by Alaric Hunt
The little man’s search revealed the same information again and again. Ghost Eddy had gone to ground. The gray-bearded drifter was as canny as a fox. No one knew where he came from or where he went to, but they saw him haunting the streets. The summertime sidewalks had a heavy burden of loiterers and passersby for Guthrie to sift, and eventually his voice faded to a croak. The street women claimed Ghost Eddy wasn’t eating as much, but Guthrie figured that for wishful thinking. Others pointed out his cans in the 150’s, and a liquor store he visited on 149th Street, east of Jackie Robinson Park. Guthrie jotted down a list of corners where Ghost Eddy was spotted, alleys he passed through, and stoops he sat on, but the long afternoon didn’t get them a single glimpse of the gray drifter.
The sun got lost in the clouds late in the day, when dusk was hustling toward the city. Vasquez guided the old Ford south on Broadway like a slow bomb. Guthrie had already mentioned a break for supper, but he was tapping his pen softly on the dashboard while he scanned his notes.
“Okay, Rachel, what do we know?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Ghost is the right name for this guy.”
“Sure, but he’s leaving tracks.”
“Where?”
“He’s got money, ain’t he? Enough to go to the package store, steady. But he’s not hooking cans.”
Vasquez nodded. “I see what you’re saying, viejo. He robbed Bowman’s body. Maybe that’s where the money is coming from.”
“Good. So, next time he calls, we ask Olsen how much pocket money Bowman carried. Then what?”
“Check the store for how much Ghost Eddy’s spending.” She turned the old Ford left on 125th Street, then went down until she could turn back uptown on St. Nicholas. She gunned the old car hard into the turn, and grinned when Guthrie gave her a sour look. She felt better about looking for the drifter. Searching the blocks had been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but now they were luring a pet cat with cream.
The bodega on 149th Street had a dirty dark green facade, slanted inward to a recessed door. The display windows held stacks of canned beans and beef stew, topped with hanging tri cards promoting a cheery, fat-cheeked cook in a billowing apron. A little bell rang when they entered the dimness inside. The street was bright, even with dark approaching, and the inside seemed like a cave with cool, spicy air. One long shelf sliced down the middle of the narrow store. The liquor was behind the counter, like a wrinkled glass wall behind a tall old black man perched on a high stool. Wisps of white marked his mustache and beard, but his hair was still deep black.
Guthrie wandered around the long central shelf, leaving Vasquez to talk to the proprietor. Guthrie listened, and occasionally looked over to watch. The young Puerto Rican started slowly, shifting uneasily from foot to foot, but she built some momentum during her description of Ghost Eddy. The old black man, Jude Nelson, unfolded himself from the stool and leaned on the countertop, nodding when she finished. He was familiar with Ghost Eddy. The gray drifter usually had clean money, and something funny to say—unlike the other vagrants, who came in carrying grubby bills and cups of change, with a shifty look that turned easily into anger or begging. Nelson counted the drifter as a decent customer.
“So what’s this about?” he asked. “It’s not my business, except that you’re asking me to pass another man’s business.”
Vasquez glanced at Guthrie, but he turned quickly away to study some jars of pickles. He raised his fedora like a shield to block his view of her—and to keep her from seeing his smile.
“Okay, then,” Vasquez muttered before turning back to the proprietor. “About ten days ago, there was a killing. This guy we’re looking for, he saw something, and we’re wanting to follow up. He’s kind of dodging, but he ain’t got reason. We ain’t cops. We just want to clear the guy the cops got, if he ain’t the one, you know?”
Jude Nelson nodded. “That’s an old story about maybe being good enough for jail,” he said. “I understand that. But what can I do?”
Vasquez’s smile was brighter than her red windbreaker. She played fill in the blanks with the proprietor to round out the interview. Ghost Eddy usually spent twenty or thirty dollars at a time, for something hard, something soft, and a handful of food. The past ten days, he’d been spending more—fifty or sixty—and buying more hard than soft. Lately, he wasn’t talking, but Nelson didn’t press customers for small talk when they didn’t volunteer. He agreed to ask the drifter if he would have a talk with them, though, and pass the answer along. He shifted back to his stool, which made him seem even taller, and waved to Guthrie as they were leaving the bodega.
