He stopped and he added in a softer voice, “It was pretty shocking, what happened to him. You’re wondering what the hell is going on, right?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You got a right to know, I’d say. Rick used to talk about you, like he was an uncle or something. Yeah, you’ve got a right to know.” He stopped, and then said, “I don’t want to talk here. Where are you? Can I swing by before I head home?”
I gave him my address, and he gave me a time. I wanted to ask questions right now. I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to go straight to the Pastores and say, “Tell me everything about the people in the party pictures, and especially those two young cops,” but I knew they did not live in the house then and probably didn’t know anything. And no one else on the block went back that far.
What to do for now? It looked like I might finally get some answers. I tried to work but my thoughts were too scattered to be productive. I suppose I finally gave up, but there I was, pouring coffee and speed dialing Darcy’s cell phone. I asked about her vacation, and she gave a deep, long sigh.
“Picture this. I am sitting in an Adirondack chair that must be a hundred years old, looking out over a sparkling lake. Everyone else is waterskiing and I am all alone, sipping a margarita and reading a stack of
New Yorkers
.”
“Is that as heavenly as it sounds?”
“What do you think? And how is life in the big, bad city?”
“Oh, Darcy. My life gets crazier by the minute. So much has happened I don’t even know where to start.”
“Tell all. Start at the beginning.” She was all business now. I imagined her sitting up straight, drink down, memo pad in hand.
Some of it she knew; some of it she loved, especially Mrs. Rogow; some of it she found disturbing. I knew that because she was commenting very, very carefully.
“Oh, yes, and I think I might have, sort of, maybe had a kind of date with your friend Steven. It was a kind of impulsive, friendly, concert in the park kind of thing.”
“Hmmm.”
‘What the hell does that mean? Hmm?”
“Ah. You think real hard.”
The light bulb finally went on. “Did you plan this?”
“Well. Plan? Define plan?”
“I hear the laughter in your voice. Dammit, Darcy. You might have told me.”
I could wring her neck. Or I could say thank you. Of course I could do both.
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
“To what purpose? What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Dressed nicer when I met him, maybe.”
“Or?”
“Or I would have said no way. I admit it.”
“Like you’ve done every other time.”
“Darcy, it isn’t as though I haven’t tried; you know I have.”
She did know. She’d been the sounding board when I’d had a couple of not very deep relationships. In the end, none of them were Jeff and it all seemed pretty pointless.
“Well, my dear, he’s recently single, and he is an interesting person, an intelligent, charming man with diverse interests and good manners. Where’s the problem?”
“Oh, please. One, I have too much going on in my life to be interested in dating anyone right now. Two, I have to think about Chris and dating. That’s weird. Three, I’m not even so sure if I like him. He’s kind of too…I don’t know. Too the world is his oyster. I don’t even know if he likes me, either. Four, we have nothing whatever in common. I mean, it’s obvious we are from different worlds.” I paused for breath. “I don’t even understand what he does for a living.”
“He helps very rich people figure out ways to become richer. He’s good at it, too.” She sounded slightly amused.
“You see? That proves we have nothing in common. I don’t even know any very rich people. Maybe you and Carl.”
“Not us. We are not in Steven’s world. Not even close.”
“See! So what world am I in? From a different galaxy altogether? I can’t talk about prep school friends or golf or whatever people like that talk about. I don’t even know what they talk about. He’s too…he’s very suave for me.”
“Consider this. His ex-wife is a golf-playing debutante with an MBA. Maybe he likes you because you aren’t?”
“Assuming he does like me.”
“I say this with the greatest possible affection: you are a dope. You underestimate how interesting and fun you are, and you know something else? I admit his surface is very smooth, and a little stiff, but there’s more to him. He can be fun when he relaxes but there is loneliness, too, I think. But of course if you’re sure he’s a waste of your precious time…”
The sarcasm floated right through the phone wires, loud and clear.
“Ok, mom, I get the point. Maybe.”
“Do you like him? Isn’t that the question?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t, at first. Then, now, maybe, sort of, he’s growing on me. He’s kind of…I guess, kind of nice. And, he’s not hard on the eyes though he’s not really my type. I don’t think.”
She laughed. “Just so you keep an open mind and let yourself have a little fun. Keep in touch, honey.”
I watched the block, hoping my visitor could find parking. I noted that the double-parked plumber’s van from earlier was still here and was now parked at the curb, right in front of my house. Some part of my brain wished he would move the damn van and give me the spot. When my visitor arrived, he double-parked without hesitation. Cops can get away with that.
“Nice to meet you in person, Ms. Erica Donato.” He offered his hand. “You look just like the photo on Rick’s desk, only without the black cap and gown.”
“High school? I can’t believe he still had that one. Well, I’m surely a little older looking now.”
He looked at me with squint and a smile. “Not that much.” He came in, and we settled into the living room.
“How well did you really know him?” He was not looking at me while he waited for my answer.
“That is the question, isn’t it, the one that’s keeping me up at night. I thought I knew him as well, at least almost as well, as I know my own father. I don’t think that anymore. It’s shaken me.”
“Let’s say,” he said, still not looking at me, “let’s say he had a few sides to his personality and he didn’t show them all to everyone.”
I nodded. That made sense. I don’t really know everything about my dad, and Chris certainly doesn’t know everything about me. And that’s a good thing too.
Why should it be different with Rick?
“He was a good friend, as I’m sure you know from your dad, and yeah, he was always as good a cop as he was a friend, citations, promotions, well thought of. He did like to have a hell-raising good time though, all through the years. That’s what busted up his marriages.”
