Take Out

by Margaret Maron

  “Looks like a parking ticket,” he said.

  The printing was crisp and legible and dated the seventeenth of last December from a garage over on the East Side.

  “Urbanska and I’ll go,” said Hentz.

  Sofia DelVecchio paused at the foot of the stairs as her housekeeper closed the front door and took off her rain hat.

  “Back already? Wasn’t she at home?”

  “I didn’t go. Before I could get out the door, Laura grabbed my umbrella and snatched your envelope out of my hand. I couldn’t stop her.”

  Sofia’s lips tightened. “Couldn’t or didn’t.”

  Orla shrugged. “As soon as that woman said her name yesterday, you should have known she would find a way to go there. She wants to be a singer, too.”

  “More opera? Dear God! Is it never to stop?”

  “I’ll bring you an espresso,” Orla said, and escaped to the kitchen.

  “May I help you?” Marian Schmidt’s large frame blocked the doorway of Number 403. Today, instead of Valkyrie braids, her long blond hair was tied back at the nape of her neck with a red ribbon, but she seemed as formidable as any Teutonic Valkyrie to the girl who stood there with a hopeful smile.

  Rain bounced off her open umbrella and splashed on the woman’s sandals, which made her take an involuntary step backward.

  The girl flourished a six-by-eight envelope. “I’m here to deliver this to Ms. Randolph.”

  “I’ll take it,” said Marian Schmidt, and held out her hand.

  “I was told to give it to her myself.”

  “And you are?”

  “Laura Edwards. Tell her I’m Mrs. DelVecchio’s granddaughter.”

  Randolph’s assistant frowned. “Wait here,” she said, and closed the door, leaving Laura outside in the pouring rain.

  A moment or two later, the door opened again. “Come in, Miss Edwards. Let me take your umbrella. You may wipe your feet on this mat.”

  Laura’s eyes widened as she took in the chrome and white interior, the spiky light fixtures that gleamed and sparkled overhead, the window wall at the far end. From the outside, Number 403 was of the same architectural period as her grandmother’s house.

  But inside?

  “Oh, wow!” Laura exclaimed. “This is totally awesome!”

  “Why, thank you,” said the white-haired woman who sat at the grand piano that overlooked the garden where rain beat down on the flowering bushes. She half turned on the bench, which was padded in white leather. “I’m Charlotte Randolph. I believe you have something for me?”

  Struck by a sudden and unaccustomed shyness, Laura nodded and walked across the long space to hand over the envelope.

  Without opening it, Randolph laid it on the gleaming ebony piano top and gestured to a nearby chair. “You’re Aria’s daughter?”

  “Did you know my mother?” she asked eagerly.

  “Not really. We met when she was still a child. I was sorry to hear of her loss.”

  “She never mentioned you,” said Laura.

  “Why would she? As I said, we only met a time or two when she was a child.”

  “But she knows—” The girl shook her head impatiently at her slip of tongue. “She knew I want to sing on stage. Not opera, of course, but still…”

  Randolph smiled. “But still?”

  She turned to face the keyboard and her fingers came down strongly on the keys. “Sing for me.”

  “Now?”

  “Now. What shall I play? And please don’t say rap.”

  Rather than make the long drive out to Riverhead, Elaine Albee phoned the Seaview Recovery Center. After much holding and transferring, she was eventually connected to the doctor who had overseen Matty Mutone’s treatment there. He had not realized that Matty was dead. “But it doesn’t surprise me, Detective. The cure rate for methamphetamine addiction is less than ten percent and the relapse time is usually within six months. I’m surprised he lasted this long.”

  “He only fell off in December, Doctor.”

  “Really?”

  “And it wasn’t the meth that killed him. He was poisoned. Is there anyone there who was close to him, who might have known if he had any enemies?”

  “I’m looking at his file now and all that I’m seeing is that he had a cousin out here in Riverhead who visited him every week. An Aria Edwards. You might ask her.”

  Albee thanked the doctor and hung up. “I didn’t see the point of telling him that it was the cousin’s death that sent him back to meth,” she told Lowry.

  He jingled his car keys. “Got an umbrella?”

  It was a short drive down to the soup kitchen and he even found a parking space less than half a block away, but despite Albee’s large umbrella, they were both damp around the edges when they got there. The doors were soon to open for lunch and workers were busily bringing in trays of food for the steam counter.

  “Yeah, he was a regular here for a while,” said one, “but he didn’t talk to anybody I ever saw.”

  “Matty? Oh, sure,” said an older black woman who seemed to be in charge of the kitchen. She wiped sweat from her brow with a dishtowel tucked in her waistband. “He was a regular up to a year or so ago when he got clean. I think he had relatives that lived nearby, so he’d stop in occasionally to shoot the breeze, even help out a little if we were short-handed. A real sweetheart. We didn’t see him for a while, but then he started coming in again back in—late January? Early February? As a client, not a helper. You really hate to see it, y’know? You think they’re gonna make it and then bang!”

  She called to a man carrying a tray of condiments. “Hey, Denny. You knew Matty, back last winter, didn’t you?”