Once they were back in the Ford, Guthrie told her to drive up and down 151st Street a few times. He already knew where the manhole was that Black-haired John had mentioned, but he wanted to remind himself of the lot’s situation. They paused to eat, then cruised the manhole a few more times as the light failed. The night began slow and hot. Guthrie checked his notes again before deciding to set up in the abandoned lot on 151st Street. He figured the manhole for a good maybe, and worth watching. If they saw Ghost Eddy going in or out, they would have a chance for a conversation.
Redbrick buildings crowded the lot from all sides except the street side, but an alley wandered from among them on one backside corner. The manhole was an old-style rectangular job that shouldered above the sidewalk and opened on top with a swinging lid. About half of the rectangular casing jutted beyond the sidewalk into the lot. The sidewalk boasted some fence posts with drooping triangles of rusting hurricane fence; layers of debris sheltered behind them in the dusty lot. Trails cut through the weeds from the alley in the back to the manhole and the cross corner of the lot.
Sometime in the past, the manhole had been secured. Since then, a long war raged between lockers and breakers, with the debris of battle scattered around the old battleship. The war appeared over. Every hasp welded on had been sawn, burned, or broken. Links of chain, long gone with rust, peeped from the dirt like old shell casings. A fiery deathblow warped the lid past the point of closing normally, leaving it to sit dark and silent like a boxer with a crooked jaw, wearing tattoos of slag and weld burn. The city maintenance workers’ surrender was only an admission that they had no control over what was determined to emerge from the darkness beneath the city. Turning a blind eye was just easier.
Guthrie decided the lot had enough junk cluttering it to set up inside. He sent Vasquez to buy some cold food and leave the Ford parked down the street. When she came back, he was in the lot with some makeshift stools. He gave her a flashlight and a pair of quick-start railroad flares. Aboveground, the streetlights were numerous, but he thought they could end up going underground. One of the buildings blocked the western sky and passed for a cool wall.
After the light was gone, the city’s noise seemed to fill the space left behind. Guthrie and Vasquez were invisible in their corner. Above them on the bricks, some of the windows leaked light through shades. Traffic on 151st was light, but in the dark silence it seemed to race over their laps while they waited. Every so often, someone hustled by on the street, or an elderly couple would tap by slowly. Vasquez developed a habit of checking her watch and dropping sighs. Guthrie laughed quietly at her, but she couldn’t stop. The sound of a kicked bottle came from the alley a little after midnight, and a golden tomcat prowled the lot at two o’clock. He watched them distrustfully, then shook furry haunches at the bricks nearby. Morning tagged along an eternity after that.
“Tomorrow,” Guthrie said when he stood up in the morning light. His knees and back crackled when he stretched. “He’ll be here tomorrow.”
Vasquez snorted.
“It could happen,” he said. “Let’s get breakfast, and then I’ll run you home.”
CHAPTER TEN
Guthrie and Vasquez started late on the fifth of August. After a night of stakeout, the little detective was willing to sleep until lunch. The afternoon sky glowed like hot chrome above Columbia University, with no relief in sight. Vasquez p
arked the blue Ford in the east-side lot. Empty spaces outnumbered the parked cars jutting bright as gold teeth in the sunshine above new asphalt that stank of tar. They found a bench covered over with the shade of a maple tree, on the north side of McNamara Hall, and settled down to make calls.
Greg Olsen knew enough about the letter societies to outline obvious things when he’d roll-called the address books for Vasquez. The shade around the maple tree bloomed slowly to the east while the detectives used their phones and jotted notes. Most of the Columbia students wouldn’t talk; they weren’t interested beyond volunteering a good-guy or good-girl report, mixed with an occasional “Screw you”: Bowman was dead, and Olsen wasn’t worth talking about. The students were absorbed in what they were doing themselves. The detectives whittled the list and watched the campus. Small groups of students hurried in the heat between the parking lots and auditoriums. They wore blue jeans, backpacks, and pastel shirts, with glittering wristwatches and sunglasses for accessories. The detectives were invisible on their bench because the students weren’t looking.
