by Mike Lawson
He told Justine: “Have NYPD make the request and imply, or lie—I don’t care which—that this is terrorist-related to speed things up.”
It still took over a week to get a response from the State Department; maybe if Ella’s name had been “Fatima” or “Jamala” they would have acted faster. At any rate, State had issued four passports to women named Fields, Ella who were in their early thirties, the age DeMarco figured his Ella Fields had to be. One of the women was pretty but black. The second was so homely that no one who wasn’t legally blind would have called her pretty. The third was a teacher in Iowa, attractive, but not a knockout, and only five feet two inches tall.
The fourth Ella Fields was a five-foot-nine blond bombshell.
And DeMarco couldn’t find a trace of her anywhere in these United States.
“Find this fuckin’ woman,” he growled at Sarah.
DeMarco wasn’t a paperwork guy. He wasn’t an Internet hunter. Looking at a computer monitor gave him a migraine or put him to sleep. So while Sarah was scouring the Net trying to locate Fields, DeMarco decided to see if he could prove she was in New York. Right now he thought she might be in the city, but he had no evidence. He also thought—again with no proof—that she might have been behind the busboy’s skipping town and Esther’s stroke. So what he was going to do was go talk to people and show them Fields’ passport photo and—he hoped—get someone to confirm the woman was indeed messing with the Rosenthal witnesses. If he could prove she was in the city, maybe then Justine would be able to get NYPD to use a few of its thirty thousand cops to hunt her down.
DeMarco took a cab over to the Astoria Houses in Queens, where Edmundo Ortiz had lived before he vanished. He wondered who had come up with the name, making a public housing project sound like something just down the road from Downton Abbey. The Astoria Houses occupied thirty-two acres on the banks of the East River and consisted of twenty-two six- and seven-story brown brick buildings. Three thousand New Yorkers, mostly black and Hispanic, lived in the buildings—not members of the British aristocracy.
He located the building where Edmundo Ortiz had lived, brushed by a couple of teenagers who looked like predators, and went inside. The elevators weren’t working, and he had to trudge up—or limp up—five floors on his cane. By the time he got to the apartment where Edmundo used to live, his leg was screaming for mercy.
DeMarco had decided to begin by asking the people who now occupied Edmundo’s apartment if they’d heard from him, like maybe he’d called to have his mail forwarded or asked them to ship him something he’d left behind. He doubted he’d get that lucky, but if he could find Edmundo, then Justine could ask him directly if Ella Fields had anything to do with his leaving town.
He knocked on the door, and his knock was answered by a stout Hispanic woman in her twenties wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a white T-shirt spotted with what looked to DeMarco like Gerber baby food: squash, pumpkin, some gooey yellow vegetable. The woman was holding a chubby boy clad only in Pampers; behind the woman, clutching her knee, was another kid, maybe three, a cute-as-a-button little girl with ringlets of curly dark hair. The little girl smiled at DeMarco; the woman did not. When DeMarco showed his investigator’s credentials, she somehow managed to look both frightened and defiant.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” DeMarco said. “I just wanted to ask if the man who used to live in this apartment has contacted you since he left?”
“No hablo Inglés.”
He had the impression she spoke English but didn’t want to talk to him because she thought he was a cop. Or maybe she thought he was one of the storm troopers working for ICE. “Look, I’m not here to hassle you about anything. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just trying to find Edmundo Ortiz.”
“No hablo Inglés.”
“How ‘bout this woman?” DeMarco said, showing her Ella Fields’ photo. “Have you ever seen her around this building?”
“No hablo Inglés.”
At that moment the baby in her arms began to shriek, and DeMarco wondered if the woman might have pinched the kid to cause a distraction. Whatever the case, she muttered, “Lo siento, lo siento,” and closed the door in his face.
