The Hard Way (5 page)

Eddie nodded.

“And you call Dashiell Lookout. Or you can just ignore him, not call him anything. Can you do that, do you think?”

“It's sort of like acting, isn't it?”

“Yes, but the best kind, the kind where you stay in character even when you don't have any lines to say. Because you never know who might be watching.”

“What do you know about the man you're looking for?”

“That's the hard part, Eddie. The witnesses? They only agreed on two things, that he was homeless and that he was tall.”

“What about his race?”

“Not even that.”

“Because they were so scared,” he said.

“Exactly so.”

Eddie nodded. Scared he understood.

“He's probably crazy,” he said. “God only knows why he pushed that man. He himself might not know.”

“But that doesn't make him any less dangerous.”

The waiter arrived and set down the coffee and tea. Eddie picked up his cup and inhaled deeply. He took a sip, closing his eyes, concentrating on the taste. “The coffee in the army stinks,” he said. And then he looked out the window again while we waited for the cheesecake.

When the cake came, I thought Eddie would dive in. But he didn't. He took the tiniest bite, just enough so that he could revel in the pleasure as the taste spread sideways and filled his mouth with the tartness of the lemon and the sweetness of the cheese.

“I've been thinking about what you said, Rachel.”

“And?”

“The day we met the first time, I saw you climb out of the Dumpster. That was a good piece of work, thinking to do that. Maybe that's why it never occurred to me you weren't really homeless.”

I must admit swelling a bit with pride.

“But did you ever actually eat something you found there?”

I made a face, shook my head, unpuffed my chest.

“And when there's trouble, nothing's happening, the weather's bad, the cops show up, there's a fight or something? You go home, right? You never slept outside, did you?”

I shook my head again.

“I'm sorry to ask this at the table, but did you ever relieve yourself outside?”

“No,” I said. “I never did. But what does this have to do with—”

Eddie held up one hand to stop me. “Maybe somehow that shows,” he whispered, leaning closer. “Maybe that's why you're not having any luck.”

“Because by not doing those things, I'm not staying in character,” I said, as much to myself as to Eddie.

He nodded.

“I'd have been curious about the place you offered me, more receptive to your generosity.”

“Maybe.”

“But I didn't need a place to stay.”

“And some of them…” He stopped for a moment. “Some of us are canny enough to pick up on things like that, especially those of us who've been in trouble.”

Eddie leaned back against the banquette, letting me think it over. I did, thinking that if I had to eat what I found in a Dumpster, sleep outside and use the space next to a tree as a toilet, I hadn't charged Eleanor Redstone nearly enough; thinking, too, that I never should have taken the case in the first place. I didn't like either thought. I'd made a deal and I would stick to it, and I'd find a way to get the information I needed even if it meant competing with the city's rats for old tuna cans and half-eaten sandwiches.

“Okay,” I said, “let's talk business.” But I'd forgotten to touch his arm, and Eddie was looking out the window again, making me wonder if he was seeing West Fourth Street or something else, a different place, a different time. It made me wonder if he remembered things from before the war. Or what had happened to him during the war.

I reached out and put my hand on his arm, pulling him back into the present.

“Can we give it a shot tomorrow? Can we meet up, I mean, can
you meet up with Eunice tomorrow and see if we can do better together than I've been doing alone, if your credibility might rub off on me?”

“Sure,” he said, back from wherever he'd been.

“You'll treat me as Eunice the whole time. Agreed?”

“But only if you act homeless the whole time.” Tough now. Taking charge. “Agreed?”

“Yes. About the money, I was thinking…”

Again Eddie raised his hand to stop me. “I have to think about that,” he said. “Right now, I'm the one who's behind. I'm the one who hasn't earned my keep.”

“Fair enough,” I said, knowing I wouldn't let it end there.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said.

“Sure. Anything. Go ahead.”

“I'm going to be me, no problem, right?”

I nodded.

“And you're going to be Eunice?”

I nodded again.

“So how are we going to figure out where we can talk as…” He stopped and looked at the dark glass again. “As whoever I am and Rachel?”

“Good question. We'll meet back here tomorrow night, same time, as Eddie and Rachel. Okay to leave it Eddie for now?”

He nodded.

“That sound okay?”

