I gave up on my drink and ordered a cup of coffee. I thought of the cats in the park who had so suddenly appeared when Fay rasped that spoon across the railing. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Peter Dobrynin had been the Mother Theresa of the feline world just because he’d fed them expensive Russian cuisine. I don’t know why I felt that way. Maybe because stray cats who live in the park always do better than strays in abandoned buildings and alleys. It’s the latter whose existence is so sad and so problematical, so filled with terror and danger from vehicles and starvation—and heartless people. Those are the cats I wish he’d seen to first. There are countless numbers of them only a block outside the park. And they certainly don’t need gourmet food; all they need is commercial cat food.
Thinking about all the strays made me depressed. Over the years I had spent hundreds of hours with various short-lived volunteer programs, trying to rescue stray cats. It’s hard to catch the poor things, even those who are hurt or emaciated. And once you catch them it’s harder still to find homes for them, unless they’re kittens. And if you can’t place them—what then? Give them to the animal-welfare agencies? That often means death. I finished my coffee and pushed the cup away. If I stayed in the bar I would begin to remember specific strays. And I didn’t want to do that.
Tony and I walked uptown on Broadway, past the Columbia University campus, past the seminaries and music schools. We crossed under the elevated subway station on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, then turned west on One Hundred Twenty-sixth.
It was a dingy street of squat factory buildings one right after the other. I looked searchingly up the block. Then I heard Tony say, “Well I’ll be damned.”
We saw the blue building. At least, it had once been blue. The paint had come away from the brick in great hunks, and the structure was now a speckled blue-and-rust.
We entered through double steel doors and found ourselves in the small lobby, aged marble all around. The old building directory indicated that there were only two tenants remaining in the place: a metal-spinning firm on the second floor, and an auto-parts wholesaler. It didn’t appear that anyone lived in the building, just those two industrial tenants.
“What are you doing here?”
Tony and I whirled to the right, where the voice had come from. A gray-haired man in taped-together spectacles stood inside the open fire door. He was holding a plumber’s snake and some other implement I couldn’t name.
“Who are you?” he demanded, coming near us.
“Who are you?” I retorted, sounding equally suspicious.
“I’m the super,” he said, gripping the tools more tightly.
Tony spoke then, pleasantly. “We’re Lenny’s friends.”
At that the super relaxed, even treated us to a smile. Obviously, he liked Lenny.
“Where’s he been?” the super asked. “Haven’t seen him in a while.” Then a worried look crossed his face. “Something happen to him?”
Tony launched into essentially the same story he’d made up for Fay’s benefit. “Well . . . yes,” he answered, serious but not overly grave. “There was an accident. He’s in Beekman Hospital, downtown. But he’ll be okay.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that,” the man said. “Lenny’s the best tenant I ever had—except when he brings those bag people around sometimes.”
“Yes,” Tony went on. “Lenny’s good people. He really cares, doesn’t he?”
I decided it was time for me to jump in. “I’m so relieved we were able to find you. Lenny didn’t have a thing on him when he was hit. No keys, no money, or anything. He wanted us to pick up a few clothes and things for him. Could you . . .?”
The super set his things on the floor, extracted an out-sized ring of keys from his back pocket, and led us up the stairs. When we’d reached the third floor we walked down a gloomy hallway, at the end of which there was a solitary door.
“Right here,” the super said, trying one key and then another until he’d found the right fit. He pushed the door open, switched on the light, and told us he’d meet us downstairs when we were ready to leave.
Basillio and I were equally dumbfounded by what we saw before us.
The room was brilliantly lit by a series of spotlights overhead. The floor, a beautiful parquet newly waxed and shining like a gem, had been coated, it seemed, with a gripping agent.
Dobrynin-Lenny had fitted the room out as a ballet studio, complete with a practice barre and a mirror that ran the length of one wall. There were two towering armoires in the room—both filled with leotards, toe shoes, leg-warmers, sweatpants, all sorts of dance paraphernalia—as well as a stereo system and a shiny black grand piano.
“Curiouser and curiouser!” Tony mumbled as he looked around.
I walked along the opposite wall, looking at the mats and blankets scattered on the floor. No doubt, the bag people the super had mentioned stayed over once in a while.
“Swede, look at this!” Tony called. “There’s a video here in the VCR.”
I went over to join him. He was grinning. “I wonder what kind of stuff your friend liked to watch.”
“He wasn’t my friend, Basillio. I never met the man.”
Tony flicked switches to turn on the TV and set the videotape in motion. A moment later a couple appeared on the screen.
“Now, why doesn’t this surprise me?” he said, leering.
It was obviously a home-made video, shot, it quickly became clear, exactly where we were standing. The man and woman on the tape both had beautiful bodies—dancers’ bodies. And they were both completely naked.
“Is that the great Lenny . . . or should I say, Dobrynin?” Basillio asked, his eyes riveted on the screen.
“Yes,” I said.
The couple were dancing now, fluidly, wonderfully. It was eerily beautiful. I found myself shivering.
“Know who the woman is?”
I didn’t answer.
Tony looked up quickly at me, then turned back to the television set, his face up close to the screen. “Who is it, Swede? And what are they doing?”
