Unsafe Harbor (3 page)

“That’s a beautiful shawl, Magda,” I commented, as she handed me the kielbasa nestled in a roll.

“Yes, and it’s very warm,” Magda replied, her fingers gently stroking the wool.

My own fingers eagerly clutched the bread, grateful for the warmth that emanated from the grilled sausage.

“Where did you get it?” I asked and bit into the meat, its sweet juices bursting inside my mouth.

“It’s a gift from a friend,” Magda answered with a smile.

“You know, I saw you with the police this morning,” I followed up between bites, suddenly feeling quite ravenous. I wanted to question the woman, but knew enough to be careful not to spook her. She already seemed to be on edge.

“Yes, I know,” Magda solemnly responded as her eyes filled with tears. “Something terrible happened. It was a horrible thing. Horrible.”

“I heard you found a body,” I added, hoping that she would continue.

Magda’s eyes once again began to dart around. I casually followed their course, wondering what could possibly be making her so nervous. However, rather than speak, she busied herself with cleaning, choosing not to respond. Only I wasn’t yet ready to let go.

“What were you doing in that empty field at the crack of dawn?” I pursued, egged on by my curiosity.

She cleared her throat, stalling for time, her reluctance having become a palpable living thing.

“I’ve been parking my truck across the street at night. You know, in the warehouse lot that’s filled with wheels. The owner said it would be all right. Oh, I hope he doesn’t get angry now that the police are snooping around,” she anxiously replied.

“But don’t you drive your truck home at the end of each day? Or does somebody give you a lift?” I questioned, having no idea where it was that she lived.

Magda bit her lip and lowered her head, as if in shame. “The truck is my home now. I lost my apartment close to a month ago.”

I looked at her in astonishment, not having realized that Magda was in such dire straights.

“You’re not saying that you sleep inside your truck?” I blurted in disbelief.

Magda nodded, her chin bobbing in and out of the folds of the shawl. “I scrub it every day after work, and a friend lent me a sleeping bag.”

“But how can you possibly sleep out here in this cold?” I
questioned, feeling both frustrated and embarrassed not to have known.

Magda shrugged stoically which only made me feel all the worse. “I run the heater full blast before going to sleep. If I wake up, I turn it on again for a while. That helps to take the chill off. It’s really not so bad.”

I could scarcely believe what I heard. I wouldn’t have left a dog or cat outside, no less a person.

“I’m sure there must be a shelter where you can sleep. At least temporarily, until you find another place to stay.”

But it was as if I’d suggested that Magda be locked up in prison.

“No! I won’t go to one of those horrible places. They’re filthy, and the people…they steal,” she declared vehemently, her voice trembling with rage.

Then she began to scrub the grill, ignoring me and making it clear that the subject was off-limits.

“Fine. Just as long as you’re all right,” I replied, and let a moment slide before returning to the topic of interest. “So, you were parked across the street last night? Then you must have seen what happened.”

Magda slowly turned back again to face me. This time her expression was full of pain. “No. It was dark. The sound of a car woke me up and then there was the glare of the headlights. They were so bright.”

“Did you hear anything? Voices, perhaps?” I continued to prod.

Magda quickly glanced around once more, and then leaned over the counter. She motioned to me and I followed as if pulled by a string.

“I did see two people get out and open the trunk. They dragged something from inside and carried it into the field,” she revealed in a whisper. “They stayed there for a while and
then eventually left. I waited a long time after that. Maybe two or three hours. I lay listening to the pounding of my heart until the sky turned light. Only then did I go and take a look.”

It was now my turn to wait as Magda covered her face with her hands and drew a tremulous breath. I held my own, having become a captive audience.

“What did you find?” I finally asked, unable to wait any longer.

“I found a woman lying dead in the snow. Her skin was so white it didn’t look real. And then there were her eyes and that mouth…” Magda shuddered at the memory.

“What about them?” I asked, dying to know.

Magda’s eyes locked onto mine as if afraid to let go. “They’d been sewn shut with black thread. She couldn’t have screamed no matter how hard she tried.”

We were both quiet, as if imagining her whimpering sobs locked in the back of her throat.

“Could you tell if she’d been shot?” I asked, eventually breaking the silence.

Magda continued to hold my eyes as if hanging on for dear life. “No. There were no bullet wounds.”

“Maybe she’d been stabbed,” I proposed lightly.

But Magda brushed aside the suggestion. “No. No knife marks. No blood. There were only purple bruises around her neck.” Her hand crept up to her throat, as if to make sure the blemishes hadn’t spread to her own skin. “I saw nothing else. After that, a police car drove by and I ran into the road and waved it down. That’s all I can tell you.”

