“How should I know that?”
“Come on, Howard,” I said, poking him with the gun. “What was it you said to me? Think about it—hard.”
“She sold uptown. At a street market a lot like ours. It’s on First Avenue.”
“Fine. Did Ida have a buyer for her dolls up there—a rich black woman, very refined, who lives up around the hospitals?”
“I don’t—”
I dug the muzzle deeper into his lap.
“Okay, just give me a chance to answer, okay!”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Maybe she was a customer and maybe not, but I saw Ida with a woman like that—a few times. And I don’t know where she lives, but East Side makes sense.”
“Good. Was there a man with them? About Ida’s age, maybe even older?”
“Yeah. I saw him once or twice.”
“What were they all doing?”
Here he became less than forthcoming. He looked searchingly at the crowd of patrons, all of whom had their backs to us. Maybe he was desperately calculating the odds of making it safely through the tangle of people and out the front door before I could catch up with him. He didn’t have a chance in hell and he knew it.
“Noisy in here, isn’t it?” I noted. “I guess you didn’t hear my last question. I asked what they were doing.”
“All right, listen, you crazy—Just listen. I’m going to say ‘I don’t know’ to begin my next sentence with. To begin with, understand? And then just let me finish what the fuck I’m trying to say before you jam that fucking thing into my balls again. Okay?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Okay. I don’t know what they were doing together. All I did was deliver something to them. And then I would leave. What happened in there after I was gone, I don’t know. I didn’t ask and they didn’t tell me.”
“What happened in where? What was it you delivered?”
“A van.”
“What van?”
“It belonged to them, I guess. A big one. Ida paid me to drive it from this lot where it was parked to wherever she said. Then, an hour or so later, I’d show up and drive it back to the lot.”
“What was in this van?”
“I don’t—Nothing.”
“What did they need it for?”
“I told you, I didn’t ask questions like that. I picked it up from the lot at the piers off West Street. At the West Side Highway. I drove it to whatever spot I was told and then I split.”
I shook my head. Not just because I didn’t believe it was the whole story. More because it represented yet another complication.
I groaned then, and must have inadvertently shoved the gun further in, because he yelped “Hey!” loudly enough to cause a few people to turn and look our way.
The harried waitress assumed Howard was rudely summoning her. She walked briskly over to the table and threw down our check, turned on her heel and left.
“Let’s go,” I said decisively, throwing a few tens on the table.
He looked at me, incredulous. “Go? Where the fuck do you think I’m gonna go with you, bitch?”
“The pier. West Street, I believe you said. We’re going to get into your car and then you’re going to take me to that van.”
We looked like a couple in love. Entwined. Two people who could barely wait to get home and do it. Certainly I must’ve looked eager—a girl who couldn’t keep her hands off her man.
We walked out of the restaurant, turned left, then right on Park, and cut through the now empty farmers market, straight to his station wagon.
“Two older people,” I mused. “Up to all kinds of mischief. They need somebody young and strong who never asks questions. You must’ve run all kinds of errands for Ida and this guy Miller.”
Howard kept his eyes on the road for most of the short trip to the parking lot off the Morton Street Pier. The balance of the time he was looking down at the gun pressed into his ribs.
He muttered something.
“What was that, Howard?”
“I said I never had any dealings with Miller. I only caught a glimpse of him. Ida never even told me his name. I just did a few things for her. And nothing illegal. You just try to prove that I did.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Just answer a few more questions and this date’ll be over soon. Have you got any idea at all why somebody would want to kill Ida?”
“No, goddammit! I knew you were going to try to put me in that. I don’t care what kind of gun you have, you hear? You tell the police I had anything to do with that and I’ll kill you.”
“Take it easy, take it easy. Nobody’s trying to put you in that. Did it look like Ida or Miller was forcing this woman into the van? Or forcing her to do anything, for that matter.”
