The Hard Way (3 page)

Eleanor paused for a moment.

“The detective told me that Mr. Williams had refused to talk to them at first and only did so when offered monetary compensation, to make up for the time he was losing from work.”

“I know that happens. Some people will use any situation to their own advantage. And witnesses often disagree about what they've seen,” I said, understanding why the police had put the case on the back burner.

“In this case, they agreed on four things, that it was hot out, that the man who sent my father off the platform and into the path of the oncoming train had been taller than average, that he appeared to be homeless, and that but for the grace of God, it could have been them.”

“How did you get this information?” I asked her, knowing the police normally would not have shared the names of witnesses with a member of the deceased's family.

There was no answer right away. And then, “Through a personal contact,” she said.

“In the police department?”

She nodded.

“A detective?”

She ignored my question, glancing beyond me, as if someone had just come in the door. “I need you to find him,” she said, “the homeless man who murdered my father.”

“You know there's no guarantee I will,” I told her. “All I can promise you is that I'll try my best.”

“I know you will, Ms. Alexander.”

I didn't ask who had recommended me or how she'd checked me out. That was her business. She didn't ask me how I'd go about trying my best. That was my business.

“Is he always with you?” Pointing toward Dashiell with her chin.

“He helps with the work.”

Eleanor nodded. She asked my fee and how much of an advance I required, wrote a check and handed it across the nearly empty desk. I thanked her and told her I'd be in touch.

Walking down the marble steps and through the marble shop, I noticed that our wet footprints had already been wiped up. We left without stopping to admire any of the things there that, even if I cashed my retainer and used it all, I could not afford. No matter. What I cared about was something very different. What I cared about was finding the answers to those questions. Who did this? Why did they do it? Though in this case, there might not be a
why
. If the man who had pushed Gardner Redstone from here to eternity was homeless, there was a good chance he was mentally ill. He might have pushed the person standing in front of him because he heard bees buzzing around his head or because someone touched him or because he just did. The real point was finding him and making sure, as Eleanor had said, that he'd never get the opportunity to do it again.

There's no formula for finding the answers I was after any more than there's a formula for getting through life. You make choices and you live with the consequences. I knew right away I'd have to work undercover, that there'd be no way to get credible information from the homeless community, if you could call the homeless a community, unless I was credibly one of them.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. But so far, even crawling around in Dumpsters had netted me nothing. Five days into
the job, three and a half months after Gardner Redstone had been killed, the man I was looking for seemed as elusive as smoke on a windy day.

 

Leaning against the wall
in the tunnel that led to the cottage where I lived, I put my hand in my pocket, took out my cell phone and checked to see who'd called an hour or so ago, the call that made the phone vibrate when there was no way I could answer it, when I was still at the fire, talking to the soldier. Watching the snow falling beyond the tunnel, in the garden, I listened to the message from a Dr. Paul Charlip asking if Dashiell and I could work at his anger-management therapy group on Tuesday nights. He thought the presence of the dog would help maintain “a calm, appropriate atmosphere and aid in the interchange of ideas.” And although he understood I usually did this kind of work pro bono, he was more than willing to pay.

The world's gone mad, I'd said to Eleanor that first day. I believed it, too. Walking through the tunnel and into the garden, I began to think I should take Dr. Charlip up on his offer. The way things were going, I was pretty sure I'd be needing a rage-management group myself any time now.

Eunice,
leaning into the never-ending snow, walked west, toward the narrow park along the Hudson River, the dog, Lookout, at her side, attached to her by a rope she'd found tied around some old newspapers sitting at the curb waiting to be recycled. Recycled, Eunice thought. What a world. Every dog in the Village pees on them and then they make paper plates for your next picnic, those gowns they put on you in the hospital, your ass hanging out in the back, you tie the belt to try to keep the damn thing on, you can't untie it, you need a scissors to get the damn thing off when they're done poking at you, hands protected in those rubber gloves because God knows, you're homeless, you got to be contagious.

Where was the place the soldier had talked about, a place where she wouldn't get robbed, not that she had anything left for anyone to take except for Lookout and no one would take Lookout from her, not even the dogcatcher, because Lookout was a pit bull and people thought his jaws locked and if he bit them, they wouldn't get him off, not unless they got a crowbar and pried his mouth open. No, Lookout was the one thing no one would steal from her, the one thing she couldn't afford to have stolen, not if she was going to get up in the morning, survive another day, everything the same as the one before, hungry, cold, cold, hungry.

She walked south first, along the river, ice floating near the
shore, the river not frozen farther out, moving quickly toward the ocean, everyone going somewhere, even the Hudson, Eunice thought as she headed for one of the piers. Is that where he'd gone that night, out on the pier?

