He leaned forward and stared at me. I looked at a spot over his head and focused on the spine of my classic edition of The Elements of Style, a book that Richie had surely never read. “What’s your game? What are you doing?” He paused dramatically. “What’s your angle?”
I felt like I was watching a bad film noir from the forties, what with this dialogue. “I have no game, Richie. I want to buy an apartment. Plain and simple.” I held his gaze. My ass was killing me but I didn’t want to grimace, lest he think that he had the upper hand. In reality, it was Sister Louise who had the upper hand; I was hurt, her headlight was broken, and I was footing the bill.
He leaned back, unsatisfied, clearly seeing that he wasn’t going to be able to get me to budge on my story. “OK. We’ll play it that way.” He stood. “But if I find out that you’ve wasted Madeleine’s time, or that you’re poking around the site any more, I will make things very unpleasant for you.”
I stood, keeping the desk between us. “Is that a threat?” I asked, narrowing my eyes in an attempt to intimidate him.
“No,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “It’s a promise.”
And . . . scene. After he left, I rolled my eyes. Couldn’t he come up with a more original exit line? I was left more annoyed than frightened by Richie’s visit and more convinced than ever that he had something to hide.
Eighteen
“Boy, have I had a day.”
I was sitting in a cozy booth in a restaurant on City Island, one of my favorite spots in the city. Crawford had surprised me by taking me to a seafood restaurant, something I never would have hoped for given that it was still technically winter and most of the restaurants on the Island were closed until spring was in its final days. I snuggled in next to him, happy that I was with him and that he had found one that was open.
When he picked me up, I told him I had a lot to tell him, but he made me promise that I wouldn’t launch into the details until he had had his first beer. Seeing as he didn’t have a to-go cup in the car, I figured that meant until we were seated in the restaurant.
He leaned in and gave me a long kiss, his mouth tasting slightly like salt and peanuts, salted peanuts being his food of choice for when he was stuck in the car all day without any hope of getting real food.
“Were you sitting on somebody today?” I asked, proud that I remembered police vernacular for a stakeout. “You taste like peanuts.”
He pulled back, surprised. “You’re getting good.”
I shrugged. “You’re rubbing off on me.”
He looked like he was going to take the conversation in a dirty direction, something about rubbing and me, but the waitress appeared with the appetizers we had ordered. I waited until he had eaten some of his Caprese salad before commencing with my story; I stole a few glances at his salad, which looked way more appetizing than mine. He dropped his fork somewhere around “sore ass.”
“She hit you with her car?” he asked. Most boyfriends would be incredulous at this news but he was merely confirming that it was the car, and not Sister Louise, that had hit me. I must have confused my subjects in the retelling.
I nodded, my mouth full of baby greens and blue cheese dressing. “Can you believe it?” I asked, putting a napkin to my mouth to catch anything that could potentially fall out onto my lap.
“You obviously weren’t hurt or that would be the first thing I would have heard about.”
“Wait till you see my ass,” I said, rolling my eyes. Throughout the day, periodic checks confirmed that my left butt cheek would be Technicolor before the day ended.
“Been waiting all day,” he said. He shook his head and returned to his salad. “Is that it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Well, you implied that there was more.” He finished his beer and signaled the waitress for another one. Then, seeing my half-drunk martini, pointed to my glass, too. The waitress gave him a dazzling smile. Yes, he’s gorgeous. Got it. Now go get my martini. Hop to, serving wench.
“Richie Kraecker came by my office.”
He frowned. “Continue.”
“He said that if I had wasted Madeleine Cranston’s time . . .” I said, and then seeing his confused look, elaborated, “. . . the sales rep? That he would be angry or make me pay or make things ‘unpleasant,’ ” I said, finally remembering his exact words. I was still thinking about his dingy teeth.
He forked a piece of mozzarella cheese into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “So, you think Richie Kraecker can succeed where I have failed?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you frightened enough to stay away from the site and from the sales office?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, do you feel bad about getting up a sales rep’s hopes for a commission on roughly one million dollars?” he asked, thanking the waitress when she dropped off our drinks. I gave her a scowl, just for good measure.
“Sort of.”
“Then that should be enough.” He downed a third of his beer. “Because you clearly don’t have any fear of getting hurt. Or worse.”
“You think Richie’s going to kill me?” I asked and burst out laughing. I couldn’t see it, but the thought made me nervous nonetheless.
“I’m going to say it one last time,” he said, even though I knew what he was going to say and that it wouldn’t be the last time. “Stay away from Richie Kraecker, Riviera Pointe, and anybody affiliated with it. I’ve got a large enough caseload without having to tail you and make sure you’re OK.” He cut the salad on his plate. “Now let’s talk about something else.” He handed me a piece of basil. “Basil?”
I opened my mouth and he dropped it in. “Oh!” I said, rummaging around in my messenger bag. I had made a copy of the list Amalia had given me and put it in my desk drawer; I rooted around for the original now, trying to unearth it from the mess of papers in my bag. I finally found it, pulled it out, and held it aloft. “I don’t know what this is or what it even means, but I think you should have it.”
Crawford looked at it. “What is this? Looks like a bookie’s list.”
