I nodded at her and looked down at Pamela, a smaller version of her mother. “‘Morning, Pam. You OK today?”
She smiled her mother’s smile—a little shyer—and nodded her head, thick blond mane dancing up and down. “Is Dr. Mason your doctor, too?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “but she’s a really good friend, and I just stopped in on my way to work to say hello to her and make sure she’s OK, because I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“I’m just fine, Phillip, and I’m so glad you took the time to stop by.”
I turned to see Jill Mason standing in the doorway between the waiting room and the hallway leading to her office. She had on another of those quietly expensive suits—deep green today— and she was smiling at me and beckoning to the Starretts, both of whom moved toward her. I edged backwards, toward the front door, and, once Patty and Pamela were out of sight, I looked a question at the shrink and her smile faltered a bit but held.
“I’m really quite fine, Phillip,” she said, not quite convincingly, and I wondered whether she knew about the squirrel.
“I’ll call you later,” I said. “What time do you have free?”
She looked at the receptionist through the glass partition, who looked down at her appointment book and turned a few pages. I heard her response and opened the door the behind me, promising to call between two forty-five and three thirty. Making the call on time would present no problem because, in the absence of Yolanda, I’d be in the office all day. And that was not a situation I resented. I very much needed to spend several quiet hours reading the information I knew that Yo had been compiling for me...pages and pages of documents that I’d given no more than a cursory reading and, therefore, had not absorbed to the extent necessary. Between what I’d learned from Connie de Leon and Dr. Bader, what I’d understand from their insinuations once I read the police and hospital, and what Yo had compiled, I expected to have some concrete knowledge about who was raping and murdering little girls in my neighborhood. And I’d accepted the fact that once I had that knowledge roaming around in my quiet places, I’d have to find him. Them. So that my quiet places could be quiet once again.
I felt every bit as sad and lonely as I knew I would when I entered the empty, dark office. I switched on the lights quickly and opened the blinds and turned on the CD player. Yolanda didn’t like music while she worked and I didn’t need it when she was present. The wail of Gato Barbieri’s sax filled the air as I hung up my coat, the snow melting and dripping on to the floor. My knit cap was almost soaked and I took it into the kitchen and dropped it into the sink and I opened the bag from Starbucks: Two large lattes; and two poppy seed bagels with cream cheese from H&H. Funny thing, but I’d lost my lust for napoleons. One coffee and bagel went with me to my desk, the others waited in the microwave.
Leaving the kitchen, I turned on the back lights, creating daylight behind the Shoji screens in defiance of the moody ambiance Yolanda preferred. I gathered up every piece of paper from the printers and from near or around the computers, including from the trash cans, which had not been emptied because of the way in which the office had been vacated the previous night. Sitting at my desk, I retrieved all the documents already presented by Yolanda, and began the process of organizing all the material. It took a while, because of the amount of material at hand, and the process was further hampered by the regular ringing of the telephone, which began promptly at nine o’clock and continued unabated until after eleven. Not a single one of the calls was frivolous, and if I didn’t have the information the client needed, I took a message for Yolanda to return the call tomorrow.
Suppose Yolanda’s not here tomorrow?
The thought scared me silly. Was it really possible that Yolanda would not return tomorrow? Would not ever return? Since I didn’t know the reason for her absence I couldn’t realistically predict her return, I told myself. Then I told myself to cut the crap! Whatever was the nature of the immediate problem, it was not the essence of Yolanda Maria Aguierre, I told myself. I knew that person; knew what made her tick; knew what motivated her. And I knew she neither could not nor would not just walk away from me and our business. Yo had never not handled anything in her life.
I was finishing up the second latte and bagel when a hand-written note from Yolanda in the margin of one of the pages caught my attention: Phil—check this out. Addresses don’t match and SS# wrong for this guy. “This guy” was Gregory Jenkins, the weekend custodian and maintenance man at the building managed by Basil Griffin, the building from which Anna Arlene Cummerbatch was thrown. I grabbed up the notepaper on which I’d written the names, addresses and social security numbers of the three men who worked for Griffin. The first two, according to Yolanda, checked out. So did Griffin himself. Gregory Jenkins did not. The social security number that Yolanda checked indeed was for a Gregory Jenkins—Gregory Frank Jenkins—but he was in his mid-sixties and he lived in the Bronx. The Gregory Jenkins who worked for Basil Griffin was supposed to have been almost thirty years younger and a resident of the East Village.
