It was, let there be no doubt, a hell of a story.
35
RUTH KING’S LEGS LOOKED LIKE BOWLING PINS. THE SHORT WOMAN filled the doorway as if she were blocking the way of something inside that wanted to get out. For reasons probably buried in some fairy tale I was told in my diaper days, I imagined scores of highly animated mice fleeing the house, swirling past the woman’s boxy black shoes like little Pamplona bulls. The woman had a wide face and eyes set far apart, as if she had been stretched at the ears. Her hair was a fine nest of mousy brown going gray. Her dress was also brown and a little shiny. I fully expected a large hairy wart to sprout on the side of her nose.
“You’re Margaret King’s aunt?” I said.
Her lips were fat and cracked. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. King, but it’s very important that I talk with you. A friend of Margaret’s told me how to locate you. My name is Fritz Malone. I’m a private investigator working with the police on a case that… Well, it’s a matter of life or death.”
“What do you want with me?”
“There’s a man out there who I need to locate as fast as possible. I have reason to believe that your niece was acquainted with him in some fashion and-”
“My niece is dead.” She had a strong, clear voice, like a car horn.
“I know that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“What did Margaret have to do with this man? Who is he? I can’t help you.”
“The man is a murderer, Mrs. King.”
And then a creature did appear next to her shoes, a hairless dog not much bigger than a rat. Its eyes were like jellied marbles, and its toenails clicked as it shifted nervously from foot to foot to foot, like maybe it had to pee.
“I can’t help you,” the woman repeated. The dog let out a yelp. My shoe would have fit over it perfectly.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “This will take just a few minutes, but I can’t accept no.”
“Did you say you’re with the police?”
“I’m working with the police.” I pulled out my wallet and showed her my card. It didn’t make her swoon. The dog yapped again and resumed his I’ve-got-to-pee dance. Another day and I might have shown my ID to the pooch, too. “Five minutes, Mrs. King. You can set your egg timer.”
A sharp sound erupted from her. I saw a flash of teeth. It must have been a laugh. She skidded the dog away from the doorway with her foot and stepped back. “Come in.”
The television set in the living room was on. Some TV movie. A pair of beautiful people having a lip-quivering competition while the camera closed in on their faces. Ruth King waddled to the set and was about to turn it off.
I blurted, “Wait. Could you keep it on?”
“What?”
“Could you just turn down the volume?”
She honked. “You watch this?”
If Angel was back in form, they’d be cutting away from the movie to report the carnage. Ruth King turned down the volume, then set her knuckles on her hips. I braced for the spell. “Do you want some water or something?” she asked.
“No, thanks.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the copy of Margaret’s suicide note that Sister Natividad had copied. And I froze. The woman noticed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Um. Nothing. I… I’ll take you up on that offer after all. The water.”
She stepped into the kitchen, trailed by her hairless rat. I could feel the blood rushing into my face. My breath even went short, as if I were suddenly back in a tunnel.
Angel Ramos was not our man. Rather, he was maybe one of our men, the way Roberto Diaz had been one of them. But he wasn’t the only man. He was not the thinking man. If he was involved at all, he was muscle. He was a man who could pull a trigger or leave off a bomb or swing a knife, but this thing that had kicked up last Thursday was not his scheme. I knew it. The nagging feeling that had been with me on some level since the moment I’d entertained a doubt at the Flea Club… it was the right feeling after all. Doubt everything. I’d known it the second I pulled Margaret’s suicide note out of my pocket.
Angel Ramos. In Fort Petersen. A punk, a hood, a lowlife since he was old enough to light his first cigarette.
Sister Margaret King. A nun way the hell up in Riverdale.
Trying to fit those two together had been like trying to force magnets at their similar poles. Why in the world would Angel Ramos jerk Leavitt and Carroll around for a million dollars only to hand it all over to an order of nuns that he had no apparent connection to? It had never made sense, and it was never going to make sense, because that’s not what had happened.
The person who left the note instructing the Sisters of Good Shepherd to go collect their “gift” at the Cloisters had made one thing clear to anyone who was paying close attention. And Sister Natividad had paid close attention. The fact that she hadn’t drawn the obvious conclusion was not her fault. That was my fault. I’m the one with the license to snoop. Such things are my business, not the business of some young Filipino nun with a ready blush.
The one thing made clear by the person who left the Cloisters note-and my bet was that it was evident in Nightmare’s earlier notes as well-was that the person who had written that note had also had access to Margaret King’s suicide note. That wasn’t Angel Ramos, unless he’d happened across Margaret’s body in the park before the jogger did and decided on a whim to copy down the contents. And I wasn’t buying that scenario.
The note had been found by the police in Margaret’s coat pocket. Doubtless it had circulated among a few of the blue, though probably not all that many. Once the M.E. had confirmed the obvious, that Margaret King’s injuries were self-inflicted and that this was in fact a case of suicide, the thin file was complete. No further investigation.
The dead nun’s note would have been passed on to her family. Her next of kin.
