“You OK?”
“Just marvelous,” I muttered. “I’m outta here.” She tossed me one of the cellular phones and I dropped it into the inside pocket of my overcoat, grateful for its tiny-ness. One of many things I didn’t miss about being a cop was all the crap you had to wear and carry.
“So what, there ain’t no hoodlums on the Upper East Side?” She gave me that in her Rosie Perez voice and without another word, I got my gun from the desk drawer and made a big production of removing my top coat and sport jacket, strapping on the holster and gun beneath my left arm, and re-clothing myself. That was one point of departure from Hawk/Spenser: I didn’t like guns. Didn’t like ‘em as a cop, didn’t like ‘em now. Had shot somebody only once and didn’t ever want to do it again. Give me a good old fist fight any day. Problem is, every asshole on the planet has a gun these days because the little punks are too cowardly and weak to go it mano a mano. Yo, on the other hand, despite her dislike of aspects of the business, was a strong advocate of my being armed— with weapon and phone— at all times.
“You satisfied now?” I asked, pique in full bloom.
Yo sniffed disdainfully at my charade and blew me a kiss as I left. So much for attitude and fits of pique.
I could have gotten off the train at 77th Street; it would have been closer to my destination. But I got off a stop earlier, at 68th Street-Hunter College, so I could wonder what it had been like for Jill Mason getting off here twenty-four years ago. A poor Black girl from the Lower East Side immersed suddenly in the rarefied opposite world. From the beginning of New York there’s been a major difference between the Uppers and the Lowers of the East and West sides of the city, a difference defined and explained, then and now, by money.
But when I exited the train station at 68th Street, I could have been almost anywhere in Manhattan. Kids and bums and purveyors of everything from incense to hot dogs to bootleg video tapes, CDs and books, crowded the mouth of the station. Even as familiar as this corner was to me— this was my stop back when I walked the beat— I was surprised by the noise and the congestion and the dirt. But it didn’t take long for the scenery to change. I walked north on Lexington Avenue for five blocks and hung a left at 73rd Street. By the time I walked the block to Park Avenue, I was in a different world. The world of the Upper East Side. The world of Mr. and Mrs. Elliot Payton, who had lived for fifteen years in a top-floor, twelve room apartment.
William Vargas was the doorman, had been the doorman for more than eight years. He was perhaps ten years older than me and about forty pounds heavier though we were the same height. But he looked like a tank, not a sausage, in the black uniform with its gold braid and buttons. He wore gold wire-rimmed glasses and a gold wedding band which made him look like the husband, father, and peewee league coach that he was. Yeah, Ernie Sanchez had told him I wanted a word and he didn’t mind as long as I didn’t get in the way of his door. I promised not to get in the way.
Yes, he knew Mrs. Payton...Dr. Mason. He called her Mrs. Payton when she was with her husband or children, Dr. Mason when she was alone. She was “the nicest lady in the building. That is the truth,” William Vargas said, laying his right hand on the middle of his chest, across a swath of gold braid. What made Mrs. Payton/Dr. Mason so nice, and so memorably so, was the fact that she spoke to him— the doorman! Always. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And she called him Mr. Vargas! Him, the doorman! Merry Christmas, Mr. Vargas. Happy Easter, Mr. Vargas. And Mr. Payton and the children, as polite as she was. Always. “And it wasn’t no act, either! You know how some people do things just to say it’s what they’re doing, or to be that, whatsittheycallit? politically correct?”
I tried to convey to William Vargas that yes, indeed, I did know what how some people’s behavior is dictated by others’ reaction to that behavior, but William didn’t need to hear from me. He was on a verbal roll, recalling and telling how Jill Mason Payton gave a gift certificate “for special underwear” to the wife of the night doorman, who had had a mastectomy. “Can you imagine?! Who would think to do something like that? Dr. Mason, that’s who! She knew that special-made underwear cost a shit load of dough!”
I had to ask: “Special underwear?”