I closed my eyes and called up the conversation with Griffin that afternoon: “You wanna know who else works in the buildin’, ask me who else works in the buildin’,” he had said; and I had asked and he’d told me. I’d copied the information on the three men directly from Griffin’s meticulous files into my notebook, and I’d torn out that page and given it to Yolanda. I now held it in my hand. Could I have made an error?
I opened my desk drawer and took out my daily log, the journal into which I transcribed every event, thought, and action of every day, and opened it to the date I first talked with Basil Griffin. I’d written that I found the man open, honest and totally believable. And I’d written the names and addresses of his three employees. No errors. I knew I couldn’t ask Griffin about the Jenkins discrepancy; he’d fire the man on the spot if he thought he’d lied about his personal information. And he’d kill him if he thought it even possible that he’d harmed the Cummerbatch child. Yet I needed to know.
I jumped up and ran to the back of the room and slid into the chair before the client computer. I knew enough—at Yo’s insistence—to access client files and I quickly found the Golson/Stein entry. I copied the number and hurried back to my desk. I punched the numbers knowing that Gregory Jenkins was one of rapists. Which one?
“This is Phillip Rodriquez. Is this Miss Golson or Mrs. Stein, Please?”
It was Miss Golson and I quickly told her what I wanted and she answered my question without asking why I wanted to know. A dream client. Then she shocked me speechless: “It’s that Jenkins character, isn’t it? He’s the only reason you could be asking me whether we’d done background checks on our employees. Basil Griffin and Javier Lopez and Alvin Boggs are three of most decent human beings I’ve ever met but Jenkins is scum. Knew it from the first moment I saw him.”
I couldn’t get any cogent words to come out of my mouth but it didn’t matter to Shirley Golson. “I’ll get those files for you, Mr. Rodriquez, and have them delivered to your office this afternoon. After all, you should have them. You’re the firm that now handles that kind of thing for us. But I will tell you this: If that man...if anyone working for the Golson family harmed that child, I personally will castrate the bastard!” And then I was listening to a dial tone.
A sudden influx of calls postponed my ability to have a reaction to the talk with my dream client—if only they all were Shirley Golsons—because the next two hours and forty-five minutes of phone work demonstrated that truly they were not. Damn but I missed Yo! And so did the clients, especially the male ones who’d had occasion to visit the office. Yolanda could remind them that their payment was late and they’d bring it in person. Yolanda could inform them that the new level and degree of service they requested would cost more money and they’d sign and return the amended contract the same day. Me they gave shit.
My headache was back when I finally got off the phone, but I consoled myself with the fact that for several
hours I’d forgotten about my hangover. Now I was hungry and aware of the queasiness of my stomach and the thudding of all those assaulted and insulted brain vessels in my head. I looked at my watch. It was almost two o’clock. I was trying to decide whether to order Chinese, Cuban or Italian for lunch when the phone rang again. Mike Smith was on the other end, his voice a mixture of excitement and foreboding and it scared me for a moment. But he calmed me quickly.
He and Eddie were on the job for the limousine company when one of the prospective hires just happened to turn up at the office to check on the status of his application. Mike and Eddie just happened have in their hands the information that the would-be stretch limo driver was wanted on a felony warrant across the river in Union City, New Jersey. The man had torched his ex-girlfriend’s house. With the ex-girlfriend and her two children in it. All three were still in the county hospital burn unit. So Mike and Eddie grabbed the man and called me to tell me to call the cops and that ate up another hour.
I remembered almost too late to call Jill Mason and was hoping she hadn’t worried that I hadn’t called. Needn’t have bothered.
“She’s not here, Mr. Rodriquez,” the receptionist said.
