Where Nobody Dies

by Carolyn Wheat

  12

  It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. The words were in green, lettered in a calligraphic style I’d never seen before. Drawings of kids at play surrounded the words—kids jumping rope, kids swinging on trees, tossing colored balls, playing with a cocker spaniel. They were Lois Lenski-style drawings, very open and sweet but not cloying.

  Just as I was deciding I liked the poster a lot, I thought of Dawn. Never too late to have a happy childhood? When you’re passed from a self-centered mother to cold-fish aunt? When the alternatives are a smothering grandmother or a spoiled-brat father? I turned away; it was a nice picture, but that was all.

  It would have been hard to imagine a less likely place to track down the murky past of Art Lucenti and Todd Lessek than the Friday’s Child Day-Care Center. In the middle of the big room a group of toddlers sat wide-eyed as a bright-faced young black woman told a story with puppets. In the corner, two young men were changing diapers. In the other corner, babies too young for the story were crawling on blankets, watched by a middle-aged woman who cooed at them encouragingly.

  When the diapering was done, one of the men came over. He was tall, with a thin face and lank blond hair, worn in a pony tail. “Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Chris Alter. Do you have a child you want to place here?”

  It was a natural question, but it flustered me anyway. “No,” I replied, too quickly. “I’m not even married.” The absurdity of the remark struck us both at the same time. We smiled and he said, “Neither are the mothers of some of these kids. But I get the feeling you’re here about something else.”

  I nodded, then glanced around the child-filled room. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  “Sure,” he said. “My office.” He led me into a tiny cubicle off the main room. Desk, two chairs, rusting metal gooseneck lamp. Very spartan, except for the wall posters, which were elaborate, fanciful renderings of classic children’s book illustrations. Twisted trees, pre-Raphaelite fairies with long curly hair, and a wonderful Alice in Wonderland caterpillar.

  He caught me looking at the posters. “Arthur Rackham,” he explained. “From the Green Tiger Press in California. My lady’s an artist; she gave me those when we moved in here.”

  “She did the drawing in the other room?”

  “Yeah. It’s great, isn’t it?”

  “It’s pretty,” I replied. “It’s not true, but it’s pretty.”

  His eyebrows went up, but he said nothing. Just sat back and waited for me to go on. He would have made a good shrink—or a good lawyer.

  “For some people it is too late to have a happy childhood. What about abused kids, molested kids, kids whose parents are dead—not all kids’ problems can be solved by an hour or two playing with a puppy.” I didn’t know why my voice was taking on a hard vehement edge it sometimes got in court, why it suddenly seemed so important to convince Chris Alter of the rightness of my position. Some obscure honor demanded that he acknowledge the limits of his profession.

  “Nobody said,” he replied gently, “that all kids have the same kind of happy childhood, or even that you have to be a child to have one. An adult who learns to play, to free the child within, to love without restrictions—that person is giving herself the happy childhood she couldn’t get from her own parents.”

  His use of the feminine pronouns was interesting, to say the least. “You mean,” I said warily, “that I’m taking the sign too literally?”

  “Maybe.” He smiled the kind of sweet innocent smile I hadn’t seen on an adult face since the days of flower power. “Although I suspect you have a particular child in mind. In which case, all I can say is I have seen abused, neglected, bereaved kids who can be helped to happiness. All it takes is a little extra love along the way.”

  Welcome to Walton’s Mountain, my mind retorted. That “little extra love” was just what Dawn wasn’t getting from anyone. But I hadn’t come to talk about Dawn and I was sorry I’d started the topic. I changed the subject.

  “Why Friday’s Child?” I hoped my tone was as light as I’d intended it to be. “What’s wrong with Monday’s or Tuesday’s?”

  He smiled as though the question was the bantering one it might have been if I’d asked it before we’d had the other conversation. “Monday’s child is only ‘fair of face,’” he replied. “Friday’s child is the one we’re trying to encourage—‘loving and giving.’”

