Remains Silent mm-1

by Michael Baden

  Renko turned it over in his hands. “You have dental records for comparison?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “The rest of the skull?”

  “What you see is all there is.”

  Renko smiled. “I like a challenge.”

  “Good, because I’m hoping you can tell me something that might help identify the victim. All I know is that it’s a woman in her late teens or early twenties who probably died in the mid-sixties, when she was a patient at the Turner Psychiatric Hospital.”

  Renko raised his eyebrows. “O-ho. A mental hospital. They’re often butchers when it comes to dental care.” He took up the mandible. “Bones and teeth are formed when you’re young, so we could examine the carbon isotopes to determine whether she spent her childhood eating cane sugar versus beet sugar. That’d narrow down the region where she grew up. Of course, you’d need a nuclear reactor-”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Jake said, “but it might.”

  Renko pulled down a magnifying lamp attached to an arm at the corner of the desk and looked at the jawbone with the concentration of a diamond merchant. “Well… here’s something.” He held out the bone for Jake to examine. “See those four fillings on the edges of the teeth? They’re Class Three gold-foil between-teeth fillings. Popular in the fifties, before dentists moved to silicate cement and acrylic. If the work was done in the sixties, it was behind the times. And it’s amateurish anyway. They got the job done, but it’s messy.”

  “So it might have been a sloppy old guy upstate using outdated materials.”

  “Or a sloppy young guy. In the sixties, a dental student still had to be able to do this kind of filling to pass the New York State boards.”

  “Maybe she was from a poor family and had to go to a clinic.”

  “There were only three dental schools in New York State then: Albany, NYU, and Columbia. Sometimes state institutions like prisons or mental hospitals had a day set aside for students to work on-site.”

  “You think a dental school would have records that old?”

  “Sure, if they have archives. Copies might be in the asylum, too. In either case, it’s a needle in a haystack.”

  “At this point,” Jake said, “I’ll take what I can get.”

  “Sam, it’s Manny. Office emergency. I’m running a little late.”

  “I can’t talk now.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “It’s yoga hour.”

  “Why are you doing yoga at Jake’s?”

  “There’s a nice vibe here.”

  Oh. “Have you even started?”

  “Mmmmm.”

  “I’ll come just as soon as I can.”

  ***

  When he entered his office, Jake was stopped by a lawyer in a pin-striped suit, who identified himself as Anthony Travaglini of the Corporation Counsel’s office- the city’s attorneys. “I’m here to serve you this,” he said, handing Jake some paper-clipped documents.

  Jake looked at the heading: ELIZABETH MARKIS, ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ESTATE OF PETER JOSEPH HARRIGAN, v. DR. JACOB ROSEN AND THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

  “It demands that you return Dr. Harrigan’s possessions to her,” Travaglini explained. “She’s only seeking the items you took from his house, nothing more.”

  What’s she doing? First she won’t let me tell her the truth about her father, and now she won’t let me have the things from his house- things she wanted me to have and begged me to pick up. What’s happening? Do they know Pete had the bones? Fear went up his spine like fire up a fuse. “What if I say no?” he asked.

  “The city won’t back you. She’s within her rights. She’s donated them to the Queens campus of the Catskill Medical School for a library that’s going to be named after him. And she’s powerful- remember, she’s not just Harrigan’s daughter, she is a U.S. Attorney.”

  “Bullshit!” The word was out before his better sense could censor it.

  “That’s as it may be. Whatever she wants them for, they’re hers. Matter of fact, the sheriff’s officers are waiting outside your house. Your brother’s there, but he won’t let them in till you give the okay. Call him, please. You have no choice.”

  Jake went to his desk and dialed his home number. “Let the sheriff’s men in,” he told his brother. “Give them Harrigan’s boxes on the top floor.”

  Sam’ll understand. I didn’t say anything about the box in the basement safe.

  JAKE CALLED MANNY on her cell just as she was heading uptown and told her about his encounter with Travaglini. “No need to meet Sam,” he said. “He’s gone to a class on Tantric sex.”

