by John Lutz
Sanderson maintained his poker face and shrugged. “Well, it ain’t the safest neighborhood. I’m thinking about moving.”
Quinn stared at him. “Let’s talk about this out in the lobby.”
“Sure. But remember I’m working. We’ve gotta finish this up in another few hours.”
“This won’t take long.”
“That’s what they tell you when they hang you.”
Quinn guessed that was a joke and managed a smile. He remembered a woman who’d hanged herself in her bedroom years ago and hadn’t done a good job. It had taken her long, agonizing hours to die in a noose that was too loose, at the end of a rope that was too short. He thought that people who killed themselves had a responsibility to give it some thought first. They owed it to whoever was going to find the body.
The lobby was angular and carpeted in red. Though there was enough glass to qualify it as a greenhouse, the brightness was intensified by overhead track lighting. There was a low black sofa along one wall, but neither man moved to sit down. Quinn got what he wanted, a close look at Sanderson’s face in good light. There was no sign of scratches or gouges, or of makeup covering any. This wasn’t the man Weaver had clawed.
But that didn’t mean he hadn’t had something to do with the assault.
“We gotta have time to get those restrooms cleaned,” Sanderson said, pointing to a door with the international symbol of a woman in a skirt standing squarely as if she were in a snit.
“You’ll have it,” Quinn said. “Where were you between seven and ten last night?”
Sanderson rubbed his chin, making a show of trying to remember. “I don’t know if I could tell you exactly, but around seven-thirty or so I went out for a walk. I was gone quite a while.”
“What’s a while?”
“I dunno. Maybe two, three hours.”
“You’re quite a walker.”
“Yeah. It helps to get rid of stress.”
“What’s stressing you?”
“Same things stressing lots of people. Getting by, getting around, stretching a buck, holding on to a job because it’s not easy to get another one if you’ve spent time behind the walls.”
“Woman trouble?”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t mention woman trouble.”
“Right now, I ain’t got any. Not that I didn’t have lots of it once. But you know all about that.”
“Not all, maybe.”
Sanderson shrugged one shoulder beneath his gray uniform. “Well. ..”
“Anybody see you during this walk?”
“Sure. Hundreds, I suppose. You know New York. But I doubt if any of them would remember me.” Sanderson smiled. “I mean, I don’t remember any of them, do I?”
“Did you go in someplace and get a cup of coffee? Maybe stop to buy a newspaper or magazine?”
Sanderson took a long time to answer, putting on another show of searching his memory. “No, I didn’t stop or do anything that anyone might remember.”
“These walks you take, do you have any sort of destination when you set out?”
“Never. That’s part of why they relieve stress.”
“Do you ever pick somebody at random and follow them? Just for something to do?”
Sanderson appeared shocked by the conversational swerve. “Follow somebody? No, that’s nutty.”
Quinn smiled. “Yeah, I guess it is.” He held out his hand for Sanderson to shake. “You can get back to work. Thanks for your time.”
“Sure.” Sanderson shook the proffered hand.
But Quinn didn’t let go. He tightened his grip slowly and powerfully. Not as tight as he might. Just letting Sanderson know he could easily crush all his fingers. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with a woman getting beaten up last night, would you?”
Sanderson was too proud to show any sign that his hand hurt. He’d learned in prison not to reveal vulnerability. “It wasn’t that cop, Pearl, that got worked over, was it?”
“Why would you think so?”
“I don’t think so. I’m asking ’cause I don’t know. I kind of liked Pearl, is all. She was nice. I wouldn’t wanna think somebody beat the shit out of her.” He took a deep breath and let it out, but still didn’t change expression. “Say, you wouldn’t mind letting go of my hand, would you?”
Quinn acted surprised that he was still clasping Sanderson’s hand. “Oh, sorry.” He turned the hand loose.
Sanderson grinned. “I need that hand for work.”
“And, since you don’t have any woman trouble right now, not just for that.” Quinn winked and turned to leave.
“Thinking about Pearl,” Sanderson said.
Quinn felt a stab of anger and turned back around.
“You never answered me whether it was Pearl that got beat up last night,” Sanderson said.
“Somebody else,” Quinn said.
“Good. If something happened to Pearl, I’d wanna know myself who had a hand in it.”
Quinn stared at Sanderson, wondering if the little bastard was quicker off the mark than he seemed.
“I better get back to sweeping up,” Sanderson said.
Quinn nodded. “That’d be your best bet.”
As he left the YMCA, Quinn had a better understanding of why Weaver thought Sanderson might be worth watching.
However, Weaver was probably wrong. There was no doubt about Sanderson’s alibi for the night of Judith Blaney’s murder. And for that matter, no doubt that he wasn’t the man who assaulted Weaver. Sanderson was just another smalltime ex-con with a devious streak and a healthy skepticism, probably a fraction as smart as he saw himself.
Weaver had been right in her suspicions but wrong in her conclusion.
Exactly what Quinn had spent much of his life trying to avoid.
Still, Quinn had respect for intuitive reasoning, and Weaver had demonstrated that quality in other investigations.
It might be a good idea to put a tail on Sanderson for a while.