“I don’t know. Amalia gave it to me. She thinks it belonged to Jose.”
He studied it for a few minutes. “Thank you, I guess?” he said, not sure what he was looking at. I was glad it wasn’t only me who had no idea what it was. He folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. “I’d have it dusted for prints, but . . .” he looked at me pointedly, “. . . I’m guessing that you and Amalia had your mitts all over it?”
“And now you,” I said.
He laughed. “Good point. Really, thank you. I’ll bring it in and we’ll see what we can figure out.”
Dinner was pleasant and it was nice to spend time with him during the week. We went over the dinner the Saturday before and he confirmed my impression that after the initial awkwardness, the night had gone off without a hitch. Though he did relate that Fred didn’t think one cake and a tray of brownies was enough dessert for the number of people assembled. I told him to tell Fred that I would take that under advisement. When we finished, I asked him if he was coming over. He looked conflicted. “I can’t.”
“Dang.”
“I have to take Bea to the doctor in the morning,” he said, referring to his aunt. She lived below him in the brownstone that he had lived in all his life.
“Anything wrong?” I asked, concerned. I had met Bea—well, let’s say that Bea and I had a “shared experience” involving kidnapping—and liked her very much. We even spoke every few weeks, just to catch up.
He got a look on his face that told me that he didn’t want to go into it.
“Are you taking her to the lady-parts doctor?” I asked, gently poking him in the ribs.
He nodded and grimaced. “She’s having some kind of minor procedure but my mother made me promise that I would drive her there and back.” He put his hand over my mouth as I started to ask what kind of procedure it was. “And no, I don’t know what it is. All I know is that
what she has isn’t life threatening and that she should be fine.”
I held up a hand. “Say no more.” I slid out of the booth. “I’m disappointed but this sore ass might make the mood less than romantic, so it’s for the best.”
I had left my car at school in its usual spot and he drove me back there. He pulled up alongside my navy Volvo sedan, his headlights illuminating the whole car. He moaned.
“What’s the matter?” I said, but he was already out of the car.
I got out and stood next to him and followed his sight line to the four deflated tires on the car. “Now do you understand why you need to stay out of this?” He walked around to the front of the car and snatched something from under one of the windshield wipers. “Mined your own bizness,” it read.
My eyes were wide—more from the fact that this was the second misspelled note that I had gotten than from the message itself. I thought guiltily about the first one—the one that I had never shown Crawford—still wedged deep between the seat and the gear shift in the car—and prayed that he didn’t decide to do a full search of my vehicle. “Do you think Richie had something to do with this?” I asked, trying to sound as innocent as I could.
“Richie or one of those goons who works at the site,” he said, pulling a pad out of his pocket and jotting down a few notes. After walking around the car to confirm that every tire had been slashed (they had), he came back to his car. “I’ll drive you home and tomorrow I’ll make sure that a tow truck comes and brings this to your garage. Or your dealer. Whichever you prefer.”
I told him to bring it to my local service station, a place that I had been going to for the last ten years and felt comfortable patronizing. We got back in the car and headed to my house. It was getting late and I knew that Crawford had put in more than a full day’s work, so I felt guilty that he had to drive me home and then turn around and go back to Manhattan after that.
“Do you want to just drop me at the train station?” I asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
“Yes, Alison, I’m going to drop you at the train station at ten thirty at night, down by the river, and let you wait for the next local to come by.” He pulled out of the campus parking lot and onto the sparsely populated avenue, wending his way down toward Broadway. He softened a bit as we pulled up at a light next to the park. “Thank you for offering, though.”
We were both tired so our ride to Dobbs Ferry was pretty quiet. The town was pretty much closed up for the night. We passed the grocery store, the only store in town that stayed open until midnight, and made our way along Route 9 until we hit the road that would take us to my street. As we got closer to the house, I buttoned my coat and picked up my briefcase and purse.
“Tell Bea I’ll be thinking about her tomorrow,” I said as he pulled the car up in front of my house.
He threw the car into park and turned to say goodnight. He started to lean in to give me a kiss but got distracted, pulling back and looking over my shoulder.
“Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to a huddled figure on my front steps.
I turned but couldn’t make out the identity of the person in the dark. “Don’t know,” I said, putting my hand on the door handle.
Crawford put a hand on my knee. “Don’t. Stay here,” he said, taking the gun off his ankle and putting it into his right pants pocket. He got out of the car and approached the person, who stood up and came toward him. As the person got closer to Crawford, I could see that it was Amalia Escalante. I wondered what she was doing out at this hour on a school night. I got a sick feeling in my stomach.
I got out of the car and hurried toward her. She was nearly hysterical. Crawford had his arm around her shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She let out a wrenching sob. “It’s my father. He’s gone.”
Nineteen
The next morning, Crawford was working on Hernan’s disappearance while I was speeding down Park Avenue in Crawford’s car on my way to an outpost of Lenox Hill Hospital with a very mellow, and extremely grateful, Bea MacDonald, which gave me the opportunity to think about the events of the previous night.