“You know! When a lady, she loses a breast ‘cause she’s got cancer, she gotta have some special-made underwear.”
I nodded. I knew. What I didn’t know was how Jill Mason would know to make such a gift to the night doorman for his wife.
William Vargas looked at me strangely. “From her maid,” he said to me in a tone borrowed directly from Yolanda. Of course. From her maid, whose name I wrote down, along with the fact that she lived in Park Chester, in the Bronx.
During our conversation, William Vargas had tipped his black-trimmed-in-gold cap and opened the door to admit and release at least two dozen men and women, addressing most if not all of them by name, and not one of them had acknowledged his presence or his actions with a word or a glance, to say nothing of calling him “Mr. Vargas.” He had tipped his hat and assisted mink-and-diamond-wearing women into taxis and not one of them had even looked at him, to say nothing of thanking him. No wonder he could remember every word Jill Mason Payton ever spoken to him.
“What about the husband?”
“I told ya already, stand up guy. Just like her.”
“But how did he feel about her? You ever notice any tension between the two of them? See any problems?”
Vargas bristled as if I were questioning the sanctity of his own marriage. “They were solid,” he said, raising his right hand and crossing the middle finger over the index finger in a sign of inseparability. “You shoulda seen how he looked at her. You know how a man looks at his woman, pride, lust, and the rest of you sonsabitches keep away? That’s how he looked at her. Always. And always had his hands on her. Around her shoulder or holding her hand or around her waist. And if the kids were with ‘em, they were holding their hands. He always held the little girl’s hand and she held the bigger girl’s hand.”
Vargas left me standing alone for a moment while he stepped into the street to meet an approaching limousine. He opened the back door of the stretch, then hustled back to the front door of the building just in time to open it for two women who’d make Jill Mason look like a pauper. Wearing half a million dollars in fur and jewels between the two of them, they followed Vargas to the limo and into it. Neither one of them looked his way. He saluted and closed the door and the big bus eased silently into the traffic that seemed to part for it.
And Jill Mason was back downtown riding taxis and the subway? That’s what I was thinking when Vargas told me I’d have to come back later, after the lunch rush. “Lunch is big business around here. Everybody either goes out to it or invites people in to it.” And, on cue, another limo eased up the curb. Vargas opened both doors and from the car emerged four richly clad women whom the doorman greeted and addressed by name. None returned the greeting. I watched and listened and one of them looked at me, the up-and-down, head-to-toe perusal, wrinkled her nose like at a bad smell, shoved past me, literally. Vargas was right, I needed to come back later. After the lunch rush.
The porter at the building where Jill Mason practiced the art of psychiatry also was William— Robinson— a sixty-year old Black man who told a similar tale as William Vargas. “Mr. Robinson,” she called the porter, and always had the time to chat with him for a few seconds. How were his wife, his children, his grandchildren? Did he have a good holiday? Was he enjoying the lovely weather? She’d given him tickets to the 50th anniversary celebration of Jackie Robinson’s integration of major league baseball because she knew he loved baseball. She gave all the cleaning ladies in the building fifty dollar Macy’s gift certificates for Christmas. Every year. Yes, the beat cop had told him Phil wanted a word and why, and Mr. Robinson couldn’t think why anybody would make trouble for Dr. Mason.
“I was the porter in this building the first day she came to work here and I was on duty her last day here. In that wh
ole time, I never heard anybody say a word against her, even the old school fellas.”
And who, I asked, were these old school fellas?
“Old men who don’t think women should be doctors, and definitely not Black women. But every one of ‘em, to a man, spoke politely to her, even if they did try to vote to have her removed from the building when she first came.”
“How did she take that?”
