Where Nobody Dies

by Carolyn Wheat

  “But how would she have known about Nilda?” Pat asked. It wasn’t an objection, I realized, just a question.

  I answered it with one of my own. “Did Nilda Vargas have adult arrests? On-the-record stuff, not sealed?”

  Pat nodded.

  I explained. “There was a second NYSIIS number scrawled on Aida’s rap sheet along with Nilda’s name. Linda could have checked it, seen Nilda’s record, and her physical description, and—”

  Pat interrupted. “You know those dark glasses Aida always wears?”

  Puzzled, I nodded.

  “Nilda’s eyes were green,” he said with finality. “Bright green in a dark Spanish face. You couldn’t miss them.”

  25

  Eight inches. School-closing weather in the city; a dusting back in my snowbelt Ohio hometown. I sighed and stretched my arms to the ceiling. No lazy Saturday for me. Shoveling was the first priority. The last thing in the world I could afford was a lawsuit.

  I went for my coat, but before I put it on, I looked long and hard at the telephone. To call or not to call. To warn or not to warn. I’d been through it all with Flaherty the night before.

  “We could be wrong,” he’d said quietly, his face troubled. I’d felt a rush of pleasure at the “we,” but I also heard the pain in his voice. “And if we are, if everything in her past is raked up for nothing …” He’d broken off and looked at me with a face full of misery. “I’d feel like a first-class bastard,” he said, his voice low.

  I remembered being sharp with Flaherty, reminding him that Nilda Vargas had been no saint, and that somebody had killed Linda Ritchie. I hadn’t said in so many words that I was going straight to the cops, but I’d implied it.

  Now I wasn’t so sure. The theory that had seemed so brilliant the night before looked pretty thin in the light of morning. Maybe Aida Lucenti did deserve a chance to explain. I picked up the phone.

  I put it down again. What, I asked myself, was I planning to say to her? And what if the phone was answered not by Aida, but by Art? Part of me still considered him the prime suspect; I didn’t think he’d appreciate my interest in him or his wife.

  My afternoon in Lucenti’s headquarters came back to me. I’d picked up a flyer from the edge of Donna Healy’s desk. I fished it out of my purse and read that Art was planning to appear at a rally to save a neighborhood firehouse in Fort Greene. I smiled sourly; given his track record, I decided wryly, Todd Lessek probably had plans to turn the firehouse into a luxury co-op.

  Then I remembered Donna Healy’s bitchy remark about Aida’s penchant for coming to the office in the early morning. At the time, I’d assumed she did it to see Linda in private, but now I wondered whether instead it was a way for Aida to be close to her husband’s work without running the gauntlet of jealousy put up by all the Donna Healys who worked for Art.

  I dialed again, a different number this time. I let the phone ring a long time and was finally rewarded with a “hello” that had a definite tinge of Spanish.

  “Mrs. Lucenti?” I asked, getting a murmured yes in response. I plunged ahead. “This is Cassandra Jameson. I was in your husband’s office yesterday?” I made it a question although I was sure there was no danger of her forgetting.

  “I remember,” she replied in a voice that was cool, ironic. I could picture a touch of amusement on her face.

  “I’d like to talk to you again,” I said. “There are some new developments we should discuss.” I was talking, I thought with an inner smile, as though the phone were tapped. The smile left my lips when I realized it probably was.

  “I don’t believe we have anything more to say to each other.” She said it nicely, still with an undertone of amusement.

  “Oh, I think we do,” I countered softly. “You see, I talked to Pat Flaherty last night. He told me all about a girl you and he used to know—Nilda Vargas. Of course,” I added insinuatingly, “you knew her better than he did—a lot better.”

  Silence. The sound of breathing. Maybe a heartbeat, but that may have been imagination.

  Then the question. “Have you told anyone else?”

  “No,” I said, keeping my voice level. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “Come here,” she ordered, her tone ragged. “Right away.”

  “As soon as I can,” I promised, putting down the receiver with a bang.

  I could have won a gold medal for Olympic speed-shoveling. Eight inches never disappeared so quickly.

