“And you think Glatzer was killed by his own people. For political reasons.”
“No, I didn’t say that,” Villa replied. “I don’t know who killed Glatzer. I don’t know if Glatzer had diamonds.”
He reached for his cigar.
“What’s the motive if there are no diamonds?” I asked.
“I have no idea. But,” he added, “I have established reasonable doubt.”
I went behind the chair. “And what about these other guys? Her gang?”
“If you think about it, there can be no doubt that Sixto told Sonia to go down to that part of the Bowery,” he replied. “He must have understood they’d find more in the wallets down there than in Hell’s Kitchen or by those old tracks near 30th Street. But who among them was smart enough to plan to kill a man for the diamonds he carried, to fence the diamonds and plant evidence on Sonia? I say none.”
He again glanced at his watch. He stood and came around the desk, bringing the cigar with him.
I said, “So your theory is whoever killed Glatzer needed to kill Sonia to keep her quiet. Thirty years later.”
“I would think so.”
He reached to shake my hand. Then he put his left hand on my back, as if to signal it was time for me to go.
“My customary consultation fee is $350 per hour, Mr. Orr,” he said, “and we have been together—”
I stopped. “You’re charging me?”
He paused and looked at me. Then he said, “Let’s leave the account open, shall we?”
I didn’t reply and tried hard to hide my incredulity.
“Can I give you a ride someplace, Terry?” he continued effortlessly. “I’m not going as far downtown as TriBeCa, but to midtown, if you’re in a hurry.”
I was tempted to take the lift: I wanted to ask him a few more questions. But I feared it’d cost me another 350 bucks.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got no place in particular I’ve got to be. But,” I added, “I’d like to ask you something.”
“Of course.” He slipped into the camel’s-hair coat that had hung on the back of his door.
“What’s your interest in this? Fee aside.”
He pulled on his lapels to adjust the lie of the coat, then he tugged at the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the silver studs. Now it was perfect.
“I am an advocate for my people,” he replied. “What happened more than thirty years ago was a travesty. This you know. We cannot allow what happened to Sonia now be the final injustice. The police will not do what they should. With your help, Sonia will be vindicated.”
I waited outside on Third trying to decide whether to go down to the Bowery to see if the Glatzers were still in business, visit the Avellaneda or go home to check in with Julie at the D.A.’s. Home sounded best for now: Spend some time with Bella; learn whether Mrs. Maoli had heard from her friend Dorotea Salgado, who might’ve been the one who told Villa about me; and try to figure out why a man like Danny Villa, who never did anything that wouldn’t benefit him, was so forthcoming with me. As I said, only an idiot trusts a stranger, and I’d never heard anyone say Villa was an idiot.
But as I went to the corner to flag a cab, I knew I’d have to scrap those plans. McDowell was sitting behind the wheel of a city-issued car and he reached out to adjust the side-view to watch me as I crossed 89th. If I hadn’t turned away quickly, he would’ve caught me staring at him.
Sitting between 89th and 90th on an avenue that ran north, he was in the wrong spot for a tail if I went west. As I walked to the southwest side of the crosstown street, he saw his mistake and pulled his black car away from the curb, waited, and drove hard over to the west side of the avenue as I threw my hand in the air to hail a cab. He started inching toward 89th, white taillights signaling he was in reverse.
“I could do no worse than that,” I told myself as a mustard-yellow Ford pulled up next to me. New York City plainclothes cops were astonishing. When they went into action, it was as if they materialized, spirits taking form. This guy: backing up on Third, car dovetailing, wobbling as he went to ease behind a beer truck.
I slid in and told the cabbie to go west on 89th and take a left onto Lexington Avenue.
The round, slouching man in the driver’s seat had a fat, drooping bottom lip, hair only above his large ears, and he’d had a rough time shaving this morning. His short-sleeved cotton shirt was off-white, and he’d thrown over it a maroon sleeveless vest. Joe Moran was his name, according to his license. He looked tired in the photo and he looked tired behind the wheel.
“Joe,” I said as I leaned forward, “we’re being followed.”
As he turned onto Lex, he raised his head to look in the rearview. “The ex?”