Irene Locklear, a pushy organizer for Sigma Kappa, volunteered a gripe about Camille Bowman that stood out from the whitewash the others reserved for the victim. The detectives had inadvertently discovered someone who knew Michelle Tompkins better than she knew Camille Bowman. Locklear blamed Bowman for drawing Tompkins to the dark side of the sorority, into the clique of sisters obsessed with partying. The alignment lasted a year; then Bowman’s abandonment of the party scene was quicker than Tompkins’s switch from studious to possessed. The sorority erupted when the crown princess fled the palace, smoothing things over afterward with Tompkins on the outside again.
Sunlight splashing from the windshields of passing cars winked beyond the line of shrubbery masking the campus. The shade from the maple tree had all the effect of an illusion against the midafternoon heat. Vasquez scored the last point on the phone list. From other conversations, she pegged a second Sigma Kappa sister, Amanda Hearst, as being close to Bowman—enough that she held back from the infighting after Bowman’s fall from grace. Hearst had nothing good to say about Olsen, and she volunteered sympathy for a Delta Psi brother, Justin Peiper, who held Bowman’s eye before Olsen appeared. Destiny was averted, according to Hearst; Peiper and Bowman would’ve been the prettiest couple in the universe.
“Maybe she ain’t had a look at Olsen,” Vasquez said after the call.
Guthrie grunted. After looking Peiper up in the Columbia directory, the little detective had begun sifting for information. Peiper was a senior, and the registrar showed him attending summer classes. “This guy needs a look,” he said finally. “He’s carrying a temper. He pled no contest on two assaults in Utica in the past three years. Maybe there’s something to him.”
* * *
Finding Peiper proved little challenge.
Each time Vasquez paused to ask a passing student, she received a knowing smirk and a quick answer. Justin Peiper was a tourist attraction at the university. Within a quarter of an hour, she found him in the food court. The court was an upscale cafeteria with a veneer that couldn’t hide the institutional background. Banks of plants softened two walls over rows of booths, looking out on an island of more booths, which were overshadowed by towering ficus trees. Bright light poured down from the translucent ceiling.
The students didn’t seem to notice the effort to make the cafeteria comfortable. Some of them were in a burning hurry, so rushed that even five minutes spent gulping a handful of french fries was too much to spare. They ran in and out like hummingbirds, a new one appearing to replace every one who left. Some students sat alone, darting glances as they wolfed down their food.
One group filled two booths on the central island, lounging like castaways killing time. Their conversation was punctuated with hoots of laughter and the switching of seats. At a distance, Justin Peiper was small enough to be inconspicuous, dark-haired and clean-shaven, but the bigger, louder men were plainly circling around him. Vasquez compared him against his DMV photo and snapped her palmtop shut.
“Maybe he walks like a duck,” she said. “He’s a little guy like you, viejo. Too bad you aren’t that pretty.”
“I used to be. I had surgery to correct it.” He took out his phone and pointed it at the crowded booths. “We need some decent pictures—preferably walking. Jeannette Overton might recognize him.”
“Those are some stupid muchachos,” Vasquez said.
“See? I knew you would be a good detective.”
Vasquez laughed, and some of the young men at Peiper’s table looked at her. Whispers and pointed fingers slid around the two tables. Two students stood for a better look, and then the tile floor cast hard echoes from a round of banter and laughter.
“Maybe this ain’t the best time,” Guthrie said. “Some of them are drunk, or just ordinarily stupid. Let’s move a little bit.” He stood up but kept shooting video with his phone.
“What do you mean?” Vasquez asked, throwing the detective a puzzled glance before turning her glare back to Peiper’s table. The young men were slipping from their seats and walking toward them. “What’re they going to do?”
“I thought you grew up on the Lower East Side,” Guthrie muttered. “Or maybe you been watching too much TV. White don’t mean soft unless you’re talking about bread.”
