table. The other seat was unoccupied. He was studying
the board, perhaps planning out moves in his head. I
crouched down at the other side of his table, cleared my
throat awkwardly.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Have a seat, young man,” he said, his mouth
breaking into a smile. He reached into his briefcase and
pulled out a cloth containing numerous chess pieces.
“Pick your poison. Speed chess? I’ve got a killer Danish
Gambit, so hold on to your hat.”
“I’m not looking for a game,” I said somewhat apolo
getically. “I was wondering if you might have seen this
man before.”
He looked at the picture, a blank expression on his
face. He said he’d never seen Gaines, and I believed
him.
I spent the rest of the day questioning every person
I could find in the park, until by the end people started
to recognize me as having pestered half the lot and they
began to move away before I even approached them.
One couple I asked twice within half an hour.
Nobody had seen Gaines. Nobody had noticed him.
He was a ghost in his own neighborhood. Or at least to
these people.
When people asked what I was looking for, I
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mumbled something about him having gone missing. If
they knew I was looking into a murder, they’d clam up
faster than a vegetarian at a barbecue.
The sun began to set. So far my efforts had yielded
nothing. I took a seat on a park bench. Desperation had
come and gone, and I was left holding a crumpled photo
of a man I barely knew, who’d lived a life seemingly
nobody had known. Several days ago none of this
mattered. Work was good. My relationship seemed to
finally be on stable ground. And now here I was, bother
ing strangers, hoping they might have happened, by some
ludicrous hope, to have seen someone other than my
father shoot a man in the back of the head. Or at least knew
more about Stephen than I did which was next to nothing.
I was searching for a needle in the East River, with
no clue which way the current was flowing.
I was about to give up, to try to think of a new angle
to attack from, when a shadow fell over me. I looked
up to see a young woman, late twenties or so, standing
in front of me. She was reed thin, one arm dangling limp
by her side while the other crossed her chest, holding
the opposite shoulder. Her hair was red and black,
mascara haphazardly applied. Perhaps twenty pounds
ago she’d been attractive, but now she was a walking,
painted skeleton. She was wearing a long-sleeved
sweater, but the fabric was dangling off her limbs. It
allowed me to see the bruising underneath. The purplish
marks on her skin immediately caught my attention. My
pulse sped up. Her lip trembled. I didn’t have to show
her the newspaper clipping. I knew what she was going
to say even before she opened her mouth.
“I knew Stephen.”
13
A cup of steaming tea was set in front of me. It smelled
like mint. She offered me milk, which I politely
declined. I watched her sit down, a cup of the same at
her lips. She’d poured both from the same kettle, so I
didn’t have to worry about being poisoned. I began to
think about how much more paranoid I’d become over
the years.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. I brew three pots a day.”
I nodded, took a look around.
This woman, Rose Keller, had taken me up to her
apartment after I told her who I was and what I was
doing. She seemed apprehensive, but once convinced of
my authenticity she was more than happy to help.
She lived in a studio apartment at the top of a fourstory walk-up on Avenue B and Twelfth Street. The
floor was covered with gum wrappers, the walls deco
rated with posters of vintage album covers and artsy
photographs, usually of frighteningly skinny women
shaded in odd pastel light. The room smelled like patch
ouli and cinnamon. Our tea rested on what appeared to
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be an antique trunk, covered in customs stickers from
every corner of the earth. Portugal, Greenland, Syndey,
Prague, the Sudan. This woman didn’t look like she
traveled much. Odds were she’d bought the pieces,
stickers already applied.
The bed was unmade, and I noticed a large box
sticking out from underneath. She saw me looking at it,
said, “Clothes. I keep meaning to donate them.”
She was lying, but I wasn’t here to judge.
“So how did you know Stephen?” I asked.
“We used to…” She looked away from me. Then she
pulled a lighter from her sock, took a bent cigarette
from a drawer. “You mind if I smoke?”
“Go right ahead.”
She took out a glass ashtray and set it on the table.
It was crusted with old butts and ash. Flicking the
lighter, she lit the cig and took a long puff, holding it
aloft between two fingers.
“We used to get high together,” she said.
“Used to?” I asked.
“I met him when I moved to the city eight years ago.
Wanted to be on Broadway, you know? All that kicking
and dancing. I was voted ‘most likely to succeed’in high
school. Starred in all the drama shit. Figured I’d come
here and show those Rockette girls how things are really
done.”
