McDowell rolled down the passenger’s-side window and called to me. “Nice shiner.”
My right eye had taken on a purple ring, but it no longer pulsed with pain. “Think so?” I had a good sweat going, my heart rate was up to 132; under the listless sun, the slow run up to the Joltin’ Joe and uptempo run back along Washington had loosened the stiffness in my shoulders. I was doing all right. Until now.
He was wearing his uniform, not the navy-blue hooded sweatshirt he’d had on the day before.
“Maybe that shiner says you’re not going to give me any of your Jack Webb speeches today.” His little teeth sparkled behind a forced smile.
“Aren’t you a little young for Dragnet?”
“We get TV Land in Queens, P.I.,” he said with a short shake of his head.
“It must be tough sitting out here, McDowell, when you could be home watching the tube, washing down the aluminum siding, buffing the lawn jockey.”
The chill off the river was cooling me down faster than I’d wanted. I turned toward my house.
“Where you going, P.I.?”
I pointed to my white front door.
“And after that?” he asked.
“Big day,” I said as I walked away.
“Then it’s a big day for me too,” he shouted.
I stopped. “You’re going to tail me again?”
“It’s fun. Libraries, bars, El Caballero. Where we going today?”
I was staring at his teeth when I replied. “Dentist. On 68th, off Fifth.” There had to a dentist on 68th. “Then Dario Fo at the 92nd Street Y.”
He frowned and I could hear him thinking. The Fo part sounded plausible, at least to me. I used Jimmy Mango on a tail job last year. When I relieved him, I had a copy of Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist in my back pocket. Crazy Jimmy made a big deal of it, laughing like a hyena on ecstasy.
“Sounds fabulous,” McDowell said sarcastically. “I’ll give you a lift.”
“Thanks,” I told him as I backpedaled toward my front steps.
“You’re not going to invite me in?”
“I would,” I said, “but I’ve got some loose change in a cup in the kitchen.”
When I shrugged, I felt my shoulder ache.
Answering machine. Again.
“Julie, Terry,” I told the tape. “I’ve got three names for you: Luis Sixto, Ahmed Hassan—”
“Hello,” she blurted as she picked up the handset. “Terry, hi.”
“Not in court?”
“Not yet,” she said.
I sat on the edge of the bed and slipped into my loafers. “You get the first two names?”
“No. I only knew it was you.”
“I met with a guy yesterday who said he knew about Sonia Salgado—”
“You’re staying with this?” she asked.
I stood and started to slide my belt into the loops of my gray cords. “Sure.”
“Sharon said you would.”
“I’m nothing if not persistent,” I told her.
“Me too.”
I went to the closet for a shirt.
“I looked at Salgado’s file again last night,” she said.
“You come across the names Sixto, Hassan and Bascomb?”
“Her little gang. Yes.”
I took a white Oxford from a wire hanger. “What did you get on Hassan?”
“Not much. In fact, not much on any of them,” she said. “Bascomb went to Spofford for pushing a cop. Sixto liked to drive a little too fast, ignore red lights. He got picked up in a sweep near the train yards, sniffing glue. They walked, but it put them both into the system.”
I redid the belt, finding a hole and putting in the gold prong. A jacket and I’d be ready to go.
“Julie, this Hassan. Where’s he from?”
“They all went to DeWitt Clinton together.”
“No, I mean, by any chance is he Moroccan?”
She said yes. “Is it Argana?”
“Argana. The capital under the French.”
“Why?” she asked.
“A hunch.” I put my wallet in my back pocket. I was ready to go. “Julie, listen. Thanks for all your help, OK?”
“It’s useful?” Her voice lifted.
“Sure.” I’d grab my short leather jacket from the laundry-room door and head out back toward Sheila Yannick’s cello, away from McDowell’s dull wit, raw ambition. “You know you can call any time, Terry,” Julie said warmly. “I mean, I took these files home with me.”
“That’s great,” I said, as I went to put the handset in the cradle. “It says a lot about you, Jule.”
“Yes. Yes it does.”
