The Hard Way (8 page)

Sitting on the floor
under the stairs at Penn Station, I waited an hour for Eddie, and then another hour. My heart pounding and filled with fear, I finally got up and walked up the stairs, staying in character by ranting and waving my arms when a policeman told me I couldn't have a dog at Penn Station, sounding and acting just crazy enough to make him back off, not bothering to mention that I was leaving anyway.

Or was it the smell that made him change his mind? I'd put one foot in exactly the wrong place when Dashiell was marking a tree, just so that my too clean odor wouldn't give me away. I was taking what Eddie had told me seriously, one step, literally, at a time.

But where was Eddie now?

I wondered if there was another door, another way out. I wondered if Eddie had gotten hurt. Or worse. I felt sick that he had gone down there on my behalf, but I didn't follow him, not while Dashiell was with me, not without knowing how tight it was in there, if you'd have to walk on a ledge beside the tracks, one foot carefully in front of the other to be safe, or if you'd have to flatten out like a hieroglyphic when a train went past, things a dog would be unable to do.

At six, after a long, hot shower, and wearing clean clothes, sheepskin-lined snow boots and a warm coat, I walked Dashiell
and then headed for Osteria by myself, hoping Eddie would show, not sure what I would do if he didn't. I was already trying to find one homeless man, and failing miserably. Would I soon be looking for two?

I took the same table, the one in the small room with the bar, but this time I sat facing the window so that I could watch for Eddie. But he wasn't there at seven and he wasn't there at seven-fifteen and he wasn't there at seven-thirty when I finally ordered a glass of wine and then picked up the menu, but couldn't bring myself to look at it. And then the waiter asked what I was having, and though I had no appetite, I finally looked at the menu but couldn't bring myself to order. I apologized and asked for a check.

Meaning to go home, I changed my mind almost immediately. Eddie had offered me a place to sleep, hadn't he? Maybe there was some reason he hadn't shown up at Osteria. Maybe he was “home,” I thought, picturing the little niche in the road, the high stone wall, Eddie huddled in the corner in a refrigerator box with a plastic sheet as the door. I began to walk faster, then run, slipping occasionally, a thin layer of black ice where people had shoveled, making my way west, toward the river, heading into the bitter wind as I did.

I crossed West Street at Horatio, running again when the light changed, turning right and slowing down for two reasons. I was out of breath. And I was scared. What if Eddie wasn't there? What would that mean? What would I do next? And why hadn't I stopped at home to get Dashiell before coming to this deserted place?

I crossed the last street before the dogleg, an L-shaped bend in the road, nothing more, the salt spreaders lined up against the curb and ready to go once the snow stopped. And there it was, a box in the corner, newspaper sticking out from behind the torn, dirty blanket that covered the opening, not a sound other than the wind. What now? Anyone could be in there. Or no one. I hesitated, then called his name. But Eddie usually couldn't hear me if he couldn't
see me and besides, the way the wind was whipping the snow in circles, slapping the cardboard box, whistling by the spaces in the stone wall, it would have been difficult to hear even if we were face-to-face. I tried again, saying his name louder, hitting the box with my hand.

No Eddie. No response.

And then it happened, two icy hands, as bony as a skeleton's, as tight as a vise around my neck, squeezing it until I could barely breathe. I began to pull at them and kick back, trying to hit his shins, but whoever was choking me was stronger than I was. I could see the snow in front of my face and then I couldn't. I saw black spots dancing before me. I heard the raspy sound of someone rapidly losing the ability to breathe, my own last few gasps. And then just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, and before I had the chance to get my breath, the hands were on my shoulders, spinning me around to face my attacker.

It was his chest I saw at first. When I turned my face up to see his face, I thought I might be hallucinating. The man who had choked me, the man who was standing so close now, holding my shoulders, looked the way my father had in his coffin, pale and unreal, as if he were made not of flesh but of wax. How did any of these people live through the winter? Of course, not all of them did.

I looked at his face for what seemed a long time, trying to breathe normally again, my throat still not believing it was no longer being choked.

“Not a sound,” he said.

I nodded.

There was only one person this could be. I hadn't found him. He'd found me.

“You the one wants to talk to me?” he finally asked, his voice barely above a whisper. Who did he think would hear us in this godforsaken place, in the middle of this storm?

“I am,” I said, my voice scratchy, barely there.

“I didn't push him,” he said. He let go then. I stepped back against the wall, though not exactly of my own volition.

