hadn't, or thought they did. At this point, I wondered if anything I'd written down was true, if anyone was remembering things objectively, and then I wondered if human beings were capable of doing that.

I turned to Marilyn Chernow's page. The first time she'd agreed to meet me, she told me I'd know her because she'd be carrying a tote bag with the company logo on it. She never told me what the company was called. No matter. We found each other. But now I was wondering if she'd had that tote bag with her the day of the incident, the day of the tragedy, the day the world changed for everybody waiting for the train at Fourteenth Street. Was that what had been on the platform, her tote bag?

I checked the notes again and found something else interesting, pulled out my cell phone and called Marilyn at work.

“Is there any news?” she asked.

“Not really, but I'm still working on it,” I told her, “and I was wondering if we could meet again,” checking my watch, “just for a few minutes.”

“I can't,” she said. “Not today.”

I turned and began to head toward home, the phone still at my ear. “Do you have a minute now?” I hated to ask questions on the phone because sometimes the more interesting information was in the set of the person's shoulders or the size of their pupils, but two things were eating at me, things I needed clarified.

“Sure,” she said, “I have a minute.” In case I forgot she was at work.

“I was wondering if you were carrying that tote bag or some other big bag that day on the station.”

“Well, yes. My sister had asked me to bring her some things, a book to read, some hand cream, some fruit. The food was awful in the hospital and she wanted something fresh, particularly since it was summer. I got her grapes and peaches, bottled water, her own slippers.”

“But you didn't leave the tote? You had it with you when you left?”

“That's right,” she said. “I wear sneakers going to and from the office. I carry my nicer shoes. I don't leave them here because there'd be too many, you know, black shoes if I wear black or navy, brown if I wear brown or tan. I don't have navy shoes,” she said, not finishing the sentence. “There I go again. Why would you care about what color shoes I have?”

“I was wondering if you recall dropping the tote bag or putting it down on the platform at all at the time Gardner was pushed.”

“Why, no. Why would I?”

“No special reason. I was just wondering.” Waiting for a cab to pass, I wondered what the hell I thought I was doing. Was she going to tell me she'd put the tote bag down in order to have her hands free to push Florida into Gardner?

“There was something on the ground right near me, but it wasn't my bag. Did you ever look at the platform in most subway stations? I never could have used it again if it had touched the ground.”

“You said there was something there,” I said, starting to lose interest in this line of questioning. Maybe God was in the details, but I was starting to think the answers to my questions weren't.

“It was that damn cat carrier,” she said.

“It was on the ground?” Not crossing now even though the cab was long gone, Dashiell looking up at me, his forehead pleated. Marilyn had told me she'd nearly tripped over it and I'd assumed she'd only bumped into it while it was being held.

“Yes,” she said, repeating what she'd told me that first time.

“I took a step, now let me think, back, yes, that was it, away from where everything had happened, and that's when I stepped on it and nearly lost my balance.”

“You stepped
on
it?”

“Yes. The dumb thing was right behind me.”

“It was one of those soft carriers, right? A Sherpa Bag.”

“Whatever. Yes, that's right, one of those soft ones.”

“Did the cat cry when you stepped on her?”

“I didn't step on the damn cat. Who said I stepped on the cat?”

“If you stepped on the Sherpa Bag, even if you tripped over it…”

“No,” she said. “The cat didn't cry. There was no cat in the bag.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure,” she said. “That's how my foot got tangled up in it. It was flat. Well, nearly flat, you know what I mean.”

“Collapsed.”

“Yes.”

“But—”

“What does it mean? Did she get loose, the cat?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“She must have been terrified.”

“You mean the cat?” I flipped the book open to my map and looked at the initials in the circles.

“Yes. I guess that's why she escaped.”

“Could be,” I said. I thanked her and wished her a happy holiday, promising I'd call when I knew for sure what had happened.

There hadn't been a cat in the carrier at Pastis either, I thought, suddenly more aware than ever of the crispness of the air I was breathing and the way the light of the setting sun was reflected in the upper windows across the street. That's why Dashiell hadn't tried to get closer to the carrier, and when he'd sneezed to clear his nose, it hadn't been the cat's smell he'd been drawing in, he'd been feasting on the more enticing odor of someone's hamburger and fries.

But why would someone claim they had a cat in an empty Sherpa Bag?

I'd been heading home, but there was no chance I'd find the answers I was looking for there. I pulled out my cell phone to call information and get Missy Barnes's address, remembering as the phone was ringing that I had all the witnesses' addresses in my notebook. I closed the phone and pulled out my notes, going back to the beginning, and there it was.

