The Scent of Murder

by Barbara Block

“Great.” This was not the kind of news I wanted to hear. But I wasn’t surprised. The world Manuel moved in was definitely on the scummier side of the scale. It wasn’t full of heavy duty drugs and guns, but it was full of edgy kids carrying box cutters and baseball bats. I watched as he went back to work on his hat brim again. “Why are you doing that?” I finally asked.

  Manuel looked at me as if I were stupid. “I’m breaking it in. You got to do this when you get a new hat.”

  Of course. How could I not have known? We made arrangements to meet when I got off from work. Manuel hung around for a little bit longer, hoping for a lift, then drifted out the door when it was obvious he wasn’t going to get one. I spent the next hour or so calling around, trying to locate a Brazilian rainbow boa for a customer. I finally found one down in Fort Myers. Unfortunately it was on the pricey side. Four hundred dollars for a baby. I tapped my pen against my front teeth. Joe had said price was no object, but I decided I’d better call him up and make sure, before I finalized the order. I didn’t want to be stuck with something I’d have trouble unloading.

  Next, I ordered a dozen dog sweaters in small sizes from a local woman who knits them, fed the fish, checked the pH balance in their tanks, and waited on customers. It’s amazing how they always come in clumps. I wondered if someone in an MBA program had ever done a study on the phenomenon. It’s true, though. Your store can be empty for the entire day, then bam! Suddenly you got eight people in there, and everybody is in a rush, and then they start to walk out because you can’t wait on all of them at once.

  Naturally, George had to call during one of those periods. That’s another law of retailing: You never get personal calls during slow time. I offered to call him back, but he told me he was talking from a pay phone down at the Bronx County Courthouse.

  “Your cousin really messed up, huh?”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” George said. He sounded angry and sad. I could hear someone in the background yelling for him to get off the phone.

  “When are you coming back?”

  “As soon as I can.” Then he hung up, leaving me feeling bad that I hadn’t been able to talk longer.

  The feeling lingered as I worked. I was wondering what his family expected George to do, when Tim walked in. The heels on his cowboy boots made a clicking sound as he crossed the floor.

  “He still here?” He pointed to Mr. Bones.

  “I think we’re going to be stuck with him for awhile.”

  “One of my friends has a ferret cage he’s not using. I’ll bring it in later tonight.”

  “Great. I’m sure Mr. Bones will be most appreciative.”

  Tim grunted, took off his black leather jacket, and went into the back room to hang it up. It’s a good thing I wasn’t hungry for conversation, because with Tim I would have starved to death—although he does okay with the customers. When I left at five, he was trying to explain to a woman and her son why their pet corn snake wasn’t eating cooked chicken. Better him than me, I thought, as I whistled for Zsa Zsa. Since I’ve stopped smoking, my tolerance for stupidity has gone down to zero. Not that it was ever very high to begin with. On the way home, Zsa Zsa and I stopped at Burger King and got four hamburgers and two orders of fries. Zsa Zsa finished hers first and snagged some of my french fries when I wasn’t paying attention. She had begun to shred the takeout bag, as I pulled into the driveway. I took it away and got out of the cab.

  James was waiting at the door, meowing impatiently. For an outdoor cat, he’d certainly gotten soft in his old age. I let both of them in, glanced through the mail, and fed James half a can of cat food. Then I went upstairs and changed into a black turtleneck, dark blue jeans, and sneakers. As I passed the phone, I thought about calling Gerri Richmond and having a little chat, but decided to wait. I didn’t want to do anything that would make looking for Amy any more complicated than it already was. Both Zsa Zsa and James were asleep on the sofa when I came back down. I felt like joining them, but I called Manuel and told him I was coming by to get him instead.