“What happened?”

Florida, his pale eyes watching me, waited, collecting his thoughts. He was Caucasian, a white man, tall, thin as a fence post and almost that stiff. Definitely someone who would stand out in a crowd, someone you'd think people would remember.

“Hands on my back. Like this,” holding his up, like a mime caught in an invisible box. “Two hands on my back and—” His hands moving forward, miming the push.

There was a small tattoo of a sparrow on his left hand, in that soft triangle where the thumb and the forefinger meet the palm.

“And they knocked you into the man in front of you, sending him onto the tracks?”

He nodded. Something about him appeared too loose now, as if he were a marionette with too few strings. I would have backed away but there was no place to go, a stone wall behind me, Florida looming in front of me. Hands up, palms still facing me, he made the pushing move again. “Pushed me,” he said.

I nodded; best to have him think I was on his side. I nodded again, like one of those birds that looks as if it's drinking out of a glass, mechanical, stuck, barely able to catch my breath.

“Then what?” I asked.

He lifted one hand, as if he were trying to see if it was still snowing. Not a talker, a man who said as little as possible to as few people as possible, but here to communicate nonetheless. Of that I was sure.

“All screaming,” holding his ears now, “pointing,” his face a grimace of pain and fear.

“Pointing at you?”

Nodding now. “I ran away. I ran away.”

Florida's eyes were closed and I watched the snow landing on
his cheeks, his lashes, his hair covered with it, as if he were an inanimate object. Or a corpse. Which he almost was.

“Where did you go?” I whispered.

“To the tracks.”

Knowing now why he was so thin. No food down there. No light, no water, no hope, except whatever vestiges you managed to bring with you. Something, after all, had kept him alive.

“Were you scared?” I asked him.

Florida's eyes opened wide.

“You must have been so scared,” I said.

“You have to help me,” he said, his voice gravelly. “You have to tell them. I didn't push
him
. Someone pushed
me
.”

“Do you remember someone there carrying a cat in a case?” I asked him. “Do you remember the boy? Do you remember the man who paid for your ride?”

Florida squeezed his eyes shut and his head seemed to roll back, the snow landing again on his hollow cheeks, his lashes, his white hair.

“Just the hands on my back. Ice-cold hands. Just the man falling. Just the yelling.” And then, “It wasn't me. I swear it.”

Isn't that what they all say? I thought. No one ever did it. Everyone's a victim.

But what if, in this case, it was true?

“Where were the hands?” I asked him. “Where did they touch you?”

Florida stepped closer. I turned to face the wall and felt his hands flat on my back. He must have bent his knees in order to place them that low, just inches above my waist. Someone shorter than he was. That would be everyone else on the platform.

If he was telling the truth.

I faced him again, touching his arm, his coat sleeve stiff from filth.

“Someone put their hands on your back and pushed you into the man in front of you?”

“That's it.”

“Not an accident? They didn't jostle you when they heard the train, trying to get up front, maybe grab a seat? You're sure?”

“Hands on my back. Not a shoulder shoving by.”

We stood in the cold. I was looking at Florida. He was facing west, toward the river, the wind right in his face.

“Do you trust me to tell them, to tell the cops it wasn't you?” I asked him.

“He said I could.”

“The soldier?”

Florida nodded.

“Okay. I'm going to work on this,” I told him. “How will I find you when it's done? How will I be able to tell you when it's safe for you?”

“Safe for me,” he said, blinking.

“Yes.”

“Safe,” he said.

“That's right. It'll take me some time. And then I'll need to—”

“He knows where to find me,” he said, turning to go.

“Eddie? The soldier?”

He nodded, his back to me, the snow falling between us.

“Where is he? Where's Eddie now?”

I took a step away from the wall, a step toward him, but he was walking, too, walking away from me.

“What's your name?” I asked him. “What's your real name?”

He'd all but disappeared by then. Perhaps my words had, too, blown back into the city by the wind, or sucked out over the river, heading toward the ocean now. Whatever had happened, whether or not he'd heard me, Florida kept going. He never did answer my questions. “Why were you on the platform?” I'd wanted to ask.

“Where were you going?” But I never got the chance.

That night in bed I thought about the man I'd seen in Washington Square Park, the man who'd given me two quarters. He hadn't recognized me, not even when I stood right in front of him,
not even when I spoke. Odd, I thought, because Eddie had recognized me the second time we'd met, seeing me once as Eunice and then again as Rachel, but Jack Alexander hadn't been able to see beyond the shabby clothes, even when it was his ex-wife standing right in front of him. Jack never did see me. Wasn't that part of the problem?

