Mitchell Smith (63 page)

Birnbaum came out into the corridor with Ellie, walked with her to the elevators, and thanked her again.

“-Especially just for coming to see her,” he said. ”You know, she’s very lonely all day, with no visitors. The nurses say they’ve found her crying, sometimes, and then she gets very upset and says if they touch her tears, they’ll die. -They’ve told her that isn’t so, but she doesn’t believe them.”

“I’ll come over when I can,” Ellie said.

“She’s been terribly alone, all her life,” Birnbaum said, `-except for people who wanted to have sex with her. She’s had to live on the moon, all alone … and now this.”

“Perhaps they’ll be able to pull her out of it.

“Not now,” Birnbaum said. “-After I met her, you know, we both lived on the moon ……

The administrator at the Ninety-sixth Street methadone clinic was a pretty woman, with short beautifully cut light brown hair, gray eyes, and dark down along her fore arms. She’d reminded Ellie of Clara-and when she spoke, very much.

“Paula Dillon,” she’d said when she shook Ellie’s hand, and thereafter, in conversation, had smiled and looked at Ellie in a way that made her uncomfortable. Ellie thought Paula might be one of Clara’s friends, or know someone who was, or who Clara might have talked to. -Thought the woman might be imagining things about her. In consequence, Ellie grew gruff, got directly to the point, and was worried about blushing when the woman, still smiling, at her ease in a small, cluttered office, looked at her too directly.

Paula Dillon, it turned out at last, did know someone Ellie knew. She knew Lennie Spears, and had worked for him several years before, in ATDC. She had heard of Ellie’s old encounter with the Puerto Rican mother who burned out devils.

In any case, possibly because she enjoyed Ellie’s corn pany, her shyness

. . . perhaps enjoying her long, white throat, Dr. Dillon was cooperative, believed the tale of Major Crimes needing some further information from the case files on’Maurice and Clayton Garrison, made notes of Ellie’s shield-number and ID, and went to get the files herself, possibly so that Ellie might watch her as she rose, passed near in pearl-gray silk, and walked away. Dr. Dillon had a soft, round ass, and long, strong legs.

She’d brought the file folders back, laid them out on a table against the office’s left-hand wall-a TV and VCR

took up the table’s other half-sat at her desk, and watched Ellie, bending, take her notes.

There were medical records, dosages, initial authorizations-many of those-and copies, additions, and comments. Physicians’ forms, enables, dosage recommendations, psychological profiles and psychological profiles updated. Additional comments. Referrals and recommended actions. Personal data and family data and family history.

Addresses-many of those over the four years attendance-the brothers occasionally at the same address, usually not. Relatives’ addresses-a number of these as well, and, occasionally, phone numbers.

Ellie pretended to jot notes as she read along, turning pages, but really only wrote down two: the addresses of the Garrison brothers’

grandmother and aunt. She’d already written the grandmother’s when she saw the stamped DECD. at the end of the paragraph. -The aunt, apparently, was still alive.

Ellie had thanked Paula Dillon for her cooperation, shaken her hand again, received a smile as warm as summer, and left.

At the corner, a block west, she found a working phone, and called Leahy.

“You restin’?”

“Yes, I am. I went out for a walk.

“Well, you got three, four more hours to rest-then go on down to court.

Arraignment’s going’ to be at four o’clock, room nineteen.”

“Both together?”

“You got it . . . and the D.A.“s people are going’ to want to talk to you after that. They’ll bullshit with you a couple, three hours, just going’ over what we already did.

OX.?”

“O.K.”

“Now-you sure you feel all right? -How’re those injuries?”

“Fine. -They’re not bothering me.”

“Well, they shouldn’t bother you-‘cause you’re a very successful cop.

You an’ Tommy. -They got preliminary prints off that Bloomingdale’s cash-Anderson put the squeeze on ‘em to hurry it up.”

“What was it . . . ?”

“Platt’s prints-and the Gaither woman’s. Not many, either one-but enough. First time prints did us any good in a long time. . . .”

“That’s a relief.”

“That’s right. Before now, you had a case. -Now, you got an open-an’-shut. Nice work.”

“Four o’clock?”

“Four o’clock. Room nineteen.”

