“Okay, Velvet,” he said, leering. “So … what do you do for, uh … fun?”
A painfully thin blond with a beak nose and frizzy hair touched a nipple and said, “Macramé.”
I switched off the set.
Lights out. The blackout drapes did their job well.
My heart was as dark as the room.
CHAPTER
26
I beat the wakeup call by more than an hour. After showering, shaving, and dressing, I drew open the drapes on a view of the red-brick building across the street. Men in white shirts and ties were framed in its windows, sitting at desks, talking into phones, and stabbing the air with pens. Down below, the streets were clogged with double-parked cars. Horns blatted. Someone was using a compression drill. Even through the sealed windows I could smell the city.
I phoned Robin at just past nine L.A. time. We told each other we were fine and chatted for a while before she put Milo on.
“Talk about bicoastal,” he said. “Expedition or escape?”
“Bit of both, I guess. Thanks for taking care of the lady and the tramp.”
“Pleasure. Got a little more info on Mr. Gritz. Traced him to a small town in Georgia and just got finished talking to the police chief. Seems Lyle was a weird kid. Acted goofy, walked funny, mumbled a lot, didn’t have any friends. Out of school more than he was in, never learned to read properly or speak clearly. His home life was predictably bad, too. No father on the scene, and he and his mother lived in a trailer on the outskirts of town. He started drinking, slid straight into trouble. Shoplifting, theft, vandalism. Once in a while he’d get into a fight with someone bigger and stronger than himself and come out the loser. Chief said he locked him up plenty, but he didn’t seem to care, jail was as good as his home, or better. He used to sit in his cell and rock and talk to himself, as if he was in his own world.”
“Sounds more like the early signs of schizophrenia than a developing psychopath,” I said. “Onset during adolescence fits the schizophrenic pattern, too. What doesn’t fit is the kind of calculated thing we’re dealing with. Does this sound like a guy who could blend in at medical conferences? Delay gratification long enough to plot murders years in advance?”
“Not really. But maybe he changed when he grew up, got smoother.”
“Mr. Silk,” I said.
“Maybe he’s a good faker. Always was. Faked looking nuts, even back then—psychopaths do that all the time, right?”
“They do,” I said. “But did this police chief sound like someone easily fooled?”
“No. He said the kid was nuts but had one thing going for him. Musical talent. Taught himself to play guitar and mandolin and banjo and a bunch of other instruments.”
“The next Elvis.”
“Yeah. And for a while people thought he might actually make something of himself. Then one day, he just left town and no one heard from him again.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Nineteen-seventy.”
“So he was only twelve. Any idea why he left?”
“Chief had just busted him for drunk and disorderly again, gave him the usual lecture, then added a few bucks for him to get some new clothes and a haircut. Figured maybe if the kid looked better he’d act better. Lyle walked out of the police station and headed straight for the train depot. Police chief later found he used the money to buy a one-way ticket to Atlanta.”
“Twelve years old,” I said. “He could have kept traveling and ended up in Santa Barbara, been taken in by de Bosch as a charity case—de Bosch liked to put forth the humanitarian image, publicly.”
“Wish I could get hold of school records. No one seems to have any. Not the city or the county.”
“What about federal? If de Bosch applied for government funding for the charity cases, there might be some kind of documentation.”
“Don’t know how long those agencies hold on to their records, but I’ll check. So far I’m drawing a blank on this bastard. First time he shows up in California is an arrest nine years ago. No NCIC record prior to that, so that’s over a decade between his leaving Georgia and the beginnings of his West Coast life of crime. If he got busted for petty stuff in other small towns, it might very well not have been entered into the national computer. But still, you’d expect something. He’s a bad egg, where the hell was he all that time?”
“How about in a mental institution?” I said. “Twelve years old, out on his own. God knows what could have happened to him out on the street. He might have suffered a mental breakdown and got put away. Or, if he was at the school the same time as Delmar Parker, maybe he observed Delmar’s death and broke down over that.”
“Big assumption, he and Delmar knowing each other.”