  She was relieved. Lack of attention to her day job was preying on her. This would give her a chance to see Mr. Williams about his whiplash suit against the Fire Department, file the final papers on the Cabrera deportation case, and catch up on her bookkeeping. The reward would be a late dinner with Jake.

  Her office was in one of those buildings near Wall Street that accommodate small businesses of every kind. Next door to her a dentist plied his painful trade (Manny loathed drills); around the corner was a CPA whose clients seemed to be mostly union organizers; at the far end of the hall was a publicist who handled a rock-and-roll girls’ band given to skimpy costumes even when they were not onstage. On the frosted glass panel of her door was stenciled in elegant gold letters:

  PHILOMENA MANFREDA

  Attorney-at-Law Her office space consisted of a small room for Kenneth, a larger room for herself, and a window with a view of other windows; when she looked outside she had a hard time telling if it was day or night.

  It was, she realized now, night. After her meeting with Williams, she had worked for she knew not how many hours, barely conscious that Kenneth had bid her good night and that, though the lights were on in the building across the street, no people remained to make use of them. She looked at her watch. Jesus! She dialed Jake’s cell.

  “I’m still at the office.”

  He sighed. “I am, too. You got me just before I was going to call you. Do you mind if we cancel tonight? I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”

  Not see him? Well- good. She was too tired for banter or for the avalanche of emotions she felt whenever she was with him. Better to grab a salad, get home in time to walk Mycroft, and catch the late-night repeats of the news shows to watch the spectacle of the legal trial du jour.

  She stood and stretched, fatigue searing every muscle in her back, and for the first time became aware of the silence. I must be the last person in the building.

  Last week the thought wouldn’t have bothered her, but after Turner Psychiatric it produced a tremor in her stomach, and she hurriedly gathered up her purse and coat.

  Someone’s in the corridor! She could see his silhouette against the frosted glass of her door. He was standing still- no, bending down now. To look through the glass? She imagined his breath on her neck, felt it again viscerally, as though she were still in the Solitude Room. Had he followed her? Did he know she’d met with Jake and Sam after his warning? Is he going to kill me now?

  Listen! A noise was coming from outside her door. What is it? A motor. A machine? An electric saw! Manny stifled a sob and stood paralyzed, her pounding heart so loud she could hear it above the whir of the motor. The shadow moved again, away from her door and out of her vision.

  Idiot! It’s not a saw; no one’s come to cut you to pieces. There’s no man outside. It’s a woman, the cleaning woman. And she’s using a floor polisher, like she does every night at this hour. My office is at the corner; it’s where she’d start. She bent down to turn it on.

  Tears of gratitude sprang to her eyes. “Oh,” she said aloud, and again, “Oh.” She put on her coat, wound the straps of her purse firmly over her arm, and- not without a residual shiver of trepidation- opened the door.

  Yes, there she was, the cleaning lady, polishing away in front of the office of Terrance Prescott, DDS.

  “Good evening,” Manny said, proud of the firmness
in her voice.

  The woman turned. She was wearing a kerchief that covered her hair and face, a baggy floral dress, and-strange-Tod’s lizard boots. Expensive.

  What kind of cleaning lady…? “Good evening,” the woman answered. She left the polisher where it was and walked toward Manny, holding something out as though it were an offering.

  A knife!

  The light was bright in the corridor; it ricocheted off the steel like sparks from a fire.

  Manny whirled, ran, slipped on the polished floor. The woman stood above her, knife poised, hand drawn back behind her head. Manny screamed, screamed, screamed again, the sound reverberating through the corridor, until the woman plunged the knife and Manny could scream no longer.

  She awoke to bright light and a searing pain in her right thigh. She was in a bed- no doubt about that- but it wasn’t her bed at home. Rather, it had the smell and feel of a bed in a-hospital?

  She opened her eyes. A hospital indeed. “Where am I?” she asked nevertheless, having all her life wanted to say it.

