Come Out Tonight

by Bonnie Rozanski

  As I should have realized, the morning trains up to the Bronx were few and far between. By the time I got to the home, I knew from talking to Ralph that Henry’d been there the better part of an hour already. Sherry was probably safe, though. Thursday morning amidst the breakfast crowd and the nurses, crisscrossing the floor dispensing medication, wouldn’t be a good time to do away with her.

  I didn’t want to be seen, so I made my way around the building to the backdoor to her room. There was a window in the rear wall, and the shades were up. I backed myself up to the outside wall and watched them through the window.

  Henry was talking while Sherry was trying her best to eat her breakfast cereal. She put down her spoon and said something, then Henry again. Then Sherry. Then Henry. I couldn’t hear a damn thing, but that wasn’t really my priority. If Jackman raised as much as a hand to her, I’d be inside in a New York minute.

  They seemed to have given up on talk. Henry was grabbing at the remote from the bed table and aiming it toward the TV. He pulled over another chair adjacent to Sherry’s and dropped into it. For half an hour they watched TV. It was absolutely riveting, watching them watch TV. Outside it was starting to drizzle, and I almost considered going home. Then, abruptly, there was a change in Henry’s demeanor. He jumped up and approached the TV, squinting into the screen, then cringing. I surreptitiously slipped to the other side of the window, trying to catch whatever was on the screen, but between the glare from the outside light and the angle of the screen, I couldn’t make out a thing.

  Then, all of a sudden, whatever it was, it didn’t matter, because Henry had clicked it off. His expression had changed from anguish to something else – self-satisfaction, I’d almost say. It was eerie. But now I couldn’t see his face at all, since he had turned and was walking toward the door. Then he was out of the room, never even bothering to say goodbye to Sherry, who was yelling after him to no avail. I waited a minute or two to see if he’d return, before calling Ralph to ask him to go to the website and start tracking Jackman’s phone. Sure enough, the little blinking light, Ralph said, was out the door and slowly marching in the direction of the subway. “I’m going to follow him,” I told Ralph. “Keep your eye on the blinking dot, just in case he gives me the slip.”

  I trailed him to the subway, keeping just far enough between us to keep a dolt like Jackman from noticing that I was there. He took off a little faster than I expected, though, and it was all that I could do to keep up with him. First he went south on the Lexington line. I watched him from the end of the car with my head down. He was lying back against the seat, legs outstretched and obstructing the aisle, that same smug smile on his face I’d seen in Sherry’s room.

  When he got out at 63rd, I followed him around underground; we wound our way toward what I didn’t know, until it turned out to be the F train going to Queens. At this point, I slipped into the adjoining car, figuring that I knew where he was headed. Every time we stopped, I peeked out the open doors to make sure Jackman hadn’t run off, but nothing happened until the stop before Parsons Blvd, when he suddenly stumbled out, a dazed look on his face. I rushed out the moment before the doors closed to see him disappearing down a long flight of stairs. I followed him, cloaked by a large woman with two shopping bags, running around her as he darted back up the stairs to the platform going the other way. At the top, I hung out behind a column, worried that I had blown my cover. The buoyant confidence and the smug smile were gone, replaced by agitation and a look of scared confusion. Yeah, he must have spotted me.

  The train certainly took its time, and when it did come, it was packed. A mob of schoolchildren filled the car, providing me camouflage as they jumped, jostled and leaned on each other. I watched Henry weave his way unsteadily down the car, until he finally grabbed onto an overhead strap. He took a look at his watch and recoiled in horror. I figured he was late for at work, and that was where he was undoubtedly going. Now was the time to approach him, if ever I was going to.

  I wove my way through the schoolchildren and grabbed the strap to his left. “Late for work?” I said to his back.

  Jackman turned around, his expression telling me that I was his worst nightmare.

  “Have a nice trip to Queens?” I asked.

  “You been following me?”

  “All the way from the Bronx.”

