by Jane Haddam
He did understand the need to be seen as a hardworking person. All the really rich people these days prided themselves on how hard they worked and how little time they had to relax. Cary found this, quite frankly, bat crazy, but he put his time in and made himself looked as harassed with responsibilities as possible. It was a kind of status symbol. Today the weather was so awful and the moods of everybody at the office were so depressive, he just couldn’t stand it anymore. He came home early, and he had every intention of staying home until the night started and there was something serious to do.
Home was the thousand-square-foot penthouse on top of the best building he owned in the city. It had four bedrooms, seven bathrooms, its own movie theater and its own lap pool. It also had a game room with a pool table and a bar as long as the one in the Alder Palace VIP room. He had wanted to put in a bowling alley, but one of his people had convinced him that the damned thing would make too much noise.
It was two thirty in the afternoon when he let himself into his own living room. He sank himself into a large old-fashioned armchair and called the houseboy to ask for a glass of scotch. This apartment was his private retreat. Nobody was invited here. Cary made a mystery of that, a little eccentric quirk that was supposed to become part of his legend. What he really wanted was a place where he could drink blended whiskey without evoking the pitying stares of people who thought he ought to know better.
The whiskey came. He took a long drag of it, then got the remote for the television that occupied almost one entire wall of the room. At this time of day, there would be nothing on but soap operas, which he didn’t like. He still needed the noise. He hated being by himself with no sounds anywhere. He found a country music station and put that on. He had never understood what most people were attracted to in music, any kind of music, but at least it was noise.
No matter what anybody thought, Cary Alder wasn’t a complete idiot. He had figured out long ago that practically every phone he owned and every space he inhabited was likely to be bugged. It would be royally stupid if he wasn’t being bugged. The financial stuff alone ought to give some agency somewhere grounds to get a warrant. The issue became what to do after that.
There was a landline right next to him on a round occasional table. The table was thick and sturdy and nothing like an antique.
He dialed his number and waited. The line rang and rang until it was finally picked up.
“¿Sí?”
“It’s Cary Alder. I thought I’d check up on our projects.”
The man on the other end of the line coughed. When he started speaking again, there was no indication that he had ever said a single word in Spanish in his life.
“Our projects are the same as they were yesterday,” the man said. “Things don’t move as fast as you want them to.”
“Nothing ever does.”
“You need pills,” the man said. “Something to calm you down. Everything is going according to plan. Everything is on schedule. We’re not due to move into the next phase of any of this for at least another two weeks.”
“Two weeks? All of them are moving into the next phase in the next two weeks?”
“North Carolina,” the man said. “North Carolina moves into the next phase in the next two weeks. Georgia doesn’t move for at least another month. Mississippi isn’t going anywhere until May. We’ve had a few problems with permits and other government bullcrap in Mississippi.”
“Figures,” Cary said.
“People are people,” the man said. “You can’t blame them for being people. We’ll be all right.”
“Have you talked to Mr. Green Jeans?”
“Just last night. You had him all agitated about something or the other. He wasn’t being very coherent. I tried to call him back today, but I haven’t been able to get in touch.”
“Seriously? Not even on his cell phone?”
“Not nowhere no how,” the man said. “Don’t worry about it. He’s probably got a household emergency. I’ll track him down.”
Cary took another long pull of scotch. “I know you will. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I’ve been jumpy since I got up.”
“I think you ought to consider spending some money to save yourself some trouble,” the man said. “Sometimes it makes sense spending the cash for copper pipes instead of the crappy stuff. They don’t break as much. You don’t have to replace them as often.”
“They get ripped out of the basements by junkies,” Cary said. “You wouldn’t believe it. They go down into the basements and just take the pipes. You can get a ton of money for copper pipes if you know where to sell them. And they don’t do anything sane. They don’t turn off the water or anything like that. The next thing you know, the basements are waist-deep in water and somebody has to come out to get rid of it and it’s not worth it.”
“I can’t do anything about junkies,” the man said. “You have something you want from me? I’ve got a few things to do.”
“No,” Cary said. “I was just checking in.”
“Pills,” the man said. “When you get like this, you take a pill and go to bed. I’m going to get off this damned phone and get some work done.”
“Listen,” Cary said. “About North Carolina.”
“What about it?”
“You sure you have the mix right this time? We don’t want to make the same mistakes over and over again.”
“That was five years ago,” the man said. “You learn things from experience.”
“I know.”
“Just stop this,” the man said. “We’re on track. We’re well organized. We’ve got the right mix. Go play with yourself and leave me alone.”
The phone clicked decisively. The connection was broken. Cary finished his scotch in one long gulp.
He wondered if there really were people out there bugging his phones, and what they thought of conversations about Mr. Green Jeans.
FIVE
1
There are always problems in cases on attempted homicide. Actual homicide has its protocols and its rules of investigation. They apply in every case and vary only superficially. Attempted homicide can be a whole list of things with different circumstances and different possible outcomes. The worst of those circumstances is the one where everybody must wait. The woman in the garbage bag was not dead, but she might be, any minute now. If she died, one set of rules would pertain. If she didn’t, that would be something else again.
