Songs of Innocence (Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback))

by Richard Aleas

  Probably not. Brian Vincent was also the one who’d sent Dorrie that e-mail to check up on her after seeing the story in the paper. He’d sounded genuinely surprised, even concerned. No, I could believe this wasn’t the man who’d killed her.

  “What about the other three?”

  “I only heard back from one. Our Civil War general, Robert Lee.”

  “And?”

  “Couple of e-mails back and forth. He’s scared. Scared to meet, scared not to meet. I’m guessing he’s married, thinks I’m going to blackmail him. I’m playing it innocent. Meanwhile I sent him some photos to bait the hook.”

  “Photos?”

  “Just some shots I grabbed off Voyeurweb,” she said. “Some girl with big tits. No one can resist big tits.” Maybe I just imagined it, but I thought I heard a catch in her voice. When she’d been in the hospital, they’d removed her implants, one of which had been slashed in the attack. I’d thought she looked better afterwards but she’d been self-conscious. It’s one of the things we’d disagreed about.

  “I’ll get him,” she said. “He’s starting to come around. Maybe even tomorrow. I’ll try. But John...do you really think it’s smart for you to wait—”

  “Don’t, Susan,” I said. “Don’t. I need to do this. When it’s done, I’ll turn myself in, I promise. But I’ve got to do this first.”

  She looked at me, and in the dark I couldn’t make out her expression. She didn’t say anything. Then she leaned in and kissed me, softly, on the side of my mouth. Not quite on my lips. Not quite not.

  “The shaved head,” she said. “I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

  “That’s the idea,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “I’ve got to go, Susan.”

  We stood up. I handed her her handbag.

  “Don’t get yourself killed, John.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Where are you going to go now?”

  “Better if you don’t know,” I said.

  “You could stay with me,” she said. “The police have already been over. They’re not going to come back tonight. At least you can take a shower, shave, eat something—”

  I shook my head.

  “Why, John?”

  I ignored the question. “Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll need to get together again. I need to know what you find out.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Susan, please. It’s very important.” I thought for a second. “You know the place we used to go, in the Ramble? Where the big boulder is? Meet me there at—” I thought about where I was going to be tomorrow morning, how long it would take to get back. “At two. Okay?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Tomorrow at two. No matter what happens in the meantime. Please, Susan.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you,” I said, but she’d turned away.

  I walked off, to the west.

  When did she notice it was gone? Maybe minutes later; maybe not till the following morning. I felt lousy for doing it. But I needed a train ticket, the machines at Penn Station require a credit card, and I couldn’t use my own. I could have asked her, but what if she’d said no? And it really was better, for both of us, if she didn’t know where I was going.

  I returned the credit card to her wallet, slipped the wallet into my jacket pocket, alongside a disposable razor and a tiny can of shaving cream I’d bought at the 24-hour Duane Reade in the station. I’d also used her card to get some cash. She’d understand or she wouldn’t. She knew my situation.

  The tickets had Susan’s name printed on them and I signed where I was required to with an illegible scrawl that conveniently covered part of the word “Susan.” I could only hope the conductor wouldn’t look too closely at them. Or at me.

  The big board rattled, numbers and letters spinning into place, announcing the tracks for upcoming departures. I found my train listed, and headed off to the gate for the 11:15 to Philadelphia.

  Chapter 22

  First there were the train yards, then the truck yards, each lit a burning white by sodium vapor lamps at the top of tall poles. Then we were passing the water and all I could see in the window was my own reflection staring back at me, bristling with a day’s growth of stubble. I fingered the can in my pocket. I decided to save it till we arrived. Shaving on a moving train might not be suicide in this era of safety razors, but I didn’t want to draw attention by emerging from the bathroom with a bloody throat or scalp.

  A voice welcomed us to Amtrak’s service from New York’s Penn Station to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, making stops at... I didn’t listen to the list. There was no danger I’d miss Philadelphia when we got there.

