by John Lutz
She stood back so they could enter. It was warm in the apartment but not uncomfortable.
“I made brownies,” she said.
She left them abruptly and scurried toward what they assumed was the kitchen.
Vitali and Mishkin exchanged glances.
Then Ida Frost was back, using two hot pads to hold a large rectangular pan of brownies generously dusted with powdered sugar. They smelled delicious.
“Hot from the oven,” she said. “My mother’s recipe and her mother’s before her.” She offered the pan.
“Can’t say no to all that history,” Mishkin said. He delicately lifted one of the end brownies.
Vitali, thinking that for all they knew the brownies could be poisoned, smiled and shook his head no. Ida Frost moved in on him with the brownies. He raised a hand, still smiling. The edge of the hot pan was almost touching his tie. She was smiling up at him insistently, still advancing. If he didn’t back up he’d have a brownie pan scar on his stomach.
“These are great, Sal,” Mishkin said. There were brownie crumbs and powdered sugar in his bushy mustache, on his tie. “You oughta try one.”
Vitali gave in and helped himself to a brownie. Ida Frost withdrew from his personal space.
“You said on the phone that you recalled something,” Mishkin said, and took another bite of brownie.
“Did I? Oh, yes.” Ida Frost looked at Vitali and at the half a brownie in his hand. “Do they meet with your approval, Detective?”
Vitali growled around a mouthful of brownie that they did.
“What was it you recalled?” Mishkin asked.
Ida Frost appeared puzzled.
“You called the precinct house and asked for Detective Mishkin,” Vitali reminded her. “You left a message saying you remembered something about the Mary Bakehouse case and were calling as we’d requested.”
“I liked Mary,” Ida Frost said. “I wish she hadn’t moved away.”
“Probably it’s better for her that she went somewhere else,” Vitali said.
Ida Frost seemed to consider that; then she smiled. “Yes, she’s probably safer if she moved out of the city. People in these big apartment buildings don’t seem to know each other, don’t have the time. Everyone’s always rushing around wrapped up in their own thoughts, busy, busy. I’m afraid we lead very insulated and uncaring lives.”
“We should all take better care of each other,” Mishkin said.
“Yes. We all share the guilt, in a way.”
“We all agree that’s true,” Vitali said dismissively, trying to keep the Frost woman and Mishkin on point and hurry things along. What was it with Harold sometimes? “About your phone call, ma’am…”
Ida Frost’s smile widened. “Am I a suspect?”
“Gosh, no!” Mishkin said, helping himself to another brownie.
She saw that Vitali had finished his brownie and advanced on him again with the pan. Though she had a slight limp, she was fast off the mark. “Do take another, Detective. They’re sinfully delicious.”
“They should be against the law,” Mishkin said, and he and Ida Frost laughed.
Vitali took another brownie in self-defense. Or so he told himself, the brownies being hell on his diet. “You did call the precinct house,” he reminded Ida Frost. “What was it you remembered, ma’am?”
“A hat. I understand the thug who attacked Mary wore a hat.” She paused for what might have been dramatic effect.
“A hat,” Mishkin said.
“I saw a man with a hat that very evening, standing outside and looking suspicious. I passed him when I went out for my daily walk.”
“What time was that, ma’am?”
“Why, I couldn’t say.”
“Was it still light outside?”
“Outside, yes.”
“What did he look like?” Mishkin asked.
“He was…just a man in a hat. A cap, rather. A baseball cap.”
Mishkin glanced over at Vitali and almost imperceptibly shrugged. He couldn’t recall if he’d mentioned to Ida Frost that the attacker had worn a baseball cap. “Do you remember the color, ma’am?”
“Blue, or perhaps gray. Or both. Now that I think of it, It was a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, I’m sure,” Ida Frost said. “I spend enough time in Ebbets Field, I should be able to recognize a Dodgers cap.”