  The stocky white man who’d paused in the doorway looked as if he’d like to deny it. “Yeah. Why?”

  “These detectives are asking about him.”

  “Whaddya wanna ask?” he asked suspiciously. “I already told you everything I know.”

  “But you were friendly, right? Used to talk when you were working here last winter?”

  “Yeah, we talked, but I ain’t seen Matty since last December.” He rested the tray on the back of a chair.

  “He ever say he had enemies, someone who might’ve had it in for him?”

  “Naw, we weren’t that tight. Look, I need to get this tray out there. You want to know about him, why don’t you ask the people that live across from that diner on Vanderbock Street. He said he was related to them.”

  “So what did you think, Marian?” Charlotte Randolph said when Laura Edwards had gone and her assistant had brewed them both a cup of green tea.

  “She sounded good to me, but I’m no judge. Are you going to take her on?”

  “Coach her? Certainly not. In the first place, I’m phasing out the students I have. In the second place, her grandmother would never allow it. I’m surprised she even let the child bring me that envelope.”

  She looked around. “Where did I put it, anyhow?”

  “On the piano? Yes, there it is,” said Marian. “I’ll get it.”

  The envelope was sealed.

  Didn’t trust her granddaughter? Charlotte wondered.

  She slit it open and shook the photo inside onto the glass tabletop.

  “Benny DelVecchio,” she told Marian. “Four days before he was killed.”

  “He certainly was handsome, wasn’t he?”

  Oh yes, she thought. Had he lived, this picture would have been hers from the beginning. He had laughed about her wanting a formal portrait of him. “A portrait? Am I so fancy now I can’t just have somebody take a snapshot? I gotta have a portrait?”

  “I gave you mine,” she’d said, “so it’s only right I have one of you.”

  Hers had probably been burned the same day Sofia found it. Her cleaning woman had seen a pile of smashed records atop a bin in front of Number 409.

  “All of them were yours,” she’d told Charlotte.

  The lab to which Marcus Livingston’s secretary had sent Vincent Haas w
as only a five-minute walk from the Museum of Modern Art on West Fifty-Third Street, and after letting a technician swab his mouth, he decided to see for himself an example of pictures he had seen only on his computer. The admission fee was a little higher than he’d expected, but he handed over the unfamiliar bills with a growing sense of anticipation. A docent at the information desk directed him to the fourth floor.

  Upon exiting the elevator, he entered a large hall and started down the nearest side, scanning the names on the placards. Halfway down, he stopped at the one that read “Oscar Nauman, American” and stepped back to take a good look at Untitled #19.

  Compared to some of the huge canvases that covered whole walls, it was relatively small—only two feet wide by three feet tall—and had raw slashes of black and purple across an acid yellow background. By the dates on the placard beside it, Haas realized that it must have been painted about two years before his birth when Lila and Nauman were living together.

  Not a study in serenity.

  His eyes swept over the abstractions that surrounded him, none of which captured his interest or clamored for a closer look. They left him feeling vaguely disappointed, both in himself and in the art. He had no language for these pictures. His training had been scientific and mathematical, so it wasn’t as if he’d expected to feel an electric connection, but his father had stood in front of this canvas, had worked on it while his biological mother watched from her corner of the loft.

  Yet, even though he thought he felt nothing as he turned back toward the elevators, something made him stop and look a final time at that grim picture and wonder at the emotions that must have prompted it.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Vic’s Garage was located in a run-down section of Greenwich Street that would probably become gentrified once the Hudson Greenway was completed, but for now the garage was typical of the area: a shabby brick and concrete building with faded and peeling wall signs that advertised products long since discontinued. This close to the river, it was a self-parking facility with relatively low rates.

  Hentz parked in the exit lane and showed his ID to Vic Leibowitz, a beefy six-footer pushing fifty, whose belly strained the bounds of his grease-stained gray T-shirt and hung over his belt like a hefty salami roll.

  Before he could ask what this was about, a woman pulled in out of the rain and nudged the NO SPACES sign that blocked her entry to the ramp. She lowered her window to wave a ten-dollar bill at him. “C’mon, Vic. Shoehorn me in, okay? I’m late for my meeting.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re always late, Selma. Think this is valet parking?” But he gestured to a pimply young man to move the sign so that she could ease up to the ticket machine and take the slip of paper it spit out. When the automatic arm raised, she stopped her car on the other side of it and got out.

  “You’re a prince, Vic.” She handed him the ten and her car keys before unfurling her umbrella and hurrying out into the rain.

  When shown the ticket that had fallen from the plastic sleeve, Vic said, “Yeah, that’s one of mine, but they’re supposed to hand ’em back when they pay at the gate.”

  “So the car could still be here?” asked Detective Hentz.

  Vic looked closer at the date. “Issued back in December? No way.”

  “You’re absolutely sure? You keep track of every car that comes in?”

  “No, but if it was parked here six months, I’d’ve noticed. Or my guys would’ve. Space is money, y’know? Anything left here more than ninety-six hours gets reported to the police as an unclaimed vehicle. If the title holder can’t be located, and the city doesn’t want it, I can sell it for scrap. Or if it’s worth a little money and I feel like filling out a bunch of forms and jumping through all the hoops, I can sell it at auction. Someone did leave a sweet little BMW here a few years ago. Got a nice chunk of change for that baby. But mostly, they’re junk and not worth the trouble, so I just scrap ’em.”