And that’s pretty much the way it went for the two hours he knocked on doors showing people Ella Fields’ photo and asking if anyone had heard from Edmundo. No one knew anything. No one wanted to talk to a white guy who represented the government. Ironically, the most cooperative people he talked to were the hard-looking teenagers standing on the stoop, who said they sure as hell would have noticed a chica who looked like her.
DeMarco had to wait almost twenty minutes for a cab to pick him up at the Astoria Houses—what a surprise—then he headed over to the assisted living facility where Esther Behrman still lived. He had learned that she was now bedridden and grouped with the Alzheimer’s patients and folks with maladies that required round-the-clock nursing care.
He walked into the building and immediately noticed that the doors weren’t locked, but as it was the middle of the day, maybe that wasn’t so surprising. He supposed if he’d looked like some raggedy-ass street person, someone might have rushed over and asked him what he wanted—but he didn’t look like a bum and was at an age that he could be visiting his mother if she lived in the place.
He proceeded across the lobby to a reception desk, where a woman in her sixties was talking on the phone. When DeMarco stopped in front of her, she put her hand over the phone and said, “Just sign in,” and pointed to a clipboard with a sign-in sheet.
DeMarco looked at the sign-in sheet. Visitors were supposed to write down their name, who they were visiting, and, if they’d parked in the facility parking lot, the make and license plate number of their car. He wondered how long they kept the sheets. He didn’t sign in, however; he just stood there impatiently waiting for the lady to get off the phone, which she eventually did.
“May I help you?” she said. Before he could answer, she said, “If you’re here to see one of our residents, just sign in.”
DeMarco imagined the doors were locked at night and there might even be a rent-a-cop patrolling, but during the day it was obvious you could just walk in, and nobody—certainly not the busy lady at the desk—would be likely to notice or stop you. And if you were stopped and required to sign in, all you’d have to do was write down a phony name and illegibly scrawl the name of the person you were supposedly coming to see.
“Do you ask to see people’s IDs when they sign in to see somebody?” DeMarco asked.
“What?” the lady said. DeMarco noticed she was wearing a name tag that identified her as Nancy.
DeMarco pulled out his credentials. “Nancy,” he said, “I’m an investigator for the Manhattan DA. I’m here to ask some questions pertaining to a crime.”
“What kind of crime?”
“Murder.”
“Oh, my God!” Nancy said. “Are our residents in danger?”
“Absolutely not,” DeMarco said. “I’m just trying to find someone I need to talk to, and your residents may have encountered this person. Now, do you ask to see IDs when people sign in to see your residents?”
“No. Why would we?”
DeMarco almost said: So if a person visiting the old folks here is a thief or a con man then the cops might have a chance to catch him. But there was no point in saying that. “How long do you keep these sign-in sheets?”
“Oh, we throw them out at the end of the week.”
Which made DeMarco wonder why the hell they even bothered with them. But it didn’t really matter, because it was unlikely that Ella Fields, if she’d signed in at all, had used her own name.
“Does this place have surveillance cameras?” DeMarco asked.
“A few,” Nancy said. “They’re aimed at the entrances, so we can catch somebody if they try to break in.”
“How long do you keep the tapes?” DeMarco said.
“They don’t use tape. They’re digital, and they record for a twenty-four-hour p
eriod and then start over.”
Great.
DeMarco showed Nancy Ella Fields’ passport photo. “Have you ever seen this woman?”
Nancy squinted at the picture. “No, I don’t think so.”
“I may need to show this photo to some of your residents and the staff. But first I need to speak to a lady named Leah Abramson.”
“I think I should call the director,” Nancy said. “My boss.”
“You do that,” DeMarco said, “but tell me where I can find Leah first.”
DeMarco knocked on Leah Abramson’s apartment door, and a tiny woman with short gray hair and bright blue eyes answered. She was wearing a T-shirt with one of those pink breast cancer ribbons, blue jeans, and sugar white running shoes.
“Yes?” she said when she saw DeMarco standing there, looming over her.
“My name’s DeMarco. I work for the Manhattan DA. I wanted to talk to you about what happened to your friend Esther.”