  What I almost missed was the last part of the announcement. “The conductor will be coming through the train in a moment to collect your tickets and conduct random ID checks for your security. Please have your tickets ready and your ID out. Thank you.”

  A squeal of feedback whistled as the microphone went back into its cradle.

  I looked around. Most of the seats were empty. There was a woman in a business suit working her way through a stack of what looked like annual reports, a man in a down coat with his long legs sprawling into the aisle, another man talking quietly into his cell phone, and a third man, directly across the aisle from me, reading an issue of Sports Illustrated. During rush hour, when every seat was full, they probably checked one passenger in ten, maybe one in twenty. Now, if they checked one per car, I had a one in five chance of it being me.

  Who would I check, if I were the conductor? I ruled out the woman—what are the odds Ms. Executive Suite was packing a bomb or smuggling hashish into Philly? The man across from me was clean-cut and in his sixties. That left three of us and one was as good as another. The shaved head probably didn’t serve me well here—my stubble was too short to make me look military, and that missing quarter inch could make the difference between signaling ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ to some people.

  I thought about heading into the bathroom after all, trying to stay in there till after the conductor passed, but it seemed unlikely that that would work—the conductor was bound to pass through more than once, and could I stay in there for the entire hour and a half of the ride? At some point one of the others would have to go, and Murphy’s Law said they’d knock just in time for the conductor to catch sight of me coming out—or would summon the conductor if I didn’t come out.

  I might still have tried it if the door hadn’t opened right then. I glimpsed a woman in a blue uniform and billed cap at the far end of the car and immediately turned away. It was too late to get up; too late to do anything, really, except play the odds.

  I set my ticket on the empty aisle seat next to me where she’d be sure to see it, and nestled my face in the corner between the seatback and the window. I slipped my glasses off and into my shirt pocket. Closed my eyes.

  It was almost midnight. The other four passengers were awake. The conductor wouldn’t needlessly wake the one poor bastard who was sleeping. Would she?

  At least there was a chance she wouldn’t.

  I waited with my eyes shut, fighting the urge to clench them tightly, trying to keep my breathing measured and regular. I didn’t want anything to call attention to me. Nothing at all.

  I heard the man on the cell phone—he was talking to his wife or girlfriend, quietly telling her to please be reasonable, it wasn’t that late. Across the aisle, a page turned, then another. Twice I heard the conductor say, “Tickets? Tickets, please.” Then the sound of her handheld hole-punch leaving its little triangular marks in the stiff paper.

  I waited her for her to say “ID please?” to either of the people between her and me—the woman or the man on the cell phone—but she didn’t. Of course maybe she didn’t need to because they’d already had their IDs out and had handed them to her unasked. But how likely was that if they hadn’t had their tickets out?

  H
er footsteps came closer, stopped next to my seat.

  I felt a trickle of sweat along the side of my face, by my ear. It hung there at my jaw—I could feel a droplet slowly forming. I ached to wipe it off. I didn’t move.

  I heard her pick up the ticket from the seat beside me and punch it, set it back down. A moment passed—but I didn’t hear her walk on. Then she spoke. “Thank you. May I see your ID, sir?”

  I couldn’t help it, I clenched my eyes tighter, like a little kid trying to convince his parents he was really asleep and not just pretending. This was it. I was on a train rocketing between two stations; even if I could somehow get away from the conductor, there was no way off the train. By the time we arrived, they’d have me in custody, and from there it would be a short ride back to the city and the Manhattan Detention Complex downtown. I’d be in jail by nightfall.

  “Sir,” the conductor said again, impatience creeping into her tone, “your ID?”

  I turned reluctantly, trying desperately to come up with some way to talk myself out of this situation. Maybe I’d left my driver’s license at home. I’d been mugged in the station and lost my wallet. Something. Anything.

  But when I opened my eyes I saw I was facing the conductor’s back.

  I put on my glasses.

  The man across the aisle was putting his wallet away with an annoyed look on his face. “Thank you,” the conductor said. “Next time, have it out where I can see it.” She punched his ticket and handed it to him.

