Buried on Avenue B (13 page)

 

CHAPTER 31

O'HARA RAPS LOUDLY
on the door, “Pizza.”

After a sizable wait, the door opens a crack. The woman, no longer in her kerchief, peers through the opening.

“Pizza,” says O'Hara again. Seeing the box, the woman opens it a bit wider and stares at O'Hara hard. Hard enough for O'Hara to wonder if she recognizes her from Publix.

“What happened to the kid?”

“He had to go to a funeral,” says O'Hara. “His grandfather died.”

“That's too bad.”

“It is. Apparently he was a real sweetheart.”

The woman studies O'Hara's face, and O'Hara stares right back. Say one fucking word, thinks O'Hara, and I'll pull you into the parking lot and beat the living crap out of you.

“
Do I know you?” asks the woman.

“I don't know. Do you?”

“Aren't you kind of old for this kind of work?”

“I'm the manager. We're all filling in.”

Harsh TV sounds come from the far corner of the room. O'Hara turns in its direction and sees the girl parked directly in front of the set, watching the show on MTV where three skanky girls sit in the back of a bus and take turns trying to win a date with a moron. Seeing the girl makes O'Hara feel bad about the pizza.

The room, which has a foreign funky odor, is a shambles. The small kitchen table is covered with fast-food trash, empty cans of soda and beer, and liquor bottles. Sweat-stained T-shirts and shorts hang over the backs of the chairs and couch. In front of the couch is a coffee table, bearing two overflowing ashtrays, a notepad, and an old-fashioned steel Rolodex, and beneath it are a boat-size pair of lime green Crocs that turn O'Hara's stomach.

The woman twists her head in the opposite direction of the girl and the TV and yells, “Pizza's here.”

“I'm on the crapper,” replies a deep male voice. “Just pay the kid, Gab. The money's on the dresser.”

“TMI,” says the girl under her breath, “gross.”

After a wary glance at O'Hara, the woman disappears into a back bedroom. With the girl glued to her show and the woman gone, O'Hara takes two steps into the room. As she reaches for the Rolodex, the girl turns from the TV and stares into her eyes. “Hi. I remember you from the grocery store.”

O'Hara smiles at her and puts her finger over her lips. “I remember you too. Our little secret.” O'Hara is still standing beside the girl when her mother returns with the money.

“My cousin was a contestant on the show,” says O'Hara. “Beautiful girl, but she didn't get the date.”

“Am I supposed to give a fuck?” The woman hands O'Hara a sweaty rolled-up twenty.

“Not much of a tip,” says O'Hara.

“I thought you were the manager.”

“I still drove out here. I still delivered your pizza.”

“I don't care. That's all you're getting.”

“Suit yourself.”

O'Hara retreats to her car, turns on the ignition, and glances at her watch. She doesn't have to wait long. In less than a minute, there's a flash of light and a bang as the door swings open and crashes into the brick wall. A dark shape fills the doorway and bellows an unintelligible curse.

 

CHAPTER 32

THE VOICE IS
elderly but firm, and even in desperation, polite.

“We need an ambulance at 5265 Gulf of Mexico Drive immediately, Unit 306. The owner's name is Benjamin Levin.” Now the high-pitched wail of a lawn mower straining to power through Florida crabgrass intrudes on the tape, and when the woman raises her voice to be heard, O'Hara and Wawrinka lean forward in their chairs.

“Please hurry,” says the woman. “I heard . . . gunsho . . .” before the mechanical din drowns her out.

“I think she said she heard gunshots, plural,” says O'Hara.

“I have no idea,” says Wawrinka. “It's those damn two-cycle Briggs and Stratton engines. They should make them put mufflers on them.”

While O'Hara devoted her evening to delivering justice of the greasiest variety, a detour she has chosen not to share, her new partner kept her Hawaiian eyes on the ball and her Polish nose to the grindstone. After an hour and a half at the gym, she returned to her desk to review the original paperwork filed on Levin's suicide, then tracked down the tape of the 911 call placed by Levin's neighbor, Sharon Di Nunzio. O'Hara and Wawrinka, sitting in a closet-size space in the basement of the Sarasota PD, have just replayed the tape for the third time and are still not sure what's on it, although O'Hara's faculties might be more acute if she hadn't ended her night with two six-packs in her motel room.

“Is Di Nunzio still alive?” asks O'Hara.

