“You’re selling, Matt. Hard selling. Only you wouldn’t be sitting here telling me all this if you didn’t smell the stink. Sheet, when you talk I smell it.”
“Hey, I brushed my teeth this morning.”
“Hey yourself, White Man. Roth said you’re good at this. Hell, I know you’re good. You got to the Avengers and got them to talk. Matt, you know something strange is happening here.”
I’d spent the first half hour of my movie shoving all that knowing aside. “Let’s pretend there is. Who will it help if I stick my nose where it doesn’t belong?”
“Where Washington Clifford tells you it don’t belong!”
I shrugged.
“You’re scared of that man.”
“Sure I’m scared. He could pull my license, beat on me again, or worse.”
“You’ll wade into a group of vicious punks but you won’t mess with a cop?”
“Cops, not just Washington Clifford. I feel more comfortable with punks than Blues.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a detective.”
“I’m not in the business for the same reasons as the police. I don’t much care about ‘law and order.’”
“Then what do you care about? It sure doesn’t sound like you give a damn about getting at the truth.”
I groped for words. “I’m interested in people and I like looking for things,” I finally said. I didn’t say “looking for myself,” which was what I thought.
“Well, you ain’t showing much interest, and you surely ain’t looking hard.”
“I told you, Cheryl, I don’t cross cops.”
“Even when it means leaving your friend Simon flapping in the breeze.”
“I gave Simon everything he needs to walk the Rabbi. That was my job and I did it. Curiosity didn’t win you the Pulitzer, sweetie.” She’d gotten me annoyed.
Cheryl raised her hands. “I’d do it again.”
“Maybe the twenty years between us makes the difference.”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t have anything to do with age. It has to do with changing the way things work.” She paused, then said regretfully, “Damn, I wish I could be out there. I’d show you what’s what.”
“Don’t even think about it young lady.” Mrs. Hampton strode through the doorway.
“You’ve been eavesdropping,” Cheryl accused.
“No, I’ve been listening,” Charlene corrected. “From what I heard this man makes good sense. Stop pushing your face where it don’t belong. Why can’t that sink into your thick, woolly head?” Mrs. Hampton swung around in my direction and I expected a blast but all she said was, “Did you enjoy the ham?”
“It was terrific, Charlene.”
“Charley.”
“Charley.”
She turned back to her daughter. “I want you to stop this foolishness. If this man thinks something is too risky you have no right urging him on. None at all.”
Cheryl shook her head sadly. “I wish I could do it myself.”
“And thank the Lord you can’t. Girl, you’re lucky to be standing here. Look at yourself, both hands in casts.”
I’d worn my welcome a little thin. “I have to leave, Cheryl. How long do the casts stay on?”
“A month tops,” said Cheryl.
“A minimum of six weeks,” said Charlene.
I stood. “Would it be all right if I dropped in again?”
“Of course.” The two women spoke at once.
“Be a better visit if you do what you ought to,” cracked Cheryl.
“Now don’t you pay any attention to her,” Mrs. Hampton instructed.
I had a dismal thought. “Cheryl, I know you feel strongly about this, but what I told you was off the record and confidential.”
“You mean don’t go talking at the paper?”
“Anywhere. Even Simon. I don’t want you to talk to anyone.”
“I’ll think about it,” Cheryl answered.
Before Mrs. Hampton could dress her down I said, “Listen, you respect my confidentiality and I’ll think about what you said.”
“You’ll stay on the case?”
“I’ll think about it.”
This time it was Charlene who shook her head.
A mischievous smile broke across Cheryl’s face as she stood. “Fair enough,” she said. “Now I’ll walk you out.”
When we arrived at the door that tense silence descended once more. There was no mistaking what it was and it made me uncomfortable. I nodded and skipped out of the house.