This time I went to Ninth. At 45th, the lanky driver of a white Econoline van was sneaking a mid-morning egg sandwich, its ketchup dripping onto the bag in his lap. On the other side of the avenue, a short guy with a squeegee on a pole was washing Zanzibar’s windows with soapy water. A wobbling woman in a tattered housecoat and a pale-green parka supervised. The half-empty bottle of Colt 45 in her hand suggested she wasn’t on the restaurant’s payroll.
I shielded my eyes from the sun and went west toward the Avellaneda.
The black door of the old theater was locked. I rang the small, rectangular buzzer in the intercom. As I waited for a reply, I looked at the glass panel next to the door. It held reviews for the current run: photocopies held by thumbtacks to a plywood sheet. “No Direction Home,” said Newsday, “is a gritty slice of reality.” The Post called it “a Romeo and Juliet for modern times.” “As the disheartened teacher, Hector Elizondo is terrific,” reported Vanity Fair. I stepped closer. “By Edwina Acuñar-Gonzalez, No Direction Home is about the painful travails of a troubled teenager who must choose between the promising path his late father chose for him and what seems an inevitable journey to destruction.” “Acuñar-Gonzalez,” said the Post review, “worked in an advertising agency before—”
“Yes?” The intercom. A man’s voice: weak, wavering.
“I’m looking for Mr. Majorelle,” I said, bending at the waist to use the plastic speaker.
“You are?”
“I’m a friend of Sonia Salgado.”
He seemed to sigh. Several seconds later, I heard a metallic buzz, which let me push back the door.
He was waiting for me at the bottom of the steep stairwell, hunched, faded into his oversized wheat-and-black djellaba worn over black slacks, tilting his head to shield his face under the shadow of his tarboosh, which covered the top of his head but did a poor job of hiding the sporadic tufts of his graying hair. Behind him was a heavy black curtain; when I reached the last step, I saw that behind the curtain was the auditorium of the Avellaneda theater: perhaps 20 rows of seats, no more than 10 across in a semicircle.
I looked at the man before me. Even in the dull light of the landing, I could see he wasn’t well. His sickly gray-yellow skin clung to his skull and his eyes seemed sunken in large, oval pits. His lips were cracked and dry, and as he leaned his left elbow on the ticket-taker’s station, he let out a soft groan, as if trying to conceal the pain of his muscles raking against his bones.
“Safi Majorelle?” I asked.
He nodded softly and looked down at his embroidered slippers.
He kept his hands under the djellaba.
I reached across quickly and lifted the garment, as if I expected he was concealing a scimitar. Instead, I found thin, spotted hands folded against a black turtleneck that hung limply on his frame.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I had a little bad luck here last night.”
He looked at the wound at the side of my eye.
“You’re the one,” he said.
And when he spoke, I saw the vague, distant resemblance to the photo on his theater’s Web site.
Chemotherapy, radiation: Safi Majorelle had cancer and it had been a rough go, a brutal fight. He was no more than 50 years old. He looked 25 years older.
“Sonia …”
He turned to push back the curtain
.
I followed him as he took a seat. I sat in the row behind him, on the aisle.
On the stage, a subway-station platform: a black sign, its white letters announcing 168TH STREET, hung on white tile; thick, square pillars, dotted with rivets, that disappeared into the rafters; a neglected bench, hosting a discarded tabloid newspaper and a cloth bag filled with textbooks and notepads; and, at stage left, the exit—the tall, gate-style turnstiles that swung but one way.
He turned slowly to face me. “Sonia Salgado,” he said, as he adjusted his striped pullover. “How can I help you?”
I handed him a business card. He looked at it and nodded slowly, thoughtfully, as he covered his hands with the front of the warm djellaba.
He said, “I don’t see you as police. Your hair … No; even with that eye, you have … But how do you know Sonia?”
“Her mother hired me to track her down,” I told him. “I found the body.”
“I see.”
“And you knew her,” I led.
“I can’t say I knew her,” he replied, his voice weak, raspy. “We had a correspondence. She came to appreciate the work of the writers.”
