CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) (14 page)

“And the profit you make on the ones Helping Hands buys takes the sting out?”

“That too. Listen, Smith, this is actually kind of fun, but I’ve
got a lot on my plate today. Did you get what you came for?”

“I don’t know what I came for, and I don’t know what I got. Can I ask you one more thing?”

“If it’s quick.”

“What is it Triple-A delivers over there at night?”

“I don’t know what it was, but I believe they’ve stopped.”

“Not according to Burcynski.”

Aha. A slight movement of the eyebrows, a brief hesitation. Four–all. “No? Well, I’m not sure about that. But I’ll look into it.”

I laughed. For a moment he seemed uncertain why. Then he grinned. “No, I really will. Look, I’m sorry, but I really have to get back to work. Come back any time you want to accuse me of something. It’s been a pleasure.”

Hill rose with a smile, shook my hand, showed me to the door.

Game called on account of darkness.

T
WENTY
-F
OUR

I
couldn’t think of a thing to do next except have lunch. So I headed for that, crossing the street to the deli where I’d run into Arthur Chaiken and Andy Hill the morning before.

The sky over the Bronx was startlingly blue. The afternoon sun glowed the honey color you see on groomed lawns and stately homes in calendar photographs. Here, it picked out elaborate details of brickwork and stone, glazed terra cotta, ornate cornice lines; but it shone equally upon peeling paint, vacant windows, doors twisted on their hinges, and the graffiti that lapped at street walls like breakers from a rising sea.

It was after two, and the deli was half empty. Up front, a rumpled attorney waved his fork at a thin black woman. An untouched cup of coffee sat before her; he was demolishing a corned-beef platter. Other lawyers were scattered around, most of them tired-looking middle-aged men. The few younger men and women wore the
suits and power ties of people on the move. A.D.A.’s, they were, with ambitions: maybe to rise in politics; or maybe to pick up a prosecutor’s mental habits, then open criminal defense practices, where, after a number of years, they would get to be tired-looking and middle-aged.

I ordered a cup of coffee and a pastrami sandwich. The coffee was to help me think. What I really wanted was a beer, to help me not think, to spread that optimistic warmth through my brain that said everything would work out one way or another.

What the hell to do now? Talk to more people, hear more half-truths. Wait for that moment, that break: the lie you catch someone in, the story that doesn’t match, the offhand word that couldn’t possibly be true. That’s how cases are broken; but you don’t get that unless you do the dogging, the footwork, the going over and over and over the same barren ground.

I ate, trying to silence the buzzing in my mind. Outside, yellow leaves rustled on the plane trees in the park, drifted carelessly to the sidewalk. I thought of the hills above my cabin, brown and orange, splashed with fiery maples, shadowed by stands of blue-green fir. If I left now I could get there in time to see the light fade, soft lavender to gray to silent black night. The air would be sharp this time of year, the icy wind from Canada cold and cleansing. I could walk in the woods, where the only smell of decay comes from last year’s leaves, where rot nurtures next year’s growth.

I watched the street, drank more coffee, smoked a cigarette. Finished, I made a phone call. Then I walked through the sunshine to my car and drove across the Bronx.

The sunlight seemed at home in Riverdale, bathing great trees and old stone walls, slate roofs and clipped hedges. There were new, huge apartment buildings along the highway, and older ones in modest brick clusters in half a dozen other areas; but where I was, on winding streets heading up from Broadway, the homes were big and the lawns were generous. These were old, substantial houses, of stone, brick, gleamingly painted clapboard; and occasionally a modern gem, glass-and-cedar boxes piled artfully together.

I rode, as usual, with the window down; I could smell wood-smoke. The quiet seemed less disturbed than underlined by the steady growl of an unseen leaf blower. Brown leaves lay mounded, raked into neat piles by brown men who didn’t live here.

