“It wasn’t an
interview,
” said Kate. “It was a simple conversation, that’s all.”
Brown locked his dark eyes on hers. “Nothing is a simple conversation if you’re going to work with us on this case. You think you can you remember that?”
Kate raised her hands in defense. “Absolutely.”
“You’d better,” he said. “This Stokes guy, would he want to do your husband harm?”
“I don’t know him very well, but”
“How long did he work for your husband?”
“About two years.”
“And you didn’t know him?”
“We didn’t socialize. I’d see him from time to time at the office, but no, I didn’t know him.” The bank statement flashed in Kate’s mind, and she was about to tell Brown, but something stopped her. Was it that she suspected Richard could have been doing something illegal? She wasn’t sure, but wanted to find out before she said anything. “Richard had a talk with him. It’s possible Stokes was on notice, about to be fired.”
“People have killed for less,” said Brown.
“Says he was home with a cold. Has that been checked out?”
Brown tapped a few words into his computer and they both watched as data filled the screen, and Brown scrolled through it. “Here it is. Andrew Stokes’s statement.” He paused, reading. “Yep. Home with a cold. Wife was there. Building’s doorman verified that Stokes had not left the building that day.”
“I still say he bears watching,” said Kate. “Any possibility of putting a tail on him? The secretary confirmed that Richard was annoyed with him lately, plus the fact that he was probably about to get canned. I know it’s not much, but”
“We need more than a hunch to do that legally, McKinnon.”
“How about the fact that he paints for a hobby?”
“I thought you didn’t know him?”
“Just found out.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Maybe we can put someone on him.” Brown made a note on a legal pad, then looked up. “By the way, I’ve got you teamed with Nicky Perlmutter. He was in Homicide for five years. I chose him for my squad when I took over. Good guy. Smart. You’re gonna like him.”
Kate folded her arms across her chest, gave Brown a prove-it-to-me look. “And why’s that?”
“Because he’s one of the few guys on the force taller than you?”
“Funny,” said Kate.
“Perlmutter started up in the Bronx, on foot, so he knows the terrain.”
“You’re out of the Bronx too,” said Kate. “Why don’t you work the case with me?”
“ ’Cause I’m the boss,” said Brown. “And I don’t want a partner who’s in this for personal reasons.”
T
he lemony-yellow street lamps provide the perfect light. No annoying glare or irritating sun. Others might not find it so, their vision severely limited, details a blur, but for him it provides the ideal mode in which to hunt. He pictures himself as one of those Marvel comics X-Men, imagines looking through special commando night-vision goggles, while everyone else is blind.
There they are, the girls, only a block from the river, on this desolate street, three of them, hanging together on the corner, signaling to slow-moving cars.
He moves swiftly, taking in everythingdarkened warehouses, closed-up shops, cars hugging the curbs, men in front seats, eyes closed, girls providing quickie twenty-dollar relief.
He’d like to pull one of those car doors open, slice and dice one of those men. But not now. He is on a mission. He needs to learn. This has to mean something.
He has a jacket on over his shirt, shirttails pulled out to hide the roll of tape that bulges in one pocket, the knives, wrapped in a piece of canvas, in another.
The girls of the night call out to him“Hey, handsome, how about a date?”but he keeps moving until he spies a really young one down the end of the street, smoking a cigarette, tugging at her mini as though she were just a little bit ashamed, and he likes that. He slows his pace, lets her have a good look at him.
“Hi, there.” Gray puffs of smoke escape her lips as she speaks.
He turns toward her and flashes his smile.
The girl smiles back. She can’t believe her good luck. A young guy. And really cute. Not one of the usual slobs.
The street lamp glitters in her hair. Goldenrod, he thinks, and feels a tug in his groin. He knows right away she is the one.
They stand a moment under the streetlight.
“What are you looking for?” she asks.
“Company,” he says.
Come and knock on our door
“That’s me,” she says.
“I like your eyes,” he says. “They’re so blue.”
“No, they’re”
He scowls.
“Yeah,” she says, thinking, blue, gray, what’s the difference? “I bet all the girls tell you how handsome you are.”
He grins, shrugs like a little boy.
For a moment she considers giving him a freebie, but thinks better of it, keeps her mouth shut.
“You gotta place?” He looks from her eyes to her hair.