He shrugged and his shoulders lifted almost to his ears. “Same way she took everything. Couldn’t tell if it bothered her or not. Always calm, always polite, never saw her mad and saw her upset only twice.” The first time, he said, was when a young patient of one of her colleagues committed suicide in the office bathroom. “‘I told you she was suicidal.’ That’s what she said to that other doctor. They were in the hallway and I was in the trash room and I heard ‘em. ‘You were over-medicating her instead of believing her and now she’s dead. I hope you burn in hell!’ That’s what she said to him. ‘I hope you burn in hell.’ She was cryin’ and she went into the back stairwell. I went in after her. Gave her my handkerchief. You know what she did? The next week gave me a dozen pure linen handkerchiefs with my initials on ‘em.” He pulled a perfectly laundered and starched linen hankie from his pocket. “Still got ‘em. Use one ‘em every day.”
“And the second time?” I prodded him.
He shook his head sadly. “After Mr. Payton and the little girls were killed. She tried to work and just couldn’t. I never seen anybody so tore up.” He shook his head again and I thought he was finished. “And, come to think of it, she was put out about how her partners acted when she said she was leaving. Tried to sue her, they did.”
“Sue her for what?” I asked.
“To keep her from leaving,” William Robinson said with alacrity. “She’s one of the best child psychiatrists in town. They say she knows more about child abuse than almost anybody. She testifies in court all the time. No sir, they didn’t want her to leave and said they’d sue if she did. She told ‘em to go ahead, she didn’t care, and off she went. Will you tell her I said hello?”
Listening to the Williams, Vargas and Robinson, it felt like they were talking about some mythological creature, and yet I’d sat face to face with a very real human being that very morning. Was taking her a bar-be-cue sparerib dinner and a bottle of wine in a few hours. I knew this woman! Did I think she was a saint? I’d never met anybody that good in my life.
I walked the ten blocks back to Jill Mason’s former residence keenly aware of my surroundings. I’d just left a building comprised totally of practitioners of the medical profession: psychiatrists, plastic surgeons, urologists, cardiologists, oncologists. Not a GP or a dentist or a clinical social worker in sight. Up here it was the limousines causing the traffic jams instead of the taxis, and fur coats were as commonplace as leather jackets downtown. The population was whiter, older, maler and definitely wealthier. I wondered if Jill Mason had ever felt really and truly at home here? I resolved to remember to ask her.
What I wanted to ask William Vargas was whether Jill Mason had enemies where she lived. Hard feelings with any of her neighbors, and was surprised to hear that Elliot Payton had almost come to blows with one of the residents who had tried to make Jill’s parents enter the building through the servants’ door. Surprised but pleased. Now they were acting the kind of human beings I was familiar with. Somebody does you wrong, you deck ‘em and worry about the good conduct medal later.
“...but since it was before my time, maybe you better ask him,” Vargas was saying. Damn.
“I’m sorry, my mind was imagining Payton laying some rich guy out on the sidewalk, messing up his Brooks Brothers. Ask who what?”
Vargas grinned. “He coulda done it, too. Dude worked out two hours every day and boxed at the Y twice a week. The night man. Ask him about the time Mrs. Payton smacked some old broad who spit on her. Like I said, it was before my time.”
I egged him on. “I don’t care if it’s second-hand info right now. I’m just building a profile...” I raised my eyebrows and my hands to the sky.
“Well, the way I heard it, this old broad was on the elevator and Mrs. Payton was getting on, or the other way ‘round. Anyway, the old broad takes a look at who’s comin’ to dinner and starts screamin’ about how she ain’t ridin’ with no nigger. Tells the operator— old man, he’s dead now— to close the door and don’t let her in! He don’t know what to do, he’s just standin’ there, this old broad is callin’ both of ‘em niggers. Then she turns and spits right on Dr. Mason, who draws back and slaps her silly and tells the operator to close the door and take her up to her floor, tells the old broad she can walk if she don’t wanna ride.”
I tried to ask a question and couldn’t, tried to make myself remember that none of this could have happened more than fifteen years ago because that’s how long Jill Mason had been married to Elliot Payton. This stuff sounded like something out of some dusty old history book, or on a Public Television documentary. Like stories mi abuelitos would tell. Or Itchy Johnson, or Mrs. Gillespie, Sandra’s grandma who I’d met a few times. But Jill Mason was only forty-two years old. I kept reminding myself of that fact. And sometime between the ages of, say twenty-eight and forty-one, somebody had called her a nigger and spit in her face in the elevator in the building where she lived.