The ride home was a breeze—no traffic, no car trouble. At one point I found myself tapping my hand on the steering wheel to Dire Straits’ “MTV.” I was surprised; I hadn’t expected the doorway tension to lighten my mood. Up till now I’d bundled Cheryl in with Yakov as a finished job. By the time I was sitting at my kitchen table, the bundle was breaking apart. Without Cheryl’s prodding I might have let things slide. But Cheryl had pushed and I was going back to work.
I debated telling everything to Simon. Hell, if I was going to disobey Clifford’s first commandment, there was no reason to uphold his second. But I was concerned that an anxious Simon would shake trees that would tumble me to Washington. Also, despite Cheryl’s scorn, the odds still favored an overlap. I decided to go easy and break one commandment at a time.
I rolled a joint and considered my next move. Despite hazy purpose and clear risk, I enjoyed returning to the hunt. I took a couple of tokes to somber up. I’d already done too much mindless to add more now. I thought about trying, again, to ferret out information from the neighborhood, but wasn’t quite ready to spit in Clifford’s face.
I walked into the bedroom, pulled the gun case from under the bed, and brought it back to the kitchen table. I lit a cigarette, opened the box, and stared. After a couple of minutes I dragged out the holster, strapped it on, then cleaned the gun. I wasn’t planning to use it, but the equipment helped me feel like a real gumshoe. I glanced at the clock, nodded to the cat’s shifting eyes, and shoved the .38 into its leather. It was time to visit my redhead.
Clifford hadn’t known that I’d followed her—at least he hadn’t hit me for it. So the woman seemed like a relatively safe place to begin. Especially if I didn’t run her to the police.
I worked hard to shake any potential tail before I drove to the address on the note I found in Kelly’s apartment. The same three-flat I had followed the redhead to. I pulled into a parkingspace up the block in case she wasn’t home. If this was her home. On the short walk to her building I cursed myself for not having brought something to read; I hadn’t considered the possibility of a wait.
There were names attached to the three mailboxes on the front porch. Two of the tags suggested Kirche und kinder; the third-floor box read D. RYAN. I pushed the bell and waited. After a couple of disappointing minutes I tried again, ready to give myself a reaming. But just before my foot hit the step the front door jerked open and I stood facing my quarry.
“Can I help you?”
Though her face glistened with fresh sweat, the woman’s tone was neutral, her breath steady. She wore a long-sleeved, perspiration-dampened, white tee shirt low riding over black spandex leggings. “I think so. I’m trying to gather information on the White Avengers.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Rubbing her sleeve across her face in a short, choppy gesture.
“Well, it’s come to our attention that you knew Sean Kelly.”
“Our? Who is ‘our’?” she asked, dropping her arm back down to her side.
“Kelly was shot in self-defense after he assassinated an important local Rabbi. I work on the defense team for that person, a Rabbi Yonah Saperstein, who killed Kelly.”
“Do you have any identification?”
I handed her the photostat of my ticket.
She handed it back. “From the way you describe the incident it’s difficult to see the need for a private investigator. Anyway, this has nothing to do with me. Where did you get your misinfo
rmation?”
“Perhaps we could go inside? I’m cold so you must be freezing.”
The woman hesitated. “Sure. I forgot my manners. Come on in.”
I followed her up the stairs. Occasionally she took two steps at a time and a pair of dark red gym shorts peeked out from under the long shirt. By the time we got to her apartment I was breathing heavy but it wasn’t just from the view. It had been a long three flights.
Ms. Ryan watched me catch my breath, an amused look on her face. “Don’t work out much, do you?” she asked.
I saw a large all-in-one gym on one side of the room. “Every once in a while. How much did that thing set you back?”
She shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”
“I see them advertised on late night television but they never give the price. Anyway, I’m afraid it would end up in the basement next to the rowing machine and the fanny-flattener.”
She smiled slightly. “The type they sell on television isn’t very well made.”
“That’s okay, neither am I.”
She squinted her eyes. “I can’t imagine why you’re questioning me. I really don’t have any information about the shootings.”
“None?”