“When did she first contact you?”
He said, “I would say at least fifteen years ago.”
“Why you?”
He managed a shrug. “She is Cuban. We are Cuban.”
“So Majorelle is not your name?”
“I don’t mean I am Cuban,” he replied. “The Avellaneda … In that sense, I say ‘we.’”
“I see.” I unzipped my jacket. Majorelle kept it warm in here; the djellaba, turtleneck, hat, and yet he shivered. “What was your reaction when you heard—”
“That she had been murdered?” he asked. “It is unfortunate. I did not know her well: letters, requests for material, manuscripts—apparently she had tried to create a cooperative among the prisoners to mount …” He shook his head. “Unfortunate.”
“Who notified you?”
“The police. They found some of the materials I had sent her.”
I told him she’d had books about Cuban theater in her living room. I didn’t mention the clippings. If he knew I’d seen them, he’d also know I was aware that his relationship with Sonia had gone on for much longer than 15 years. He might’ve guessed that I already suspected he could be Ahmed Hassan, the only Moroccan in young Sonia’s clique.
“I have been told they can have a sort of fixation,” he said, “these people in prison.”
“I guess.”
“But to have a passion …” Removing a mottled hand from under his cloak, he gestured toward the stage.
“Yes,” I agreed.
He closed his eyes as if to request a moment’s rest.
I waited, then I asked, “When was the last time you spoke to her?”
He moved his head but kept his eyes shut. “Last time? At no time.”
“Was there anything in your correspondence that might’ve suggested she was worried about what might happen after she was released?”
“It could be so many things, so many possibilities,” he sighed. “Someone from prison. Or just someone … In her letters, she was like a child. A dreamer, I would say.” He opened his eyes to look at me. “When someone is naive, they will answer the door for anyone.”
I shifted in the small seat, the narrow aisle. “When you say she was a dreamer … I don’t understand.”
“She sent a list—Prida, Machado, Ariza, Huidobro. She wanted to perform their work in Bedford.” He frowned. “Later she suggested she wanted to perform here. Here, without experience. Here, at the Avellaneda.”
“Not possible?”
For a moment, he seemed insulted, and he drew up in his indignation. But he let it go. “Impractical,” he allowed. “You can start a new career at forty-eight years of age, but it will not be easy.”
“So you think it could’ve been random,” I said. “A break-in, a thief—”
“They will steal anything to buy their drugs.”
“Do you know if she had any contact from the family of the man she is said to have killed?” I asked. “The Glatzers.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he replied.
He turned from me and, with much effort, lifted himself from the seat.
As I waited for him to gather himself, I looked to the uptown subway platform on the stage. An artful facsimile, I told myself. Well executed. But not real. Though we are underground, encased in cement, in timeless stone, with death hovering nearby, perhaps as close to us as the black pipes clinging to the ceiling: not real.
I stood to join him in the aisle, thinking it would’ve been too easy if he’d been putting on My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, Rent even.
“I notice that you say ‘said to have killed,’” Majorelle said, nodding, his voice still a pained whisper. “You are saying, then, that you don’t believe she killed this man.”
I said, “I don’t know. Someone did. Someone took the diamonds and killed an old man.”
“Diamonds,” he repeated. “Yes, interesting.”
“Why?”
“Do you think someone came to Sonia for the diamonds?” he asked.
“I don’t think she kept six hundred thousand dollars in diamonds in a flat in the East Village, no.”
“So many possibilities.”
I said, “You think it’s possible she kept the diamonds hidden for thirty years?”
“So many possibilities,” he repeated.
He brought his left hand from under the djellaba. His gesture told me it was time to leave.
Who, I asked myself as I looked down at him, is this sick man, this suddenly old man, with his ethnic affectations, artificial gestures, ludicrous theories, bald-faced lies? A man who was, from a distance, kind to Sonia Salgado. Who may have been involved in the crime for which she gave 30 years of her life.
Did he first tell these lies to whomever Mango sent? Or did Mango tell them to him?