  I dashed back into the office to deposit the shovel and take a quick trip to the bathroom. I almost ignored the ringing phone, but then picked it up, thinking it might be Aida Lucenti.

  It wasn’t. It was Marcy Sheldon, sounding more agitated than I’d ever heard her.

  “Cass, is that you?” Her voice was strident. “Cass, it’s awful. I don’t know what to think, what to do. You’ve got to help me.”

  “Marcy, I’m on my way out. Can I call you—”

  “It’s Dawn,” she wailed, cutting off my protests. “She’s run away.”

  My first thought was: Not now! My second was that it didn’t surprise me in the least. Dawn must have felt so alone, so rejected ever since she’d heard Marcy’s plan to send her to boarding school. Running away must have seemed the only alternative. But now, I decided reluctantly, was hardly the time to lecture Marcy Sheldon on her shortcomings as a guardian.

  “Where’d she go?” I asked. “Florida?” I was thinking of the tennis academy she’d described with such longing.

  “Of course not!” Marcy snapped. “How could a twelve-year-old get to Florida?”

  If she didn’t know, I wasn’t going to tell her. “Did she leave a note?”

  “Yes, I have it here. She says—”

  “Can you read it to me?” I interrupted. “I’d like her exact words.”

  I got Dawn’s words but with her aunt’s exasperated, I’m-wasting-precious-time-here tone of voice.

  “‘Dear Aunt Marcy,’” she read, “‘You and Cass don’t care about my daddy being in jail for something he didn’t do, but I do. I care a lot. So I’m going to find the man who killed Mom, and then the police will have to let Daddy go. P.S., When he gets out, I can live with him. Love, Dawn.’”

  It took me a minute to get over the hurt of Dawn’s “you and Cass.” How could she, I wondered, lump me in with the aunt who threatened her with boarding school? Then I realized that in her eyes I too had promised but I hadn’t delivered. I guessed that made me about even with Marcy.

  “I wonder where she’s gone,” I mused aloud. “And what she means by—” I broke off as an awful thought struck me. “Do you suppose she’d try to find Art Lucenti?”

  “Why would she do a crazy thing like that?” I didn’t let Marcy’s scornful tone bother me; it was clear she was worried as hell.

  “She thinks he killed Linda,” I explained. I did some fast thinking. With any luck, Dawn would have gone to the Lucentis’ house, or even to Detective Button. But there was a chance she was headed for the same place I was—Art Lucenti’s campaign office, where she’d meet the woman who might or might not have killed several people under the name Nilda Vargas. It was becoming more imperative than ever that I get the truth.

  “After all I’ve done”—Marcy’s words held all the bitterness that choice of words usually conveys—“she wants to live with that worthless father of hers.”

  “You can bet he won’t send her to boarding school,” I shot back.

  I regretted the words as soon as I’d said them. Maybe Marcy’s coldness was the root cause of Dawn’s running away, but now wasn’t the time to discuss it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said at once, cutting into Marcy’s passionate defense of her position. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You know,” Marcy said after a pause, “when this is over, I think maybe I’d better hire another lawyer.”

  “That’s fine with me,” I said crisply, trying not to think about the prospect of never seeing Dawn again. “But meanwhile, the
re’s something you should know.”

  I told her everything—Art, Aida, Nilda—the whole sordid package. It wasn’t easy—I had to talk through a minefield of interruptions, denials, accusations. Yet frustrating as it was, I knew I was doing the right thing. Marcy had a right to know the danger Dawn might be in. And if part of me hoped that the thought of such danger would soften Marcy’s frozen emotions, then so be it.

  “Listen, Marcy,” I concluded, “I’m on my way over to the headquarters right now. If Dawn calls you or comes home, don’t, under any circumstances, let her go to Lucenti’s. And,” I added, taking a deep breath, “if I don’t call you in two hours, get the police. Two hours,” I repeated, “not before and not after.”

  I hung up before I could get more arguments. Then I called the number on the firehouse flyer. No, Congressman Lucenti wasn’t there yet. Yes, he was still expected. Yes (with a sigh), a message could be left. I lowered my voice and tried to sound impressive as I told the message-taker that Art was urgently needed at his office. His wife, I said ominously, was in trouble and needed him right away. My urgency seemed to impress; I was assured the congressman would get the message the minute he walked in the door.

