by S. J. Rozan
We bought aspirin and a seltzer to down them with. Bill looked at me critically while I drank.
“You do look beat,” he said. “Let’s take a cab to the museum.”
I was going to protest that it wasn’t that far, which it wasn’t; normally it would have been a nice brisk walk through the winter evening. Right now, though, the thought of slogging all the way to the Kurtz made me feel like a sled dog on the last day of the Iditarrod race.
“We’ll be early,” I said. “Do you care?”
“What’s a little bad manners compared to protecting the health of your partner, the vigor of your companion, the bloom in the cheeks of your—”
“Taxi!” I hollered, stepping into the street.
The cab dropped us a block down from the Kurtz; Bill and I think alike about that. Probably because I learned it from him.
As we approached the limestone building it seemed cozy and inviting, a soft light glowing from the third-floor window and another over the broad front door. Catching our breath in the wind charging out of the park, we climbed the stoop, and this time I rang the bell, seeing myself just for a moment as a daughter of New York’s glittering turn-of-the-century society paying a social call.
Then I saw something else.
The door was ajar.
“Bill?” From watching the street, Bill turned, looked where I was pointing, at the thin dark shadow line between door and frame. We exchanged glances.
“Ring it again,” he said. I rang the bell again. No one came.
“It’s not normal, is it?” I asked. “For a closed museum to be open?”
“No.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s not breaking and entering if the door is open. And it’s not trespassing if we were invited.”
“Sounds right to me.”
We could, of course, have called the police then. The museum is closed and the door is open, we’d have said; some thing’s wrong. But I was still hoping, then, to keep the police and this case apart.
And maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe Steve was just waiting upstairs, and the door hadn’t quite caught when he’d closed it, and he hadn’t heard the bell.
So we pushed the door open, silent on its heavy brass hinges, and we went in.
The downstairs lights were off, but enough light filtered in from the streetlights outside the high windows for us to see our way. I shut the door behind us, and I locked it.
“Wouldn’t you expect a museum to have an alarm system?” I whispered to Bill.
“I’m sure they do.”
“Wouldn’t you expect it to be on?”
“Not if there’s someone here and they haven’t actually closed up yet.”
We looked at each other. “There’s a light on upstairs,’ Bill said.
“What are you suggesting?”
He shrugged. So did I. We went upstairs.
The light we had seen from outside was in the third-floor windows of the director’s office. The dim outlines of glass cases shimmered in the pale glow from the streetlights. The pad of our footsteps on the marble stairs disappeared into the carpeted silence of the second floor.
The stairs from the second floor up were dark polished wood; they creaked under us. Beside me, Bill reached into his jacket, softly withdrew his gun. My hand was already on the .22 in my pocket.
On the third floor, light spilled onto the carpet from the half-opened door of the director’s suite. Soundlessly, we moved toward it, took up positions on either side of the door.
Bill looked at me; I nodded.
He kicked the door wide. We both went in, crouching, guns up, each covering half the room and each other’s backs.
We didn’t need to.
The room was a disaster. Drawers were dumped, computers smashed, papers everywhere. Shards of a broken computer screen sparkled in the light of the lamp. And next to the lamp, as wrong and unmoving as everything else, lay Trish Atherton, lamplight glinting off her golden hair and off the blood, still fresh, that soaked her beautiful silk blouse.
My bones went cold.
Bill stood, looked at me. He nodded toward the door into Caldwell’s inner office. On autopilot, .22 ready, I stepped back to where I could see both that door and the hall one. Bill toed the inner door open, waited. He stepped inside, made a quick trip through the room and out again.
“No one here,” he said. He crouched by Trish, put two fingers to the side of her throat. The carotid artery, I thought uselessly, one eye on him, one on the hall doorway. That’s what’s in the throat. That’s what throbs, moves, pulses more than once a second, every second of your life. She’d need an ambulance. Call an ambulance, Lydia.
I reached for the phone, stopped. Fingerprints. Don’t mess. I pulled on a glove I’d taken off downstairs and dialed 911. When the operator asked me the nature of my emergency, I said, “A woman’s hurt. She’s bleeding badly.”
Bill looked up. He said, “She’s dead.”
T W E N T Y - T W O
I was sitting on the sofa in Roger Caldwell’s office. My head was throbbing. Back and forth in front of me, an overweight detective named Bernstein paced the room, seeming unwilling to trust any of the delicate furniture with his bulk, swearing at the furniture for it. The streetlight stabbed through the window and joined the desk lamp in poking me in the eyes whenever I tried to do more than squint. In the other room, beyond the closed door, the crime scene technicians were finishing up their photos, sketches, and measurements. They’d already found a letter opener covered with blood discarded near the door. Soon the medics would be able to zip Trish Atherton’s body into a thick rubber bag and heft it down the twisting stairs.
“Tell me again,” Bernstein growled.