  I hadn’t changed the subject as far as I thought I had. “A noble sentiment,” I muttered, unable to shake the mood of cynicism that caused me to take a shot at anything Chris Alter said. I hoped getting down to business would dispel some of it, but considering the nature of my business, it wasn’t likely.

  “You used to occupy space in a different building, didn’t you?” I asked. “One owned by Ira Bellfield?”

  “Yes,” he answered, wariness tightening his face, closing it off just a fraction. I was interested; apparently Alter wasn’t as childlike as he seemed at first blush.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions about what happened between you and Art Lucenti over that building,” I began. “I promise it won’t go any further. I’m doing some investigation into a different matter entirely, and I need a little background.”

  “What makes you think I know anything you’d be interested in?” The wariness was on the front burner now. Apparently a happy childhood didn’t necessarily preclude a cautious adult—or maybe Chris Alter’s dealings with the real-estate crowd had taken its toll of his innocence.

  “I’ve seen the court papers, Chris,” I said quietly. “The ones you never filed, charging Art Lucenti with a conflict of interest.”

  “Oh God.” Wariness had turned to what seemed to be utter despair. I wasn’t sure why, but I liked the lanky, pony-tailed man well enough to feel a pang of guilt. “Look, I don’t know how you got those papers, but please—”

  “I said,” I interrupted firmly, “that it wouldn’t go any further and I meant it. I just want to talk to you off the record about what happened before you had those papers drawn up. I promise not to make trouble for you.”

  He wasn’t convinced. I could see it in his face, as shut off as an abandoned building with tin in the windows to prevent vandalism. I might not be asked to leave, but I’d get nothing but panicky denials unless I tried something drastic.

  “The thing is,” I began, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt, “a woman’s been murdered. Her husband’s in jail for the murder. The only person who believes in his innocence is their daughter.”

  The long, tense face relaxed. “You’re not from them?” he asked. “You’re not a reporter or anything like that?” I didn’t say any more. I didn’t exactly want to mislead him into thinking I represented Brad, but I knew the truth was too complicated to serve my purpose. And the word blackmail might start a panic I couldn’t quell.

  “And the child? She was the one who was in your thoughts when you saw our sign, wasn’t she? The one you hope it’s not too late for?”

  I nodded, uncomfortably aware that I was using Dawn. But it was her cause I was fighting for, and she had been in my thoughts, so I decided my subconscious wouldn’t lie to me and pressed on.

  “It seems,” I said carefully, “that other people had a motive to kill her mother—who was, by the way, Art Lucenti’s secretary.”

  “Heavy stuff,” he said seriously. “I heard it on the news.” He looked at Alice’s caterpillar as though seeking advice, and then turned to me, decision in his ascetic face. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  “When you first moved into the other building, it was Ira Bellfield’s?”

  “Yeah. Slum city. We had a real hassle getting city approval for the day-care center, what with all the problems. Exposed wires, leaky pipes, falling plaster—you name it, we had it. We were up to our ears in Health Department inspectors, but finally we got certified. Most of our workers lived in the building. We started as a cooperative to help each other out with our own kids, and final
ly ended up as the biggest facility in the neighborhood. But the building itself was falling apart. We were constantly on rent strike in those days.”

  “Who was your lawyer?”

  His answering grin told me I’d asked the right question. “Art Lucenti, of course. He was a Legal Services lawyer. Man, you should have seen the show he used to put on in court.” He shook his head, admiration in his face. “He’d walk up to the bench, carrying about fifty folders, and start haranguing the judge about the heat, and the plumbing, and talk about how one of the kids got hit by falling plaster. Once he brought a rat to court. Dead, of course, in a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag. That was the part that got me,” he chuckled. “The Bloomie’s bag. Here’s the judge thinking Art brought his new shoes to court, and all of a sudden, he opens the bag, takes out the shoe box, takes off the top, and there’s this big old hairy dead rat. The judge closed the courtroom and left for the day.”