  “Well, then, you’d have noticed I never made it to Queens,” he said.

  Of course, he never made it to Queens once he saw I was on his tail. I decided to change the subject to Diego Jimenez.

  “Never heard of him,” he said.

  What did he think we were - stupid? His cell phone statement proved the connection, if nothing else did. He admitted it finally, but insisted Diego was threatening him over Alicia.

  I told him Diego was dead, but he didn’t give me the reaction I was looking for. So I asked him why he was at Diego’s house in the first place.

  With a straight face, Jackman insisted he didn’t know the guy –he just found the address on a strip of paper in his pocket and passed by the last time he was in Queens. Finally, just in case I had actually bought that, he managed to undo all his lies by concocting some theory of how Alicia probably killed him. Diego was the one who had attacked Sherry. He thought it was Alicia in his apartment; then when he went home he found out it wasn’t Alicia, but Alicia got him before he got her. And all that, though he never heard of the guy. I was almost back to thinking this guy was too dumb to have done it.

  * * *

  But I couldn’t get Henry out of my head. The fact that Sherry was attacked in his apartment; the violent temper, the mysterious girl friends; the Somnolux in his apartment. It had to be him. If necessary, I’d have to force the situation.

  Saturday morning I got up early, leaving Julian sleeping as usual. I showered, dressed and made myself some coffee before going over to the precinct to grab one of the Crown Victorias. I had only a vague idea of what I was going to do, but whatever that was, it would have to do. I’d visit Sherry to pump her for information. If all else failed, I wasn’t above planting an idea in her head. Maybe the seed would grow, and produce fruit. We’d just have to see.

  The Cross Bronx wasn’t too bad at eight in the morning. A steady stream of cars fanned out into all six lanes, branching smoothly off onto the exits but never quite coming to the usual standstill. Something about the angle of the light made me realize that we’d crossed over from summer to fall: pleasant enough, but witness to the fact that five months had elapsed since Sherry had been attacked. I so wanted to get closure on this case.

  Sherry was being dressed when I looked in. I excused myself for a few minutes to go down the hall, while the aide finished the job. Most of the able-bodied patients were on their way to the dining hall, some in walkers, some with canes, a few perky ones under their own steam, but all old. Sherry was the exception: a young person robbed of her vitality by some low-down, vicious son-of-a-bitch. As much as anything, I wanted to find the culprit for her sake.

  By the time I looked back in, Sherry was dressed and sitting in a chair, a wheeled breakfast tray in front of her. She seemed to be making headway with a small pile of scrambled eggs.

  “Hi,” I said. Sherry looked at me sideways. “I know you,” she said uncertainly.

  I reintroduced myself, complete with badge.

  “Yes, now I remember,” Sherry said. I wondered if she really did. Memory’s a funny thing. I have this vivid recollection of being born: staring up into my mother’s proud young face, over at my father’s masked one, his tortoise-shell glasses peering over the top; the doctors, the nurses, bright lights, the whole gestalt. But that must be just a mental image of what my parents told me.

  Then, of course, there are the vast numbers of eye witnesses, steadfast about what they saw even when it turns out not to be the case. Memory, it seems, can be fabricated.

  While Sherry attacked her scrambled eggs, I pumped her for information on the night in question. Did she remember the birthday dinn
er? Did she see her father following her? Did he catch up to her? Had anyone accosted her in the street? Climbed in the open window? How did she get to Henry’s apartment in the first place?

  To each question, she screwed up her face in a sincere attempt to remember, but never did it come. And finally, after I had shot questions at her for half an hour, during which she had given up on the eggs, the toast and the coffee, finally pushing away the tray in frustration and defeat, she began to sob.

  I let her cry for a few minutes, handing her a tissue from a box near the bed. I’m not much good at sympathy. I’m better at sheer persistence. Finally, she stopped, wiped her eyes and apologized.

