Night Secrets

by Thomas H. Cook

  The judge closed the file slowly, then stared directly at the woman’s eyes. “Do you still refuse to give your name, miss?” she asked.

  The woman did not move.

  “You realize that your attitude will have no effect on our competence to proceed,” the judge told her.

  The woman said nothing.

  The judge cast a final quick glance in her direction, then went on with the arraignment. “You will be listed as a Jane Doe Defendant until your true identity can be determined. You are charged with a violation of the New York Penal Law PL 125.40. That is, murder in the first degree. How do you plead?”

  The woman did not answer, but Frank could see her shoulders lift slightly, her head rise as she looked squarely at the judge.

  “You choose not to plead?” the judge asked.

  The woman did not reply.

  “Very well, then,” the judge went on matter-of-factly. “Let a plea of ‘Not Guilty’ be entered on behalf of defendant number 778224, and I assign Mr. Andrew Deegan as her attorney of record.” The judge looked out over the room. “Mr. Deegan, are you here?”

  “I’m here, Your Honor.”

  Frank turned and saw a short, somewhat stocky black man surge forward to the bench and take a stack of papers from the judge.

  “For the record,” the judge said, writing it down as she spoke, “let’s show that Defendant Number 778224 will have assigned to her as her court-appointed attorney of record Mr. Andrew Deegan of the firm of Canton, Harrison and Meyer, 260 Broadway, New York City.”

  Deegan began shuffling through the papers. “Should we discuss bail, Your Honor?” he asked absently.

  The judge looked at him somewhat scoldingly. “I can’t discuss bail until I have an identity, Mr. Deegan,” she said. “How can I assess the likelihood of appearance if I have no idea who she is or her resources or anything else for that matter?”

  Deegan nodded. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “The amount of bail remains pending,” the judge said loudly. She looked up, stared directly at the woman. “Do you have anything to say, miss?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  The judge turned to Deegan. “I suggest you have a long talk with your client, counselor. She has been charged with a very serious crime.”

  “May I have a word with her before she’s remanded, Your Honor?” Deegan asked immediately.

  “Yes, all right,” the judge told him. “Use the conference room behind chambers.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  The judge banged the gavel. “Next case.”

  For a moment, the woman remained absolutely still. Then Deegan took her arm and tugged it slightly. She followed him immediately, moving silently to the right until the two of them finally disappeared behind two double doors at the rear comer of the room.

  Frank got to his feet and walked out into the outer corridor. For a long time, he stood beneath its long fluorescent lights, watching silently as the dawn parade passed by. Across the way, he could see Upjohn making his final pitch to the man who’d sat on the bench in front of him. His fangs were sunk deep now, his nose already twitching with the scent of such a large, slow-moving prey.

  They’d both moved down the corridor, Upjohn’s arm draped protectively over the other man’s shoulder, by the time Deegan came rushing through the doors of the courtroom. He wore a shiny blue suit, papers sprouting in all directions from its various pockets, and carried a battered briefcase, which he swung in a wide arc as he hustled forward.

  He was already in the crowded elevator before Frank caught up to him.

  “My name’s Clemons,” he said, flashing his official PI identification.

  Deegan barely glanced at it as he punched the first-floor button. “Something on your mind?”

  “I was wondering what you’d found out about the woman,” Frank asked.

  Deegan’s eyes shifted over to him immediately, twitching left and right. “Woman?”

  “The one they just assigned to you.”

  “I see,” Deegan said, his voice very level. He looked either vaguely shaken or simply ill at ease. Frank couldn’t tell which. “That woman,” he said, then stopped, as if they were the first two words of a sentence he’d decided not to finish. He started to speak again, but the elevator doors opened and he walked out briskly, waving Frank alongside him as he headed toward the revolving doors at the other end of the building.

  “I know you had a talk with her,” Frank told him, “and I was just wondering …”

  Deegan slammed through the doors, out into the crisp morning air. He drew in a long, deep breath. “That fucking smoke,” he said. He glanced eastward, his eyes settling slowly on the slick pinkish flow of the East River. “That’s better. Calms you down.” He drew in a second deep breath, his large belly swelling out from under his jacket.

  “I think the woman may have tried to hire me,” Frank told him.

  Deegan’s eyes turned toward him. “To do what?”

  “She didn’t really say,” Frank told him. “She just sent me a note. Well, not a note exactly, but … a bead.”

  “A what?”

  “A bead,” Frank repeated. “A red bead.”

  “How did you get this bead?”

  “It came in an envelope,” Frank said. “Nothing else. No letter, nothing.”

  Deegan shook his head and glanced back toward the river. A barge was moving slowly out to sea, trailed by a tumbling foamy wake. “How do you know this bead was from her?”

  “I don’t know for sure.”

  “Why did she pop into your mind, then?”

  “Because I think the bead came from that fortune-telling operation they were running on Tenth Avenue.”

  “Tenth Avenue? That’s where the murder occurred.”

  “I know.”

  Deegan looked surprised. “Really? How do you know that?”