I told him again, giving him the most compressed version yet, because this was the third. “We’re investigating the theft of some porcelains. We came here yesterday because we thought the thief might try to sell them to the Kurtz. Steve Bailey, who works here, called Bill today and said to meet him here at six. When we got here the door was open. We came up and found her. Then we called you.”
“Why did Bailey want you to meet him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always go places you don’t know why?”
I felt stretched with patience. “I hoped he had some information that would help us solve our case.”
“Which is?”
“I told you, a theft. Porcelains.”
Never lie to cops, if you can help it, and never tell them more than they absolutely have to know. Especially if you don’t know them.
Bernstein scowled at me. “What else?”
“There’s nothing else, except the name of my client. I won’t tell you that without my client’s permission.”
“Withholding information’s a crime, Miss Chin. Even for a p.i. Now I think of it, especially for a p.i.”
“Only if it’s relevant.”
“Oh, sure. And you’re in a great position to say what’s relevant. Who socked you in the jaw?”
That threw me. I straightened my shoulders. “A Chinese boy I know.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t like the way I behave.”
Bernstein gave a cold chuckle. “How’s that?”
“I’m not afraid of him.” That wasn’t quite true, but it would serve Bernstein right to believe it.
“He involved in this case?”
“I don’t see how he could be.” Assuming, of course, that the case Bernstein was referring to was his, not mine.
“What’s his name?”
I shook my head.
“Tell me his goddamn name!”
I took a breath. “Detective,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth, “there’s a lot I haven’t told you. My birthday. My brother’s favorite foods. If you want to know everything I ever knew I’ll tell you, but as far as anything that will help you find whoever killed this woman, there’s nothing else.”
Bernstein stopped pacing. “Lydia,” he said quietly, “—it�
�s Lydia, right?—Lydia, there’s only one thing gets under my skin worse than a killer, and that’s a wiseass p.i. Don’t get smart with me, okay?”
“I wasn’t trying to.” Control yourself, Lydia, I suggested, or you and your headache will spend the night in a holding cell at the 19th. I tried to sound reasonable. “But I’ve told you everything I know. This,” I fingered my tender jaw, “this was a private quarrel.”
He stared down at me for what must have been a full minute before he spoke. “Look, Lydia. I have here two p.i.s and a dead woman in a closed museum. The p.i.s won’t tell me what they’re doing here except they came to meet someone who’s not here. They won’t say how they got in except the door was open. They won’t say what the dead woman was doing here except she worked here. I don’t give a shit about your private quarrels, ’scuse my French, but in my experience, which I think is maybe a little bit broader than yours, the things people hold back are the things I want to know. Where’s Steve Bailey?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who else knew you’d be here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Trish Atherton?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who’d want to kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did—”
Bernstein didn’t get to finish that one; a uniformed black cop stuck her head in the door from the outer office. She shifted her wad of chewing gum and spoke around it. “Caldwell’s here, Bernstein.”
“Yeah?” Bernstein gave her a narrow-eyed stare. “All right. Bring him in here.” The cop shut the door again. Bernstein hissed out a breath. “You can go,” he said to me. “Just hope your partner’s story was the same as yours. And don’t leave town.”
I didn’t believe real cops actually said that, I almost told him, but my better self knew better, so I shut up.
As I gathered myself to leave, the uniformed cop returned, ushering Roger Caldwell through the office door. Caldwell’s face was ashen above the silk scarf in the neck of his fine tweed overcoat. He was subdued, but with a tightness about his mouth and shoulders that suggested costly control, not calm. At first he didn’t notice me. When he did he almost jumped, as though he’d heard a sudden noise.
“Ms. Chin. What are you doing here?” Caldwell looked from me to Bernstein, back to me.
I opened my mouth, not sure what was going to come out, but Bernstein beat me to it.
“Miss Chin and her partner found Trish Atherton’s body.”
“I don’t understand,” Caldwell said to me. “Were you here to see Trish?”
I’d caught on to what Bernstein wanted, and it was the same thing I wanted. “We were hoping to talk to someone,” I said. “The door was open when we got here, so we came up.”
“Open? It wasn’t supposed to be open.” Caldwell sounded a little vague, as though he wasn’t sure any of these words made sense.
“Not wide open. Ajar.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be open,” he repeated. “Did Trish call you?”
“Why would she have done that, Mr. Caldwell?” Bernstein jumped in. Caldwell must have been seriously distracted; he didn’t flinch at the “Mr.”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Why would she want to talk to a detective?”
“Why does anyone?” Bernstein said. “What was her relationship to Steve Bailey?”
“Steve? Trish and Steve? They worked together. I—they seemed to get along quite well.”
“Anything more than ‘get along’?”
Caldwell stared at Bernstein. “Are you asking if they had a romantic relationship? Implying that … that this could be the result of some sort of lovers’ quarrel?”
“Did they?”
Caldwell bristled. “Steve Bailey is a fine young man. It’s ludicrous to think him capable of such a thing.”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate the testimonial when we find him. Now answer the question, please. Was there a romantic relationship between Bailey and Miss Atherton?”