Yellow? Tangerine?
His hard-on is aching, and he needs to know.
She tosses her cigarette to the pavement. “There’s a parking lot one block over. Somebody’s always left a car open. Lots cheaper than a hotel. Come on.”
The lot occupies an entire corner, cars lined up in neat rows, just a few dim overhead lights, not much. For him, perfect. He reaches for a car door handle. She stops him. “Could be alarmed.” She creeps from car to car, peering into windows, stops, and says, “This one’s got the ‘Club’ across the wheel. Usually means there won’t be an alarm.” She tugs and the door opens. “See. Wide open.”
“You’re pretty smart,” he says.
“And you’re just pretty.”
“You don’t think I’m smart?”
The girl leans against the car and looks into his face. She thinks maybe there is something a little weird about this incredibly cute guy. But he smiles again, that little-boy smile, and she looks at his pouty lips, and the bad thoughts melt away and she decides she might even let him kiss her, something she never allows. “It’s thirty for a suck. Fifty if you want to fuck me. Up front.”
He peels off five ten-dollar bills, and she hands him a condom in exchange.
“You got any kids?” he asks.
“Jesus, why the fuck would you ask me that?”
An image tears across his brain: a gray-fleshed man and woman on a bed. His eyes blink, a vein pulsates in his temple. “Forget it,” he says.
“You okay?”
“Me? I’m grrrrrrrreat!” He flashes another one of those Justin Timberlake teen-idol-type smiles. “You’re in good hands with Allstate,” he says.
She laughs, slides into the backseat of the car and tugs the mini up to her waist.
He drops his jacket onto the ground outside the car before joining her.
The car’s interior is dim, to the girl almost black.
He pretends he is undoing his pants while sliding the roll of tape from his pocket.
“Let me help,” she says.
He mumbles, “Uh-uh,” then pushes her down hard against the seat as he tears the tape with his teeth.
“What the fuck”
She’s a little thing, no more than five-two or -three, maybe a hundred pounds, no match for him. She’s kicking and scratching, but it only takes a few seconds to get the tape across her mouth, more around her wrists and ankles.
Her mind is racing:
How can this be happening?
She tries to say something. Impossible.
“Shhh…”He pulls on plastic gloves and pats her hair, still wondering about the hue.
Oh, God. This can’t be happening.
All the creeps she has serviced in her young life and it turns out to be this one, the cute guy. She tries to think clearly, grasps at hopemaybe it’s just a game, tries to telegraph with her eyes that she will play.
But then she feels the knife pierce her flesh, a sharp hot-cold flash, and when she looks down sees that blood is spurting out of her chest.
Colors explode before his eyesred-violet and plum. His erection throbs. He reaches down with one hand and releases it from his pants.
The girl feels the knife moving in and out of her flesh, tries to take in the reality of what is happening to her, and to breathe, but it’s like sucking Jell-O through a straw.
He decides it’s too cramped in the car to open her up, that he will have to make do with the blood. But it’s enough.
The colors intensifya rainbowand that’s all it takes. He comes against her naked thigh, eyes blinking like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and he cries out, naming the colors as they flash before his eyes: “Maroon! Magenta! Mulberry!”
The last word the girl hears him say is
Strawberry,
and she remembers a night, not that long ago, in the remodeled den of her parents’ split-level home in Dayton, Ohio: She and her baby sister, Abbywhom she has not spoken to since she ran awaydefrosting a packet of strawberries in the microwave and pouring them over vanilla ice cream just before they settled in to watch an episode of
Melrose Place,
which her parents forbade them to watch, but they were out somewhere, who cared, as long as they were out, and now, just before her breathing fails and her heart stops, she hears the theme song from the show playing in her head.
I
nside the car, everything has gone a murky, dismal gray, and all he wants is out. He no longer cares about making a painting, the brush having never left his back pocket. It’s too late. He can’t remember anything. A total waste.
Celebrate the moments of your life…
As if.
Another opportunity wasted. He feels nothing but shame and disgust as he plucks his jacket off the ground. It does a good job of hiding his bloodied shirt, though not his pants, which is okay, it’s too dark to see the blood against black denim. He peers around the parking lot to see if any other cars are being used in the same way, but it’s quiet. He tugs the girl out of the car, leans her body against his, both arms around her waist to keep her upright. She’s heavier than expected, the inert body clumsy to maneuver.
