Suddenly I needed to be busy, to be soothed by work. I decided to do what I could before Maggie came—clean the kitchen, empty the closets, check the cabinets under the bookshelves. I was sure Maggie wouldn’t want Tim’s clothes, and the kitchen things looked ordinary and inexpensive. I could make things easier if I could figure out what belonged to Parker and pack those things for him, maybe avoid his coming here altogether.
There were two big closets that opened into the living room, dividing it from the back of the apartment. I thought I could start there, do something mindless while I let the new information gel. I opened the one on the right first. It was a deep closet, one rack in back of the other, everything in the back in garment bags. I figured that would be the winter clothes, the things in front for summer. Except for the coat that had been on the arm of the couch. That was now hanging among the lightweight clothing. I wondered if whoever had hung it up had paid any attention to which closet was Tim’s and which was Parker’s. I wondered if I would know whose things were whose, until I looked under the clothes, at the shoes. I took the clothes off their hangers and carefully laid them on the couch. When the front was empty, except for the hangers swaying there like dancers at the end of a long marathon, I unzipped the garment bags and took out the woolen sport jackets, a navy-blue suit, sweaters in bags from the dry cleaner, folded over hangers waiting for their season to arrive again.
I pulled the shoes out, cop shoes, all of them, except for one pair of loafers. In the very back, there was some luggage. I thought I could pack up the clothes and put the suitcases back in the closet, see if Maggie wanted any of it for any reason. If not, they’d be ready to go to Housing Works. I wondered whether, if I waited until the end, they’d send a truck, take everything at once—the furniture, the pots and pans, even the books. It was the sort of recycling I thought Tim might have approved of: his things sold, the money used to help people with AIDS, people with nowhere else to turn. Not exactly what he’d been doing with men like Parker, but not entirely unrelated either.
I saved a cashmere sweater and a particularly beautiful scarf and set those aside for Maggie. I left the shelf—I’d need a ladder or a chair to reach the things up there—and started the second closet. As soon as I opened this one, I knew I was no longer in Kansas. There weren’t as many clothes, but the ones there were seemed new. I thought about all those notations in Tim’s checkbook. “For Parker.” Expensive sweaters and slacks, sandals, boots, the inside of the closet door plastered with pictures cut from magazines: horses running at full tilt, a skull and crossbones, pictures of rocks. But then I spotted the shelf. And now I didn’t want to wait. I took one of the kitchen chairs, carried it over to the closet and climbed up. There were no clothes on this shelf. There was, instead, a sort of shrine, maybe one hundred tiny objects spread out in what seemed like, but I was sure wasn’t, random order: the skulls of tiny creatures and the claws of others, bits of marble, like steles, standing between them; a tiny American flag; feathers, rocks and tiny figures, some human, some not, grouped together or standing singly, as if in prayer. There was hair there, too. I didn’t know the nature of the creature it had come from. There were coins, some foreign, one gold. There were beads and thread and string that had unevenly placed knots in it, a woman’s antique pearl ring. I ran my finger on the shelf between the objects. No dust. Someone took good care of his shrine.
I closed the closet door, trying to figure out if there was a way I could get Parker’s things to him without having him come here. Things were starting to add up in a way that made me want to avoid him.
Of course, I could simply empty the second closet and pack it up. Even if everything in it wasn’t his, I was sure he wouldn’t refuse anything. Did I have an obligation to let him come and pick and choose what he wanted to take, even if some of what he picked and chose wasn’t his in the first place? I thought of calling Brody, not to ask him to be here, but to ask him what he thought. Getting Brody to talk? That might be as easy as threading a rabbit through the eye of a needle. So I didn’t call. I went back to work.
It was hazy, hot and humid out, but not in O’Fallon’s apartment. With the air conditioner humming, I couldn’t hear any street noises, nor was it too warm. The shutters were the way I found them, closed on the bottom and partly open on top, letting the late-afternoon light filter gently into the room.