  “What happened to the case?” I was intrigued. Art sounded like the kind of lawyer I’d have been proud to know. I wondered what had changed him into somebody whose Bloomie’s bags contained nothing more than Gucci shoes.

  “Well, we held on to the rent,” Chris said with a laugh. “That was the name of the game. Keeping the rent in escrow. Not giving it to Bellfield until real repairs were done, and not giving it to the court either. Art kept our money for us that day. That’s not all, either. We had rent-strike meetings every month, and Art organized picketing in front of Bellfield’s office. We were on television six times,” he said proudly. “Once, we all got on a bus and went out to Bellfield’s house to picket.”

  “He must have loved that,” I murmured.

  Chris grimaced. “It was a fiasco. He lived in Seagate and we couldn’t get past the guards.”

  “I suppose a slumlord would live in a heavily protected private enclave,” I said absently. What bothered me was the suspicion that Art must have known where Bellfield lived before putting his clients on the bus. In which case, he’d been more interested in putting on a show of militancy than in actually being an effective advocate. And that was before he’d worked for Lessek.

  “We thought we’d finally won,” Chris Alter went on, “when Bellfield walked away. We ran the building ourselves for about a year. Paid for oil, had some repairs done. Then the next thing we knew, this Todd Lessek guy had bought the building. We had a party on the roof, we were so happy.” He shook his head. “How naïve can you get? We actually thought Lessek would fix up the building and let us all stay there.”

  “What did he do?”

  “First thing he did was ask us to leave. Politely, offering relocation money. Some tenants took it and left.” He shrugged nonjudgmentally. “Some of us didn’t. A day-care center’s not so easy to move. We finally had all the city licenses and approvals, so we decided to tough it out and hope for the best.

  “He sent in a new super. A real animal. Next thing we know the boiler’s busted—not just down, but out for the rest of the winter. Didn’t take long for the Health Department to find out either. We had electric heaters set up all over the center, but they didn’t care. They slapped fines on us every time we were the slightest bit below code standard, whether it was Lessek’s fault or ours.”

  Alter sighed and clasped his hands behind his head. “Then the pipes burst and water overflowed throughout the building. Toilets backed up. We started getting hit by burglars—well, to be fair, we always did, but it was like five minutes after you left to go to the supermarket, they were breaking in ’cause they knew you were gone. How did they know? The super told them. Great, huh?”

  “What did you do about it?”

  “What could we do?” He snorted. “Cops thought we were paranoid, so we called our lawyer. Art was in private practice by then, nice little storefront office in the neighborhood. ’Course we didn’t know it’s not his only office, that he also had his name on the door of a fancy firm on Court Street.”

  “He was happy to represent you?” I asked. “He never said anything about a conflict of interest?”

  “Hell, no. In that neighborhood, Art was a saint. Old Italian ladies who never voted in their lives couldn’t wait to get in the booth and pull the lever for good old Art. He was already on the City Council making speeches about tenants’ rights, so he welcomed us with open arms and talked about how we were his clients in the old days and he won’t let us down now. We felt great. We invited him to the next roof party—and our roof parties were justly famous, let me tell you. He said don’t worry about a thing and he went into court to ask for an Article 7-A administrator.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Someone the court appoints to run the building,” he explained. “Someone who collects the rent and makes sure it goes toward the building, not into the landlord’s pocket.”

  “Lucenti appeared in court on the case?”

  “Amid some publicity in the local paper,” he said. “We didn’t know a city councilman’s not supposed to appear before city agencies, or represent clients who might have an interest in city laws he votes on. That was dumb enough. But what we were really burned about was finding out that the fancy law fim in the Heights that carried his name on the door represented Lessek.”

  “You think that’s why you lost in court?”