Ruth King returned with a glass of water, trailed by the dog. I put the note back in my pocket as casually as I could. It felt like I was stuffing in a thirty-pound goose. I accepted the glass of water and drained it. “I’m sorry to ask this, but is your husband still alive?”
“Albert? He died ten years ago.”
“I see. Do you have any other family? Any children?”
“You mean James?”
“James.”
“That’s my son.”
“Does James live in the area?”
“He lives in Manhattan.”
“What can you tell me about him? I mean, if you were to say what kind of person he is.”
“I don’t understand.”
I was grasping, I knew, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something in my fist. “Let me ask you this. James and Margaret, they were cousins, right? What kind of relationship would you say they had?”
She darkened. “He hated her. He blamed her for Albert’s death.”
“For your husband’s death?”
“That’s what he says.”
“How did your husband die, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“He grew weak. His heart gave out.” She gave another honk. Not with humor this time. “It’s a long story.”
“Could you sum it up quickly for me?”
“Sure I can. We took Margaret in after her parents were killed. Then she-”
“Wait. I’m sorry, Margaret’s parents were killed? When was that?”
“I told you, it’s a long story. I thought you said you were in a hurry.”
“I can hear this.”
She shifted on her feet. “Albert’s brother and his wife, June, were killed in their sleep by an intruder. Years ago. It was a dopehead trying to get some money. They caught him. He’s in jail and that’s where I hope he rots. Margaret was in her bedroom when it happened. She was sixteen. She heard it happening, the whole thing, and she hid under her bed. That’s the only reason she lived. When he was finished butchering Ronnie and June, the man went into her room, too. But he di
dn’t see her hiding. Girl peed herself lying there on the floor. Can you imagine? After this, she moved in with us. Then she had… You know about her attack?”
“I know about that. They never caught the man.”
“For three months the damn girl pretended it didn’t happen, or when she’d finally admit it, she made up all these different stories about what really happened. Then one day, out of the blue, she says it was Albert that did it.”
“Your husband?”
“That’s right. All those nutty stories of hers and that’s the one she decided to stick with.”
“Did… do you think-”
I’d never seen someone turn so red so fast. “He never touched that girl! Never! End of story. Albert was a kind person. He never even swatted bugs. That was my job.”
“Why did she say it?”
“Lord, don’t ask me. That girl had more problems than a math book. She said it and she refused to take it back and that was that. I begged her. I wanted to hit her, but I didn’t. Of course it devastated Albert. It devastated all of us. There was a trial, the newspapers, the whole thing. I think back on that time and I want to throw up. In the end, it didn’t stick, ’cause there was nothing to stick. He was innocent. Whoever it was who really did it to her got off scot-free. Margaret had already started her drinking problem. She had moved out of here already. We couldn’t keep her. The Catholic Charities were helping her out. I saw what she was doing with that drinking, and I thought… God forgive me for this, but I thought, Good. Drink. Go ahead. If it doesn’t kill you, maybe it’ll kill the baby.”
“What baby?”
“What baby? Margaret’s baby. What baby do you think?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. King. You’re losing me.”
“The baby. Margaret’s baby. That girl was raped. It got her pregnant. All the nutty stuff she was doing and saying, she didn’t tell anyone until it was too late. She’d refuse to have an abortion, in any case. She’d gotten all holy at that point.”
“Did she have the child?”
“Oh yeah. She had it. Baby girl. She held her for all of ten seconds, then…” Ruth snapped her pudgy fingers. “Off to adoption. Never saw her again.”
She leaned down and scooped the dog off the floor, then straightened and held it to her chest. It kicked, but she ignored it. I took ten long seconds of silence. My brain was going muddy. I wasn’t even certain why it was I’d come out here in the first place.
“Mrs. King… there was a suicide note. Did the police return that note to you?”
“Yes, they did.”
“Could I see it?”
She was already shaking her head even before I’d completed the question.
“Afraid you can’t. James took it.”
36
THERE WERE THREE OF THEM. ONE WAS IN THE METAL BUCKET, suspended from a small crane affixed in the bed of the green Parks Department truck. He had a chain saw and was running it like a knife through butter, hacking off the small limbs of one of the large oaks in Carl Schurz Park. The other two, on the ground, were taking up the fallen limbs and tossing them into the growling machine that was hooked to the back of the truck. The limbs came out of the chute on the other end, reduced to chips. A call to the Arsenal in Central Park asking after James King had led me to the eastern edge of Manhattan. I was lucky. The storm had passed, but not before cracking off part of a large limb on one of the trees in Carl Schurz Park. James King was pulling a little O.T. to help take down the rest of the limb.
The bulge of land where Gracie Mansion was situated was visible several hundred yards to the south. As I approached, the man suspended from the crane called out something to his colleagues on the ground. They both took several steps backward. One of them almost bumped into me. He placed a gloved hand on my chest. “Hold up, buddy.”
