Blood in Babylon

by Blake Banner

“I want you to leave now.”

  “What orphanage, Chevronne?”

  “Why won’t you tell us?”

  “Get out!”

  I gave Dehan the nod and we made our way toward the front door. As I opened it, I turned to Chevronne Brown. “I want you to understand, Mrs. Brown. If we get this information, and it’s above board, your son automatically drops off the list of suspects…”

  “Get out!”

  “We will get a court order.”

  “Get out! Now!”

  We stepped outside and she slammed the door behind us.

  The sun was still bright and warm, but the shadows were growing long in the afternoon. I went and leaned my back against the Jag and called the deputy inspector.

  “John, hello! Some development?”

  “Yes, sir. We went to see Mrs. Brown and asked her nicely who left her son the inheritance, and who she adopted him from.”

  “I see. Did you actually ask her nicely or did Dehan try to put the fear of God into her?”

  “No, nothing like that, sir. We were very polite and we explained that if she could give us that information, we would in all probability drop her son from our list of suspects.”

  “How did she react to that?”

  “She told us to get out.”

  “And you didn’t threaten her.”

  “Not at all. Sir. We need that information, and I can promise you that she and Ned are hiding something.”

  “I can’t take your hunches to the judge, John, you know that.”

  “I know, sir. I am just saying, we need this information.”

  “I hear you.”

  He hung up.

  Dehan was leaning next to me, with her arms crossed the car. She said, “What the hell do we do now?”

  “You make a moussaka, and we wait till tomorrow. We’ll see what Annunziata has to say. And who knows, we might get lucky with the inspector’s hanging judge and the court orders.”

  I handed her the keys and we climbed into the car. As she fired it up, she said, “We could always go and see the attorneys ourselves.”

  “It would be a waste of time.”

  She pulled away and I reached onto the back seat for the file. She drove slowly as I leafed through it and found Ned’s attorney’s address. “Hernandez and Heap, 1332 Metropolitan Avenue.”

  “Jeez! You ever get the feeling a case was almost incestuous? That is like right ’round the corner from Epstein.”

  “Same block.”

  She nodded. “Same block.” She turned right onto Watson, and then left onto Virginia. “I mean, right here.” She pointed back over her shoulder. “Three hundred yards down there is Ned’s house, and his garage. As I am saying that, we are coming up on the Church of the Sacred Apocalypse, we just left Chevronne’s place and just here, at this intersection, Gleason and Virginia…” She slowed and pointed left and right. “You’ve got Al’s house a hundred yards up on your right, the church right here, fifty yards on my left, and Joy’s house, two hundred yards past that, on Leland.”

  I was interested. “What’s your point?”

  “I don’t know, but man! They are all right in each other’s pockets.”

  She drove north to the circle, and even though it was slightly out of our way, she took us past the offices of Hernandez and Heap. They were on the ground floor, under a blue awning, less than thirty yards from Dr. Epstein’s lobby.

  I thought about it and sighed. “I guess it’s in the nature of the case. It’s all about people taking care of each other, and people rejecting each other.”

  She frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

  “The Chesters were, are, a very tightly knit family, which is a kind of community, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Al broke the rules of that community. The way he felt when he was twenty years old, he wanted to break every rule he could get his hands on, and then some. That’s what it was all about for him right then, breaking the rules, breaking free! That was the sixties: peace, love and above all, freedom. But, when he broke the rules once too often, his community, his family, rejected him. He didn’t care! He was twenty, good-looking, rich and free. They couldn’t touch him. So he continued to break the rules, every social rule he came across, he broke it. He abandoned his family, he abandoned Harvard, he abandoned the U.S.A., he abandoned civilization, until he ended up destroying himself in the process.

  “Then, ironically, he sought the help of the communities he had rebelled against most violently: Harvard, the medical profession, welfare—society itself. Sadly, society has very little to offer a man like Al. So he kind of slipped through the safety net and wound up down and out in the Bronx.”