  Manuel lived on the west side of town. The drive over took me about twenty minutes, and I spent it thinking about how odd it was that I should now be looking for the daughter I never knew Murphy had—a daughter I would have given anything to have had—and about how maybe everything in the universe does interconnect after all, a fact that argues for the existence of God. Then a nicotine fit hit me, saving me from my bout of metaphysical speculation, and I began thinking about how much I wanted a cigarette instead. I could buy a pack, smoke one, and throw the rest of them out. George wouldn’t know. I spotted a grocery store at the corner of Oswego and Clark and started slowing down. At the last minute, though, my conscience got the better of me, and I sped back up. I was still muttering when I turned onto Manuel’s street.

  Despite the cold, he was waiting for me in front of his mom’s place. Nestled in between two other nondescript houses, the yellow, run-down, two-story colonial always housed a changing parade of aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends. The porch sagged and the postage stamp-sized front yard was filled with discarded Big Wheels, jump ropes, and balls. Two large carved pumpkins signified the holiday to come.

  “It took you long enough,” he groused, as he got in and slammed the cab door shut. “I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

  “You could have waited inside.”

  He muttered something under his breath.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” He slumped down in his seat and began tapping his fingers on the door handle.

  I took another look at him. He was wearing an expression I recognized all too well. “Your father kicked you out again, didn’t he?”

  He corrected me angrily. “Fucking Walter isn’t my father.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don’t know why my mother ever married that jerk.” Manuel fingered the edge of his Windbreaker. It was too thin for a night like this, but then, he was never dressed for the weather. I haven’t been able to figure out whether he can’t afford to, or he’s too stubborn to. “I wish he’d stay drunk. He’s worse when he’s sober,” Manuel said angrily.

  “So where are you going to go?”

  “I’ll crash at Rabbit’s. I could use a change anyway.” The bravado he was trying for was betrayed by the slight trembling of his lower lip. To hide it, he turned and looked out the side window.

  I patted his shoulder, but he shrugged my hand off. I sighed and started up the car. I felt bad for Manuel, but there was nothing I could do. I tried talking to him about his stepfather before, but it hadn’t worked. In fact, it had just made things worse. Hoping to find some candy, he leaned over and opened up the glove compartment. There was no candy, but his face lit up when he saw the cell phone. He took it out.

  “This is new,” he observed.

  “I got it a month ago. It’s for emergencies. Now please put it back.”

  “Let me make one call.”

  “No. Now put it away.”

  “All right,” he grumped, returning it to its place.

  “So where are we going?” I asked, after a minute had gone by.

  It turned out we were heading for an industrial area over by the Carousel Mall. It was drizzling as we drove through the city. The streets were quiet. The streetlights reflected off the wet roads. Crepe paper skeletons and cardboard witches leeringly marked our progress. When we got to Wolf Street, Manuel indicated I should take a right. Halfway down the block, he told me to stop.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” I asked.

  The building I was parked in front of was a one-story brick structure. The sidewalk in front of it was cracked. The front door had been boarded up with plywood, as had the two front windows. A weathered sign hung above the door. I managed to make out the first word, “Syracuse,” but the next two were too faded to read.

  “Of course I’m sure,” Manuel told me. He sounded annoyed. He didn’t like having his expertise questioned.

  I questioned
it anyway. “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve seen her here.” Manuel started playing with the zipper of his Windbreaker. “She was at a party I went to.”

  “You went to a party here?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” he demanded.

  “Nothing, I guess.” I’d done stuff like this when I was his age, too. I turned off the ignition and pocketed the keys. “Who lives here, anyway?”

  Manuel shrugged. That and tugging up his pants seemed to be his favorite gestures. “Different people. Right now it’s two girls.”

  “Runaways?” I guessed.

  “They’re doing okay.” Manuel’s voice was defiant. “Anyway,” he added, when I didn’t say anything, “they got no other place to go.”

  I didn’t state the obvious. Instead, I surveyed the street. The buildings—some square, some rectangular—one-, two-, and three-story structures, housed a variety of small industrial companies and warehouses. In the background, a lit up Carousel Mall loomed off to the left like a deranged blue and white spaceship ready to take off into the evening sky. Silhouettes of oil storage tanks sat off to the right.