I saw that a rope had been tied around one of the larger limbs, the loose end of it run through a Y in the tree and coiled around a large spike that had been driven into the trunk about five feet up from the ground. As I watched, the man in the tree worked his chain saw through the large limb. When he was halfway through it, it buckled downward but was held in place partway by the rope. The man continued with the saw. He broke through, and the limb dropped several feet, then jerked to a halt as the rope brought it up short. Instead of falling to the ground, the limb remained in midair, rocking back and forth. And ten dollars to the person who doesn’t think of someone being hanged from a tree until dead.
I took a few steps closer to the truck. The guy who had stopped me asked, “You want something?”
“I’m looking for James King.”
“You’re looking at him.”
“You’re him?”
“No. Him.” He jerked his gloved thumb toward the man with the chain saw. The man in the trees was wearing a white safety helmet and a pair of protective goggles. The goggles made him look like a bug. The man on the ground called up to him, “Hey, Jimmy! Someone here to see you, man.”
James King pulled a lever in his bucket, and immediately the crane began to lower him. He gazed down at me as he descended, or so it seemed; it was difficult to tell because of the goggles. He held the chain saw up near his chest, as if at arms. The blade caught the sunlight on the way down. The bucket was swinging closer to me than I’d expected, and my temptation was to step back. I resisted it. For one thing, the wood chipper was only a few feet behind me. It was still running, still humming, still ready for whatever might be tossed into it. But more than that, an image flashed through my mind. It was of the boy at the parade. The boy with the balloon. It was the image of him standing by as his mother was being placed in the back of an ambulance. The shadow of the bucket swung over my head. But I didn’t budge. This just wasn’t the time to give, not even an inch.
The bucket stopped less than a foot from the ground. James King stepped out of it. He was still holding the chain saw at arms. Above him, directly over his head, the large severed limb continued to sway and rock, side to side.
37
IT WASN’T HIM.
He was an angry man, possibly a violent man. When he pulled off his helmet and goggles, I saw a man in his late twenties already losing his thinning hair. He had enough of his mother’s face to warrant some sympathies. The thought even dashed swiftly through my brain that he had the eyes of his mother’s dog. His skin was ruddy, recently and harshly burned by the sun. He wore a thick Fu Manchu-style mustache, in need of a trim. There was practically more hair on his lip than remained on his head. He lit up a cigarette while we talked, and the smoke seemed to leach right into his skin.
He sat on the retaining wall overlooking the river. He’d set the chain saw down gently next to him, as if he might snatch it back up without warning.
“I still hate her. I guess I’ll rot in hell, but I can’t help it. She destroyed my family. Here’re my parents, taking her in, and what does she do? She puts a spike right in my father’s heart. Then what? She turns around and becomes a nun? She was a little teenage slut, and then she becomes a nun? That’s great, huh? I guess she’s ‘saved.’ ” He made the sarcastic quotation marks in the air. “How about saving my damn father? Ever think of that? Do you know what happens to a person’s reputation when he gets accused of something like that? He got cleared, but so what? The stain is there, man. You can’t get it out. Everywhere he went after that, you could just see it. He was the guy who maybe raped his own niece. He lost friends. He lost his job. His life was over, it was just a matter of waiting around until he died. Meanwhile, little bitch Maggie is off with her nuns. Well, I guess she finally got her ending, too. My crazy mother went to the funeral. Not me, man. No way in hell. As far as I’m concerned, they couldn’t dig her grave deep enough. All the way to hell’s what I’d like. Jesus. Don’t get me started.”
It was a little late to avoid. He finished his cigarette and lit another one. The move was seamless.
“You know, when we were kids, I liked her. She was my only cousin, and we used to play toge
ther. Maggie kind of dropped me once she became a teenager. I guess that’s normal, I don’t know. She was getting into boys. Shit. Like I’m suddenly a frog or something? Aw, man, Uncle Ronnie and Aunt June. That nigger breaks in and kills them in their frigging beds. This is me rotting in hell again, man, but I wish he’d dragged Maggie out from under her bed and killed her, too. Why not? She’s dead now anyway. But at least my old man would’ve been spared all that crap.”
He threw his cigarette away in disgust. I half expected him to grab up the chain saw and start to work on the retaining wall. Instead, he stared off into space.
I looked past him to the river. Halfway across, a barge was being nudged upriver by a towboat. I don’t know where they came up with the name “tugboat.” I’ve been staring all my life out at the water that runs around this island, and not once have I ever seen one of those boats tugging anything. They push. They settle up against the rear of something fifty times their size, and they start pushing. I know it’s a metaphor for something, but in all these years, I’ve never quite placed it.
James King was not Nightmare. He was describing nightmares, but that was as far as it went. He told me that he had taken Margaret’s suicide note because he wanted to plunge a knife into it, to rip it into a hundred shreds, to spit on it and burn it. Phyllis Scott would no doubt posit that King had some “unresolved issues.” Sadly, ravaging his cousin’s final words probably hadn’t given the man anything near the “closure” he sought. I was looking at an open wound sitting on the retaining wall. Open and oozing and aching.
Speak of the Devil Page 29