I tried the cabinets under the bookshelves next and found them locked. No matter, I thought, you could open those locks with a nail file. Instead, I went back to the desk to look for a key, not finding it. I sat in O’Fallon’s chair, trying to slip inside the man who used to sit there. Wasn’t it James Thurber who said, “I hate women because they always know where things are”? Hands flat on the desk, eyes closed, like a fortune-teller minus the crystal ball and the weird outfit, I dowsed for keys. Nothing. I looked over at the bookshelf nearest the closet door, scanning the shelves for something that might hold keys, though, Lord knows, a cop should know better. It was on the highest shelf I could reach, a little tan honey pot with a lid. I took it down, feeling the heft of it, and put it on the desk. Then I took off the lid and found it was filled to the top with sets of keys. The key to the cabinets, one key fits all, were on a ring with the rest of O’Fallon’s keys, one of which was no longer viable now that the locks had been changed. I had two sets of the new keys. I thought I’d give one to Brody, if he had any use for it. If Maggie wanted a set, I’d have mine copied for her. I could ask her at lunch.
There were papers in some of the cabinets, notebooks with notes from old cases. I checked the dates. There were ten years’ worth of notebooks, stopping a year earlier. I would have loved to read every word, but couldn’t do that now. I thought I’d keep those, if Maggie didn’t want them. The next cabinet had records and CDs. O’Fallon had a couple of movies, too, ones he’d taped from the TV, Red River and Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather and Star Wars, a small, odd collection. There wasn’t any porn, nor any porn magazines. Not so far.
The next cabinet held the liquor. Again I thought about how easy these locks would be to pick. Unless Parker had found the honey pot with the keys as readily as I had. There was some of everything, but none of the bottles had much in them and some were drained and wrung out, not a drop left to drink, but put back anyway. Which one of them had been that thirsty? Or was this something they did together? I thought about all the empties that had been in the kitchen when Brody first brought me in here, the bottles he himself had bagged and thrown away. Mostly beer, but some booze as well. That mess was most likely left over from Parker’s last party. But that didn’t tell me whether or not Tim and Parker had enabled each other, talking about AA between drinks.
I thought about where the bullet had destroyed the tiles, the place too high on the wall for the shooter to have been seated, the place that had been repaired. Perhaps all the empties were O’Fallon’s doing; maybe drinking with or without company was something he did in an attempt to numb his feelings, to wash away his sadness, finding that, over time, the drinking only made things worse or that it took more and more of it to do the job.
I needed some fresh air, even if the fresh air was bound to be as thick as soup. I took Dashiell around a couple of blocks, stopping to pick up an iced tea at Florent, heading back to O’Fallon’s thinking I’d get more of the cleanup done before I called it quits. But when we got back and opened the doors, when I found myself in that depressing hallway, I kept going straight. No harm sitting in the garden while I sipped my cold drink. No harm postponing the kind of job no one liked to do.
As I passed the first door on the other side of the hall, I heard a baby crying. I headed for the garden, finding the door unlocked even with no one there. I sat at the round table and watched Dashiell explore the garden, seeing with his nose in a way I couldn’t even imagine. I wondered often if he saw the scents in color or if he pictured waves of gray, wishing that, for just a moment, I could live in his skin and know the world as a dog.
The door we�
�d just come out of opened and there was the squalling baby in the arms of her nanny, a Caucasian child, a nut-brown caretaker, cooing to the unhappy little girl as she walked outside.
“She’s teething,” she said, rocking the baby in her arms, a short, squat woman with a round, flat face and black hair that caught the light. The baby, who was blond and fair-skinned and looked as if the world were about to end, had her fist in her mouth.
“I’m taking care of Detective O’Fallon’s affairs,” I volunteered, apropos of nothing, I suspected. This woman did not seem the least bit concerned about who I was or why I was there.
“I know,” she said. Then, “Shh, Emma, it’ll be okay.”