She lived a block north of the warehouse fire where I'd met Eddie. She hadn't needed the subway to get home. She'd only been there because Gardner Redstone had, because for some reason, she'd been following him, attached by an umbilical cord of hate.

Everyone had lied to me, I thought while I waited, most because they were confused. But not Missy. She hadn't been scared of seeming guilty, the way Willy was. Missy's whole persona had been a lie, from the hat she wore to shield her face right down to the empty cat carrier, something for people to focus on aside from her.

And that's when it all started to make sense. I'd seen Missy before I met her at Pastis. She'd been at the fire, not one of those
hapless souls losing the place he or she had called home, no, not that. For Missy the fire had been a gruesome but thrilling form of entertainment, if not for her, then for her grandson. Little boys do love to watch a fire, to see the firemen working, the great snake of a hose trembling and stiffening as the water shoots through it, to see the fire trucks, larger than life, red and shining in the light of the flames.

I headed north, not to do a stakeout at Missy's apartment building. That would come later. Checking my watch, I headed for Fourteenth Street, for GR Leather. I still had some questions and I was as sure as I could be that that's where the answers would be.

Richard looked up
when the door opened, surprised to see me. Meredith glanced my way, too, a scowl on her face. If I was so sick, what was I doing at work? I waved and headed straight for the stairs, not stopping to let Eleanor know I was in before going to my office. I closed the door behind me and went straight for the files, unbuttoning my coat with one hand while pulling out files with the other.

It didn't take long. It was ten to five when I found out that only part of what I needed was in the files. I left them on the desk and took the stairs up to the design floor, Dashiell, as always, getting there first. Only the lamp on Gardner's desk was on, Abe sitting there though he'd told me he never did, his hands flat on the worn wood, Delia gone.

“Rachel,” he said, “I heard you had the flu. You shouldn't be out in all this—” And then the look on my face stopped him. “You're not sick?”

I shook my head. “I was out interviewing the witnesses again but I didn't want that to be public knowledge.”

“Because you think someone here—”

“No, no, no. It's just best to keep things private until there's a definite answer.”

“And you have this now, this definite answer?”

I sighed. “I'm getting there.”

“But first you need to ask me something?”

“Yes, I do. It's about Alison.”

He nodded, his hands moving away from each other and back again on the old desk. “So much loss when you grow old. So many friends gone now.”

“Is that why you're sitting at his desk?”

He turned the chair so that he was facing me. “The more time that passes,” he said, “the more I think about the old days, when we were getting started.”

“The more you forget about the disappointments along the way.”

He looked up at me and didn't speak for what seemed like a long time.

“Was it Gardner or Eleanor behind all the cuts in benefits?” I finally asked. “The records didn't say. They just show a gradual eroding of bonuses and benefits and finally the cessation altogether of medical benefits. How do you manage?”

“For me it's not a problem. I have Medicare. For Delia, it's another story.”

“Tell me, Abe. I can always listen to a good story.”

“It's not a good story. Not at all. I help her out. I pay the premiums for her. Do you know what it costs nowadays, one day in the hospital, one visit to the doctor? And drugs?” He picked up one hand and I noticed how enlarged the joints were. I wondered how he held a pencil all day long. “Astronomical.”

“So you manage on less medication?”

He lifted his big hand again. “What do I need at my age? But for the young people, it's a problem.”

“Delia,” I said. “Meredith and Richard. And Alison. It must have been a problem for Alison, especially with a sick child.”

“You give your life, your heart, your talent to the business, and in the end,” he shrugged, “you have half the retirement money you were promised and no medical coverage at all. It's not only here, Rachel. It's everywhere. It's the way things are done now. There
was a time that if you had a steady job with a good company, you were set for life.”

“But not any longer.”

Abe nodded. Anyone who read the papers knew that was so and that it was only getting worse. There had been stories about pension losses and the elimination of medical benefits for years now. There was always some loophole the firms could use, some way to get away without paying what every worker had the right to believe was coming to him. Or her. Because it was almost always worse for women, who were usually paid less to begin with and then kept at a lower pay scale. It was bad enough that a lot of senior citizens had been forced to go back to work, but what of the ones who couldn't do that? What happened to them? Or to people who were still part of the workforce but who couldn't make ends meet no matter how much overtime they put in?

“Is this why you're still here, because you can't afford to retire?”

“I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I didn't have to come here, to do this. What would I do, sit and watch reality shows on the television set, find someone to play checkers with? It's not for me.”

“What about the others?”

“They're too young to retire.”