The streets, besides being clean, curving, and tree-arched, were empty. So when a green Chevy Nova that had been a few cars behind me off the Deegan stayed in my mirror as I curled my way uphill, I had a feeling there might be meaning here.

He was careful, lagging back, too far for me to read his plate or see his face. Once or twice he almost lost me as I made a turn, but I was careful too, careful to keep him with me while I decided what to do.

I gave up temporarily on my destination, meandered a little, thinking. Huge horse chestnut trees rose from a grassy center island, paused for a traffic circle, continued uphill. When I was a kid in Kentucky we’d collected chestnuts every fall. They were magical when you first cracked the green globe to reveal the brown-black nut, glossy and perfect.

In a few days, though, the chestnut would start to dry and dull. One year I kept the biggest, greenest globe unopened, hoping that way to keep the chestnut inside perfect too, though I’d never see it. But within a week the globe began to shrink. The spines turned brown and fragile, lost their ability to protect. Finally it split. The chestnut, exposed, dulled and withered like the others.

I had two choices: I could lose the Chevy, or I could confront him.

The hill flattened out before the chestnuts ended. The Chevy was far enough behind, downhill, that he couldn’t see me. I swung hard around the island, sped back the way I’d come, the way he was still coming.

He was in the middle of a long block with no cross streets on his side. I expected that when he saw me, he’d speed up too, try to race past too fast for me to see his face. If that worked for him—if I didn’t get a look—then I’d swing back around and chase him. That was my plan. But he had one other option, and he took it.

A short street angled sharply from my right into the boulevard we were on, and the chestnut island broke there. When the Chevy saw me coming he stomped on his gas, cut hard to his left. He whipped across me and flew up that street.

It took guts. I was coming pretty fast. I hit the brakes and my tires squealed; I missed broadsiding him by maybe three inches.

It was a good move, though. He got what he wanted. He swung left at the next corner, was out of sight before I was moving again.

I shifted, gave it gas, cut right; almost a U-turn, the angle was so sharp. At the top of the block I cornered left as he had, sped two more blocks to a twisted three-way fork. Down, down, up, and you couldn’t see twenty yards along any of them, narrow streets close with turns, grand houses, hedges. I chose up: it seemed like the straighter, faster road, and he was in a hurry. But up turned down within half a block. It curved and suddenly with no warning it thrust me from the tree-lined fantasy land into the wide brightness of a bridge over the highway.

I slammed on my brakes at the stop sign, just missed a car in the intersection. He cursed me and I didn’t blame him. I looked around; so many roads, so many choices. And then to my right I saw the Chevy in the distance disappearing east on the highway, in the direction that could take him upstate, or back into the heart of the Bronx.

Adrenaline raced through me and I almost threw the car into gear to charge after him. I could catch him; I knew I could. But it would be risky for everyone else on the road if I tried.

I sat gripping the wheel, breathing deep and controlled the way I do at the piano, until I was calm. I lit a cigarette; it helped. My original destination lay across this bridge. I shifted into gear, headed for it.

A grin slowly spread itself across my face. I’d caught a look at his plate. Something with L’s and 3’s in it. I could get that checked out. Besides, the guy had been following me for a reason. I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t seem to me he’d gotten much out of our little game.

If I was lucky, he’d be back.

T
WENTY
-F
IVE

I
could hear the doorbell from where I stood, on the square entry porch of the square white house. Four deep tones, a dominant seventh chord yearning for resolution. The house was
stucco, vaguely Italianate but not showy, not as large as many in this corner of Riverdale, along the Hudson. A small grove of spruces separated this yard from the yard next door. Looking down the hill through their green-blue branches I could see the river shining in the sun. The front garden, like the house, was small, modest; but it was beautifully planted and cared for. It bloomed with fall flowers, tall gold chrysanthemums and shorter, buttery ones, glowing orange marigolds and, against the whitewashed front wall, sunflowers drenched in light. I wondered if fall flowers were colored like the sun as a consolation for the approaching darkness and cold.