  “Nobody comes here at night,” Manuel said, voicing my thoughts.

  “Except for you guys.”

  “That’s right. Except for us. And we don’t count.”

  I took two sticks of gum out of my jacket, gave one to Manuel, and began unwrapping the other one. “So how do we get in?” I asked.

  Manuel grinned. He liked being the one in charge. “I’ll show you.” I wondered if he’d ever been a child.

  We got out of the car at almost the same time. The thud of the cab doors shutting echoed up and down the street. Manuel beckoned for me to follow him. We walked down the driveway. In the middle of the warehouse wall, someone had spray painted a smiley face with its tongue sticking out. Under it, they had written. “Going nowhere. Doing nothing.” Seemed right to me.

  I continued walking. The asphalt was littered with junk food wrappers and beer cans, plus the occasional brick that had fallen out of the wall. Manuel turned the corner, and I did the same. The back of the warehouse had been blacktopped over. A band of weed trees had grown up around the edges. Stray strips of newspaper and plastic hung from branches, fluttering in the wind like lost souls. I turned towards the building. A large pull-up accordion-pleated metal door marked the loading dock. A smaller door, now boarded up with plywood sheeting, sat a couple of feet away. The four concrete steps leading up to it looked safe enough, though once I got closer, I could see that the metal railing fastened to them was beginning to rust through.

  Manuel climbed the stairs quickly. I was right behind him. When we got to the smaller door, he bent slightly, put his hands on either side of the bottom half of the plywood, and pulled. The wood came away, revealing a door with a hole gashed into the middle of it. It looked as if someone had taken an axe to it.

  Manuel grinned. “Neat, huh? When you put the plywood back, you can’t see anything from the outside.”

  Then he stepped inside. I felt a little like Alice going into Wonderland, as I followed him through.

  Chapter 8

  I looked around. We were standing in a hallway that was maybe ten feet wide at the most. The place had that fusty odor places get when they’re not lived in or worked in for a long time. I rubbed my arms. It felt colder in here than it did outside, but at least it wasn’t pitch-black. A large metal industrial style lamp looped onto a pipe which ran across the ceiling and threw a ragged white light on the cement walls and concrete floor. It seemed as if we’d stepped into a different time, but whether it was feudal or postmodern, I couldn’t tell.

  I pointed to the lamp. “Who tapped into the power lines?”

  Manuel shook his head. “I don’t know. Come on.” He motioned for me to follow him down the hall. “We have to go this way.”

  I trailed my hand along the wall as I walked. It felt rough to the touch. We’d taken about five steps when two girls materialized in the corridor in front of us. They were both bundled up against the cold in long black skirts, heavy sweaters, lace up boots, and patched, oversized ski parkas.

  The smaller one shaded her eyes with her hand, trying to see into the gloom. “Lisa?” she asked. Her voice was childishly high. “Is that you?”

  “Sorry.”

  The two girls froze in alarm at the sound of my voice. In another moment, I was sure they’d be gone, vanishing into the bowels of the warehouse.

  Manuel stepped in front of me. “It’s okay,” he said, and he put up both hands, palms facing outward, to show he meant no harm.

  The bigger girl took a step back. “What do you want?”

  “Everything’s fine.” Manuel’s voice was low and soothing. “Don’t you remember me? I was here with Rabbit. At the party. The one last week,” he added, when he didn’t get a response. “I brought the Bud.”

  The smaller girl snapped her fingers and giggled. “Yeah. That’s right. You’re the one that got sick all over Jamal’s shoes and passed out.”

  Manuel screwed up his mouth in an expression of outrage. “Hey, I just shut my eyes for a couple of minutes.”

  The bigger girl put her hands on her hips. “Excuse me! You were out cold. Rabbit had to drag you out of here.” Her face had relaxed while she talking to Manuel, but then she glanced at me, and she started looking scared again. “What does she want?” she asked, indicating me with a nod of her head.