He shuffles toward the river, the dead girl’s head bouncing on his shoulder. A few cars pass by. No one stops.
He thinks that it wasn’t so bad after all. He saw a few things that he would not ordinarily have seen, and though he did not make a painting, he’s not left anything behind. It’s as if this never happened, like a get-out-of-jail-free card.
At the river’s edge he remembers his fifty dollars, gets a hand into the pocket of what is left of her mini, and tugs out a fistful of bills. Then he pitches her body into the river and watches it disappear into the inky-black water.
T
he detectives’ “lounge”formerly a ten-by-twelve-foot storage binhad been affectionately referred to as “Graceland” ever since the calendar with the faded color glossy of the King’s Memphis estate had been tacked onto the wall beside the vending machines.
Nicky Perlmutter, in loose-fitting khakis and a blue button-down shirt tight across his chest, was leaning against the wall dipping a Lipton tea bag in and out of the mug in his hand. At almost six feet four inches tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular, he would have made an impression even without the apple-red hair, blue eyes, and freckles, but the combination of the Huck Finn face on the strapping thirty-seven-year-old body was disarming.
“McKinnon, right?”
Kate took him in as they shook hands, surprisedhe was not at all what she had expected. “How’d you guess?”
“Brown told me to be on the lookout for a tall, beautiful woman.”
“Oh, please.” Kate actually blushed. “Brown never said that.”
“No, but he
did
say you were tall.” Perlmutter smiled, which Kate thought made him look about fourteen. “I don’t mean that you’re
not
beautiful, what I meant was that, uh”he sputtered“you know, that
I
added the beautiful part.”
“Well then, I guess Brown is right about two things.” Kate smiled too. “One, I’m tall, and two, that I’d like you.”
A couple of detectives at the far end of the long narrow table were huddled over cups of steaming coffee; one, mid-fifties, balding, and overweight, chewing on an unlit cigarette, the other one, younger, not bad-looking, though he already had that mean, suspicious look that twisted up some cops’ faces. They glanced up at Kate and Perlmutter, then looked away, slightly disgusted.
Kate figured the news of her arrival had made its way around the stationnews like that always did. And she knew the scorethat being police was a fraternity, that the boys were not going to invite her in, certainly not without some significant hazing, which, in this case, they knew was impossible: Kate was Tapell’s pal, and close to Brown as well. Bad enough she was a woman, whom the men would not like having around even if they had to pretend they did. Of course the women cops wouldn’t like her either. They’d just see her as competition. Kate remembered what that was like when she worked in Astoria. She and Liz had clung to each other like lifelines, just about the only women on the force who got along.
She made a note to have Brown spread the word that she was not after anyone’s job or their collars, simply to help catch a psycho, and when that was over she’d go back to her life.
What life? What exactly was there to go back to?
No, she would not allow herself to think like that.
Perlmutter caught a glimpse of the cloud that had suddenly darkened Kate’s features. He took hold of her arm. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Z
erega Avenue was a wide thoroughfare that might once have been grand, though if that was the case, it had been a very long time ago. Half the tenements and storefronts were boarded up or burned out, and everything was so graffiti-covered that the edges of buildings blurred into one another, creating a kind of urban camouflage. Perlmutter brought the car to a stop alongside a wide ten-story apartment building that looked as though it had been built sometime in the 1920s and not cleaned since.
Inside, the semicircular lobby was big enough to set up a Little League game, though completely devoid of ornamentation, plaster detailing on the ceiling stripped away, walls a combination of flaking paint and grime, pillars the size of redwoods etched with crude initials, names, hearts, and skulls.
“Super’s in number one,” said Perlmutter.
K
ate hadn’t seen so much Catholic imagery since her high school days at St. Anne’s, and she hadn’t missed it. Above every door, crowding the walls, flanking the heavily curtained windows of Rosita Martinez’s airless apartment were paintings and objects and reproductions of saints and crucifixes, all smiling beatifically or writhing in pain.
Richard had a passion for the real ones, the Italian version, and Kate always kidded him that it was because he was Jewish, that if he’d been brought up Catholic he wouldn’t be able to stomach the stuff.