  “No need. I understand,” I said. This was standard empathy stuff they teach us in police school. Actually, I couldn’t begin to understand what she had been through and what there was still to come. All I could do was to try to catch her assailant and to bring him to justice. It might not make up for what she’d lost, but in my own wanton way I try to follow in the footsteps of the righteous men of the bible - those thirty-six souls who, though not pure themselves, perform righteous acts to others and thus spare the world. Yeah, well, maybe that’s a bit much. Better stated as, what goes around comes around, the point being that I try to do what I can and hope that atones for when I screw up.

  Meanwhile, I’d decided that pumping Sherry for information was a failed strategy. I decided to try a new tack, one that I may have been thinking of all along.

  “This Henry,” I said. “He has something of a temper, doesn’t he?”

  She thought for a second before agreeing.

  “He’s hit you?”

  “He was jealous a lot,” she said.

  “He hit you when he was jealous?” I asked.

  She thought for a long time. “He threatened to.”

  “But did he actually hit you?” I tried again.

  “I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

  I tried a new direction. “Do you remember Henry being there the night you were attacked?”

  “He must have been there. In the bedroom.”

  “Was anyone else there?”

  She shook her head, close to tears again.

  “Only you and Henry?”

  “Yes,” she thought.

  “Did he come out of the bedroom?”

  She thought a long time. “I don’t remember.”

  “Did Henry come out of the bedroom that night?” I went on. “Was he angry about where you had been? Jealous? Did Henry hit you that night, Sherry?”

  She mumbled something I couldn’t make out.

  “It was Henry, wasn’t it, Sherry? Henry who hit you with the statue, knocked you down, and left you for dead?” I pressed. “You remember that, don’t you?” But I couldn’t be sure Sherry was even listening; she seemed to be looking above my head at something off in the threshold. I turned around to see Henry entering the room.

  “Mr. Jackman,” I said, as he leaned over to give Sherry a kiss.

  “Detective Sirken,” he replied.

  The air between us was heavy with suspicion.

  “What brings you here?” he asked, finally.

  “Just come to see how Sherry is,” I said. “She seems so much better.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, shocking Sherry.

  He asked us what we were talking about, but neither of us answered. “Have you been putting ideas in her head?” he said.

  I said nothing, but Sherry was angry now. “You think I’m so stupid I can’t think on my own?”

  Henry tried to shush her, but it didn’t work. I thought now was the best time to go. If my idea worked, good. If not, well, I’d try again. But Sherry told me not to go. Henry should go. Henry was in one of his moods, she said.

  This was interesting. I decided to stay a while longer and see where it led.

  “I’m not going,” Henry said, stubborn all of a sudden. “I want to hear what you were saying about me.”

  But Sherry stood up to him. “What shouldn’t I tell her, Henry?” she demanded. For the first time, Henry lifted his hand as if he were about to hit her.

  This seemed to unleash her tongue. “Your temper, Henry? Or your jealousy? How you said you’d kill Ryan if you ever saw him near me one more time?”

  “I never lost my temper with you,” he shouted. “I never did those things!”

  I decided it was time to go. I picked up my notebook and went out into the hallway. From there I could just hear Sherry crying and Henry begging for forgiveness. I could have stayed to listen from the hallway, but the residents had begun to troop back to their rooms, and were looking at me strangely. I decided I’d set something in motion, and it would either happen or it wouldn’t. As I left, I picked up my phone to call the precinct for surveillance over Sherry tonight.

  * * *

  By the time I got home it was one in the afternoon. I called Julian’s name but no one called back. I walked through the apartment. In the kitchen, remnants of an elaborate breakfast of something with whipped cream and strawberries were moldering in the sink. In the bathroom, wet towels hung on the hook on the back of the door. In the bedroom, the bed was unmade, several layers of his clothing draped over the desk chair. In short, Julian was gone, but where and when I had no idea. It was Saturday, so it wasn’t likely he’d be on an interview. I checked the closets to be sure and noticed no missing suits. By a process of elimination, it looked like he was wearing black jeans and his black silk shirt.

