Murder in Hell's Kitchen

by Lee Harris

  On her way home, she stopped at a neighborhood market and bought some necessary items. Her kitchen was empty and she wanted to eat in tonight, go through the autopsy report, get to bed early. On the way out, she saw plastic bags of firewood, not exactly a cord, but maybe a beginning. She picked one up, made a second trip through the checkout line, and went home.

  The apartment was pleasantly warm, and she cooked and ate without much fuss. When the dishes were done, she glanced through the small pile of mail, tossing most of what was there. At the bottom was the small letter on crinkly paper.

  OK, she thought. I can’t put it off any longer. The hell with the autopsy report, the hell with everything else. I didn’t throw it away when it came, so I know I have to read it.

  Taking a knife out of the kitchen drawer, she slit the top of the envelope carefully and pulled out the two sheets of paper inside.

  20

  WHEN SHE UNFOLDED the letter, she saw the snapshot. The girl was twenty, with fair hair, a nice figure, and a nice smile. It was the kind of picture that appeared in high school yearbooks, a picture that a boyfriend or father might put in his wallet and pull out to show with pride. Jane took a deep breath and set the photo on the end table next to her chair and began reading.

  Dear Ms. Bauer,

  I have reason to believe that you are my natural mother. I was adopted a few days after I was born from an adoption agency in New York City. My parents flew out and brought me back.

  I have wonderful parents. They have done everything for me that they could. I do well in school and graduated from high school with honors. I am now a student at the University of Kansas, and I am doing pretty well here, too, although the competition is a lot tougher than it was in high school.

  I have known all my life that I was adopted. When I was in high school I met a girl who was older and she had looked for her birth mother and found her. I always wondered what my natural parents were like, so I decided to find you. My parents know I am writing to you.

  I would like to meet you. I know you’re a police officer in New York. I have been putting money away for the last few summers so I can fly to wherever you are. I would like to hear from you. You can write or call me.

  Yours,

  Lisa Angelino

  Jane sat perfectly still and let the tears flow when she finished the letter. Nothing in it surprised her, but a lot pleased her. Lisa Angelino came across as a nice person, a bright young woman. Like Jane, she was a natural-born detective, and Jane smiled thinking of that. There was a wholesome and almost shy quality to the writing. Had she been nervous, putting pen to paper? Had she written a hundred drafts and settled on this one? Was her heart breaking because she had not yet heard from Jane?

  It had been so many years since it had happened, and Jane had lived half her life since then, the adult half, the responsible half. She had not given much thought to whether she would ever hear from this daughter she had borne, although she had suspected the moment she saw the envelope who it was from.

  She had met Paul Thurston in one of those late-teen summers when everyone’s hormones were running wild, when she was thinner, maybe even a little cute, her hair sun-bleached, her freckles prominent. He had been gorgeous; there was no other way to describe him. He was Ivy; his parents lived in Manhattan; he had gone to private school. He had a body that just had to be touched, caressed, enjoyed. She had somehow managed to get through high school a virgin, largely because of her parents and the church. But that incredible summer she gave him everything, her heart, her soul, her body. And she believed he gave her his.

  When the inevitable happened, he said he would marry her. That was before he told his parents, before they knew who she was. They had plans for their son, and Jane didn’t fit into them. That it was the oldest story in the book meant nothing to her. This was the man she loved, she was carrying his baby, and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him and their child.

  She was terrified to tell her parents, although she didn’t need to be. There were a lot of tears, but they stood by her. The idea of an abortion crushed her mother and distressed her father. Jane could no more imagine raising a child as a single woman than she could believe that Paul would come back to her. The irony of following in her own mother’s footsteps weighed upon her. She wanted to rid herself of the child growing within her and get on with her life, but she began to dream that her own mother had aborted her. Finally she decided to give birth but then give away the baby. Her parents accepted it.

  The last time she saw Paul, he gave her a thousand dollars for an abortion. She knew, spending those last few hours with him, that this was the most difficult thing he had ever done. He was almost in tears at one point, and she felt she loved him at that moment more than she had ever loved him before. He wasn’t trying to get away from her; he was prolonging their last time together, as though these were the sweetest minutes and hours they had spent together.

  When he walked away, finally, after many last kisses, she knew she had left her youth behind; she had abandoned irresponsibility; she had become a new person. He called only once, a few months later, and she said she was fine, never mentioning she was still pregnant, never offering to give back the thousand dollars. Now the child whose existence was unknown to him had surfaced, along with all the memories and emotions she engendered. The piece of herself that she kept tucked away, never to be exposed, was returning to life. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  Although she had neither seen nor heard from him again, she knew vaguely what had become of Paul. His name was mentioned in the paper occasionally, so she knew where he worked. When his mother died not so many years ago, there was a small obituary. Among the survivors were Paul and Marla Thurston and their children. They lived in an expensive suburb of New York.

  She left the letter on the end table. In spite of all that needed to be done in the apartment, the many cartons that had to be opened and emptied, she had lost her ambition. She picked up some paper that dishes had been wrapped in, scrunched it up, and laid it in the fireplace. She broke down one of the empty cartons and laid the pieces on top of the paper. Lacking a source of twigs, this would have to do. On top she placed a couple of the logs she had bought. Just as she was about to strike a match, she remembered to open the flue. It worked just the way the super had shown her.