“Only what I read in the papers.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true, is it? By the way, what does the D stand for?”
Her questioning look disappeared and she glanced at me coolly. “Deirdre. You sound pretty confident for someone who doesn’t even know my name.”
I shrugged. “Some things I know, some I don’t.”
“That’s not good enough, Mr. Jacobs.”
“Jacob, without the s.”
“With or without the s, it’s not good enough.”
“Then please call me Matt.” Deirdre wasn’t hostile or angry, just rock firm. I stood for a moment and took my first hard look. She was older than I’d thought, though you couldn’t tell it by her supple body. Only the tiny crow’s-feet at the corners of her green eyes, the slight roughness of skin on the back of her hands, and the darkening of some of her face’s freckles, gave her away. All but the nail on her left ring finger were closely cropped. That one extended a quarter inch beyond her finger. She wore no polish. Kelly’s age and the seductive tone of Deirdre’s note reminded me of Doris Lessing’s notion that the sweetest morsel in the smorgasbord of love was the one between an older woman and a younger man. Standing six inches away from Deirdre, older man, older woman didn’t seem half bad either.
“Would you mind excusing me for a second?” she said interrupting my thoughts. “I don’t feel comfortable talking to you in these clothes. I was in the middle of my exercises when you rang the bell.”
Before I answered she had spun toward a door that led to the bathroom while I regretted the length of her tee shirt. Despite the flatness of her demeanor there was an undercurrent of hard. Or maybe distance. I couldn’t tell. When the door closed I looked around the living room. A large bookcase on one wall was filled with modern literature. Her collection included the Vintage Contemporary Fiction Series. So did mine; I liked the covers. But even with the bookcase, the room had a transient feel. The beat-up and scratched oak floors were without rugs, the window shades without curtains, the wall paint a faded off-white. Somewhere to stay but no place to call home.
“A detective who reads.” Deirdre had silently reentered the room.
“I couldn’t find the television,” I grinned. She wore a very loose pair of army-green canvas pants with open ankle zippers over the spandex, but had left her shirt alone. I hadn’t heard a toilet flush and wondered why it had taken her as long as it had.
“I don’t own a television. A radio is enough.”
“Enough what?” I replied with another grin.
“Enough of this. Why are you here, Mr. Jacob?”
“Matt. Look, Deirdre, I know you knew Kelly. Why play games?”
She smiled glumly. “No games. It wasn’t common knowledge that we knew each other. It surprises me you found out.” She paused and added, “I didn’t know him very long. A couple of months, maybe.”
According to the date on the note, a couple of months meant more like a year and a half. “Then why the denial?”
“Frankly, once I read about the shootings I didn’t want to get involved. It doesn’t help a single woman’s reputation to have police visits.” She held her palms to the sky then waved toward the chairs spread out in the room. “Why don’t we sit down?”
Deirdre chose a straight-backed chair while I found one I hoped wouldn’t collapse under my weight. I pulled it across the room close to her. “What do you do for a living?” I asked, sitting gingerly.
“I’m a teacher but right now I work as a temp.”
“Why does a teacher work as a temp?”
Her left hand had balled into a fist. “Where do you live? They haven’t hired a new teacher in this city for years. Anyway, what does my job have to do with Sean Kelly?”
“It’s difficult to picture the two of you friends,” I said by way of an answer.
“I didn’t say we were friends.”
“Then what were you?”
“I said I knew him.”
“I know what you said. I’m asking about what you won’t say.”
Deirdre sat quietly thinking. “We were acquaintances, if you will,” she said.
“Which brings me back to what I said before. It’s a little hard to imagine.”
“Perhaps there is a problem with your imagination.”
“The man was a neo-Nazi. You too?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said evenly. “That had nothing to do with me.”
“Then what did? From what I gather the Avengers were his life.”
“Not his entire life. We met because he wanted a high school diploma. I am an unemployed teacher, so he hired me to tutor him. We never discussed politics. It was simply a way for me toteach.”
