by Susan Israel
31
It’s Brooklyn we’re riding off to, Quick tells me as the sun begins to set behind us. He opens the passenger door of a blue Volvo that almost but not quite matches the denim of my dress. “This is my car,” he says. I clamber in, expecting to fight for seat space with a lot of personal belongings since it’s not police issue, but aside from a neat bundle of brochures of some sort bound with a rubber band that he quickly tosses on the back seat, and a Daily News opened to the Sports section, the interior is so uncluttered that it could pass as a rental car from Avis. There are no other clues about what makes Quick tick, except maybe that he likes the color blue.
“You’re going to be staying at my sister’s place on Henry Street,” he tells me as he starts the motor. “It’s nice and quiet there. You’ll like it.”
“How about your sister? Is she going to like it? My being there, getting in her way?”
“You won’t be in anyone’s way.” The muscles in his jaw tighten conspicuously as he checks out the view of oncoming traffic in the rearview mirror. “She’s not there right now.”
“Then my guess would be that she’d like it even less.”
He gestures to the safety belt dangling to my right. “Buckle up,” he orders, hinting that I better prepare myself for bumps and jolts along the way, and not necessarily just those caused by road surface and vehicular traffic conditions. “She knows you’re going to be there,” he says as he jerks the steering wheel to the right. “I spoke to her. She’s okay with it, Delilah.” The car continues to lurch forward. “There’s a few things I have to tell you about before we get there.”
I tighten the shoulder strap preparing myself for a crash.
“While you’re in Brooklyn, we want to plant a decoy in your place, set a trap. We’ve got a female officer, about your coloring and build, who’s going to mimic your movements. If Curtis makes an appearance, we nail him, and she’s going to make damn sure he can’t resist making an appearance.” He doesn’t say how. “I’m going to need your house keys. You’re not going back there until we take care of it on our end. If you do, you’ll be jeopardizing your own safety and hers as well.” He turns to me. “The life of a cop.”
I half expect him to start reciting my rights, feeling like I’m guilty before the fact. There is no worse crime than this. I fish out my keys and clench them in my palm before handing them over. “Why couldn’t I just stay there then? I’d obviously have police protection. Why try to con me that I wouldn’t be safe and then tell me ‘oh, by the way, we’ve got a female cop we want to put up in your place while you’re elsewhere.’ Don’t I get to have any say in this?”
“You get to say ‘yes.’ It has to be this way, Delilah. Trust me.” He takes the keys before I have a chance to drop them and puts them in his pocket. “You should be safe at my sister’s place as long as you stay put. Even if you don’t, you’ll be somewhat safer than you would be at Waverly Place right now. I know some people in the Eight-Four; they keep an eye on the place. If you need help, you’ll get it. I don’t live too far away, but I may not be home much.” He veers off gridlocked Houston Street and onto the FDR Drive entrance ramp and guns the gas pedal as he cuts into the left lane. “I’ll keep you informed.”
“Just like you’ve been doing?”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know for sure,” he reminds me. He turns onto the Brooklyn Bridge entrance ramp.
“What you’re not telling me is telling enough.” I say. “I overheard you saying something about a task force this morning. How big is this?”
“It’s getting bigger. Majesty Moore got an invitation a lot like the one you got today the day before she disappeared, Delilah. It was one of the things that were found in the trunk of the car along with her remains.”
“What were some of the other things?”
“Mannequin parts. Heads, torsos, limbs.” He frowns. “A model stand that was probably used to prop one up in a store window. And of course what was left of Miss Moore.”
“How did she die?”
He turns to me and I notice his hand momentarily slip off the steering wheel. “She was impaled with part of the model stand.”