“It is, but there are some factors that might point in that direction: he and Delmar were around the same age, both were Southern boys a long way from home. Maybe Gritz finally made a friend. Maybe he even had something to do with Delmar stealing the truck. If he did and escaped death but saw Delmar die, that could have pulled the rug out from under him, psychologically.”
“So now he’s blaming the school and de Bosch and everyone associated with it? Sure, why not? I just wish we could push it past theory. Place Gritz in Santa Barbara, let alone the school, let alone knowing the Parker kid, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Any luck finding Parker’s mother?”
“She doesn’t live in New Orleans, and I haven’t been able to find any other relatives. So where does this Silk-Merino thing come in? Why would a Southern boy pick himself a Latino alias?”
“Merino’s a type of wool,” I said. “Or a sheep—the flock following the shepherd, and getting misled?”
“Baaa,” he said. “When are you planning to see Rosenblatt’s kid?”
“Couple of hours.”
“Good luck. And don’t worry, everything here’s cool. Ms. Castagna lends a nice touch to the place, maybe we’ll keep her.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Sure,” he said, chuckling. “Why not? Woman’s touch and all that. Hell, we can keep the beast, too. Put up a picket fence around the lawn. One big happy family.”
New York was as clear as an etching, all corners and windows, vanishing rooflines, skinny strips of blue sky.
I walked to the law firm, heading south on Fifth Avenue, swept along in the midtown tide, comforted, somehow, by the forced intimacy.
The shop windows were as glossy as diamonds. People wearing business faces hurtled toward the next obligation. Three-card monte players shouted invitations, took quick profit, then vaporized into the crowd. Street vendors hawked silly toys, cheap watches, tourist maps, and paperback books stripped of their covers. The homeless squatted in doorways, leaned against buildings. Bearing crudely lettered signs and paper cups, their hands out, their eyes leeched of expectation. So many more of them than in L.A. but yet they seemed to belong, part of the city’s rhythm.
Five Hundred Fifth Avenue was a six-hundred-foot limestone tower, the lobby an arena of marble and granite. I arrived with an hour to spare and walked back outside, wondering what to do with the time. I bought a hot dog from a pushcart, ate it watching the throng. Then I spotted the main branch of the public library, just across Forty-second Street, and made my way up the broad, stone stairs.
After a bit of asking and wandering, I located the periodicals room. The hour went fast as I checked four-year-old New York newspapers for obituaries on Harvey Rosenblatt. Nothing.
I thought of the psychiatrist’s kind, open manner. The loving way he’d spoken about his wife and children.
A teenaged boy who’d liked hot dogs. The taste of mine was still on my lips, sour and warm.
My thoughts shifted to a twelve-year-old, leaving town on a one-way ticket to Atlanta.
Life had sneak attacked both of them, but Josh Rosenblatt had been much more heavily armed for the ambush. I left to see how well he’d survived.
Schechter, Mohl, and Trimmer’s decorator had g
one for Tradition: carved, riff-oak panels with laundry-sharp creases, layers of heavy moldings, voluptuous plaster work, wool rugs over herringbone floors. The receptionist’s desk was a huge, walnut antique. The receptionist was pure contemporary: midtwenties, white-blonde, Vogue face, hair tied back tight enough to pucker her hairline, breasts sharp enough to make an embrace dangerous.
She checked a ledger and said, “Have a seat and Mr. Rosenblatt will be right with you.”
I waited twenty minutes until the door to the inner offices opened and a tall, good-looking young man stepped into the reception area.
I knew he was twenty-seven, but he looked like a college student. His face was long and grave under dark, wavy hair, nose narrow and full, his chin strong and dimpled. He wore a pinstriped charcoal suit, white tab shirt, and red and pearl tie. Pearl pocket handkerchief, quadruple pointed, tassled black loafers, gold Phi Beta Kappa pin in his lapel. Intense brown eyes and a golf tan. If law started to bore him, he could always pose for the Brooks Brothers catalogue.
“Dr. Delaware, Josh Rosenblatt.”
No smile. One arm out. Bone-crusher handshake.