  “Saint Vincent’s,” a voice answered from the foot of the bed.

  She raised her head. Dr. Jacob Rosen, in full hospital regalia, was smiling at her. Must be a nightmare.

  Memories flooded her. Her office, the silhouette, the woman in lizard boots, and the knife-Oh, God, the knife! She tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness pushed her back down. Her mouth felt funny, as though she had been chewing on tweed.

  “Lie still,” Jake said. He moved to her side and took her hand. Maybe it’s a dream after all. “A cleaning woman found you and called nine-one-one.”

  “A cleaning woman? She was the one who- black or white?”

  “Black.” A different woman. “You were on the floor outside your office. You’d been stabbed. There’s a gash on your thigh, four-five inches long.”

  “How’d you know I was here?”

  “You had your PDA in your blazer pocket. The EMS called the emergency numbers you’ve listed and finally got Kenneth Boyd. He called me.” Jake shook his head in wonder. “It was quite a conversation.”

  “Where is he? And has he taken care of Mycroft?”

  “He’s taking Mycroft to your mother’s for the night. Said he can’t stand hospitals or the sight of blood. He’ll only see you if you’re well or if you’re dead.”

  She closed her eyes. “Which am I?”

  “Well- or almost well. You’ll be in a lot of pain when the drugs wear off, but it’s only a flesh wound. You can leave later this morning, and you’ll be walking fine in a couple of days.” He pulled up a chair. “Feel strong enough to tell me what happened?”

  Her story was disjointed, partly because of the drugs but more because her mind remembered scattered images rather than a coherent sequence.

  “Your attacker,” Jake said. “You sure it was a woman?”

  “Not really. All she said was good evening, and it might have been a falsetto voice. There’s the dress, of course, but she wore men’s Tod’s lizard boots. Unmistakable.”

  “Right. A man or a woman. Kenneth-”

  “He didn’t do it!”

  Jake laughed. “I’m not implying that he did. But I’m trying to find out whether it was the same person who scared you at Turner. Could have been two separate people.”

  The comfort of his presence wore away, and she was once again assaulted by the horror of what had happened. The impact of his statement struck her hard. “Two attackers?”

  “Say, Sheriff Fisk and Marge Crespy.”

  “You think-?”

  His face darkened. “My colleague, Wally Winnick, is in Baxter County trying to find connections. We’ll know more when he reports back. All I’m sure of is that he or she or they didn’t want to kill you.”

  “The person at Turner didn’t, but the cleaning woman did.”

  “If she’d wanted to, you’d be dead. The knife could just as easily have gone into your heart as into your thigh. They’re trying to scare you off, Manny, and, through you, me.” He banged the side of her bed with his fist. “God, how I wish she’d come after me!” It’s my fault she’s hurt. I didn’t have to get her involved. I wanted her along. I didn’t need her.

  “I’m glad she didn’t,” Manny said softly. He sat with his head bowed; she stroked his arm. “It means I didn’t have to wait till tonight for our date to see you.”

  He tried to smile and couldn’t. A nurse came in. “There are two policemen outside, Ms. Manfreda. They want to talk to you about the attack. Are you up to it?”

  “I suppose so.” The drug was wearing off, she realized. The pain was worse but her mind was clearer. “How did the cops find out about this?” she asked Jake.

  “From EMS. They have to report all suspicious injuries.”

  “Nothing suspicious here. It was an out-and-out crime. What do I tell them?”

  “Just say your screams scared the assailant off.”

  MANNY KNEW, as Jake helped her out of the taxi, that she could have called Kenneth or asked her mother to come stay with her at her apartment, but Jake had invited her to his house-“You’ll be safest there”- and she’d accepted. Who wouldn’t? The EMS had cut off her clothes, so, with becoming modesty on both sides, Jake had bundled her into two hospital gowns and signed the discharge papers.