  Next call: the Henry Street Car Service. Yellow cabs don’t cruise Brooklyn looking for fares; everyone calls the car service. Including the crooks—I’d once represented a gang of armed robbers who’d made their getaway in a car-service vehicle and then wondered why they were so easily traced. It was smart thinking like that that had netted them five-to-fifteen apiece.

  I jumped into the car as soon as it pulled up and gave the address. Adrenaline rushed through my body. I felt as if I were starting to pick a jury in a felony case. I had the same sense of being in a complicated game where brains and nerve were equally crucial, that same anything-can-happen feeling, that same smell of adventure in the air. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t healthy to enjoy the feeling, but it didn’t help. It was what street cops felt; it was why they loved wearing the tin.

  I paid the driver with a perfunctory smile, then got out and forced myself to walk instead of run toward the campaign office. The door was locked; I knocked loudly and waited, tapping my foot with impatience.

  Aida Lucenti opened the door a crack, then opened it wider and let me in. Her face looked haggard under the oversized sunglasses. For a wild, hysterical second I wanted to rip them off her face and reveal her green eyes.

  I didn’t. I didn’t have to. Her face told me the truth. It was an exposed face now, the makeup and the contoured cheekbones insufficient to gloss over the street-smart South Bronx toughness.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Lucenti,” I said formally, then added, “or should I call you Nilda?”

  26

  If there’s one thing I know on God’s green earth, it’s how to talk to skells.

  She began with bluster. “Nilda’s dead,” she announced with a sullen, defiant edge to her voice. Her stance was wary, at odds with the designer suit and blood-red silk blouse.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Nilda,” I said with bluff good humor. Speaking not to the sophisticated façade but to the scared ghetto kid inside, I went on, “It’s like I tell my clients. You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool your lawyer any of the time.”

  “What proof you got?” she challenged, beginning to walk around the room. Her movements were lithe, sinuous, unthinking—like a cat’s. “I tell you what proof—none.” She rapped her knuckles on the passing desk for emphasis. “And I tell you why—there’s no proof ’cause there’s no truth.”

  I watched her with a deliberate stare that started a tiny blush across her dusky cheeks. “You know,” I said conversationally, “you really are beginning to sound like one of my criminal clients. The kind who never says he isn’t guilty—he just says the cops didn’t see him do the crime. I’ll tell you what I tell them: It’s not much of a defense. Besides,” I added, looking at my purse on the floor, “how do you know what I can and can’t prove?”

  “Prove it, then,” she snapped, resuming her pacing. A caged panther in an Anne Klein suit.

  “What’s the point?” I asked, my tone deliberately weary. “Your fingerprints will tell the whole story. Either you’re really Aida Valentin or you’re not.” I shrugged my indifference to the outcome.

  She stopped moving. As still as an animal in hiding, she whispered, “They can’t fingerprint me unless I’m under arrest. That’s the law.”

  “Good,” I approved. “You’ll make a terrific jailhouse lawyer, Nilda.”

  “Stop calling me that!” There was a note of near-hysteria in her voice that told me I was coming close to provoking the mental state I wanted her in.

  “The only problem with that reasoning,” I continued in the same unhurried voice, “is that you could be arrested any minute. If not for the murder of Linda Ritchie, then on the old Nilda Vargas warrants. The cops could arrest you, print you, and then”—I locked eyes with her—“if you’re really Aida, you get an apology from the mayor and a nice big lawsuit for false arrest. On the other hand, if you’re Nilda …”

  I didn’t have to finish. The despair in her face told me mayoral apologies wouldn’t be necessary.

  She started pacing again. Faster this time, with stiffer, more constricted movements. It was as if the panther had been moved to a smaller cage.

  Finally, she confronted me. The defiance was back in her face in full force, but I was experienced enough to know it masked surrender. “Okay,” she announced, “so I’m Nilda Vargas. That doesn’t mean I killed Linda.”

