“Hi.”
She looked up at me and smiled, her fingers still working the keyboard. “Hi, Phil,” she said, and stopped typing. She met my eyes and I could see the sadness in hers though she continued to smile at me.
“How did you come to be at Dr. Mason’s this morning?”
“I had an appointment at 6:45. I’ve been seeing her for a couple of weeks. Late at night or early in the morning.”
I didn’t know what answer I’d expected; perhaps this one, for nothing else made sense. “Good thing, then,” I said, all of a sudden feeling awkward and prying.
“I’m sorry, Phil. I should have told you. About...what happened to me when I was a kid.”
“I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t, Yo. And I promise you that whatever I’ve done or been to make you feel you couldn’t trust me—”
She pushed back her chair and stood up so quickly that the chair continued rolling and crashed onto the desk, which ordinarily would have gotten her attention; anything potentially harmful to her computers commands her attention. But she was focused totally on me, her expression a mixture of sorrow and disbelief. “Is that what you think? That I don’t trust you?”
“Well...yeah, Yo. What else? I mean, when you don’t tell me something that important and we tell each other everything...what other reason could you have?”
Her eyes filled with tears and she quickly wiped them away with her back of her hand. “Shame. I was ashamed. I’ve always been ashamed. So has my family. Until Sandra, you were the dearest person in the world to me and I couldn’t bear it if you were ashamed of me, too.”
I couldn’t speak. I thought instantly of Bert Calle and Daniel Esposito and the shame they felt; and even Carmine felt a little shame though he was mostly mad enough to kill with his bare hands. I felt no shame, just incredible anger, and sorrow deeper than anything I’ve ever known. How anybody could hurt my Yolanda. I still couldn’t speak so I grabbed her and held on. What words could make a difference after all this time? I was still searching when the front door opened. “We’ll talk later,” I said, releasing her and heading out front to see who might be visiting, silently praying that it wasn’t a representative from the police department.
It was a client delegation, comprised of Bert Calle, Arlene Edwards, Patty Starrett and Carmine Aiello. We greeted each other warmly, me exchanging handshakes with the men and hugs with the women. And each of them giving me an envelope.
“The police and hospital reports,” said Arlene Edwards with grim satisfaction. “They didn’t want us to have them, you know, especially the police.”
“But Mr. Aiello’s lawyer put a stop to all that,” said Patty Starrett.
“I almost let them get away with it,” Bert Calle said so quietly I barely heard him, and only slowly understood his meaning. “I was letting them tell me why I couldn’t have the papers. Then I heard Mr. Aiello. He was goin’ crazy in there and they were putting him out of the office and he saw me and asked me did I have my papers. And I told him they said I couldn’t have them and he went crazy again.”
Carmine waved him into silence. “Thing is, we got the reports, Rodriquez. Or most of ‘em. Calle here brought that other guy’s, what’s his name?”
“I have Daniel’s daughter’s,” said Bert, again very quietly. “Daniel’s working extra shifts, trying to get caught up, you know?” As if to say, If I can cut this guy some slack, so can you.
Five out of the seven, including both of the murder victims. Enough for Dr. Bader, I was certain; enough for her to discern a pattern if one existed.
“Are you in trouble with the police, Phillip?” asked Arlene Edwards.
“They told us you had no business requesting these reports,” said Patty Starrett, “and they said you could lose your license.”
“Nobody’s losin’ nothin,’” Carmine snarled, “‘specially not Rodriquez. We don’t hear nothin’ from the cops for damn near a year, and soon as we start askin’ for what’s ours they start with the threats? I’ll sue their asses myself!”
I held up my hands to restore calm. Theirs and mine. “You had a legal right to these reports, and I had an obligation to tell you your rights since you hired me and paid me money...which I took,” I said with grin, which they all returned. “The only thing that matters now is whether there’s enough information here for an expert to develop a profile of the rapist. I believe there is and I believe that, when coupled with other information we’ve developed, we’ll have a direction—”
“Does that mean you’ll know who the murderer is?” asked Arlene Edwards.
I hesitated. “It means specific individuals can be put under the microscope and those individuals’ activities and actions can be carefully examined. Now. Before you leave, I’d like for each of you to write down the names of all the people who have access to the buildings where you live, including the mail carrier if you know his or her name.”
“You mean like the porters and the janitors?” asked Patty Starrett.
I nodded, though not too enthusiastically. “Anybody with access. Exterminators, if you know the name of the company. Restaurant delivery people.”
“But somebody has to buzz them in,” said Bert Calle.
I nodded again, being as noncommittal as possible, and passed out notebooks and pens. Everybody sat and began writing and I looked up to find Yolanda looking at me. She gave me a thumbs up and disappeared behind her screens. I resisted the urge to begin reading the hospital and police reports, sensing that most, if not all of them, felt that information too private for general consumption. And I wondered whether any of them had had the stomach to read the reports themselves; if they even knew in real world terms what those reports contained.
Arlene Edwards finished first, the only one of them whose information was not relevant to the case, for she didn’t live in the same building as her granddaughter. The others, one by one, completed their lists and returned the notebooks to me.
