“I’ll think about it,” he said grudgingly.
He moved his chair back a bit so he could cross his legs. He lighted a cigar to enjoy with his final cup of coffee. He blew a plume of smoke into the air, then looked at Monica. She was staring moodily into her cup.
Morning sunshine glinted from her shiny hair. He saw the sweet curve of throat and cheek. Solid body planted. Her flesh alive and firm. All of her assertively womanly. The strength!
Then he looked about the warm, fragrant kitchen. Worn things gleaming. Crumbs on the counter. A full larder. All the dear, familiar sights of the best room in the house. The hearth. The drawbridge up, moat flooded.
She saw something in his face and asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“An empty refrigerator,” he said, and rose to kiss her.
Abner Boone had showered and shaved, scowling at his hollowed eyes and caved-in cheeks. He dressed, checked his ID and revolver, and started from the apartment. When he opened the outside door, there was Rebecca Hirsch, her hand raised to knock. They stared at each other, her hand falling slowly to her side.
“I just—” she said huskily, then caught her breath. “I just want to see if you’re all right.”
“I’m all right,” he nodded. “Come in.”
He held the door wide for her. She came in hesitantly, sat at one end of the couch. He sat across the room.
“You’re going out?” she said. “Maybe I better go.”
“It can wait,” he said. “I want to talk to you. I’m sorry about last night. ‘Sorry.’ Whatever that means. Rebecca, I don’t think we should see each other any more.”
“You don’t want to see me?”
“I didn’t say that. But it’s not going to work. Last night proved it.”
“Why do you do it, Ab?”
“Lots of reasons. I told the Chief it was because of the filth I see as a cop. That’s one reason. It’s true. Losing my wife is another reason. That’s true, too. Want to hear another reason? I like whiskey. And beer and wine. I like the taste. I like what alcohol does for me.”
“What does it do for you?”
“Dulls anxieties. Makes everything seem a little better. Two ways: either there’s hope, or it doesn’t make any difference if there isn’t any hope. Either way, it helps. Can you understand that?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t,” he said. “I don’t expect you to or blame you. It’s my fault; I know that.”
“What about AA?” she said. “Medicine? Counseling? Therapy?”
“Had ’em all,” he said stonily. “I just can’t hack it. You better walk.”
“There’s a way,” she said.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m one short step away from a pint of muscatel in a brown paper bag. Shuffling along.”
“Jesus!” she gasped. “Don’t say that!”
“It’s true. Get out while you can.”
They sat staring at each other, two species, so different. She with the gloss of unwounded health, he with the pallor of defeat.
“If you could love me …” she tried.
“Redeemed by the love of a good woman?” He smiled sadly. “You’re something, you are.”
“I didn’t say that,” she said angrily. “You already have my love. You must know that. And it didn’t keep you from … No, what I meant was your loving me. And knowing you’ll lose me if—if it happens again. That might work—if you could love me.”
“It wouldn’t be hard,” he said gallantly.
“You say,” she scoffed. “But I think it might be. For you. It wouldn’t come easily. You’d have to work at it.”
He looked at her curiously.
She flung back her hair, smoothed it from her temples with both palms.
“Oh yes,” she said. “My motives are purely selfish. But then, if it kept you from drinking, if it saved your job, your motives would be selfish too, wouldn’t they?”
“You’re a Jewish Jesuit,” he said.
“Am I?” she said. “Not really. Just a woman who knows what she wants and is trying to get it. I lay awake last night thinking about it. It’s worth a try. Don’t you think it’s worth a try?”
He was silent.
She said: “Unless the idea of absolute doom is so attractive to you?”
He shook his head wildly. “I don’t like it. I swear I don’t. It frightens me.”
“Well then?”
“All right,” he nodded. “With the understanding that you walk whenever you want to. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
“One more thing,” he said. “Don’t, please don’t, plead with the Chief for me. If he cans me, he cans me, and that’s it.”
“I understand,” she said gravely.