  “Where this community picked him up.”

  I nodded. “Babylon. On the one hand, he had people befriending him, helping him to find a place in their midst, helping him to belong and even, to some extent, to heal. On the other hand, he had people, living side by side with him, bent on hurting him, stealing from him, even killing him, simply because he was different.” I sighed. “I digress. The point is that he was gathered up by a very different kind of close-knit society, who were willing to help him find a place and heal. Hence the very close proximity of the people to the church and to Dr. Epstein’s practice.”

  She was very quiet. It wasn’t till we had gotten to the Metropolitan Oval that she looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  “You son of a…”

  “Careful with that mouth, Eugene.”

  “What? Who is…? Never mind! You deliberately went off on that blurb about community and rejection and being gathered up, because you thought…” She stared at me and poked me as I started to laugh. “You thought that there was something significant in the proximity of all those places and you…” She started smacking me with her left hand. “You wanted to put me on the wrong scent! You son of a…!”

  “Full marks, Little Grasshopper!”

  “Bullshit! Who’s Eugene?”

  “It was a song, long before your time. Careful with that Axe, Eugene. Mot the Hoople.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if we are speaking the same language.”

  “Mot-the-Hoople.”

  “Oh, OK. So it is significant that all those places are so close?”

  “You know it is, Dehan. You don’t need me to tell you that. Your reaction when you realized where the attorneys were, told you so. But what I said wasn’t complete BS. This whole case hinges on that whole community thing. It is what brought Al together with his killer, and it is what caused the murder to be committed in the first place.”

  She glanced at me as we pulled up outside the El Paso deli. “You really think like that, don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I guess I do. Everything is actually connected. It’s not just a theory. That’s how it works.”

  She nodded. “Minced beef, eggplants, wine. Go, fetch.”

  Late afternoon was turning to dusk and lights were coming on in the street outside. I smiled and went to open the door. Her voice stopped me.

  “You’re deep, Stone. You’re a pain in the ass, but you’re deep with it.” She smiled. “I can live with you being a pain in the ass, but I love that you’re deep. That’s kind of hot.”

  I grinned. “You’re not so shallow yourself, Detective Dehan. Ply me with good moussaka and wine, and I might just tell you all about what I’m thinking.”

  She leaned close, breathed on my ear and whispered, “Show me, don’t tell me.”

  FOURTEEN

  Dehan got up first. She showered and went down to make breakfast. I would have made it, but she said that only somebody who’d been brought up as a Jewish Catholic could really understand the art of cooking bacon. It wasn’t a point I was ready to argue—I figured she was probably right—so mornings when we had bacon, she got up first.

  By nine o’clock, we were sitting outside Dr. Epstein’s block, waiting for him to arrive. Joy showed first, at five past nine, looking like she was in a hurry. At twe
nty past, Epstein arrived, looking like his head was too heavy for his body. He went inside and we climbed out of the Jaguar and followed.

  His elevator had just left by the time we got there. We took the one next to it and caught up with him as he was going through his door into his office. He paused with his key in his hand, frowning at us as we stepped out of the elevator.

  “Detectives Stone and Dehan. You are very early. I usually have a final cup of coffee at this time, before the onslaught begins…” There was a hint of reproach in his voice.

  I smiled amiably. “Please don’t let us stop you. We just have one question we want to ask you.”

  He sighed. “It couldn’t have waited till lunch… Fine, come on in. Tell me, what is it?”

  Joy emerged from his office with a can of spray-wax and a yellow cloth. She showed us a big smile. “We was up so late yesterday at the church, making parcels and preparing for them to be collected six o’clock this morning. I am pooped! Sorry, Dr. Epstein, I only just done your desk.” She grinned at me and winked. “Carmen and John, you want a cup of coffee? It’s real proper coffee, not that instant muck.”