“No. Somebody I don’t want to talk to.”
I dug out a business card and slid it to him through the murky Plexiglas via the money cup, as we sped past the Lutheran Church at 88th.
“Private eye?” he asked.
As it says. I bought 500. I have maybe 480 left.
“They need anybody?” he asked.
The light was going yellow on 83rd. “Hang a right, Joe.”
He did, cutting the corner near the austere brick of the Loyola School. There was an oil truck up ahead, but enough of it was near the hydrant for us to ease by.
He asked the question another way. “They got any openings at your place? I mean, they could use a guy like me. I got people skills, you know, doing this.”
“Joe, get on Fifth,” I said, “and go into the park at 79th. We’ll figure out what to do when we hit the West Side.”
I dug into my pocket and pushed $30 toward him.
“And we’ve got nothing for you, Joe,” I said.
“You ain’t asked around.”
“No, not yet.”
“You got to, ’cause I’ve got to quit hacking, I told the wife,” Joe Moran said. “The kidneys, they’re shot.”
“That’s no good.” I inched back in the long seat.
“Potholes,” he explained, “and six hours you wait to take a leak. I got that prostrate thing going on someplace.”
“Joe, what’s back there?” I didn’t want to turn around to let McDowell know I’d spotted him.
“Crown Victoria,” he said. “Black.”
“Redhead behind the wheel,” I added.
Joe Moran nodded, then looked a second time. “But a guy, though.”
“He’s a cop, Joe. Don’t risk the medallion.”
“You want, I could lose him if I go seventy-second.”
“No wheelies, Joe. No three-sixties. We’ll be all right.”
We made it to Fifth, then started south, running alongside the Met, passing the errant spray from its oblong fountain, a curious crowd that milled near the charcoal and easels of streetside artists. Joe thought about timing the light at 80th until it was ready to leave yellow, but he realized the young cop would jump the red. I could’ve told him we weren’t going to shake McDowell now. His determination made up for the smarts he might’ve lacked.
We went right on 79th into Central Park. Young leaves were growing cautiously on the branches over the transverse and, as we passed under stone arches, I saw that the black cobblestone walls were damp with remnants of winter ice that had turned to water and seeped into the thawing ground. Old blue wooden police sawhorses were stacked near a narrow path that led to Belvedere Castle. We swung right as the road curved north and, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a small, enthusiastic group of teenaged girls playing soccer near The Ramble, using orange traffic cones to form their goal. They were oblivious to the pale, ornate towers of the Beresford that hovered nearby, stoic against the gray, late-afternoon sky.
We came out on Central Park West at 81st Street, near the Natural History museum. A left would soon put us where the traffic grew thick as taxis and limos that had picked up their passengers at the Dakota, the Majestic and other stately apartment buildings were caught in the logjam caused by Columbus Circle. I told Joe to stay
on 81st.
We passed the glass cube and Hayden Sphere at the Rose Center. School buses were queued on the wide, two-way street, new takes on the old yellow school bus alongside sleek, bullet-like models. “When you get to Columbus,” I said, “stay in the center lane until sixty-sixth and tap your blinker like you’re going to get on Broadway.”
“Broadway. Got it,” Joe agreed.
“But stay on Columbus. You with me?”
“You really want to lose this guy, I drop you at sixty-sixth, you grab the subway,” Joe advised. “He won’t leave his car there. By Lincoln Center, they tow in two minutes.” For emphasis, Joe Moran held up two fingers.
Not the subway, Joe. Not for me.
“We’ll drive it,” I said.
“So you want him to think I’m going Broadway but I’m going Ninth.”
“That’s it, Joe.” McDowell would only ease up if he thought we tried to lose him but couldn’t: The sense of self-satisfaction would bring a moment of complacency. That might be my chance to break free.
But the zealous young cop was still on our tail when we made it back to TriBeCa. According to Joe Moran, McDowell was never more than a block behind us, even when we snaked onto Hudson, instead of Greenwich, at 14th.
“We square, Joe?” I asked as I stepped out in the front of the Tilt’s green door.
“You put in a good word, right?”