“You see,” he said with a flimsy grin, “I don’t want the woman I love begging.”
She smiled for the first time, eyes glistening.
“See?” she said. “It’s working already.”
They went down in the elevator together, making plans. When they separated on the street, he kissed her fingers and she touched his cheek.
12
WHEN DELANEY CLIMBED INTO Boone’s car on the following morning, carrying the Maitland charcoal sketches rolled up, the two men carefully avoided looking at each other.
“Morning, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Morning,” the Chief said. “Feels like rain.”
“The radio says partly cloudy,” Boone offered.
“My bunion says rain,” Delaney stated, and that was that. “Let’s get caught up …”
Both men opened their notebooks.
“Two items,” Delaney said. “About Maitland dying without a will, the Department legal eagles gave me the usual bullshit: maybe this, maybe that. But under New York State law, the widow gets two thousand in cash or property and one-half of what’s left. The balance of the estate, after taxes, goes to the surviving child—in this case, Ted Maitland.”
“So Alma Maitland is the big winner?” Boone asked.
“Apparently,” Delaney nodded. “But the bank accounts and a few piddling investments and the apartment on East Five-eighth—that’s a co-op—all together don’t add up to much over a hundred grand. The big asset in the estate are those unsold paintings in Saul Geltman’s show. By the way, here’s your invitation. They came yesterday afternoon. Each ticket admits two.”
Boone took the card and ran fingertips over the printing.
“Nice,” he said. “Geltman’s laying out the loot.”
“You’re taking Rebecca?” Delaney asked.
Boone nodded.
“Monica will call her,” the Chief said. “We’ll all go somewhere for dinner, and then go over to the Galleries together. All right with you?”
“Sure. How much do you figure those paintings will add to the estate?”
“Didn’t Geltman say one would go for a quarter of a mil? Even if he was hyping us, the lot of them should go for a mil, minimum.”
“That’s a better motive than a hundred grand,” Boone observed.
“Oh yes,” Delaney agreed. “Maybe that’s what the killer figured on: the paintings would automatically increase in value once Maitland had conked. Of course, the IRS will take a nice slice of the pie, and so will the State, but there should be enough left over to keep Alma Maitland off welfare.”
“You figure her?” the sergeant asked.
“Capable,” Delaney rumbled. “Eminently capable. So is Ted Maitland. As of now, they’re the ones with the money motive. I also called Thorsen’s office about getting to see Dora Maitland’s bank records up in Nyack. Thorsen wants to avoid a court order, if possible. All it’ll do is get J. Barnes Chapin sore, and keeping him happy is the point of this whole shmear. So Thorsen is going to work through some local Nyack pols he knows. Maybe they can get the bank to cooperate. I’ll be in and out of there, make a few notes, and no one will be the wiser.”
The sergeant was silent. The Chief knew what he was thinking: Had Delaney talked to Thorsen? Had he blown the whistle on Boone? Delaney said nothing about it. Let him sweat awhile. Do him good.
“All right,” the Chief said finally, “what did you get?”
“A lot,” Boone said, flipping the notebook pages. “Some of it interesting. I checked the deli that sent up those sandwiches when Saul Geltman was having his conference with J. Julian Simon. The guy who made the delivery said it happened just like Simon told us: The lawyer came out of the inner office, paid, and took the lunch back inside. The delivery guy didn’t see anyone in the office but Simon and Susan Hemley. I called her and made a date for lunch. To find out if she saw Geltman in the inner office when Simon came out to get the sandwiches.”
“Or at any other time from ten to one-thirty,” Delaney added.
“Right,” Boone nodded, making a note.
“Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. Something else. The interesting part. Your prejudice against pinkie rings paid off. J. Julian Simon has a sheet.”
“Knew it,” Delaney said with satisfaction. “What was he doing—fronting a baby farm?”
“Not quite; no, sir. It goes back twenty years. Twenty-four to be exact. The bus companies in Manhattan and the Bronx were getting hit on a lot of accident claims. More than normal. All of a sudden it seemed like their drivers were a bunch of rumdums, knocking pedestrians down right and left.”