Purple bruises were something I knew about all too well. I’d nearly been choked to death while stationed in Texas. The experience had taught me an important lesson: Never wear a leather cord around my neck that could be used
against me as a weapon. Ligature marks would most likely reveal that Bitsy von Falken had been strangled.

Magda’s elbows remained planted on the counter where she buried her head. Soon she was covered in a sea of claret. It was as if the shawl were beckoning to me. I couldn’t help but reach out and touch it. My fingers lingered on it, having never felt anything so luxurious in all of my life.

“I’m so sorry you had so see that,” I quietly said.

Magda raised her eyes and dried her tears. Then she grasped my hand.

“Oh, you’re so cold. Here, give me your other hand and I’ll warm them up for you,” she offered.

I didn’t protest, but let her wrap them in the stole.

My hands floated inside material that was light as gossamer and sinfully sensuous. Ultrasoft and thin, the wool could have been a mound of downy feathers; it weighed no more than air. Yet within minutes, my hands were so toasty that they nearly began to sweat.

“This shawl is so nice and warm. Where did you say that you got it again?” I asked.

Magda softly giggled, as if about to reveal a secret. “I told you. A friend gave it to me. It’s good for the cold. Yes?”

It
was
good for the cold. Which made me wonder why she hadn’t been wearing it this morning.

“What kind of wool is it?” I asked, and gently rubbed the fabric against my cheek.

Perhaps Magda felt I was being too forward, for she abruptly unwrapped my hands and pulled the shawl away.

“I don’t know. Wool is wool. I have to close up now,” she said.

She lowered the counter window, and I slowly walked back to my SUV.

Magda was right. Wool is wool is wool. Only some are
vastly more expensive than others, and then there are those that are highly illegal.

A sickening feeling began to take hold. It was one that, for now, I didn’t want to think about, much less know.

I
wrote up a few more tickets, until four thirty rolled around and everyone promptly rushed out. It was as if a school bell had rung and officially announced dismissal. I hung back, choosing not to be part of the throng. Besides, I knew what awaited me on the road. I’d be swallowed up in a mob of cars. Finally, having no other choice, I climbed into my vehicle and gave way to being part of rush-hour traffic.

My Trailblazer joined the horde that inched along the Jersey Turnpike. It gave me plenty of time to take in the local scenery. Row houses stood etched against clouds of smoke spewing from refinery stacks. It billowed like grimy scarves being pulled from a magician’s sleeve. Then I looked to my right and my heart did a somersault. There was the place that I’d left for so long. I’d finally returned home to New York.

The Statue of Liberty seemed to welcome me back as it followed my Chevy, never choosing to leave my sight. However, there was still a gap where the Twin Towers used to be. If I tried hard enough, I could almost paint them in once more with my mind. Then I’d look again only to find that they were really gone.

The city was where I’d been born and raised. It was the one true, solid thing in my life. Or at least that’s what I’d always
believed. But I’d been feeling lost of late, having bounced around for so many years. My friend Terri had suggested that maybe I needed to reconnect with my roots. Perhaps he’d been right. In this case, my Africa was New York City.

I followed the traffic into the Holland Tunnel and held my breath, anxious to reach the end. Once inside the tunnel, I always had the same vision. I imagined one tile popping off the wall, followed by another and another. Then a trickle of water would begin to seep in. I’d watch in growing horror as the volume continued to swell until tiles shot off the walls like rockets. But as in all good horror flicks, there was still more to come. That would only be the beginning.

A torrent of water next came hurtling in from the tunnel’s opposite end. Then the crest would rise up along my tires. Soon it would slip into the car, and my feet would begin to get wet. The cold, dark liquid would tickle my ankles, climb past my calves, and scale my legs to slowly cover my thighs. All the while, I’d be pounding on the car door and windows, knowing that I was going to die.

“Don’t be afraid,” little fish would say, as they’d swim past with their mouths agape. “Just take a last breath, and then swallow the water. For you, there is no escape.”

Terrified screams would ring in a concerto of death as the tunnel walls began to cave in. We’d all be crushed beneath concrete and grime, buried in a watery grave. I had no doubt that my very last thought would be exactly the same as the one I was having right now:
Life would be so much easier if only I didn’t have to deal with lousy bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic.

The red taillights of cars glowed eerily on porcelain white walls as I carefully checked the tunnel again. Their luminous splotches resembled splatters of blood, which only added to my catastrophic vision.

I expelled a sigh of relief as I exited onto the street and was enveloped in a madcap swirl of activity. Gone was my nightmare, replaced by a multitude of people and noise. It was as if I’d been dropped in the middle of a movie.