“And then?”
“It’s a tough gig,” she said like a woman who’d given
up the dream long ago and had come to peace with it.
“Too tall. Too fat. Too short. Nose too big. Tits too small.
There’s always an excuse. So I started waitressing in
Midtown, cool little Irish pub. Some of the actors used
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to go there for a drink after the shows. Then I’d come
back here, get high and crash. That’s how I met
Stephen.”
“How exactly did you meet him?”
“Funny story,” she said, taking another long drag. “I
used to call this guy named Vinnie when my stash
needed re-upping. Well, his name wasn’t actually
Vinnie. It was kind of a global pseudonym that all the
runners used, they’d all call themselves Vinnie. There
were probably a dozen different Vinnies working at any
given time, covering different parts of the city. So one
day I’m outside on the stoop waiting, and another guy
kind of ambles up and just stands around. I can tell from
the way he’s walking, kind of looking at the street, side
to side, he was definitely a user. So I said hi. He said hi
back. Vinnie rolls up half an hour later, this greaser
wearing a hat turned sideways, couldn’t have been a day
over fifteen, and fills us both up. And since it’s always
more fun to see those bright lights with company, we
went back to his place.”
> Rose’s eyes flickered to the walls, then back to the
table. There was sorrow and pain in her eyes that hadn’t
been there a minute ago. She was trying to stay cool,
but I could tell she’d cared about Stephen.
“It was kind of funny, because Stephen and Vinnie
had this little, I don’t know, chat. Friendly, like two
buds. I figured Stephen had used this guy before. You
know how sometimes you order pizza so often, the
delivery guy kind of becomes your pal? At first it’s all
tips and friendly hi’s but then you’re talking about the
weather. One pizza guy actually asked me out once.
That’s when I knew I needed to learn how to cook.”
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“How long did you know Stephen?” I asked.
Rose sniffed, tapped out her cigarette until it stopped
smoking. Then she placed it in the ashtray amidst a
graveyard of used butts. She stared at them for a
moment, like a woman who’d been trying for years to
quit and realized just how addicted she was.
“Just about seven years.”
“Were you two close?”
“Depends on when you mean,” she said. Her voice
had become a little more abrasive. She had feelings for
Stephen, but there had been some bad times, too. I
imagined that when two junkies got together it wasn’t
exactly Ozzie and Harriet. If a relationship between
two such people could be thought of as “tumultuous,”
it was probably the best one could hope for. I’d had
enough relationships that were able to find trouble on
their own without the uncertainty caused by stimulants
and hallucinogenic substances.
“Did you date?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t get
offended at my prying.
“Again,” she said bitterly, “depends on when you’re
talking about.”
“Were you seeing each other when Stephen got
killed?”
“Hell, no,” she said irritably. “See, thing is, after a
while you get tired of the life. It’s one thing to be irre
sponsible and screwing around in your twenties. I mean,
everyone does it. Most folks don’t settle down by
twenty-five and spend time worrying about a mortgage
and a 401k. I didn’t, and neither did Stephen. But then
you hit thirty, and you’re still renting a studio smaller
than a shoe box, and guys like Vinnie stay the same age
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because whoever the dude is who supplies them just
keeps hiring high-school kids. Funny. I must have had
half a dozen dealers all named Vinnie, all under the age
of twenty-one. You know how stupid you feel when
you’re thirty and some kid is selling to you, and you
know he’s still in high school and probably makes more
money than you?”
“So you were looking to go clean,” I said.
“Have been for a year now,” Rose said. She stood up,
picked up the ashtray and brought it into the kitchen
where she tapped out the contents into a trash bin. She
came back, put the tray back into a drawer like it had
never been taken out. “Trying, at least. The hooks are
a lot easier to dig in than they are to pull out.”
“What about Stephen?”
Rose sighed, leaned back in her chair. A wistfulness
crossed her face. “I thought he was trying to quit. He
seemed like he was. See, I never really thought Stephen
had that serious a problem. Just recreational crap. I mean,
everyone smokes a bit. Shoots up a bit. It’s all about
keeping it under control. I did that, and then I quit. Stephen
never quit. And in case you haven’t noticed, addicts never
stay even keel. They either get better or they get worse.”
“And Stephen got worse.”
“Like cancer,” she said.
I looked again at the skin under Rose’s shirt. I could
see the bruises weren’t track lines, but destroyed veins.
