“Oh yes I will,” she said, feeling more like the little girl than the woman who had grown up.
“You still don’t weigh very much. How can you handle those crooks when you’re so thin? You’d better come home more often so we can fatten you up a little.”
Outside there was a deep distant rumble, and everyone turned toward the sound.
“Was that thunder?” her mother asked.
“Sounded like it,” her father said.
“Good. Maybe we’ll get some rain tonight.”
Her father shook his head and pinched his lips together. “Nope, the moon’s not right.”
“I don’t see how the moon has anything to do with it.”
They heard the thunder again before he could explain, if he intended to explain.
“I’d better go out and finish up.”
Katherine got off his lap and tried to cover her disappointment that the thunder had replaced her in her father’s mind. He bent down and tied his work boots, then went outside through the back porch. She saw him walk up the little hill past the granary where he stopped, hands on his hips, to stare up at the sky. She wondered what he saw, how he interpreted it, how he had learned to read the moon and the clouds. Did it come from his father like the poem of Hiawatha, or was it self-taught from years of looking toward the sky?
The thunder grew louder as the night moved in. They sat in the living room and talked over the noise of the television. When the weather report came on at ten o’clock, there was a prediction of rain. Her father didn’t believe it.
Katherine went upstairs to bed after the news. By then the storm was close enough that the lightning lit her room. She heard the screen door slam and knew her father had gone outside again. On the one hand he would want rain, but on the other he would not want his prediction to be wrong. That was how she felt, too.
Suddenly the wind increased, and the first drops of rain fell on the roof. Before closing her bedroom windows against the storm, she waited a few minutes to see if it would stop, hoping almost that it would. Then she heard windows being closed downstairs as the rain increased, and she rose out of bed to close hers. The stairway door opened and her mother called up to her. “Katherine, are you awake?”
“Yes. I’ve closed the windows up here.”
“Okay,” her mother said. “What do you suppose happened to that moon?”
She laughed with her mother, but at the same time felt a sadness mingle with the welcome rain.
Chapter 8
In the mailbox marked “W,” Sam pulled out a used manila envelope addressed to him. He opened the envelope and removed the autopsy report Markowitz had sent. The fate of Olivia Sanchez was circled in red, and he felt the peculiar hollowness that seemed to follow this child. “You were right,” Markowitz wrote in the margin with the same red pen. “No indication of physical abuse.”
It was a poor copy, a copy of a copy, and he had difficulty reading it. The technical jargon meant nothing to him anyway. The words could have been describing a broken machine rather than a child. The report could simply have said that the baby died because she needed a drink of water, and after a drink of water, she needed her mother’s milk, and after the milk or perhaps before it, her mother’s care or care from anybody else who could have given it.
“You were right,” Markowitz had written. Unwritten but clear anyway was his opinion that answers would follow. With answers, they would solve the case and everything would then become clear. That was a lie. Nothing would become clear.
Behind him a steel door with its mechanical closer working improperly repeatedly banged shut as cops came in to work or headed home. He looked up at the wall clock mounted above the mailbox. It was twenty seconds before 4:30.
At the bottom of the autopsy report, there was another message from Markowitz. “Since you know the parents now, why don’t you pack up the personal stuff in the girl’s room and take it to them. We’re finished there.”
The sergeant walked briskly through the door at the opposite end of the long room. He had a clipboard and pencil in hand. Sam walked to the closest end of the quickly forming line of men. The sergeant called the names and gave assignments rapidly. He placed a check mark on the roster as each man answered. The entire First Watch barely filled a single line, and roll call took no more than a minute. There was little enthusiasm. I made it, each man seemed to say, but don’t expect me to be excited. We’re just hanging on until the reinforcements come.
Before going to the car Sam stopped at the property room and picked up four cardboard boxes. By placing the smaller ones inside the larger, he was able to carry all of them at once. He threw them into the backseat. Inside the car he shifted around until he found a comfortable position. Then he adjusted the mirrors, moved his briefcase farther away, and reached down to make sure his black, steel flashlight was on the floor beside him.
With everything in its proper place, he drove directly to the Donald Hotel. The bar on the street level was dark, and the beer signs were turned off. He pulled the boxes out of the backseat and carried them past foul, sour-smelling garbage cans that stood in disarray on the sidewalk.
He stepped around a drunk who lay snoring inside the hotel door. He climbed the stairs and passed the manager’s office without stopping. At Alberta’s room, he dropped the boxes onto the floor and reached into his pocket for his keys. He unlocked the police padlock that had sealed the room since the detectives left.