  We told her that would be nice and followed Epstein into his room, where he dropped heavily into the chair behind his desk. From there, he gestured for us to sit opposite him.

  “What is this question that must be answered at all costs first thing in the morning?”

  Dehan arched an eyebrow at him. “This is first thing in the morning?” She turned to me. “Honey, we been getting it all wrong!”

  I gave her a look that told her to shut up and turned my attention to Epstein. “Why didn’t you tell us that Al was planning to get married?”

  Nothing at all happened to his face. He stared at me so long it was almost embarrassing. Finally, he reached forward and flipped a switch on his desk. When he spoke, it was almost a roar. “Joy! Come in here, please!

  “What,” he snapped at me, “makes you think that Al was contemplating such an absurd course of action?”

  I glanced at Dehan. Behind us, the door opened and Joy hurried in with a tray. She placed it on the desk and scowled at Epstein, who scowled back.

  “What’s all this shouting?”

  “I did not shout. I never shout. I growled. Sit!”

  She pulled up a chair and sat.

  He gestured at us with his open palm. “Detective Stone has just asked me why I did not inform him that Al was planning to get married…”

  Her face and her body both seemed to sag slightly. The laughter drained from her expression and she looked down at her hands in her lap.

  After a moment, Epstein went on, “I am having to tell them that I did not inform them of this fact because I didn’t know about it! Now, would you care to clarify things for all of us?”

  She heaved a big sigh and gazed down at the floor, twisting her hands together and rubbing her fingers. “I never thought I was going to have to go over all this again. Poor Al.” She glanced at Dehan. “He was awful lonely. He had a lot of people who would say ‘Hi!’ to him in the street.” She raised her hand and waved and smiled to illustrate. “‘Hey, Al, how’s it going?’ but nobody ever stopped by to have a cup of coffee, or a chat. I did when I could, but you know, the church has me so busy. And Dr. Epstein never give me no rest!” Her face creased and she laughed out loud.

  “Joy, would you kindly confine yourself to the relevant facts!”

  “So one day, long time before he went to the Lord, must have been midsummer, so about six month before he died, he come to get his medicine and he takes me aside, real excited and smiling, and he tells me he got a girlfriend. To be honest, I didn’t believe him. I am thinking, some woman said hello, and now he’s blown it all out of proportion in his head. ‘Oh, fantastic!’ I ask him, ‘What’s her name?’ So he tells me, ‘I can’t tell you her name—or Dr Epstein—she made me promise.’”

  I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “His girlfriend told him to keep it a secret?”

  “That’s what he told me, but I didn’t believe him.”

  Epstein cut in, “It was consistent with his condition that he would develop fantasies of this type.”

  “So I told him, ‘You tell Dr. Epstein all about it. You have to tell him everything, you know that!’ But he says to me, ‘No, if I tell the doctor, she will stop coming to visit me. It has to be a secret. The doctor won’t let me have her.”

  “You should have told me about that, Joy.”

  “Maybe I did and you just don’t remember, old man! Anyhow, I didn’t think much about that. It was just one more of his crazy ideas. He told me later that she come to see him every night. But couple of times I passed by on the way to church or on the way back, I never saw nobody there. Lights out and him watching TV.” She turned to look at Dr. Epstein. “He didn’t have no girlfriend. Even if there was some woman crazy enough to get involved with him, he was too scared to get involved with any woman!”

  “Even so, Joy. It was an important fantasy. I should have known about it.”

  I scratched my chin. “Apart from what he said, was there any indication at all—maybe something you missed at the time but in retrospect makes sense—that might have indicated there was somebody, a woman, in his life?”

  Epstein raised his eyebrows. “Well, I began to observe, about six months before he died, that his general humor had changed for the better. He seemed more optimistic about the future, more cheerful… But it would never have occurred to me in a thousand years that it might be due to a woman!”

  Joy shrugged and smiled at Dehan. “Love!” she said simply.

  Epstein turned and frowned at me. “Where did this ludicrous notion come from?”

