by Blake Banner
I put the file down and considered her across the desk, lacing my fingers over my belly. “Suggestive of somebody who knew her, wanted her, but was rejected.”
She nodded, then shrugged. The whole thing was a ‘yeah, maybe’ in body language. “It could also suggest a stalker who had been building up a fantasy at a distance. More suggestive is the fact that her windows were all locked from the inside and the door had not been forced. So either her attacker had somehow got hold of a key, or she let him in.”
“She had been at a Halloween party…”
“Yup. Seems she was involved in some art group based at the Bethlehem Church hall, near the corner of Lacombe and Thieriot. Had nothing to do with the church, they just rented the hall three nights a week.”
I managed to frown and raise my eyebrows in a complicated expression of skeptical surprise. “That’s a lot of dedication to art. Usually it’s just once a week, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know, Sensei. Anyhow, this group must have been pretty tight, because they arranged a Halloween party at one of their houses. I think the house belonged to the guy who led the group. On…”
She screwed up her forehead, trying to remember, and I said, “Taylor Avenue, within staggering distance of Sue’s house...”
“…On the corner of Patterson. Seems she left the party at about two AM. A neighbor raised the alarm the next morning. He had seen comings and goings at the house the night before, and when he got up for breakfast, he saw her door was still open.”
I sighed. “Art, sex and a murder, all at Halloween. Edgar Allen Poe meets George Simenon. Did you know, Dehan, that turpentine is an aphrodisiac?”
“No, Stone, I didn’t know that.”
“Yup, that is why you rarely see nudes draped languidly across the beds of writers, but you will often see them in that attitude across the beds of painters.”
“Huh. How about musicians?”
“That depends on the style of music, Dehan. Composers and performers in Tudor, Renaissance, Baroque and classical, you will very rarely find with nudes across their beds. However, rock and roll is notoriously sexual.”
“Sex, drugs and rock and roll.”
I wagged my pen at her. “In the words of the mighty Dylan, ‘Lay across my big brass bed.’”
“Lay across my big brass bed?”
“That is what he said. So what do you say we go and have a look at this church hall and talk to whoever was in charge at the time; see what they can tell us about this bunch of wild, wayward Bohemians?”
She stood. “I say, lead me to the turpentine, Sensei.”
It was extremely cold outside. Shards of icy air stabbed through whatever small opening they could find in your clothes, and froze small patches of your skin, making your whole body shiver. I looked at Dehan as she stamped across the road toward my Jaguar, with her cheeks flushed pink under a brown woolen hat pulled low over her ears. She was also clapping her gloved hands as she stamped.
We clambered into the car (a burgundy 1964, Mark II, which I had brought with me from England years back) billowing clouds of condensation, slammed the doors and I turned the key in the ignition. The big, old engine growled and I reversed out of the lot.
It was less than a mile down Soundview Avenue to the Bethlehem Church. As we turned right out of Storey, Dehan said, “You know where the mystery lies for me, Stone?”
I glanced at her.
She went on. “The guy knows her. She knows him. That’s why she let him in. That’s how they come to be in her bedroom with no signs of a struggle. But he makes no effort to hide his DNA. He goes right ahead and rapes her and strangles her. Makes no effort to hide his identity at all. It’s like he is super confident that no match is going to be found.”
I nodded a lot, chewing my lip. “That is very interesting, Dehan. I agree. It could be the key to the answer.”
“And then, he just vanishes. Nobody has seen him, nobody has any idea who he is. He’s like…”
“Please don’t say a ghost. I know it’s thematic, with the whole Halloween thing, but don’t.”
She tried to arch an eyebrow at me, but her woolen hat wouldn’t let her. “I wasn’t going to… I was going to say a ghoul.”
I turned into Thieriot Avenue and pulled up outside a large, white church that looked as though it might have been more at home in a Mexican desert. It was chunky and square in design. The walls were lime washed and there was a giant, wooden cross on the roof above the door. Beyond an iron fence and gate, steps that had been painted oxblood red climbed to an arched wooden door in which two crosses had been cut. To the side of the building there was a large lawn, and at the back I could see a long, low, clapboard building which I guessed was the hall.