  “And how many have you scrapped since this ticket was issued?”

  Vic shrugged. “I’d have to look it up. Three, or maybe four. People too lazy to dispose of their car the right way. Think it’s easier just to drive it in here and walk away. I barely get enough to pay the towing fee.”

  He walked back to the grimy glass-fronted room that served as his office. As it turned out, Vic had actually scrapped five cars since December, one of which the city had claimed, a late-model Mercedes that had been used in a drug deal and had a bullet hole in the rear window. He had a copying machine and ran off copies of the reporting forms for them. The Mercedes had been three years old, the others were eight to ten years older than that.

  Vic shook his head when asked if he could match the ticket to one of those junkers, so they would take those forms back to the station—“More fodder for the files,” Hentz told Urbanska—where they would keep trying to figure out why Matty Mutone had been carrying a parking ticket for a car he didn’t own and which one of those it was.

  “Too bad one of them’s not an Oldsmobile,” she said.

  The faxed prescription from Mrs. DelVecchio’s doctor came through just after lunch and after showing it to a nearby druggist, Tillie broke the bad news to Sigrid.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant. It’s the exact same brand as Ms. Randolph’s.”

  “So we’re back at square one,” she sighed.

  The skies had finally cleared although there were still puddles to wet the shoes of the unwary. When Sigrid left her office shortly after five and headed for the nearest crosstown bus stop, the air felt thick and slightly sticky.

  The sidewalk was crowded with commuters and walking was further impeded by construction barriers that channeled people through narrow passages no more than four feet wide in places. Just in front of her, an elderly woman stumbled on a bit of broken concrete and as Sigrid reached out to steady her, a man on the other side took the woman’s arm and kept her upright.

  Flustered, she thanked them both with an exasperated shake of her head. “Seventy-three years I’ve lived in this town and they’re never going to finish building it.”

  The woman turned at the next corner onto a sidewalk that was smooth and barrier-free, but the man continued in step with Sigrid.

  “Lieutenant Harald?” he asked.

  So far as she knew, Sigrid had never met this middle-aged man before.

  “Yes?”

  He sidestepped a cluster of laughing teenage girls who were barreling down on them and held out a copy of a newspaper photo, one of her that had run when Nauman died.

  “I thought it was you. I’ve waited almost an hour for you to come out. I’m Vincent Haas.”

  She stopped so abruptly that someone bumped her from behind, muttered something halfway between an apology and a curse, and went around her in a huff.

  “Please,” said the man, and touched her arm to guide her out of the main flow of pedestrians to a place of relative calm beside a hot pretzel cart parked at the curb.

  “They have told you about me?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Gray eyes met blue and he was as Buntrock had described him: his height, his hair fast going white like Nauman’s, the color of his eyes, but somehow she had expected to feel something on a psychic level that would tell her whether or not he was really Nauman’s son. Instead, he was just a pleasant-faced man who could have been anybody. There was indeed something familiar about him, something she couldn’t quite identify, but that probably rose from those pictures of Lila Nagy that Rudy Gottfried had shown her.

  “Please,” he said. “Could we go sit down somewhere. Have a drink? Talk for a few minutes? This is weird for me, too. Did they tell you? I only found out six months ago that I am not who I grew up thinking I was.”

  Sigrid looked around blankly. The Urban Renewal Society was only a block away. Owned and run by two former cops, the scruffy bar’s smoke-stained walls were lined with autographed pictures of uniformed police officers, including four of the last six police commissioners and three may
ors. Over the bar, amid a clutter of outdated handcuffs, nightsticks, and other police equipment was a wooden plaque with the names and badge numbers of former customers who had died in the line of duty. There were booths for those who wanted relative quiet with their better than average bar food, and drinks were modestly priced, but Sigrid knew that it was the precinct’s favorite watering hole, which meant there might be speculative stares if she stopped in with this man.

  Still, the other options ran to salad bars, Formica countertops, bright fluorescent lighting, and plastic drink cups.

  “This way,” she told Haas.

  CHAPTER

  23

  Vincent Haas settled into the booth’s brown leatherette cushion and looked around with approval, especially when he saw someone light up at the bar.

  He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them to Sigrid, who shook her head.

  “Will it bother you if I do?” he asked.

  “No, it’s all right.”

  “I’m not a chain smoker, but not being allowed to on the plane was rather hard. I drank three beers and managed to sleep most of the way over. And now I hear that soon Americans will not be able to smoke in any restaurant.”

  Sigrid recognized a delaying tactic and did not rise to it. The station house had recently gone smoke free and while there had been some grousing among the uniforms, the only smoker on her team was Detective Ruben Gonzalez, who was trying to quit and looked upon the ban as a helpful crutch. She saw no need to share that with Haas.

  “Did my father smoke?”

  “Nauman smoked a pipe,” she said carefully as their waiter approached.

  “What’ll it be, ma’am?” he asked Sigrid.