The Hard Way (10 page)

Standing out
in the snow on the corner of Little West Twelfth Street, I pulled out my phone and called Eleanor Redstone.

“Can you reach your detective friend,” I asked her, “the one who gave you the information about the witnesses?”

“I can,” she said. I heard her talking to someone else and then she was back. “What is it you need?”

“Two things. The name of Dustin Ens's school and the name of the messenger service that employed Willy Williams.”

“Hang on,” she told me. I was put on hold, Beethoven's Eroica symphony now playing in my ear. I walked west, just past Pastis, checking out the continuing gentrification of what was once a bustling meat market, and before that, a produce market, the squat buildings disappearing and being replaced by tall, nondescript ones that sold or rented space for astronomical sums, replacing the neighborhood color with the clack of Jimmy Choos and the rustle of shopping bags. Me, I preferred the butchers in their bloody white aprons, the hookers with no place else to go, anything but Miami on the Hudson, as some people were now calling the Greenwich Village waterfront.

Eleanor was back in almost no time. I guess she had the detective's cell number.

“Willy Williams worked for Speedy Messengers,” she said, “and
Dustin Ens goes to a small private school on West Seventeenth Street, the Howe School.”

“After Elias?”

“I didn't ask,” she said, “and I don't know. But more likely it was named after someone who donated generously early on. I got descriptions for you as well.”

“You're a genius,” I said.

“He said Willy was small, dark and wily.”

My cell phone crackled. “Wiry?” I asked.

“That, too, but he was referring to his character rather than his appearance.”

“Meaning I should take what Willy says with a grain of salt?” Asking for clarity's sake, but in fact preferring to form my own opinions.

“At the very least.”

“And the boy?”

“He's monochromatic,” she said.

“He's what?”

“Reddish-blond hair, what they used to call strawberry blond, pale, freckled skin, hazel eyes. He'll probably be wearing a baseball cap and carrying a skateboard.”

“In this weather?”

“He goes from school to Chelsea Piers for skateboarding.”

“Anything else?”

“He's short for twelve. Thin, too. And he's a bit twitchy. He took his mother's death really hard.”

“Which shouldn't surprise anyone,” I said, as much to myself as to Eleanor.

“The school is very small, small classes, lots of attention. It's for troubled kids,” she said, “not bad ones, not acting-out kids, for children who…” She stopped, looking for the right words.

“Are hurting?” I asked.

“Yes, something like that.”

“Eleanor?”

“Yes?”

“How does your friend know that Dustin goes to Chelsea Piers to skateboard after school? There was no school when your father was killed.”

“A follow-up phone call to his father, to see how the boy was doing.”

“Oh.”

“Speaking of which, how are you doing?”

“Too soon to say,” I told her. “I'm gathering a lot of information, but it's going to take a while to see if any of it leads me in the right direction.”

“Well, I'm here if you need anything else.”

“One more question,” I said.

“Of course.”

“The skateboard. Did he have it with him then, the day of the accident?”

“No. I was told it was given to him afterward, to…” There was a pause, a long one.

“To help him get over what he saw?” I asked.

“Yes, a distraction of sorts.”

“Thanks for this.”

“Anytime.”

I checked my watch. If school still got out at three, I had just enough time to slog through the snow and get to the Howe School before the kids came bursting out. I remembered seeing it, on the south side of Seventeenth Street, between Seventh and Eighth avenues. Dashiell and I headed that way.

I stood across the street from the school, a smallish, redbrick building with a fairly unobtrusive sign. You'd more or less have to know where you were going to find it. No problem. I did.

The kids started coming out at 3:10, and unlike most schools, they didn't burst out shouting, happy to be sprung. Some came out
with friends, small clusters of two or three or four kids, talking together. Lots of them came out alone, heads down, less thrilled than you might imagine to be free to go home.

Only one came out holding a skateboard and wearing a baseball cap. He wore it forward this time, so that the peak would keep the snow out of his eyes, and shoulders hunched, he crossed the street to the side where I waited, then turned west. I didn't know how he'd react to me, or to Dashiell. But I had to give it a try.

“Dustin,” I said when Dash and I were close enough.

He turned and squinted at me as if the sun were in his eyes.

“I'm a private detective,” I told him. “I'm working for Eleanor Redstone, whose dad was killed in the subway three months ago.”

“Let's see your badge,” he said, shifting the skateboard higher under his arm, adjusting one strap of his book bag, looking quickly at Dashiell and then back at me, blinking now, a kid who could break your heart in no time flat.

“I don't have a badge,” I told him. “I only have a card and it doesn't say private detective on it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I'm not a licensed PI,” bending a little, lowering my voice, something for his ears only.

I pulled a card out of my coat pocket. He took a step toward me. I handed him the card.

“It says ‘Research.'”

I nodded. “It does. Do you want to know why?” Hoping his curiosity would be stronger than any admonition not to talk to strangers.

Dustin nodded, slipping my card into his pocket.

“Well, people hire me to find out things for them. That's where the research comes in.”

He cocked his head, eyes pinched, as if he were waiting for the next blow, but curious as well. He had freckles splashed across his cheeks, and his smallish nose and his ears stuck out a little, giving him a bit of a comical look, a look at odds with the fear in his eyes.

“This time I was hired by Mr. Redstone's daughter. The police haven't found the man who pushed him in front of the train.”

He nodded, something he knew.

“And she'd like to be sure he's not able to harm anyone else.”

“Do you carry a gun?” he asked.

“I have one, but I don't usually carry it.”

“How come?”

“I don't like guns. I think it's too easy, when you have access to one, to use it. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I'd like to see it sometime.”

I nodded. “Well, that would be a tough call, wouldn't it?”