“Where is she?” I wanted to know, acutely aware how little it took these days to upset and worry myself.
“Oh, don’t worry. She’s fine. She’s at her parents’ place. Her mother called.”
“Are you sure it was her mother?”
“Oh, yes! I’ve talked to Mrs. Mason many times on the telephone. Mr. Mason, too. And she even called, Dr. Mason did, to tell you she was sorry. She thought she’d be back sooner but, well, her parents are kinda old, you know?”
Phil said he understood and asked again whether the woman—what the hell was her name—? was certain that Jill Mason was with her parents.
“She said she’d call you tonight when she gets home if you leave a number, Mr. Rodriquez.”
I gave the receptionist my home number and the number to the cell phone, which I’d resigned myself to keeping with me, and hung up. Now I was hungry and annoyed, but the annoyed didn’t last long. The kid from the messenger service blew into the office covered with snow flakes and resembling a weird kind of ghost: His Gore-Tex riding suit was black with red stripes; his skin was burnished mahogany; and the white snow clung to all the dark places.
“Hey, dude, whattup?” he called out cheerily, the fact that he was covered in snow and riding a bicycle in sub-freezing weather obviously no cause for ill temper.
“?Que paso?” I greeted him, reaching for the package and the slip to sign that he was proffering.
“The weather,” he said in the same cheery voice. “Cold as a bitch out there. And you know how stupid they drive in the presence of snow.” He shook his head in wonderment, tore off the top sheet of the receipt and gave it to me, and was headed out without another word. I followed him to the door and looked out. Sure as shit: the snow was sticking, and the bike messenger would get where he was going a lot faster than anybody stuck in the traffic jam out there.
I turned my attention to the package was from Golson Properties. Shirley meant business. APB Security, based on Long Island, had worked for the Golson family for a dozen years. It was basic, professional work and I experienced a small pang for APB at the loss of regular work, even though it couldn’t have amounted to much money. But work was work and money was money.
I quickly paged through the documents searching for the background check on Gregory Jenkins. I found it, along with the report back to the Golsons: no outstanding warrants, no arrests on Gregory Jenkins, SSN 123-45-6789. Same number I had for the guy. But APB had checked no further, and, in truth, there was no reason that they should have. They probably had been asked to make sure that the man wasn’t an escapee from some institution. But it wouldn’t have been too much of a reach for APB to have noticed that Jenkins listed a different address than on his employment application, that he had listed the same address in the Bronx as the elder Jenkins. And an eerily similar name: Gregory Francis Jenkins. And his most recent place of employment was an address that was all too familiar: Bert and Angie Calle’s building. Jenkins had been the night porter there until he got the job at the building where Anna Cummerbatch lived.
“Gotcha, you son of a bitch!” Or I would have your ass if Yolanda were here. Goddammit to hell! I ran back to the bank of computers and stared helplessly at them. At the one I knew would cross-check Gregory Frank Jenkins and Gregory Francis Jenkins and tell me what I knew: that G. Frank was the father of G. Francis and that the son was a piece of shit who had to use his father’s social security number to evade computers like this one. I stood there and swore that when Yo returned, I’d listen to her and learn the basics of each of the machines. Oh, Yolanda, I thought and the thought produced reality: I was due to meet Sandra at my place in exactly twenty-two minutes.
She was waiting when I arrived, standing in the tiny vestibule looking perplexed but not, thank goodness, annoyed.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Sandra,” I said as I charged into the doorway.
“No problem, Phil,” she said, looking as I’d never before seen her look: weary, exhausted, worried, and perplexed. “I just got here. And then I wasn’t sure whether I’d said four or four-thirty so I thought maybe I was early.” She tried to shrug it off but the weariness prevented so casual a motion.
