Mitchell Smith (57 page)

Ellie called Leahy’s number on the Squad, and the Lieutenant answered, caught just before lunch. “Lieutenant,” Ellie said, “-this is Klein.”

“Klein? -What is it, honey? You OK.?”

“I’m fine, Ed. I’m working.”

“What the hell you doin’ working?”

“We have the Gaither thing, Lieutenant. It’s broken.”

“What? -Are you kidding’ me?”

“No. I’m up at the suspect’s apartment. I have her under arrest.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Jesus .

“I need a car, and somebody to take her down and p they be onged on younger fingers.

It -Or, I suppose,” Ellie said, “she t ave gone in on you.

book her-and I need somebody else to go with me for the accomplice.”

“Who is this you got?”

“A lady named Margolies. Went over for the money.”

“You got a good chain, I hope.”

“More than good enough.”

“You sure about that?”

“She had motive, access, and opportunity, and she can’t explain seventeen thousand in very big bills. She’s hiding more.”

“O.K…. O.K. Murray’s on the street. We’ll call him over to you right away. Where is this place?”

“The Donegal, Eighty-seventh and Riverside. Apartment Seven D.”

“O.K. Well-you aren’t supposed to be workin’, but looks like you got one for the Squad.”

“Yes,” Ellie said, “-we got one for the Squad.” She hung up, and began to wait with silent Susan.

“Congratulations on this one,” Murray said, following Ellie and Susan Margolies down the hall to the living room. ‘-Are you all right? Nobody down there can believe Tommy’s gone….

“Tommy was the one,” Ellie said, ‘-who wanted to come back and check her. Susan, this is Detective Murray. He’ll be taking you downtown.

“Nice apartment,” Murray said when they walked into the living room.

“-Really nice.” John Murray was a slender black man in his fifties, with a short, artful “do,” and a mustache. Figured for a fag by most of his colleagues, but not despised on that account, he was regarded as a competent cop, patient and pleasant, if not much for rough stuff, no boon companion.

“I read Susan her rights,” Elbe said, as Susan Margolies went back to her couch, sat down, and looked away out one of the tall windows. “-And we packed a big purse for her, toothbrush and a paperback and some things.

She’s got change for phone calls.”

“All right,” Murray said. “-Susan and I’ll get along just fine.”

“I wouldn’t leave her alone.”

“No,” Murray said, “-I won’t do that. We’ll get along just fine.” He smiled at Susan Margolies, but she didn’t notice. She was staring out through her tall window, as if a new, giant, and wonderfully pinioned bird swung high over the Hudson. “-Lieutenant’s sending a woman officer up to come in with her, and somebody else from the Squad. -You want to wait for them? They’ll be here pretty quick.”

“No, I better not. Whoever the guy is, have him meet me at Bloomingdale’s, O.K.? Lexington Avenue entrance.

I’ll wait as long as I can.”

Susan sighed on her couch. She looked dreamy, as if the intrusion, the excitement and despair, had made her sleepy.

Ellie went to the couch and put her hand on Susan’s shoulder … felt the white blouse’s fine silk, a bone beneath. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Susan reached up and patted her hand. “-What in the world for?” It was the first thing Susan had said in some time.

Ellie got out of the cab at the corner of Fifty-ninth and Lexington. The driver, a pleasant young man from Pakistan, hadn’t known how to get to Bloomingdale’s, and they’d gone several blocks out of their way before he admitted it. He said he knew the West Side very well.

Ellie crossed the street, trying to step lightly in the brown shoes, and stood on the downtown side of the store’s entrance doors, waiting for whoever Leahy sent up. A lot of people were going in and out … a constant flow, almost all women. It was nearly noon, and more of these women, sleek, nervous, harried, up from their offices to shop over their lunch hour, now unfolded from their taxis, left small tips behind them, and strode past Ellie to strike the door handles hard, going in.

Ellie stood waiting for ten minutes-then couldn’t wait any longer. She went in, took the stairs up to the mezzanine, and found a security guard-a thin, blond young man in a maroon blazer-standing beside a counter of Lanc6me cosmetics with a small walkie-talkie in his left hand. He was talking to a young woman clerk wearing a purple sweater-and-skirt outfit and several large pieces of costume jewelry.

Ellie tapped him on the shoulder, and showed her ID when he turned.

“Is your chief in the store?”