Dark blues and black, yellow skin surrounding them.
Perhaps even an infection gone untreated. Whether drug
addiction started off as a disease I didn’t know, but sure
as hell once those hooks dug in, the virus swam around
in your system until it ate you from the inside.
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“What do you do for a living, Rose? I mean, all those
drugs couldn’t be cheap.”
“Graphic designer,” she said proudly. “I make eighty
grand a year.”
She noticed how impressed I was.
“And your employer, they…”
“Never knew a thing. Been working for a television
studio doing Web site design for six years. They figure
the geeks are wired differently than everyone else, and
that we were all born in the same freaky nursery. So you
come in with your hair messed up smelling like stale
cigarettes and beer, they figure you were up late
‘hacking.’ Most people can’t differentiate between a
designer and a programmer. As long as you know html,
you’re golden. As if they even knew what the letters
stand for.”
“Stephen,” I said. “What did he do?”
The moment I said it I felt a sadness. The more I
learned about Stephen Gaines the closer I got to him.
The more I despised having never known this man at
all.
“I know he tried to write for a while. He wanted to
do culture reporting, trend pieces…” Rose’s voice
trailed off.
“Did he get any published?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not sure he ever really tried. He
just talked about it.”
“So how did he make a living?”
“You know,” she said, furrowing her brow, “I’m not
really sure. But at some point he stopped talking about
writing altogether. The drugs got a hold of him worse
than ever. It was all he could do to get up in the morning,
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and he looked like death when he did. I barely saw him
after that.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.
“A week ago,” Rose said. She sighed again, but this
time a sob cracked the noise. Her eyes began to water.
As hard as this was for me, I didn’t know Stephen at
all. This woman had lost a loved one. A lover.
“He said he was going to get clean,” she said, the
cracks in her voice becoming more evident. “He
promised me. He said he was going to get help. Rehab.
We spoke on the phone. He swore on his mother. Then
he stopped returning my calls.”
Rehab, I thought. My father said Helen Gaines was
looking for money to help Stephen get help. That part
sounded like it was true. But unfortunately all it did in
the eyes of a prosecutor was likely bolster my father’s
motive in Stephen’s murder.
“Did you know Helen at all?” I asked.
Rose nodded. “They lived together. She was dirt
poor, and Stephen seemed to make enough money to
pay rent and keep food on the table. I met her maybe
/> half a dozen times. Kind of quiet, like she was scared
of life. Made good coffee, but never drank it with you,
if you get my meaning.”
“I got it,” I said. “You wouldn’t by any chance
happen to have her contact information, would you?”
“I don’t have a phone number or e-mail or anything
like that. But when Stephen used to write, he’d always
go to this cabin in the Adirondacks up by Blue
Mountain Lake. I think Helen’s parents left it to her or
something. He went up there to work, and Helen usually
went with him. She was quiet enough, and it’s not like
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she had anyone else. Not exactly the kind of woman
who liked to be alone.”
The Adirondacks were about a four-and-a-half-hour
drive northwest of the city. I’d never been up there, but
knew it was a popular spot for camping, hiking and just
getting away from the world for a while.
Something a mother might do if her only son was
murdered.
“Rose,” I said, “would you mind giving me that
address?”
14
We finished the car rental paperwork by noon, then
loaded the vehicle up with coffee, snacks and Amanda’s
iPod. I fought the good fight to bring mine, but lost
despite a valiant effort. To be honest, it wasn’t much of
a fight since I learned early in our relationship that
when it came to playing music, Amanda had the one and
only vote. The only thing I could do was learn to love
Fleetwood Mac and early Britney Spears. Though I did
worry that listening to “Rumors” right after “Oops!…
I Did It Again” might cause my head to distend like
when you poured cold water on hot metal.
It was Saturday. Hopefully we wouldn’t hit much
traffic, the rest of the city either sleeping off hangovers
or snacking on fried dough with powdered sugar at a
street fair.
Luckily the car had an iPod dock built in. Amanda
hooked it up and began scrolling through songs. I
started the engine and pulled into traffic and headed
toward the George Washington Bridge.
“You know, isn’t there some kind of rule stating that
whoever drives gets to choose the music?”
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“I think that law was considered outdated in the
1970s. Now the female in the car gets to choose the
tunes.”
“What if there’s more than one woman in the car?”
I asked.
“Then it goes to the most dominant female,” she said
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