“Jin Mei mentioned me?”
She nodded, looking suspiciously at Dashiell, her shoulder toward him, shielding Emma as if Dash were about to leap at her and end her teething problems forever.
“Do you have a moment to talk?” I asked.
“About?”
“Detective O’Fallon.”
“I didn’t really know him. Anyway, I already spoke to the police. I told them, I don’t know anything.” Looking frightened.
No green card, I thought.
“It’s sort of personal,” I told her, “just for me.”
“I still don’t know anything, no matter who it’s for.” A bit too loud. Who was she playing to? I wondered.
“I have to change her,” she said, again too loud. “You can follow me if you want to.”
I did, up to the kitchen door of the apartment across the hall from O’Fallon’s.
“You have to leave him in there,” she whispered, indicating Dashiell, then the door to O’Fallon’s kitchen. I had more important things on my mind than showing her that Dashiell meant no harm, that it wasn’t his fault his breed had a history of dogfighting or that it was the breed of the moment, still, for guarding illegal drug stashes.
I opened the kitchen door and sent Dashiell inside, telling him to wait so that he’d know I’d be back very soon.
“Netty Land,” she said when we got inside baby Emma’s apartment, the door safely closed.
“Rachel Alexander,” I told her.
“I know,” she said.
The layout of the apartment appeared to be a mirror image of O’Fallon’s, also two units combined, a large studio apartment with two doors. I wondered if both buildings had been renovated that way, top to bottom. I followed Netty into the front room that served as living room, bedroom and nursery. I thought Netty would take Emma to the changing table but she sat on the tan leather couch instead, putting the baby down on the rug.
“I don’t usually work on Sunday,” Netty told me. “But I needed the money. I was here that whole weekend. They went away, to Amish country. They don’t spend a whole lot of time with the baby, not if they can help it. It’s good for me, anyway. My son is still in Peru, with my mother. I want to bring him here, but I don’t have enough money yet. It’s expensive,” she added, in case I was too dull to get the point.
“Perhaps I can help you a little,” I said. “Perhaps we can help each other.”
“That would be good. I was here since Friday night. They left right after work.”
“Can you hear anything, from across the hall?”
Netty shrugged. “Shouting. I’m sure he heard them plenty, too. She says it’s this place, Miss Helene, that they fight all the time because it’s too small. She says that’s why she can’t give me a raise, because they’re saving up for a house. She says, Miss Helene, that’s why she and Mr. David need a weekend to themselves, because two adults and one baby in this place, it’s driving them crazy. ‘You don’t want us to get a divorce, do you, Netty?’ That’s what I get instead of a raise.”
“I see,” I said, giving her problems not much more sympathy than her employers did, wanting to get back on track. “So did you hear any shouting that weekend, from Detective O’Fallon’s apartment?”
Netty nodded. “First there was the party. His friends, Mr. Parker’s. A bunch of bums, freeloading off Mr. O’Fallon when he wasn’t even home. I heard that. I was in the garden most of the afternoon. The baby likes it out there. She watches the birds. I saw the men running out the back when he came home, Mr. O’Fallon. They went through the garden and out the far door, by Jin Mei’s apartment. Can you imagine? Grown men acting like that. And then I heard the shouting. He told Parker his free ride was over.” Netty leaned toward me, whispering again, the baby asleep on the rug, sucking her thumb. “And then it was quiet, all of them gone. Except him.”
“What about Sunday morning? Did you hear the shot?”
Netty shook her head. “The police told me the time. I forgot. Eight something, I think. She was screaming. The teeth, the teeth. And no mama here. I told them, if I heard anything, I figured it was a car, not a gunshot. Who expects to hear a gunshot?”
“You told the police this?”
“I did,” she said. “I answered all their questions.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
Netty nodded. “I saw him come back and break the kitchen window, the snake.”
“You mean Parker?”