The horizon starts to look wavy to me and I’m not even looking down at the East River below. I close my eyes. A couple of armatures disappeared during the night. Armatures made of twisted wire. All the better to pierce you with, my dear. I feel Quick turn a sharp right and open my eyes. The buildings to the left and right of me are shorter and browner than the ones directly across the river that now have a tantalizing glow; from this distance, they look like long strands of tinsel lit by tiny bulbs. Quick turns up one street and down another, forced to find a legal alternate-side-of-the-street parking space for the Volvo like the rest of the mere mortals in this city. I feel like I’m going around in circles, and not just because of being driven around the block a few times. She was impaled with the model stand. Quick suddenly pulls up to a vacated space in front of a pastoral courtyard and adroitly backs into it, making the tight squeeze in one try. He turns off the motor and turns to me. “Are you okay?”
I shrug.
He gets out of the car and comes around to open the passenger door for me. “It’s only a couple of blocks,” he says, slamming the car door behind me, setting off a sharp trill that blends in with the bird sounds emanating from the trees behind the wrought-iron fence. He stops for a minute in front of the fence, looking in almost as if expecting to see someone he knows there, then steers me ahead of him and to the left, past brick and brownstone buildings barricaded by more wrought-iron gates. He turns again, this time to the right. The neighborhood looks pricey. I start to wonder about his sister. She must have a damn good job to be able to afford to live here. I wonder again where he lives. Not too far away. He stops in front of a brick building that looks a lot like the one I just left this morning on Waverly Place. “This is nice.” I hesitate in front of the concrete stairs. “You’re sure it’s no trouble?”
“We don’t want you to get in trouble,” he says, gesturing with a jerk of his head to follow him. The hallway smells of cabbage. He sidesteps a ten-speed bike affixed to the banister with a U-bar and leads the way up the stairs. Two flights of stairs. Three flights of stairs. All the way to the top and I can still smell cabbage when I catch my breath. He opens the door with no hesitation and walks in like he owns the place. “That’s funny,” he says, his hand brushing the collar of a down coat slung over a metal café chair. Not ha-ha funny, I take it; he’s not exactly smiling. I tiptoe in behind him. He goes from room to room. “Alison?” he calls softly. “Allie?” He turns back to me. “My sister’s coat,” he says, gesturing to it. “She’s not supposed to be here.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be…”
He puts his hand up like he might if he were assigned to traffic duty, totally in control, but is he really? He backs up and walks into another room. “Allie!” I hear a brief scuffle, a soft female voice uttering something incomprehensible, a toilet being flushed. Quick emerges from the bathroom with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and picks up his cell phone. “Medical emergency, send an ambulance.” He barks out the number of the building before putting the phone down and going back where he came from. He reappears again. “I’ll go down to let them in.”
“I can do that. Stay with her.”
“Just open the door and come right back up here,” he commands. I nod. Four flights. I hear the toilet flush again. I shut the door behind me and descend into the cabbage patch. I’ve just left the stew up there. The EMS wagon jerks to a screeching stop just as I open the front door, and a couple of paramedics scramble out. “All the way up?” one asks with surprising familiarity as the other hauls a stretcher out of the back of the wagon. He takes a sip of coffee from a plastic mug that says PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE BUT NOT WHEN I HAVE PATIENTS, then puts it down on the curb, freeing his hands to take more apparatus out of the wagon. I half expect him to tell me to watch it for him while he’s gone, and I do. I pick up t
he mug and bring it into the foyer with me while I wait at the foot of the stairs.
Quick bounds down two flights ahead of the paramedics and gestures for me to stand back. I hear a soft moan and turn away until I hear the front door being opened. A couple of uniformed cops stand like stone lions on both sides of the entryway. When I look back, I see Quick talking softly to them, then to the paramedics. All I can make out is “Atlantic Avenue” before he turns back to me. “Here’s the key.” He holds it out in his palm. “Don’t drop it and don’t go anywhere except upstairs. Lock yourself in and wait until you hear from me. I’ll try to stop back here after I check on her.” He looks over his shoulder. “Or I’ll call from the hospital. Don’t set foot out of this place.”
“Is she going to be all right?”
