VC03 - Mortal Grace (33 page)

“Do people eat in here often?”

“As infrequently as possible. I’m sure it was quite the place a hundred years ago, when rectories had full-time servants—but it’s a little grand for nowadays.”

“And gloomy.”

“You noticed.”

“Would it bother you very much,” he said, “if it turned out that Father Joe was mixed up in something criminal?”

“Of course it would bother me. But he isn’t.” She straightened one of the tilted candles. “You know, Lieutenant, in my work I get to see people—just as you do in yours—and I learn to make judgments—just as you do—and I’m not a bad judge of character. I’m a lot better at people than it looks—and I’m certainly not as bad as you think I am.”

“What do you know about what I think?”

“I know you feel sorry for me.” She looked at him and there was a cool electricity in her gaze. “You see me as a do-gooding liberal who’s never had an opinion tested in the crucible of the real world. You’re hoping I’m strong enough to survive the disillusion when you show me that Father Joe is a rat.”

“That’s quite an exercise in mind reading. But the blade cuts two ways.”

“Please. Read me. Cut me. I deserve it.”

“You see cops as rednecks in city clothes. Right-wingers who trample on minorities and blindly support an unjust status quo.”

“There’s an element of that in every cop, isn’t there?”

“Have you ever known a cop? Ever really talked with a cop? Ever sat down and had a meal with a cop?”

“Are you proving a point or asking me to have a meal with you?”

He was uneasily aware that they belonged to different tribes. “Tod Lomax was found dead two weeks ago.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“His hairs were in the hairbrush in Father Montgomery’s guest room.”

He felt an ice curtain drop between them.

“I’ve told you he worked here,” she said. “He used the guest bathroom and he brushed his hair. Why is that such a surprise to you, Lieutenant? Why do you expect it to be a surprise to me?”

He sighed. “Do you have any idea where Father Montgomery could have met Tod Lomax?”

“I’d assume they met down near the West Side docks where the runaways congregate.”

FORTY-THREE

T
HE SECRET OF GETTING
information from a bureaucracy is confidence and swiftness. You must approach, intimidate, and seize in one brazen, continuous move.

Cardozo laid his shield and his ID on the bank manager’s desk. “I need a photocopy of check 2727 drawn on the parish account of St. Andrew’s Church.”

The manager’s eyes gave off sudden uncertainty. “I really should ask to see your court order….”

“Fine. If it takes a court order to track down a piddling forged check, I’ll get a court order.” Cardozo snapped his shield case shut. “And maybe some reporter down at the courthouse will get a good story: the oldest bank in Manhattan isn’t even reading the signatures on forged checks.”

The manager’s lips pressed into a thin line. She took off her oversize tortoiseshell glasses. “Would you please let me finish?”

“No, you let
me
finish. Next time you or your bank needs me or my men, I’ll remember you made me go by the rules.”

The manager’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That won’t be necessary. Seeing as you’re with the precinct, we’ll waive the formalities.”

The photocopy was sitting on Cardozo’s desk two hours later. The face of the check told him nothing new: it had been made out to
Cash
and signed by Bonnie Ruskay. What interested him was the stamp-endorsement on the back: the faint letters had been badly smudged, but he could make out enough to put together the words
Fidelity Mutual Corp. Inc.

Fidelity turned out to be a storefront check-cashing operation on a low-rise stretch of Varick Street where the signs in the windows were mostly
TRIPLE X ADULT FILMS AND FOR RENT
. The blinds were angled against the hot blaze of noon as Cardozo stepped through the doorway. A seven-foot zombie decked in shades, gold chains, and holster-hiding Hawaiian shirt stood eyeballing the clientele. He tracked Cardozo with the attentiveness of a heat-seeking missile.

Cardozo nodded hello and flashed his shield.

The zombie escorted him to the head of a shuffling line of surly suckling moms and nodding-out junkies.

Cardozo laid the photocopy on the countertop next to his shield. “Who’d you cash this check for?”

The employee didn’t answer. His pockmarked heavy-jawed face stared at the endorsement. Eerie, high-pitched notes were spilling from his Walkman earphones, like crickets playing violin duets. “This check was cashed last year.” It was a complaint.