“It’s about damn time,” Leah said. “Come in. Oh, you got ID? You could be a mad rapist for all I know, I should be so lucky. I’m just kidding, but let’s see your ID.”
DeMarco liked Leah immediately. She had to be close to ninety, but he got the impression that there wasn’t anything wrong with her mind. He showed her his credentials, and she pointed him to a love seat in her living room. She took a seat on a floral-patterned couch; her legs were too short for her feet to touch the floor.
“So somebody finally believes that somebody tried to kill Esther.”
“To tell you the truth, Leah, we’re not sure but—”
“Well, I’m sure,” Leah said. Then she had to go through the whole story again, which DeMarco had already heard from Coghill and Dent: how Leah had found pills in Esther’s pillbox that didn’t match the pills in the Coumadin and digoxin vials in Esther’s medicine cabinet, and how the facility nurse had found diet and antihistamine pill bottles in the closet that contained pills that looked just like Esther’s prescription meds.
“People think that everyone who gets old, their minds turn to mush,” Leah said. “Well, Esther and me, we used to watch Jeopardy! together, and got the answers right more than half the time. We’d do the crossword puzzle, and usually get most of it without having to cheat and look at the answers. And they give us tests in this place to see if we’re getting Alzheimer’s. You know, they show you a ball and a horse and a car, and ask you five minutes later if you can remember what you saw. Well, I never failed the damn test and neither did Esther. So I’m telling you that Esther didn’t mix up her pills, and she never took a diet pill in her life.”
“I believe you, Leah.”
“What I can’t figure out is why somebody would want to do that to her. She has money, but she doesn’t have any relatives who would want to bump her off so they could inherit. And Esther’s will leaves almost all her money to a children’s hospital.”
“I’m going to tell you something in confidence, Leah, because I trust you. Do you promise not to repeat what I’m about to say?”
“Scout’s honor,” Leah said, holding up her right hand as if she was taking an oath in court.
“Someone may have tampered with Esther’s medication because they didn’t want her to testify at the Rosenthal trial.”
“Is that true?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a possibility I’m looking into. Let me ask you something: How could somebody have gotten inside Esther’s apartment to mess with her medications? The cops said there wasn’t any indication that somebody had broken in.”
“I’ve thought about that,” bright-eyed Leah said. “I suppose it could be like in the movies, where somebody picked the lock, but Esther has a good lock on her door. Another possibility is all the residents have to give a copy of their apartment keys to Needleman in case we have a heart attack while we’re locked inside, or in case maintenance needs to get in for whatever reason.”
“Who’s Needleman?” DeMarco asked.
“The director of this zoo. He’s actually a lackey for a big corporation that has assisted living places all over the country, and he’s in charge of this one.”
“Where does Needleman keep the keys?” DeMarco asked.
“Beats me, you’d have to ask him. But I imagine it’s like in the building where I used to live. There’s probably a box somewhere that has all the keys for all the units.”
“Okay, I’ll ask Needleman about that.”
“There’s one other thing,” Leah said. “About a month before Esther had her stroke, she had her purse stolen at the Manhattan Mall. They bus us over there once a week so we can stock up on Depends.”
DeMarco laughed.
“Anyway, Esther had her purse stolen when she was in the ladies’ room, and her keys were in her purse, but the security guys found her purse only half an hour later and the only thing missing was Esther’s cash. I figured the thief was probably some junkie, but after what happened to Esther, I started thinking: What if the thief pressed her apartment key down into putty, like they do in the movies, and then had a copy made?”
What DeMarco was thinking was that if Esther’s purse had been stolen from the ladies’ room, it was most likely a lady who’d done the stealing. He took out the picture of Ella Fields and showed it to Leah.
“Have you ever seen this woman?”
Leah studied the picture. “Pretty girl,” she mumbled. “No, I don’t remember ever seeing her. You think she’s the one who hurt Esther?”