To make sure.
55
Verna Pound was past the point of waiting until no one was looking. She simply walked up to the wire trash receptacle, which was chained to a light pole at the corner, and began poking through its contents. She saw a roach skitter away from a white foam box. It was the small kind that wouldn’t accommodate much food, but well worth a look.
She scooted the roach farther away with the backs of her fingers, and opened the box.
It contained half a hamburger and another cockroach. This cockroach took its leave even before Verna could brush it away or whisk the chewed hamburger and bun from it.
She was grateful. Even if she found nothing more, this was enough food to hold her until breakfast tomorrow morning at the chapel.
She hunched her body around the foam container and limped away from the trash barrel. Her plan was to find a safe place to sit down, eat her meal along with the third-full bottle of wine she’d bought from a friend, and then walk across town to the shelter. She’d rest a few blocks from the shelter and see if she could beg a few more dollars. It was best to get a jump on her tomorrows, assuming she could hide the money safely from the thieves that came in the night. That was a problem at the shelters. That and sex. Why any of those sickos would want to force sex on the sorts of poor and battered women who slept in such places was beyond Verna’s comprehension. And it was absurd that any of the street women would want anything to do with the homeless and hapless-and bathless-men who bedded down at the shelters. Dirt and desperation were mood breakers. Not to mention hunger.
There were exceptions, of course. On her better days, Verna liked to think of herself as one. And perhaps inside his ragged clothes and dirt-smeared exterior was a man worth knowing. One who could see beyond Verna’s exterior to the beauty inside.
Some women-or maybe all women-never gave up hope.
Verna remembered the man who’d given her a five-dollar bill earlier that evening. That was the money that made possible the shelter bed. H
e seemed genuinely interested in her. His suit had been old and threadbare, but his scuffed shoes weren’t too worn. A guy maybe just beginning the long and steepening slide. He so obviously couldn’t afford to spare the five dollars he’d given her that Verna for a moment felt like returning it. For only a moment.
She’d watched him as he strode away. Viewed from behind, at a distance, he appeared as if he possessed some wealth. Not prosperous, but maybe a guy with a job.
She was thinking about the generous donor when a black sedan pulled over to the curb slightly ahead of where Verna was walking.
Her heart jumped. Police? I’m not staying in one place, panhandling. I’m not dressed so bad that I look like a street person. What the hell…
She decided the car had nothing to do with her.
But as she walked past it, picking up her pace and staring straight ahead, a man called her name.
She looked over and saw the generous guy standing by the car with the driver’s side door open.
“Verna Pound,” he said again. He was grinning.
“Do I know you?” Verna asked.
“Five dollars’ worth.”
Now she understood what he expected for his money. “I’m not selling,” Verna said. “Only borrowing.”
“I don’t expect to be repaid, Verna. Gifts aren’t meant to be repaid with something of more value. I only want to talk with you.”
Verna had been moving slowly forward, and was now about ten feet away from the man. “How do you even know my name?”
Instead of answering, he slammed the car door and cut across the sidewalk so he could be next to her, walking with her. Casually, he aimed his key fob behind him, and the big car’s lights flashed as its doors locked.
“You do remember me?”
“I remember the five dollars,” Verna said. She didn’t tell him about her cataracts. Now that he was close, the man was something of a blur to her.
He slowed his pace to hers, and they walked together for a while. They were approaching a small stone church next to a boarded-up brick building. There was a dark passageway in between the two buildings. Verna attempted to change her direction a few degrees so she’d be walking away from the dark passage, but the man from the big car didn’t budge and let her bump herself into him. Verna began to be afraid.
“How do you know who I am?” she asked.
“I saw your name in the paper, so I looked you up. Tried to find your address and found that you have no address.”
“What is this? Am I owed some money?”
“With what’s going on, maybe you could get a book contract.”
She gave him a dubious look. “Me? What, am I famous? Am I missing my fifteen minutes?”
“Don’t you read the papers or watch the news on television?”
“Hah! I haven’t read a newspaper in months, and if you see a television set trailing behind me, let me know. Not that I could afford the electric bill.”
“You really should read the newspapers,” the man said. “About the rapist who served time for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“What have I got to do with that?”
“You really don’t remember?”
“I’m lucky if I remember if I got socks on.” They walked on a few steps, more slowly. “Really, how’d you know where to find me?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
“In New York?”
“I’m a cop.” the man said. He flashed a badge inside a thin leather folder. “We can find anyone.”
“That didn’t look like a police badge.”
“It is, though.”
“I don’t understand this,” Verna said uneasily. She trusted nothing and no one, and especially she didn’t trust this man.
She’d seen his name when he flashed his shield, but hazily. She couldn’t recall it. If she remembered it later, maybe she’d check him out tomorrow, phone a precinct house and make sure he was actually a cop.
If he was the real thing, that still didn’t mean Verna would talk to him. Right now, cops represented authority, and authority was what had hammered Verna into her present circumstances.
The man grinned over at her. “Whew! If we don’t slow down I won’t have any breath left to ask my questions.”
“Questions about what?”
