Flesh and Blood (17 page)

Feig stared at Frank suspiciously. “Woman?” he snapped.

“Her name was Hannah,” Frank told him, “Hannah Kovatnik.”

Suddenly Feig's lips curled downward. “Hannah,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“Hannah,” the old man said again, his voice suddenly sharper, more vehement.

Frank knelt down beside the chair. “We understand she worked for you. At your factory here on Orchard Street.”

Feig's eyes narrowed into two small, unspeakably hateful slits. “
Sie war eine Hure
,” he snarled.

Frank leaned toward him. “What was that?”

Farouk touched Frank's arm. “Never mind,” he said quickly. Then he turned back to Feig. “
Was wissen Sie von dieser Frau?
” he asked sharply.

Feig glared at him bitterly. “Everything,” he hissed angrily, “I know everything about her.” He spat on the floor. “
Ihr Hen was schwarz.
”

Farouk's dark eyes bored into the old man. “
Warum sagen Sie das?
”

“My love,” Feig said, again in a low whisper, his voice suddenly breaking over the words. “My dear love.”

“What do you mean?” Farouk demanded.

The old man said nothing. He seemed to withdraw into a dark cavern deep within him.

“Do you know her sisters?” Farouk asked quickly.

The old man's eyes drifted toward the window. He did not answer.

“
Was wissen Sie, Herr Feig
?” Farouk asked.

The old man's eyes swept toward the window. “
Ich weiss nichts.
”

“
Was wissen Sie?
” Farouk demanded sharply.

Feig shook his head resolutely, his lips curling down in a scowl. “No more,” he snarled. “No more.”

“No,” Farouk said with a sudden fierce determination. His body stiffened, and Frank could see a galvanizing passion leap into his eyes. “
Ich will die Wahrheit wissen
,” he said urgently.

The old man did not speak.

“The truth,” Farouk demanded.

Suddenly the old man's face twisted brutally. “
Ich muss mit anderen Menschen leben
,” he cried. He wrenched his head to the left, his eyes staring brokenly at Frank. “
Ich habe mit Scham gelebt
,” he said tremulously.

Frank stared helplessly at Farouk.

Farouk glared intently at the old man. “
Die Wahrheit
,” he said.

The old man's face grew stony. “
Fragen Sie Gott
,” he said.

Farouk stepped back slowly, as if giving up. Then he turned and walked into the corridor.

“What was it?” Frank asked as he quickly joined him there.

Farouk stepped over to the elevator and pushed the down button. His face trembled slightly. “Nothing of use,” he said, his voice clearly shaken.

“Did he know Hannah?”

“He knew her, yes,” Farouk said. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Well, what did he say?” Frank demanded.

“He said that he lived in shame,” Farouk told him.

“But what did he say about Hannah?”

“He called her his dead love,” Farouk answered wonderingly. “And he called her a whore.”

“A whore?”

“A whore, yes,” Farouk repeated. The elevator door opened and the two of them walked in.

“He said she was a whore,” Farouk began again, his voice barely audible above the purr of the elevator, “and that her heart was black.”

14

Frank paid the vendor, then tucked the magazine under his arm and headed down 49th Street toward his office. Farouk walked beside him, his eyes surveying the immense rust-colored skeleton of the building which was going up across the street.

“Your rent, Frank,” he said. “It will be going up when this is finished.”

“Yeah, I know,” Frank said.

Farouk's eyes continued to scan the naked maze of steel girders. “The old man,” he said. “Feig. He looked like a spider.” He turned to Frank. “When the old are thin, they always look like spiders.”

“The old man who showed me where Hannah had lived,” Frank said. “He talked about a scandal.”

Farouk's eyes shifted over to him. “Scandal?”

“Yes,” Frank said. “But he didn't go into it.”

“Perhaps you didn't press him hard enough,” Farouk said.

“I'm not sure it would have done any good.”

“Perhaps not,” Farouk admitted with a slight shrug.

