The Hard Way (20 page)

I waited
until right before closing to go back downstairs. By then, I'd waded through four more file drawers and knew more about how GR operated than I thought I could absorb, but I wasn't a single step closer to knowing the answers I was after—who and why? I was hoping to exchange the red jacket for my sheepskin coat, a relic of my dog-training days when I was spending hours outside in weather like this instead of being locked up all day in an overheated office, and take Dashiell for a long walk. But there was one last customer in the store, and it was Dashiell he was attempting to interact with. He'd put that idiotic fur collar up and stepped back to assess the look of the jacket, as if his dog would care. In fact, unless his dog was a whippet or a greyhound or one of a handful of other breeds with low body fat, he wouldn't need a coat at all, not even on an evening like this one, the snow still fluttering, blowing, swirling, landing, sticking, covering, doing whatever it's possible for snow to do. Okay, one more minute, I thought, and then I'm out of here, for the moment anyway. I planned to come back as soon as everyone else was gone.

But one minute turned into two and two turned into four. Now the gentleman in question wanted to see how the coat looked on a sitting dog, or perhaps how the fit was when the dog sat. In fact, it wasn't as silly a thing to check as it appeared to be because when a
dog sits, the strap going around his chest tightens. I knew that the strap was wide, so that it wouldn't cut into the dog, and that there was a panel of elastic inside the leather band. As I said, there's no way you can get this kind of fit and drape at bargain prices. So the curious customer was now pushing on Dashiell's rump, which is how I cleverly discerned that he wanted my dog to sit for him. And Dashiell, being a dog, was pushing back.

Even a trained dog will react with a version of Newton's third law—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Only, in the case of most dogs, and certainly in the case of most pit bulls, the reaction tends to be more powerful than the action. Dashiell, who would have sat in a nanosecond if asked to do so, was pushing his rump against the well-dressed man's hand. When he seemed to be giving up, I whistled for Dashiell to sit, which he did. And instead of thanking me, though perhaps he was a fan of coincidence and didn't realize the whistle had been a command, he bent to check the strap, a man who, it appeared, had bought dog coats before.

Richard was straightening the stock. I walked over and asked him to take the sale. I was being paid enough and had the feeling, in fact, that any sale credited to me would yield no commission to anyone.

“Drinks?” he whispered before changing to his work accent and imperious but subservient smile.

“Can't,” I told him. “Tomorrow?”

But I didn't get an answer because he'd been asked for a “fresh” jacket and had gone to the rack where they were hanging. I wasn't sure I was earning my keep, but Dashiell was surely earning his.

I waited for Meredith and Richard to take their coats, taking mine and leaving my scarf in the closet as an excuse for coming back. I didn't think I needed one, but decided it couldn't hurt. Then I left the motorcycle jacket and took the dog, heading out into the snow.

I couldn't help thinking about Eddie while I was out. My body
was warm, but the wind was stinging my face. I walked west, into it, to check the little homeless city right around the corner from all that luxury surrounding GR, but the place looked deserted. In weather this bad, even the diehard street people sometimes head for Penn Station or any other place where they can keep warm. I thought of that ugly area where Eddie had talked to the sad crew of homeless people about Florida, and then about the last moments I spent with him, Eddie telling me that sometimes the bravest thing to do was to let yourself be saved. I felt tears stinging my eyes and wiped them away quickly. It was too damn cold to be crying out in the storm. It was too damn cold to be out in the storm. At least I had a choice.

I stopped by Florent, the little French bistro on Gansevoort Street, one of the only places around that predated gentrification and still a favorite of mine, and picked up a sandwich to go. I checked the time and headed back to GR. Darnell White was standing just inside the door and he unlocked it as soon as he saw me. That was when I realized my first mistake. I'd only gotten one sandwich.

I handed him the bag. “I thought you might…,” stopping while he opened it and took a whiff of what was inside.

“Thank you, Rachel, I sure appreciate this,” he said. “You back to work?”

And that was when I realized my second mistake. I could have taken the scarf. Darnell was happy to have someone around. No way was he going to question my return to the mill.

I nodded and headed up the stairs, stopping on the second floor for a moment and then taking the next flight up to the studio. I could tell from the bottom of the stairs that Abe and Delia had gone unless they were working in the dark. I left the overhead lights off. There was an old gooseneck lamp on Gardner's desk, another battle, I guessed, that his daughter had lost.

I dropped my coat over the stool where Gardner used to sit when he was drawing and sat at his old desk, putting my hands
on the scarred wood and just getting a feel for the place before I opened any drawers. Then I started with the top one and worked my way down.

It didn't take long for me to stop looking at drawing pencils, colored pencils, scissors of various sizes and sample after sample of skins, pebbled, smooth, dyed, stamped, pearlized, all supple, some with little notes tacked to the backs about what they'd be best used to create or where they were from. I pushed the chair back, away from the desk, and thought about the last customer of the day trying to push Dashiell into a sit, Dashiell pushing back not because he didn't want to sit, but because he didn't want to be pushed around.