Martinez was anywhere from forty to fifty, impossible to tell if the lines on her face were caused by age or a hard life, a tiny woman, no more than five feet, with bottle-black hair, and dozens of bangle bracelets on her wrists that created a mini-cacophony when she gestured.
“Oh, such a terrible thing.”
Cling. Clang. Clink.
“The worst thing in my life to see.”
Clink. Clank.
“The worst thing I have ever to see happen in this building since I become super hereand I seen plenty of bad things.” She sighed over the clinking and clanking of her bracelets. “Horrible. I am still taking the pills.” Her eyes darted from Kate to Perlmutter. “From the doctor,” she added quickly. “I can show you the prescription.”
“Not necessary.” Kate offered the woman a warm smile. “If I’d gone through what you did, Ms. Martinez, I’d be knocking back handfuls of tranquilizers with Scotch.”
Rosita Martinez smiled at Kate. “You are not like the rest of them. The questions they ask. Over and over. As if I don’t have it bad enough.”
“I can imagine,” said Kate, taking the woman by her bangled hand, leading her toward the couch. “You should sit down. Relax. We don’t have a whole lot of questions.”
Nicky Perlmutter offered the woman one of his Huck Finn smiles, then whipped a small notepad out of his back pocket. “Says you found the body at four
P
.
M
. Can you tell us what you were doing in the victim’s apartment at that time?”
Rosita Martinez’s jaw clamped shut.
Kate threw Perlmutter a look with the slightest tilt of her head, and he understood the messagemake yourself scarce. “Could I get a glass of water?” he asked, a nod toward the kitchen.
Rosita Martinez shrugged, and he took off.
“I can imagine how awful it is to have to relive any of this,” said Kate, turning to the woman. “But it will help us find out who did it if you can.”
The tiny woman took a big breath. “Well, Suzie, she tell me the day before that her hot water, it was not working right. To be honest, this happens many times in this building. I was coming to her apartment to see if there was a problem. That was when I, I” She crossed herself several times, the bangles striking up an atonal symphony. “When I found her.”
“So you saw her the day before,” said Kate. “Do you happen to remember what time of day that was?”
“I would see her many times. Her apartment, it is just across the lobby. But that time, the last time, it was at eight or eight-thirty. I know that because she stopped to ask me about the water and I was watching the
American Idol
on the TV.” She glanced over at the twenty-seven-inch Magnavox directly opposite the couch with a look of pride, then above it at a garishly painted plastic Jesus and crossed herself.
“You have any idea where Suzie was going at eight or eight-thirty?”
Martinez shrugged as Perlmutter came back into the room sipping water, though he hung back, gave Kate and the witness some space.
“Please.” Kate laid her hand over the woman’s. “Anything you can tell us is very important if we’re going to catch the person who did this horrible thing to Suzie.” She caught some sadness in the woman’s dark eyes. “You liked her, didn’t you?”
“She didn’t do anyone harm.”
“I’m sure she didn’t,” said Kate. “Like a lamb to the slaughter, the Good Book says.”
“You are a Catholic?” Martinez asked.
“Full-blooded,” said Kate, deciding to omit the fact that she had not been inside a church in over twenty years, unless it was to look at art or attend a weddingor a funeral.
“I knew it!” Rosita Martinez’s dark eyes brightened.
“So, do you know where Suzie was headed that night, when you saw her going out?”
“She had one of her…dates, you know. Suzie brought men back many times during the night.” She was almost whispering. “But is that a reason to die?” She wrapped her fingers around the silver cross at her throat, her eyes on Kate. “Mary Magdalene, she was like that, and she turned out to be a good woman.”
“Absolutely,” said Kate. “Tell me, RositaI hope you don’t mind if I call you Rositawere there any men who were regulars of Suzie’s, that you saw here often? You know, on a continual basis.”
“A few.”
“Can you describe any of them?”
The wrinkles in Martinez’s brow deepened with concentration. “There was one man, a businessman, maybe. I say this because he always wore a suit.”
“What else can you tell me about him? Tall, short, bald? Anything like that?”
“I remember one time he came into the lobby and I was just leaving to the supermarket because I had no milk and I do not like coffee without the milk, and he was coming in, like I say, and he passed right by me and he was tall.” She extended her bangled arm way above her head.
“You have an excellent memory,” said Kate. “How old, would you say?”