Frank reached up and absently fingered the pages of the magazine. “She worked for Feig. At least we know that. And she lived above him, in his building.”

“And she betrayed him, as well,” Farouk said quickly.

“What do you mean?”

“She joined a union,” Farouk explained. “She helped to lead a strike against him. It's possible that to Feig, this was betrayal.”

“Yes.”

Farouk nodded firmly. Then his eyes once again scanned the massive steel building. “That could cause a great deal of bitterness,” he said, thoughtfully. “But it wasn't bitterness Feig talked about.” He looked at Frank. “It was shame.” He considered it for a moment. “He said,
‘Ich habe mit Scham gelebt.'
This means ‘I have lived in shame.'”

Frank said nothing.

“Then he said,
‘Ich muss mit anderen Menschen leben
,'” Farouk added.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, ‘I have to live with other people.'”

Frank looked at him. “That sounds like Hannah.”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like something from one of her speeches,” Frank told him. “The kind she made during the strike.”

“Against Feig?”

“Against him and the others.”

Farouk's eyebrows lowered slightly. “Do you think he was quoting the dead woman? Could this be possible?”

“I don't know.”

For a little while they walked on silently. Then Farouk glanced at the magazine which Frank had tucked under his arm. “You are interested in interior design?” he asked.

“My client mentioned that someone had done a story on Hannah's apartment,” Frank told him. “About how it's decorated. You know, pictures and all. I thought I'd take a look at it.”

“Yes, that's good,” Farouk said. “I will also look.”

Once inside his office, Frank turned on the desk lamp and opened the magazine to the article on Hannah's apartment.

Farouk stood over him, staring intently at the pictures.

“So that is the dead woman,” he said as he gazed at the first photograph. It showed Hannah in her study, sitting at her desk, looking pensively at a few fashion sketches. Her hair was pulled tight around the sides of her head and gathered in a bun. She was wearing a dark red blouse that looked as if it were made of velvet. It had a high lacy collar, and seemed a bit too formal for the picture, as if Hannah had decided to dress herself up for the photo session, and in doing so had gone just a bit too far.

“A handsome woman,” Farouk said as he looked at her.

Frank remembered her face as it had appeared in the union newspaper, then as he had actually seen it for the first time, white with bluish lips. He turned the page.

The next picture showed the study itself, then the single wall of pictures and awards, all neatly framed and carefully arranged.

“From the look of it,” Frank said, “the killer didn't go in here. At least he didn't kill her in here.”

Again he turned the page, this time to a large color photograph of Hannah's living room. It looked larger in the photograph, but the subdued elegance was the same. There was the lovely brocade sofa, the polished antique furniture and lush blue carpet, the vases of freshly cut flowers and large glass coffee table.

“This woman lived well,” Farouk said quietly as he stared at the photograph.

“Yes,” Frank said. For a moment, his eyes held to the picture. Then he turned to the next page.

There was a photograph of Hannah's bathroom, complete with marble fixtures and terra-cotta walls. The accompanying caption gave the dimensions of the room and commented upon its inventive use of so limited a space.

Frank turned the page again, but there were no more pictures of Hannah's apartment, so he flipped back to the beginning again, his eyes lingering on Hannah's quietly contemplative face.

“Was she raped?” Farouk asked.

“No.”

“And nothing stolen?”

Frank shook his head. “All her jewelry was there,” he said, “and she had a lot of it.” He looked up at Farouk. “And she didn't have a safe.”

“What do the police think?”

“That it was probably a psycho,” Frank said.

“Because of the hand.”

“Yes.”

Farouk leaned toward the pictures in the magazine. “Where was the body?”

Frank took out the police photo of Hannah sprawled across the living room floor and dropped it onto the open magazine.