  The paper caught immediately and burned hotly. The cardboard caught next. The wood was another story. She remembered then that the super had given her a small brick-shaped object that he said would help the fire get started. She found it and tossed it in. It caught, and after a few moments one of the logs began to burn. Success!

  She sat down opposite the fireplace and just watched it for a while. If she were still seeing Hack, she would talk to him about this. He was one of the few people in the world she had told about the baby she had given up. She was amazed at her own ambivalence. How could she not know whether she wanted to see this child she had given birth to? She missed Hack’s thoughtful appraisals of politics, in government and on the job, of her problems and concerns, of events in the city. The only thing he could not appraise well was his own situation. And here she was, facing the same problem.

  She would have to think about it. She would not call or write till she knew what she was doing, however long that took. The child had turned out well. That was something to be grateful for, something, perhaps, to feel ecstatic about. Paul was happy, probably happier than if she had married him. She wondered whether their marriage could have survived. With his parents, probably not.

  The fire was beautiful. It was all the things she had hoped it would be, bright and warm and comforting. There was something to be said for being forty and having a wood-burning fireplace in your apartment, for having a job lined up that would pay a good salary, for having loved a great man for a long time and having severed the relationship with no hard feelings.

  She got up and put another log on the fire. Then she went to the kitchen and picked up the autopsy report on Henry
Soderberg. It would calm her down after the dizzying thoughts about Lisa Angelino and Hack.

  In her adult life, which began for her when she gave up the baby, it had always been her work that saved her. When a love affair soured, she worked longer hours, volunteered for special teams and training, forced herself to work hard and think of nothing else. She hoped the insurance business would appeal to her in the same way that police business did. If her head was occupied, she told herself, she could take almost anything, even the entry into her life of the child she had given up.

  She remembered that there was a tattoo on the arm of Henry Soderberg’s body. She thought now that she should look at that more carefully. It was the style today for little girls to tattoo themselves, but Henry Soderberg had been an adult of nearly fifty years. A tattoo on his body would reflect something other than what was currently fashionable, perhaps a place he had been or some group affiliation. She turned to the photograph of the tattoo, but it meant nothing to her, except that it had a date in the 1970s. At least it wasn’t a love note to his mother. She would ask around tomorrow. If only she could ask him, Hack would know, she was sure. He knew all those little things about men’s experiences that never crossed the gender line.

  She went to the kitchen and found her magnifying glass. She always kept it with the silverware, which she had already unpacked and arranged in drawers. The tattoo was some kind of snaky creature and didn’t make any more sense when enlarged, but in running the glass over the picture of his whole nude body, she saw a color change on his skin, darker on his torso and arms, lighter where he would have worn trunks. He had died in the fall after the effects of the summer’s sun would normally have worn off. That would indicate that his skin was permanently tanned from years outdoors. She knew he had left for work in a business suit and he had worked for QX Electronics for some time, so it wasn’t a new tan. Maybe he had been a lifeguard for a few years or a beachcomber who needed little money to live on. Whatever the answer, he had spent a lot of years out-of-doors.

  Except for the one broken bone, which had apparently healed well, and the new injuries Soderberg had sustained in the fall that killed him, his body was unmarred. There were no healed bullet wounds, no cuts or slashes, no breaks or abnormalities. He had his appendix and his tonsils, and his muscles had good tone. All in all he seemed a tough guy to contend with.

  Jane left the file in the kitchen near her bag and got ready for bed. Finally she propped the picture of Lisa Angelino against her mirror in the bedroom. She might want to look at it a few dozen times before she made up her mind what to do.

  21

  EVERYONE WAS IN early on Friday morning. Jane started with her partners, showing a blowup of the tattoo and getting nowhere.

  “Maybe it’s the day he was married,” MacHovec said.

  “Doesn’t look very marital to me,” Jane said. “It looks snaky. And there’s no name of his beloved.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” Defino said. “Long time ago. Sorry. It’s gone.”

  Coffee in hand, Jane went to the second whip and put the picture on his desk. “Military,” he said. “Maybe the marines.”

  She moved on. Graves was on the phone. She went into the first team’s office. “This mean anything to any of you?” She handed it to the man at the first desk.

  “Sorry.”

  The second man said, “Yeah, I know this. It’s a golden shellback or golden dragon. For when you first cross the equator and the international date line at the same time. Before you cross, you’re called a guppy. That’s a tattoo, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “A bunch of guys on my ship did it when I was in the merchant marine. After you cross, you’re a shellback.”

  “Nice,” Jane said. “So this guy could’ve been in the merchant marine.”

  “Or the navy or a troop ship. How old is he?”

  “Now? Early fifties.”

  “Too young for a troop ship. I’d bet on the navy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I like it,” Defino said. “He could’ve been a twenty-year man, built up a suntan, then retired with a nice pension and got a job in electronics. Maybe he worked in that area on board ship. It’d give him a career.”