  I whipped my glasses off and turned back to the window, closed my eyes again. I was breathing rapidly, my heartbeat staggering under the burden of an after-the-fact burst of adrenaline.

  Not yet, I thought. They’d get me if I pressed my luck long enough. But not yet.

  We drew into the station with a weary hiss. At the top of the stairs, the station’s main concourse loomed like an art deco temple, monumental columns at either end supporting a roof so far overhead it might as well have been the sky. At one end of the room a statue of an angel with upswept wings lifted a dead soldier from the ashes of a World War II battlefield. The corpse was probably meant to be stylized, but it looked painfully realistic to me, with its bare feet and slack flesh and torn clothes. Looking at it, I felt physically ill. I saw Ramos’ face; I saw Dorrie’s arms, floating limp in the water.

  I hurried to the men’s room, found a sink and failed to throw up. I stood over the sink, sweating, clammy, tasting a thread of vomit at the back of my throat but unable to get it out of me. After a while, I gave up. I turned on the water, first cold, then hot. I laid out my razor and shaving cream on the sill behind the sink and went to work. I realized, as I plowed clean furrows down my cheeks, that somewhere along the way I’d stopped looking so young. My eyes had dark rings beneath them, my skin was sallow, and without hair my head looked angular and severe. With the stubble shaved off, I looked presentable. But I didn’t look well.

  Well, I wasn’t. I felt sick; I felt beaten down and empty. I was here in a strange city to say goodbye to a woman who’d had a harder life than she deserved and a worse end to it. She’d been my friend and I’d been hers, and we’d clung to each other like shipwreck survivors to flotsam. With her gone, I could feel myself sinking. I couldn’t hold onto Susan, couldn’t drag her down with me, not now that she’d managed to escape her old life for a better one. And who else did I have? Michael? He wouldn’t shed a tear if someone handed him my obituary. He wasn’t built that way. Maybe that night, after the customers were gone, he’d raise a glass of whiskey to me, but that’s the most I could expect. And maybe it’s all I was worth.

  I shoved the half-empty shaving cream can and the used razor into the trash, wiped my face and head with a handful of coarse paper towels, and walked out to the taxi stand.

  The angel watched me go.

  Chapter 23

  Greenmount was fenced in, but at various points there were gaps, places where a section of the fence had bent or fallen and not been repaired. I climbed over one of these and spent the hours before dawn wandering among the tombstones, resting on the funerary benches that dotted the grounds and looking for Dorrie’s plot. I found it finally, side by side with her sister’s, Catherine’s headstone quietly announcing the years of her birth and death, 1972–1986. The hole for Dorrie’s coffin had been dug and covered over with a canvas tarp the color of the soil around it. A lowering machine stood silently in place, ready to receive its load.

  I wished I smoked. Anything to pass the time, to keep me from spending the hours with nothing but my thoughts for company. But I didn’t. And in the dim pre-dawn light, in the chill, dry air, I sat alone watching the covered hole in the ground that had been prepared for Dorrie. One by one, ghosts sat beside me on the granite bench. One by one, they hung their heads and leaned close and whispered in voices only I could hear. Miranda was there, and Dorrie, and Julia Cortenay, and my mother. All my dead women. Ramos was there, too, and Miranda’s boss from the strip club, Wayne Lenz, with that great bloody hole in his chest. All my dead men. All on one little bench.

  The wind was strong. I pulled my light jacket tighter around me, wrapped my arms around myself.

  Dorrie and I had gone to the cemetery with Lane when his wife died; Dorrie had stood beside me as I dropped a handful of dirt on the coffin and heard the terrible, hollow echo when it landed. She’d been stoic throughout, but on the way back to the city she’d said to me with real anguish in her voice, “When I go, I don’t want any ceremony. No minister praying over me. Just you there. That’s all.”

  Well, I couldn’t stop them from bringing a minister, and I couldn’t stop them from praying. But I was here. I could do that much.