  “What about that phone call—the one that got your husband out of the office?”

  “It was from Linda,” she replied. “He lied when he told me it was from Pete.”

  “Is that what you told the police?”

  Her melon-tinted lip curled with contempt. “Of course not. Do you think I would betray him?” She was genuinely indignant. It was either a sincere belief that Art was guilty, or a very clever acting job by a known killer. As far as I was concerned, the jury was still out.

  “Why don’t we sit down?” I suggested, “and talk about your legal position?”

  Nilda seemed reluctant to give up her freedom to move, but she docilely sat on a hard chair next to the desk. I went behind it and sat in the swivel chair. The lawyer-client relationship having been reinforced, I got down to business.

  “If you didn’t kill Linda,” I began, “then all you have to worry about are the old warrants.”

  “All I have to worry about,” she repeated with a sardonic laugh. “Lady, those warrants weren’t for shoplifting. They were for murder.”

  “It was a long time ago,” I pointed out. “Who knows whether the DA could make out a case or not anymore? Witnesses die, cops retire. There may be no statute of limitations on murder, but that doesn’t mean the DA’s got an automatic conviction.”

  “You think I could beat the cases?” I tried not to smile. I’d heard those words many different times in many different contexts, but never from a woman who dressed better than I.

  “I didn’t say that,” I cautioned. “I’d have to know more. But there could be a good chance of pleading to manslaughter, at least. Who’s still around from the gang, for one thing? They could help you or hurt you, depending on whether any of them needs a break from the DA’s office.”

  She wrinkled her forehead in thought. “Nelson’s dead,” she said, no part of her conveying the slightest hint that she was talking about her former lover. “He got stabbed upstate. I don’t know about the rest. But a lot of them were junkies and they were all into fighting and shit like that, so they could be dead too.”

  “Well, that’s the first step,” I said. “Find out what kind of case the DA has. Then there’s the question of what you did—you personally, not the gang—to cause those people’s deaths. Did you ever take part in the killing?”

  She shook her head. Behind the dark glasses, her eyes were wide. �
��I was too scared,” she said in a small voice. “I tried not to let Nelson see because he wanted his woman to be strong, but it made me sick. All I wanted to do was run away and throw up, but I had to stand there and look anyway. Because that was what Nelson wanted.”

  “And you always did what Nelson wanted,” I said wryly. Not my favorite defense: The devil made me do it. But then I considered Nilda’s sultry good looks, suitably toned down by her business clothes. Young impressionable girl, mother a junkie, led astray by an older man. An older man who happened to be a vicious killer who liked an admiring audience for his crimes.

  I recalled Pat Flaherty’s remark, “She was good at roles, Nilda.” She’d been a Galatea in search of a Pygmalion. First Pat, then Nelson, then the rising young lawyer Art Lucenti. For each she’d unearthed and developed a new personality. What I wondered now was, how far had she gone to prove to her killer lover that she was his kind of woman?

  “I suppose you were afraid of Nelson sometimes,” I murmured.

  Nilda picked up her cue; she’d be great on direct. “Of course,” she said, her voice low. “He said he’d kill me if I tried to leave him. He said no woman ever walked out on Nelson Rodriguez.”

  “And did you,” I asked, “try to leave?”

  “Once,” she whispered. “He cut me.” She looked up, her face pleading. “I could show you the scar,” she offered.

  I shook my head. “Not now,” I replied, abstracted by the vision of Nilda in the witness box, modestly unbuttoning her silk blouse to reveal a nasty, jagged scar. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Nilda Vargas tried to leave the depraved killer who made her an unwilling partner in his crimes—and look what he did to her! Is it any wonder, ladies and gentlemen, that she never tried again?”

  I stepped out of my imaginary courtroom and fixed Nilda with a confident smile. “So far,” I said hopefully, “we’ve got three possibilities. One: The People have no case after all this time. Two: You weren’t guilty because you were acting under duress. Three: A motion to dismiss in the interest of justice. You tell the court all about how you’ve gotten your life together and led an exemplary existence since the crimes were committed, and ask the judge to throw out all the charges.”