I followed him through a quarter acre of secretaries, file cabinets, and computers to a broad wall of doors. His was just off to the left. His name in brass, on polished oak.
His office wasn’t much bigger than my hotel cubicle, but one wall was glass and it offered a falcon’s lair view of the city. On the wall were two degrees from Columbia, his Phi Beta Kappa certificate, and a lacrosse stick mounted diagonally. A gym bag sat in one corner. Documents were piled up everywhere, including on one of the straight-backed side chairs facing the desk. I took the empty chair. He removed his jacket and tossed it on the desk. Very broad shoulders, powerful chest, outsize hands.
He sat down amid the clutter, shuffled papers while studying me.
“What kind of law do you practice?” I said.
“Business.”
“Do you litigate?”
“Only when I need to get a taxi—no, I’m one of the behind-the-scenes guys. Mole in a suit.”
He drummed the desk with his palm a few times. Kept staring at me. Put his hands down flat.
“Same face as your picture,” he said. “I’d expected someone older—closer to … Dad’s age.”
“I appreciate your taking the time. Having someone you love murdered—”
“He wasn’t murdered,” he said, almost barking. “Not officially, anyway. Officially, he committed suicide, though the rabbi filed it as an accident so he could be buried with his parents.”
“Suicide?”
“You met my dad—did he seem like an unhappy person?”
“On the contrary.”
“Damn right on the contrary.” His face reddened. “He loved life—really knew how to have fun. We used to kid him that he never really grew up. That’s what made him a good psychiatrist. He was such a happy guy, other psychiatrists used to make jokes about it. Harvey Rosenblatt, the only well-adjusted shrink in New York.”
He got up, looked down on me.
“He was never depressed—the least moody person I ever met. And he was a great father. Never played shrink with us at home. Just a dad. He played ball with me even though he was no good at it. Couldn’t change a lightbulb, but no matter what he was doing, he’d put it aside to listen to you. And we knew it—all three of us. We saw what other fathers were like and we appreciated him. We never believed he killed himself, but they kept saying it, the goddamn police. “The evidence is clear.’ Over and over, like a broken record.”
He cursed and slapped the desk. “They’re a bureaucracy just like everything else in this city. They went from point A to point B, found C and said, good night, time to punch the clock and go home. So we hired a private investigator—someone the firm had used—and all he did was go over the same territory the police had covered, say the same damn thing. So I guess I should be happy you’re here, telling me we weren’t nuts.”
“How did they say it happened?” I said. “A car crash or some kind of fall?”
He pulled his head back as if avoiding a punch. Glared at me. Began loosening his tie, then thought better of it and tugged it up against his throat, even tighter. Picking up his jacket, he flipped it over his shoulder.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“You in shape?” he said, looking me up and down.
“Decent.”
“Twenty blocks do you in?”
I shook my head.
He pressed forward into the throng, heading uptown. I jogged to catch up, watching him manipulate the sidewalk like an Indy driver, swaying into openings, stepping off the curb when that was the fastest way to go. Swinging his arms and looking straight ahead, sharp-eyed, watchful, self-defensive. I started to notice lots of other people with that same look. Thousands of people running the urban gauntlet.
I expected him to stop at Sixty-fifth Street, but he kept going to Sixty-seventh. Turning east, he led me up two blocks and stopped in front of a red-brick building, eight floors high, plain and flat, set between two ornate graystones. On the ground floor were medical offices. The town house on the right housed a French restaurant with a long black awning lettered in gold at street level. A couple of limousines were parked at the curb.
He pointed upward. “That’s where it happened. An apartment on the top floor, and yeah, they said he jumped.”
“Whose apartment was it?”
He kept staring up. Then down at the pavement. Directly in front of us, a dermatologist’s window was fronted by a boxful of geraniums. Josh seemed to study the flowers. When he faced me, pain had immobilized his face.
“It’s my mother’s story,” he said.
Shirley and Harvey Rosenblatt had worked where they lived, in a narrow brownstone with a gated entry. Three stories, more geraniums, a maple with an iron trunk guard surviving at the curb.