“I think you’re better off where you are,” I told him, as he rolled down the shotgun-side window. “But if you want to do this, call one of the big guys. Maybe they could use somebody like you.”
“What about you?”
“There’s no money in obsession, Joe,” I said. I patted the cab as if it were a palomino on the Ponderosa. Frowning, Joe Moran restarted the meter, his hood light went on, and he headed toward the bottleneck on Canal.
McDowell was waiting near the corner of Harrison, a block south of the Tilt; I could see his front end as it jutted onto Hudson. When we’d gone down Greenwich, he probably figured I was heading home. When we’d circled back north after using Chambers for the huey, he probably guessed I’d go to the bar. I’d bet he thought I’d sit for awhile and muse over a few drinks, none the wiser.
Leo had Monday’s Times-Picayune spread on the bar and he was using his bifocals to decipher the small print of the classifieds. Crying fiddles of sad old country music poured from the jukebox. Now Diddio was scoring Leo’s life.
“Changing careers?” I asked him. The door banged behind me.
“Killing time,” he replied. He threw his thumb in the air. “In back.”
“Leo, in 15, 20 minutes a cop’s going to come in here looking for me.”
“You ain’t looking for D?”
“Sure. D,” I said. “But later. Leo, this cop—”
“One of Mango’s boys?”
I nodded.
“Fuck him.”
I drummed my fingers on the hardwood.
“Sorry,” Leo muttered. Above him, a channel dedicated to animals in the wild showed a lithe gazelle bouncing, springing across a green field.
“When he comes in, tell him I left,” I said. “Tell him I probably went home.”
“Yeah.”
“Mind if I use the bathroom window?”
He shook his head. “Get D to lock it on up,” he replied. “Don’t want nobody ripping off my urinal cakes.”
I went past the pool table to Leo’s rumpled office. Diddio was on the phone. He had his big, fat Rolodex with him, the old-fashioned kind with the rectangular cards. He looked like he was at the back of the rack.
“Don’t hang up,” I told him.
“Aw, she’s not there.” I noticed the plastic letters on his old black T-shirt had nearly peeled away. “Her company went out of business. There’s no more Woolworth’s?”
“D—”
He groaned, “Terry, I am dateless. I am dateless for my own coronation.”
Stoned again, I thought.
“Don’t get desperate,” I advised, looking over my shoulder.
“I passed desperate three exits before the last rest stop,” he said as he eased out of the hard chair. “Terry, I’m calling record-company flacks here next. Tonight, I’m digging out my high school yearbook.” He hitched up his black jeans. Apparently, he’d been at it for awhile: His black boots were under Leo’s messy desk.
“D, I’d like to commiserate with you later, but now I—”
“N-G to later, T,” he said. “Marianne Faithfull at BAM, Beth Orton at Roseland, Angie Stone at Irving Plaza.”
“There,” I said quickly, “three possibilities.”
“Don’t joke. I’m fantasizing I walk in with somebody like that on my arm. I’m thinking Chrissie Hynde. That’d be sweet. Can you imagine the look on—”
“D,” I interrupted, “come lock the window behind me.”
“But I love Thora Birch too—”
“D.”
“You ditching who?”
I stepped aside so he could pass. His stringy hair smelled of Herbal Essence and pungent pot.
He slid on his old sweat socks across the cracked green-and-black linoleum squares and squeezed past the tower of long-necks. Red, orange and blue wires hung from the wall where Leo had pulled the pay phone.
“Listen, when it starts getting busy a cop’s going be looking for me,” I said. “Don’t say anything. Let Leo do the talking.”
“‘Getting busy.’ You mean, like, the same three Wall Street guys, yellow suspenders, mousse heads, shooting pool? The final Gekkos?”
“Them,” I said as we entered the bathroom. To kill time before their evening cruise, the three guys dropped in and shot $100 a game. Money meant everything to them, but they started counting at 100K. A $100 bill was toilet paper, even now, with the Trade Center gone. Another sign that downtown might recover: the reemergence, if only sporadically, of the unconscionable spender.
I went over to the sink, climbed up and withdrew from the frame the long nails Leo used as security. I handed them to Diddio.
I opened the window. The air cut the scent of mothballs, memories of Lysol.