  “I came by the place just after it happened,” Frank said. “I talked to one of the cops from Manhattan North.”

  “Which one?”

  “Leo Tannenbaum.”

  Deegan eyed him doubtfully. “And you saw this woman and these red beads?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’d never heard of this woman before you met her at the fortune-teller’s?”

  “No.”

  A thin smile crossed Deegan’s lips. “You wouldn’t bullshit me, would you, Mister … Mister …”

  “Clemons. Frank clemons.”

  Deegan’s eyes returned to the barge, drifting slowly southward along with it. “You wouldn’t happen to have a card, would you? Something with your address and phone number?”

  Frank gave him a card.

  Deegan looked at it closely, as if trying to see through the scam he was sure it represented. “And you’re licensed in New York State?”

  “Yes.”

  Deegan pocketed the card, then looked at him very sternly. “What do you want in all this?”

  Frank shrugged. “I don’t know,” Frank said weakly. “Just to help her, I guess.”

  Deegan laughed. “Come on, now, Mr. Clemons,” he said, “why don’t we be honest with each other. What’s your angle on this? There’s got to be a pot at the end of the rainbow, right?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Money?” Deegan suggested.

  “No.”

  Deegan smiled knowingly. “Maybe some kind of romantic thing? Maybe in a little payment in kind?”

  Frank felt his eyes grow cold. “Nothing.”

  Deegan still wasn’t buying it. “Well, I’ll tell you what. You stay in touch, and if I think you could help me out on this thing, I’ll let you know.”

  He started to turn, but Frank touched his arm.

  “Did you find out anything when you talked to her?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Not even her name?”

  “Oh yeah, I got a name,” Deegan said.

  “You did?” Frank asked, realizing suddenly that he was sorry sh
e had given in, had finally revealed some part of herself that she had fought so desperately to hide.

  “Yeah, I wrote it down,” Deegan said. “It’s some weird name.” He patted himself down, searched one pocket then another, until he came up with a small slip of paper. “Puri Dai.” He laughed. “What is that, some Gypsy name?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said as he wrote it down. When he’d finished, he glanced back up at Deegan. “I’d like to talk to her,” he said.

  Deegan’s face turned grim. “I don’t think that’ll do you much good. She’s not much of a talker.”

  “I’d like to try.”

  Deegan’s eyes bore into Frank. “Are you telling me the truth, Clemons?” he asked. “You really didn’t get a fee?”

  Frank shook his head.

  Deegan considered it a moment, his large brown eyes narrowing in concentration. “All right, I’ll take you at face value for now,” he said finally. Then he wagged his finger in Frank’s face. “But only for now. Tomorrow morning, I’ll see if your card checks out, your license, all that shit. If mat’s in line, I’ll let you talk to her. But if it’s not, pal, you’re going to disappear from this case, you understand?”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. He returned the notebook to his pocket. “I just want to look into it a little,” he added.

  Deegan stared at him intently, like someone trying to decipher some arcane, ancient script. Then he nodded crisply, turned and walked away.

  Frank watched him go until the round globe of his head had disappeared down the subway stairs a few yards away. Then he turned and walked to the river. He could feel his eyes burning with sleeplessness, and for a moment he yearned to lie down. But it was too late for that, and so he simply stood in the open air, breathing in the morning cool, a single figure, very small, against the city’s gray enormity.

  The glare of sunlight was very bright on the nearly blank page as Frank glanced down at his notebook, matched the address Phillips had given him with the one across the street, then eased himself back against the wall and waited. It was a four-story brownstone in a part of Sixty-fourth Street where such places could go for five or six million, depending upon the condition, and from the look of it, this one was in very good condition. The upper windows were done in stained glass, the lower ones covered by polished wooden shutters. It was easy to imagine what lay behind them—antique furniture, marble fireplaces, crystal chandeliers, all of it sealed off by the elegant facade.

  The street was different, open to anyone, and as Frank slumped against the wall, he watched the various people who moved up and down it—delivery boys, museum workers bound for the vast halls that ran up and down Fifth Avenue, people out for a morning stroll, their small dogs trotting along beside them. But they seemed pale and far away compared to the vivid colors and tangible presence with which his mind continued to see and feel the woman in the blue prison dress. It was as if she’d managed to pass something of herself over to him, slip it secretly into his hand like a lock of hair pressed through the slender vines of the beaded curtain.

  For a little while, his mind remained with her, as if, in the early-morning hour, he was still lingering in her arms. Then, because he had to, he forced himself to draw his attention back to the brownstone across the way, and he stared determinedly at the black wrought-iron gate that separated it from the street, then at the doors beyond the gate, the first one made of thick glass panels, the second a few feet behind it, dark, wooden, with a shiny brass knocker.

  He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. It was the worst time for any case, the time when you didn’t know anything, and when only long periods of watching and waiting could get you what you needed to know in order to stop the waiting itself. He knew that he might be here for an hour, two, eight. Until he’d established Mrs. Phillips’s routine, he simply couldn’t know. She might be a woman who bustled about Manhattan more or less continually. Or she might be reclusive, a woman who rested for long hours in the upstairs bedroom, or stretched out in her private sauna.