The beveled glass beside the front door filled with the stringy-haired face of a yapping dog. The door opened and the dog rushed out, a large traveling mop that planted its front paws on my knees and tried to lick my face from there. Probably that was because it had so much hair in its eyes it had no idea where my face was. I leaned down and scratched its head. It writhed in ecstasy.

“Scotty, get down! Smith, I’m glad to see you. Come in, come in.” Arthur Chaiken, dressed in open-necked shirt, gray trousers and cardigan, wrestled the dog to a draw. He held its collar with one hand, shook my hand with the other, stepped aside for me to enter his house.

“Thanks,” I said. “For letting me come on such short notice.”

“It’s no problem. And besides, I have to admit I’m intrigued.”

The dog flopped around us, sniffing at my shoes. I followed Chaiken through the small entryway into a house flooded with light. The floors were pale wood and the walls were white, the doorways large and the windows wide and numerous.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” I said. “The lawyers I know mostly work at home when they absolutely have to get something done.”

A high-ceilinged living room with a stone fireplace lay directly ahead, but we turned left down a short hall into a sunroom with a slate floor. The sun streamed onto the darkness of the stone, which collected its warmth and radiated it back, enfolding us.

“No, no,” Chaiken said. “The fact is I don’t go in every day. So much of what I do is paperwork, and sometimes it’s easier to do it from here.”

The dog’s toenails clicked on the slate as it stretched out in a patch of sunlight, thought better of it, chose a different patch. I asked, “Who minds the store?”

Chaiken grinned. “Is this part of your investigation?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh. Sit down.” He gestured to a pair of tan leather chairs by a coffee table heaped with paperwork. A small desk equally heaped stood a few feet away. On both table and desk, magazines lay folded open to underlined articles above and beneath stuffed file folders. Yellow legal pads were scrawled with words in three colors of ink. Pens were sprinkled around like fallen leaves and a half-empty coffee cup sat making brown rings on a pink official form.

“Gad.” Chaiken seemed suddenly to see the room through my eyes. “It’s not as bad as it looks, you know. There’s a system.”

“I believe you.”

“Would you like a drink? It’s a little early, but I’m flexible.” He grinned again. “Bourbon, right?” He opened a cabinet, took out a bottle of Jim Beam, the right bourbon for a non-bourbon drinker to stock, if you ask me. He clinked ice from a bar fridge into two generous glasses, poured more bourbon in one than I would have, and more scotch in the other. He handed me mine, settled in the other chair.

“Well,” he said. “You’ve certainly got my attention. And by the way, I was glad when you called and said you were working on a case. That security-guard thing just didn’t make sense to me. Skoal.” He lifted his glass. I did the same, sipped the ceremonial first sip.

“You didn’t believe me?”

“I didn’t know any reason why you’d lie to me, but no, I didn’t believe you. And look, I was right.” He seemed pleased with that, like a guy who gets an off-the-wall tip on a horse, puts two bucks on it, and hits. “So. What are you working on, and how can I help you?”

The sun, pouring in behind me, warmed my shoulders. The bourbon warmed me, too. I told him what I was working on.

“Hmm.” He frowned in a lawyerly way. “I wondered about that, when you said yesterday that those killings might not be what they seem. I suppose it’s possible. Anything is possible. But I’m not sure what makes you think that.”

“When I started this investigation I didn’t really believe it either. Now I’m a lot more willing to buy it.”

“Why is that?”

“Do you know anyone who drives a green Chevy Nova?”

Chaiken looked blank. “I can’t think of anyone. Why?”

“He tried to follow me here. I lost him on the other side of the highway.”

“You were followed?”

“Yesterday, too, I think. Different car.”

“Oh,” he said slowly. “I see.”

“There’s more. I keep running into strange things and getting explanations that don’t explain them.”

“Such as?”

“Such as I just came from Andy Hill’s office.” I related my conversation with Andy Hill.