“The Los Angeles Dodgers, you mean, ma’am?” Vitali asked. There was powdered sugar on his brown suit coat. “The Dodgers haven’t been in Brooklyn for a long time.”
“I attended the games often with my father when I was a young girl.”
“We all miss the Dodgers,” Mishkin said.
“The man in the cap. He might have been Pee Wee Reese.”
Mishkin grinned broadly. “Say, you’re a real Dodgers fan.”
“I’ve always been partial to Pee Wee. Would you like a glass of milk with those brownies? I have nice cold milk for all my visitors.”
Vitali and Mishkin regarded each other. Vitali had powdered sugar on his suit and the back of his right hand. Mishkin had more of the white dusting on his mustache and tie. Probably some on his white shirt that wasn’t visible unless you looked closely. Some of the powdered sugar on Mishkin had drifted down and was on his right shoe.
“Milk would be great!” Mishkin said, and Vitali seconded him.
Ida Frost set the pan of brownies on a magazine on the coffee table and hurried off again to the kitchen. The two detectives shook their heads silently. They were going to get nothing of value from this witness other than brownies. Ida Frost was one of the older, lonely women who inhabited many of Manhattan’s small, rent-controlled apartments. What she wanted was company, somebody to appreciate her brownies. She had found two such people. Alleviating her loneliness might have been the sole purpose of her phone call.
Mishkin helped himself to another brownie while Vitali stood brushing at the powdered sugar on his suit coat with the backs of his knuckles, making more of a mess.
“Pee Wee,” Ida Frost said to them, when she came back from the kitchen with two tall glasses of milk on a tray, “would never have harmed Mary Bakehouse.”
Not Pee Wee, they agreed.
After leaving Ida Frost’s apartment, Vitali and Mishkin slapped at their clothes to rid them of powdered sugar, trailing a white haze as they strode toward the elevator.
They both saw her at the same time, a woman standing watching them from beyond the elevator, near the end of the hall. She was wearing a dark raincoat and a dark hat with the wide brim bent low so her face was in shadow.
As if she’d just noticed them, she turned and walked quickly away, rounding the corner at the end of the hall and passing out of sight.
“I’ll go after her,” Vitali said. “You take the elevator and beat her to the lobby, Harold. We’ll have her between us, and we can flush her out.”
Off he went.
The elevator was already at lobby level and took its time rising to where Mishkin waited.
When it arrived at his floor he quickly stepped in and punched the lobby button, then the button that closed the elevator door.
The elevator stopped at the floor below, and a woman with two identical corgis on red leather leashes got in. One of the corgis began licking Mishkin’s right shoe.
Another floor down, an elderly but alert-looking woman with an aluminum cane boarded the elevator. She and the woman with the Corgis ignored each other. No one paid the slightest attention to Mishkin except for the corgi licking his shoe.
When they reached lobby level, Mishkin, out of habit and because they crowded past him, let the women and the two dogs exit the elevator ahead of him. He stepped out just in time to see the door to the stairwell burst open and a panting and heaving Vitali come skidding out.
Both men looked at the street door shutting slowly on its pneumatic closer as the women and dogs disappeared into the night.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Sal,” Mishkin said, “but I think our shadow woman beat
you down the stairs and got out of the building.”
“How did you get your shoe wet, Harold?”
“Huh? Oh. Dog.”
“She’s probably gone, Harold, but maybe she didn’t leave at all. Let’s get some uniforms down here to check the building.”
Two hours later, all the occupants and apartments were accounted for. The shadow woman had escaped again.
“I don’t understand it, Harold,” Vitali said, as everyone was leaving the building. “I was really flying down those stairs.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Mishkin said. “She had a good head start.”
They pushed through the pneumatic door out into the night.
Three radio cars were still parked at the curb. Two uniformed cops were lounging against one of the cars, and three more cops were standing around nearby on the sidewalk, chatting.
Ida Frost emerged from the building, wielding her pan of brownies.
