Night Secrets (28 page)

T
he Women's Center was only a few blocks from Smith's Bar, and Frank walked to it within a matter of minutes. It was nearly one in the morning, and the mood of the avenue had darkened considerably during the last few hours. The bridge and tunnel crowd had abandoned Manhattan for the wide green safety of the suburbs, and the edginess of the people they'd left behind had slowly begun to take over the street's still-bustling atmosphere. A few crack zombies slumped against the iron metal gratings of the closed storefronts, and here and there, a prostitute from one of the slum hotels threw a whispered remark at a quickly passing stranger:
Hey, babe, wanna date
?

During all of his short walk to the center, Frank tried to think of exactly what he was going to say to the Puri Dai once he saw her again. It was easy for him to imagine her dark eyes watching him steadily as he went through what he'd learned from Ortiz, but her reaction was beyond him, and something in its unpredictability seemed to draw him instinctively toward her, as if she were the lure he could not avoid.

“Why do you want to see her?” the woman at the desk asked as Frank returned his identification to his pocket.

“She made a confession,” Frank answered. “I'm checking on the details.”

“Is she expecting you?”

“No.”

“I'll need to let her know,” the woman said. She was wearing a sturdy, corduroy jacket and pleated trousers. Her hair was long and fell in brown strands to her shoulders. Her voice was very crisp and self-assured, not a woman who might fall easily before a disingenuous tale.

“She won't see me, if you do let her know,” Frank told her bluntly.

The woman looked at him suspiciously. “Well, that's her choice, isn't it?”

“I'm trying to help her,” Frank said.

“And she doesn't want you to?”

“That's about it.”

The woman glanced back down at the name. “Magdalena Immaculata Coitez,” she said. She looked at Frank. “What is she anyway?”

Frank gave the only answer that struck him as entirely accurate. “A woman,” he said.

The woman laughed. “Well, I know that,” she said. “All we have here is women.”

“The thing is,” Frank said, “she may have confessed to something she didn't do.”

“She's up for murder, right?”

Frank nodded.

“Yeah, I read her sheet,” the woman said. She smiled. “I read all the sheets. I'm in law school. Fordham Law.” She put out her hand. “Ruth O'Keefe.”

Frank shook her hand lightly, then smiled as amiably as he knew how, a technique which Farouk used very well, but which always gave him a faint, insistent ache. “Can you help me out?” he asked.

Ruth studied him a little longer. “I'm not really sure.”

“Well, there's no law against me just dropping by her room, is there?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether you're on the visitor's list,” she said.

“Could you check?”

“Sure, no problem,” Ruth said. She pulled out a small stack of papers and flipped through them until she came to the one that referred to the Puri Dai. “Well, you're in luck, Mr. Clemons.”

Frank gave her another smile. “Frank.”

“Anyway, you're on the list.”

Frank was surprised. “I am?”

“Yeah,” the woman said. She turned the folder towards him. “You and somebody named Deegan.”

“That's her lawyer.”

Ruth turned the folder back around. “Anyway, you're on the list.”

“So I can go on up?”

Ruth hesitated.

“I'm trying to save her life,” Frank said, “even though she doesn't want me to.”

Ruth considered it a moment, then made her decision. “All right, I'll let you go up unannounced,” she said. “But if she asks for you to leave, you'll have to.”

“I understand.”

“She's on the sixth floor. Room 603. You can take the elevator at the end of the hall.”

“Thanks,” Frank said.

“Actually, I'm glad you dropped by,” she said. “You can save me some steps.”

“How?”

Ruth handed Frank a small blue envelope. “This is for Maggie,” she said.

Frank took the envelope and glanced at it. It was addressed to Magdalena Coitez. There was no return address, no stamp or postage mark.

“Would you mind taking it to her?” Ruth asked.

Frank lifted the envelope toward her slightly. “Somebody must have delivered this,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

Ruth shook her head. “I don't know.”

“You didn't see anybody?”

“I guess it came while I was away from my desk.”

“When was that?”

“About an hour ago,” Ruth said. “I had to go to the bathroom.” She looked at him curiously. “Why, you don't want to take it to her?”

“No, I'll take it to her,” Frank said quickly. “I was just wondering who it was from.”

Ruth looked at him knowingly. “Well, I guess you'll just have to ask her, won't you?”

The Puri Dai was not in Room 603 when Frank got to it, but another woman was, a girl with blond hair who whirled around instantly as he entered the room.

“Who are you?” she blurted.

“My name's Clemons,” Frank told her. “Are you in this room, too?”

“Why?” the girl asked nervously. She raised one of her arms defensively. “Why do you want to know?” Her eyes were light green, and they were bulging fearfully. She was very thin. The skin over her face was drawn tightly over her skull, so that the structure of her bones could be seen behind it. She had a wide, flat forehead and high, rounded cheekbones that gave her a primitive, hunted look, which nothing in her manner did anything to offset.

Frank eased himself out the door so that he no longer blocked it. “There's another woman in this room,” he said. “I was looking for her.”

The girl said nothing. She covered her stomach with one of her arms, its fingers grasping shakily at the waist of her dress. “She went down to the common room,” she said.

“Where's that?”

“End of the hall,” the woman told him. “It's got double doors.”

Frank offered a quick smile. “Okay, thanks,” he said. He nodded politely. “Sorry if I disturbed you.”

He eased himself out into the hallway, then walked to the common room.

The Puri Dai was sitting in one of its empty corners, her body very erect in a red plastic chair. She had combed her hair, and it fell over her shoulders in long black tresses. Her skin was very dark in the half-light of the deserted corner.

Frank took off his hat as he stepped over to her. “This is for you,” he said as he handed her the envelope.