The lights in high-rise buildings beamed like stars in the night. They twinkled inside their concrete and steel constellations. Their reflection bathed the road so that taxis speeding by were immersed in their glow. The stream of vehicles morphed into glittering yellow chariots.

The city’s pulse rippled through the air, and steam rose from beneath the street. It was as if Manhattan’s very soul were being stoked. New York was twenty-three square miles of high-speed energy and nonstop performance art. And at the moment, I was the only actor onstage, with 1.5 million residents comprising my audience.

An electric current raced beneath my tires, its vibration reaching up into my seat. A low roar announced that I was driving above a subway, and I knew right then and there that New York City was the greatest place on earth.

I drove the city’s width to the Lower East Side, parked in the municipal garage on Essex, and briskly walked home. Sherlock Holmes could keep London, and Poirot could have Paris. As for me, I’d take Manhattan over either, any day.

I’d chosen to live where New York first began, and where the term “melting pot” had originally been coined. At one time, this spot had been deemed the most crowded place on earth. It was a neighborhood that had seen countless waves of immigrants come and go. In that sense, little had changed. People continued to move in and out, leaving traces of their passage along the way. What had become altered was mainly its exterior.

Formerly squalid tenements had recently been gentrified, with hefty rents to match. There was still McDonald’s, with
its ethnic offering of ranchero bagels, but the fast food chain was being steadily overrun by hip and expensive wine bars. My grandmother had once dreamed of escaping this neighborhood. Little would she believe this was where I had now chosen to live.

No matter. The area appealed to me with its eclectic mix of ethnic groups that merged into a unique native stew. Jews, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Chinese all crowded its streets in a concoction of young and old, hip and frumpy. The aroma of chicken soup from Jewish delis mingled with dumplings from Chinese restaurants, as Eastern European pickle shops vied for space with Turkish bakeries.

I took a deep whiff and the heady bouquet nearly carried me away. What brought me back to reality were a couple of roosters squaring off in an alley. The two cocks were about to duke it out over a piece of stale pizza crust. The scene managed to nail the Lower East Side’s plucky personality.

I approached my apartment on Orchard Street. As far as I was concerned, it was in the perfect location. My place was around the corner from El Sombrero Restaurant and Katz’s Deli, with Il Laboratoria de Gelato just down the block. Entering the building, I walked upstairs to the third floor. There was something comforting in knowing that my grandmother and mother had done the same thing before me. Call me crazy, but it made me feel as if I were still surrounded by family.

I opened the door and walked in to find Santou and Spam stretched out on the couch together watching the news. Jake’s arm rested on the fifty-pound pit bull, while Spam lay with his head nestled on his master’s chest. I took in the scene and quietly chuckled. The two had bonded ever since we’d found the pooch as an abandoned pup in Hawaii.

“Hey, chere. You’re just in time,” Jake said, gazing up at me from beneath a pair of hooded lids. “Look at this. Did you know that a dead socialite was found at the port today?”

I followed to where he pointed at the TV. Damn! A reporter was broadcasting from the same exact spot where I’d been standing earlier this morning. Magda could be seen in the background wearing her flowered babushka. But the camera didn’t stop there. It made sure to pan over to her silver tin can of a home, the Kielbasa House, with its name prominently displayed on the side. No wonder she’d been so nervous during our meeting. Why didn’t the news crew just pin a big red bull’s-eye on her?

“Oh God. Why do they have to do that?” I groaned.

“What? Show the murder scene?” Santou asked, as I leaned over and gave him a kiss.

But he wasn’t about to let me off that easy.

“Come back here, woman,” he said, and pulled me down for another as Spam joined in to lick my face.

I curled up in Jake’s arms and jockeyed with Spam for space.

“No. Make sure to show the one possible witness to the crime,” I explained. “See the woman in the babushka? That’s Magda, and the Kielbasa House is her mobile luncheonette. She’s been sleeping inside there. Magda had a perfect view of what went on when the body was dumped.”

Jake gave a low whistle and shook his disheveled black curls. “The press. You’ve got to love them. By the way, did you know that the victim was Bitsy von Falken?”

I nodded, my face rubbing against his stubbled cheek.

“Interesting timing,” he continued. “There are rumors that her husband’s company is in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” I immediately followed up.

I admit it. Part of my interest was purely professional, while the other half was because I loved gossip.

“Hyde Barrow is about to come under investigation for investor fraud,” he explained.

Santou was again working for the FBI, having spent a year in Hawaii recovering from a back injury. He’d been assigned to the Manhattan office after I’d put in my own request for a transfer. My superiors in D.C. had been more than happy to comply, and promptly plant me in Newark.