  “Then there’s got to be a military record.”

  They both looked at MacHovec, who grinned. “I hear you. Archives are in St. Louis. I don’t think they’re awake yet out there. I’ll get on it.”

  “What about Bracken?” Defino said. “We haven’t found the leak yet.”

  “I been putting it off,” MacHovec admitted. “I’ll call him this morning.”

  Jane felt a wave of sympathy for MacHovec. “Maybe Otis Wright’s wife talked to someone.”

  “I’ll give her a call. And we’re gonna need a full set of prints on Soderberg for the military archives. If he was born six years ago, he must’ve served under another name.”

  “They’re in the autopsy file,” Jane said. “I saw them. You doing anything about looking for leaks where I filed my travel papers?”

  “Yeah, that’s a problem. I’m not cleared to see personnel files. McElroy’s gonna get them, let me see what he thinks is relevant.”

  “OK. Anything from that funeral home in Arlington?”

  “Nada. I’ll give them till this afternoon.”

  Jane checked in with her father. When she got off the phone, MacHovec was talking to Mrs. Wright in a friendly, schmoozy way. He didn’t want to call Bracken, would do anything to avoid it.

  Jane picked up her phone and dialed his number. He answered right away. “Charlie, it’s Jane Bauer.”

  “Hiya, Jane. How’s it goin’?”

  “It’s getting complicated. Can I come up and talk to you for a bit?”

  “Sure. I’m here.”

  “Half an hour,” Jane said.

  Defino was already on his feet. “We’re going to see Bracken,” he said to MacHovec. MacHovec waved, displaying a look of absolute relief. He was off the hook.

  “So,” Bracken said, “you still on the Quill case?”

  “Sort of,” Defino said. “It’s taking a few turns we didn’t plan on.”

  “Probably why we couldn’t clear it. What’s up?”

  “We need to know everyone you’ve talked to about the case since we were here last week,” Jane said.

  “People I talked to about the Quill case?” Bracken was almost laughing.

  “Right.”

  “The two of you. That’s it.”

  “Think about it, Charlie. I took a trip on Monday and somebody was waiting for me.”

  “A trip where?” His eyes had narrowed and his brow furrowed.

  “Omaha,” Jane said.

  “Who was waiting for you?” His face was dark. He knew what was going on.

  “Never got to meet him. But if he wasn’t a killer, he came damn close.”

  “You find Hutchins?”

  “Charlie,” Defino said, “we have to know if you talked about this case to anyone. Anyone at all.”

  Bracken didn’t say it, but he knew what they were driving at. You weren’t in the business as long as he’d been without making connections quickly. “I didn’t give it a thought after you guys left. I don’t even remember what day you were here.”

  “The PAA,” Jane suggested. “Your partner. Anyone.”

  She wondered if he would get angry and throw them out, but he played it very cool. He was old and wise and had a clean enough record that he didn’t have to worry. “Nobody,” he said. “And I didn’t leave any notes lying around because I didn’t take any.”

  “Thanks, Charlie,” Jane said.

  Out on the street Defino lit a cigarette. “Shit, I hate doing that.”

  “I know.” She looked at her watch.

  “Let’s get on Derek,” Defino said. “See if he knows anything about the guy living in the empty apartment.”

  “He knows.”

  “I don’t know if he knows what day it is.”

  “I don’t k
now either. Let’s go.”

  Derek was in the West Fifty-sixth Street building, scrubbing the second floor. He smiled when he saw them, and leaned the mop against a closed door. “So how you doin’?”

  “We’re doin’ fine, Derek,” Defino said. “You got a minute for us?”

  “I got all the time you need. Where you wanna talk?”

  “Right here is fine. It won’t take a minute. You remember back when Mr. Quill was killed?”

  “I never forget it.”

  “And you remember everybody that lived here at that time?”

  “You know I do.”

  “And what apartment they all lived in.”

  “Right you are.”

  “Now, if someone was living in that empty apartment on the fourth floor, you’d know that too, wouldn’t you?”

  “Wasn’t no one livin’ there.”

  “But if someone was living there, you’d know that, right?”

  “Yeah.” He said it tentatively, almost like a question.

  “Well, we know that someone was living there. We want to know who it was.”

  Derek shifted his glance to Jane, but she said nothing. “That place was empty, Officer. Wasn’t no one livin’ there at all. You ask Mr. Stabile. He tell you.”

  “I know no one was paying rent on the apartment, Derek. But someone was living there. I’d like you to tell me who it was.”

  “I didn’t see no one.” He looked from Jane to Defino and back again. “Never. Wasn’t nobody there.”

  “We’ll have to talk to Mr. Stabile about this.”

  “You talk to him. Go on. He tell you, wasn’t nobody there. I gotta lotta work to do here, Officers.” He went over to the mop and dipped it in the bucket of dirty water at his feet.

  “It’s important to us, Derek,” Defino said. “We have to find that person.”

  “Who tol’ you?” Derek asked with hostility. “Who said we got someone livin’ in that empty apartment?”

  “The people who lived here told us. They heard him. He made a lot of noise at night.”