Gregor imposed on John Jackman’s secretary to have the enormous folder on Cary Alder sent home to Bennis. He didn’t want to be carrying it around while he was dealing with the regular detectives at work on the regular case. When he called Bennis, she had just come in from lunch and having re-collected Pickles from Tibor’s apartment. She had things to say about vomiting dogs and Tommy reading Dr. Seuss to Javier. Gregor couldn’t keep his mind on any of it.
He was a lot more focused when he got to Homicide and was introduced to the two detectives assigned to work the case. That was his first clue about the way the city was going to handle the woman in the garbage bag. They expected her to end up dead.
“I know it sounds ghoulish,” Detective Morabito said when he’d got Gregor settled in a chair near a desk and sent somebody out for coffee. “But we don’t see that there’s any other way we can look at it.”
“She’s an old lady,” Detective Horowitz said. “In her sixties, at least. And she was really beat up. That little trip she took did a job on her.”
“Do you mean somebody literally beat her up?” Gregor asked.
Morabito shook his head. “Best the doctors can tell, she seems to have been hit at the base of her skull with an old-fashioned cosh. You know, rocks or metal balls in a leather sack. Given her age and her general state of health, that should have been enough, but even if it wasn’t the garbage bag thing and falling out of the van should have finished her.”
“But she’s still alive,” Gregor said.
“She was ten minutes ago,” Horowitz s
aid. “I checked. She isn’t conscious, though.”
The coffee came. Gregor confirmed that it was just as awful as most police station coffee and put the cup down on the desk. He tried to remember if he’d met these two men last night, and couldn’t. He hadn’t been concentrating on the case last night.
“All right,” he said. “I take it you haven’t got an identification yet.”
Morabito shook his head. “We put the picture out, and we’ve been getting calls all day. And it’s weird. We’ve had plenty of calls from people we’re pretty sure actually recognize her. There’s been a whole cluster of them from around St. Catherine’s Church. That’s—”
“I know where that is,” Gregor said. “That’s how I ended up at the scene last night. My wife and I were at St. Catherine’s School with a couple of other people from our neighborhood. We—my wife and I—we were picking up a child we’re going to be fostering for the next few months.”
“That’s right. You were there,” Horowitz said. “That old guy and the boy were people you know? Were you there when the incident happened?”
“If you mean was I there to see the body fall out of the back of the van, no,” Gregor said. “I came later because the old guy, as you put it, called me in case he needed some help. At the time, the word was that the body falling out of the van was accidental. The driver wasn’t looking to dump her there.”
“The van skidded on the ice and spun around and hit a light pole,” Morabito said. “And the doors popped open and out she came. Yeah, that part we’re pretty sure was accidental.”
“So the woman herself seems to have been from the same neighborhood, or somewhere close?” Gregor asked.
“Probably,” Horowitz said. “But before you ask, no, that doesn’t help much. The nuns recognized her as somebody who comes to St. Catherine’s for Mass pretty much every day. But they’ve just seen her. They’ve never talked to her. We talked to the priest at St. Catherine’s, and he recognized her, too, but he doesn’t actually know her. He doesn’t know her name or where she lives.”
“He did say one thing,” Morabito said. “He said she had an Anglo accent. He said he could tell that much the few times she said hello to him after Mass.”
“The guy at the newsstand said the same thing,” Horowitz said. “She came every day to buy a paper. She had an Anglo accent.”
“And nobody else in the neighborhood recognized her?” Gregor asked. “Assuming she lives there, she must have had contact with somebody sometime. Even if she was homeless. Especially if she was homeless, she must have come in contact with cops on the beat at the least. And if she wasn’t homeless, she must have an apartment, and the apartment must have a super. She must have paid rent. There has to be someone who knows her name.”
“There has to be, but we may never hear about it,” Morabito said.
The two detectives exchanged glances. Horowitz shook his head.
“I don’t know how much you know about what it’s like out there,” Horowitz said, “but that’s a Spanish neighborhood. Latino. Whatever. After we went out and talked to the nuns and the priest this morning, we spent maybe an hour showing the picture around. We got absolutely nothing. Nobody admitted to recognizing her. Some of them indicated they didn’t speak English. A lot of them disappeared as soon as they saw us.”
“The cops and Child Protective Services,” Morabito said. “Most of these people want nothing to do with either. As far as they’re concerned, we’re all the Gestapo.”
“Child Protective Services?” Gregor asked.
“They take your children away,” Morabito said “And then at the base of it all, there’s ICE. That neighborhood is honeycombed with undocumented immigrants. Almost every household has a couple of people here illegally. Mixed households, ICE calls them.”
“Because some of the people in the family are here legally and some of them are not,” Horowitz said. “The apartment will be rented by somebody who is here legally and can get housing benefits, and then the rest of the family moves in. But they’ve got to be careful. They know the Feds know what they’re doing. Hell, everybody knows what they’re doing.”