“Andy,” Chaiken mused when I was through. “Andy’s a strange bird. You didn’t buy what he told you?”

“I think what he told me was true. But I don’t think a guy like Hill gives away anything for free. He told me how good I was for finding stuff that wasn’t hard to find, and he filled in the blanks for me pretty fast. I think the point was to make me think I had the whole story, so I’d stop looking. But what it really does is make me think there’s something more to find.”

He crossed one leg over the other. “I haven’t seen any evidence of that.”

“Could that be because you haven’t wanted to see?”

Chaiken looked at me over his scotch. “Ah, yes, the famous Smith tact. I remember that.”

I didn’t respond.

He regarded me silently for a space. Then he went on. “Andy’s made it possible for me—for us, the foundation—to do our work. It’s work that needs doing, even though it seems hopeless sometimes.” He smiled ruefully. “A lot of the time. Our work is a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage. It’s the wrong cure and there’s not enough of it. But if you’ve got it, and it’s all you’ve got, you have to try it, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it just hides the real danger of the patient’s condition. Maybe it just makes the doctor feel better.”

Chaiken’s eyes were unblinking behind his thick glasses. “I’ve heard that argument before. Try using it when the patient is bleeding to death in front of you.”

We were silent for a few moments, while the gently moving shadows of tree branches striped the sunlight. A flock of finches, seven or eight, flashed by the window and settled at a bird feeder in the yard.

Chaiken followed my gaze. “I’m not supposed to be feeding them this late in the season.”

“Why not?”

“They won’t fly south while there’s food here.”

“I didn’t know finches flew south. I thought they always wintered over.”

He shook his head. “Only since there’ve been bird feeders. And patsies like me to fill them.”

“Will they survive the winter, if they stay?”

“Most of them. The weak ones would have a better chance somewhere warmer. I’ll stop at the end of the month. I hate to stop. They seem so disappointed the first few times they come. Then they stop coming.”

I sipped some bourbon, said, “Andy Hill.”

He turned back from the window. “Maybe Andy’s up to something, beyond what he described to you. If he is, I don’t know what. And frankly, to me it doesn’t matter. I have five hundred clients over there leading better lives than they would have without Helping Hands, and Helping Hands couldn’t do what we do without Andy. Not just the real estate shenanigans,” he added. “He’s an organizer. He’s been there whenever we needed help. He brings political support from the Borough President’s office, which I’m sure has helped get us accepted in some neighborhoods. After our first executive director left, Andy found Francine Wyckoff for us. She’s been a godsend.” He grinned. “Though I can see from your expression you’ve met her. Well, take my word for it. She’s a terrific administrator. A genius at paperwork. Of which, believe me, there’s plenty. She takes things off my hands, things I’d have to be doing otherwise. And she’s totally dedicated to the organization. Identifies with it, if you know what I mean. Helping Hands’ good name is her good name, that sort of thing.”

The dog was hit with a sudden inspiration. It leaped up from its sunlit stretch of floor, burrowed under the desk and came up with a big squeaky toy. It bounded over, dropped the toy in Chaiken’s lap.

“No, no, Scotty.” Chaiken slipped the toy under the cushion of his chair. “Later.” The dog tipped his head to one side, wagged his tail tentatively. Chaiken rubbed the dog’s head. “Go lie down.”

The dog sighed and chose a new square of sunlight to flop into with a symphony of jingling tags.

“When my older son went off to college,” Chaiken said, “my
younger one was fifteen. I got Scotty to keep him company. He left a few years later, and now it’s just Scotty and me getting old together. Isn’t it, Scotty?”

The dog raised his head, but must have decided there was nothing in this for him. He settled again, stretched out on his side.

“Tell me about Helping Hands,” I said.