  Manuel stamped his feet. The cold must have been getting to him. I know it was getting to me. I could feel it seeping up through the floor, through the soles of my shoes, into the bottoms of my feet. I began to wish I’d put on heavier socks. “She just wants to ask you a few questions,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Amy Richmond,” I explained. “I’m looking for her. Manuel told me she might be here.”

  The girl made a minute adjustment to the pocket flap of her parka before answering. “Well Manuel is wrong. She was here, but she left.”

  “I see.” I took a couple of steps towards the girls, then stopped and waited for a reaction. When there was none, I took a few more. As I slowly drifted towards them, I realized I was doing the same kind of thing I did when I tried to get close to a stray cat. “And when was that?” I asked, when I was within eight feet.

  “A couple of days ago.”

  I nodded towards the corridor they were standing in front of. “So if I walk in there, I won’t see her?”

  “I just told you that,” the girl who was doing the talking replied.

  “Fine.” I made conciliatory noises. I didn’t want to antagonize my only source of information. “Did Amy happen to say where she was going?”

  The girls exchanged glances. Now that my eyes had a chance to adjust to the light, I could see them better. They both looked to be about thirteen. They had bleached their hair blonde and plastered their faces with makeup, trying, no doubt, to look older, but the puppy fat on their bodies and the high notes in their voices betrayed them. They should have been in their houses doing their homework, watching TV, and talking on the phone to their friends—not standing here answering my questions.

  “No,” the bigger one said. “She didn’t.”

  In a couple of years, the girl’s expertise would grow. But right now, she was still a bad liar.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” she insisted, when I politely expressed my disbelief. “She left with this guy.”

  I thought of the man who had been waiting for me outside my house. “Is his name Toon Town?”

  She gasped in amazement. Robin Light. Genius. “How’d you know?”

  “I had the pleasure of meeting him last night.”

  “He gives me the creeps.”

  “He gives me the creeps, too.”

  I was rewarded with the shadow of a smile. “He’s always bragging on how he’s always spying on people. How he knows everything we do.”

  “Nice.”

  “Amy told me her mother said if sh
e saw him around the house, she’d call the cops.”

  I didn’t say anything, even though I could sympathize with the sentiment. Instead I put my hands in my pockets and looked around. “So how long have you guys been here?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  I gave an involuntary shudder. “That’s a long time.”

  “It’s not so bad,” the bigger one said. “You get used to it.”

  “How do you stand the cold?”

  “We got blankets and camping stuff.”

  “And anyway, we’re waiting for someone,” the littler one said. “Justin’s taking us to Chicago.”

  “Melanie.” The bigger one’s voice was fierce. “Shut up.”

  I could see Melanie flinch.

  “How old is Justin?” I asked.

  “Old enough,” the one who was talking said. Her voice had taken on a defiant edge. “Not that it’s any of your business. If my parents don’t care, why should you?”

  “No reason at all,” I replied soothingly.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “No, I do.”

  The girl looked as if she were going to cry. Melanie patted her shoulder. Her friend gave her a wan smile. I wanted to hug her. The four of us stood in silence for a few seconds. Then I offered everyone a piece of gum and brought the subject back to Amy. “So what’s Amy’s story? How come she ran away?”

  This time the girl answered. She was relieved to talk about someone else. “She didn’t run away. Her father threw her out.”

  “Really?” Charlie had said Amy had taken off.

  “They got into a big fight.”

  “Over what?”

  “Stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  The girl shrugged. “She didn’t say.”

  “Do you know why she was sent to Cedar View?”

  “The usual. Smoking weed, skipping school, staying out late, talking back.”

  I remembered something else Charlie had said. “I heard Amy had a bad acid trip.”

  The girl stuck her chin out. “It wasn’t that bad. I’ve seen worse.”

  She probably had, too. She was probably a better judge of that kind of thing than I was. “Okay.” I wiggled my fingers to get the blood flowing. “Are you sure she didn’t say anything to indicate where she might be going?”