“Do you really think whoever is doing this is somebody we know? Somebody who could work in the building?” asked Patty Starrett, clutching the front of her sweater.
“The experts think so,” I said. “It happens often enough that it’s the kind of thing they look at first: Who had access to the victims?”
She sighed and shook her head. “What a world we live in,” she said.
“Insanity. Pure insanity,” said Arlene Edwards.
“No shit,” Carmine intoned, and on that somber note, they all left and I sat down with the police and hospital reports and tried to be as objective and clinical as possible in my perusal. About halfway through, I hoped like hell that none of those good people had read the objective and clinical truth about what had happened to their little girls; and by the time I finished reading them, the nausea was sitting high up in my throat. I didn’t know how people sloshed through filth like this every day. Maybe that’s why some cops had such shitty attitudes: They had to be hard asses to preserve their own sanity. Maybe, sub-consciously, that’s why I didn’t remain a cop, so I wouldn’t have to choose between wallowing in filth or becoming an asshole. Then, like a kid peeking into the living room on Christmas morning, I looked at the lists they’d written for me, and I fully understood what was meant by the term, ‘grim satisfaction.’
“How’s it coming?” I yelled to Yolanda.
“You go see Dr. Bader,” she yelled back, “and do whatever else you have to do. I’ll have this bastard nailed on this end by the time you have him nailed on the other end.”
I walked around the screens to stand beside her and waited for her to talk to me. “What?” she said, not looking up from her computer screen.
“I need you to call Dr. Mason for me.” Now she looked at me. “I need to talk to her parents.”
“Why, Phil?”
This thing that’s happening to her, it’s playing out in the here and now, but it didn’t start down here, in the East Village, last month. It’s old stuff, Yo, I’m sure of it.”
Yo th
ought about what I’d said, and I could watch agreement cross, then cloud her features. “Her parents are old, Phil, and they’re both in ill health. And...they don’t know what’s been happening to her. I’m not sure...I don’t think her father would even understand.”
Something else Itchy had been right about. “Ask her anyway, OK?” I said, and I left before I had to further justify a request to question a couple of sick old people about why they thought somebody was trying to kill their only daughter.
CHAPTER NINE
I was muttering curses and keeping an eye out for an unoccupied taxi but ended up walking the entire way to NYU. I’d even buttoned by coat all the way up and put my gloves on, further proof that it was really and truly cold if the absence of a single vacant taxi weren’t sufficient evidence. I was forced to echo the comments and concerns I’d been hearing for the last week or so: If it was this cold this early, what would January be like?
The young woman in Dr. Bader’s outer office, a student judging by her youthful appearance and her wardrobe, gave a nod of recognition when I told her my name, accepted the package from me, and told me that Dr. Bader said to come back at four o’clock. Back outside I resumed my search for a taxi and succumbed to a narcissistic pride in my physical condition when I out-sprinted a guy about my own age to claim a taxi being vacated by an elderly woman at West 4th and Lafayette. Not only didn’t I want to make the long cross-town walk into the wind coming off the East River, I didn’t want to risk being even a second late for my meeting with Willie’s nephew. In fact, I wanted to be a few moments early, so I could sit at the counter and drink a cup of coffee and eat a doughnut and appear relaxed and at ease. To relax and put him at ease.
He barely noticed me and didn’t acknowledge me at all when I entered the diner. It was warm inside, like it was the first time I was in the place, and the patrons were quietly engrossed in their own business...the business of eating, of reading books and newspapers...of talking to their companions. There were maybe dozen people here, all of them, like Willie’s nephew, familiar with life on the edge; a few of them no doubt still challenging the sharpness of the razor.
I took a stool at the far end of the counter and took off my hat, scarf and gloves and unbuttoned my coat. He looked at me and I nodded and raised two fingers and then made a circle with my thumb and forefinger. He brought me a cup of coffee and two plain doughnuts. I put a five on the counter and told him thanks. He picked it up and told me thanks and went back to the sink and began washing dishes. I drank my coffee, the only positive thing about which I could say was that it was hot, and ate the doughnuts, which were gooey, quite fresh, and surprisingly good.
My guy, who had eyes or antennae in the back of his head, wiped his hands on the towel at his waist and edged toward the cash register. By the time he reached it, three patrons were in line to pay their checks. That allowed seven people to wrap themselves for warmth and leave the diner. Four remained: two at the opposite end of the counter, and a couple at a booth near the kitchen door. I was wondering what my guy was going to do about them when an Ichabod Crane look-alike emerged from the kitchen and my guy grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the shelf above the sink, grabbed his knit cap and a jacket from somewhere beneath the sink, and walked out the front door. I finished my coffee and my remaining doughnut, wiped my mouth, and followed.
He was seated in the bus shelter half a block away, smoking and hunched against the cold. I joined him. “You need on an overcoat, Hermano,” I said with a shiver.
“Tell me about it,” he said, not even checking to see if I looked as stupid as I felt for making such a remark. “Who knows you’re here?” he asked instead.
“You, me, and Willie,” I said, not bothering to explain about Yolanda, Mike, and Eddie. I pulled my cap down over my ears, placed my scarf and gloves on the seat between us, and stuffed my hands into my coat pockets.