Dustin blushed, his skin more the color of his freckles for a moment. “Still,” he said. And then, not looking at me, “My dad wouldn't mind, if that's what you're thinking.”

“I'll tell you what. I have some questions I'd like to ask you. How about I walk you over to Chelsea Piers—that is where you're going now, isn't it?—and we find a quiet place to sit down and I ask you my questions, about what you might remember from that day? And then, if your dad says it's okay, I'll arrange to take you over to the Sixth Precinct and have one of the detectives show you around, take you to the squad room, show you how fingerprinting is done, maybe lock you up in a holding cell for two minutes.”

I smiled. He didn't.

“And show me a gun?”

“I think that could be arranged, too.”

“Okay,” he said. “Deal.”

The snow picked up as we headed west. You could cross the highway at Seventeenth Street and we did, feeling the sting of the wind off the Hudson, the snow hitting us even harder now. There was no real way we could have a conversation as we walked, but it wasn't a problem. The silence was comfortable, not awkward. We had our deal and I was going over questions in my mind, thinking of how to phrase them, what order they should be in, things like that. I didn't realize how lost in thought I was until Dustin touched
my arm. He'd apparently asked me something that the wind had blown away.

“Does he bite?” he asked, presumably for the second time.

“No,” I told him. “Not unless someone attacks me.”

“Would he let me walk him?”

“He would,” I said, “and so would I,” handing him the leash.

Dustin handed me the skateboard. And then his book bag, as if I were his mother instead of someone he'd just met moments earlier. Seeing the look on his face as he walked Dashiell, I didn't mind one single bit.

We walked up the ramp that would take us into the building where you could chip golf balls all day long even though it was snowing out. We'd be out of the weather, too, but still heading in the right direction.

“They won't let him in,” Dustin said, pointing to Dashiell with his chin.

“No matter. I'm not going in. All we need is a dry place to sit for a few minutes. How about right here?”

We were on an indoor walkway that led to the next parking lot, the one nearest the gym where I swam. Dustin would have to continue on to get where he was going. It was as good a place to talk as any.

I put the book bag and the skateboard on a picnic table and then sat down on the closest bench. Dustin sat near me, still holding the leash.

“Does he do tricks?” he asked.

“He does.” I took my wallet out of my pocket, put it on the top of Dashiell's big head, told him to wait and then to “take it.” He flipped the wallet into the air and caught it, then dropped it back into my hand.

“I saw this bull terrier on TV once. He could ride a skateboard,” Dustin said.

“Yeah, I saw that, too. Neat trick. Especially when he made it turn a corner.”

“That was my favorite part.”

I wondered again if he'd been told not to talk to strangers. He probably had, but kids tend to ignore a lot of the advice they get. If they didn't, it would be a perfect world, and as far as I could see, it wasn't even close.

“Can we talk about that terrible day for just a minute?” Fear flickered in his eyes and I realized my mistake. “The day Mr. Redstone got pushed,” I added.

“I said we could,” he told me, trying to recover from the tightness in his chest, the vision of his mother before she died.

“Do you remember where you were standing before the train came?”

“Yeah, sure. Right next to him.”

“Next to Mr. Redstone?”

Dustin nodded. “To his right,” he said.

For a moment, I was out of questions. I hadn't been told the kid was right up front, standing next to the victim, and that after losing his mother, he got to see someone killed right before his eyes. Or that he hadn't walked up to have a look-see. He was right there in the first place. I took out the little pad, slid closer to the kid and made a circle, writing DE in it, his initials.

“Is this right?”

He nodded. “What's that for?”

“Well, remember how my card said I do research? This is part of it. Sometimes the answer I'm looking for hinges on a tiny detail, something most people would ignore. Or they wouldn't think to ask about.”

“Like where everyone stood?”

“Exactly. Also, one of the other witnesses told me something interesting that the police didn't mention. She said you were really close to the edge of the platform,” diplomatically leaving out why Claire Ackerman said he was there, because only one of them was telling the truth, and at this point, I had the feeling it was Dustin.

“She said someone pulled you back. A man.”

Dustin's mouth fell open and his eyes got big. “Right.”

“You mean you forgot that part?”

He nodded. “Until now.”

“That often happens to people who witness a violent crime. When there's so much confusion, so much fear, and everyone is screaming, it's easy to blank out some of the details or even all of them. But someplace in you, the whole picture's there. Do you understand?”

He nodded again. I could see he understood, all too well.

“It's there now.”

“Tell me what you remember.”

“It was him.”

“Him?”

“The tall guy. The one who pushed Mr. Redstone. He was the one who pulled me back.”

“You're sure?”

Dustin leaned toward me. “For just a second, when I felt his hands on my shoulders, I thought he was going to push me, too. But that was stupid.”

“Because the train was already in the station?”

“No. Because of what he said.”

“And what was that?”

“‘Be careful, son.'”

I sat back and regrouped, whatever that means. Or at least tried to.

“I'm telling the truth,” Dustin said. “You've got to believe me.”

“I do,” I said. “You have no idea how much I do, Dustin.”

He smiled now, one crooked tooth on top, the rest straight and even.

“You want me to believe you, don't you?”

His face darkened. “It's a special school, the one I go to. A lot of the kids, they don't tell the truth. So sometimes…”

“Sometimes the teachers don't believe you even when you're telling the truth?”

He nodded, biting his lip. His head was down. I thought if he lifted it up, I might see tears.

“Dustin, tell me about his hands on your shoulders, what that felt like.”

Face up, talking faster now, “Strong. That's why I thought he was a basketball player.”

“I thought that was because he was tall.”

“No, first it was his hands, like he could palm a basketball, easy. His fingers were really long, and his grip, it was like steel.”