The church door stood slightly ajar, like God knew we were coming but didn’t want anybody else disturbing his Monday morning with a pot of coffee and the New York Times. We clambered out of the car and, as I locked it, Dehan jumped up and down for a bit, billowed vapor from her mouth like a small, woolen dragon, and stamped up the steps to the door. I followed.
Inside, it was dark. Only the golden altar at the far end, beyond the transept, was illuminated. There, candles wavered and reflected off the crucifix and the gilt on the walls, and the frames of the paintings.
We proceeded down the central aisle. I coughed and it ricocheted around the rafters on the ceiling, knocking against the echoes of our footsteps. Out of the shadows beyond the transept, a small man with big eyebrows appeared, as though he’d been dislodged by my cough. He was little more than five feet tall, with a bald, shiny head, brown corduroy trousers and a sage green cardigan. He was holding a cloth and a can of furniture wax. The smell was both strong and oddly reassuring.
He looked at us uncertainly, in turn, one after the other, suggesting he was uncertain about both of us. Dehan said, “Are you the guy who takes care of things around here?”
His shoulders rose slowly and his head tilted to one side, like he was shrugging in tai chi. Then he spread his hands: shrugging tiger, uncertain dragon.
“I am not the padre. I am only the handyman.” His accent was more Spanish than Hispanic.
I showed him my badge. “I’m Detective Stone, this is Detective Dehan. We’re with the NYPD. What’s your name?”
“I am Juan de la Torre.”
“How long have you worked here, Juan?”
“Twenty, almost twenty-five years. I am naturalize now. I come from Spain…” He said ‘Espaing’, but I knew what he meant.
“Do you remember a group of artists who used to rent the church hall, about twelve years ago?”
He nodded. “They still rentin’ it. Mr. Giorgio Gonzalez, he is teachin’ his classes there, couple of nights por week.”
Dehan asked him, “Do you remember the group back then, one Halloween…?”
He was nodding before she had finished. “And the nice woman, Sue, she was kill. I remember. It make me very sad.” He pointed back past the transept. “You wanna come in my room? I make some coffee an’ you can ask me. Is very cold here in the nave.”
We followed him past the altar into the shadows. He pushed open an arched wooden door and led us into a small, neat room with a bed, a small cooker, a table and four chairs. There was also a single armchair in front of an iron wood burner, and beside it a small bookcase with a couple of dozen books. None of them was the Bible. He saw Dehan reading the spines and sighed.
“I am a communist and an atheist. I told Padre Romero, but he say he don’t care. He is a communist and an atheist also. Sometimes he invite me to eat in his house. He is a good man. From Puerto Rico. Please, sit. You like some coffee?”
We sat at the old wooden table and he poured us black coffee. He put a carton of milk on the table and a dish of sugar. We all sipped and he said, “I remember this group. Giorgio Gonzalez is the teacher, back then also. He is Mexican. All the women like him because he has the strong personality, lots of temperament.” He gave a small laugh. “I think maybe it
is a bit of theater, you know? But he is not a bad artist.” He leaned toward Dehan and narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps he is a little bit prisoner of his own culture. You understand what I am saying. He paints like a Mexican in New York. Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Goya, they are painting like human beings in the world. Their art is for the everybody. But Giorgio is painting like a Mexican, so he is painting for himself. Is just my opinion.”
I smiled. “That is a very good observation. So you said you remember Sue?”
“Yes, of course. She was a nice girl.” His face lit up. “Always laughing. Always with a big smile on her face. I like her, and she is always happy to talk. Many people are thinking, ‘Oh, Juan is the cleaner. It is no good people see me talking with him.’ But no Sue. Sue was off the people. Nice girl.”
Dehan asked him, “Can you remember anything that happened around that time that was unusual, that struck you as strange in the behavior of the group?”
