Nightbird (2 page)

“Check this out,” he said. “She’s barefoot.”

“I see that,” Ryan said, shrugging.

“And her feet are clean,” Gregory added emphatically, still holding the tablecloth in the air. “How the hell did she walk
across a terrace in this city without getting dirt or soot on her feet?”

Maybe the terrace was newly carpeted, Ryan thought, or she’d kicked off her shoes at the last minute, then stood on a chair.
Maybe her shoes came off in the fall. There were logical explanations. Almost always.

“She said something to me,” Ryan said, and instantly regretted it.

On the sidewalk, a black midget in an ornate blue-and-gold doorman’s uniform hawked the stragglers and out-of-towners. Yanking
them toward the entrance to a tacky nightclub on the second floor.

“Said what?” Gregory asked.

“I couldn’t understand it.”

The rolling lights of the ITT Building announced, “Sweltering! 95 degrees high. Yanks 1, Tigers 3.”

“This woman was dead before you got there,” Gregory said. “What you heard was expelled gas. The body expels gas after death.
You know that. She didn’t say a freaking word.”

Maybe he’s right, Ryan thought. With all the street noise, the sirens, everybody yelling. Who knows? He tried to recall the
moment, to hear the sounds again, but it was like trying to snatch a puff of smoke from the air.

“You’re probably right.”

“Freakin’ A I’m right,” Gregory said.

Ryan was well aware that in moments like this you stuck with what you knew for sure. Two things were definite: He could still
feel the stickiness on his lips; and he could not possibly have saved her. The words she spoke, the words he thought he’d
heard, were the spoken testimony of nightmares, not courtrooms. He would now go about the business of trying to put them out
of his mind. After all, it didn’t make sense, not even to him. It was just a whisper. He was being weird again, he knew that.
But it had sounded as though she’d said, “I love you.”

T
he late city final edition of the
New York Post
identified the Times Square jumper as Gillian Stone, a young actress only weeks away from opening in a chorus role in a superhyped
revival of
West Side Story
. It was topic A on all the morning talk shows. Danny Eumont reread page three of the paper, editing the story, as he leaned
against the warm stone wall of the Mid-Town North Precinct.

Three reporters shared the byline of the piece, which was well written considering the short deadline. As a journalist himself,
Danny knew he had to write a far different West Side story. One with a personal subplot buried between the lines. He circled
a reference to unnamed police sources who stated that the preliminary investigation indicated suicide. He knew that was false.

Angled shafts of sunlight formed geometric patterns on the brownstone across the street. A beat-up Honda sat directly in front
of the hydrant, the windshield full of PBA cards, two baby seats in the back. A new bumper sticker stood out on the car’s
fading blue paint: “New York City Cops Deserve More.” Just above the left brake light, another warned: “If You’re Not a Hemorrhoid,
Get Off My Ass.”

Although he had press credentials Danny decided to wait outside rather than give the beleaguered desk officer an opportunity
to break his balls. His most recent piece in
Manhattan
magazine painted one of the boys in blue as much less than New York’s Finest. The welcome mat is never out for snakes in
the media grass. Danny checked his watch; another two minutes had passed. Patience was not his virtue. He sipped coffee from
a Starbucks double cup and stared at the front door, watching for his uncle, First Grade Detective Anthony Ryan.

Shifts were changing at the precinct, the day tour relieving the midnight watch. Armed people in baggy shorts and tight T-shirts
bullshitted at the curb, the exchange of priceless parking spots in full swing. The late-tour cops looked grubby and exhausted,
as if they could not possibly stay awake long enough to survive the LIE or the Palisades Parkway; as if they’d nod off long
before the first breath of salty air in East Cupcake, Long Island, or the sharp scent of Rockland County pine.

Many of them never got home, for one reason or another. If they were lucky, however, a shower awaited—wash off the soot of
midtown. Then fall into bed, hopefully make love to the good woman waiting there, still warm and funky from the night, sleep
until five
P.M.
, awaken to meat loaf and mashed potatoes, kiss the kids good night, drive to Manhattan. Do it all again. It was a tough life.
One his uncle had told him to avoid.

