The Hard Way (24 page)

Eunice was a block north
of the old warehouse that had burned down before she'd ever gotten the chance to sleep there. That was the night she'd met Eddie, the night everyone scattered to look for new digs, and good luck on that, she thought, Lookout at her side stamping his feet up and down like a horse, let's go, let's go, let's go. Didn't she know it was too cold to stand still, the sun not even up yet, the ground so cold your feet might stick to it if you didn't move around? Rush-hour traffic had barely started and the windows across the street were all dark, but Eunice only cared about one apartment, apartment 4F, the one where Missy Barnes lived. She'd checked the bells downstairs, thinking Missy had taken the boy to live in her apartment because it was cheaper than Alison's and with Alison gone, with Alison's income gone, every penny counted.

Eunice remembered the night of the big fire, the night she'd met Eddie, stamping her feet like Lookout now, trying to get some feeling back, her nose running from the cold, the air hurting her lungs when she inhaled, even with the old scarf covering her mouth, even so. Lookout barked once, let's get the hell out of here, c'mon, c'mon, but Eunice wouldn't move. There was something she had to know, even if she had to stand there all day. No one's getting away with murder on my watch, she told the dog.

And then the lights came on, one and then the next one, 4F, the F for front, 4B facing the back, facing a behemoth of a building behind it. Four B might need the lights on all day long, she thought, not just until the sun came up. A window shade came up, a moment later another one, someone looking out, wanting to know if it was snowing, like you wouldn't need your boots if it wasn't, you could freeze your feet off, the way Eunice was doing, standing around on the icy sidewalk, waiting to see what was what, hoping Missy would come out with the boy, do a little last-minute shopping, buy some groceries, anything so that Eunice would know, what she came here in the first place to find out. She'd be making coffee now, pouring cornflakes for the kid or maybe one of those sugary cereals in garish colors, marshmallows floating in the bowl once the milk went in, something the kid would actually eat. Then she'd wake him, Eunice thought, hugging herself against the cold. C'mon, Kenny, she'd say, time to get up. If he was well enough. A big if, Eunice thought, shivering again, wishing she had more layers on under the ratty coat she was wearing, more newspaper in her shoes. She looked down at the dog, at how she'd covered him from head to toe, two sweaters and a big muffler around his thick neck, not because he needed clothes to keep warm but because when the woman came out,
if
the woman came out Eunice didn't want her recognizing the dog, figuring out who the dog was with, knowing why. Eunice didn't want any trouble because just getting through each day was trouble enough. Ask anyone, she thought, and they'd agree. Even Missy Barnes, too damn old to take care of a little kid on her own, too damn tired at the end of the day and too damn poor to pay the rent, buy them food, buy Kenny the medicine he needed in order to breathe. But if not Missy, then who? Who else was there to take care of this little boy who'd already lost his father and his mother?

If Missy came out with the boy. Always an if, because Missy's name was nowhere in the records.

Eunice didn't have a watch to check, but the sun was coming
up. Big whoop, she told the dog, it must be one degree warmer, wishing she had a hot chocolate, marshmallows floating on it or not, she wasn't fussy, wishing she were sitting on the rug in front of the fireplace, then shaking her head, shaking the thoughts away because in this work, the wrong thoughts could get you fucking dead in no time.

And finally the door opened and there was Missy in that striped scarf she'd been wearing at the fire, pointing to the truck, the kid all excited, neither of them thinking about the consequences for the preacher, for Snakey, for poor Eddie. That was the trouble with people, Eunice thought as she checked for cars before crossing the street, they often didn't think about the consequences of their actions, didn't think about the possible results of cutting their employees off from medical benefits.

Eunice followed behind them, the kid wearing a backpack, the woman holding his hand, not schlepping along the cat carrier this time, no one around to fool now, no reason to distract attention from herself with what she carried, just Missy and her grandson; a guy in a top coat picking his way along the icy street, a delivery man with a sack over one shoulder and Eunice and Lookout, no one else around.