He made a face, pulled his mouth down at the corners, and shook his head. “No, the detective ask me the same thing. Nothing…” He shrugged again. “Nothing, everything normal, they come in for their lessons, they always laughin’, he is teachin’ them, makin’ a bit of theatre, ‘hey, look at me, I am an artist’… I remember she was kill on Tuesday. On Monday they have a class and it is a nude girl. Giorgio was jokin’ with Sue if she want to be the model. But she say no, and they get a model to come and pose. Pretty girl, nice figure, but she was complainin’ about the cold. Giorgio was laughin’ at her, flirtin’, comin’ on to her. In the end, I have to go get some more heaters for her because she said otherwise she was leavin’.” He looked down at his coffee with a sad face, like coffee just wasn’t coffee anymore. “Pretty girl,” he said. “Giorgio no respect her.”
“Nothing else remarkable happened? Nobody new joined the group? Sue didn’t seem different in any way…?”
He shook his head. “No, no, nothin’ like that. Everything was normal.”
I said, “Who were the people she was closest to, Juan?”
Now he smiled at his coffee. It was a lopsided smile and after a moment, he looked up and met my eye, then Dehan’s. “She like Giorgio. A lot. She use to tell me, ‘Oh, Juan, I am crazy about Giorgio! But he don’t see me at all! Is like I am no here!’” He laughed. “She really upset when Giorgio was comin’ on to the model. I tell her, ‘No! You are wrong! He like you, but he playing hard to get. You should be cool with him!’ But she don’t listen. Until…” He paused for dramatic effect. “Fernando join the group.”
“Who is Fernando?”
“Fernando Martinez. He is an ol’ friend of Giorgio. He is also from Mexico. Women also like him. He is good artist, better than Giorgio in my opinion. So when he is joining the group, Sue is not knowing which way she wanna go: to Giorgio who is ignoring her, or to Fernando who is comin’ on strong?”
I laughed. “So what happened?”
He spread his hands, shrugged and nodded in a way that could only be Mediterranean. “Immediately this happen, Giorgio is all over Sue, and Giorgio and Fernando are competin’ with each other for her attention. It was the stupidest thing I ever seen in my life. They was like fifteen year-old teenagers, you know?”
Dehan drained her cup and set it down on the table, frowning to herself. “When did this happen? How long before she was killed?”
“Oh, very short time, I think like the month before, or two months. I think about it many times because it was sad. He only realize he have to fight for her, when it was too late.”
I examined the dregs of black liquid in my own cup for a moment and asked, without looking up, “Juan, did you ever form an opinion about who might have killed Sue?”
He made a long, ‘pfff…’ noise. “My opinion is only my opinion. You cannot send a man to prison because of my opinion. But, you know this because you are cops, so this is my opinion! People kill for money and sex. I don’t know about any money problems with Sue. Maybe she have them, I am not saying she didn’t have money problems with somebody! I don’t know. I just saying I didn’t know about any. But…” He nodded a lot, using his whole body, “I do know about sex problem, with Fernando and Giorgio. Mexicans, like Spanish, are very jealous people. The night she is kill, she is at a Halloween party with Fernando and Giorgio…” He held up his hands like somebody was pointing a gun at him. “You can take out your own conclusions from this. I don’t wanna say nothin’. But sometimes, when two men are real close, an’ a woman is come between them, they can punish the woman, instead of kill each other.”
“Point taken. Was there anybody else close to her at that time that you noticed?”
“Not that I can remember. Better you ask Giorgio. He still livin’ here, still doin’ the classes.”
I looked at Dehan. She shook her head and turned to Juan.
“Thank you, Juan, you have been very helpful. Stay here in the warm, we’ll see ourselves out.”
As we stood, he watched us a moment. “You openin’ the cold case, huh? I hope you get him. She was nice girl.”
Dehan nodded. “We’ll get him. Don’t you worry.”
We let ourselves out and closed the door behind us, then crossed the long, dark nave toward the gray, icy day outside.