“No, he isn’t. Mr. Watson is, though. -He’s exec under Mr.

Delacroce.”

“Fine,” Ellie said. “-Please call Mr. Watson, and ask him to meet me in the female employees’ locker room. -There is one, isn’t there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the security guard said. “It’s on the fifth floor, now.

You can take the elevators up, then go left. -Anybody up there can tell you.”

“O.K. -And he’ll meet me up there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the young man said, lifted his small radio and began to talk into it.

Mr. Watson, also wearing a maroon blazer, was tall, thin, and black, and wore luxuriant sideburns. He’d met Ellie in Lingerie just off the fifth-floor elevators, and taken her back through a fire door into long greenpainted corridors–complaining all the time about current disruptions and moves from floor to floor, the women’s locker room being only an example. Then he took a right-hand turn to an open sliding metal door. There were mirrors lining the wall of the white-painted room beyond it.

“What’s Commissioner’s Squad doin’ workin’ on a homicide?” he said, taking his time now examining Ellie’s ID. An ex-cop. Sergeant, probably.

“We were told to . . .” Three women walked past them and through the doorway, talking about somebody named Gary.

“And Platt’s your pigeon?”

“I think so.”

“Well-you got some backup comin’?”

“I have somebody coming. -But I don’t want Rebecca leaving the store before we get to her.”

“Well, I can station my people on the doors-report back to me. But they can’t stop her if she tries to leave-we got no powers of arrest on some criminal charge comin’ outside the store.”

“She could be holding stolen cash on these premises,” Ellie said.

Mr. Watson smiled. “O.K. That’s a little better, now. -Now, you talkin’ something’ ‘sides shit!” He took another look at Ellie. “Didn’t you lose a man off your Squad, yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Well … I’ll put my people on the doors. They all know her. -She tries to leave, they’ll hold her, suspicion of usin’ store premises for illicit storage.”

“I appreciate it.”

“O.K. -Let’s go see what old Rebecca been hidin’ in her locker. . .

.” He took a small notebook from his back pocket, flipped it open, and leafed to find a page. Facing pages were filled with lists and numbers.

-Lock combinations, Ellie supposed, and the names they went with.

A stack of Italian fashion magazines. A wide-mouth Lliermos—empty. A tan raincoat. -Ellie lifted that out of the locker to look into the pockets, smelled Rebecca’s perfume. . . . A scarf, polyester-small green-and-white checks; a pair of transparent plastic galoshes; a folded Bloomingdale’s shopping bag; a flowered makeup kit (Ellie opened that, then closed it and put it back); a small box of Tampax; a blue folding umbrella; a bar of Dove soap, unwrapped but not used, lying on a folded brown paper towel. And her purse.

Ellie went through the purse, then Rebecca’s wallet.

There, amid checks, a pen, her calculator, and small paper debris, were nineteen dollars-one ten and nine singles-a MasterCard, driver’s license, bank card. Chemical-and two old photographs of Rebecca, years ago, at the beach with the same man-a smiling young man with a sharp-jawed face and long dark hair, neatly combed back. They were both in bathing suits-the young man slight, gangling, and pale-Rebecca, in a bikini, darker, small-breasted, round-bellied, rich-thighed. She and the young man had their arms around each other in both pictures, facing the camera smiling, squinting in the sunlight. -There was some change, a few tokens, and a book of stamps in Rebecca’s change purse.

Watson said something into his radio, waited awhile watching Ellie put things back into the wallet, the wallet into the purse, the purse into the locker-heard some response, and talked a little more.

Ellie closed the locker, and snapped the lock shut, “Perry saw Rebecca on four,” Watson said. “She did a big new display down there last week.

Always checking’ it out. She was down there about a half hour ago.”

“All right, I’ll go down, see if I can find her,” Ellie said. “-I’d appreciate it if you could have. somebody check the Lexington Avenue entrance. See if there’s a detective there waiting for me-send him up to four.”

“All right. My guess is,” Watson said, “she’s headin’ out for lunch.

I’ll make the rounds of my people, see they’re on the ball. -You be surprised the shit a man’ll say on the radio, an’ him nowhere near where he supposed to be.”