“The law says you keep records.”

Mr. No-Smile-for-You-Today gazed at Cardozo with drooping why-are-you-doing-this-to-me eyes. He reached under the counter and dug out a six-inch-thick ledger. He turned pages overgrown with paste-ons. A cloud of dust motes mushroomed up into the air. “That check was cashed by Nell Z. Dunbar.”

A crummy Xerox of a picture ID had been taped to the paperwork. Cardozo studied the sunken cheeks, the crater eyes. “This is her?”

“One of those runaway teen hustlers. They hang out on the dock.”

“When did you last see her?”

“This one? She was in here two days ago—trying to cash an S and A welfare check.”

S and A stood for
stolen and altered
—the most profitable racket run through these check-cashing storefronts. The Human Resources Administration claimed it had tightened procedures and was annually losing “only a modest” hundred eighty million dollars through such scams. In fact, the department admitted off-the-record to an annual half billion siphoned off in fraud.

Cardozo peeled the Dunbar ID off the page.

“Hey.” The employee’s Queens Irish vowels shaded into a whine. “We need that.”

Cardozo smiled. “So do I.”

Cardozo’s nostrils winced at the stench of unshowered bodies and fecal waste and decayed food. The dock on West Twelfth had once been an enormous warehouse. The interior was as desolate a scene as any Third World capital taken over by rebels and liberated by U.S. Marines.

With his clean shirt and tie, he was as invisible as a fire truck in Grand Central Station. The several dozen heads that were not stoned or unconscious turned. He could feel the low buzz spread:
Watch it
—
cops are here.

He searched as he would have canvassed a neighborhood, door-to-door, only there were no doors, just the little unmarked squares of open floor that each of four hundred runaways had claimed as her or his own. The nearest square was occupied by a dark-skinned, one-legged boy playing with Walkman earphones.

“Have you seen this girl?” Cardozo held out the ID photo.

The gesture drew the boy’s gaze. The eyes narrowed—exiled eyes, not caring, barely seeing.

The head shook. “Haven’t seen her.”

Each grave-sized plot of floor was furnished with junk pulled from the street—a discarded mattress, a wooden crate, maybe a lantern or a flashlight. Cardozo went to the next.

“Have you seen this girl?”

Callused fingers took the ID photo. “Never saw her.”

At the northwest end of the warehouse, a wan-faced girl with pale blond hair sat barefoot on a mattress with burn holes. She was easily the hundredth person he’d spoken to. She was playing solitaire and she didn’t look a day older than sixteen.

“Excuse me. Have you seen this girl?” Cardozo handed her the photo.

She looked at it, and a faint shimmer of revulsion came into her eyes. The eyes were cornflower-blue and the hair was feathery blond, hanging in braids down to her freckled shoulders.

With a jolt, he realized she was the girl in the photo. Deeper lines around the mouth, deader eyes, braids instead of bangs—but the face was hers. “You’re Nell Dunbar.”

She didn’t deny it. She gave the picture back. “Lousy photo.” She had a faintly regional accent. Cardozo would have said New England. “Fidelity cashed a check for you.”

“They cash all my checks.”

“Last year they cashed a check drawn on St. Andrew’s Church. Two thousand dollars.”

Resentment flared in the eyes. “And kept five hundred of it.”

“What was that check for?”

“For me, what do you think?”

“In payment of what?”

Her breath came shallowly, quickly. “If they say I stole it, they’re lying.”

“I’m checking if your stories match.”

“They gave it to me because they felt sorry.”

“Two thousand dollars?”

“They felt very, very sorry.”

He could see she wasn’t about to explain her actions, least of all to a cop. “When you were at the church, did you happen to see this boy?” He showed her the photo of Tod Lomax.

Her eyes became somber. “Who says I was ever at the church?”

“You know you were there, Nell. Two thousand dollars didn’t walk down here to you.”

She shrugged. “I’ve seen Tod around—but not at the church.”

“Where?”

“He hung out here a while ago.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Two, three months ago. Three, I guess.” She handed back the photo. “His family’s looking for him?”

Cardozo nodded. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

Her lips curled in a halfway smile. “He said they’d send someone. His mom, right?”

“Did you know him?”