I recognized what they were “doing,” thanks to some of those long-ago rehearsals I’d attended with Lucia Maury. They were dancing one of the early scenes from Giselle. Giselle and Albrecht execute four ballotés and then a balloné and a grand jeté. I could almost hear the old rehearsal mistress calling out the steps.
“Come on, Swede,” Tony demanded, his voice full of urgency, as if the video were disturbing him in some way.
“Do you know who that woman is or not?”
“Her name’s Melissa Taniment,” I said.
Chapter 16
“How do you get an outside line?” I asked.
We were in Tony’s hotel room, having taken a cab back from Lenny’s strange “mansion.” I was still a bit dazed by what I had seen. I had to call to Lucia now, had to find out more about Melissa Taniment. As an insider, Lucia would know all the intimate details about her—even the salacious ones, I hoped.
“Dial nine first,” Tony instructed.
He was seated in the easy chair in front of an old, feebly hissing radiator. One leg stretched out in front of him, he was gingerly rubbing it. Obviously the heavy amount of walking we’d been doing lately hadn’t furthered his recovery from the fall he’d taken trying to execute that ballet step.
Over the ringing at the other end of the line, I could hear Basillio say from behind me: “You know, Dame Nestleton, your basic problem is that, deep down, you really are an academic. You should be teaching somewhere—teaching the finer points of acting to a group of eager young know-nothings. The fact of the matter is that you’re a little too decorous for your own good. The fact of the matter is that you would never dance naked with me. Never in a hundred years. Even if it wasn’t being videoed.”
I found that amusing. “But Tony,” I said, “you’re not Dobrynin. Who knows what I might have done if he had asked me to dance?”
No response from Basillio. And none at the other end of t
he line. I hung up finally and called Frank Brodsky.
The attorney told me that Lucia was at home but taking no calls. She was falling apart, heavily sedated and under the care of her physician. The tension had just become too much for her.
I escaped from his questions about the investigation as soon as I could, saying I had a pressing appointment related to the case.
Then I phoned Melissa Taniment. I identified myself and said it was urgent that I see her again; might I drop by for just a few moments?
She informed me that she had no wish to see me this evening, or any other.
“Are you willing to put that response on videotape?” I asked.
I waited out the long, loaded silence emanating from the other end of the line, until she said stonily, “Come over now.” Then she hung up.
“Do you want company?” Tony asked.
“No, you stay here and rest. It won’t take long. I’ll bring back some soup for you,” I offered, getting into my coat.
“Sure. Tell him to make the soup straight-up. And with two olives in it.”
I left the hotel and walked directly to the glass tower. Melissa didn’t say a word as she opened the door. Obviously she had just emerged from the shower—there was a huge blue towel wrapped around her head and she was wearing a bathrobe of the same color.
Parking me once again in the kitchen was her way of telling me that I was déclassé, not worthy of a seat in the living room—like a repairman. I transferred a copy of Harper’s Bazaar from one of the kitchen chairs to the table and sat down.
Melissa went over to the counter, on which stood one of those elaborate juicers that seem capable of pulverizing anything into liquid nothing—even aluminum cans, if one wished to add them to the brew. Next to the contraption were oranges and carrots and what I took to be mangoes—all lined up for the eventual slaughter. She began by quartering the oranges, still ignoring me completely. I waited in silence. She moved on to the carrots. Neither of us spoke. Finally, she dropped the knife disgustedly onto the counter and sat down across from me at the table.
“You were in his apartment,” she said bitterly, fearfully.
“Yes. And I watched the tape.”
She sat rigidly in her chair. I could see that she was trying to collect herself. She looked down at her hands on the table top, willing them to be still.
“It isn’t true, is it, that you hadn’t seen Peter Dobrynin during the last three years of his life? You lied when you told me that.”
Her eyes blazed. “Of course I lied to you! I owe you nothing!”
I only smiled a little. “Please go on,” I said.
“Oh, for god’s sake, what do you want me to say? That I went there once a week? I did. Sometimes more than that. That I made love with him? Of course I did. There—does that satisfy you?”
“You did something else,” I said. “You danced.”
“Yes,” she admitted petulantly, “but only once . . . like that. He . . . made me.” She folded her arms suddenly across her chest, as if she were chilly. Then she leaned toward me, her face suddenly that of a child pleading with its mother.
“Please. Give me that tape. I will pay you anything you ask. Please!”
Her offer of a bribe made me uncomfortable. But she had good reason to attempt to bribe me. If I gave the tape to the police, they would be very interested. If I gave it to the papers, they would resurrect the case and splash her face—and possibly a lot more than that—all over page two. In any case, she would become a suspect in the murder. And, probably most threatening of all as far as Melissa was concerned, her social lion of a husband would know everything.
I kept my eyes on the juicer while I pondered her predicament. Finally I said to her, “I don’t want your money. But I will hold the tape until the murderer of Peter Dobrynin has been caught.”
“She has been caught!” Melissa retorted angrily. “Lucia Maury killed Peter.”
“I don’t think so. In fact, at this point you’re a much more likely candidate than Lucia.”
