She met my scrutiny and I knew she wasn’t lying. It would have explained so much about this family.
“Is that all?” she asked. Her voice had remained thin, as I’d always heard it, throughout our short conversations, but this question took me off guard. Her meaning wasn’t clear. The Company was present. We would all mull over today’s events separately and together and something would come of it later.
“I’m not giving up. Is that what you want to know?”
All she did was blink, as if we had established a code. One blink for yes. Two for no. She gave me one blink. “I’m not giving up,” I repeated and left her sitting there stroking the Jack Russell who had jumped up on the bed beside her.
I passed Miriam’s room. She was quiet, lying on her side. I suspected that Claudia had this time given her one of the real sleeping pills. I heard movie music coming from the family room and the blender churning in the kitchen. I let myself out.
She’s not lying, said Hester as I pushed the button for the elevator.
The doors opened, and Olive stepped through. “She’s not telling the truth either.”
Chapter 14
Cabs are just small dark spaces on wheels, and elevators, small spaces on cables—worse. But subway cars and buses are different. For one thing,they usually contain more people.Safety in numbers. More importantly, they are bigger. Size matters.
So I went back down into the subway and took the express. I stepped into the first car. The only passengers were five young men in taxicab-yellow T-shirts emblazoned with black letters proclaiming them Jews for Jesus. Each had a canvas shoulder bag full of taxicab-yellow pamphlets. As I passed by them to get to the rear of the car, one of them offered me a brochure. I declined. The Jewish purveyor of Christ just smiled and tucked the pamphlet back in his bag. They were a happy bunch, full of high purpose, camaraderie and relentless certitude.
At Times Square I had to change trains, which meant walking through the underground station. This doesn’t prompt a shift because it’s fairly wide open and brightly lit, but beneath Times Square it is hard for me to think in the din of a constantly moving human population, machinery, trains passing through from all directions, and commerce; for here are sellers of wares and gizmos that move and sparkle for late commuters realizing at the last moment they’ve forgotten a birthday or anniversary, and here they’ll find a serious gift for a child or an amusing token for an adult. Here are shoe shiners, peddlers, tiny places to leave a silent watch and pick it up on your next pass through, ticking, and people asking for money—they’re not supposed to. There’s a law against panhandling in the subways. People give them money anyway—they’re not supposed to, but they do. Get your shoes shined,your watches repaired and find entertainment. Usually it’s a band or single musician with a violin, a guitar or battered marimba. Often it’s an Ecuadorian combo with flutes, little drums, and yes, gourds. Today the crowd was watching a contortionist perform on a grubby plastic sheet spread over the cement floor. Rap music brayed from a boom box. He wore a skin tight, silver-and-black leotard that covered him like paint from neck to wrists to ankles. A skintight hood, like a diver’s wet suit, blackened his head and neck. His white mask, its features merely sketched, suggested an Asian face. I thought Kabuki without really knowing why, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything Kabuki. A couple people tossed coins onto the plastic sheet. His continuous movement was crab-like, spider-like, comprised of slow acrobatics and yoga postures. While his flexibility, strength and skill were impressive, his performance as a whole was disturbing. Nor were his movements in sync with any rhythm generated from the boom box.
Skirting the crowd, I made my way to the stairs leading down to the R train. The platform was nearly empty. The relative quiet enabled me to try to make sense of the little scene Claudia had played with me in the bedroom. So brief. So straightforward. She hadn’t been offended by my question. Her answer was definite, without hesitation. What was wrong? I heard a small creech creech from below and saw a rat scuttle across the track and disappear into darkness on the other side. The animal was about a foot long, not counting the tail, and the same color as greasy cement.
I felt Olive shudder. Why can’t they get rid of those things?
Poor thing, said Hester.
It needs a bullet in its brain.
You have no compassion. They can’t help it if they live in filth and squalor. Who created filth and squalor? Not them. Am I right?
I’m in no mood for your bleeding heart. Rats! Snakes. That creepy spider person. Good God what next? Please don’t say a giant cockroach. I want off this case, Isadora. Right now. We’re headed for trouble. I feel it. This rat. That snake. They can’t be good omens.
Very Kafka.
Lance?
I’m afraid I agree with Olive, Isadora.
Lance rarely participated in Company discussions, or arguments. I think we should give the money back—
Not all of it! We did put in two days!
All right. Give some of the money back and move on before something really bad happens.
“Something bad has already happened. Two kids are missing.”
Before something bad happens to us, Hester wailed.
“That’s already happened, too. I’m not quitting. End of this discussion.”
Saved by the train. I boarded hoping that tomorrow morning I wouldn’t find a painting of rats and spiders.
Ray had taught me, when things got too complicated inside my head, to concentrate on the outside. I sat down and observed my fellow midday travelers.
New Yorkers are readers. In any subway car, on any bus, you will find bestsellers and classics, and all the major genres including sci fi, romance, mystery and magazines ranging from the New Yorker to People. The riders who aren’t reading usually have their eyes closed. I can’t do either. I stay alert.