  “We lost because Lucenti never wanted us to win. All that rhetoric …” Chris shook his head sadly. “All that bullshit about tenants’ rights and neighborhood loyalty. He was on Lessek’s payroll and we never knew it. That roof party turned into a wake—but we still had Lucenti there. We toasted good old Art and told him not to feel bad, it wasn’t his fault. Man, were we taken.”

  “When did you find out the truth?”

  “Believe it or not, when Lessek’s lawyers sent us a notice on their stationery—and there was Art’s name, listed as ‘Of Counsel.’ Whatever that means.”

  I nodded; what it meant was trouble for Art Lucenti.

  “So what did you do?”

  “Talked to another lawyer. One we could trust. He told us all about the conflict-of-interest thing and drew up the papers to take it to court. I was so mad I just wanted to ruin Art, spread it all over the newspapers what he’d done. But the lawyer convinced us that wouldn’t get us our space back. We’d have a better chance if we could show the court that we never really had counsel in the Article 7-A proceedings because Art was really on the other side.”

  “It would have been picked up by the media either way,” I pointed out. “One thing I want to know is, why wasn’t it?”

  Chris ducked his head, and his thin face reddened. He mumbled something I didn’t catch. I was about to ask him to repeat it, but then I realized I didn’t have to. The space the Friday’s Child Day-Care Center now occupied was large, well-finished, and clearly beyond its means.

  “Lessek owns this building.” I said it flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “I understand.” Cynicism back in full force.

  “No, you don’t.” The embarrassment was gone, replaced by genuine indignation. “My job is helping kids, not fighting crooked politicians. I’ll do whatever it takes to get my kids what they need—and if that means getting in bed with Lessek and Lucenti, then that’s what I’ll do. Look out there.”

  I looked. The kids had formed a band and were marching in step around the room. Some had solemn, intent faces as they concentrated on playing their instruments. One little black girl with yellow barrettes on her tiny braids squealed with delight as she banged her tambourine. The triangle player had a plastic brace on one leg, and brought up the rear with a quickstep trot that didn’t show on his beaming face.

  “They don’t care about Lessek or Lucenti or conflicts of interest and neither do I.”

  “I understand,” I repeated. This time I meant it.

  13

  The sign for fire: the hands move up and down, fingers wiggling frantically, like licking flames. The sign for lawyer: the L-sign held up against an open palm (representing a law-book), then
the sign for person added on. The sign for bad: the right hand at the mouth, then forcefully thrust downward, as though throwing away rotten food. That was the sign the boys made when Ira Bellfield turned the corner and headed, straining against the gusty wind, toward the burned-out building.

  I had a copy of the court order in my pocket, just in case. There was no doubt of my legal right to be there, looking at and photographing the arson site, but I knew Bellfield would hold me to every technicality in the book. He’d made that clear already, the way he’d tried to convince the court to refuse my application for access to the building. His strenuous opposition had only made me hungrier to see for myself what it was he was trying to hide.

  Ira Bellfield walked straight up to me, ignoring the eight or so Unknown Homicides, who stood in a sullen, wary group around me. His petulant face was set in a mask of distaste. A hat covered his balding head, the kind of hat private eyes used to wear with dash and style. Bellfield’s hat had neither, since he wore it square on his head, clamped on like a lid. He gave me a distinctly unfriendly look from under its gray brim.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said in his nasal, slightly aggrieved whine. “I got things I gotta do.”

  I was sure he did, things like arranging burglaries and commissioning fires. But I had already promised myself that Linda’s murder wasn’t on the agenda today. I was here as Tito Fernandez’s lawyer, and I owed it to my client to let nothing interfere with a thorough investigation of the crime scene. If only the back of my mind didn’t contain the tantalizing, treacherous thought that by proving Bellfield guilty of Linda’s murder, I’d be clearing Tito as well. I shoved the thought ruthlessly aside and said calmly, “I can’t start until my investigator gets here.”

  Bellfield snorted. “I shoulda known a broad couldn’t do something like this on her own. So you need a big strong man to come and hold your hand?”