“Yes. I saw him crawl in through the window.”
“When was this?”
“Late Sunday morning. Or maybe noon. I was going to give her the bottle outside, hoping she’d fall asleep. I was going out when he was going in through the window.”
“So you saw him entering Detective O’Fallon’s apartment?”
Netty nodded.
“But not actually breaking the lock?”
She shook her head. “But he did,” she said. “The palette knife was right there on the ground where he dropped it.”
“Jin Mei’s knife?”
“Yes.”
“Jin Mei was out painting when Parker broke the lock?”
“No, she forgot the knife the day before. She left it on the table. No matter. No one else uses the garden. Even the others”—she pointed to the ceiling—“they hardly ever come out. Maybe if there’s a party for the two buildings, once a year. Otherwise, it’s just the first floor.”
“What about Detective O’Fallon?”
She shook her head. “Not that I saw. He was at work all the time, not sitting in the garden.”
“Did you see or hear anything else? Anything unusual?”
“I told them the same. I didn’t see anything else. I mind my own business. I take care of Emma.”
“And you weren’t out in the garden earlier, like around eight?”
“I was in here. I didn’t get her out until around noon, maybe twelve-thirty.”
“And with the air conditioner and the TV…”
“I didn’t hear the accident.”
I went back to O’Fallon’s apartment and got two twenties and my business card from my wallet, taking them back across the hall.
“If you think of anything else, would you let me know?”
“I thought you didn’t know him,” she said, screwing up her face. “I thought he’s not your family. Why are you asking these questions?”
“He asked me to take care of things for him. I don’t know what it is he wanted,” I told her. Her dark eyes looked blank. I don’t think Netty Land understood what I was talking about. I wasn’t sure I understood it myself. I heard the baby starting to cry. Netty put the money in her pants pocket and closed the door.
I went back into O’Fallon’s, going straight for the bathroom again, hoping the contents of his medicine cabinet might speak to me, hoping for an answer from anywhere. I picked up some of the ordinary things I found there, holding them in my hands, putting them back where they’d been: aspirin, Tylenol, Irish Spring soap, razor blades and razor; a bristle brush without a handle, the kind men used to use in pairs; Band-Aids, deodorant; and a prescription bottle, Alocril, the same as I’d gotten from my eye doctor on October 11, 2001, to help me with my irritated eyes, the detritus of the Twin Towers still blowing up to Greenwich Village when the wind came north. Nex
t to that, the same as in my medicine cabinet—artificial tears. Despite the real ones, you had to wash your eyes out several times a day, the irony of that not lost on anyone.
CHAPTER 10
He was waiting at the gate that led to my garden, moving nervously from one foot to the other, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I saw him in profile first, his black hair pulled back into a long braid that went nearly to his waist, twisted with some kind of cord or string, a feather hanging near the end. He had perfect skin, a straight nose, a strong chin. When he turned, I saw his eyes, a rich, deep brown, more the color of bittersweet chocolate than Turkish coffee, and more lucid than they should have been, given what I’d been led to believe. I knew who he was before he said a word.
“Mr. Bowling, I presume.” I didn’t offer my hand. Actually, both hands were full, but I wouldn’t have offered one anyway.
“Rachel?” He slid the cigarette from his mouth and held it for a moment between his long, thin fingers before tossing it into the street, as if he were reading my stand on his habit before deciding whether or not to waste a perfectly good smoke. I had the feeling he could seduce the gold bars out of Fort Knox without lifting a finger.
I looked at the ember, still alive after the sparks went out, and walked over to crush it with my shoe. I knew I was just being a bitch. No dog was headed our way, Dashiell was nowhere near it and it would have gone out in less than a minute on its own.
“What is it you want?” I asked, not taking out my keys.
“I thought you might want to talk to me,” he said, bending closer so that he could lower his voice to a near whisper and I’d still hear him over the traffic from Hudson Street and the whir of the air conditioners.
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