Chaiken sat back in his chair. “A few months after my younger son left for college, I woke one morning thinking that if I came across my own obit in the
Times
, I wouldn’t bother with it. The only people who needed me were people who didn’t need anybody, and the only things I did well were things those people could pay someone else to do.

“I made a lot of money practicing law, and I didn’t start out a poor man. My sons are doing well; one’s in Denver, the other’s in LA. I gave them cash gifts, retired, and put the rest of my money into the foundation. I spend my time now writing grant proposals to make up the difference between what I had and what we need to operate.” He waved his hand at the pile on the coffee table. “Is that what you want to know?”

“How do you choose your projects?”

“The needs are endless. But fads change. One year there’ll be lots of government money for the elderly; the next year that dries up, but they’ll fund group homes for runaways. The projects we start are whatever’s popular that year. Then we blackmail the government and private philanthropy into supporting ongoing unfashionable ones.”

“Blackmail?”

“Not your kind. Emotional blackmail. Guilt trips. I’m a master at it.” Chaiken grinned again.

“What happens if the blackmail doesn’t work?”

“Well, that hasn’t happened yet. If it did I suppose we’d have to close the unfunded programs.”

“If you closed a program, what would happen to the building it was in?”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “We’d use it for another program if we could. Otherwise I suppose we’d have to convey it back to the state. Unless its cycle was up. Then we’d see if we could turn a profit on it.”

“Its cycle?”

“When the state buys a building for an organization like ours, it’s on a twenty-year cycle. For the first twenty years we have to guarantee to run a not-for-profit program in it, or convey it back to the state for what they paid. After that we can end the program and the property belongs to us. We can do whatever we want with it.”

“Including sell it for a profit?”

“If we can.”

“I don’t get that. How can a nonprofit make a profit?”

“Nobody can take money out of an organization like ours except what we pay out in expenses like salaries and fees. That is, no
individual
can make a profit. But there’s no reason why we couldn’t, for example, keep expanding our real estate empire forever. Or invest and grow a large endowment. Churches and universities do it all the time.”

“Do you pay taxes on property?”

“Not for those first twenty years. That’s part of the arrangement with the state.”

I had a thought. “What’s your arrangement with Andy Hill?”

“How do you mean?”

“When you buy from him. Do you pay him outright, in cash?”

“Oh, God, no. The lawyer in me shudders when you say that. No, it’s a complicated setup, but basically it amounts to Andy holding a mortgage.”

“Standard term? Thirty years?”

“That’s right.” He nodded, but didn’t meet my eyes.

“So when you eventually sell these buildings, Andy Hill will make his money back. In the meantime he makes a profit on the interest.”

Chaiken said nothing, sipped his drink.

“It seems to me,” I said, “that that’s perfectly legal. It might not look right, but Hill seemed less worried that I’d go to his boss than that I’d come to you. He got suddenly talkative when I implied that if I got what I wanted from him, I might forget about you.”

He watched a patch of sunlight creep across the slate. I watched with him.

“He wasn’t afraid that I’d tell you something,” I thought out loud, “because you already know more than I do about how this thing works. He was afraid you’d tell me something.”

Chaiken still didn’t speak.

“Look,” I said. “I can do this the hard way. I can dig around until I come up with something that doesn’t smell right. It’ll be a pain, but real estate leaves a paper trail and I’ll find it eventually. When I do, if that’s how I do it, you won’t be there to explain it to me.”

Chaiken moved his eyes to me. “And you think I ought to?”

“I think you might want to.”

We were both silent. Then Chaiken spoke to the patch of sunlight. “What Andy’s doing—buying this real estate, cutting in half the time it would take us to open programs otherwise—it’s terrifically helpful to us. People who’d be on the street, panhandling or worse, can get their lives together—” He broke off, looked up at me. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I don’t have to give you the spiel, do I? But I want to make it clear that that’s my priority. The clients.”

Chaiken paused. I kept my eyes on him and my mouth shut. “Those kids they say did the killings,” he said. “The Cobras, right?”