The odor was no longer suffocating. Even so he raised the open windows as high as they would go. He looked around the room and planned what to take. The baby crib would stay, and there was no need to take cooking utensils or food. The detectives had taken all the soiled clothes to the laboratory, as well as the bedding, and they had taken everything that resembled a document. There was little left after that. He began by placing the two largest boxes in the center of the floor—one for Alberta, one for the baby. He took the clothes out of the dresser and placed them into the boxes first. Then he began looking for personal items to put on top. He found two children’s books, one in Spanish with a picture of a small boy standing beside a cactus, and one in English, A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. There was a page with a corner folded down, and he opened it to that mark.
The Swing
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all,
Over the countryside -
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown -
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
He read the poem several times while standing at the window. First Avenue was so close that noise from the street entered the room and sounded the same as if he had been outside. Mother and child would have to swing high to see trees, or cattle, or rivers from this window.
Although he was not sure which child should have the book, he put it into the baby’s box and, with a sense of urgency, set out to finish the job. Two stuffed toys into the baby’s, makeup and a handheld mirror into Alberta’s. Shoes, one pair so small they fit in the palm of his hand. Two boxes, one each, were all he needed.
He pulled the boxes gently to the door although there was nothing fragile in either of them. He opened the door and stooped away from it to pick up the boxes. Suddenly he realized he was not alone and spun around. An old man stood in the hallway peeking into the room. Without saying anything, the old man slipped inside. Sam might have demanded to know what he was doing, but the old man looked as if a raised voice or a raised anything would be enough to scare him away. Sam stood still and watched as the old man closed the door and faced him.
“You’re the one who was here that night, aren’t you?”
“I was here,” Sam
said.
“I saw you pull up in front. I should have told you when you was here before.”
“Told me what?” Sam asked.
“I couldn’t hear that baby crying except when I walked by. I’m down at the end of the hall. You got to mind your own business here, but if I’d known it was that bad, I would have called. I hope you can see that, mister. I would have called if I’d known it was so bad.”
Sam nodded his head and forced himself to permit the old man to tell his story. He tried to remember in which room he had seen him, but there were too many rooms to remember. The old man looked Indian or Eskimo, shaved and clean—a pensioner, perhaps, staying because of the cheap rent rather than the proximity to the taverns. He was sober on this day, anyway.
“There was a man that came here, and sometimes they would fight awful bad, him and the girl. I could hear when he was yelling. Everybody could hear that. I only saw him a few times, but I could hear him all right. He’d shout like a madman, and I don’t think that girl came out of it too good. I thought maybe you’d want to know about that. Last time he came, I didn’t see her anymore. I didn’t want to get mixed up with this mess, but with the baby and all, I thought maybe you’d want to know.”
“Yes, thank you. I appreciate that. Can you tell me what this man looked like?”
“Like I said, I only saw him a few times, and then it was just a peek. He was a white man, dark white if you know what I mean.”
“Young? Old?”
“Not too old. About like you. Forty maybe. Never shaved much. It seemed like he was always wearing a white shirt.”
“Did he wear a tie?”
“No. Just the white shirt. Long sleeves.”
Don’t lead him, Sam reminded himself. Don’t lead him where you know it is going.
“Skinny guy?” Sam asked.
“No. Kind of fat. Not too tall either. About like me. Mean-looking eyes.”
“Could you hear what they were saying?”
“No. Nothing particular. A word now and then, but I don’t remember any of it. He talked funny though. Some kind of accent. He’d be a bad one to get mixed up with.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’re the police. You must know all about these people.”
“We’re the last ones to know anything.”
“I wish I could help you out a little more, but that’s all I know, officer.”
“I understand,” Sam said. “Did you see anybody else come to this apartment?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Did you ever hear this guy’s name, the one who had the accent?”
“Nobody has names here. That’s all I can tell you, officer.”
“You’ve been very helpful,” Sam said. He reached out his hand to shake with the old man, who looked ready to bolt again. “My name is Wright. Sam Wright.”
The old man was surprised with the offer of the handshake, but he responded from some bygone sense of etiquette. “Gabriel Romanov,” the old man said, straightening his frame as he shook Sam’s hand. “I didn’t know it was going to get that bad.”
“I understand,” Sam said, “I’d like to talk to you again sometime if you wouldn’t mind. Just me. Nobody else needs to know about it.”
“I guess that would be okay. I live in 408, but I’m looking for a new place. It’s hard to get any sleep here anymore. I eat breakfast down at Tommy’s about ten o’clock. That way it lasts most of the day.”
“If I need to talk to you,” Sam said, “I’ll find you in Tommy’s. I can nod to you or something, and we can talk outside.”
“No. Tommy’s is a good place. You can just walk right up to me there. Nobody will think anything about it at Tommy’s.”
With that the old man was gone, opening the door just wide enough to pass through. Sam watched him leave and then filed his name into memory. Gabriel, the trumpet player. Romanov, the Russian czar. He had not written the name down while the old man was with him. If Gabriel had seen the pen and notebook, he might have forgotten all about his story.