“I’m not sure. He had one of those baby faces, you know, and good-looking.”
“Could you pick him out from a photo?” asked Perlmutter, figuring it was okay to be part of the conversation now.
“
Sí.
Yes. I think so. He was here many times. The first time I see him”Rosita Martinez clutched her crucifix in her tiny palm“it was springtime. I think maybe the end of April, a very nice day, the first one after the winter. I was talking to Mr. Diaz, who works on the garbage truck, a nice man, a gentlemanand to have such a job…”She clucked. “And Mr. Diaz was saying that it was a lot more easy to collect the garbage when there was no snow and it was not freezing, but that it would be even worse when it was summer and hot and the garbage it would stink and”
Kate interrupted as gently as possible. “And that’s when you saw him for the first time?”
“
Sí.
Yes. He was coming into the building, and he looked nervous with the eyes going all around, and he had a piece of paper, one of those, what do you call themwith the glue on one part?”
“A Post-it?” Kate offered.
“Yes, that was it, a Post-it. It was in his hand, and he kept looking at it and then up at the building, like to check that he was in the right place. And I remember that I wondered who he was, this good-looking man, and who he was coming to see, up here, in the lousy Bronx. So I watched when he went into the building, and I have to tell the truthI peeked in through the door, and I see that he goes to Suzie’s apartment, and I give Mr. Diaz one of those looksyou know, I raise my eyebrows, like you-know-what-this-guy-is-up-to. And now”she twisted the cross and chain around her throat“I feel bad that I did that.” She glanced up at Kate with some urgency. “You don’t think this man, he do this to Suzie?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll find out.” She patted the woman’s arm and the bangles played a little jingle. “Oh, by the way, do you know if Suzie painted?”
“Painted?” Rosita Martinez peered up at Kate. “What do you mean,
painted
?”
“You know, made paintings, with oil paint, pictures on canvas?”
“Icons, like Jesus?”
“No, regular pictures. Scenes, or paintings of fruit.”
“Fruit?”
Rosita Martinez shrugged as though the idea of making pictures of fruit was the most absurd thing she had ever heard. “No, I don’t think so. I never see any pictures like that in her place.”
Kate hadn’t thought so, but had to ask. “Were there any other regulars?”
“There was the boyfriend. He stay here many times. Not such a nice one, this boyfriend. But who am I to judge?”
“I’m sure you are an excellent judge of character,” said Kate. “Can you tell me what this boyfriend looked like?”
“A black man. Skinny. Tall. With long hair in those clumps, you know.”
“Dreadlocks.”
“
Sí.
Exactly. And he used a cane, a silvery one, but I do not think he needed it for walking. He did not have a limp. He was a young man. I think the cane it was like a…how do you say?”
“A prop? A costume?”
“
Sí,
a prop.”
“You have some memory,” said Kate. “Doesn’t she, Nicky?”
Perlmutter nodded enthusiastically.
“Anything else?” Kate asked. “A tattoo? Any scars?”
“Oh, sweet Jesus. How could I forget? A scar, yes. A bad scar. Like someone had once tried to cut his throat.” She brought her hand across her throat dramatically, then crossed herself.
“Would you mind going into the station, looking at some pictures?” Perlmutter asked.
Rosita Martinez eyed Kate, waiting for her approval, and Kate gave the woman’s arm a gentle squeeze.
“Okay,” she said, patting her hair.
Perlmutter stepped away, called the station and arranged for a car to fetch Rosita Martinez while Kate commended the woman yet again on her memory, then went through a few more questions. By the time the uniforms showed up to take Rosita to the station, she and Kate were chatting like old friends.
“You are a very nice lady,” said Rosita Martinez. “And pretty. But a little too skinny. Probably you are always on the diet,
sí
?”
“No,” said Kate. “I eat all the time, I swear.”
“Good. I will cook for you a delicious meal sometime.”
“That would be lovely,” said Kate.
“You like fried plantains?” asked Rosita Martinez.
I
mpressive,” said Perlmutter, as he and Kate headed across the lobby toward Suzie White’s apartment. “Another ten minutes and that woman was going to adopt you.”
“She wanted to talk,” said Kate. “And probably no one has given her the time before. Plus, she was scared. I learned a long time ago that all people need to open up is to feel safe.”