They turned the corner and Eunice followed, but not too close, and there it was, their destination, the Leaping Frog Day Care Center, halfway down the block on the opposite side of the street. There were two men on the corner, one bumming a cigarette from the other. Eunice stayed on the north side, waiting. Missy opened the big front door, bent and kissed the kid, told him to eat his lunch, that she'd be back for him later, whatever it was you said to a kid when you dropped him off at day care. Mind your manners, Kenny. Grandma loves you.

And when Missy turned around, there was Eunice in her face.

“Buck for a cup of coffee?” Eunice asked, her hand out.

Missy stepped back, appalled to be near someone like Eunice, someone who didn't have a place to call home, a steady job, indoor
plumbing, for God's sake. She had to get to work. Even Eunice could see that by the way Missy was dressed, makeup on, her long hair pulled back and wound into a bun, and by the shoes she was wearing, shoes for someone who had to be on her feet all day, a salesperson, a waitress, maybe a nurse's aide. And then, after being on her feet for eight hours, she'd have to pick up Kenny, take him home, make sure he was okay, vacuum the dust out of the apartment so that he could breathe. How did she do it? Eunice wondered. How did she pay the rent, feed herself and the kid, pay for doctor visits, inhalers, whatever else the boy needed to keep him going?

But that was more, far more, than Missy wondered about Eunice. The moment she turned around, Eunice was gone from Missy's thoughts. She never asked herself how Eunice managed, how she fed herself and that big dog, where she slept, how she kept herself going despite her bad luck.

Missy was heading west. There was a diner a block away. Maybe that's where she worked. Breakfast and lunch. Maybe longer. Maybe a neighbor picked up Kenny, someone who had also taken care of him on those evenings when Missy had waited outside GR Leather and followed Gardner Redstone. Had she ever gone all the way to Sylvia's stop? Eunice asked herself, wondering when it started and what Missy was thinking when it did.

Missy kept going, never once looking back at Eunice and Lookout. Shoulders hunched, she walked quickly, checking her watch when she reached the corner. Eunice followed from a distance. No matter if Missy turned the corner, if she disappeared inside a building, she'd given the dog the scent. And when he stopped in front of the diner and looked up at Eunice, Eunice stopped, too. But she didn't go in. It's not that she wouldn't have loved someplace warm to sit down, maybe have a cup of tea, a sweet roll or a toasted English muffin, but Eunice had something else more important on her mind. She pulled out a cell phone and dialed Brody's number, talking for a long time before closing the phone
and dropping it back into her pocket. Then she pulled off her cap, Eddie's cap, stuffed that into the other pocket and waited for the cops to show. She could see Missy through the big windows of the diner, wearing a uniform now. She had a cup and saucer balanced on one arm, a plate of eggs in her other hand, and she was smiling. But she wouldn't be smiling for long. That was the trouble with people, Eunice thought, the sun up now, feeling good on her face, they didn't think about the consequences of their actions.

Things don't
always work out the way you want them to. I did find out who had caused the death of Gardner Redstone, but it didn't bring him back—it never does. It didn't make anything better at GR Leather either. Eleanor listened to what I had to say, thanked me and asked me to send her a bill. She was back doing paperwork before I left her office.

I hadn't said much to Missy Barnes. What could I have said? That even though a terrible wrong had been done to her daughter, she'd had no right to kill the man she held responsible? That even if in the end, even if she felt it was worth it, or that she'd done what she had to do, that there hadn't been a choice, she'd killed the wrong person? No, I'd put out my hand to ask for money mostly so that I could look into her eyes. What had I expected to see? Surely not what I did see, that even before the cops arrived, some part of her knew it was all over. It was probably all over long before she pushed Florida into Gardner on the platform that awful day. The loss of a child is often more than a mother can bear.