He nodded again, then had second thoughts. “Unless circumstances make it impossible.”

“What circumstances?”

“Like what I mentioned before. Might be I can find someplace where we could stay, someplace where a lot of homeless stay. If you stayed, it would give you more credibility than any costume you could wear. Not only that,” he said, and this time he put his hand on my arm, “you'd really
get it
if you did that.”

There wasn't much to say after that, no stories to tell, no ques
tions to ask. For some reason, I knew that Eddie wanted me to get it, that that was what he needed. It was part of what I needed too, not only to find the tall man, but to find out what sort of path he'd taken to get where he was, what sort of path Eddie had taken, too, that took away his name and his home and part of his hearing, but not his ability to trust another human being and not his ability to relate.

I asked the waiter to wrap both pieces of cheesecake to go and handed the bag to Eddie when it came. “Makes a nice breakfast,” I told him.

He thanked me and opened his backpack. I saw what was making it so lumpy. Along with what appeared to be a few items of clothing, a sweater and a pair of jeans, Eddie was carrying books.

I gave him my card and a handful of change. “In case you need to call me,” I said, “about anything.”

It was still snowing out when we left Osteria, still silent, too. Big flakes fell like pieces of torn-up tissues floating in slow motion all around me, cold on my mouth. They accumulated on Dashiell's back, white on white, until he stopped to shake, sending them flying out sideways, soggy now, stuck together and looking more like library paste than snow.

Eddie promised to meet me at Jackson Square Park at noon the next day. It was a funky little park set in the triangle where Eighth and Greenwich avenues met. Most people just passed it by on their way to someplace else, even in good weather, but the homeless and a bunch of the city's pigeons hung out there, rain or shine, neither group having much choice in the matter. It was one thing to avoid the outdoors in foul weather when you had someplace warm to be. It was quite another when you didn't. I figured from there, we'd go over to Washington Square Park, see if I'd do any better with Eddie than I'd done on my own.

A block from the restaurant, Eddie pointed north. I pointed the other way. I didn't ask him where he was going. I didn't want to know. But I wasn't as coldhearted as I might have seemed. My
right hand was in the oversize pocket of my duffle coat, holding his wineglass, which I'd dropped into a doggy bag when he went to use the men's room. I thought I'd managed to bag the glass without the waiter seeing me, but when I looked up, he was across the room, shaking his head. I promised I'd return it shortly and gave him a huge tip to buy his silence. He'd smiled and nodded, as if to say it was perfectly normal to take your dinner partner's glass when he wasn't looking, as if to say it happened every day of the week, no big deal. But when we left, I saw him watching us through the window, his own face reflected on the dark glass the way Eddie's had been.

I called the precinct
in the morning and asked for the detective I'd met because his partner had named me executor of his will and then was found dead one day under mysterious circumstances. Since I'd hardly known his partner—I'd met him while doing pet-assisted therapy in a post-traumatic stress group shortly after 9/11—the detective had offered to have the department do the work, to relieve me of the burden. That had only made me more curious. I wanted to know why this man had chosen a perfect stranger to do the job that usually falls to family, and in the process I got to know more than I'd bargained for, including, to an extent, the man's taciturn partner.

“Brody,” he said when he picked up. I bet the windows still hadn't been washed in the detectives' squad room. I bet his ashtray was piled up as high as the famously tall gourmet food at the Gotham Bar & Grill, only incredibly less appetizing.

“It's Rachel,” I told him, then quickly added, “I need a favor,” to keep it businesslike.

I heard him strike a match—from the scratchy sound, he must have been using wooden ones. I heard his chair move, perhaps closer to the desk. I heard him clear his throat, too.

“What can I do for you?” he asked as I remembered the odor of Old Spice, the same aftershave my father used to wear.

“I have a set of fingerprints on a wineglass,” I said into the phone, trying to keep my voice neutral. “They belong to a young soldier who served in Iraq and is homeless now.”

“And you think he committed a crime?”

“No, Michael, I think perhaps a crime might have been committed against him. He served his country and now he's living on the street.”

I heard the ashtray sliding across his desk.

“Anyway, he doesn't know who he is. He's wearing an army jacket with a name over the pocket, but he says it's not his name. He says the jacket may belong to someone else.”