Josh produced a ring of keys and used one key to open the gate. The lobby ceiling was coffered walnut, the floor was covered in tiny black-and-white hexagonal tiles backed by etched glass double doors and a brass elevator. The walls were freshly painted beige. A potted palm stood in one corner. Another was occupied by a Louis XIV chair.
Three brass mailboxes were bolted to the north wall. Number 1 said, ROSENBLATT. Josh unlocked it and drew out a stack of envelopes before unlatching the glass doors. Behind it was a smaller vestibule, dark paneled and gloomy. Soup and powdered-cleanser smells. Two more walnut doors, one unmarked, with a mezuzah nailed to the post, the other bearing a brass plaque that said SHIRLEY M. ROSENBLATT, PH.D., P.C. The faint outline of where another sign had been glued was visible just above.
Josh unlocked the plain one and held it open for me. I stepped into a narrow entry hall lined with framed Daumier prints. To my left was a bentwood hall tree from which hung a single raincoat.
A gray tabby cat came from nowhere and padded toward us on the parquet floor.
Josh stepped in front of me and said, “Hey, Leo.”
The cat stopped, arched its tail, relaxed it, and walked up to him. He dropped his hand. The cat’s tongue darted. When it saw me, its yellow eyes slitted.
Josh said, “It’s okay, Leo. I guess.” He scooped up the cat, held it to his chest, and told me, “This way.”
The hall emptied into a small sitting room. To the right was a dining room furnished with mock Chippendale, to the left a tiny kitchen, white and spotless. Though the shades were up on every window, the view was a brownstone six feet away, leaving the entire apartment dark and denlike. Simple furniture, not much of it. Some paintings, nothing flashy or expensive. Everything perfectly in place. I knew one way Josh had rebelled.
Beyond the sitting room was another living area, slightly larger, more casual. TV, easy chairs, a spinet piano, three walls of bookshelves filled with hardbacks and family photos. The fourth was bisected by an arched door that Josh opened.
“Hello?” Josh said, sticking his head through. The cat fussed and he let it do
wn. It studied me, finally disappeared behind a sofa.
The sound of another door opening. Josh stepped back as a black woman in a white nurse’s uniform came out. In her forties, she had a round face, a stocky but shapely figure, and bright eyes.
“Hello, Mr. Rosenblatt.” West Indian accent.
“Selena,” he said, taking her hand. “How is she?”
“Everything is perfect. She had a generous breakfast and a nice long nap. Robbie was here at ten, and they did almost the full hour of exercise.”
“Good. Is she up now?”
“Yes.” The nurse’s eyes shifted to me. “She’s been waiting for you.”
“This is Dr. Delaware.”
“Hello, doctor. Selena Limberton.”
“Hello.” We shook hands. Josh said, “Have you had your lunch break yet?”
“No,” said the nurse.
“Now would be a good time.”
They talked a bit more, about medicines and exercises, and I studied the family portraits, settling on one that showed Harvey Rosenblatt in a dark three-piece suit, beaming in the midst of his brood. Josh around eighteen, with long, unruly hair, a fuzzy mustache, and black-rimmed eyeglasses. Next to him, a beautiful girl with a long, graceful face and sculpted cheekbones, maybe two or three years older. The same dark eyes as her brother. The oldest child was a young man in his midtwenties who resembled Josh, but thick necked and heavier, with cruder features, curly hair, and a full, dark beard that mimicked his father’s.
Shirley Rosenblatt was tiny, fair, and blue-eyed, her blond hair cut very short, her smile full but frail even in health. Her shoulders weren’t much wider than those of a child. It was hard to imagine her birthing the robust trio.
Mrs. Limberton said, “All righty, then, I’ll be back in an hour—where’s Leo?”
Josh looked around.
I said, “I think he’s hiding behind the couch.”
The nurse went over, bent, and lifted the cat. His body was limp. Nuzzling him, she said, “I’ll bring you back some chicken if you behave.” The cat blinked. She set him down on the couch and he curled up, eyes open and watchful.
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