Anthony and Leigh Ryan had practically raised Danny. After his father split, he and his mother, Nancy, moved in with the Ryans.
That first night at the Ryans’ they stayed up all night, unpacking boxes and talking. Danny remembered sitting in his cousin
Rip’s bedroom, crying as Rip furiously shoved furniture around, making room, making plans. Rip was a year older and seemed
infinitely wiser. This is gonna be great, he kept saying. And he made it great. Leigh and Nancy were sisters who got along
well enough to share the same household for four years. After four years in that tiny room Rip and Danny were brothers for
life. He still couldn’t believe he’d never see him again. When Danny and his mother finally moved to their own place, it was
to an apartment less than a block away from the Ryans.

From the open station-house window Danny could hear the madhouse that was morning in Mid-Town North. A convoy of pissed-off
hookers shuffled past the desk, heading for the front door. The smell of cheap perfume infused the air as the gang-chained
hookers yanked each other sideways down the three front steps. They knew the drill and moved directly across the sidewalk,
stepping up into the waiting wagon.

“Y’all waiting for me, sugah?” said a tall black girl in thigh-high boots and a red leather micro-mini. The line slowed as
those with the highest heels and tightest skirts carefully negotiated the stretch up onto the van’s metal steps. “You gorgeous
baby, you stay right there till I get back. You hear me?”

Danny set his coffee on the window ledge and stared at his paper.

“Ain’t that lovable, he’s blushing,” the woman said. “When I get back I’m going suck that pretty boy’s dick until he screams,
‘Lu Ann, Lu Ann, I love you!’ I am, sugah baby, I am. You wait right there.”

Danny ignored her and kept his eyes glued to the newspaper. The front page consisted of two pictures, side by side, underneath
the headline. One picture was a studio head shot of the beautiful Gillian; the other was a long-range photo of the Broadway
Arms. A curving arrow, superimposed on the eighteen-story building, traced the path of Gillian’s descent. From a terrace on
the top floor she traveled past a billboard of an immense sweating navel—an ad for suntan products—past the marquee of a shuttered
porn theater—to the roof of a preacher’s van.

Suddenly the paper flew out of Danny’s hands and he was spun around, almost yanked out of his loafers by the force of two
meaty hands. Blood drained from his face as he was spread-eagled against the wall, his hands yanked behind his back. The metal
teeth of handcuffs clicked through their ratchets.

“We got a collar here, pally,” Joe Gregory said. “Lewd and lascivious leering at an official New York City hospitality hostess.
Wadda ya got to say for yourself, Romeo?”

This can’t be legit, Danny thought as the Egg McMuffin he’d wolfed down earlier returned for a bitter encore in his throat.
Maybe they got their wires crossed. He hadn’t quite heard what Gregory said. It happened so fast. He turned his face away
from the wall, far enough to see his uncle standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets… smiling. Anthony Ryan wouldn’t
be smiling if this were legit. Then he winked at Danny. It definitely wasn’t legit. Just Joe Gregory’s sick idea of fun. Danny
caught his breath and in that instant went from frightened to angry. He twisted around to face Gregory.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, asshole?” Danny yelled. He appealed to his uncle. “Please call this lunatic off.”

“I never interfere with due process,” Anthony Ryan said.

“This is my neighborhood, for Christ’s sake. I live here.”

Danny actually lived two blocks from the precinct, on West Fifty-sixth, in a studio with a broken Murphy bed.

“Taking the Lord’s name in vain in proximity to an official police station,” Gregory said. “The charges continue to mount.”

The hookers begged Gregory to put Danny into their van. Cops on the sidewalk offered their opinions as to where he should
go.

“Why don’t we just let him ride to Central Booking in the van,” Ryan said. “I hear he’s quite the ladies’ man.”

“Yeah,” Gregory said. “But then the
media
might criticize us. That might be sexual harassment, or some kind of ethical faux pas.”

“Right,” Ryan said. “We wouldn’t want an ethical faux pas on our records.”

Joe Gregory steered Danny by the back of his shirt all the way to Ninth Avenue. Apparently not satisfied that Danny was handcuffed
behind his back in broad daylight, Gregory would jostle him every few steps so that he wobbled drunkenly. Danny never understood
what his uncle saw in an idiot like Joe Gregory. And they’d been partners forever. Go figure.

“Okay, joke’s over,” Danny said. “Let’s act like adults now.”

“Oh, this guy deserves a beating, pally,” Gregory said. “Just say the word. It would make my day.”

“Great,” Danny said. “Now he thinks he’s Dirty Harry.”