They were at the passageway between the cathedral and the adjacent building. “Come in here where it’s quiet and we’re alone together and I’ll tell you,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
He smiled. Shrugged.
That was when a police car came around the corner.
Miracles do happen.
Not that Verna was in any deep trouble; she could handle this guy.
But she couldn’t be sure.
She realized he was no longer gripping her arm.
When she turned to talk to him, he was gone.
Must have run down the dark passageway alongside the church. She stared into the dimness, but knew that with her eyes she couldn’t see him even if he was back there.
Well, she wasn’t going to follow him.
Verna held her head high and strolled past the oncoming police car. The cop who was driving glanced at her and the car slowed slightly. But it didn’t stop. That was fine with Verna. Maybe the guy who’d had her arm really was a plainclothes cop and the car was on its way to pick him up in the next block. That was how cops usually worked, in pairs.
Verna didn’t want to hang around and figure out any of this. All she’d been looking for was a place to sit down and eat the partial hamburger she’d found. This city was tough. It wouldn’t give her even that much.
Then she remembered the five dollars and figured she wasn’t so unlucky after all.
56
It required eyes that never quite closed.
Vitali and Mishkin had maintained a loose tail on Jock Sanderson for several days. Sanderson led a dull life. He left his apartment and went in to work about ten o’clock, wearing what looked like gray coveralls. Sometimes he wore regular casual clothes and carried the coveralls in a gym bag. Switching off the task of driving, one of the detectives followed Sanderson as he walked to his subway stop. The other simply drove there and waited, then left the parked car and picked up the tail. The car, and the first detective, would be waiting near the offices of Sweep ’Em Up when Sanderson arrived. Then they would tail the white van that transported Sanderson, along with other members of a cleanup crew, to whatever job they had for the night.
After that came boredom and a long night, with sleeping in shifts. Vitali and Mishkin had done this kind of work plenty of times and were used to it-inasmuch as anyone ever really got used to it. Both had learned the cops’ technique of almost sleeping, yet with part of the mind remaining alert and watchful. The watchfulness was accomplished through eyes that never quite closed.
By morning Vitali usually managed not to have been completely exasperated by Mishkin, and not to have injured Mishkin’s delicate feelings. Or Mishkin himself. As for Mishkin, he would seem unaffected except for being tired.
Then would come the daily routine in reverse, as Sanderson left work for home. Sometimes he’d leave directly from the job, and other times he’d return to Sweep ’Em Up in the white van and then go home from there. A normal, everyday, monotonous life. It was nothing like following a showgirl.
“This isn’t like following a showgirl,” Mishkin said, while watching the unmoving white van in his peripheral vision.
Beside him, Vitali said, “We’ve never followed a showgirl, Harold.”
“I’m imagining,” Mishkin said. “You must do that sometimes, Sal.”
“You’d be surprised, Harold, some of the things I imagine.”
Now and then Sanderson would eat out. Often he’d get takeout from a nearby deli. Sometimes he’d stop in at a small grocery store and stock up on simple food he could prepare in a microwave. He ate a lot of frozen pasta.
Vitali and Mishkin were patient. Varying their routine somewhat, they
took advantage of slow-moving traffic that made it easy to follow Sanderson in the airconditioned, unmarked car, even if he was on foot on his way to his subway stop. That way neither of them had to get out in the hot evening and walk. The traffic was so locked up that sometimes Sanderson, walking, would actually pull ahead of them for a while. They would catch up with him at intersections where he was waiting to cross. This kind of work required patience, as well as ways to counteract the boredom.
Vitali was driving the unmarked blue Ford tonight. He felt tired and irritable and by now doubted that Sanderson was anything but a poor ex-con who’d had his life turned upside down by a mistaken identity. He was on a treadmill of despair, and Vitali and Mishkin were on it right behind him.
Lounging next to Vitali, in the Ford’s passenger seat, Mishkin said, “I been thinking, Sal.” He continued watching the unsuspecting Sanderson through the windshield as he spoke. “Wouldn’t it be nice if this tail surprised us and panned out? Like maybe if Sanderson met a mysterious beautiful woman and they went someplace and talked like they had a big secret, maybe exchanged a brown package wrapped with string.”
“A MacGuffin,” Vitali said.
“Huh?”
“That’s what Hitchcock used to call packages like that, MacGuffins.”
“Who was MacGuffin?”
“Never mind, Harold.”
“What I’m talking about is a romantic assignation.”
“That isn’t going to happen, Harold.”
“It does in books.”
“We’re not in a book, Harold. Try to remember that.”
“How do you know we’re not, Sal?”
“Not what?”
“In a book.”
Vitali said nothing. Had his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel. His gaze was fixed straight ahead on Sanderson. He knew that as long as the tail lasted, he’d simply have to endure Mishkin’s conversational meandering.
“You know that famous athlete that got in trouble because he was addicted to sex?” Mishkin asked.
“Do I know him?
“Of him?”
“Yeah.”
Vitali came more alert. Sanderson had stopped walking and was looking into the show window of an electronics shop. Only a few seconds passed before he walked on. Boredom again descended on the car.