“It may?”

“He's an okay kid. And he seems to be thinking clearly. Except that he can't remember his name and possibly much of anything about who he was and where he came from before Iraq. He's lost some hearing, too. He says he was at the VA Hospital in Brooklyn. That's about all I know so far. So I was wondering if you could run the prints, check with the army, find out what his name is.”

“I could,” he said. “No problem.”

There was nothing but silence on the line now. If he'd gone over to those dirty windows, he could have seen the gate to my cottage, but we might as well have been an ocean apart. Sometimes things happen between people that are the opposite of what happens in pet therapy. Instead of building a bridge with the help of a friendly dog, circumstances remove the bridge that was there, they burn it to the ground, the way the old warehouse where Eddie used to stay got gutted, nothing usable remaining.

“You say you have his prints on a wineglass?” he asked.

“I do.”

He didn't ask why the prints were on a wineglass, or how I'd gotten them, given the fact that the man was homeless. He didn't ask if the man was a wino, too, nor did he comment that most homeless people usually drank straight from the bottle, skipping not only the delicate aroma of the wine but the stemware as well.

In fact, there was no small talk of any kind, no extraneous conversation at all. He'd started out that way when we met, but we'd gotten beyond it, to where we could talk to each other, to where we could listen, too.

“I'll be heading out in a minute,” he said. “But you can drop it off at the desk. Tell the sergeant it's for me. I'll take care of it and get back to you.”

Detour, I thought. Bridge washed out.

“Thanks,” I said into the phone. “I really appreciate it.”

More silence.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I'm okay,” I told him. “And you?”

“The same,” he said.

Did he mean the same as me, okay, or the same as he'd always been? Lonely, overworked, isolated, sad. In other words, not so okay. But I didn't ask and he didn't volunteer anything further. And neither did I.

“Give me a few days, okay?” he said.

“Sure thing,” I said. “And, Michael?”

“Yes?”

“I very much appreciate this.”

I waited for him to hang up, and then put the phone down on my end. It was hours before I was supposed to meet Eddie. I decided I'd go swimming. It always helped me to clear my mind by emptying it as I moved in the water and thought only about my breathing. Sometimes I even tried to fall asleep while I swam. Of course, I couldn't. But trying put me in a Zenlike state, the one, I think, called “no mind.” Just then it sounded like the perfect place to be.

I'd had my landlord's house painted the month before, finding someone who would put paint on the walls and not on the wall-to-wall carpeting or the furniture, no mean trick in this or maybe any city. I'd supervised to make sure everything went well. As a thank-you, the Siegals bought me a two-year membership at
Chelsea Piers, where the pool was out on the far end of the pier, surrounded by glass. From the pool area, I could see the Statue of Liberty standing out in the Hudson, torch held high, welcoming visitors to New York. While most gyms put the pool in the basement, where there were no windows at all, this one was bathed in natural light, and since it was out on the river, it seemed you were on a ship and not in the city at all.

I walked Dashiell, then headed toward Chelsea, passing, once again, the place I'd found as Eunice where some homeless people had apparently stayed, unsheltered from the wicked wind blowing across the river toward the Village. Would I be sleeping here one night in order to solve this case, my head against the rough stone, nothing but a piece of cardboard between me and the cold, hard ground?

There was jazz playing in the ladies' locker room and blissful quiet in the pool area. As I reached forward, pulling the water back behind me, I saw a honeycomb of light splashed across the bottom of the pool, golden and seeming to shimmer gently though it was the water that was moving, not the light at all.

Coming out of the water after my swim, I thought about Eddie Perkins, who lived on the street in the dead of winter while I swam in this perfect place and then pretended to be homeless. It was easy to shake it off, to look at the detritus of someone's long, cold night out in the elements, protected by a piece of cardboard, a sheet of plastic, if that, feel a modicum of sympathy and go on with your life, a swim at Chelsea Piers, dinner at Barbuto or Gonzo, a fire in the fireplace when you got home, a hot shower, clean sheets and a warm blanket. Eddie wanted me to “get it.” And now, suddenly, I was afraid I would.

But would it help me find the tall man who might or might not have a tattoo on one hand? That I didn't know and wouldn't for a while.