The taxi driver was from Peru. He was very small, large-headed, and a mild purple color-with the blackest hair Ellie had ever seen. It lay on his head like night.

“Harlem-I don’ go.”

“Police . . . police, ” Ellie said, and presented her shield. “-Yes, you do.”

Mrs. Perry lived in the building on the corner of 115th Street and Frederick Douglas, and the cab driver drove Ellie there, and let her out between two parked cars, after muttering in some language-not Spanish-all the way uptown.

“Wait for me,” Ellie said, gave him five dollars, and got out, “-and remember I’ve got your name and number, you little shit.”

She walked to the building stoop, heard the car’s transmission shift behind her, and turned to see it pulling away. “-So much for the majesty of the law,” she said to a small black boyfive or six years old, who sat on the top step of the stoop, staring at her. He wore a clean T-shirt, ironed jeans, and brown running shoes with white rabbits on them. A number of other older black boys and girls (all of whom should have been in school) were playing some stickball game farther down the sunny street-a few jumping, running, scattering between the two borders of parked cars-but most occupied in game commentary, sitting on car hoods. A few of the bigger boys had turned to watch her.

Ellie walked up the last two steps, through the glasspaneled door (several panels broken, one kicked out entirely) and on into the building’s entrance hall-dark, high-ceilinged . . . mustard-yellow plaster walls cracked, marked, the wood flooring splintered, settled, and worn to slight, winding narrow ridges by more than a hundred years of passage.

Ellie walked up the stairs, into a strong smell of frying pork. Pork and something else. Some spice … cardamom, or curry. It smelled good.

The stairs were narrow-too narrow for two people abreast-the risers worn in shallow curves, the fat railing chipped and rutted by whittling. The cooking was being done on the second floor; Ellie heard a number of people talking behind the door of 2-D. People laughing. -She thought the cooking was being done in there.

As she started up the staircase to the third, Ellie heard down the well the building’s door slam shut below, hasty steps crowding down the hall, then drumming up the stairs. She climbed faster-hurting her feet-reached the landing, and stood against the wall as three large teenage boys rounded the banister post and ran up the stairs to her and past her-one, a tall, grinning mahogany boy with a rattling, beaded hairdo, saying “Boo . . . !” to her as they hustled by.

It didn’t seem that any cooking was being done behind the door of Three C. Ellie pushed the doorbell, but it had been painted over long ago.

Mud-brown . . . oxblood. It was hard to tell. -She knocked.

“What do you want?” The woman was in her late thirties, dark honey-brown, sharp-faced, big-bodied in jeans and white blouse, her hair shaped and smoothed to leave a long, neat center part. She’d left the chain on the door-stared out through the gap.

“I’m a police officer,” Ellie said, took out her ID.

“Shit . . .” The woman closed the door, took the chain off, then opened it wide. “You want to come in, right?”

She stood aside, and Ellie walked past her into the apartment. The living room was small, painted white, the two windows white-curtained.

-Mrs. Perry had tried to make a small space bigger. There was a furniture suite-two armchairs and a couch, cream-colored and covered with heavy plastic.

You takin’ inventory?” the woman said, “-or you got something’ to say?”

She closed the door and locked it.

“I need to sit down, for a start. -O.K.?”

“Go right ahead.”

Ellie sat in the nearest armchair, and Mrs. Perry sat down heavily on her couch, making the plastic squeak.

“I already had a visit from you people, last evenin’,” she said. “They wanted to know where my nephews are. -That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I want to know. -My name is Klein …

Eleanor Klein.”

“Well, my name is Lula Perry, and I don’t have the slightest idea where those boys are. -I’m tellin’ you that; I told the other cops that, and I would like not to have to keep sayin’ it.”

“There is something I’d like to ask you, though.”

“Umm-hmm . . .”

“Did they tell you why they wanted to know about Clayton and Maurice?”

“Oh, sure … sure they did! Said they wanted them for witnesses to some junkie getting’ killed. Said there wasn’t no charges against those boys at all. . . . An’ I got to tell you, I believed that shit right away-a bunch of nasty old cops comin’ up here to find those boys, just so they can witness to some no-name junkie getting’ killed? -Now, I work hard all week, Miss Whatever, filin’ a ton of paper that cuts my fingers

. . . an’ I would really appreciate you tellin’ me your lie, an’ then getting’ on your horse an’ getting’ out of here, so I can get out of here an’ be with my friends.”