New York had been a hard adjustment for Santou to make, though he was happy to be in the field again. He’d grown up in Louisiana with its bayous, gators, and Cajun food. New York was a completely different world for him. But it was one that Spam and I both loved.

Spam was thrilled with all the new odors to be sniffed on each corner, and there was a park just around the block. As for me, I was once again mastering the fine art of dashing between moving cars, using my horn too much, and viewing eye contact as an act of overt aggression.

It was true. Living in a city apartment did take some getting used to. Santou still referred to our place as the equivalent of a veal pen. I considered that a small price to pay for any number of reasons, not the least of which was its sentimental value.

The apartment had not only been my grandmother’s, but was also where my mother had grown up. Besides, it did have a certain charm. The place boasted wide plank hard-wood floors and taller-than-average windows. Granted, there wasn’t enough hot water and the radiators pumped way too much heat. But that’s what windows were for. I simply cracked them open and let the cool air blow in. The only drawback was that the apartment also came with the city’s
very own version of wildlife: cockroaches, creatures that I’d always detested.

I left Jake and Spam on the couch and walked toward the kitchen, my antennae set on high alert. If the apartment was a veal pen, then the kitchen was the size of a thimble. No problem. Few people cooked in the city, anyway. It was a shortcoming that suited me just fine. After all, this was the land of takeout. Which was why I was surprised to spot a large, round Tupperware container sitting on the counter.

“What’s this?” I called to Jake.

“Gerda dropped it off. It’s half of a cake that she baked,” he responded.

Gerda wasn’t only our neighbor, but so much more. She and my grandmother Ida had been in a concentration camp together. Gerda was a young girl at the time, part of a group of youngsters that had drawn butterflies on their barrack walls using fingernails, pebbles, and whatever else was available. My grandmother, who’d been a few years older, had done what she could to keep them all safe.

After liberation, the two were inseparable and had immigrated to New York together. They’d shared this apartment until Ida got married. Then Gerda had moved next door.

“Of course, it looked much different back then,” Gerda once laughingly told me. “I think the word ‘hovel’ would have best described it.”

I used to sit as a child and listen to her tales of pushcart vendors and Yiddish theater, entranced as she played the piano and slipped pieces of candy into my eager hands. If I listened closely, I could hear strains of music coming from her place even now.

After my grandmother died, an aunt took over the apartment. But she’d been getting on in years and had recently
decided to move in with her daughter. I’d come back just in time to claim it as my own. Upon arriving, I’d immediately been adopted by Gerda. Or maybe we simply picked up where we’d left off so long ago.

“Oh yeah. And Terri’s going to join us tonight for dinner. Apparently, Eric’s working late and Lily has a date. I guess he’s feeling a little blue,” Santou informed me.

No sooner had he said the words than our buzzer rang.

“Let me in before I freeze to death out here,” Terri wailed over the intercom.

I buzzed him up and unlocked the door.

“For chrissakes, Rach. Tell me again why it is that you live all the way downtown?” Terri groused as he breezed inside. “It’s certainly not for the charm. I swear to God, sometimes I think that you’re bound and determined to channel your dead grandmother. Not a good idea. So let me save you some time and trouble and perform a quickie exorcism.”

Terri threw his arms wide open, as if he were about to placate the gods.

“Ida, for the love of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, please let your granddaughter go! There, that ought to do it. Now maybe you and Santou can move closer to civilization.”

Terri was apparently feeling close to the spirit world tonight. His blond curls bounced on the collar of his faux rabbit fur coat, as he sank into my latest Salvation Army got-it-for-a-steal chair.

Terri Tune had been my former landlord in New Orleans. Since that time we’d become fast friends. He was the girl that my mother had always hoped I would grow up to be. Instead, she’d ended up with a daughter who’d gone into law enforcement, lived in jeans, and carried a gun.

Terri was stylish, well mannered, musically talented, and had the skill of a makeup artist. He’d recently moved to New
York with his significant other, Eric. I’d helped them out a few years ago when Eric’s daughter, Lily, had run away. Now the three of them lived as a family in Chelsea, a section of Manhattan famous for its brownstones, hot new art galleries, and gorgeous men.

Terri removed his coat and I took a closer look at my friend. He’d already been tan, but was now as brown as a tobacco leaf.

“What’s going on? Did you take a trip to Miami that I don’t know about?” I asked, secretly envious that he might have escaped to someplace warm in the middle of winter.

Terri preened in his chair with the insouciance of a Vogue model. “It looks pretty natural, huh? I didn’t go anywhere other than the local tanning salon on my block.”

“Actually you’re looking a little too well-baked,” Jake astutely observed. “Maybe you should think about laying off the sun lamp for a while.”