“You have to pull the door behind you,” he instructed as he looked toward the black stairwell that led up to the air, the light, the street where I’d been beaten. “I ask you to make sure it is locked.”
I told him I would.
I went to the slope of the parking garage east of the Avellaneda and stared at the spot where the lumbering man had attacked me. There were no bloodstains on the cracked sidewalk, but the damned NO PARKING sign was there, unbent, triumphant. I thought about kicking it, but didn’t. Old loafers and I had a lot of walking to do. I headed west.
Up ahead, a bus was idling outside the Aladdin Hotel. The kids were going somewhere beyond midtown: the Cloisters, maybe, or down to Whitehall Street, which might appeal to history-minded kids from Denmark. (Sure. Knud comes 4,000 miles to New York City, wants to see where Peter Stuyvesant lived in the New World some 350 years ago. When MTV’s studios are up the block. When 16 empty acres sit where the World Trade Center used to be. Sure he does.)
As I reached Eighth, I decided to walk over to the Diamond District on 47th Street. There were about 2,500 jewelers on a crowded stretch between Fifth and Sixth. I had a naïve notion that an old man in one of the shops would remember the paternal, politically connected victim, Asher Glatzer, or his sons.
The sun was bright up ahead on Broadway, but the crosstown wind repudiated its warmth and in the shadows that fell beneath the marquee of the Minskoff, a group of city workers in green overalls shuffled as they gossiped, laughed, leaned on push brooms or against gray trash cans on wheels, grateful, perhaps, that they hadn’t drawn duty in the cheerless streets downtown. On 45th heading to Broadway, as cars and taxis swerved dramatically to pass them, two Middle-Eastern men in heavy coats and long beards pushed hotdog carts toward the bright light; to put heft into the effort, they angled their bodies until they were nearly horizontal to the blacktop. As I caught up, I could see the sweat on their brows, the effort in the sinew of their necks.
The Loew’s on the north side was playing a revival of Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. As
I reached the crowd of middle-aged tourists outside the Marriott Marquis, I noticed an electronics store over on the west side of Broadway. It bore the requisite GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign, and I knew its prices were marked up 20 percent to grab out-of-towners made ebullient and unwary by the noise, the lights, by sympathy for the city’s plight. I could almost hear the disdainful pitchmen who used guile disguised with rudeness and impatience as a selling technique, as if they were in the open-air souks of Marrakesh. As I crossed past the blue wooden horses set up to manage the queue at the TKTS booth, I shoved my hands into my pockets.
I went to the window of the electronics store, which also carried faux Fabergé eggs, alabaster Buddhas and a chess set made of characters from The Simpsons. On a clear shelf, below a row of digital cameras, the subject of Diddio’s prayer: a portable, anti-shock DAT player/recorder with built-in microphone. These guys were offering it for $999, which meant you could get it for $300 less within a short walk from here.
The New York Rock Critics Association was giving it to award-winners on Saturday night.
“Terry, man, do you know what I could do with this?” Diddio said, as we lounged in a sticky booth at the Tilt one afternoon before September 11 in the winter that was 1,000 days long.
He jabbed his finger onto the pages of a Sam Ash catalogue.
“Bootleg concerts?”
“Abso-freakin’-lootly, T.”
When I looked up, I saw behind the electronics store’s glass-top counter a rail-thin man in a short-sleeved shirt who was simultaneously sneering at me and cajoling me to venture inside. That, I told myself, is an amazing skill: the ability to make someone feel valueless and valuable at the same time. It came from reducing people to the amount of money they had in their pockets.
I went along Seventh, passing through the scent of baking pizza in Sbarro’s. At the curb stood a well-built man in sunglasses, a sweatshirt and a long leather coat. When he saw me over the heads of the bustling crowd that ignored him, he smiled to show me his gold teeth, then quickly pulled open one flap of his jacket to reveal dozens of wristwatches secured to the lining. When I pointed to the watch I was wearing, he switched flaps and presented a collection of cell phones. I pushed my finger toward the phone in my pocket and he dismissed me by turning his shoulder and closing his coat.
A Well-Known Secret Page 10