by S. J. Rozan
6
“Here, drink this.”
Mary held a takeout cup with a dangling Lipton’s label. I sipped, hoping tea would clear my fog. I felt as though I were seeing through the wrong end of a telescope and hearing through a closed door. And standing in sludge.
“Sit down,” Mary ordered.
“The forensics people—”
“Then in the hall.” She led me to the corridor and pointed at the floor.
Why hadn’t I thought of that? I sank down and leaned against the wall, closing my eyes.
“They’ll be through with you soon.” Mary’s voice came from beside me. “Then you can go.”
“I missed the train.”
“What?”
“Joel told me to get up here, and I was so mad at him for ordering me around that I didn’t hurry. If I’d caught the train that was pulling out, I’d have been here in time.”
“To get killed, too?”
I opened my eyes. “To stop the killer!”
“Maybe not.”
“I was talking to Joel on the phone!”
“And maybe the killer was right outside, waiting for him to hang up.”
“Still—”
“No ‘still.’ It’s not your fault. The point is now to catch the person who did this.”
I stared at this best friend, this cop. When, I wondered, had Mary stopped understanding me?
A small, sharp-featured man stepped out of Joel’s office. His gold shield was clipped to his pocket, and I knew someone had told me his name, but I had no idea what it was. He stopped when he caught sight of the badge hanging around Mary’s neck. “Who’re you?”
“Mary Kee. Fifth Precinct.”
“What’re you doing here?”
Mary pointed. “She’s a friend of mine.”
The uptown cop frowned. “Your name’s familiar. Do I know you?”
“We spoke on the phone. Your Asian John Doe from the hotel.”
“Right! You’re supposed to be ID-ing him.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Here? Now, I need the witness.”
“I’d like to stay.”
“I’d like you not to.”
“She’s a friend of mine. She’s upset.”
“And you’re off your turf. I’ll be nice.” He showed me a bunch of teeth, which was probably a smile.
Mary looked to me. I shrugged. She said, “When you’re ready to go, I’ll take you home,” and walked away down the hall.
The detective watched her, then turned back to me, notebook in hand. “You worked for Pilarsky?”
A preface would have been nice, I thought. Your name, how sorry you are. “Not exactly.” My voice sounded dull. Well, maybe I’d bore him, and he’d go away. “We’re both freelance. He called me in on a case. Before that I hadn’t seen him in a while.”
The detective had stopped writing, as if to let me finish babbling. “So, on this case, you worked for him.”
“I guess.”
“What’s the case?”
“Stolen jewelry.” I gave him a summary, finding it hard to stay focused. I kept seeing Joel standing outside the Waldorf, bursting into off-key song.
“Any way that could be related to this?” On “this” he nodded toward the office. I could read the skepticism in his lifted brows.
“I don’t know. When he called, he said something was fishy.”
“What was?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
Nodding as though he’d expect Joel not to tell me, he asked, “This jewelry—very valuable?”
“Not really, though it’s probably worth more than a Chinese civil servant could hope to see.”
“I thought everyone was getting rich over there, now that they took all our jobs. What’s ‘not really’?”
I stared at him. “Around twenty thousand, each piece.”
“Gee, sounds valuable to me. Must be nice to be you. What about Pilarsky? Why would someone shoot him over it? Did he have it?”
Mulgrew, I suddenly remembered, that was his name. Not that that made me feel any warmer toward him. “Detective Mulgrew? It’s missing. That’s why we were hired.”
“So maybe Pilarsky found it.”
“He told me something was fishy. That wouldn’t be fishy.”
“Fishy. Uh-huh.” He lifted his eyebrows again. “His wallet’s gone. And laptop and cell phone. And the place was turned over. You want to know, I make this for a robbery. How much cash did he keep in the office? A lot?”
“I don’t know. Just a robbery?”
“Some days, the bear gets you. We have three unsolved robberies in this neighborhood, last two months. Just like this. Daytime, high floor, vic alone. My theory? Messenger with a jones, just delivered whatever, now he’s in the building. Finds a one-man show, easy pickings.”
“Did anyone get killed in those others?”
“Maybe the vics didn’t put up a fuss. Would Pilarsky have? Instead of forking over?”
I gritted my teeth and nodded. “He could get—indignant.”
“Civilians.” Mulgrew shook his head.
“He was an ex–Port Authority cop.”
“Oh, really?” He spoke with the thick condescension the NYPD reserves for the lower cop orders. I wanted to slug him. “What about you? You ex-PA, too?”
“I’ve always been private.”
That got me an even more patronizing “I see.” Then: “Did Pilarsky go armed?”
“No. He shot someone on the job once and he didn’t like it.”
Mulgrew wrote that down, too, and flipped the notebook shut. So much for Joel. An ex-PA cop with a never-been-a-cop girl employee, unarmed because he was squeamish about shooting people, arguing with a stickup artist in his one-man office. What did he expect? Case closed.
“They have their own ambulances,” I said.
“What?”