Caldwell’s face seemed to pale even more. He shook his head, and, without looking at Bernstein, said, “I don’t know.”
Bernstein shrugged. Then seeming to become aware of me suddenly, he said, “Oh, Miss Chin.” He sounded almost apologetic. “You can leave. I’m sorry for keeping you. I’ll be talking to you again, I’m sure.” Hand on my back, Bernstein propelled me to the door and closed it behind me.
I stood uncertainly in the outer office as the zipper was zipped on Trish Atherton’s relationship to this world. It occurred to me that someone was going to have to break the news to her family. I hoped it was someone with more gentleness about him than Bernstein.
I eyed the mess in the room. Now that the body was gone, a detective was sifting through the computer innards and scattered papers, looking for something in what was there—or what was not—that would speak through Trish’s silence.
The gum-chewing cop who’d brought Dr. Caldwell in said to me, “Bernstein said you could go.” Her tone of voice hinted that it would be a good idea. She smirked. “Unless you thought of something else you want to tell us?”
“No,” I said evenly. “But I’d like to wait for my partner.”
“Smith? Connors, you still got Smith here?”
The detective, papers in both hands, shook his head. “Nope. Gone.”
The cop turned to me. “He left,” she said.
I descended the curving stairs, wondering how cops can think you’re smart enough to be keeping things from them and dumb enough to need an English word translated at the same time.
On the street outside, three patrol cars and the detective’s unmarked one were distributed randomly, along with the crime scene van and the medical examiner’s wagon. A uniformed cop, the earflaps down on his uniform hat, guarded the front door. The crowd that materializes from nowhere had materialized. I guessed they’d gotten their money’s worth a few minutes ago when Trish’s body was lifted into the wagon for its trip to the morgue.
A small colony of reporters was swarming. Just like the mosquitoes in my brother Ted’s backyard, they spotted me coming out the door and surrounded me.
“What’s your name?”
“Do you work at the museum?”
“Who’s the dead woman?”
“What was your relationship to her?”
I gave them all a sullen “No comment” and pushed through. It took me until I got to the corner of the next block to lose the last of them.
On the corner of the block after that, I found Bill leaning against a lamppost and smoking a cigarette.
“Do you have any idea what a cliché that is?” I glared at him.
“Took you long enough.”
“What made you think I’d come?”
“North,” he said. “It hasn’t failed yet.”
That was true. We had a standing plan, if we got separated at a place where one or both of us was no longer welcome, to meet a few hundred yards north of the last place we’d seen each other. This was the fourth time it had worked.
Bill’s lamppost was on the park side of Fifth, near a park bench. The bench suddenly looked wonderfully welcoming. I sat.
Bill sat next to me, the orange tip of his cigarette glowing. “Bernstein give you a hard time?”
“Bernstein,” I said, “is an unpleasant, condescending, sneaky creep. He probably didn’t give me as hard a time as he thought I deserved, for being a woman, a p.i., and there. But it was hard enough to give me a splitting headache.”
“You had a headache already. He ain’t so tough.”
“No,” I declared. “He ain’t.”
He threw the cigarette away, turned to look at me. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I moved closer, to get warmer. I realized my insides were shivering.
“Bill?” I whispered.
“Hmm?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmm,” he said.
We sat like that for awhile, bare trees throwing long dancing shadows
on the sidewalk and on us. A pack of cars whished past. Some of them got trapped behind a stoplight, halted, stood panting and growling to move again.
“Did Steve do that?” I asked Bill, when the silence had been long enough.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think he did.”
“Why?”
“He knew we were coming. That would be the worst time to kill someone, when you were meeting two p.i.s in a place you were supposed to be alone in.”
“Unless you had to.”
“Why would you have to?”
He didn’t answer.
“They brought Dr. Caldwell in as I was leaving. Bernstein asked whether there was anything between Trish and Steve. He said he didn’t know.”
“It’s a motive.”
“I don’t think it was him,” I said again.
“Why?”
“Because—oh, because he was so enthusiastic on the phone. Because he called us. Because when he was showing us around he got excited about the porcelains and it’s not even his field.”
“Because you like him.”
“Well? That’s my p.i. instinct.”
“No, it’s not. But it’s one of the best things about you.” He said that seriously. Then he leaned over and kissed me.
Usually, Bill’s kisses are light, half-kidding; usually, mine are like that too. Not this time.
This time, his kiss was long and warm and made me forget that we were sitting on a park bench in a New York January evening. It made me forget Trish Atherton’s golden hair and her ruined silk blouse. And it made me forget that I didn’t let him kiss me like this.
Then I remembered something.
Pulling away so that I could look him in the eye I said, “What do you mean it’s not my p.i. instinct?”
He stared for a moment; then he laughed. “Boy, remind me to never play on the other team from you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said, “that a p.i.’s instinct is what says not to trust people who seem trustworthy. I’m not sure it works the other way around.”