Missy wasn't the only mother who had lost her child that year. Like so many other parents whose sons and daughters volunteered to serve in Iraq, Bob and Anna Perkins lost their son Eddie. He'd served honorably in Iraq where, according to the records, he'd been kidnapped and held captive after the vehicle he'd been in had hit a
poorly made roadside bomb, the explosion enough to turn it over but not enough to blow it into tomorrow. One of the four men who had been in the vehicle had been shot as he emerged. The other three were taken. After seventeen days in captivity, blindfolded and beaten, two of the men had been beheaded and Eddie, who had witnessed the brutal slayings, had been released. In addition to his physical injuries and memories that would haunt him for the remainder of his short life, he suffered from survivor's guilt and, my guess was, attempted to dissociate himself from the events during the war by believing his name was not Edward R. Perkins, the R for Robert, his father's name. His body was found two days after Christmas in an abandoned building where several homeless people were squatting. They had found and were using some kind of space heater and had all died of carbon monoxide poisoning during one cold night. Eddie had been twenty-three and had left behind a wife and two sons.

On the tenth day of the new year, Detective Michael Brody and I visited the Howe School and spent an hour and a half with Dustin Ens's class. The kids got a talk on gun safety, and saw and handled an unloaded firearm and heard a brief and, if I must say so myself, snazzy talk about canine scenting ability followed by a demonstration in which my pit bull, Dashiell, found a hidden person, Dustin, a hidden set of keys and, at the suggestion of a little girl with blond hair and an infectious smile who was kind enough to volunteer her lunch, a hidden roast beef sandwich that the kids insisted he get to eat.

“We're lucky they didn't insist he eat everything he found,” Brody said as we left.

“He wasn't
that
hungry,” I said.

I told him about running into my ex-husband in Washington Square Park and how he hadn't recognized me.

“That can happen,” he said, glancing quickly at me, then looking straight ahead again.

“I was working undercover at the time,” I told him.

“In that snappy outfit you were wearing at the diner?”

“Same coat, different hat.”

“How'd you…” He stopped but this time instead of looking at me, his gaze was directed at the traffic. “How did you perfect that smell?”

“Dog pee,” I told him. I poked his arm so he'd look and stuck out my foot.

“Good thinking.”

Was that a snicker I heard?

“The overall effect was…” He paused, looking for the perfect word.

“Stunning?”

This time he did laugh. “One of the uniforms thought so. He asked me for your number.”

“No kidding? Did you give it to him?”

“I told him, ‘Grow up. She's homeless. What do you think, she's got a cell phone?' He said, ‘You said she called it in,' the men bringing out Ms. Barnes at the time. I told him not to get so hung up on details. ‘Details,' I told him, ‘don't mean shit.'”

When we got back to Tenth Street, I thanked him for the demo. Then I headed for the wrought-iron gate that led to my cottage, and he headed back to the house.

Two days later, on January 12, I called Detective Brody to thank him again for helping to educate and entertain Dustin's class, making the kid a hero in the process, and asked if he was free for dinner, telling him there was someone I wanted him to meet. He said he was.

Sylvia ordered in enough Chinese food to feed the entire precinct, not just two people and one very hungry dog, and despite my pleas to the contrary, she made a pot of Gardner's favorite tea.

Despite the late hour and the numbing cold, I asked Brody if he'd mind walking back along the river. He said he wouldn't. I told him there was something I needed to do, that I needed to say good-
bye to the young soldier who had helped me solve the case. When we got back to the Village, I pulled Eddie's hat out of my pocket and tossed it as far as I could into the river. Like my mother's ashes, the hat went nowhere, the wind blowing it back toward where we were standing. We looked down into the blue-black water, watching it float for a moment, then disappear from view.

“He had a different hat in his pocket when he was found,” Brody told me.

“Navy blue?”

He nodded and then wiped the tears from my eyes with the balls of his thumbs. I was thinking how short life was, way too short for some people, way too sad for others, and that it was a mistake to stay on the sidelines, afraid to take a chance because you might get hurt. I took a step closer to Michael Brody, leaning against him as his arm came around me and we stayed a while longer, looking out over the river, the lights of New Jersey sparkling across the way, all our obligations waiting behind us.