  I made myself a sandwich from some chicken Julian had roasted earlier in the week, and ate it standing up at the kitchen counter. Where would he be going in black jeans and a black silk shirt? Meanwhile, I washed the dishes in the sink, hung up his clothing from the chair, picked up the mail from downstairs and dumped the contents of the laundry basket along with the wet towels into the washing machine down the hall. Still no word of Julian.

  I fought it until I couldn’t fight it anymore. Sitting down at the computer, I clicked on the GPS icon and went to the login page. I checked out the whereabouts of Henry, who was apparently on his way back home; and of Ryan, who blinked from 42nd Street for some unexplained reason. Finally, I checked out the location of a little yellow dot named Julian, and lo and behold, it winked at me from 297 Central Park West.

  My first inclination was to hoof it over there and catch the two of them in the act. But I hadn’t allowed myself to check out Julian’s phone records, so I had no idea of his paramour’s name or her apartment number. And it would be decidedly unclassy of me to stake out the revolving door for any number of hours till he emerged, purged and ecstatic, from beneath the green canopy. So I finished the wash, cleaned the refrigerator, and generally obsessed over why I always made the same dumb choices.

  I wondered whether I had too long a list of must-have’s in a man: smart, ethical, responsible, educated, good-looking, with a terrific sense of humor. No one seemed to be able to live up to the whole list. Maybe I should have cut Julian some slack after all, putting less emphasis on ethical. I mean, if a man has four out of six, isn’t that enough? According to the 2009 American Community Survey, there are 131,548 more unmarried and divorced women than men in greater New York, not counting the widowed, who, all things considered, are probably in another market altogether. Still, with such a surplus of unattached, attractive, successful women all competing for the same dwindling pool of smart, ethical, responsible, educated, good-looking, humorous men, finding my soul mate was probably a lost cause.

  Maybe responsible is too much to ask, I asked myself. Maybe smart and sexy is all you really need. In that case, I’d found him. Why did I have to insist on all those other things?

  Julian finally got home at five, all smiles. Whatever he had been doing was clearly tons of fun. He got himself a drink, threw himself down on the couch, trying unsuccessfully to throw me down with him before he realized anything was wrong.

  “Okay, what is it?” Julian asked, setting his glass down hard on the walnut veneer of the coffee table. I went t
o get a coaster and slipped it underneath before lowering myself gracefully onto the other side of the couch.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your girlfriend at 297 Central Park West?” I asked with a sigh.

  He looked at me first with surprise, then shook his head, chuckling to himself. “How could I forget? You’re a detective. You followed me.”

  “Not really,” I said, splitting hairs.

  “Then how?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you were keeping this…this dalliance… from me.”

  “For God’s sake, which one of your codes am I breaking here, Donna? We’re not married anymore.”

  “Exactly. Then why did you keep it from me?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Sure you didn’t. Who is it, anyway?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I thought about this for a moment or two. As long as it was what I thought it was, and it clearly was, what did it matter who it was? But before I had a chance to answer, Julian announced, “It’s the woman whose apartment I was living at. We met last year when I was interviewing at Hongkong & Shanghai Bank down on Wall Street. She was the one who interviewed me. I didn’t get the job, but,” he couldn’t help but smile, “I got her.”

  The smile, in particular, irritated me. “I see,” I said. “So you’ve been living at her place this past year.”

  “More or less.”

  I ignored the less. How could it be less? “Then why come to me?”

  Julian picked his drink up from the table, the coaster coming too, sticking to the bottom of the glass. He peeled it off the base, letting it drop back onto the table, bounce briefly before rolling off underneath the couch. He took a long, unhurried sip. “Her parents came to visit from Hong Kong. Very traditional. Very Chinese. They wouldn’t have understood her having a live-in boyfriend.”