And what were the other parts? I wondered. All these years there was a question I hadn't wrestled with. What was my part of it?

It was more comfortable blaming Jack, thinking that Jack hadn't let me be the person I was supposed to be, that he'd had all these expectations of what marriage was, of what his wife would do and not do, everything all laid out in his mind.

But hadn't I let it all happen? Hadn't I learned as a dog trainer that not stopping behavior is the same as approving of behavior? What the hell was happening in my head when Jack said he didn't want me to work, when Jack said we should live in his house in Croton, north of the city, in Westchester County, instead of in the city, where I wanted to be, where my work was, where I felt I belonged? Why hadn't I said anything when Jack told me what he wanted and I felt as if I were in a hole, the dirt coming in on top of me burying me alive?

And even more important, I wondered at the lack of feeling, the emotional flatness, when I saw him coming toward me. I wondered why the face I'd once found so appealing looked weasely now, the nose too pointy, the mouth too small, the eyes beady and cold. I wondered again that where there had once been passion, there was none now, not love, not hate, not anything. Hell, there'd barely been recognition. Had I not been hyperalert because I was working undercover, I might have passed him by without knowing who he was, as if he'd been a perfect stranger.

And then the worst thoughts came, thoughts that would keep me up late into the night. If my instincts had been so wrong about Jack, what made me think my judgment was so hot now? What,
after all, did I really know about the soldier? Or about the man who called himself Florida?

When the phone rang, it startled me, and when I picked it up, somehow I expected to hear Jack's voice.
Rach, my God, was that you in the park, begging for coins?

But it wasn't Jack.

“It's Brody,” he said. “I have the soldier's name.”

If there was any possibility
at all that Florida was telling the truth, I'd have to talk to the witnesses myself. Up early, I noticed the bruises on my neck when I peered at myself in the bathroom mirror, marks that would no doubt be there for weeks to come. Why would I trust this man, I wondered, the homeless man who'd nearly choked me to death?

For one thing, it had happened to me before, a man choking me not because he wanted to keep me quiet, the way Florida had, but because he thought he was trying to help me. I'd been on my first assignment for the Petrie Brothers, the firm that had hired me as a private investigator slash undercover agent when I'd called asking for a job as a trainee, not having a clue at the time as to what I was letting myself in for, not knowing, either, that before I'd completed my first assignment, I'd be hooked on a job most people wouldn't ever consider.

I was working undercover at a large hospital on Staten Island, just a ferry ride away from Manhattan but another world entirely. I worked the night shift as a nurse's aide, trying to find out who was stealing supplies in massive amounts, management figuring no way could the loot be removed from the hospital during the day with so many people around. The trouble was, I had to do both jobs. Working undercover as something, you damn well better be
that something if you don't want to blow your cover, and blowing your cover isn't an option if you want to keep your job. Sometimes, when the stakes are highest, blowing your cover can cost you more than your job. You can end up fucking dead.

One night I went to help a terminally ill bedridden man turn from one side to the other to prevent bed sores. It was easily a two-person job, but the second aide, the man who should have been there to help me, would clock in, find an empty bed and sleep through most of his shift so that he could be alert for his day job.

When I grasped the patient's shoulder, since there was no other help, he tried to help me himself. The trouble was that in the drug-induced delirium that helped get him through the final weeks of his life, he had no idea what he was grabbing. Reaching for my shoulder, he grabbed my throat instead, and while his body was thin, was dying, his grip, like Florida's, was like steel. I imagine the sleeping aide heard my gasps. If not, it was just coincidence that got him up then. Had he not appeared at the door at that very moment, had he not loosened the grip on my neck, young and healthy as I was, I might have cashed it in before my patient did, no harm meant.

In this case, there was another factor. There was Eddie. Eddie knew when he didn't show at Osteria, I'd go looking for him. He knew where I'd go, too. Eddie had sent Florida to find me and, oddly, that was enough for me, that the man who'd tried to rob me at the ATM thought the man who'd choked me was telling the truth.

I looked at the bruises again. Florida's handprints on my neck. Had he wanted to kill me, he could have. I checked the clock, got dressed quickly, a turtleneck to cover the marks on my neck, jeans, boots, the winter uniform, and then not wanting to waste another minute, I grabbed the phone book and sat at my desk, hoping to catch some of the witnesses before they left for work.