29
In the Nickel Diner on Broadway in TriBeCa, Joyce House laid out a breakfast of eggs, pancakes, and coffee for the good-looking guy.
That was how she’d come to think of him, because that was what he was—good-looking. He was slightly built, with a mop of curly black hair and magnetic blue eyes, and always dressed a bit showily and expensively. This morning he had on designer jeans, pointy-toed boots that looked like they were ostrich skin, and a tailored short-sleeved black shirt with white buttons. His silver belt buckle was in the form of a soaring eagle. A silver stud earring glinted in each earlobe. Just this side of ghetto fabulous, thought Joyce. But somehow the good-looking guy could bring it off.
Joyce was no slouch in the looks department herself. She was medium height, trim, and buxom, eye candy even in her yellow and white server’s uniform. She had straight brown hair with bangs, a perfect pale complexion, and widely set eyes that were like calm dark lakes.
Mick, the diner’s owner and overseer of the kitchen, leaned down to look at Joyce through the serving window. His beefy red face was perspiring after a busy breakfast hour. Mick had one of those florid complexions, as if his tie were always too tight and choking him. It was almost ten o’clock, and the diner was empty except for an elderly couple at a table near the rear, and the good-looking guy in a front booth by the window.
“We stay slow,” Mick said to Joyce, “why don’t you come back and help with the dishwashing?”
Joyce nodded. It was their usual routine. She didn’t know why Mick even bothered to ask.
Alice the cashier would remain at her place behind the counter to greet any customers who happened to wander in during the void between breakfast and lunchtime. Alice was a gum-chomping, henna-haired former stock trader who’d opted out of the world of finance five years ago to live a simpler life with Mick. For years they’d been going to get married someday.
“I see you and Mr. Hotshot over there,” Alice said, “and I can’t help thinking I’m looking at two of God’s beautiful creatures. He’s been coming in regular for a few weeks now. He ever put any moves on you?”
“None that I noticed,” Joyce said.
“You think he might be gay?”
“Hmmm. No.”
“Married?”
“Irrelevant.”
“So maybe you oughta go over and talk to him. Strike up a conversation about his pancakes. If you don’t, I will.”
Joyce laughed. “Yeah, you will. With Mick in the kitchen with all those knives.”
“He might be in show business or something,” Alice said, watching the good-looking guy fork in a bite of pancake. “Now that I look at him, I think I might’ve seen him in something.”
“He might need more coffee,” Joyce said.
She lifted the glass pot of decaffeinated from its burner and approached the good-looking guy, who was chewing and staring out the window.
He caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window but didn’t turn around, letting her come to him.
“Top you off?” she asked.
He counted to three and swiveled around on the booth’s hard wooden seat. Gave her a smile. “Pardon?”
“Your coffee, I mean.”
“Sure.” He nodded toward the pot. “That decaf?”
“Sure is. Always the pot with the orange top.” She poured steaming coffee into his half-full cup. “My friend over there thinks you might be somebody. I mean, in show business.”
He laughed. He had very white, very even teeth, made to appear still whiter because he apparently spent time in a tanning salon. And there was something about his hair, like maybe it wasn’t so dark and had been dyed. So it could be he was a celebrity who had to be careful about his appearance. He didn’t look like the type to be in any kind of outdoor work. Theater in the park, maybe.
“You’re an actor,” she said.
Big smile. “Yes, I’m Brad Pitt.”
Joyce gave him his smile right back. “Well, I guess that makes me Angelina Jolie.”
He added cream to his coffee from the little silver pitcher on the table. “Would you really be Angelina if I were Brad?”
The coffeepot was getting heavy, so she set it down. “Why not? That would be kind of a perfect world.”
He kept his smile as he leaned back and studied her more closely. It made her uneasy, but not in a bad way. “A perfect world…”
“But it sure isn’t that,” she said. She picked up the coffeepot, keeping her elbow in tight and back so her right breast strained her uniform blouse.
“Don’t go away,” he said.