“I was at a dinner party on Long Island the night Peter was killed. With five other couples. How could I have killed him?”
“I don’t know—at the moment. But there are ways.”
She exploded in fury. “I loved him! I always loved him, you ridiculous woman! Do you understand that? I would never hurt Peter in any way!” She was screaming the words out.
I waited a second for the storm to pass, then asked dispassionately, “Were you giving him money?”
“No. Never. He never asked.”
“Then where did he get his money?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you aware that he was spending a fair amount of money feeding stray cats?”
“He may have mentioned it once or twice.”
“And did you consider that odd?”
“No. Why should I? He liked animals of all kinds. And besides, he was always doing impulsive things, things other people never understood.”
“Why did he start to call himself ‘Lenny’?”
“How should I know?”
“Are there any other compromising videotapes?”
“No. Not with me, there aren’t. I never wanted to do it in the first place. It was so childish. But Peter insisted. He was drunk. And maybe I was too. It was so embarrassing dancing that way—nude—in front of his friend.”
“Friend? Who was that?”
“The man who filmed us. He operated that damn video camera.”
“Can you give me his name?”
“I think it was Basil.”
I sat back and tried to make something of this new bit of information. None of Lenny’s street acquaintances had mentioned someone called “Basil.”
“Was he a homeless man?” I asked Melissa.
“I’m not sure. Probably. He came and went. All I knew about him was that he was an ex-convict. Peter seemed to like that, for some reason. It was almost as though he was amused by the fact that this man was a criminal.”
“What was he in prison for?”
“I have no idea. Peter never told me—and I didn’t want to know.”
“Can you describe him?”
Melissa sighed in exasperation. She stood up, adjusting the blue towel around her damp hair, and moved back to the counter. She hefted the knife again, but made no move to cut more ingredients for the juicer. I had a moment’s awful fear, thinking she might turn the knife on me.
But all she did was turn it over and over in her hand. “Listen to me,” she said tightly. “I don’t want my husband to find out. He mustn’t, do you hear? He is a very good and kind man, but he would never . . . I told him that things between Peter and me were over long ago. He wouldn’t understand.”
No, I bet he wouldn’t, I silently affirmed.
“Did you ever see anyone else in the apartment?” I asked next. “Anyone at all—men, women, anyone?”
She grimaced, her expression telling me that she was well aware of Dobrynin’s lunatic promiscuity. But also, curious about where the question might lead.
“Are you referring to anyone in particular?” she asked cagily.
“Well, perhaps Betty Ann Ellenville, or even Louis Beasley . . . or Lucia.”
“No. I never saw them. He had cut himself off from people like them. I told you—I only saw that Basil. Oh, and once or twice an older woman, another street person, I assume, who apparently ran errands once in a while. She looks a fright.”
“Is her name Fay?”
“I’m sure I don’t remember.”
“But Basil you saw fairly regularly?”
“That’s right.”
“Please tell me what he looks like.” The question I had asked earlier, which had not been answered.
“He’s a light-skinned black man. Tall. Very thin. He speaks with an accent—a Latin accent of some sort—maybe Cuban. And he has a pencil mustache.”
“Anything else?”
“Oh, God! Can this please be over soon?�
�� Melissa threw herself back into her chair.
“In just another moment,” I said. “Are you sure there isn’t anything else about Basil?”
“He usually wears a blue raincoat,” she said through her teeth. “Without buttons. He keeps it closed with a belt from a pair of trousers.”
***
I left a few minutes later, but didn’t go straight back to the Pickwick Arms. I stopped off instead at the first place that caught my notice—luckily for me, a lovely little French café across the street. I needed a few minutes alone, not just to collect my thoughts but also to shake off the emotional aftereffects of Melissa’s incivility. The cappuccino was a good, strong restorative.
The sudden emergence of this “Basil” was unnerving. Maybe even more so than the discovery of Dobrynin’s living quarters, or the Giselle tape.
Until the gun was found in Lucia’s office, many people connected with the case had believed that Dobrynin was killed by another derelict. If the police hadn’t found what they were certain was the murder weapon, as well as its owner, they surely would have mounted a manhunt for Basil once they’d come to know of him.
I remembered what my old friend Detective Rothwax had once told me: “The reason you irritate so many professionals is that you seem to have no respect for the ‘statistical nut.’”
When I’d asked him what that term meant, he explained it in simple language. If there are two suspects in a murder investigation, he said, and only one of them has a past felony conviction, the odds are greater than a hundred-to-one that the ex-convict is the murderer. And it is upon the ex-convict that the police must focus.
It was a simple rule, crude really, but obviously tried-and-true in routine crime investigations. I smiled into the steam of my coffee. One thing was sure: if I wanted to find Basil quickly, I was going to need Rothwax’s help—statistics and all.
Chapter 17
Frank Brodsky had listened attentively to my report. He found Dobrynin’s cat-feeding activities “amusing.” The hidden apartment he thought “strange and intriguing.” The videotape featuring the dancer and Melissa Taniment he thought “regrettable, sad.” But Basil was “the most important breakthrough in the case”—the discovery of a real-life derelict with a prison record.
A Cat in the Wings: Page 9