“Fallaways,” Delaney said.
“Correct,” Boone said. “The insurance companies handling the liability got together and ran a joint computer tape. About twenty-five percent of the claims were coming through J. Julian Simon and two doctors he had on the string. Plus a crew of repeat tumblers, of course. The guys with trick knees and backs who can show the right X-rays. So they closed Simon down, and he almost got disbarred. Reading the old reports I got the feeling that a shmear changed hands somewhere along the way. Anyway, he kept his license. And lo and behold, there he is in his oak-and-leather office off Madison Avenue, sporting ten big ones in dental work, and probably wearing silk undershorts with ‘The Home of the Whopper’ printed on them.”
“Well, well,” Delaney said, smiling coldly. “A shyst. Who’d have thunkit?”
“You did, sir,” Boone said. “You figure he’s still playing games?”
“The percentages say yes,” the Chief said. “Some bad guys reform and walk the arrow. But don’t take it to the bank. Most of them develop a taste for the nasty. All right, one bad mark for Lawyer Simon. How did you make out downtown?”
“I talked to every tenant in that Mott Street building. Not one of them had a cleaning woman. Not one knew of anyone coming around looking for cleaning work. Before, during or after the time Maitland was hit. They all looked at me like I was some kind of a nut. That’s a poor neighborhood, Chief. Who can afford cleaning women?”
“That’s what I figured,” Delaney nodded. “The older woman was thinking fast on that Monday morning and scammed the cop. Did you make him?”
“I got him,” Boone said, looking at his notebook. “Here he is … Jason T. Jason. His buddies called him Jason Two because there’s another Jason, Robert Jason, in the precinct. Jason Two is a black, a big guy, three years in the Department, two citations, some solid arrests and good assists. This week he’s on foot. Today he’s got the eight to four.”
“Good,” Delaney said. “Let’s buy him lunch.”
“This place used to be called Ye Old Canal Inn,” the Chief said, looking around the bustling restaurant. “And before that, I don’t know what it was called. But there’s been a tavern or restaurant on this spot since the early days of New York, when Canal Street was uptown. By the way, there really is a canal here. Underground now. A cheeseburger for me, with home fries and slaw. Black coffee.”
He had told the others to order what they liked; the Department was picking up the tab. But they followed his lead. Jason T. Jason was sitting across the booth table from Delaney and Boone. The black cop was big enough to fill half the booth.
“You look like you could handle two burgers,” Sergeant Boone told him. “Or three.”
“Or four,” Jason grinned. “But I’m trying to cut down. You see the latest memo on overweight cops? My sergeant gives me a month to drop twenty pounds. I’m trying, but it ain’t easy.”
He was almost six-four, Delaney figured, and was pushing 250 at least. His skin was a deep cordovan with a soft, powdery finish. A precisely trimmed mustache ran squarely across his face, cheek to cheek. Dark, dancing eyes. Full lips that turned outward. Hands like smoked hams, and the feet, the Chief noted, had to be bigger than his own size thirteens.
The bulk of the man was awesome. Revolver, walkie-talkie, and equipment dangled from him like tiny baubles on a Christmas tree. If he’s got the will to go with the weight, Boone mused, the best thing a bad guy braced by that man-mountain could do would be to throw up his hands and scream, “I surrender! I surrender!”
“Football?” Delaney asked.
“Nah,” Jason T. Jason said. “I was big enough but not fast enough. I tried out, but the coach said, ‘Jase, you run too long in the same place.’ Chief, is my ass in a sling on the Maitland thing?”
“Just the opposite,” Delaney assured him. “You did exactly right to tell the homicide dick. If anyone screwed up, he did—for not following up on it. But you can’t really blame him either; he probably had a hundred other leads to follow, and figured it was nothing.”
“It may still be nothing, Jason,” Boone put in. “We just don’t know. But we’d like to prove it out one way or another.”