“Kind of like kidnaping, you mean. Kind of like what you’re doing to me. No. Half the time she looked spaced out—high or something. But I never saw them hurt her. Like I said, I didn’t—”
“Yeah, I know. You never asked questions.”
It was cold at the pier. No people about. Not even the odd transvestite hustler doing curbside business. The air sweeping in off the Hudson had a hint of snow in it. It was dark as hell, too. The darkness seemed so much deeper over here. Not like it was—ordinary, pedestrian-friendly—on the well-trafficked streets near safe old Union Square with its dry stone fountains and Gandhi statue.
The burgundy-colored van that Howard led me to was big, as he had said, and quite innocuous looking. Something a hip couple with a catering business would buy secondhand; or it might be the fallback vehicle in a suburban family’s garage, the one mom takes to drive the neighborhood girls to ballet class.
In any case, the thing was locked.
“How do we get in?” I asked, peering over Howard’s shoulder.
He snorted. “You’re asking me that?”
“Stand aside,” I said impatiently, making the first big mistake of the evening.
I removed the gun from his spine and aimed at the lock.
“Hey!” he warned. “What are you trying to do—raise the dead? You want the cops here or something?”
He was right. “Then you come up with a plan. A resourceful guy like you knows how to break into stuff, doesn’t he?”
“Look, I don’t break into shit. I told you a hundred times, I don’t do illegal.”
“Okay, okay, let me think,” I said in irritation. “Boy, Howard, if I find out you have the key to this thing …”
“Oh,” he said.
“What? What does that mean—‘oh’?”
He made a sudden move and I reacted accordingly.
“Put that down!” he shouted. “I’m getting the key … I forgot I had it.”
Speechless, I just shook my head.
The door popped right open.
Let me think, I had said a minute ago. Well, here was one thing I hadn’t thought out. The nanosecond it took me to step away from the door presented Howard with an opportunity he couldn’t refuse.
He swung hard to his right. My gun went flying and so did I. When I could sit up again without seeing stars, I heard his car door slam. Within seconds he was no more than two vanishing red taillights.
Well, the hell with him. Our evening together would’ve ended soon anyway. Only now I was stranded here on this forsaken spot of concrete. True, it was only a couple of blocks to Hudson Street, where normal street life—including cabs and buses—would be going on. But I wasn’t looking forward to traipsing around the piers by myself in the dense night. At least I had a weapon, though. That counted for something.
I scrambled around and found the gun, then picked myself up. My jaw and back teeth ached something fearsome, but I was in one piece.
I placed my hand on the door of the van, but then withdrew it as if I’d just felt a high-voltage jolt. All at once I knew that my fear wasn’t about being alone in the dark.
It had occurred to me that when I slid that door all the way open I was going to smell deat
h. And then I was going to see it. I was afraid that Felice Sanders was inside that van.
Wrong. Thank the baby Jesus, I was wrong. The back of the van was carpeted—not a speck of gore in sight—and it had four spanking clean vinyl seats. That was about it. Not much of a payoff for so much trouble.
What on earth did Ida and Lenore Benson do in here? Swap recipes with Miller? Or had this vehicle hosted some kind of senior citizen orgies? Equally unlikely explanations. But of course the real question—still unanswered—was, What were Ida and Mrs. Benson doing together, period?
I began to poke around under the seats. Beneath one was a small carton, unsealed. Under another seat was a zippered canvas valise. Finally, from beneath a third seat I came up with a small flashlight and a headset that might have been part of an old Walkman.
I sat down on one of the vinyl seats and opened the cardboard box. It was very light. At least I knew I wasn’t going to find a cache of Uzis, or even black market maple syrup, inside.
I reached in and felt paper. I pulled a few sheets of it onto my lap. And looked down at a ghost.
It was Black Hat. No, I shouldn’t call him that. I should say instead that I was looking at Kevin, because the sweetly untroubled face of the boy whose photo I was gazing at held nothing of his future as a badass rap star, nor a son who reviled his parents, nor a rotting corpse sleeping uneasily, and forever, in the family plot.