Hammer time. “Come on, Red. Put away the shovel. You were closer than that. Why are you still bullshitting me?”
Maybe the crow’s-feet deepened and her fist tightened, but I couldn’t swear to it. The woman was cool. She kept her eyes locked to mine. “You’re beginning to be rude.”
“And you’re continuing to withhold information.”
Deirdre slowly stood. “Mr. Jacob, I’ve told you the truth. I didn’t want to get involved with those horrible shootings, and your attitude is precisely why. I refuse to listen to anyone’s insinuations. If you don’t mind I’d like to get back to my workout.”
I didn’t know how to press the envelope so I left it open. “If the information I received was wrong, Ms. Ryan, then I apologize for disturbing you,” I said getting to my feet, relieved to be off the chair.
She smiled but her eyes remained watchful. “You have a way of putting words in someone’s mouth, don’t you? I never said I was disturbed.”
I returned the smile and sauntered toward the wrong door. “It’s a projection thing, that’s all.”
She walked alongside me, gripped my upper arm, and steered me in the proper direction. Despite my leather jacket, her fingers dug deep. “Sometimes that ‘projection thing’ is all anything is.”
We were at the door before she let go. I opened it and walked out to the landing before I said, “Sometimes.”
“That’s what I said,” she replied closing the door behind me.
I lit a cigarette as soon as I got back to the car. I didn’t bother sticking the key in the ignition since I planned to hang around. Every shamus has his fantasies. Right now, the hope that Deirdre was going to lead me to something useful was mine. I settled in without really expecting anything to happen. This dick was still able to separate fantasy from reality.
But occasionally the two coincided. When Deirdre’s front door suddenly swung open, I dove down onto the car seat so fast I dropped the cigarette. With my nose buried in torn upholstery, I blindly fingered the floor. And got burned for my trouble.
I swall
owed a swear, yanked my hand away, and hoped the butt didn’t burn through the floor rust. I let a minute pass before untwisting from a position reserved for teenagers in love and lifted my sweaty head high enough to peek out the window. Deirdre hadn’t stayed upstairs doing pushups.
This time I followed her very carefully. Despite her overt nonchalance, Deirdre was alert. But I did good tail, and followed her unseen all the way to the same Roman Catholic church she had visited the last time. Only this time, if the broken sign was to be believed, there was no Mass for her to attend.
I sat across the street on a stoop in full view of anyone leaving the church. I was squashing my third smoke underfoot when I saw a black-clad arm push the church door open. Deirdre was accompanied by a tall blond crew-cut in full priest regalia. Both were frowning. The priest was talking when Deirdre spotted me. Her frown quickly disappeared. When she said something and nodded in my direction, his frown momentarily deepened. But, by the time they had crossed the street and stood in front of me, both wore friendly looks.
“Hello again,” said Deirdre. “You’re a bit early for Mass.”
“It takes me a while to screw up enough courage. Short workout, huh?”
The priest stepped forward. “I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Brady Collins,” he said forcefully. “Deirdre told me that you’re working on the Kelly situation?”
“Well, Kelly’s situation seems clear. I’m working for Rabbi Saperstein. My name is Matt Jacob. Matt is fine.”
“Good, good. Formalities bug me too. Please call me Brady.”
Brady stuck out his hand and I stood to grasp it. Up close it was possible to see more than the blond crew-cut and white teeth. In fact, it was a crew-cut with sneaky sideburns. I didn’t know whether the style was fifties, or the nineties had a new thing happening. Collins emitted a visible tension despite his forced friendliness. I couldn’t tell whether his worry was constant or caused by me.
“Deirdre mentioned that she’s spoken to you about her reclamation project,” Father Collins said smoothly.
“Reclamation project?”
He chuckled. “That’s what I called her work with Sean Kelly.”
“She mentioned it. Sounds like you had your doubts.”
The Complete Matt Jacob Series Page 69