They were all listed except two. Dustin Ens was too young to have his own phone, although nowadays, some kids got cell phones
right out of the womb, Web sites, too, and God only knows what else. And Willy Williams had no listing, but I thought I'd be able to get the name of the company he worked for from my client's detective friend. One way or another, I was going to find Willy.

Three hours later, I was waiting for Marilyn Chernow at the coffee shop near her midtown office where she said she could meet me during her morning break. The table was streaked, as if it had been cleaned with a dirty rag, which it probably had been, the tea seemed greasy and the waitress looked as if she'd kill you as soon as bring you your order, but I was happy to be there, to have gotten a yes from Marilyn.

She'd have a large tote bag with, she told me, the company name on it, so that I'd know her. But there was only one other person in the coffee shop at ten in the morning, a result, perhaps, of the quality of their cuisine, and that person, a man in his seventies, I figured out, due to my extensive experience as a private detective, was not Marilyn Chernow.

I waved when she stood next to the cash register, looking around. She waved back.

“Thank you for coming,” I said as she slid into the booth, across from me. “As I said on the phone, I was hoping you could tell me whatever you recall about the day you witnessed…”

She began nodding, so I stopped and waited.

“I was visiting my sister at St. Vincent's Hospital that afternoon. Hysterectomy,” she whispered. “I should have taken the train right there, but I needed to walk when I got out of the hospital, you know how that is? I think it's the smell. It does something funny to me. Sometimes I actually get dizzy and have to…” Marilyn smiled. “I know,” she said, “I talk too much. It's something I do when I get nervous. Or when I meet someone new. Or I'm with my family. Sometimes I do it on the bus, too, with total strangers.” She shrugged.

“It's okay,” I told her. “I'm the same way.” Mendacity being my middle name, anything to get what I need.

“You said you're a detective? But not with the police? Because I already talked to—”

“I work privately. I'm working for Mr. Redstone's daughter. It seems the police were unable to find the homeless man you described, and Ms. Redstone was very upset to think he was still out there and that he might harm someone else.”

Marilyn nodded. “Good for her, hiring you.”

The waitress came over, and Marilyn ordered coffee and a sticky bun. The waitress looked at me, scornfully, as if to say, some people are polite enough to order some fucking food when they come in here, not take up space for a lousy cup of tea. I shook my head to let her know I was fine, that I had enough grease in front of me for the moment.

“So you're looking for him now?” Marilyn was short, about five three, I thought, and round, and so was her hair, a ball of red curls around her worried face, one of those women, perhaps, whose opinion of herself hinged upon the number on the bathroom scale each morning.

“I found him,” I told her, feeling a rush of excitement as I said it aloud for the first time.

Marilyn brought both hands to her mouth. “Oh, my God. So is he in jail now?”

I shook my head.

“I don't understand.”

“I would have had no way to…” I lifted one hand, let it drop back to my lap. “As I said, I'm not with the police. And the meeting,” wondering if that's what it had been, the man choking me before he said word one, “well, it was set up, you might say, by another homeless man. And it was just a preliminary conversation,” I told her, struggling for words. It had been a sort of conversation. It had also been a leap of faith, a leap I was now following up on.

“So he's,” whispering again,
“out there.”

I reached across the table and patted her hand, withdrawing it as the waitress came with her order. “He's not where he can do any
harm, Marilyn. He's in hiding. In fact, I found him to be more terrified than terrifying, if you know what I mean.”

“No,” she said, “I don't. He pushed that poor man to his death. Why would
he
be the one to be afraid?”

“I know this is going to sound strange to you, but he says he didn't push Mr. Redstone. He says as the train entered the station, someone pushed
him
into Mr. Redstone.”

“Someone pushed
him
? You mean by accident?”

“No. He wasn't just jostled, someone in a rush to get on the train even before it's in the station. He showed me quite clearly how the hands were placed, even where they were placed.”

“I don't—”

“I wanted to know the approximate height of the person who'd been standing behind him.” Letting her think about that for a moment, taking a sip of the tepid tea as I waited. “And the reason I wanted to meet with you today is because I am wondering if by any chance on earth, you might remember something about the person standing behind the tall man,” feeling his street name wouldn't add any credibility to the exchange.

Marilyn began to shake her head.

“The station was jammed, is that correct?”

“Well, yes. It was rush hour.”

“So there would have been someone on either side of the tall man?”