Vasquez scowled; she didn’t run from boys. It was the other way around, ever since she was eleven. On Henry Street, the muchachos looked but didn’t talk. That way, they were safer. By the time she was twelve, Vasquez learned she couldn’t mention she liked some boy at school or in the neighborhood. Within a few days, he would be sporting the new style provided by her brothers: bruised and hurting. Even after Vasquez learned to be quiet, Indio and Miguel could get her friends to talk. They were tough muchachos. A glance and smile from Indio could make her girlfriends’ tongues wag like a dog’s tail. Then the new crush would get crushed.
Before middle school was over, Vasquez knew two things. First was that no boy dared speak to her—her brothers were loco and they would beat his stupid ass. Second was that this wasn’t normal. Other girls had brothers who weren’t stupid loco. Vasquez didn’t think it was about sex. That was no big deal. She tried that the first time at her fifteenth birthday party. Hurried fumbling at clothes in a darkened room was not the big deal everyone was making it.
These young men at Columbia University didn’t know her brothers, though, and they didn’t have the usual respectful looks on their faces. Some were amused, others curious, and some suspicious. Justin Peiper was small, but some of the others towered over him, like defensive ends or rush linebackers surrounding a punter. “Are we gonna cut out?” she asked.
“Nah. I’ll try to rattle him, but if things do get ugly, I don’t want the exit strategy to be sliding under the table in the booth and shouting for cops.” He panned his phone over the approaching crowd.
“Whatcha doing, old man?” a tall dirty-blond surfer asked. His eyes were invisible behind mirrored wraparound sunglasses; his shirt and jeans were sunbleached to the color of pale sand. The other young men ambled forward to nearly surround them. Other students, who had been hurrying, drifted to a stop like leaves striking the ground.
“Taking pictures for National Geographic,” Guthrie said, taking a pan of Peiper at short range before slipping the phone into his pocket. The little West Virginian seemed toylike beside the big young men.
Justin Peiper had hair one shade short of black, and eyes that seemed a mix of green and blue. His features weren’t overfine or pretty, but they suggested amusement and sensuality without coarseness. He had the cocky good looks that made Gary Cooper immortal, with a slim, muscular build flawed only by stature. He admired Vasquez and arched a perfect eyebrow. “You want wildlife, I know places,” he offered, then nodded at Guthrie. “Seriously, check his phone.”
The surfer took a step and leaned as if he was reaching for a wayward basketball, but Guthrie caught his wrist and stepped around him. A
nother of the big men snarled and pushed the little detective when he was bumped, but Guthrie rode the surfer into two more of them and they tangled. Guthrie stopped beside Peiper.
“Justin, there’re cameras all around us in the cafeteria,” he said softly, “but you want to worry about mine? Seriously?”
“You’re right, man,” Peiper said, holding up his hands. “My bad!” He flashed a grin that had stopped as much trouble as it ever started. The big men shifted around to leave some space. The surfer snatched off his sunglasses to glare down at Guthrie with dark eyes.
“Maybe you can tell me where you were at on Thursday, the twenty-third of July. Maybe you should pay special attention to the night hours.”
“What the hell? You’re a cop?” Peiper asked.
“Worse than that,” Guthrie said. “The night Camille Bowman was murdered, where were you?”
“Greg Olsen is in jail for that, dumbass,” Peiper said coolly. “Read the newspaper.”
“That can change, Justin, especially now that the motives are getting clearer,” the little detective said. “She dumped you for him. That’s jealousy. Juries like jealous rivals who got spurned for war heroes. Right? Maybe you should get in front of this and talk to me, instead of making me dig for it.” He glanced at the other men surrounding them. “Maybe I could find something on a lot of you. Are all of you Deltas? Been spending time at LMA?”
“I was doing something that night,” Peiper said.
Guthrie laughed. “Studying? Or something better, that you got pictures of, and somebody willing to come forward?”
“No badge, no cop,” the surfer said. “Dude’s faking. You don’t have to answer his questions.”
The little detective shrugged. “I’m worse than a cop. I work for James Rondell, an ugly-ass lawyer on Wall Street. If making you look bad helps him talk to a jury, count it as done. I’m not so bad, myself. Convince me, and I vanish like a puff of smoke. If you don’t answer, I dig; then I throw you to James Rondell. Maybe start with how many times you visited Bowman’s apartment?”