“But how do they manage? You said you pay for Delia's medical insurance. How do the others manage?” And before he had the chance to answer me, “How did Alison manage? You said her little boy has asthma. How did she manage the doctor bills, his medication?”

Abe stood up and walked over to the window, a wall of glass facing north. I saw his shoulders begin to tremble.

“Is there something more you want to tell me, Abe?”

“He wasn't like that. I can't believe he would have done that, without the pressure.”

“You mean you think it was Eleanor's doing, all the cuts?”

“I'm sure of it.”

“Did you ever ask?”

“I did once. When they cut the retirement fund in half, half of what we were promised. You wouldn't think it was something they could do. You wouldn't think it was legal to steal from someone who worked for you his whole life. But it is.”

“What did he say?”

“He was up here more and more, there,” he said, indicating the old desk with a nod of his head. “‘She says it's necessary,' he told me, ‘to keep the business viable. I'm an old man,' he said, as if I didn't know what that meant, as if that wasn't my story, too, ‘and I can't argue with her,' he said. ‘I can't fight anymore.'”

“I see.”

“He was weak at the end. He wasn't like that before. We kept the business going by working hard, by being better than our competitors, not by cheating the workers.”

“Tell me about Alison, Abe.”

He walked back to the desk and sat.

“How did she manage to get medicine for her little boy?”

He looked up. There were tears in his eyes. “You're close,” he said, “but you're missing a piece.”

“That's why I'm here.”

“He always had what he needed, the boy. It was Alison who didn't. Once the coverage was taken away…” He waved a hand and then put it to his forehead. “I saw it, the last trip we took together, to Spain, but I didn't understand until later, until after.”

“Until after her suicide?”

He nodded. “She was splitting the pills. A lot of old people do that nowadays, to save money. But when the doctor prescribes one pill a day, or two, it's because that's what's needed to control the condition.” He shook his head. “Of course I had no way of knowing on the plane that she needed more than half a pill. It was only later that I understood.”

“What was she on?”

“Antidepressants. She didn't want Eleanor to know, but one of those times when we were away, she confided in me. She told me.
Since she was a girl, she'd suffered from depression. Of course, to me she was still a girl.”

I reached for his hand with both of mine, but he pulled it away. “If only I had…”

“What, Abe? Paid for her medication, her insurance? This wasn't your fault.”

“But I should have known she was having trouble. Right before…”

“Before the suicide?”

He nodded. “The boy had a bad bout of asthma. A neighbor gave him a kitten. Alison said he couldn't keep it and the boy cried and cried. She felt so guilty…”

“Because she was away so much?”

“Yes. No matter that she had no choice. She had to work to support herself and her child. There was no one else to do it. But always she felt so guilty, that he had no father, that she was gone so often. So she said they would try. She even found a homeopathic remedy for him and that helped for a while. Just for a while.” He shook his head again. “He ended up in the emergency room one night. She said she thought she'd lose him, it was so bad, his breath whistling, the boy struggling for air. Maybe after that…”

“Maybe she didn't renew her meds at all. Maybe she spent all her money taking care of Kenny.”

“There was one more trip. And then she was gone.”

“Did Gardner know any of this?”

He seemed to knock my question out of the way with his hand.

“He didn't want to know. He let her, Eleanor, take care of business. He spent his time here, designing, more and more. ‘I don't have a hand in the business now,' he told me once. ‘Just this.' His hand was on the old board he always used. He didn't know about Alison's condition. No one did. You don't tell your employer something's wrong with you, not if you want to keep your job.”

He began to rub his right hand. I imagined that after a day of drawing it was pretty stiff, that even buttoning up his coat would
be painful. But not as painful as what he'd just told me. I put a hand on his shoulder. This time he didn't pull away.

Abe stayed where he was, at Gardner's desk, trying to sort out his past so that he could live in the present. I stopped at the office before leaving, to check once more for the missing piece of information I needed. I pulled Alison's file again, double-checked the address I'd copied down earlier, then looked to see who was listed as next of kin, the person to be called in case of emergency. But it was her husband's name. She'd never updated the original form and I had to be positive I was right before calling this in to the precinct. I put the files away, grabbed my coat and followed Dashiell down the stairs. There were a couple of last-minute customers in the shop keeping Meredith and Richard from asking me anything. That was fine with me.

The street lights had come on and, big news, it was snowing again. It would be a white Christmas this year, but not a happy one for three children that I knew about, a little boy who I was pretty sure lived in Chelsea with his grandmother, and two small children in Ohio whose dad had gone missing after returning stateside from Iraq.