Sam forgot that he was in a hurry to leave and stood in the center of the room with the two boxes at his feet and thought about Pierre’s voice loud enough to be heard down the hall. How loud would it have been inside the room?
He stacked the smaller box on top of the larger one and pushed both of them out the door, leaving the two empty boxes behind. He took the padlock off the hasp, stuck it into his pocket, and closed the door. Then he picked up the two boxes and walked downstairs to the manager’s room.
The door was closed; so was the window behind the bars. It was too early for business. Sam put the boxes on the floor and knocked on the door with his flashlight. A few moments later, he knocked again. The flashlight left marks in the wood. Inside a grumbling voice came closer.
“It’s the police,” Sam said, referring to himself.
Ralph looked as if he were wearing the same T-shirt as before. After opening the door, he stood silently, without surprise, without the compulsion to say something trivial or proper.
“We’re done with the room,” Sam said. “You can do what you want with it now.”
Ralph nodded glumly as Sam picked up the boxes and headed down the last flight of stairs. He was almost out the door when he heard Ralph at the top.
“Who’s gonna pay for the week?” he wanted to know.
Sometimes he wished there were such things as the vapor guns that they had in science fiction movies. “Bill the estate,” Sam told him. He stopped just long enough to think about saying more and decided against it.
He put the boxes on top of the car while he unlocked the trunk. Empty buses rolled past him on routes to the neighborhoods. Their big tires sounded loud and threatening on the concrete. He looked up to the still-open windows on the fourth floor where Alberta and the baby had lived. The light was on. He had not bothered to turn it off. He shook his head in disbelief. He believed, all right.
Chapter 9
Maria was the only passenger who got off the Number 7 bus at Third Avenue and Pike Street. Her newly plaited braids of black hair bounced against the back of her neck as her feet struck the sidewalk.
The Donut Shop was the only business on Pike Street that was lit brightly. She peered into the window and saw Pierre in the back beside the doughnut machine. She knocked on the glass door—too timidly for him to hear. She knocked a second time, more forcefully, and stood on her toes to make it easier for him to see her. He scowled as he looked toward her. He seemed surprised when she raised her hand and waved, but he was not surprised enough to erase the other expression completely.
When he unlocked the door, a boy about seventeen or eighteen stepped forward from a small group of kids who were standing at the rounded curb where it connected First Avenue and Pike.
“Are you open?” the boy asked.
“No,” Pierre said roughly. “It’s too early.”
“Got any doughnuts left over?”
“Sure, I got doughnuts. I don’t see you before. You got any money to pay?”
“We heard you give them away sometimes.”
“So you heard that? You heard Pierre gives away food?”
He spoke as if he were talking about someone else. Large sweat rings stained the armpits of his white shirt. She smelled the odor of his body in the open air. The boy asking for doughnuts did not come closer, nor did he answer Pierre.
“You wait here,” Pierre said. “I’ll find some for you. You come in,” he said to Maria. “I’ll show you where they are.”
Maria squeezed past him through the door. Once inside she stood away from him. Pierre closed the door and walked toward the kitchen.
“Back here,” he directed.
He opened the glass door of the doughnut case and put doughnuts into a paper bag with his bare hand. When the bag was full, he wiped his hands on his pants and handed it to her.
“Give this to him. All these free doughnuts. They will make me a poor man.”
&
nbsp; She didn’t want to take the bag. It seemed unclean. She had no choice, however, unless she was prepared to walk past the boy and down the street again. It was only a paper bag, she reasoned. She took it from Pierre and walked to the door. She opened it and stuck the bag outside. The boy took it without saying a word, and his party followed him down First Avenue.
“Lock the door,” Pierre told her.
She turned the thumb latch and heard the metal click into place.
“You come too early,” he said as she walked slowly toward the back where he waited. “I don’t pay until six.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll start early.”
“You can dump those old doughnuts into the garbage.” He pointed to the case where he had gotten the doughnuts that would make him a poor man. “I have new pans ready.”
“Do you want me to clean the glass first?”
“Sure, why not. There’s soap in the back. Then you can clean the tables. We open at six.”
She found a rubber dish tub beneath the sink and rinsed it under the tap. Then she filled it with hot water, squirted dish detergent into it, and carried it to the doughnut case. She emptied and refilled the tub two more times before she finished. She took a fresh tub of water to the dining room and wiped down the tables that were still dirty from the day before. Without asking she got a broom from the back and swept the floor. The speckled white tile became marginally cleaner. It should be mopped, but there wasn’t enough time before they opened.
As she swept the floor, she heard the sound of engines rise and fall in time with the traffic light that hung suspended over the center of the intersection. Was one of the engines a police car? Was he out there now? She put her face close to the window so that it shaded the glass from the fluorescent kitchen lights and looked across the street to the old buildings where the street ended.
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