!Madre de Dios!
I must’ve said it aloud because Vargas said Ave Maria Madre de Dios. Then the phone rang and we both jumped. I reached inside my coat and grabbed the thing. My heart was pounding when I flipped it open. Yolanda had never called me on the cell phone before, and it had to be her because she’s the only one with the number.
“Digame,” I said, willing my voice to be steady. It didn’t work, and by the time Yolanda’s hissed words were out of her mouth and roaring in my brain, my hand was shaking. I closed the phone and dropped it in my pocket. I gave William Vargas my card. “I owe you, Hermano,” I said to him, “anything, anytime,” and shook his hand. Then I ran the six blocks to the subway, ignoring the looks of displeasure and worse I elicited from those who didn’t move quickly enough out of my path.
Come back right now! There’s been another one. Another little girl raped. This is the seventh one, Phil! Bert Calle overhead the cops talking. His daughter wasn’t the only one killed. And Phil. Carmine’s daughter is one of them.
CHAPTER FOUR
There must have been thirty people in the office when I arrived, men and women, most of them sitting on the floor and clustered in groups of varying sizes, and they were eerily quiet and still. Almost as a unit they looked at me when I entered, and I could feel their anticipation. It frightened me. I sought comfort and saw Carmine. I kept searching until I spotted Yolanda and, nodding greetings as I traversed the crowed, I kept moving until I reached her at the rear of the office, near the kitchen.
“What are these people doing here?”
“Didn’t you understand what I said?”
“Yo, what the hell are all these people doing here?!”
“Trying to hire you, Goddammit!”
I don’t think Yolanda had ever been truly angry with me and she certainly had never cursed me. I stepped back from her and turned to look at the people in my office. They all were standing now, looking back at me, all that anticipation crowding in on me, pushing on my chest.
“Mr. Rodriquez.” One of the men emerged from the group and walked toward me. I didn’t know him. He was older than me by a few years and shorter by a couple of inches and he looked like men I’d known all my life, men who worked hard at physical labor jobs, never making enough money, who ate too much of the wrong food and drank too much beer and never seemed to figure out where babies came from. Good men. Nice guys...most of the time. Would have a stroke or a heart attack and die too early, leaving equally tired widows and barely grown children.
I extended my hand and he took it and I could feel the calluses that confirmed that he earned his living with his hands. His name was Daniel Es
posito and his youngest daughter had been raped on her way home from school eight months ago. The shame with which he told me this— head and eyes lowered, feet shuffling, words low and hesitant— made me angry. Some piece of shit had destroyed his child and he was ashamed! Then he looked up at me and I saw the anger in his eyes.
“There have been seven and the police knew and they never told us. Fuckin’ bastards never told us!”
Esposito’s fury became the crowd’s fury. They surged toward me and I had to will myself to stand my ground. I sought out Carmine and fixed him in a stare that dared him to flinch.
“Yeah,” he snarled, “all right, my kid, too. I guess that makes us the lucky ones. Ours are still alive. Fucked up in the head forever, but still alive.”
A woman moaned and, snake-like, the crowd inched closer to me.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
A woman I did know, a Jamaican who owned a standing room only cafe called El Caribe on Rivington Street, stepped forward and opened the handles to a Starbuck’s Coffee shopping bag. She upended it and deposited a pile of money and checks on to the desk. “We want you to fix this mess,” she said through clenched teeth. “This is to hire you to work for us and talk to us like we deserve and to tell us the truth.”
“Mrs. Edwards,” I said. Her name was Arlene Edwards and I knew her because I ate at her place a couple of times a month. I looked from her to the pile of money to the crowd of people who’d backed me up against the wall in my own office, to Yolanda. “There’s nothing...I can’t...it’s the job of the police to investigate assaults.”
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