Farouk did not flinch as he stared at the photograph. His eyes seemed almost to caress Hannah's contorted body.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Frank's eyes shifted from the stark cruelty of the police photo to the magazine's idealized living room with its soft blue carpet and polished furniture. The two pictures had been shot from almost exactly the same spot in the room, and showed the marble coffee table, the ornately flowered sofa, and then the wall behind it. Slowly, Frank's eyes followed a straight line out from the carpet, then back toward the sofa and up the wall to the neatly arranged collection of photographs.

“Alone,” he said after a moment. “In all these pictures. She's always alone.” He looked up at Farouk. “It's as if no one knew her.”

Farouk straightened himself. “Perhaps the photographer knew her,” he said. “Perhaps they talked while he took the pictures.”

“It's possible.”

“At such a time,” Farouk added, “she might have said something about the past.”

Frank nodded. “He might have gotten to know her a little. We should talk to him, that's for sure.”

“And her killer,” Farouk said. “Do you think he knew her?”

Frank shook his head. “I don't know.”

Farouk looked at him intently. “So now, you are looking for her killer?” he asked.

For an instant, a swirl of images passed through Frank's mind. He saw Hannah's face at various stages in her life, saw the rooms she'd lived in, the streets she'd walked, heard the words that had come from her pen and her mouth, saw the raised hand in the cold winter air, then the same hand, scarred and mutilated, under the hard light of the morgue.

“Yes,” he said. “I am.”

•    •    •

The doorman recognized Frank immediately, but he watched Farouk suspiciously as the two of them came through the entrance to Hannah's building.

“I came back to check up on something,” Frank told him quickly.

“You're working on the murder, right?”

“Yes,” Frank said.

The doorman's eyes shifted over to Farouk. “You, too?”

Farouk nodded silently.

For a moment, the doorman seemed to hesitate, then he shrugged suddenly. “Go on up, then,” he said. “I don't care. This is my last day on the job anyway.” He stepped into a small adjoining room and returned with a key. “Just don't forget to bring it back to me, okay?”

“Thanks,” Frank said as he turned quickly and walked to the elevator.

The crime-scene seal was still on the door as Frank opened it and stepped inside the apartment.

Farouk stepped around him and walked quietly into the living room, turning slowly, his eyes sweeping the four blood-spattered walls. “That is the thing with murder,” he said, after he'd completed one languid turn, “it has the look of the thing it is.”

Frank walked to the end of the foyer and leaned against the wall. “It's all been gone over by ID. Dusted. Vacuumed. Not to mention the pictures.”

“The pictures, yes.” Farouk said as his eyes came to rest on the swath of dried blood which swept almost to his feet. “They do not tell us how it feels.”

“No, they don't,” Frank said. “Not about a room like this.”

Farouk's eyes peered down the rear corridor, toward the open bedroom door. “In there?”

“Office. Bedroom. No blood. No signs of a struggle.”

Farouk's eyes swept back out to the living room. “Everything in here, yes?”

“Everything,” Frank said. “But we could still do one more search. Of the whole place, I mean.”

“Yes, good.” Farouk agreed immediately.

“All right,” Frank said, “you take the kitchen. I'll take the back bedroom. We'll work toward each other.”

It took them almost two hours to complete a room-by-room search of the apartment, and when it was over, both of them slumped down on the sofa in the living room.

Farouk took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his forehead. “It's been many years since I've done such a thing.” He looked at Frank. “And you?”

Frank remembered how he'd meticulously gone through the doll-like room of Karen's sister, searching through the white wicker bureau and neatly ordered vanity for some signal that would guide him to her killer. “Not that long,” he said.

Farouk returned the handkerchief to his pocket. “Nothing,” he said, breathing heavily. “But this is often the case, yes?”

“Sometimes,” Frank said.

“Perhaps, with the photographer, we will have better luck,” Farouk said. He stood up immediately, his enormous gray shadow stretching with an oddly protective grace over the stained blue carpet.

The offices of
Homelife
magazine were on the sixty-third floor of one of the towering office buildings that rose above Fifth Avenue.

Frank dropped his copy of the lastest issue on the desk of the receptionist. “Is Peter Kagan in?” he asked.