But that would be crazy, Eunice thought, stopping before she got there, looking around, the dog stopping, too, looking up at her, what's up? what's up? what's up? Always wanting to know what she was thinking, how she was doing, the only one in the world who did.

Maybe the soldier was talking about the bathroom, a little brick building, running water, soap, no paper towels but that little machine on the wall that blew out hot air when you pushed the button. He'd smelled like soap, Eunice remembered. He had to have someplace where he could wash up, get dry.

Eunice wondered what he had in that lumpy backpack, a change of clothes maybe. If he did, he could wash one set in the bathroom, dry it under that machine you were supposed to use to dry your hands, worked well if you had forever, nothing else to do but stand there rubbing your hands under the nozzle, no other mission in life except drying your hands. Eunice tried to picture the soldier washing his faded corduroy pants in the sink, then holding them under the blower for three or four hours until they were dry.

But the park was patrolled, even when it was snowing, people in uniform riding around in little carts, ready to give you a ticket if you had your dog off leash, if you tried to sleep in one of the bathrooms, or wash out your dirty clothes in the sink. No, it wasn't that. There had to be someplace else he went.

Eunice kept walking south. But all she could see were the piers sticking straight out into the icy river on one side of the path and benches, grass and trees without leaves on the other, everything covered in snow. No place to sleep here, no place to stash a refrigerator carton, no place to wash your clothes or clean up. He couldn't have meant this place. Eunice turned around and headed north.

They'd been in Chelsea, watching the place where he'd some
times squatted burn up, making him homeless all over again, spoiling Eunice's chances, too. She'd been going the wrong way, she thought. Not the first time. Not the last. She called out to the dog, who had been up ahead of her, not remembering when she'd taken the rope off his old collar, letting him run loose, not worrying about getting a ticket because, like everyone homeless, Eunice was invisible, even when she was breaking the law.

Getting back to where the bathroom was, Eunice decided to stop because it was a chance that might not come again so soon, but the door was locked, so that was that. Mumbling to herself, she walked north this time, past the sanitation-department pier on Gansevoort Street, the trucks smelling worse than she did, even in the cold. And then she crossed the street to where the path took a little jag, the bike path going straight, the footpath making a dogleg and there it was, the place the soldier had told her about, she was sure of it, a hellhole, but only if hell had frozen over.

Not in Chelsea, in the Village, right across from the Gansevoort Market, all that meat and this kid starving across the roadway. Did they know, those butchers, and if they did, did they care? There were cans and bottles in one corner against the thick wall, stone on the bottom as tall as a person, a wrought-iron fence on top, like a prison wall. There was a folded-up box, the kind some appliance came in, against one side, some used take-out containers next to it. There was a piece of plastic weaving in and out of the wrought-iron bars so it wouldn't blow away. And other signs that someone lived here some of the time, maybe several people, evidence that the bathrooms along the river were locked up tight, too.
This
was what he'd wanted to share with her. Protected from the city and the traffic on West Street by a stone wall, but open to the river, ice floating a few feet away as if it was Alaska in the dead of winter instead of New York. Was this all he had, the best he could do? How did he survive the war if he was so stupid? Eunice wondered, shaking her head, saying it out loud to the dog, Lookout watching her face, his head tilted to the left, you need me? you need me? whattaya need?

One more stop, Eunice thought, walking north a bit, then crossing West Street, all the cars waiting for the chance to mow her down, get her dog, too, if she didn't move fast enough. Her feet wet, slogging through the sloppy streets, the snow still falling but the snow on the ground already turning black from soot and traffic, yellow from dog pee, too, Eunice headed over to Fourteenth Street, past all the fancy stores, all with guards who would never let her in even if she told Lookout to wait outside, seeing tiny, little jackets in the windows, clothes that looked as if they'd fit an eight-year-old but meant for adults, for rich girls who made themselves throw up after they ate so that they could fit into a size two or a size four, rich girls who didn't know what it was like to
really
starve. There were evening gowns, too, with skinny straps, your shoulders bare in all this snow, and there was the shop with one red-leather purse that looked like a doctor's bag, in the window, no price tags on anything because if you had to ask, you couldn't afford it. Eunice wondered where all the hookers would go now that the butchers and the truckers were disappearing, now that the neighborhood was too upscale, too trendy to remain a stroll for much longer. Would they follow the butchers to Hunts Point in the Bronx? Because everyone has to be
somewhere.

She headed toward the middle of the Village, toward Washington Square Park, because the homeless hung out there, no matter what the weather was. Maybe she'd see the tall man who was either white or black or in between, the man with a tattoo or gloves, the one she had to find before she fucking froze to death or got killed for asking questions, though the soldier hadn't seemed to notice the night before that she was more curious than she should have been, that she was poking her nose where it didn't belong, that she had a mission and it wasn't finding a safe place to sleep. Anyway, to hell with him, he wasn't the one she needed.