  The cemetery’s staff starting showing up around eight o’clock, big men in overalls and work gloves and heavy boots. They carried shovels over their shoulders and long, coiled hoses. They beat their hands together for warmth and exhaled little white puffs of vapor. Some of them looked my way. I nodded back toward them. None of them came close, no one asked what I was doing there.

  Around nine, the first cars drove in, a hearse in the lead, a Volvo following. I stood and walked past Dorrie’s grave to a stand of trees some forty yards away. They were narrow trees and widely spaced—you couldn’t hide behind them. But they blocked the view a bit and distance did the rest. I turned so I was facing in another direction, looking at a stranger’s grave.

  I didn’t dare to watch openly, but I stole glances, watched out of the corner of my eye. I saw two workmen wheel the coffin up to the grave, move it from its gurney to the straps of the machine, then stand back to let the mourners come. I recognized Eva Burke, in a heavy black coat and hat, stocky and low to the ground. There was a tall man with white hair carrying a little book with a black cover—a bible, I supposed. He put his hand on Mrs. Burke’s back, and she shook it off roughly. Two younger men stood behind them, several paces back, looking uncomfortable in their Sunday suits. Relatives, maybe, or childhood friends. And one more woman, leaning on a cane. A teacher? An aunt? God knows.

  When it blew toward me, the wind carried with it the sound of the service, soft words solemnly intoned. First the man spoke, his book open in his hands, then they all spoke, repeating together some useless, ancient formula.

  I looked around. The place was almost empty—other than the mourners, the workmen, and me, I only saw one other man, perhaps another forty yards away in the opposite direction, pacing slowly beside a mausoleum, looking this way from time to time and then away again. The second time he did this—looked over at me and then, when he saw me watching, turned aside—my heart leaped and I considered making a hasty exit. Could the New York cops have found out where I was, radioed ahead to have someone pick me up here? But I told myself I was being paranoid. He stayed where he was and I stayed where I was, and between us the service droned to completion.

  I heard it when the minister closed his bible, a crisp and final snap that rang in the still air. Then they filed off toward the main building, Eva Burke
in the lead, the two young men bringing up the rear.

  I walked up to the grave, hands in my pockets. The workmen stood aside as I approached, shovels in their hands, ready to start filling in the hole, eager to move on to the other tasks of the day. Their expressions held none of the phony sympathy you see in funeral home employees. This was their job, digging holes and then filling them in again, and it was cold and they wanted to get on with it. But they knew their place and waited for me to be done.

  I stood at the foot of the trench they’d dug, looking down on the slightly bowed surface of the coffin, a simple cross carved into the wood. I’ve never known what to do at a graveside. You stand, you look. You don’t want to leave. I touched my fingers to my lips and held them out over the edge. Goodbye, I said. Goodbye.

  I heard footsteps behind me. When I looked over, a man was standing next to me, wearing a tweed cap and a green windbreaker, his hands in the pockets as mine were. Under the cap, his black hair was starting to get a few sprinkles of salt to go with the pepper. He had an unkempt goatee and heavy sideburns and stood a full head shorter than me. He was the one who had been pacing by the mausoleum. At that distance I hadn’t recognized him, but now I did. I was a little surprised to see him here.

  He said, “How did you know her?”

  “We went to school together,” I said.

  “Here in Philadelphia?”

  “No. In New York.”

  “Ah,” he said. Then: “I came in from New York, too.”

  It was an odd comment, an awkward one. There was an uncomfortable invitation to intimacy in it, as if he was dying to unburden himself, to a stranger if necessary. I asked him the question I had a feeling he was waiting for me to ask. “How did you know her?”

  I asked it even though I knew damn well he hadn’t known her, had never so much as held a single conversation with her, and not for lack of trying on her part either. One of the last times he’d even seen her had probably been a day like this one, twenty years before, when the grave yawning open and waiting to be filled by impatient workmen had been Catherine’s.