“Almost two weeks ago,” Ellie said, “a detective named Classman, and his mother, were killed in their apartment. Classman shot one of the people, wounded him . . . killed him….. we don’t know. It looked like a junkie killing….. came in to rob the place.”

“I read about that,” Mrs. Perry said, “-and I’m sorry and so what?

Unless you’re sayin’ it was my nephews did that crime? An’ if you’re sayin’ that-you got your head right up your ass. Those boys don’t hurt anybody!”

A day later,” Ellie said, “a black man, a big man who wore glasses, drove up to the methadone clinic while Maurice and Clayton were standing outside. Some men with him dropped him off around the corner. But Clayton happened to see the other men-they were white, and they looked like cops, so when the big black guy approached them to deal . . .

they said no. -And it was lucky they did, too, because the man went on to talk to a Puerto Rican named Jesfis Chdvez-took him around the corner to that car, drove him up to the Bronx, took him into a burned-out building up there, and shot him to make it look like that dead cop had done it-so that would look like a junkie killing and nothing else. Then, he and his friends threw Jesds off the roof.”

Mrs. Perry looked at her watch.

“My partner went over to the clinic, after that. He couldn’t catch Clayton-,, A smile from Mrs. Perry.

” -but Maurice told him what they’d seen. And, night before last, my partner was murdered in the subway by three men. Two white….. one black.”

“I saw that on the TV….. an’ you’re sayin’ that’s what that was all about?” Mrs. Perry said. “Well . . . you sure do lie better than those other ones.”

“Don’t call me a liar.”

Mrs. Perry got up off her couch. “I got to go. -You sayin’ those people are after my nephews? That what you’re tellin’ me?”

Ellie got up, too. “Two of them are dead. My partner killed them. The third one isn’t. I don’t know if your nephews are in bad trouble, or not. -But they’ve seen that third man’s face.”

“I got to go-I got people waitin’ for me.” Mrs. Perry walked out of the living room, then came back carrying a white soft-leather purse. “I don’t know about Clayton,” she said. ‘-That fool could be in Alabama. .

. .” She opened the front door, and motioned Ellie through. “But Maurice is workin’ driving’ a truck over in Vineland, New Jersey. He’s workin’ for a farmer over there, man I used to know. -Name’s DiNunzio.

Michael DiNunzio.”

Out in the hall, Mrs. Perry doublelocked her door.

“An’ if you lied to me, to get those boys”-she gave Ellie a cold look—“I hope you die of a cancer.”

Downstairs, Mrs. Perry nodded an unfriendly goodbye, and walked away on 115th Street toward Adam Clayton Powell. Ellie went the other way, to Morningside, to walk down to Cathedral Parkway for the bus. Taxis were getting expensive.

Morningside Park still climbed green up its long hill, only beginning to be touched by autumn. The leaves at the tops of the trees showed lighter and lighter, the highest leaves going brown to gold among the others in long loose falls across the green. Ellie exercised her hurt arm as she walked along, swinging it, holding it up and out, feeling a small ache, a slight tug where the bandage was. A black couple was walking ahead of her, with two little girls—four or five years old-tagging along in identical red parkas (too warm for the day), and venturing in their parents’ wakes small excursions into the shrubbery, onto the narrow, worn, littered lawns.

There wasn’t time to drive over to Vineland today. -The arraignment, and D.A.“s people. She could drive out tomorrow. Might call first . . .

“Well, Tommy,” she said aloud, walking along, watching the little girls ahead of her……… you’re gone.” She could see the top of the cathedral above the small park’s trees. They were building on that again, supposedly …

stone cutters.

“Hey … !”

Ellie looked right, up into the park, but didn’t see anybody.

“Hey! What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

She turned to look behind her, and saw a car drifting slowly along the curb four or five yards back-a dull blue Plymouth sedan. A big man in his forties, unpleasantlooking, mustached, had his head out the front passengerside window, staring at her. He was wearing a light blue sports coat.

“Are you deaf—or what?”

A cop.

Ellie stopped walking as the car pulled alongside and stopped.

The mustached cop was staring up at her as if she’d insulted him. He turned to the driver, and Ellie heard him say, “-You believe this?”