She felt herself heat up like the decaf, and her heart started to hammer.
“Work to do,” she said. “Sorry.”
She turned away, hoping to hear his voice calling her back. Waiting…
I’m hard to get, hard to get but worth it…. Come on….
“If you go away,” he said, “I’ll have to order something else to make you come back.”
Ah! She grinned. She did feel like one of God’s beautiful creatures. The good-looking guy made her feel that way.
She turned back around to face him, being careful to keep a neutral expression.
“I wanted to talk, is all,” he said.
“About what?”
“Why is it called the Nickel Diner? There’s nothing on the menu that’s a nickel.”
“They always said about Mick, the owner, that he never saw a nickel he didn’t pick up.”
“Interesting. See, we talked and I learned something.”
She smiled. “I didn’t.”
“Well, we haven’t talked long enough. Don’t you ever get lonely? Don’t you sometimes just want somebody to talk to?”
She put the coffeepot back down on the table. “Yes and yes.”
“What size shoe do you wear?”
Huh? “Seven,” she said. “Why?”
“I can get you shoes. I’m in New York to help design a new shoe store.”
“You’re not an actor?” She feigned disappointment.
“Close,” he said. “Shoe business.”
“God!” she said, and rolled her eyes.
But she did like a man with a sense of humor.
“I can get you shoes,” he said again. “You like pumps?”
“Joyce!”
Alice’s voice from behind the counter. When Joyce looked over at her, Alice made a sideways motion with her head toward the kitchen. A signal that Mick might be taking an interest in where Joyce was, what she was doing. Mick could make a big commotion, like a major storm with thunder but no lightning. Except maybe if he thought she was flirting with a customer. Then there would be lightning to go with the thunder. He had a thing about that, said it was one of the shalt nots in the diner Bible.
“I really better get back to work,” she said to the good-looking guy. “The boss doesn’t like even the thought of the help getting to know any of the customers too well.”
“We don’t know each other too well. But I’d like to get to know you better. It’s not just the pancakes talkin
g, Joyce. I mean it.”
She almost asked how he knew her name, and then she remembered Alice had just called her. Also, it was on all his breakfast checks along with a little smiley face.
“I’m Loren Ensam,” he said, holding out his right hand. It was narrow but long-fingered; he had a pianist’s hands.
She shook the hand, feeling its surprising strength though he didn’t seem to have squeezed very hard.
“Joyce House,” she said.
“Got a phone number, Joyce?”
“Joyce!” Alice called again. With more desperation this time.
“When I go over and total your check,” she said, “I’ll write it on the copy you keep.”
He smiled up at her. “Okay. I’ll be honest. I’m in the middle of an ugly divorce, and it wouldn’t be to my advantage if my soon-to-be ex learned I was seeing another woman. And if your boss found out about us, you might lose your job and I’d have to find another breakfast stop. So we’ll have a secret relationship.”
“Sounds like fun.” Joyce was already moving away from the booth.
“Oh, it can be,” she heard him say behind her.
Of course, he’d never seen Mick blow up.
When she was back behind the counter, Alice grinned at her and said, “So how’d you do?”
“He’s married with three kids,” Joyce said without hesitation.
She didn’t like doing it, but how could she not lie to Alice, who slept with Mick?
Joyce realized that her life had suddenly become more complicated. Secrets, lies, sex. Well, not sex yet. But it was inevitable.
Joyce was looking forward to all of it. She felt an inner turmoil that she didn’t at all mind. What was happening was like out of a book, too good to be anything but fiction.
What if he doesn’t call?
After she totaled up his check, she wrote her name and drew her customary little smiley face above it. The smiley face didn’t seem as happy as usual. She saw that her hand was trembling.
He’ll call. Why wouldn’t he?
Below her name, on the check’s customer receipt, she meticulously printed her phone number, even the area code so there would be no doubt. If Mick was watching, he’d probably think she was diligently itemizing prices.