Kevin was also represented as a curly haired infant, probably only days old. As the adorable toddler he must have been, happy in some unnamed playground in his little short pants. The class picture from fifth grade. Birthday party, with ice cream on his upper lip. Kevin and Dad trying out the new bicycle.
Beautiful memories. It made me ill.
I found some packets of fungusy tea at the bottom of the carton. Each portion was wrapped in a thin piece of cloth with a pattern I recognized immediately. My Mama Lou doll’s dress was made out of that fabric, and so was the tiny bag carried by Dilsey, the second doll.
I hesitated a few minutes before attacking the canvas valise. Oh I knew full well I had to open it. And I knew full well I wasn’t going to be happy at what I found. But I needed a couple of minutes before I could do the deed.
At last I pulled the zipper straight across in one violent movement. Primordial funk seemed to fly all over the van, nearly choking me.
I found a man’s stained suit jacket and filthy sox, along with a pair of worn-down slippers. There was an unspeakable Fruit of the Loom undershirt and three different battered old hats.
As I clawed through the tangle of items, I pulled out a set of false eyebrows and mustache, and several jars and compacts containing makeup, light and dark.
There was more. I could have gone on rooting through the bag of tricks, but there seemed little point in it. I had gotten the message loud and clear.
I had to hand it to Miller. That old son of a bitch had balls of iron. And a damn good sense of humor, by the way.
To think that I had almost shown him his own photograph that day in Union Square Park! What a joke.
The last time I’d encountered the old black panhandler—my “boyfriend,” who used to sleep at the ATM near Ida’s table—the one who flirted with me and hit me up for change a couple of times—the one who was trying to raise enough to buy a Big Mac—I had thought fleetingly of asking him if he could identify Ida’s friend Miller from the snapshot I was carrying.
What a joke indeed.
Where was Miller now? Who was he now—Ivana Trump?
The vehicle’s walls were spic-and-span clean. It took a few minutes to bring them into focus enough to realize they were covered with acoustic tiles. What was that for? Did Miller, Ida, and Lenore Benson sit back here listening to earsplitting music, like the idiot kids who ride around in those high-suspension cars listening to—
Listening to—rap music.
I looked up quickly at the van’s ceiling. There was a saucer-size object up there. It was a speaker.
Sure, they could very well have been listening to ear-shattering music in here. Some care had been taken to soundproof the space. To keep the music in and the street noise out.
I hadn’t dotted every one of the i’s and crossed every one of the t’s yet. Not just yet. But I had the feeling that my old friend synchronicity—or was it my nemesis—was going to provide a full explanation very soon.
My final discovery was the kicker. Before I left the van, I crawled up to the front. No revelations to be had up there. Driver’s seat. Steering wheel. Passenger seat. Windshield. All standard.
But before I closed things out, I pushed the button on the glove compartment.
What came tumbling out was much more threatening than the sight of Howard’s fist rushing toward my face.
This was Ida’s handiwork, too. But it was not another Mama Lou clone. Not a duplicate of any of the dolls I’d seen anywhere, in fact.
This one was a boy doll. Wearing the cutest little baggy denims and a Chicago Bulls cap. It was the spitting image of Kevin Benson.
No, I’ll amend that. This time it was altogether appropriate to call him Black Hat.
CHAPTER 18
Blue Room
Hair pulled back and shining. No jewelry at all. Lenore Benson might have been on the way to one of the endless fund-raisers that women of her class seemed always to be organizing. She was in dark blue cashmere this time. Carolina Herrera, I believe. And the sleeves covered those ugly slashes on her wrists very nicely.
She was composure itself, sitting there in front of the window on that straight-back chair. A few magazines lay at her feet.
I wanted to cry. Not just out of sympathy for all her losses. I could have cried with exhaustion and frustration.