She nodded.

“Someone behind him as well?”

“Yes, but I…” She shook her head again. “It's been…”

“Perhaps if you close your eyes and try to imagine the platform.”

But now she was not only shaking her head, she was sitting back, her hands on the table as if she were trying to push herself ever farther away from me. “I saw someone get killed that day, Ms. Alexander. I've been on antianxiety medication ever since.” Still shaking her head. “Seeing it is what I can't help doing. I see
it twenty times a day, getting on the bus, because I won't take the train again, stepping out of the shower, eating dinner, falling asleep. Mostly, falling asleep. It's like a movie, a loop, that keeps running in my head. But there are no features on the other people. There's just
him
, and that poor man, the sound of his attaché case hitting the platform. And all the screaming.”

I nodded, gave her a minute and then continued. “I'm so sorry,” I said. “But could I ask one more—”

“It's not your fault,” she said, leaning toward me, reaching across the table for my hand. “I'm sorry for the outburst.”

“No, don't be. It was awful that you were there that day, standing next to the tall man when…”

Marilyn was shaking her head again. “Not next to him. There was someone between us.”

“Go on.”

“There was me,” pointing to herself, “then to my right, a woman with a cat in a carrying case and then
him
.”

I took out a small pad and pen and made a circle in the middle of one page, putting an F in the circle, for Florida. Then I put two circles to the left of the one that represented Florida, putting Marilyn's initials, MC, in the farther one and Missy Barnes's initials, MB, in the closer one.

“This is very helpful,” I told her, reaching for her hand this time. “I can't thank you enough.”

Marilyn nodded, looking pleased.

“Is there anything else you can think of, even the smallest detail…”

“There's one thing,” she said, pushing her coffee one way, the plate with the sticky bun the other, then leaning forward. “The one with the cat carrier?”

“Yes?”

“Are you even allowed to do that, take a cat on the subway, I mean? What if someone's allergic?”

“You're not, are you?”

“No, but there were so many other people there. It just stands to reason…”

I shrugged. I thought it was okay to take a pet on the subway as long as it was in a carrier, but that wasn't the point, was it? “Was she a big woman, the one with the cat?” not wanting to give the name of one witness to another, because the names had not been made public. They'd been given to my client as a favor. And because once you offer information, you lose control of where it goes.

“No. My height. Maybe shorter.”

I wrote five three and a question mark next to Missy Barnes's initials.

“So you had a pretty good view of the tall man?”

She'd been right about his hair, but not his weight. On the other hand, living on the tracks, he'd have had trouble finding food. He might have lost forty or fifty pounds since the incident on the tracks that had cost Gardner Redstone his life. It was possible that Marilyn Chernow's description had been the most accurate one of all.

“I wasn't looking that way. Not until after.”

“Then you didn't see him hiss at the cat?”

“What do you mean?”

“The woman with the cat, she said he'd bent down and hissed at it.”

Marilyn looked confused. “I don't understand. The cat was on my side,” she said. “I nearly tripped because of the damn carrier. He would have had to cross in front of her in order to see the cat. He didn't do that. I would have noticed.” She pulled the plate back in front of her, picked up her knife and fork and cut a wedge out of the sticky bun. I waited while she put the piece of bun thoughtfully into her mouth and began to chew. Then she shook her head. “No. Never happened.”

“You're sure?”

“When someone acts crazy, I move away. Don't you?”

“Usually, yes, when I can.” Thinking of Florida's hands around my throat and quickly shaking off the image.

“Nothing crazy happened, until
it
happened. That's when I relocated. That's when everyone else did, too. So, no, he didn't hiss at the cat.”

“And you had no reason to look back, say, so that you might have glanced at whoever was standing behind him?”

This time Marilyn didn't get upset. She wasn't looking at me, and it occurred to me that she might be visualizing the platform that day, as I'd asked her to.

“I wouldn't have had a very good view, even if I had turned. The lady with the cat had some sort of hat on, straw maybe, the kind that keeps the sun off your face. And he was big, the one who did it. The one who maybe did it.”

I nodded.

“Whoever was behind him would have been mostly blocked from my view.”

I took out one of my cards and slid it across the table. “If you think of anything else…”

Marilyn picked up the card and seemed to be reading what it said, and though it said very little, just “Rachel Alexander,” and under that “Research Assistance,” and then my phone numbers, she took a very long time before she looked up.

“Rachel, will you let me know, once you know? It might help me sleep again.”