“Orthodox Jews. There are special ways you have to handle the body.” Actually, I wasn’t sure Joel cared. He’d told me once about the ambulances, but I didn’t remember him saying to make certain he was carried away in one. But he had said I should get up here fast, and I hadn’t. In case the ambulance thing was important to him, I wanted to get it right.
Mulgrew hissed a sigh. “I think the Department can handle the protocol. Okay, go. Wait—what about you? You don’t carry, right?”
“I do sometimes, but not now.” I opened my jacket and showed him. Before he could ask, I opened my bag, too. He waved it closed as though I were trying to sell him something.
“So you do and Pilarsky didn’t?” Clearly for him that was backwards, just wrong.
“I shot someone once, too. I didn’t like it either. But I’d have liked it less if he shot me.”
Mulgrew smiled.
I still wanted to slug him.
7
Mary drove me back to Chinatown. Somewhere past Fourteenth Street I roused myself to ask, “Can I call Alice?”
“The client?”
“I assume that charming Mulgrew will follow up with her?”
“He thinks there’s probably no connection. He’s hoping for the messenger with the jones who can close this and the three open robberies at the same time. But he’ll go through the motions.”
“Then I’d like her to hear it from me. He doesn’t have the greatest bedside manner. Or any kind of manner. The bear gets you. Jerk.”
“I guess it’s okay.” Mary’s tone said that as a friend she agreed and as a cop she’d rather I didn’t call. I ignored the cop.
As it turned out, though, it didn’t matter. “No answer.” I pocketed my phone. “I left a message on the room phone and her cell, just to call me.”
Mary nodded. The cop was probably relieved. “You want to go home?”
“No, thanks, to my office.” I couldn’t face telling my mother about this, not yet.
Mary dropped me on the west end of Canal. “Should I come in?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“
You forget I’ve seen you when you’re fine. But okay. Call me if you need me?”
“You know I will.”
She went back to work and I went in the street door that bore a nameplate for Golden Adventure Travel, but not my name. My office was the second one inside. As long as my clients came out with brochures about cruises through the Guilin mountains, who was to say where they’d really been?
I waved at the travel ladies as though this were a normal day. “Welcome back!” Andi Gee called, looking perplexed when I didn’t stop to chat after a month away. I’d have to mend that fence later, but right now I needed to be alone.
Unlocking my door, I stepped into the dusty stillness of a room long unused. I opened the window and put the kettle on. After I splashed cold water all over my face, I stared into the mirror, but the eyes looking back were hard to take.
A random robbery? I dropped into my chair. Would that be better, or worse? Worse, I decided. The good news would be, it wasn’t something I should have seen coming. The bad news was, I still should have gotten up there right away. And if it didn’t have to do with our case, then I wouldn’t be able to have a hand in catching the son of a bitch.
When my desk phone rang, I almost jumped out of my chair.
“Lydia Chin. Chin Ling Wan-ju,” I told it in English and Chinese.
“It’s Bill.”
Months, I marveled. For months I’ve been checking the readout to see who was calling; this is the first time I didn’t.
“I’m sorry about Joel,” he said.
“How do you—”
“Mary called me.”
“Mary did?” My best and oldest friend? Sandbagged me like that?
“Can I buy you a cup of tea?”
“I . . . I don’t think—”
“Please.”
Just that, just “please.” Anything else—any long explanation, any attempt at apology, especially any excuses—and I’d have hung up. But there was just that one “please,” and silence.
“Come to my office,” I said. “I have tea here.”
Some things surprise you, but some don’t. Bill showed up carrying a large black coffee. The offer of tea had been an olive branch, but that didn’t mean whatever peace terms he was proposing would include him drinking any.
“Long time,” I said, shutting the door behind him.
He sat in the chair across the desk. Were there really more lines on his face than last time I saw him?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“About Joel? Or about the long time?”
“Both.”
“Who the hell asked you?”
A pause. “If I shouldn’t have come—”
“Oh, shut up.”
He did.
I sipped my tea. Jasmine, what my mother used to give us when we didn’t feel well. “It’s just, I don’t think it’s okay that you get to make that decision unilaterally.”
“What decision?”
“About who isn’t good for who and who could do better without who and who should stay away from who and who gets back in touch with who. And don’t tell me some of those ‘whos’ should be ‘whoms.’ ”
“They should, though.”
“I know!”
He drank his coffee. “Listen: I fucked up big. I needed time to think about that. If I—”
“When did I ever not give you time? Did I ever crowd you? Why couldn’t you have called and said, ‘I need time. I’m going to the cabin, I’m locking myself in my apartment, I’m shooting myself into space?’ Just to call and acknowledge I still existed. Why couldn’t you do that? Before you went off to meditate on what a fuckup you are?”
“Because I’m a fuckup.” He raised his gaze; I met it silently. Without a word, long and steadily, we held each other’s eyes.
Then, because I know that face so well, I saw him fighting a smile. Dammit, I wanted to yell, this isn’t funny! And it wasn’t. But what was, was how hard he was working to stifle it. Bet you can’t, I thought, and felt my own mouth twitching.