Ida had been murdered. My friend Justin had been beaten to a pulp and his lover had narrowly escaped the same treatment. Dan Hinton’s life was in ruins. I had brandished my gun and almost gelded Mr. No Questions Asked—Howard. I’d taken a mean sock in the face. I’d crawled around a deserted pier in no-man’s-land, where anything might have happened to me and nobody would know until the neighborhood children found my twisted body a week later.
And what did I have to show for it all? A stick-figure likeness of Kevin Benson that Ida must have fashioned for Lenore Benson.
Maybe Ida had been killed before she got the chance to give it to her. Maybe Mrs. Benson had left it in the van by mistake. I didn’t know.
The kindly smile on Lenore’s lips was a permanent fixture, attached to nothing in reality, I realized, when she looked right through me and said, “I’ve finished with my tray. You may take it now. Thank you.”
I took the chair next to hers. “How are you today, Mrs. Benson?”
“I’m not tired at all, thank you.”
“I’m happy to hear that,” I said.
I was stuck there, trying to think of a way to communicate with her, to make her hear me, understand me, trust me—hideously frightened I’d say the wrong thing. What if she began to cry? What if she screamed?
Lenore Benson’s good manners were her only device for holding the rest of the world at bay. If the Black Hat doll pressed the wrong button, it might just drive her deeper into madness.
I looked over and smiled weakly at the night nurse, who looked coldly back at me.
“I have a little present here, Mrs. Benson. May I give it to you?”
“More oranges, dear? No, thank you. I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“No, not oranges. I brought you this.”
I allowed her to get a good look at the doll, and then handed it to her gently, my movements slow and deliberate. “I thought it might keep you company here, until you can go back home to all your other dolls.”
I saw the recognition break onto her face. So far, so good. Far from tears or hysterics, she was happy. I had made the right decision.
“Oh, thank you, Ida,” she said, beaming. “He’s looking very well indeed.” But then I noticed the puzzlement on her face. “But he w
on’t sing here, will he? You said he’ll only sing when we’re in the car.”
In the van, you mean. That’s what I wanted to say. It was an effort, but I held my tongue.
She took in a deep gulp of air. And then Lenore Benson, at the top of her lungs, unloosed the vilest stream of cuss words I had ever heard in my life. I didn’t even use language like that when my steam iron exploded in my hand. That is saying something.
The oddest thing of all was the expression on her face: pure delight.
She raised her hands up out of her lap and I leaned away from her, thinking she was about to strike me. But that wasn’t it. Still cursing incoherently, she began tapping out an artless beat on the back of my chair. Not a strong beat, but a straight-ahead and soulful one.
My God, she was accompanying herself. She was improvising—rapping!
Said Ernestine: Close your mouth, girl, before you start catching flies.
Queen Lenore rapped about my mama. She rapped about her mama. Before she was done, she had touched on the come and the crank and the crack and the other kind of crack.
It was a hypnotic performance. After it was over, she returned to her ultra-placid state, the doll cradled in her lap.
I could not take my eyes off of her, but it was definitely time to go. And so I left there walking backwards.
Leman. Leman. I had to talk to Leman. But I couldn’t find the public phones at the clinic.
There was a place on 69th Street. An awful bar where I gigged a couple of times last year with a sixties nostalgia band whose regular tenor was in rehab.
It was the only place I could think of in the nabe. So I ran out of the clinic and across York Avenue to that dark, stanky joint, where I’d once seen three mice frolicking on top of the jukebox.
You opened the front door of the place and the smell of stale beer and ancient hamburger grease went up into your sinuses like a swarm of diseased insects. The dark corridor leading to the bar held the unspeakable bathrooms and the phones so old they still had rotary dials. I suppose the occasional drug deal took place there, too.
I dug into the pockets of my jacket. No loose change. I rattled the small shoulder bag that held my gun. None in there either. I continued on into the bar and asked for a fistful of quarters. And, as long as I was right there, I ordered a bourbon.
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