“Alive
and
in town. I spoke to her last night. Like a lot of people down here, she can't afford two places anymore and couldn't sell this one. So she lives here year-round.”

“And how's the senility quotient? Sharon still playing with a full deck?

“Sounded pretty sharp on the phone.”

“That can be misleading,” says O'Hara, glancing at the police report. “After all, she's eighty-nine.”

“The tape is six months old. She's ninety now.”

“In that case,” says O'Hara as they get up and head to the garage, “better use the siren.”

DI NUNZIO HAS
the Banyan Bay unit directly above Levin's, with the identical layout, and when she guides O'Hara and Wawrinka to the dining room table, the tidy condition of both the place and owner are encouraging. Despite her frailty, Di Nunzio is still lovely and painstakingly put together, and wears the kind of chic little antique dress they feature in the windows of East Village boutiques. Di Nunzio has set out cookies and a pitcher of iced tea. Once refreshments have been graciously served and introductions made, O'Hara asks her to recount what she remembers about the morning Levin died.

“I had just come back from the Ringling Museum,” says Di Nunzio, “where I'm a docent, two mornings a week. The cheap bastards don't pay, but it gives me a reason to get up and get dressed. I was putting away my groceries when I heard what sounded like a gunshot coming from Benjamin's place.”

“What did you do?”

“I called his phone number, but there was no answer. So I called again, and while the phone was ringing I heard a second shot.”

“You sure about that second shot?” asks O'Hara.

“Yes,” says Di Nunzio with a piercing look.

“Then what?”

“I ran down to Ben's place and rapped on his door.”

“You're a brave woman, Sharon,” says O'Hara. “You hear gunshots and run toward them. I know cops who wouldn't do that.”

“This old-age bullshit isn't for cowards.”

“So I gather,” says O'Hara.

“Not that I think Ben's suicide was cowardly,” says Di Nunzio forcefully. “Ben was the opposite of a coward. You know I saw him punch a man at Sweet Tomatoes?”

“No way,” says O'Hara. “You were there?”

“As close as you and me. It was thrilling. Some asshole tried to cut the line, and Ben leveled him. He'd never admit it, but I think he did it to impress me. In any case, it certainly had that effect. In fact, it made me wet.”

O'Hara glances at Wawrinka, who barely gets the napkin to her lips in time to catch the iced tea flying from her mouth. O'Hara gives her partner a moment to compose herself, then turns her attention back to the spry Di Nunzio.

“So you knocked on his door,” says O'Hara. “Then what?”

“As fast as I could, which I'm afraid wasn't fast enough, I ran up those awful stairs and called nine-one-one. Of course, I should have called immediately.”

“When you first got back from the museum,” asks O'Hara, “did you see anyone going in or out of Ben's place?”

Di Nunzio shakes her head. “No.”

“And when you came down the stairs to Ben's place, did you see a car leaving?”

“No.”

“I realize it was six months ago, but did you notice if a car was parked in front of his place?”

Di Nunzio concentrates. “Yes. There was a dark green van in visitor parking, which is right in front of his place. I remember because it was from the Sarasota Water Authority, and it scared me. It made me think there was something wrong with the water, and I shouldn't be drinking it.”

“And your memory is clear on the color, even after six months?”

“Yes. Dark green with black letters.”

“When the police and EMS arrived,” asks Wawrinka, “was the van still there?”

Di Nunzio squints, as if spooling back the tape behind her eyes. “It couldn't have been, because the police cars and EMS parked where the van had been.”

“You mentioned having dinner with Ben at Sweet Tomatoes. Were you two close?”

“I'm a cheap date. That evening must have cost him all of nine bucks, but I didn't care. I've known Ben for thirty years, and I adored him. I thought his wife was perfectly lovely too, but I can't deny that after she died I had my hopes. I was crazy about him. I'd roast him a chicken, and then I'd give him every man's favorite dessert.”

“Oh, yeah, what's that?” asks O'Hara.

“Head.”

A choking sound comes from Wawrinka's direction.

“Like I said, I was crazy about him. But he was a sucker for younger women. They all are. It's vanity.”

Di Nunzio grimaces and puts her hand to the side of her ear.

“You okay?”

“My hearing aid. Sometimes it makes this awful piercing sound.”

“Does it sound like a gunshot?” asks Wawrinka.

“Not really. But it's excruciating, which is why I don't wear it half the time.”

“And how's your hearing without it, Sharon?”