“I’d eat Dirty Harry for breakfast,” Gregory said. “By the way, how soon can I expect to see this police brutality story in
Manhattan
magazine?”

“Soon as you find someone who can read it to you,” Danny snapped.

“Maybe you can pick me up some comp copies,” Gregory continued, pulling his handcuff key from his pocket. “I’d like one for
my brutality scrapbook, one for my false arrest scrap-book. Couple others… send to my loved ones. They’ll be so proud.”

When they reached Ryan’s car Danny felt the handcuffs fall away. His wrists ached from just that short time of steel against
bone. He understood why more civilian complaints were filed over too tight handcuffs than any other police act.

“See… you… there, pally,” Gregory said, pointing to his eyes, then to Ryan. Cops used signals, shrugs, and nods like a private
language, their business not meant for the ears of civilians, especially reporters.

Joe Gregory tousled Danny’s hair, then walked away north on Ninth Avenue. Gregory was a big meaty guy, the definition of burly.
Pedestrians swung wide around him as he lumbered up the hill, arms hanging, the backs of his huge hands facing forward.
Planet of the Apes
, Danny thought. Pure Neanderthal. Only once, when he reached the corner, did Joe Gregory turn around to flash his red-faced,
shit-eating grin.

“Funny guy, your partner,” Danny said, rubbing his wrists. “He have an overwhelming need to be an asshole, or what?”

“Actually, he likes you.”

“He’s got some way of showing affection. I bet women are lining up to go out with that guy.”

“He was just kidding with you, Danny.”

“No, he wasn’t. It’s the Todd Walker story. That’s what that shit was all about. Because I wrote a negative piece about a
cop. Gregory’s letting me know I’ve stepped over the thin blue line.”

“Don’t overanalyze him, please.”

“I’m not. I don’t care what he thinks. I’m proud of that story. Todd Walker was a bad cop. He should have been convicted,
and you know it. He beat that kid for no reason, pure and simple. Beat him half to death. For what… because the kid called
him a fag in Spanish?”

“Todd Walker was a dirtbag,” Ryan said. “And most cops, including Joe Gregory, think he got off way too light. My partner
just has a thing about seeing our dirty laundry in public.”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet he has a pile of his own dirty laundry.”

Ryan gave Danny a look. A look he knew meant “Don’t be a wiseass, nobody likes a wiseass.” It was his pet peeve with Danny,
who claimed he was haunted by the ghost of Groucho Marx whispering wiseass comments in his ear.

“How did you know I was here?” Ryan said.

“I called Aunt Leigh. Are you assigned to this case?”

“It’s officially a Mid-Town North investigation, but it’s high profile, so the chief of detectives wants us to keep a hand
in. Plus we were first on the scene.”

Anthony Ryan stood on the edge of the curb and turned to face foot traffic on Ninth; cops hated to leave their backs exposed.
He leaned against his blue Oldsmobile Ninety-eight. The car was a 1990, but new to Ryan. He’d been driving Rip’s 1975 olive
green Volvo, but after Rip’s death, he gave it to Danny. The car was such an ugly color, it was simple to find in any parking
lot. Rip had nicknamed the car “the olive” and said all he needed was the martini.

“What were you guys doing in Times Square last night, anyway?” Danny said.

“Fighting the forces of evil.”

“No, seriously.”

“If you must know, we were schmoozing. Gregory was collecting money for the boat ride for Project Children.”

“Project Children,” Danny said. “Isn’t that the charity that brings delinquents from Northern Ireland over here so they can
swap notes with our delinquents?”

Ryan smiled. Danny knew he could never be angry with him for long. That was the smile he remembered whenever he and Rip got
in trouble. The smile and the calmness.

“Okay, what is it, Danny?” he said. “What’s going on?”

“It’s about Gillian Stone.”

“Information
from
the press. That’s a switch.”

The smell of baking bread wafted up from an ancient brick oven in the basement beneath the Laundromat. An old woman in a checked
raincoat stood in the sun outside the OTB, chin tilted upward, studying a racing tout sheet.

“The
Post
says Gillian was wearing a long white nightgown,” Danny said. “Is that accurate?”

“What if it is?”

“Gillian Stone never wore a nightgown that I know of. Go through her clothes, I bet you don’t find one. She slept in panties
and T-shirt. If anything at all.”