“Maybe, but I can’t even prove she was in New York when Esther had her stroke. So I was thinking that I’d show her picture to people here and see if anyone saw her.”
“Do you have another copy of that photo?” Leah asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then let me show it to residents,” Leah said. “Half of them can’t remember what they had for breakfast, and I’ll know which ones to talk to. But you can talk to the staff. They won’t take me seriously, but they’ll pay attention to a cop.”
“Can you show it to Esther?”
“I will, but it won’t do any good. She can move her left arm a little, but she can’t walk, and she can’t really talk, just makes these strange squawky sounds, and the words get all jumbled. She sits in bed all day now watching the TV over her bed, but that’s just because the TV’s always on. I can’t tell if she really wants to watch or if she understands what she’s seeing. It makes me cry to see her that way. You look into her eyes and you can see she’s still inside there somewhere, not all the time, but some of the time. What kind of monster would do something like that to Esther?”
DeMarco didn’t have an answer for that.
DeMarco spoke to Needleman, a hand-wringing toady who was mostly worried about his company being sued if somebody had broken into Esther’s apartment. He had both feet planted firmly in the camp that Esther had mixed up her medications. He reluctantly agreed that DeMarco could show Ella Fields’ photo to his staff—nurse’s aides, housecleaners, cooks, security guards, and maintenance personnel. DeMarco spent two hours doing that—and nobody recalled seeing Ella Fields.
When the guy with the cane showed Curtis the woman’s picture, he stared at it for a long time, keeping his head down, forcing himself not to react, the way he did when he played poker and was dealt a full house. But he was thinking: Holy shit, that’s her! When she’d paid him to keep tabs on Esther Behrman, her hair had been dark brown—but the blond woman in the picture was definitely her.
He still didn’t think she had anything to do with Esther having a stroke. How could she possibly have made that happen? And all he did was call her each day and tell her that Esther had shown up in the dining room for lunch. But he remembered what she’d told him the last time he saw her, when she gave him the one-grand bonus. She’d said that if she had committed a crime, then he was an accomplice. He didn’t know what he was an accomplice to, and he wasn’t about to ask the investigator what the woman had done, so all he said was: “Nope, never seen her before. And I’
d remember a woman who looks like her.”
After the guy left, Curtis thought about calling her—he still had her phone number—then decided not to. He didn’t know what was going on, but he did know that he didn’t want to get in any deeper than he already was.
31
Ella spent three days following the eHarmony lady, Rachel Quinn. She was hoping she’d get lucky and find something about Quinn that she could use to blackmail, bribe, or otherwise coerce her.
But it appeared that all Quinn did was work. She’d leave for her office in the Financial District at six in the morning and she never got back home until after seven or eight. At lunch, she’d go to a gym near her office, put herself through a grueling workout, eat a salad afterward, and return to work. The lady was determined to keep her figure. In the evening when she got home, she’d walk her dog, this hyperactive little brown-and-white terrier.
Ella could never understand why people got pets: the hassle of feeding them, getting them shots, finding someone to care of them if you wanted to take a trip. Then there was the whole shit-and-a-bag thing: walking behind some mutt, standing around looking into the air while the dog took a crap—as if you didn’t want to embarrass it—and then, the most disgusting part, picking up the poop in a bag. Yuck! At any rate, every evening when she got home from work, Quinn would take the terrier for a walk, and if it was nice outside, she’d walk about a mile to an ice cream place; have a small cone like a guilty pleasure; then walk back home with Fido, window-shopping on the way.
Ella had been hoping to learn that Quinn had desires for something more scintillating than pralines and cream; it would have been better if she’d enjoyed a little recreational coke, was a closet lesbian, or hung around with some shady character who’d been arrested for insider trading. It was not to be. The woman was boringly, annoyingly squeaky clean. Ella suspected that there was going to be only one way to deal with Quinn, and it wasn’t a course of action she wanted to take.