“Ask the Wall Street guys if they have sisters,” I told Diddio as I got ready to boost up.
“They don’t,” he replied.
Ninety minutes later, and I’d reached the corner of 40th and Eighth. On the walk uptown, I made two calls: one to Bella, who was unimpressed with the news that a cop would be staring at the front door for the next few hours; and to directory assistance to learn that Glatzer & Sons was no longer in business, on the Bowery or anywhere else in New York City.
Glancing occasionally for signs of McDowell, I started out with school kids and shopkeepers in the West Village and Chelsea, then fell in with people from the warehouses and drab buildings at the edge of the Garment District who were headed happily for the A, E and C trains. Pushing aside memories, entirely spawned by media, of McKim, Mead and White’s old Pennsylvania Station, I thought about Villa, who either clued me in on Sonia’s old running crew or tried to send me off to a dark corner. And I wondered when McDowell had picked me up: at Hogan Place early this morning; as I moved from the News building to the Public Library; to Leo’s; at the Cuban lawyer’s; or at Leo’s for the second time. I hadn’t given him much of a day, but if he was on the clock, he was pulling in easy overtime. His report to Mango might’ve seemed tedious to him—“He didn’t do nothing, Lieutenant, basically”—but Tommy would know what the seemingly empty motion meant: I hadn’t heeded his warning. In fact, I’d visited the D.A.’s, dug up the old news on the Glatzer murder, and met with the leading, anointed-by-media Cuban advocate in Manhattan. Mango was too smart to lean on me hard—he didn’t need the pressure a call to Police Commissioner Kelly’s office from Sharon Knight might bring—but he’d take my snub as personal. His thinking: I spoke nice to you and you insult me with your actions. (Injured expression, shoulders hunched, palms to the sky.) Your offense has made you an enemy.
But who gives a shit?
A threat, I thought as I entered the jostling wave of commuters that poured toward Port Authority, is an incentive. Especially from those fuckin’ morons.
I made it through the masses, ignored the Vegas-style displays on 42nd and pushed past the stretch that once held porno parlors and 25-cents-a-woody peep shows and approached the theater district.
In the creeping twilight, beyond the blank expressions on the faces of the people moving toward the bus terminal, I could see a half-mile up ahead Russo’s marble statue of Columbus on its nearly 80-foot-high granite pedestal near the park, and I realized I’d made a 10-mile lap around the center of Manhattan island, just to ditch Mango’s boy. That made it hours without digging into Bella’s manuscript, without time to sit with lonesome Diddio, to find Marina and Davy in my mind.
But, you see, I told myself, there’s this dead woman …
At the corner of 45th, workers were fixing up an old Beefsteak Charlie’s.
The Martin Beck Theater was the only big-time Broadway house on the west side of Eighth on 45th. Behind me, the glittering marquees of the Minskoff, the Royale, the Plymouth, the Imperial. In front of me, past the Beck, shadows and what seemed to be a block of old brownstones, refurbished cold-water flats and parking garages. None of the crowd that had been on Eighth were on this side street.
As I headed west, I felt the evening’s chill, tugged at the front of my blazer and went under the glow of Beck’s lights. The Avellaneda was farther up the block—362 West 45th made it closer to the corner of Ninth. Since there were no other marquees in front of me, I knew Majorelle’s place would be a shoebox-sized theater, more than likely tucked into a basement, offering no amenities beyond Equity actors in worthy plays. As a U-Haul van bounced down the street, its headlights shone on a patch of the sidewalk up ahead that had been washed down with a hose. I figured that was the Avellaneda, getting ready for its 8 P.M. curtain. I kept moving, passing a square patch of cracked tarmac whose proprietor charged theatergoers $48 to park for the evening. On the other side of the street was the Aladdin Hotel, which seemed new. Or at least its gray façade and nameplate did. The three young men and two women out front in jeans and sweaters, sandals and socks, their backpacks lying on the cold concrete, suggested it was a youth hostel, which meant a bed and a charge of less than $100 a night. Meanwhile, big-chain hotels two blocks east on Broadway got $300 per, for not much more.
A Well-Known Secret Page 8