“Without it,” says Di Nunzio, taking her first bite of her own cookie, “I can't hear a fucking thing.”

 

CHAPTER 33

JUST INSIDE THE
door of the Longboat Key Public Library is a wooden phone booth that must be forty years old. When O'Hara pushes the hinged door shut behind her, a tiny ventilating fan goes on with the light. From the hush of the booth, she looks out at the nearly-as-quiet room, where a male volunteer pushes a cart up and down the short rows. Every few feet, he stops to lift a book from the cart to its old spot on the shelf. He looks like a farmer unpicking fruit and returning it to the tree.

When O'Hara stepped out of Di Nunzio's apartment and back into the scalding light, she was in need of a quiet place to mull things over alone, and remembered the little library next to the post office behind Publix. Di Nunzio is the most encouraging representative of her demographic O'Hara has encountered since Paulette walked into the precinct and the drumbeat of senescence and dementia began. If Di Nunzio's recollection of a second gunshot is accurate, it's the first major break in the case. From the moment O'Hara got the call from Sarasota about the ballistic report, she has been trying to connect the old man and the kid. If two shots were fired that morning in Levin's condo, it essentially puts the two victims side by side.

But how much stock can O'Hara put in the memory, eyesight, and most of all hearing of a ninety-year-old woman who by her own admission is just about deaf, rarely wears her hearing aid, and when she does is often besieged by rogue sonic blasts? O'Hara can imagine the reaction if it gets out she tried to build a case on something a deaf person heard.

Open on her lap is a sketch pad, purchased from Publix the night before. On the first pristine page she writes:

s. di nunzio: 2 gunshots, a couple minutes apart

green van, black letters

Sarasota Water Authority

O'Hara takes another look through the porthole-sized window. In the center of the room, in front of the librarian's desk, is an old-school wooden card catalogue. Beside it on a stand is a well-thumbed medical dictionary, and above it, on the wall, the Plaque of Honor, inscribed with the names of volunteers who died in the line of library duty. What does it mean, she wonders, that she now delights in silence as much as the twang of a beat-up Stratocaster and that libraries are up there next to dive bars on her list of favorite places? She knows exactly what it means. She's getting old.

A fat phone book, as much of an anachronism as the booth itself, dangles from a chain by O'Hara's knee, and she opens it to the section in front listing municipal agencies. When she can't find anything close to the Sarasota Water Authority, she uses her cell to call the city's main information number and asks what agency handles water issues for condos on Longboat Key.

“Sarasota doesn't handle Longboat,” says the receptionist, “that's Manatee County. Let me give you that number.”

O'Hara calls it and is connected to the Department of Engineering.

“This is Darlene O'Hara, NYPD Homicide. Can you verify for me if your department sent a vehicle to 5265 Gulf of Mexico Drive on March 3?”

“I'm going to have to put you on hold.”

While O'Hara waits, she cracks the door and compares the two quiets. Then she looks down at her mostly blank page, and starts a drawing that turns into a fairly decent facsimile of the wooden cooking spoon O'Hara found on Levin's TV stand. It looks like this:

Below it, she writes,

no sign of food/no sign of cooking

Still on hold, and in possession of pen and paper, she lists another unexplained detail:

Bullet entered boy at upward angle

The voice returns, and O'Hara pushes the door shut.

“I checked the logs. We didn't dispatch anyone to that address that day. We haven't sent a vehicle there for months.”

“Your vehicles,” asks O'Hara, “what do they say on them?”

“Manatee County.”

“That's it? You don't have any vehicles with writing that refers to water?”

“No, ma'am.”

“And the vehicles, are they dark green?”

“Correct. With black lettering.”

“Are they vans?”

“No. We use pickups.”

“Thanks for your help.” It looks like the only thing Sharon got right was the colors.

Speaking of colors, a woman with orange hair and a lavender blouse enters the library. Observed from inside the booth, her silent movements resemble a tropical fish. O'Hara feels underwater too, as if looking out from behind the glass helmet of a little Diver Dan in the corner of a fish tank. All that's missing is a trail of bubbles.

Is it possible Sharon got it all wrong? Fuck.

That Di Nunzio is such a brave and buoyant piece of work makes O'Hara even sorrier that her recollections don't check out, but her disappointment is muted by the double cocoon of quiet and the soft whir of the fan overhead. Forty minutes later a tap on the glass from the concerned librarian rouses her from sleep.