Two
It was walking distance, but with the wind picking up and whipping sleet and tiny shards of ice off the East River, and burying them in our skin like frozen shrapnel, we got in the Jag and drove the two hundred yards to Patterson Avenue. Two right turns and another hundred and fifty yards saw us parked outside something that looked like a giant boathouse. It was tall—four stories tall—and narrow: not more than twenty-five feet across. Like many of the houses in that area, it was clapboard, with a long, sloping, gabled roof and tall, narrow windows on the upper floors. There was a garage facing the street on the first floor, and a flight of ten stone steps led up to a kind of veranda at the side of the house, and what looked like the front door.
Dehan led the way, still stamping and clapping her hands, picked a path through half-carved hunks of tree, and rang on the bell beside the blue door. It was opened after a couple of minutes by a man in his late forties. What had once been thick, curly black hair was now going gray and thinning on top. He had large brown eyes, a heavy moustache and gray stubble on his cheeks. He gazed at Dehan a moment like he was thinking there might be an attractive woman underneath all those clothes. Then he gave me a careful once over, like he was wondering if I would stop him from removing all those clothes. My face and my badge said I would.
“Mr. Gonzalez? Giorgio Gonzalez?”
“Yeah, that’s me. Why?”
There was a trace of an accent. I told him who we were, then added, “We’d like to ask you some questions about Sue Benedict. May we come in?”
He sighed. “Sue?” He looked Dehan over a couple of times and stepped back. “Yeah, why not? Come on in.”
We stepped over the threshold and directly into a large space with wooden floors and a high ceiling. A fire was burning in a huge, six-foot square fireplace with a bare-brick chimneybreast. There were rugs and skins strewn across the floor, heavy linen chairs and a sofa were scattered with careful abandon around the fire, and at the far end of the room there was a massive, wooden table that seemed to be hand-made out of raw hunks of tree. Each of the six chairs around it was different, but carefully so. Everywhere there were paintings; some on the walls, others stacked against the walls in reams of five and six, and everywhere there was the small of turpentine. A giant easel stood near the fireplace, with a large semi-abstract nude on it. I stood and looked at it for a moment, thinking how far we had come from Picasso. To him an abstract was an abstraction of form. This was just an ugly distortion of it.
I turned my attention to Giorgio. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I noticed he was barefoot. Looking at him made me feel cold, but I realized the room was very warm.
He gestured at us, and there was mockery in his eyes, a mockery I figured was habitual. “You can take
off your coats. I got triple glazing, and the fire makes a lot of heat, you know?”
He fell onto the sofa, with his arms thrown carelessly along the back, and watched us sit, unbuttoning our coats. His expression seemed to suggest that he was both wise and liberated, and that we drones of the ‘Establishment’ were endemically stupid and did stupid things, like wearing coats in warm rooms. He looked at Dehan as she dragged off her hat.
“You should wear your hair down, guajira, it suits the shape of your face, and your neck.”
She sighed. “Gee, thanks, Sancho.”
A spasm of irritation crossed his face. “What do you want to know about Sue? It was a long time ago.”
Dehan spoke, looking at her hat. “How close were you two?”
“You mean was I fuckin’ her?”
She frowned hard, still looking at her woolen hat, then placed it on her lap and turned to him. “Is that what I asked you?”
He spread out his arms and crossed his bare ankles, smiling at how stupid the whole damn world was. “I’m just asking. You know, people are usually so scared to talk about sex. They use this crazy euphemisms…”
“What did I ask you?”
“Sure, but I thought maybe…”
“I asked you how close you were. You want to answer the question instead of offering me half-assed theories about social repression? Would that be OK?”
“Woah!” He held up his hands. “Hostile, baby!”
I sighed. My stomach was telling me it was lunch time and this guy was standing between me and lunch. I said, “Mr. Gonzalez, would you mind answering the question, please? The question was very clear. It doesn’t need interpreting. How close were you to Sue Benedict?”