“Here’s our food,” Delaney said. “Want to wait until we finish?”
“I better eat and talk,” Jason said. “I get itchy when I’m not on the street.”
“I know the feeling,” Delaney nodded. “Listen, if you want the rest of your tour off, I can square it with your lieutenant.”
“No, no,” Jason said. “This won’t take long. There’s not that much to tell. All right, let’s see now … That Monday morning they pulled me off patrol and put me to guarding the door to Maitland’s studio. Eight to four.”
“The sawhorses were down around the house?” Boone asked.
“Right,” Jason Two said. “Down and gone. I was posted on the top landing, right outside the door. The lab guys were inside taking up the drains, vacuuming dust samples, and stuff like that. Man it was something! They were even taking scrapings from inside the toilet. Anyway, a little before eleven I was out on the landing.”
“Sure of the time?” Delaney said.
“Absolutely. Had just looked at my watch to see how close noon was. Two guys in a squad had promised to bring me sandwiches and a coffee at noon. So at about eleven, these two women came up the stairs. They got halfway up to the landing, where the stairs turn, when they see me standing on top, and they stop.”
“Surprised to see you there?” the Chief asked.
“Yeah, surprised.”
“Frightened?”
Jason T. Jason took an enormous bite of his cheeseburger and chewed a moment, thinking about it.
“Frightened, yeah,” he said. “But I don’t think that counts. I’m a big black guy, Chief, wearing a cop’s suit and swinging a stick. I scare a lot of people. It helps,” he smiled.
“I’ll bet it does,” Boone said. “What were they? White? Black? Spanish?”
“Spanish,” Jason Two said promptly. “Take it to the bank. But whether they were Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican Republic, or whatever, I couldn’t say. But definitely Spanish. Bright clothes—red and pink and orange. Like that.”
Only he was eating now; both Delaney and Boone were taking notes. Jason T. Jason seemed to enjoy his importance.
“Descriptions?” the Chief asked.
“The older woman, say about fifty, fifty-five, she’s a butterball. Maybe a hundred-forty. Short. Say five-two or three. I’m looking down at them, you know, it’s hard to figure from
above. Also, this was like two months ago.”
“You’re doing fine,” Delaney assured him.
“She does the talking, and then I’m positive she’s Spanish. Also, she has like a whorey look. But she’s so old and fat, maybe she hustles the Bowery. Stringy hair dyed a bright red. The other one is a kid. I figure her from twelve to fifteen. In that range. Maybe five-seven or five-eight. One-twenty. Good body from what I could see. Long black hair hanging loose down her back.”
“Pretty?” Boone asked.
“Yeah, pretty,” the cop said. “Get her cleaned up, the hair fixed, some decent clothes and makeup, and she’d be fucking beautiful. Sorry, Chief.”
“I’ve heard the word before,” Delaney said, writing busily. “How did the talk go?”
“You want me to hold a minute so you can eat?” Jason Two asked.
“No, no,” Delaney said. “Don’t worry about us. You just keep rolling. What did you say and what did they say?”
“Only the older woman talked. The kid didn’t open her mouth. I asked them what the hell they were doing there. The woman said they were going through the house, all the houses in the neighborhood, knocking on doors, looking for cleaning work to do.”
“Did she say that immediately after you asked her what she was doing?”
The question came from Chief Delaney. Jason T. Jason stopped eating, frowned, trying to remember.
“I can’t rightly recall,” he said.
“Guess,” Boone said.
“I’d guess maybe she hesitated for a beat or two before she answered.”
“You didn’t figure she was scamming you?”
“Not then I didn’t. Later, when I got to thinking about it, I figured she might have been lying. You know, I been a cop for three years now, and I’m just beginning to realize that everyone lies to cops. I mean everyone! Even when they don’t have to, when there’s no point in it. It’s automatic. Is it like that in plainclothes, too?”
“If they know you’re a cop, it’s exactly like that,” Delaney nodded. “So they said they were looking for cleaning work. What did you say then?”
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