“She should be,” he says softly. His wearied tone suggests that a lot of things should be other than the way they are. “It’s a long story. She somehow managed to walk out of rehab. I’ve got to get her set up someplace else once she gets clean. In the meantime, I don’t want you leaving this place until things are secured, Delilah, not for anything, and don’t tell anyone where you are. Anyone, got that? If you get a message from Curtis or Ivan, you call my cell number immediately. We don’t know where Curtis is, or Ivan either for that matter, not since Tuesday night after he left the Sixth. Nobody’s seen or heard from him and I’d still like to know why. The two may be connected.“ He rattles the door. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch.”
A hug is what I need, not a mere touch. Quick looks like he needs it too, maybe more than me. But not now. I have to cross my arms to keep myself from crossing that boundary, and wonder if I ever will.
The pictures his sister has on display on her faux-rococo mantel represent another threshold I’m not sure I’m entitled to invade, but I do, without even pausing to take off my coat. There are several snapshots of a young woman who I presume is Alison, in a prom dress, in a cap and gown, in advanced state of pregnancy. I don’t see any pictures of her with a child. To my right is a studio shot of her standing next to her brother when he was still in uniform, his hand gripping her arm authoritatively, their expressions equally austere. There are some pictures of him by himself too, also in uniform, probably taken when he was fresh out of the Academy; he looks green in them, and not just because of shifting dyes. I’m getting a picture of the family dynamic here. Someone to watch over me. Except that in some way he has failed and I’ve witnessed the failure, and he’s in no small way berating himself now. Another item framed in black on a table beside the fireplace catches my eye, an issue of Playbill turned to the credits page, where the name Alison Quick is circled in red under the listing for set design.
I look out the window and see a blue-and-white cruise by. Someone is indeed watching over me. Quick didn’t waste any time getting things in place. Even during a personal crisis, he’s being Robocop.
And I’m being nosy. Total security can have its boring moments. I need to do something to pass the time until Quick comes back. As if looking at the pictures on and near the mantel wasn’t enough, I start to explore the rest of the apartment, looking for the fire escape exit in case I need to use it. It must be in the bedroom, the most dangerous place for the metal stairwell to be. Someone’s more likely to get in than need to get out. I glance in and what I see makes me think of a fifth floor display in Bloomingdale’s: an all-too-perfectly made bed, a polished chest of drawers, a clothes tree in the corner. I wonder when was the last time Alison set foot in this room. The bathroom across the hall looks like a set not of anyone’s design: black and gold paisley towels scattered on the floor; bottles with unscrewed caps; a burned-out light bulb. That’snot the only thing in this apartment that’s burned out.
That reminds me to keep looking for the fire escape exit. Make sure it’s locked. I’m beginning to think like Quick now. I walk to the end of the hall, to the kitchen, which is more compact than the galley on a plane. The exit I’m looking for is right in front of me: a grated door leading out to a small balcony overhanging an alley. All I can see is coils of green hose down there; it makes me think of a viper pit. And thinking of snakes reminds me to check my voice mail, as if one thing has to do with the other. Maybe it does. It all depends on what messages I have. Just one message this time, from Heidi Obermeyer, asking me if I can work for her Friday afternoon class. This is one assignment I’m going to have to turn down; I’m already hired for that time slot, at West 8th Street, and I don’t even know if can make that one.
The minute I hang up, the phone rings. I let it ring three times before I realize it’s got to be Quick and pick up. “It’s me,” Quick says. “Why’d it take so long to answer the phone? What’s going on? Where were you?”
“The bathroom,” I say before realizing this wasn’t the greatest thing to say and a lie to boot. The truth is I’m not sure what I was expected to say or do if it wasn’t him, but it’s too late for that now.
“Looks like I’m not going to be able to stop by until later. A lot later, I’m afraid, not till the end of my tour. I’m still at the hospital.” On cue, I hear a muffled voice paging Doctor Somebody-or-other over the intercom in the background. “I’ve got to go straight from here to work, and things have a way of cropping up late at night.”
“How’s your sister doing?”