  He took out the picture Phillips had given him, stared at it closely, as if it might be able to reveal something of her character, an edginess that would mean she’d be on the move, or a tired, withdrawn exhaustion, which meant that she’d stay put. But the face told him nothing. It was a beautiful face, no doubt about it, with blue eyes set against smooth white skin. Her shoulders were raised assertively, like her chin, and she stared directly toward the lens, rather than edging away from it, like other people sometimes did. Only the hands said something, the way the long fingers of one of them wrapped around the slender wrist of the other, squeezing at it forcefully, as if it were a small pink throat.

  She came out almost an hour later, and Frank quickly checked his watch, then noted the time in his notebook.

  She was wearing a black leather coat with a high collar, and she kept the collar turned up against her throat despite the warm spring air. Her blond hair was pulled back tightly and bound in a silver clasp behind her head. Her skin was very white, almost glistening in the bright morning sunlight.

  She seemed somewhat thinner than in the photograph, and in some sense more withdrawn, her blue eyes shielded behind a pair of gold-rimmed dark glasses. She moved slowly, with an oddly broken gait, until she reached Fifth Avenue. Then she straightened herself abruptly, in what appeared as a sudden, bold stiffening of the spine, and turned south, walking briskly until she reached the Pierre Hotel at the comer of Sixty-first Street.

  Frank continued behind, waited a moment after she’d disappeared into the hotel, then walked in himself. For a moment, he didn’t see her. Then a quick streak of blond passed through the remotest corner of his peripheral vision, and he saw her dart around a single marble column and disappear again, this time into an elevator with two other women. As the doors closed, he could see that one of the women had begun to talk to Mrs. Phillips casually, as if she knew her.

  Frank watched the lighted numbers of the elevator, wrote in his notebook that it had stopped at the second floor, then walked over to one of the uniformed bellboys and smiled. “Lot of women going up to the second floor,” he said amiably.

  The bellboy nodded.

  “What is it, some kind of conference?” Frank asked.

  The bellboy nodded.

  “On what?”

  The bellboy shrugged. “Something about the rain forest,” he said dully. “Friends of the Rain Forest.”

  “Rain forest?”

  “They’re raising money for it or something,” the bellboy said. “They meet every Monday.”

  Frank nodded, then stepped away, took a seat in the lobby and waited. He’d only been in his seat for a few minutes when a shadow passed over him, and he looked up to see a large man in a dark-blue double-breasted suit.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the man said. “But are you a registered guest of the hotel?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Here to visit someone?”

  “No.”

  The man’s eyes darkened. “My name’s Mortimer,” he said. He smiled thinly. “Ben Mortimer. Hotel security.”

  Frank stared at him coolly. “You rousting me?”

  “Well, we can’t let the lobby …”

  “Start to look like a bus terminal?”

  The smile disappeared. “Exactly.”

  Frank pulled himself up slightly, drew out his identification, then handed it to Mortimer.

  Mortimer glanced at the ID, then returned it to Frank. “It’s not the sort of thing we like here at the Pierre,” he said.

  “Part of the job,” Frank told him.

  “May I ask …?”

  Frank shook his head. “Sorry.”

  Mortimer nodded. “I understand client privilege and all that, but I hope you can understand my position, too.”

  “Sure,” Frank said, “but the fact is, I have to keep an eye on somebody, and that person happens to be in the hotel. As long as that’s the case, I have to be here, too.”

  “Ye
s, but …”

  “And I can’t afford a new suit everytime I step into a fancy hotel.”

  Mortimer’s body remained tightly drawn. “I’m not looking for a disturbance,” he said.

  “I’m not either,” Rank told him.

  “So, what’s the solution?” Mortimer asked stiffly.

  Frank kept his voice a few degrees below freezing. “Maybe you should have a waiting area for private dicks.”

  “I don’t think so,” Mortimer said humorlessly. “And I don’t want this to become a common practice. The people at the Pierre …”

  “Don’t always trust each other,” Frank interrupted. “That’s why some of them hire me.”

  Mortimer looked at Frank cautiously. “You mean you’re working for one of our guests?”

  Frank nodded.

  Mortimer looked as if he’d been let off the hook. “I see,” he said, obviously pondering the situation. Then he evidently came to a decision. “Well, I’ve done my job. I’ve checked you out.” He smiled politely. “Now I’ll leave you to do your work.” As he eased himself away, his eyes drifted toward the floor. “Your job,” he said, “it’s rough on the shoes.”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. And the feet, he thought, the legs, the eyes, whatever was still kicking in your soul.

  But it was mainly his back that was giving him trouble by the time Mrs. Phillips finally walked out of the elevator again. He felt a dull ache near the base of his spine as he rose slowly and followed her out of the hotel. In his notebook, he noted the time: 12:15 P.M.