Willy Williams hadn't wanted to be pushed around either, even though the pushing, in that case, had been verbal. If he was telling me the truth, he'd bought Florida a ride, and instead of being grateful, Florida had seen a sucker. Florida was asking for more and he wasn't about to let up.

So Willy gave him a shove.

I closed my eyes, trying to picture it, the small man pushing the big man, the big man, caught by surprise, stumbling into Missy Barnes. Someone, I figured, saw that, saw the way Florida had stumbled, and then what? Was that how the final push happened? Someone saw the way Florida had lost his footing and thought he was drunk, or medicated, or just unstable, both mentally and physically. Someone else looked and saw the perfect patsy.

I got up and walked over to the oversize windows and looked down at the empty street. The snow had stopped and, except for one taxi, there was no traffic down there, no pedestrians either.

I turned around and put my hands flat on Gardner's old drawing board. Had he been reading the paper, the briefcase in one hand, the newspaper in the other? No. That would have meant reading glasses. I'd seen two spare pairs in the top drawer of the desk. He wouldn't have wanted to be on the platform with reading glasses on, glasses that would magnify the space between the platform and the train, glasses that distort distances.

I went back to the desk and sat again, opening that middle drawer where people kept pens and paper clips, spare keys, glasses. I took a pair out of the soft case and tried them on. Magnifying glasses, possibly not prescription, possibly the drugstore kind. I stood and looked down, feeling my stomach whirl, glad I'd given my sandwich to Darnell. No, Gardner hadn't been reading the paper. He'd been waiting for the train, watching for it, like most of the other riders.

Then Willy pushed Florida, and several people saw that, and one of them saw how unsteady Florida was, was that what happened? Everyone was going home after work. That's why they were there. Except for one person. One person had been following Gardner and when they saw Florida get pushed and stumble, they saw a resolution to whatever horrible, real or imagined, event that had them glued to the ill-fated man. Push. Stumble. Lightbulb over the head of someone on the platform.

I was looking for an enemy, when Gardner's “crime” might have been imagined in the first place, something trivial, some slight he'd forgotten by the time the day was over. And what if it hadn't been trivial? What if it had been a normal part of doing business? One man succeeds, another fails. One man gets the lease, the hot design, the write-up in the paper, the famous customer and the beginning of a lucrative craze, another man doesn't. How would I ever find my way into the so-called enemy's head by looking through files, by poking around in the old man's desk?

Was I going about this the wrong way? I was attempting to work logically, or chronologically, going from beginning to end, from crime to punishment, as it were.

Wouldn't it make more sense to work the other way around? After all, whatever the reason, real or imagined, the murderer had been there. The person I was looking for had been on the platform with Gardner. If not Florida, it had to be someone else standing nearby, one of the people surrounding Gardner. So more than likely, I thought, it was one of the witnesses, someone I'd already met.

I was trying to find out why so that I'd know who. Maybe it wouldn't work that way—it hadn't so far. Maybe I wouldn't know why until I knew who. Backward. Or was it?

Why look here to find the killer? Gardner knew the people who worked for him. The person who did this had to have been a stranger to him, or at least someone he wouldn't have recognized. None of the witnesses reported him greeting anyone nearby. None of them reported a handshake, a wave, a nod, a smile. Someone stood near enough to touch him, but not someone he recognized. A stranger pushed him, I thought, but perhaps not a stranger to me.

I put back the glasses and shut off the gooseneck lamp, but I didn't pick up my coat right away and head for the stairs. Instead, I went back to the window, back to looking at the lonely scene below, wondering what Florida had told Eddie that made Eddie believe him. I stood there for what seemed like a long time, and then I put on my coat and walked down the stairs. Darnell had put my scarf over the door knob, to make sure I wouldn't forget it again. Apparently, after closing, he checked everywhere including the closet. When I got to where he was, he picked up the scarf and handed it to me, miming making a knot, waiting until I did before he opened the door.

“Cold out there,” he said.

Dashiell went out first, me right behind him. That's when I saw the footprints in the snow. No one had been on the street the two times I'd looked down, but someone had been by since the snow had stopped falling. Where could they be going in all this cold, everything closed up tight, not another soul around?

That's when I noticed that just past GR, the footprints turned around. Someone was lost, looking for something they couldn't find.

I'd been lost, too, but not anymore. The police had had no cause to examine the lives of the people who had been standing near Gardner when everyone told more or less the same story, that it
had been the homeless man who'd pushed him, the man who'd been standing behind him.

But everything was different now. If Florida had told the truth, and if Willy had, if, if, if, then there'd been a deadly game of musical chairs right before Gardner was pushed, or knocked, off the platform and into the path of the train. Examining the lives of the other people who'd been on the platform was exactly what I should be doing, to see which one's life led back to Gardner. Not the why leading to the who, the who leading to the why.