I thought about Wanda, and his house, so neglected except in the places where his comfort was the issue, and I nodded again. “He never showed that side to me, but I can sort of see it now.”
“Even the years he was on the job, we all knew there was some betting. He liked trips to Atlantic City and Vegas, he liked more than a few drinks, but he kept it to his off time. You couldn’t ask for a better cop, better back-up, better friend, altogether.”
“So how can they even think that? Those detectives…”
He shook his head. “He was doing something that made someone angry enough to kill him. Come on. It doesn’t look like some juiced up kid with more testosterone than brains.”
“So you’re saying no questions can be off the table for the detectives?”
“Rick always said you were smart.”
He held up a hand to stop my next indignant questions. “There’s more. What I hear—and my sources are good—they found a gym bag stuffed with cash in his closet. So first, what’s a recently retired cop running a small private security business doing with that? And second, they found pictures in a desk drawer.” He responded to my shocked look. “No, not that kind. The fully dressed but wrong people kind. In his retirement, yeah, Rick was hanging out with some extremely questionable associates. The kind the FBI takes an interest in.”
“Someone else sort of told me that,” I said slowly, “but I haven’t wanted to think it could be true. It makes him someone else, not the good man I knew.” And loved, I thought.
“Understandable, but that cash isn’t imaginary, and neither are the pictures. We don’t know what they mean. That is, not yet. And there’s no physical evidence. Not YET.” He stopped. “I should clarify that ‘we’ means ‘we, the department.’ I’m not personally involved in the investigation.”
“What if someone wanted the pictures…”
“To be found? Could be. Nevertheless, he was associating with, let us say, known felons and persons of interest. And don’t say ‘what if they were faked?’ We’ve got experts for that.”
“But these little pieces are all only pointing to things. What do they
know
? Really know?”
“They know the names of a lot of people in the pictures. They know a woman he was seeing pretty steadily has fled to Montreal.”
“Wanda?”
“You met her?” He looked surprised.
“No, I found her.”
“Nice work. I hear they’ve got some Canadian cops checking on her exact whereabouts, so they can bring her back if they need to.”
I thought about how scared she had been, and had a fleeting hope that they would not find her
.
He looked at me with a somewhat sympathetic expression. “I can’t help thinking I’ve given you more questions than answers.”
“I don’t know. Dammit, yes. I feel like I know Rick less than ever. I wanted to know why they’re asking so many off the wall questions. Now I kind of wish I hadn’t asked.”
He gave me a sympathetic smile. “He was a good cop and a good guy for a lot of years. I’d bet my shield on that. We don’t know exactly what happened in his life the last few. We, meaning all of us this time, you, me, his friends and the detective team. Whatever, it doesn’t take away from all the years before. Me, I’m sticking with that thought. You should too. And whatever deep waters he got into, bottom line, someone killed him and left him there to be found and that person will get his. Count on it. It’s not your job, but it is going to get done.”
“Is that supposed to cheer me up?”
“I was hoping.”
“It isn’t working that well.”
I had one more important question to be answered. At least it was important to me.
“I have a reason to think he worked in my neighborhood, right here where I live now, when he was young. I saw a photo. And I don’t get it. He never told me that, not after visiting me here a million times. Is there anything you know about that? It’s here, Park Slope, the 78 precinct.”
He looked at me oddly.
“Wow. That goes back a real long way. Real long, before I was married. I was just a kid then and he was too.”
He shook his head. “As best as I recall, Rick wasn’t there very long, and he wasn’t very happy. He didn’t seem like his old self, and every once in a while he’d say something about getting out of there.”
“And didn’t he ever…?”
“Nope, never said why. Young cops in those days, we didn’t exactly have these soulful talks. I figured he had a screw-up partner or a hardass sergeant. Like that, you know? Then, he got a transfer and was back to being his old self again.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “I always felt like something happened to him there. A girl? Something? Man, this takes me back a long way!”
He shook his head again. “He wasn’t like scarred or anything like that. If anything, he was even more like his old self? I don’t know how to say it better than that. He was harder in some way. Still a joker but not a goofy kid at all. Harder, like he learned something and didn’t like it.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “Ahh, we all probably did. A few years on the job and you stop being a clueless rookie. You’d better. I don’t remember any more and probably never knew any more even back then.”
I had to be satisfied with that, though of course I wasn’t at all satisfied. His words, that it was not my job, rattled around in my mind. It wasn’t but it was. Perhaps I would have to settle for frequent phone calls to Sergeant Simms. How could I let it go entirely? I knew I couldn’t.
I wrote up everything about the meeting and then forced myself to put the pages, and Rick, away for now. I had to get some work done. Maybe I could pursue it later. Work would be a challenge, because hammering had begun downstairs. Someone was building something in my house. Or perhaps tearing something down. I went to investigate.
The workmen looked up, waved, went back to the job. They were building vertical structures around the appliances.
“Yes, you’ll have your new cabinets tomorrow,” a voice behind me said. “Tell me I’m your hero.”
I turned around to face Joe. My smile told him that he was my hero.
“Sorry it’s taking so long.” He looked a little sheepish. “You know I’m fitting you in around other jobs. That’s why we’re here so late today.”
“I know. It’s finally starting to seem real now!”
“Amazing, isn’t it, how it’s a mess and then it’s still a mess, and then it all comes together? Best part of the job, seeing that. Those bleached cabinets will be nice in here, nice and bright. We’ve got the counter tops. We’ll get them in as soon as we can, I promise.”