And suddenly there we both were, cracking up. Howling, gasping for breath, astonishing a month’s worth of dust and gloom. I laughed so hard tea slopped out of the mug I held. Until in an instant I felt a change, a spin-around: Now I wasn’t laughing, I was sobbing.
Bill jumped from his chair, came around the desk, and held me, an awkward manuever since I was sitting down. The clumsiness of it struck me as hilarious, and I was laughing again, and then crying, and both, until I didn’t know anymore what kind of shudders were convulsing me.
Finally, the storm let up. I pushed Bill away, stood, and made for the bathroom. I went through the cold water routine again, this time spending longer for less result. When I came out, Bill was back in his chair, halfway through a cigarette.
“Who said you could smoke in here?”
“You changed the rules?” He held the cigarette over the ashtray, prepared to stub it out.
“No. But you’re lucky I still have that.”
“The ashtray? Yeah, but you hid it. It wasn’t easy to find.”
“You’re supposed to be a detective.” I dropped into my chair.
“As such I have a question.”
“Which is?”
“When did you start using four-letter words?”
“I haven’t, as a rule. But some situations demand extreme measures.”
“Like me.”
“Yes, I’d say you’re one of those situations.” I paused. “Bill?” I said, more gently. “How’s Gary?”
Bill looked into his coffee. “Coping.”
“Better than you?”
He shrugged.
As badly as things turned out in that case, they’d have turned out worse if Bill hadn’t been there, and people—including Gary—told him that, but it didn’t comfort him. I think the reason Bill disappeared after that was that he didn’t want to hear anymore how it wasn’t his fault.
So I didn’t say it now.
“If you talk to him,” I said instead, “give him my love.”
Bill nodded.
I got up and poured more tea, to give myself a chance to figure out some really smart, articulate words for what I wanted to say next, but I was lost, really. All I could come up with was exactly what I meant: “What do we do now?”
“About what?”
“Well, it was lots of fun cracking up with you, but we still haven’t gotten past the part where we haven’t spoken in months because you’re a four-letter-word. And Joel’s still dead.” I tried for matter-of-fact, but I felt my eyes mist.
“How about,” Bill said, “we put the first item on hold and work on the second?”
“Meaning what?”
“Mary said you think Joel’s murder may be related to the case you’re working, but the homicide cop who caught it doesn’t.”
“Speaking of Mary, wait until I get my hands on her.”
“That’s between you two. What I’m proposing is, if you want, I’ll work with you on this. We can follow up whatever you think needs following. If you’re right maybe we can light a fire under the cops, and if you’re wrong we’ll find that out.”
“I’m right.”
“You usually are.”
“Boy, you must be seriously feeling guilty, to say something like that.”
“You’re right about that, too. Deal?”
“Is this why you called?”
“Yes.”
“Because you thought I needed help?”
“No. Because I wanted to help you.”
And that was like the “please” when he’d first called.
Probably the sensible thing to do would be to let the cops handle Joel’s murder. I could focus on Rosalie Gilder’s jewelry, assuming Alice Fairchild still wanted that. Bill speaks a number of languages, but none of them is Yiddish or Chinese, so if I took that route I could throw him out and count myself lucky to be rid of a fuckup.
But it was Joel who’d said we worked well together, Bill and I.
8
I laid the situation out for Bill: Alice Fairchild and the Waldorf, Joel summoning me to his office because something was fishy, Detective Mulgrew’s unsolved robberies. I showed him the photos: the jewelry; Wong Pan, who stole it; Rosalie Gilder and her brother, Paul, smiling on a windy day. I gave him Rosalie’s first letter to read.
“There are others,” I said. “At the Jewish Museum.”
“Have you read them?”
“Some.”
“Do they help?”
I felt an odd, unexpected comfort: the same feeling I’d had dropping my suitcase in my own apartment after a month away.
“Not really, except to get to know her. It made me want to get her jewelry back even more, though.”
“Can I have them? I’ll read them later.”
“I’ll print you out a set.” I clicked on the computer and had just gotten to the Jewish Museum site when the phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I answered in both languages. “Lydia Chin, Chin Ling Wan-ju.”
“Whatever,” a dismissive voice countered. “Where’s your client?”
“Detective Mulgrew?”
“Two points. Where is she?”
“I have no idea. She’s not at the Waldorf?”
“If she was why would I be calling you?”
Because you’re as charmed by me as I am by you? “If you tried there and her cell phone, I have no idea.”
“It would be good if you did.”
“I thought you said Joel’s death had nothing to do with her.”
“I don’t like witnesses running out before I talk to them. Makes them look bad.”
“Running out? Did she check out of the hotel?”
“No, and her things are still in her room. But she’s not turning up.”
“You were in her room?”
“Oh, gee. Shouldn’t I have done that? Look, when you hear from her, you’re going to let me know right away, right?”
“Anything you say.”
“Because I don’t like people helping witnesses run out, either.” He hung up on me.