He clears his throat. “She’s stabilized. I can’t talk now. I’ve got to get some things taken care of on this end. I’ll call back later. In the meantime, stay inside, don’t go anywhere.”
Not even in the bathroom. Which is the first place I go. Which makes it not such a lie that I said I was in there in the first place. There are no windows in here. At least no one can get at me. As I step over the towels, my heel skids on something. I pick up a wax paper envelope scaled down to Barbie Doll Dream Kitchen size. Except the powdery residue in that wrapper has probably been at least partially responsible for turning Alison Quick’s life into a nightmare. I wonder what I should do with this piece of evidence that Quick in his angst somehow managed to overlook. I kick it under the heap of towels. I didn’t see it. It’s up to him to tell me. And he’s going to have to eventually tell mea lot more to account for what I did see.
32
“I have to tell you something,” Quick says, shutting the door behind him. I rub my eyes groggily. I fell asleep on the couch hours ago; how many hours ago I don’t know, it’s dark out now, and it seems as though it was still light when I curled up on the couch, but it gets dark by five. Quick said he wouldn’t be back until the end of his tour, which I translated to mean some time after midnight. A glance at my watch now tells me it’s still early afternoon, then I remember it needs a new battery. “No, don’t get up. Stay there,” he says. When he comes closer, I can see his watch, the hour hand pointing to nine. What he has to tell me, I suddenly realize, has nothing to do with his sister.
“I got a phone call a little while ago from someone I know up in the Seventeenth,” he says. “Unrelated to all of this, but he mentioned something about a stabbing late last night in front of an ATM on Madison Avenue. The vic was DOA at New York Hospital. The motive believed to be robbery. Cash was gone, but the wallet was left behind, credit cards, a BlackBerry. Gave a home address outside of Greenwich and work address on Wall Street, which it turns out is the same one you gave me Tuesday night,” Quick sits down. “It was Ivan, Delilah.”
The only response I can express is a nod. “You’re sure.” I know he’s sure, or he wouldn’t be telling me this.
“His family drove in from Connecticut early this afternoon to make a positive ID,” he reports, watching me, waiting for my emotional seams to split.
“Well, I guess that’s why I haven’t heard from him.” I take a deep breath. “Any clue who did it?”
“You don’t seem upset.” I wonder if he’s rehearsing what he’s going to write in that little notebook in his pocket. Ex-girlfriend who was abused by victim in the recent past did not seem upset.
“Are you thi
nking maybe I did it?”
“I know where you were last night at the estimated time of death, Delilah. You were at the precinct house with me, looking at mug shots. I know you didn’t do it.” He’s still looking at me the way I imagine he’s looked at hundreds of people under interrogation, waiting for them to deliver the goods. What I have to say isn’t so good. “So maybe now I can safely confess there’s this small part of me that’s not sorry someone else did. Are you happy now?”
“No,” he says, “I’m not.”
“I’m not happy either. Or particularly sad. I guess that’s normal.” I shrug. “I’m supposed to be in shock, right?” I suddenly think of the plaster head taken from the apartment last night. “Do they know who did it?”
“No witnesses as of yet. The guys at the Seventeenth are canvassing the area. There’ll be pictures in the papers, appeals for anyone who saw anything to call the TIPS hot line. What I was told was that things got a little savage, like maybe the vic fought like hell to hold onto his money.” Yes, yes, I can see Ivan doing that. “Or the perp had a mean streak. Ivan was missing a few fingers.” He clears his throat. “Vittorio was missing a few fingers.”
“You didn’t tell me…” I gulp. “What you are telling me is that the guy they want is the same guy you want, the guy I didn’t want. Curtis.”
“What I’m telling you is you’ve got to do exactly as I tell you,” Quick says. “And the first thing is to put 911 on speed dial. Add my numbers, the number for the Sixth for when you’re going to be at West Eighth. Fourth is the Eight-Four. When you’re ready to leave tomorrow, you call me and you keep calling every step of the way so we know your location. I don’t think you should have any trouble here, but I’m not ruling out anything.”