She shrugged again and this time the shrug said she’d slept with a lot of people here and in the street and in rooms all over town, and there was nothing special in that regard about her relationship with Tod Lomax. As the braids swayed, something sparkled and Cardozo saw that she had a steel wristwatch strap woven into the left-hand braid.

“Why did Tod leave?”

“He met someone.”

“A girl?”

“That would be strange.” She smiled, fuller this time.

“What’s so funny?”

“He met the priest from that church. The priest had an extra bed and he needed some work done.”

“What kind of work?”

“Painting. Carpentry. Tod’s good with his hands.”

“Was this the priest?” He showed her a photo of Father Joe.

She shook her head. “Not the priest I met. It might be Tod’s, but mine was a woman.”

“May I?” Cardozo gestured toward a corner of the mattress. She moved over, and he sat down. “My name is Cardozo. Vince Cardozo.”

He’d bought cigarettes and he offered her a Tareyton. She accepted. He gave her a light.

“Tell me, Nell, have you ever seen this boy?” He showed her Pablo Cespedes.

“Not that I can recall.”

“This boy?”

She squinted at the photo of Wally Wills. “No, never saw him. But that picture was taken right over there.” She pointed to a doorway on the river side of the warehouse.

“This girl?”

She took the photo of Wanda Gilmartin and frowned. “I never knew her—but she must have known Jeremiah.”

“Who’s Jeremiah?”

“He used to do hair. He knew how to weave things into the braid—like the wristwatch strap in mine.” She handed back the photo. “And the chain in hers.”

Cardozo studied Wanda Gilmartin’s image. There was a streak of brightness in the hair—he had assumed it was a flaw in the print. But it could have been something else. “Where can I find Jeremiah?”

“You can’t. He was killed in a fight last winter.”

Nell walked with the detective out to the edge of the six-lane highway.

“If you need me for anything,” he said, “don’t be shy, don’t be afraid—get in touch.”

“Okay.”
Fat chance
, she thought.

He gave her his card and she watched him go, sprinting through the traffic.

She had nowhere to put his card but inside her halter. It made the cut in her nipple uncomfortable, so she moved it to the other breast where the cut had had longer to heal.

She was walking back toward the warehouse when she realized that a white stretch Porsche limo had pulled out of the southbound traffic and was driving slowly alongside her. She looked over at the solid black one-way windows.

She’d seen the car before. It had followed her several times. Word on the dock was,
Don’t get involved with the guy
—
he’s a creep and an asshole and he’s cheap
—
a hundred dollars to do things you have to get a tetanus shot for afterward.

The limo stopped. The driver’s window came down in a slow peeling motion.

“Hi.” The driver leaned out. He was smiling and wide-shouldered with two gold chains showing in the unbuttoned V of his raspberry Izod shirt. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t think so,” Nell said.

He stepped out and opened the rear door. A current of rose-scented air spiraled out of the dark, brushing her with coolness.

“Ever seen the inside of one of these? I bet you haven’t, because this is a custom job.”

“Thanks, but I really don’t think so.”

It was the coolness that held her. Coolness felt so good there in the sun.

“This baby has a queen-size water bed, a Jacuzzi, an entertainment center, and a fully stocked bar.”

“What’s the music?”

“You like the music?”

She moved closer to the coolness. A recorded male voice with big-band backup was crooning “Don’t stop that line you’re feedin’ me / When you implant that need in me, / My heart gets up to speed in me ….”

Nell recognized one of the records her father used to play before he got put away for butchering her mother and sister.

A light came up in the backseat and an old guy in a toupee and a commodore’s blazer was sitting there hungry-eyed, staring at her.

“So, can we say hello now? Call me Toe—Toe as in Knee as in Tony.” He snapped a finger. He smiled. His mouth was too full of too many teeth and they were too white. “Hi, you beautiful doll. Dig the beat?”

She realized his voice was the same as the voice on the sound system. She couldn’t remember the name, but she knew he’d been one of the big pop singers of the fifties, or the sixties, years before she’d been born.

“Whatever turns your crank, doll. Grab that high and come fly with me.”

“Thanks.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think so.”

He reached a hand. She stepped back before he could touch her.