Then why couldn't she stop thinking about him, about the soldier, how young he looked, how lost, too? Weren't we all lost, Eunice thought, one way or another, even some people who had
homes, people who had jobs and families and money in the bank? But the soldier was different. In spite of everything, he'd been trying to be kind. Eunice wondered what that took, what that might mean, being kind to a stranger when you had nothing in the world but yourself and you were cold and hungry and didn't have a place to call home.

Eunice's feet were making sucking noises in the snow and once or twice, she thought her shoes would come right off, as if she were walking in quicksand, and then she was there, at the park and she told the dog to be cool because he had one thing in mind and she had another and when he looked up at her, she could see the thing he wanted, but she couldn't give it to him, and he'd have to live with that because there was no choice, no choice at all.

There was a woman sitting on a bench, a shopping cart right next to her, a cart like Eunice used to have, maybe it was even Eunice's cart, the one that had been stolen. Eunice tried to see what was in it, if any of the things had been hers, remembering that it was a long time ago, when Lookout was a pup, and no one would keep the same stuff all this time. As she approached, Eunice heard the woman talking, a heavy-duty conversation, and it didn't stop when Eunice stood in front of her, when Eunice poked her on the arm. No way was Eunice getting through to this person.

There was a cat in the cart. Eunice heard it, Lookout, too. And lots of newspaper, some of it tied in bundles, some of it balled up the way it is when you were packing breakables. Not an entrepreneurial homeless person. They didn't mess around with pets and old newspapers. They hunted redeemable cans, a nickel per when you took them back to the grocery store, and if you kept your nose to the grindstone, if you knew the schedule of what garbage got thrown out on what day, you could make forty or fifty bucks for a day's collection. But you had to hustle. You didn't have time to sit on a bench in the park having a conversation with the air.

There were homeless men on the south side of the park, near the bathroom. Eunice wondered if this one was open, if the water
was running, if they had one of those hot-air blowers. The dog looked up when he heard barking, people freezing their butts off at the dog run, giving Fido a little R & R despite the weather.

“No can do,” she told him.

His tail wagged when she addressed him. He glanced once toward the run, then followed Eunice to the first bench, to where Snakey had his wheelchair parked.

“Hey,” she said.

Snakey looked up. “Do I know you?”

“The soldier, Eddie, he…”

“Don't know you,” Snakey said. “Don't wanna know you neither.”

“I'm looking for my old man,” Eunice told him. “I thought maybe you seen him around, at the shelter, or here.”

Snakey looked at her with one eye, smoke from his cigarette keeping the other eye closed. “What's his name, your old man?”

“I call him honey,” Eunice said.

Snakey shook his head. “Honey?”

Eunice nodded, a knot in her solar plexus. Fucked it up, she thought. Fucked it up but good this time. What choice did she have? If she gave a wrong name, any fucking name she could think of, Stanley or Barry or Tyrone for Godssake, she'd never get a step closer to him. But she didn't know his real name. As far as the homeless man she was looking for was concerned, she didn't know shit from shinola.

“He's tall,” she said. “Got a tattoo here,” pulling off her glove and pointing to the soft place between her thumb and her forefinger.

Snakey took the butt out of his mouth, tossed it onto the snow. “Don't got a name?”

“He calls himself different names.” Not a giver-upper. You had to give her that. “I don't know if he knows his real name. You understand?”

Snakey shook his head again. He didn't understand. He didn't
want to understand. He had other fish to fry. He reached for the wheels of his chair, working himself slowly down the path.

“You're a pain in the ass,” he called out over his shoulder. “Probably changed his name so you wouldn't find him.”

“Probably did,” Eunice muttered. “Wouldn't surprise me one bit. Wouldn't be the first time a man did that.”

“Probably not the last either.”

“This is going well,” Eunice told the dog.

There were two men on the next bench. Eunice walked over and sat down next to one of them, but before she had the chance to open her mouth, they got up and left, too. It was like being the new kid at school. Or maybe it wasn't Eunice chasing them off. Maybe it was the dog, the pit bull. Maybe people were scared of him.

Or maybe it was something else, something Eunice couldn't put her finger on, something they could see but she couldn't. Whatever it was, Eunice didn't know how to fix it. She didn't know the tall man's name. “Give the wrong name and what's the point?” she asked Lookout. But if he knew the answer, he wasn't saying. There was a squirrel a few feet away, up on its haunches, its nose going a mile a minute. That's where Lookout was focused, not on her problems, everyone with his own agenda, even the dog.

Eunice wasn't even sure what the homeless man looked like. Sitting on the bench, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to picture him, but the picture was always the same. Blank. Nada. Nothing. Eyes open, eyes closed, all she saw was white, like the snow that had been falling all day and was still falling.