When I had encountered Amalia on the front lawn the night before and heard her news, I didn’t know how to react. It was good that Crawford had been there; he had had a very calming effect on her. I imagined that’s what he was like at the scene of a murder: cool, measured, focused, and respectful. He went into cop mode immediately, getting all the information he needed to contact the police in her town to get the ball rolling and to add to his investigation of Jose’s death. She revealed that her father hadn’t been home for two days. Amalia had asked some of the other day laborers whom she knew went to work with him, but none could remember having seen him after Monday afternoon. She and her mother hadn’t gone to the police because doing so scared them more than Hernan’s disappearance.
Crawford had taken Amalia to the police station in her town to register the missing persons’ report—Hernan had been gone long enough to ensure that this was now an actual missing persons’ case.
I had pushed Amalia’s long black hair from her face and held her cheeks in my hand. I asked her how she had gotten to my house, hoping that she had taken the train and not done something stupid, like driven in her current hysterical state, or worse, hitchhiked along Route 9. She confirmed that she had taken the train.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she had sobbed.
I had taken her in my arms. “It’s OK.” I’d held her until her sobs tapered off to sniffles. “We’ll figure this out,” I’d said, even though I suspected that the conclusion to this story might not be a happy one. I looked at Crawford over her head and when our eyes met, I could tell that he was thinking the same thing.
Crawford had driven Amalia home and then spent the night at my house. After he accepted my offer to drive Bea to the doctor in the morning, an offer he couldn’t refuse, I had to drop him off at work. The only way to make that happen was for him to give me his car for the day. Crawford, after years of experience, kept a change of clothes in his locker at work; not being able to go home and change was a common occurrence in his line of work.
Sister Mary was uncharacteristically generous in her acceptance of my “sick” day, offering to moderate the two classes that I had to teach that Wednesday.
“I can’t thank you enough, dear, for taking me to my ‘appointment,’ ” Bea said, euphemistically, using air quotes in case I didn’t get the veiled meaning. I still didn’t know what Bea was going to the doctor for and I didn’t ask. All I know is that Crawford seemed relieved to have a disappearance to investigate rather than sit in the waiting room of a gynecologist, which is where I assumed we were going. “This whole situation with your friends is very unpleasant, isn’t it?” she asked, taking a mint out of her pocketbook and popping it in her mouth; she dumped one in my hand, too.
I told Bea what had happened, starting with Jose’s murder and ending with Amalia’s visit the night before. She clucked her tongue sympathetically. “I read about the young guy’s murder. I really hope your friend hasn’t gotten himself into the same mess,” she said, looking out the window at the traffic going by on the city streets.
I continued down Park Avenue. Bea had asked me to drop her at a location on Seventy-seventh Street and to either double-park or drive around until I found a spot on the street; she didn’t want to pay the exorbitant parking lot fees and she didn’t want me paying them either. I gave her my cell phone number so she could call me when she was finished with her mysterious procedure. After I dropped her off, I found the closest parking garage I could and made my peace with the twenty-dollar-an-hour charge to park. There was no way I was going to double-park and sit in the car or drive around until she was done.
I found a coffee shop not far from the office where I’d left Bea and sat at the counter, getting caught up on the news of the day from a paper that was left on the stool next to mine. I was about midway through my coffee and the gossip p
ages when my cell phone rang. I threw two dollars on the counter and went outside to busy Lexington Avenue to take the call.
Max was in the midst of eating what sounded like a bubble wrap appetizer when I answered. “Fred wants to move.”
“Move? Move where?” I asked.
“Anywhere but where we currently live,” she said.
Fred had moved into Max’s Tribeca condo when they married. All the stuff in the apartment was Max’s; Fred had arrived with a duffel bag of giant clothing, a case of pretzels, two cans of SpaghettiOs, and not much else. “Did he say why?” From my point of view, Fred had made out quite well on that deal. He had lived in a one-bedroom walk-up in a not-so-gentrified section of Hell’s Kitchen before marrying Max.
“Oh, something about me having sex with other men in the apartment,” she said breezily.
My heart skipped a beat and it took me a second to compose myself. “Max, are you cheating on Fred?”
She snorted derisively. “No!” She ate some more bubble wrap. “The men before,” she clarified.
“Well, you did entertain a few men in the apartment. He has a point,” I said.
“I love my apartment!” she wailed.
I thought for a moment. “Why don’t you start with a new bed? Maybe that will placate him.”
She squealed with delight. “You’re a genius! Of course. That makes total sense.” She chewed some more. “He’s been on this whole ‘we can’t have any secrets’ kick. So I told him everything.”
I moaned. “Everything?”
“Well, almost everything. I left out the threesome from ’92.”
I moaned again.
“Kidding!” She snorted.
“Thank god.” I walked around on the street distractedly.
“Where are you? You sound like you’re outside.”
“Seventy-seventh and Lex.”
“What are you doing there? Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
I moved to the interior of the sidewalk and looked into the window of a bookstore, ostensibly to see what they offered but, if we’re going to be totally honest, to see if my skirt looked too tight. It didn’t, although it was quite wrinkled. “I had to take Crawford’s Aunt Bea to the doctor for some kind of secret procedure.”
Quick Study Page 15