At Thirty-fourth Street, a heavyset African-American woman with no neck got on, squeezing in with a knot of people all trying to push into the car before the door closed. She was puffing like she had had to run to catch the train. “I feel like I been power bombed by Battista!” She panted to all those around her, “I’m so sorry. So very sorry,” apologizing for squeezing her ample person into the crowd. “Yes, yes,” she answered some query in her head. “Yes, yes, yes,” she repeated. No one paid her any attention.
At Twenty-eighth Street, the doors opened and YesYes woman got off and three men got on and immediately began to sing gospel in perfect three-part harmony, This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine with a heavy beat, provided by one of them pounding the floor with his cane.
Well, the Jews and the Blacks are all coming out for Jesus.
Olive!
What?
I got out at Twenty-third Street, tuning out Hester and Olive’s argument over political correctness and rat rights.
The Gift Building was full of showrooms displaying samples of high-end tsotchkes where buyers from department stores and mom-and-pop shops all over the country came to place orders for this year’s fashion themes and colors as well as the centuries-old classics. There were no cheap souvenirs here. They were in the building across the street. Here were Waterford, Lennox and Lladró—all the best brands of things imported and domestic that no one needed but, if you had the money, you wanted.
The lobby was spacious, like a courtyard for the showrooms on the main floor, whose windows looked out to the street, and whose inside walls and double doors were glass, the better to display their wares to all who passed by or through the building.
I had no buyer’s, vendor’s or police badge. I had to trust the Burkes’ promise to help in the investigation and that they would let me upstairs. The woman at the desk eyed me sharply. The likes of me didn’t usually seek entrance to the holy halls of high-end wholesale. In her navy blue blazer and starched white blouse, her minimalist black ribbon tie, she might have been a prison matron. I stated my request and without taking her eyes off me, she picked up the phone, dial
ed a number. “This is the registration desk. A…” She looked at me again. I gave my name. “…Ms. Shiloh,” she said into the receiver, “is here to see Mr. Burke.” Spencer or Manfred? she asked me. I said either one, which she repeated into the receiver. After a moment, she said, “Thank you,” and hung up. Without another look in my direction, she typed into a small machine that thrust out a label like a rude tongue. She tore it off and handed it to me. It said in big red letters: Visitor and today’s date. I pulled off the waxed paper backing and stuck the label on my jacket. “Excuse me, what room are they in?”
She scrolled down her computer screen. “Fifth floor. Room five twenty-four. Elevators in the back.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She never cracked a smile. She didn’t like anybody who wasn’t here to spend money. Or maybe she didn’t like anybody.
She thinks the same thing about you, kiddo, said Olive.
I know.
As we passed the windows of the main floor showrooms, Hester slipped into her acquisitive mode, greedy for everything she saw. A quivering mass of I WANT.
Olive, on the other hand, while a connoisseur of art, did not much care for stuff, even expensive stuff. Probably made by slave labor in some third-world country to provide doodads for the maids of people with too much money to dust.
“Thank you for your politically correct insights. Now pipe down.”
Another matron in a matching blazer, blouse and bow tie, supervised the bank of elevators, making sure that nobody got on without a badge. She smiled at mine, revealing a mouth full of braces. I didn’t come to again till I was walking down the halls of the fifth floor. Who had ridden the elevator? Silence from the Company.They were playing games now.Contract negotiations were in order. It had probably been Cootie, but how he had blocked me out completely, I didn’t know. He was annoying and often whiney, but he was no saboteur. Hester? No answer. I felt a little nauseous and walked the halls looking for 524.
I was walking through what seemed like a warren of showrooms, some spacious, and some just overstuffed closets, but all spilling over with samples. Glass windows, glass shelves, glass everywhere. Shiny tiled floors.
Fashion, form, precious little function. Unlike Olive, I didn’t think it was all bad. An object was endowed, first by the giver and then by the receiver, with meaning. On a night table, one of these things would be dusted with care by someone remembering the giver or the occasion, or the vacation where she found it in that quaint little cottage store by the sea where it smelled of fish and wild roses, and she would remember the morning she ate fruit and pancakes and watched seagulls glide over the kelp beds. I had a dust catcher that reminded me of Ray and Maria and my first Christmas out of the asylum. I spent Christmas Eve in their home. The gift they gave me was the first I ever got and one of the first things I could say I ever owned. A carousel horse, rich in detail, colorful, and very well made, surprisingly heavy for its size. It doesn’t do anything, but I very much like looking at it and holding it. I even enjoy dusting it.
Chapter 15
The tableware, barware and textiles of the Manfred line were displayed festively on shelves and at set tables, with dishes and drinkware in everything from china and crystal to plastic and paper. Elegance to whimsy—Manfred was your man for formal dining, picnics, or pool and patio parties. The Burkes’ showroom was filled with light and every halogen was focused on a shelf or a table as if each were a ministage. Spencer was at a small desk at the rear of the showroom, a phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear, talking and scribbling on a yellow pad. He smiled at me and gave me a short wave. He was wearing, if not the same blue suit I had first seen him in, one just like it. I imagined his closet full of blue suits, white shirts and black bow ties. The official uniform of the bean counter.