“I was sneaking some of my garbage into that Dumpster over there,” he said, inhaling deeply on the cigarette. “I’m not supposed to do that, you know? But we got this cheap-ass carter company, don’t pick up half the time, and we make a lotta garbage in that place. So, I dump over there, OK?”
I let him know that I understood.
“That’s what I was doing when this guy comes bustin’ outta that door and up the steps. Looks right at me and keeps on goin,’ don’t slow up none.”
“Would you know him if you saw him again?” I asked.
“So would you,” he said. “Left side of his face is scratched all to shit. He’ll wear those marks for a while. That lady doctor? Must be tough as shit the way she fucked up his face,” he said with admiration.
I was thinking about the scratches, wondering whether the paramedics would have taken skin samples from beneath Jill Mason’s nails or if the crime scene investigator in charge would have done that? Shit. I knew next to nothing about the conduct of felony investigations; I was foot patrol. I was wondering who I could ask when I realized that my companion had spoken again. “What did you say?”
“I said I also know where the dude works, if he still works in the same place. Got my hair cut there once. Barber shop over on Essex. Too fuckin’ much money for a haircut if all you want is a haircut, you know?”
“Lay it out for me, Hermano,” I said, the bumps raised on my skin and the hair standing up on my neck not a function of the icy wind.
He gave me a look that let me know that my reaction had not been as nonchalant as I’d tried for. “I think you know. And I hope you ain’t bullshitting me about keepin’ me outta this.”
“I don’t bullshit. Willie will tell you that.”
“Willie already told me that,” he said, and lit another cigarette.
“This barber shop,” I began.
“I gave you what you came for,” he said.
I thanked him and got up, my body stiff and aching from just those few moments sitting in the cold. I offered him my hand and he took it, and what was in it, nodding his thanks without checking the denomination of the bill. I was five feet away when I heard my name called. I turned to see him pulling on the gloves, the scarf already wrapped around his neck. His eyes held mine, then he blew smoke from his mouth and nose and it billowed up around him and he was hidden from view.
I needed to talk to Eddie and Mike; I needed to see Dr. Mason; and I needed to be in Dr. Bader’s office in one hour and fifteen minutes. Which meant there was no time for either of the first two needs. I walked toward Dr. Mason’s office building. No external sign of the morning’s trauma. I stopped and looked at the sign with her name on it. I considered again the possibility that the attacks on her were related to the rapes of the girls; and I recalled Carmine’s assertion that the attacks on Jill Mason were spawned by an ancient grudge. I still wanted to believe it was possible that the two cases were connected, but something about what Carmine said still rang true; it had this morning when he said and it did now. Old stuff. An ancient grudge.
There was an empty taxi stopped at the light right before me. I sprinted to it, hopped in, and gave the address of El Caribe. I could have a full meal, the benefit of a private office to make a few phone calls, and still make my four o’clock meeting on time. I also could, as I did as soon as I walked in the door and was greeted by Arlene, order some soup for Jill Mason who, judging from the look of her face, wouldn’t be chewing any time soon.
“Some coconut milk soup,” Arlene said quickly when I told her what I wanted and why. “And carrot/ginger. And maybe some sweet potato soup.”
“She likes sweet potatoes,” I said, and wrote down the address. Then I called to let her know the soup was coming and who was bringing it—Bradley would take it, Arlene said—and to have her make certain it was Bradley before she opened the door. Arlene allowed me to eat in her office, at her desk, and allowed me to use her telephone. I talked to Mike and Eddie, to Yolanda, to Lt. Delaney. No sign of the squirrel, but there still was daylight left, Mike said. Yo was waiting on her computers to deliver their bundles
of joy; but, in the meantime, wanted to know if I’d been getting receipts from all the taxi rides I’d taken lately. I hung up on her. And Bill Delaney said he’d be in his office until at least six o’clock; probably later, given the amount of paperwork he had to clear up.
“You look very handsome today, Phillip,” Arlene said, reminding me of Jill Mason. Both called me Phillip and not Phil and I realized that to be a characteristic of certain Black women of a certain age: They possessed a formality, an elegance, that was natural and inherent and which had nothing to do with money and which no amount of money could purchase. That characteristic made it possible for Arlene Edwards to seat herself in the visitors’ chair adjacent to her desk in her office, to wave me back down in the desk chair, and to be at ease with that choice; feeling no loss of power or control. Indeed, feeling no need for either.
“You look rather smashing yourself, Mrs. Edwards. But then, you always do.” Both statements were true. Today she wore a red wool dress that was long enough to cover the tops of the black high-heeled boots she wore. She wore her hair in dreadlocks and had to have done so for a jillion years because, even tied, they hung down her back, well below her narrow hips. She possessed a youthful slimness though I knew her to be in her late fifties. Only recently, since the murder of her granddaughter, had the lines in her face told the truth of her age.
“You know who he is, don’t you Phillip?”
“I don’t...I’m not...” I felt foolish. Her question, and the directness of it, had caught me off guard. Not inclined to lie, I knew also that to tell any portion of the truth was premature at best, and potentially destructive at worst.
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