I opened the door and followed her upstairs, all my anger ebbing away. Whatever was going on with Yolanda had taken its toll on Sandra, too; and no matter that I’d known Yo longer, Sandra was her lover and if she was this beat up by whatever the problem was, I had no right or reason to harbor anger against either of them. Sandra was neither stranger nor guest in my home and therefore knew where to hang her coat and where to leave her boots and find a pair of slippers. While she did all that, I opened a bottle of the red wine she liked and put it on the counter to breathe, along with a glass and brand new cans of cashews and pecans. Sandra liked to say that she had spent the years between seven and thirty on a water-lettuce-and-carrot diet. When she stopped dancing professionally, she finally was able to indulge one of her gastronomic passions, namely, nuts, and specifically cashews and pecans.
I hung up my own coat and unstrapped the gun from my back and shoulders and put it on the closet shelf. I heard water running in the bathroom and tried wondering whether Sandra needed a few moments to gather herself, or whether she thought I did. I used the time wisely. I called the deli up in the next block and ordered two monster burgers with everything, including fries. Then I poured wine for Sandra and a very large glass of seltzer water for me, added three aspirin, and sat down.
She looked better when she came into the living room a few moments later. She’d washed her face—I could see the effects of the cold water—and combed her hair, which had been disarranged by the hat and scarf she’d worn, and touched up her make up. Not that she needed the stuff. She was as beautiful as Yolanda and, despite having happily abandoned the water-lettuce-and-carrot diet, possessed the kind of body the average woman would kill for. Though she no longer danced professionally, she taught daily and she was the kind of teacher who believed in the hands-on approach, who believed in demonstrating. She never asked a student to do what she could or would not do.
She sank down next to me and emitted the kind of groan that was pure gratitude. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes for a moment, as if praying—which she might have been— then she turned toward me. She raised her wine glass in thanks and toast and propped her stocking feet up on the coffee table. I recalled Yolanda making a joke once about Sandra’s feet, and Sandra had laughed without embarrassment and acknowledged the truth of it: Dancers might have great bodies but all of them have ugly feet! I’d never seen Sandra’s feet because they always were covered by socks or stockings and today was no exception. But I smiled at the memory.
“I am truly sorry about last night, Phil. And so is Yolanda. And she’s also sorry that she’s not the one having this conversat
ion with you. She should be and she knows it.”
My stomach began to churn. This sounded ominous and I didn’t like it. “Is there a reason she’s not having this conversation with me, Sandra? Is she...sick or something? Is she in some way...incapacitated?” I pushed away images of Yolanda unable to move or walk or talk but Sandra was shaking her head, dispelling those notions.
“Physically she’s fine, Phil. Emotionally she’s a real mess.” She drank some wine and took a deep breath and turned sideways on the sofa to face me. “Yolanda was molested when she was seven, Phil. Raped. By the man who ran the bodega next door. He was a friend of her parents and he convinced her not to tell them. And she didn’t, for a long time. This case you all are working on dredged up all that old stuff. She thought she’d worked it out in therapy and group years ago, but apparently, she wasn’t finished with it. Or it with her. And maybe it’s never finished, Phil. I don’t know.”
There was a sadness and a weariness to those last words that stabbed my heart. I reached over and grabbed Sandra and held her and she let me. “I didn’t know you didn’t know, Phil” she whispered into my shoulder. “I had no idea she’d never told you, especially knowing how much she loves and trusts you.”
Some sharp hurt was stabbing me in the chest and throat. I tried to envision the baby Yolanda, happy and laughing and beautiful. And some inhuman monster destroying all that beauty. “I guess she doesn’t love and trust me as much as I thought.”
Sandra leaned back and looked me in the eye. She wasn’t mad, or anything I’d ever seen in her. “Don’t judge her too harshly, Phil. She’s being hard enough on herself,” Sandra said, and told me what happened last night, how, after Yolanda had run crying from the office, she was determined to “revisit the scene of the crime. We rode the train up to the East Harlem and Yolanda couldn’t remember where her family had lived. That made her cry even harder. Then she couldn’t remember the man’s name who raped her, something she’d thought she’d never forget, but she could see his face and hear his voice. She was practically hysterical by this time. People were looking at us. I didn’t know what to do, so I hailed a livery car and took us to my Grandma’s. She always knows what to do about everything.”
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