  “Members of his family. He called a family reunion and told them all he was getting married.”

  “Good Lord! And they never thought to consult me, and see if it was true?”

  I turned to Joy. “In retrospect, were there any other indications that he was seeing a woman? Any hint of who she might be?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I mean, the doctor and I would often comment that he did seem more happy, but we thought it was just that he was… integrating. With the community, you know? Finding his place, making a few friends. By friends, I mean people who’d say hello on the street. Nobody ever visited him.”

  Dehan made a humorless smile. “Except his future wife.”

  Epstein shook his head. “I shouldn’t give too much credence to that, Detective. There is a reek of tragedy about this. If his siblings heard from his own mouth that he planned to get married, and, typically for them, they believed him, instead of looking deeper, instead of checking with me… If they decided to act in some way on that information…” He let the words trail away and his face seemed to sag. “That would be too awful for words. Poor Al.”

  “Is it possible that some woman from the neighborhood, who had heard the rumors about him keeping a stash of money in his house, decided to move in on him? And when she discovered who he really was, thought maybe she could do better still by marrying him? Is that possible?”

  Joy stared at Epstein with wide eyes. He expostulated. “Possible! Yes, of course it’s possible! Everyone in the neighborhood had heard the stories about the stash of money he was supposed to keep in his house. So any woman unscrupulous enough…” He closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh. “Forgive me, any woman who was in desperate enough need, might be driven to do what you are suggesting. And he would undoubtedly have been receptive. The poor man was deeply deprived of love. But…”

  Joy interjected. “We would have known. I would have known. You can just tell, right?” She appealed to Dehan. “Right?”

  Epstein nodded and gestured at Joy. “As Joy is saying, we knew him so well. He would have…” He hesitated.

  I said, “Told you?”

  “We would have known. I am sure of it.”

  I watched him a moment, then asked, “So in your opinion, the chances are this woman didn’t exist, except in hi
s imagination.”

  He nodded. “That would be my guess.”

  I turned to Joy. “I’m asking you this, not as Dr. Epstein’s assistant, but as a woman who is very active in the neighborhood. Do you think Al’s woman was real, or a figment of his mind?”

  She glanced at her employer.

  Dehan smiled at her. “Never mind what he thinks. What do you think?”

  She thought about it. Then her face became sad and she shook her head. “The truth is, there was no woman in his life. If there had been a real woman, we would have known. He was alone.”

  We thanked them and left our coffee untouched on the tray. We didn’t speak on our way down in the elevator. As we stepped into the lobby, it was dark and shaded, and the glass doors at the far end were a brilliant glare of sunlight. Through it, a dark shadow warped and moved toward us. Dehan shaded her eyes. I frowned and the shadow stopped a few paces from us. The voice that spoke was unexpectedly sweet.

  “Detectives! God morning! I didn’t expect to see you here today!” She shifted around so the sun was no longer in our eyes.

  I smiled. “Mary. I’m glad to see you. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Oh, really? I hope it was something nice.” She put her hand to her mouth. “I hope that’s not vanity and hubris! Do you think it is?”

  I laughed. “No, not at all. We all want to be honestly appreciated, Mary. Listen, you remember Al, right?”

  “Oh yes, he was killed. That was awful. They thought it was that awful Ned, but Mom says we should leave it to God to judge, while we should learn to forgive.”

  Dehan snorted. “Cops can’t afford that luxury.”

  “Mary, how old were you when Al died?”

  “Oh, well…” She brought her hands together, like she was secretly using them to count. “I’m not great with numbers, but I guess I was about ten?”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-two…?” She smiled and hunched her shoulders.

  I went on, “So you were about ten when he died. Did you see much of him?”

  “Well, I guess we saw him as much as anyone else from the refuge. Mom said he had extra special needs because he wasn’t used to living down and out. He used to be a doctor, like Dr. Epstein, and he was real smart.”