The Puri Dai's eyes had regained their light, as if something remained inexhaustibly alive within her. She took the note, but did not look at it. Instead, her eyes remained almost imploringly on Frank. “Will you do as I ask?” she said.

Frank shook his head again. “You didn't kill anybody,” Frank told her bluntly. “And one way or the other, I'm going to prove it.”

She didn't deny it, but only turned away, her eyes now set on the street below.

“You went to a grocery store,” Frank said. “You did that only a few minutes before the murder.”

The Puri Dai kept her eyes turned toward the window.

“You bought a few things, and then had them delivered,” Frank added. “The guy who brought them over was named Pedro Ortiz.”

She drew in a long, deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out in a quick rush.

“He's the one who talked to the cops,” Frank said. “The sole eyewitness, right?”

Silence.

Frank took out his notebook. “Do you know what he saw?”

The Puri Dai didn't answer.

Frank opened the notebook. “I spoke to him only a few minutes ago. He went over everything very carefully.”

The Puri Dai rose to her feet, but continued to look toward the window.

“He said the door was open, but that he didn't go in at first,” Frank said. “‘The door was open,' he said.” He looked at her penetratingly. “Open,” he repeated.

Silence.

“On Tenth Avenue.”

Silence.

“At four o'clock in the morning.”

Her eyes drifted over to him, but still she didn't speak.

Frank stared at her a moment, her stare searing him around the edges, until he pulled away, and let his eyes drop back to the notebook.

“He called to you. You heard him, didn't you?”

The Puri Dai said nothing.

“He said, ‘Hey, delivery's here.'”

One arm rose slightly, then drifted down to her side again.

“There was no answer,” Frank continued. “So after a while, he stepped inside.” His eyes followed his notes carefully, concentrating on the smallest details as he went on. “He called to you again after he stepped into the building. But you didn't answer. He didn't go very far in, but from just inside the door, he could see the curtain.” He looked up at her. “You know the one I mean, the one with the red beads.”

Her eyes shifted away from him, locked onto the dark window once again.

Frank looked at his notebook again. “He walked over to the curtain, and looked through it.” He stopped, hoping that she might say something. When she didn't, he continued. “That's when he saw you.”

The Puri Dai's eyes closed slowly and remained closed until Frank spoke again.

“This is what he saw,” Frank said. He hesitated, hoping that she would take up the narrative. “He saw you,” he began again after a moment. “No one else. Just you.”

She opened her eyes and turned her head toward him, her face strangely mobile, as if lights were passing over it.

“Just you,” Frank repeated, this time with a slight edge to his voice, as if he knew it all now, and was merely waiting for her confirmation. “With the razor,” he added, then hesitated again. “Standing over the old woman,” he said finally. “With the razor in your hand.”

Her eyes studied him closely for a moment, then a kind of visible relief swept into her face. “That is all,” she said. “That is all he could have seen.”

“Yes, that's all,” Frank admitted. “But there are a few details that still interest me.”

The relief disappeared from her face.

“Why was the door open?” Frank asked.

There was no answer.

“It was open because you wanted Ortiz to come in,” Frank said. “You wanted him to see you.”

Silence.

“But what he saw, there's a problem with it.”

The Puri Dai's eyes filled with an intense concentration, but she did not speak.

Frank lifted his arm high above his head, the fist clenched. “Your hand was in the air like this,” he said. “That's a stabbing motion.” He brought his hand down in a rapid slice. “Like that.” He looked at her closely. “But she wasn't killed like that. She wasn't stabbed at all. Her throat was cut.”

The Puri Dai said nothing.

“And it was cut from behind,” Frank added. “The killer had to have been standing directly behind her, and she was probably on her knees.”

Her eyes began to glisten, as if she were seeing it.

“She was on her knees,” Frank repeated, “and she was facing that little room.”

Her hands began to tremble slightly.

“That little room that someone was kept locked up in,” Frank added.

Her fingers began to scratch mercilessly at her thighs.

“And the killer took the woman by the hair, and pulled it back,” Frank said in a hard, relentless voice. “And he brought the blade across her throat.”

Suddenly, the Puri Dai's face grew stony. “Go now,” she said. “I do not want you.”

“You were standing with your feet on either side of her head,” Frank continued relentlessly. “You couldn't have killed her in that position.”

“Go,” she repeated, with a sudden, unexpected tenderness, almost pleadingly.

“And the groceries,” Frank said, as if he had not heard her. “Peanut butter. Bread. Fruit. Do you know what they all have in common?”

The Puri Dai did not answer.

“They don't need to be put in a refrigerator,” Frank said. “You'd also bought a quart of milk, but suddenly you didn't take it. You couldn't take it, because you weren't going to have a refrigerator, were you?”

“Go,” the Puri Dai said softly. “You do not know what you are doing.”

Frank looked at her very pointedly. “And then, there's this,” he said. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the little car game he'd bought on the way to the center and tossed it onto the sofa where she'd been sitting.

The Puri Dai's eyes flashed toward it, then back up at Frank, where they fixed on his desperately.

“You were going to run away,” Frank said determinedly. “But not alone. You were going to take someone else with you.” He looked at her intently. “A child.”

One of her hands drew in around the blue note, crushing it completely.

“You were going to take the person who was kept locked up in that little room, where the latch is high and loose, so that only a child couldn't get out if it were locked.”

The Puri Dai pressed her hands flat against her legs.

“Is it your child?” Frank asked.

She didn't answer, but Frank could tell that it was. “Where were you going to take her?”

Silence.

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

Silence.

“How old?”

The Puri Dai stared at him angrily, but didn't answer.

“Where is it now?”

Suddenly, something seemed to break in her. “Safe,” she said.

“Safe? From what?”

“She is safe now.”

Frank took a small step toward her. “She? A little girl?”

The Puri Dai turned away from him.