Sitting at my desk,
Dashiell snoring on the office daybed, a victim of too much retail, I pulled out the chart of where people had been standing on the platform the day Gardner Redstone was killed. And then I took a sheet of paper from the printer and copied it over bigger, putting in full names in each circle instead of just initials.

Gardner was standing at the edge of the platform, something I stopped doing a long, long time ago, something no one who witnessed his death would ever do again. Florida had been behind him, with Willy Williams to his right. In front of Willy, on the other side of the trash can and to Gardner's right, was Dustin Ens; behind Willy, Lucille DiNardo. Elizabeth Mindell was at the edge of the platform to Gardner's left. Behind Elizabeth, to Florida's left, stood Missy Barnes with her cat, Bette. Marilyn Chernow stood to Missy's left and Claire Ackerman was at the foot of the stairs. No one remembered who was behind Florida. At least not that they said so far.

But that was the very spot where the killer had had to stand for long enough to put his cold hands on Florida's back and push him hard enough that he'd stumble into Gardner.

I went down to the basement, where I'd hung Eunice's clothes on a peg behind the door, reached into the coat pocket and pulled
out Eddie's hat. I needed Eddie. I needed to know why he'd sent Florida back out into the world to find me, why he believed him. I wasn't sure if I'd believed in Florida's story because I knew Eddie had, or if I would have believed it on my own. How could I know, everything coming at me at once just after being choked nearly into oblivion? Florida hadn't been trying to hurt me. Mentally ill, homeless, hungry and hiding from the authorities, he was only trying to protect himself by keeping me from screaming. It was the second time some addled stranger had almost choked me to death, the second time I held no grudge. Having looked into the hard-eyed face of evil too many times to count, I thought I knew when I was seeing something else, fear and confusion to a degree I honestly couldn't understand.

But what had Eddie seen? What had Eddie heard? Where the hell was Eddie? Where the hell is anyone when you need them most?

Standing next to Eunice's coat, the old sneakers on the floor beneath it and still as pungent as ever, I thought about what it was I needed to do. I wanted to visit the witnesses again, to see if as their trauma receded, other memories might have been recouped. I could call them and ask to meet with them again. I checked my watch, thinking I could make some calls right then. But then I stopped, put Eddie's hat back into the coat pocket and sat down on the bottom step.

Would that work, calling them and asking if I could see them again? Not if one of them had ties to Gardner, no matter how hidden. Because they'd be covering up exactly what it was I wanted to know.

I could watch them instead, the way one of them had watched Gardner, stalk them, the way Gardner had been stalked. I'd need to watch carefully to see what I could learn. And to do that, I'd need to be invisible. I got up and took the coat off the hook where it was hanging. To do that, I thought, I'd need Eunice.

But then I changed my mind. What if instead of calling them
to make an appointment, I just ran into them, as if by accident? It wouldn't matter if they believed it was just a coincidence, me being where they happened to be at the same time. Because if they didn't believe it, if they thought I might be on to something, all well and good. All the better if they had reason to worry when they saw me again, reason to wonder what I'd found out.

No, I didn't need Eunice just yet. Far better if I bumped into each of them as myself, and as long as I did, I might as well ask a few more questions, clarify a few points, see whose eyes didn't meet mine, whose voice went up or who spoke faster.

I went back up to the office and grabbed the phone book, checking my list of names again to see if I had everyone's address, looking up the ones I didn't have, everyone accounted for except Willy. But I'd found Willy before and unless he quit his job and took off, I thought I could find him again. He'd be busy now, two days before Christmas, delivering presents, key rings, perhaps, to someone's top customers, flowers to the agent who'd gotten some actor the role of a lifetime, last-minute remembrances that the giver could write off on his tax return.

It would be Dustin's last half day of school. It would be easiest to find him there, as the kids were getting out. If not, no problem. There was only one Ens in the neighborhood and I was sure that was Dustin's father. So one way or another, I was pretty sure I'd be able to talk to Dustin again, tell him about the school program Brody had arranged, tell him what a hero he, Dustin, would be when the kids learned it was all because of him, and, while I was at it, see if he remembered anything more.

If time indeed heals all wounds, some of the witnesses might remember something they hadn't when I first met them. Not that much time had passed since then, but knowing that I was out there trying to find the boogieman of their nightmares might have helped. Except for one of them. For one of them, the one I was trying to single out, the fact that I was on the job could not have been good news. And that was one of the things I was counting on.

I picked up the phone and called Eleanor's private line at work, coughing a couple of times to sound convincing, leaving a message saying that I was running a fever and wouldn't be in the next day, Friday, and probably not on Saturday either. I told her how sorry I was to miss the last two days before Christmas, but that was all I said. I had no idea who else might retrieve her messages and, at this point, I wasn't counting on anything nor taking any unnecessary chances.