A twenty-something woman rose to meet me from behind a desk just inside the door. Her blond hair glistened under the lights, her toothsome, showgirl smile—practiced but genuine enough—remained, even as the welcome drained from her eyes when they met mine.
“Hi,” she said, smiling. She would give Hester a run for her money. “You must be Ms. Shiloh.”
“Just Shiloh.”
“I’m Kim. Spencer is on the phone with our showroom in LA. He might be awhile, but he said to make you comfortable. Can I get you some coffee or tea or a soda?”
Her long nails were painted to match her lipstick, which matched the pink flowers splashed across her silk blouse. Her high heels were the same beige as her suit. Her makeup was heavy but expertly applied. She went with the décor. Mixed in with the merchandise were flowers. Cut flowers on the tables, flowering plants in large ornate pots strategically placed to complement color schemes while not getting in the way of a display.
I declined her offer of refreshment, though I could hear Cootie whining faintly for a Coke. “Can I ask you some questions?”
Her smile flickered, but she rallied. “Sure.” She returned to her chair behind the desk and offered me a chair next to it. I declined that as well. “Do you like your job? He can’t hear us and I’m standing in front of you, so he can’t see what you’re saying even if he’s a lip reader, which I suspect he’s not.”
She had to rally again, but she managed. “I do like my job. I mean it’s better here than in a gray office cubicle all day. I don’t think I could do that.”
“Do you like working for the Burkes?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“They’re nice. Interesting. I get to meet people from all over the country. All over the world sometimes. It’s fun. Hectic during shows, but I don’t mind.”
“How many computers in the showroom?”
“Mine.” She indicated the machine that occupied the corner of her desk. “And the one in the office back there. Spencer uses that one. The police took them both, you know.”
I did know.
“For two days,” she added.
I knew that too. They had found nothing even remotely unsavory. The few passwords required for some business and shopping sites, Spencer had given up freely. There seemed to be no attempt to hide anything or make anything inaccessible to the wrong people, and nothing of any consequence had been erased. All financial and sales data was stored on a large computer in the main business office in New Jersey. The police had printed out lists of the toys, clothes and books he had ordered, all of which Cootie had seen in the file. Spencer was fond of books about business, conservative politics and spy novels. Some of the toys I had seen in the bedroom of the Keating boys.
“It sure makes you stop and think—how much we depend on computers,doesn’t it,when they’regone?Thepolicehadthem for only a couple days and we could hardly do anything here.”
“Does Manfred use them?” The only prints found on either computer belonged to Spencer, Kim and the cleaning lady, who came in after hours. They had interviewed her and come up with nothing except pleas not to tell the Burkes that she was Web surfing on their time.
Kim laughed. “He won’t touch a computer. Not even a calculator. It’s a point of pride with him. Never touched a computer and never will. The police looked at everything. They took all our cell phones, too, and I think they got calling records for all our phones. It’s a good thing I only ever call my mother and my boyfriend.” She laughed again, nervously this time.
I knew that the police had searched and didn’t find any hidden phones or laptops. They found nothing at all. That did not mean there was nothing to find. In the same way I needed to see the playground for myself and ask the questions myself, I needed to see, at least, Spencer’s computer. “I’ll just be back there for awhile,” I said.
“Okay, let me know if you need anything.” The phone rang before she could make any further offers and she picked it up. “Manfred Designs. Kim speaking.”
The office in the back of the showroom was not much more than a walk-in closet. The large window overlooking Madison Park made it bearable. Against one wall, a counter placed over two short fi
ling cabinets served as the desk for the computer, a phone, a Rolodex, and some papers, pens and order forms. On the opposite wall, on a built-in shelf, rested a small fax machine and a printer. Between them were two office chairs. I rolled one directly in front of the monitor and sat down.
The computer was on to its screensaver, Manfred’s ornate signature—the company logo.I checked the Burkes’ e-mails first, knowing they had been scoured thoroughly. Nothing of interest had been found there. I didn’t find anything either. I opened the Web browser and the list of Favorites. Spencer had bookmarked news sites and the online versions of trade publications, national directories of stores and buyers, again everything aboveboard just as documented in the police file. Still, I opened each one and printed out the home pages to study later. Among them I found a flower and garden site. Someone was apparently fond of flowers. I suspected Manfred. But he didn’t touch the computer so why would he have an online flower site? And it was Spencer who had given Anna the playsuit with the embroidered violet.
“Kim? Whose idea is it to have the flower pots?”
She rolled her chair back so she had a sight line into the office. “Spencer. Flowers are kind of a hobby with him. Manfred approves as long as they don’t clash with his colorways.”
“Wouldn’t think Spencer has time to take care of them.”
“He doesn’t. We have a plant service come in twice a week. They’re pretty, aren’t they?”
I started entering all the letters of the alphabet in the search box. Every site starting with the letter entered that had been accessed appeared in a drop-down box. They were mostly the same sites I had already opened from the bookmarked list. Other sites had to do with his travel—hotels, information and maps of the cities and vacation spots. I printed them all out. Spencer continued his phone conversation.
“Kim?”
She rolled her chair back again and smiled.
Command of Silence Page 12