Watson left her back in Lingerie on five, and Ellie took the escalator down one floor with a companion group of women, all silent, staring out over a murmurous expanse of furniture, furnishings, whole rooms and separate suites entire, lamps, mirrors, and a thousand articles of decoration, the aisles sifting with shoppers as they descended. This section of the floor was Italianate, the pillars faced with what appeared creamy, swirled butterscotch marble, each surface fronting on mirrors that gave it back to passersby on every side. Lights-focused spots, unfocused floods-dazzled into the mirrors, gleamed on the cream and brown and yellow surfaces. Ellie got off the escalator and walked back, out of furniture.

Here, behind the escalators, lay another kingdom. Its pillars were deep blood red. Between and among these, low showcases lined the aisles.

Strewn beneath their glass, or draped over small stands, lay costume jewelry, combs, handbags, gloves, scarves, hats, belts, long, thick mufflers, and all and every sort of accessory for the clothes gathered in their sheepfold racks, soft, rich islands of cashmere, shearling, and wool. Autumnal colors.

Ellie, walking down the center aisle, paused for a moment at a stand of long tweed overcoats with wide, draped sleeves. She looked at a light gray, stroked the material, which was heavy and soft as warm water, and checked the size … price tag. It was very expensive.

At the end of that long aisle, where a number of women stood alongside two counters of cosmetics lit from above by gold-filtered light-displaying toilet water, perfumes and lipsticks in gold containers, gold-flecked bottles, pornanders, compacts, and powders, all in boxes of gold-Ellie went down three steps to a lower level, and saw Rebecca’s display in the center of the floor.

It was beautiful. A small carousel—a real one, turning slowly, the little horses real merry-go-round horses-and on each a perfect mannequin, a lovely woman dressed for autumn in tawny colors, thick, soft, warm fabrics in slacks and skirts, jackets and suits, boots (sheepskin, maroon leather and black), sweaters, mufflers, berets, fedoras and tarns. The mannequins were riding into the new season, gliding gently up and down as they swept slowly around through a scattering of falling leaves, each leaf red and gold and brown-these hanging on long black silk threads, blowing gently here and there as the carousel turned. Above, at the carousel’s peak, turning with it, a huge cornucopia lay on its side, spilling out more flaming leaves, great jewels of glass and gilt, small, fat pumpkins, and huge cartwheel wooden coins painted gold. A long, carved, white wooden sign hung from brass chains above the display. Rushing the Season it said, in crimson paint.

“Not bad … ?” Rebecca said, behind her.

“No. It’s better than not bad, Rebecca. It’s beautiful.”

Ellie slowly turned to face her. ‘-I was looking for You-where’ve you been?” Rebecca was wearing a dark green dress. Her black hair was drawn back into a soft French knot, held with a silver clip. She wore silver earrings.

“I had a bite in the cafeteria. -I was down in the shop all morning, and I have a feeling I’m going to be there all afternoon, too. They have a carpenter down there must be as bad at his job as Jesus. I’ve been trying to get a simple window display out of him-you know, sunny window, curtains, grass and flowers on a backboard? It’s for a kitchen faucet. You’d think I was asking the asshole to build me a house in Connecticut.” She looked over Ellie’s left shoulder at the display.

‘-But this thing’s pretty good.”

“Better than good.”

“Well … not bad, not bad. You notice I used that

“Rushing the Season’ thing.”

“It’s just right.

“You see anything you’d want to wear? -You know, they just moved all this shit down here, last few weeks.

They’re always turning the fucking store upside down.”

“There was a nice coat back there.

“Oh, yeah-they have some good ones. Tweed-right?”

“A light gray .

“Umm-hmm … but you need something with a little more color, honey.

You’re too pale to wear light gray you’ll look like Dracula’s daughter.

Medium gray at least.

Go for medium. -If you fell in love back there, I’ll pick it up for you, employee price. What the hell-figure Christmas came early, . It still isn’t going to be cheap.”

“Rebecca … I need to talk to you.”

“O.K.-So, come on down to the shop with me. I have to get going, anyway, or he’ll make me a toilet seat instead of my window.”

“I need to see you privately, Rebecca.”

“We’ll be in the basement. -How private do you need?”

They walked to the escalator, and stepped on behind a tall blond woman with three small children. The children clung to her, hung on her arms-and one of them, behind his mother’s back, kicked another in the leg.

“There’re some things,” Rebecca said, watching, “-I don’t regret. . She cocked her head, looked sideways at Ellie. “-I’m sorry I never warmed up to that partner of yours. Is it killing you-what happened?”