  She was feeling something she had rarely felt before: vulnerability. It felt good to be taken care of. He sat her in one of his leather club chairs in the living room, propped up her feet on a mismatched ottoman, and made her tea.

  “I’ll get you something else to wear,” he told her.

  She was still in the hospital gowns. “Have you been hanging around with Kenneth?”

  He glanced at her. “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Whatever you’ve got.”

  He went upstairs.

  She sipped her tea and marveled at the fact that she was alive. Her attacker could have killed her-poof!-and she would have been just like Mrs. Alessis, her body empty of her being. That others could be responsible for her death was frightening. Control was her strength, and she was learning how little it meant. She’d spent her adult life dealing with human suffering and loss; she’d even assisted at an autopsy. But it was only now, when she’d come so close to her own death, that outrage overcame her. I’m a human being. How dare they? She wanted revenge.

  Jake came back. Recompense. “Try these.” He dropped a pair of his pajamas on her lap.

  “I thought for sure you’d have your girlfriend’s sweatpants.”

  “No girlfriend. No sweatpants.”

  Aha.

  “I have to go back to the office for a few hours,” he said. “We’ll order out when I get back. I called Sam to see if he could come over”- Please, no. -“but he isn’t around. So you’ll be alone. Don’t open the door to anyone.” He looked at her, concerned. “Do you need help putting on the pajamas?”

  “I can do it.” She tried to stand, fell back. “Ow! I can put on the top, but you better help me with the bottoms.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Lascivious scientist. She felt a throb of desire. “Turn around.”

  “Why? I see naked bodies all the time.”

  “Dead naked bodies. Turn around.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Manny slipped out of the hospital gowns, put on the top, and buttoned it. It was maroon with little ivory diamonds on it-hideous-but the cotton was smooth, luxurious. She rolled up the sleeves and thought of lying next to him in bed. The codeine is messing with my head. “I need help now.”

  Jake got down on one knee and placed her feet in the legs. Is he about to propose? “I think you need to roll them up,” she said.

  He pushed them up discreetly so her feet stuck out of the bottoms. His hands touched her calves. She shivered.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” she squeaked.

  “Good. Lean forward and pull them up. Be careful not to put weight on that leg.”

  She gave her tush a wiggle
and tied the cord at the waist. “There.”

  He looked at her like a man, not a physician.

  “Go back to work,” she said. “There are bodies waiting for you.”

  And another when you come back home.

  ***

  Manny wasn’t in the club chair when he got home. The living room was empty.

  Terror filled him like poison. I can’t lose her. She’s too important. He didn’t try to interpret what important meant; he was only aware that his breathing was labored, his panic was making him dizzy, and if she were kidnapped or dead he would have to get a new name, a new life. He could not live with the Jacob Rosen he was now.

  “Manny?” he yelled. “Manny!”

  A sound from upstairs. It took him a moment to identify it: running water. She’s taking a bath!

  He raced up the stairs, laughing. Yes. The bathroom door was closed. It was definitely water he heard. Manny was singing Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife” at the top of her lungs.

  He pounded on the door. The singing stopped.

  “Who is it?”

  “Jake. How the hell did you get upstairs?”

  “Rocket ship. I needed a bath.”

  “Very funny. If you get water on those bandages, you’ll rip out the stitches. The wound’s probably bleeding now from the climb.”

  She turned off the water. “Actually, no. And I’ve got my leg hanging over the side of the tub. If I ever decide to quit lawyering, there’s a job for me as a contortionist.” She giggled. “You should see me.”

  “I’d like that very much.” He turned the doorknob.

  “Don’t you dare!”

  “It was your suggestion.” He stood by the door, listening to the sounds of her bathing. Then he heard water running out of the tub. “There are clean towels in the closet,” he told her.

  “Found them.”

  “Need help getting down the stairs?”

  “I got up them, didn’t I?” She hesitated. “Although it might be fun.”

  ***

  She appeared at the kitchen door wearing his pajama bottoms backward and holding a prescription bottle. Her eyes flashed fire.