Gregor considered the situation. “You said everybody who would talk to you says the woman had an Anglo accent. Does that mean she’s not Spanish?”
“Latina,” Morabito said reflexively. “We don’t know.”
“Do you think they would refuse to talk to you about someone who was not—Latina?”
“They don’t refuse to talk to us because of her,” Horowitz said. “They refuse to talk to us because of themselves. They don’t want to be involved with the police.”
“Wouldn’t it be odd,” Gregor asked them, “for her to be living in that neighborhood if she wasn’t Latina? I know that neighborhood. We aren’t talking about a polyglot of cultures. It’s a solidly Latino neighborhood. And it’s been that way for at least a couple of decades. Why would she be living there if she was some kind of Anglo?”
“We have no idea,” Horowitz said.
“We also have no idea what she was doing in a giant-sized leaf bag,” Morabito said. “We’re assuming somebody was trying to kill her, but then why not just kill her and dump the body in an alley? Where did they think they were taking her? What was the point?”
“If she woke up, we could maybe just ask her,” Morabito said. “But we’re not expecting her to wake up.”
They were interrupted by the appearance of a policewoman, tall and blond like she’d just emerged from a television cop show.
“Hey you two,” she said. “There’s a woman who’s just come in. You’d better listen to her.”
2
The woman that the uniformed policewoman brought in was middle-aged, stocky, red-haired, and uncomfortable. Her gray suit was too cheap, too shiny, and too tight. It was also shorter than she was comfortable with, although it was not short. She came in clutching a black purse large enough to be Captain America’s shield and tugging at the hem of her skirt.
“These are detectives Horowitz and Morabito,” the policewoman said, obviously trying to sound encouraging.
“This is Gregor Demarkian,” Horowitz said.
The middle-aged woman flushed. “Oh,” she said.
The policewoman brought over a chair and shooed her into it. “Maybe you should have had this meeting in the conference room,” she said. “The chairs in here are ridiculous.”
“Now, now,” Morabito said. “Miss … ah … Mrs.… ah—”
“Mrs. Denning,” the woman said, flushing again. “Patty Denning.”
“Mrs. Denning isn’t a suspect,” Morabito said. Then he paused. “Is she?”
The policewoman gave them all the fish-eye. “I’ll go arrange for some coffee,” she said. Then she turned on her heel and left.
Gregor turned his attention to Patty Denning. She was still clutching her pocketbook to her chest as if she were trying to protect herself from a stabbing, and her tugs at her skirt hem had become frantic.
“Now, Mrs. Denning,” Horowitz said, “if you could tell us—”
“I know who Gregor Demarkian is,” Patty Denning burst out. “I read about you in the papers. And that’s it. It’s the papers.”
“What’s it?” Gregor asked.
Patty Denning clutched and tugged, clutched and tugged. “There was a picture of a woman in the paper this morning. Except I didn’t see it in the real paper. I don’t have the time to read the real paper anymore, and it’s expensive, and I can read the same paper online while I’m at work. Not that Miss Agerwal is happy with that, I can tell you, but we all do it. And she can’t be out in the bullpen prowling around every minute of every day.”
“Maybe we ought to start from the beginning,” Horowitz suggested.
Now Patty Denning looked bewildered. “The beginning?”
“You saw the picture in the paper,” Horowitz said. “I take it that was the picture of the woman from the incident last night. The woman we can’t identify.”
“That’s right,” Patty Denning brightened. “And of course, I recognized her. We see her at least once a month, and sometimes we see her more often than that, because there’s always something, and I think she’s stopped talking to her super altogether, which drives Miss Agerwal out of her mind, but practically everything drives Miss Agerwal out of her mind—”
“Wait,” Horowitz said. “You said ‘we’ see her. Who’s ‘we’?”
“Oh.” This time Patty Denning took a deep, deep breath. “Oh, I see. Yes. My name is Patty Denning and I work as a clerk in the main offices of Alder Properties in the rental processing department. Alder Properties rents a lot of apartments. Hundreds of them. And the supers in those departments collect the rent checks and send them to us, and we process them. Record them, you know, put all the information in the computer. Keep track of who’s on time and who’s late and who’s not paying at all.”
“And the woman in the picture works there, too?” Morabito suggested.
Patty Denning shook her head. “No, she rents an apartment. I know I said the tenants give their checks to the supers, and almost all of them do, but they don’t have to do it that way. They can bring their checks right in to us and we’ll give them a receipt for them. We don’t encourage it, you know, because if everybody did that it would be chaos, but some people do. Miss Warkowski did. She did it every single month going on two years now.”
“Miss Warkowski is the name of the woman in the picture?” Gregor asked.
“Exactly,” Patty Denning said. “Marta Warkowski. She was having some trouble with her super, I don’t know what it was, but for some reason she didn’t trust him. She thought he wouldn’t hand in her rent check to us and then she’d get evicted. So, she brought in the check and we gave her a receipt.”
