That question had brought him to the city, only his fourth visit in a lifetime spent just two hundred miles away. Sohegan was about an hour north of even the most outlying suburbs, well beyond the city’s magnetic field. Few residents saw anything strange in turning their backs on one of the world’s great metropolises, despite its proximity. More Sohegan citizens had been to Orlando, via the Albany airport, than had ever ventured to Manhattan.
But Dwight was glad to be there all the same. The hot July sun slowed the city’s pace to a tolerable rate, encouraging the neighborhood women to flaunt their fit, big-city bodies in shorts and tight T-shirts. He’d left behind a cloudy sky and the threat of thundershowers, and figured he’d crossed the front that was causing all the trouble about a half hour north of the George Washington Bridge.
The marble lobby of Gwen Amiel’s old building was unexpectedly cool. He showed his badge to the doorman, whose gray uniform had Julio Menendez stitched in red on the jacket pocket. He looked about sixty, with white hair, a dark complexion, and the stern countenance of a man who took his job seriously.
“Were you working here when Gwen Amiel still lived in this building?”
Julio Menendez squared his shoulders. “Fifteen years I work here. But the FBI, they already ask the same question.”
“I know that.” Dwight waited as Menendez opened the door for an elderly man, who slowly crossed the lobby. He knew he was retracing the FBI’s steps, and that his chances of learning anything new were slim. But Gwen Amiel was at the center of the crime, he felt more confident of that every day. And if the crime had been months in the planning, as he suspected, then that planning might well have taken place at 222 West 83rd Street.
“Do you happen to recall a thirtyish man visiting Ms. Amiel—tall, well built, with light brown hair…a piano player?” The only photograph of Nick Lawrence he had was an overhead shot of Priscilla’s funeral in which he was little more than a blur in a black suit and dark sunglasses. If Lawrence ever showed his face in town he might be able to get a better shot of him—or at least the press would.
“Maybe, maybe not,” the doorman said. “But she have very few visitors, this I remember. You could talk to the night man, Jose DeLeon, but he don’t remember so well.” Menendez took a step closer to him. “He drinks.”
Dwight stepped back. “Miss Amiel left this building suddenly, I understand.”
“Nobody could believe it. Everyone liked her, and her boy, Jimmy.” His expression softened for a moment. “She used to leave him with me sometime when she need milk across the street. Very polite boy, no problem. I let him buzz the tenants when they get deliveries.”
“You haven’t mentioned her husband, Barry Amiel.”
He glanced at the marble floor and shrugged. “He was not so nice.”
“Not so nice, how?”
“Always fighting with everybody, you know? The mail is late, he fight with the mailman. Once upon a while I forget to announce a visitor, he fight with me also.”
“Did he become violent?”
“No, no, he never hit me, but I sometimes think he could, you know? He is a very tense man and…” He stepped closer. “He drink.”
Dwight stepped back. “He ever get violent when he drank?”
“I never see that, but my shift ends at four in the afternoon. You ask the night man, Julio DeLeon, see if he remembers, but you have to keep in your mind, Julio, he…” Menendez stepped closer.
“I know, he drinks.” Dwight turned and looked around the lobby. “Is there anyone in the building who knew the Amiels well?”
“Everyone know them like neighbors, but I don’t think they had good friends in the building. Private people, you know? Gwen, Miss Amiel, she was more friendly, but…” He shrugged and looked away.
“But what?”
“I think he was not very nice to her,” he said. “Barry. I think…I think he hit her. Sometime she wears dark glasses, in the rain? Sometime she have a scarf around her face even when it is warm outside. And you hear things, working the door, you know?”
“Were the police ever called in?”
“Not on my shift, but you can ask—”
“—The night man, I’ll do that. What happened to their apartment after she left? I understand Barry Amiel disappeared soon after that.”
“He leave a few week later, but first he sell everything in the apartment, all the furniture and paintings and kitchen pots and pans. A moving truck came one day, takes it all away. Then he leave.”
“And the apartment?”
“They sell it, I think. New people coming soon.”
“Gwen Amiel is selling the apartment?”
He shook his head. “I think the co-op try and sell it. The Amiels, they owe money on the apartment. When they left, the building took over. But you should talk to Mrs. Robinson, she knows what happened.”
“Mrs. Robinson?”
“In seven D, the president of the building. You want me to buzz her?”
Cora Robinson opened the door to her seventh-floor apartment wearing a black leotard and panting heavily. In the background, Dwight heard a female drill sergeant: lift your arms, punch the ceiling. Punch it! Punch it!
“I’m…just…finishing my…step workout,” she said. “Come in.”
He angled past her and entered the foyer of the sunny, traditionally furnished apartment.
“I’ll just…turn this off.” She crossed the living room, grabbed a remote, and extinguished the television. She was about forty, very fit, with frosted blond hair and a taut, angular face.
“Julio tells me you’re interested in the Amiels,” she said when she rejoined him in the foyer. She was rocking gently on the balls of her feet, like a jogger waiting for a streetlight to change. “I can’t say I’m eager to discuss them any further.”
“Any further?” He glanced into the living room but received no invitation to sit down.
“We had a lot of trouble with them. First Gwen left in the middle of the night like some…I almost said criminal, but I suppose you can’t use words like that lightly around a policeman.”
She smiled and he raised his age estimate by about ten years: the body looked forty, but the lines along her mouth and eyes exposed additional wear.
“Why did Gwen’s leaving cause you trouble?”
“Her leaving didn’t cause us trouble per se; it was her husband’s leaving a few weeks later that was the problem. He abandoned the apartment. They were already two months behind on the monthly maintenance. They bought at the peak of the market, so they had a huge mortgage and virtually no equity in the apartment.”
“The bank took over the unit?”
She nodded. “But we had to cover the maintenance until we could sell the place.”
“By ‘we’ you mean…”
“The cooperative. The apartment was a wreck. We had to have it professionally cleaned and completely repainted before we could even think about showing it.” She wiped sweat from her forehead. “It’s amazing how much damage a man can do in a few weeks on his own.”
“So you were inside the apartment before Gwen Amiel left?”
She hesitated a beat before answering. “Once.”
“Was that a social visit?”
“An official visit. There were complaints from neighbors down on three. About excessive noise. As co-op president I’m occasionally called upon to handle these situations. We’d sent the Amiels a few letters; our managing agent had called at least once. Finally, I decided to speak to Gwen myself.”
“What kind of noise did the neighbors complain of?”
“Shouting.”
“What kind of—”
“He used to yell at her. Like an animal, the most vile language.”
“You heard it personally?”
She started to answer, then held up a finger and left him alone for a few moments. He glanced into the living room, took in the plump sofa covered in a bright floral pattern, the pale yellow walls, the piles of oversize art
books stacked on every horizontal surface. In the exact center of the room, on a lush oriental rug, sat a squat plastic platform like some sort of Asian shrine. For the step workout, he guessed. Cora returned with a glass of water and took a long sip before speaking.
“I went downstairs one evening to investigate. The couple across the hall, the ones who had been complaining, called me and asked me to. So I stood out on the elevator landing and listened for a few minutes. He sounded quite out of his mind, Barry Amiel.”
“Do you remember what he was yelling about?”
“Just name calling, basically. I’m not a prude, but I couldn’t possibly repeat those words to you.”
“This was at night?”
“Late evening, about eight or eight-thirty.”
When the boy was at home. “And did you hear Gwen Amiel that night?”
“Of course. She was trying to calm him down, but having no luck. Frankly, when I later heard that she’d left, I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I was relieved. She seemed like a nice person, a good mother. And her store over on Amsterdam was quite lovely; she had a very good eye, if you know what I mean. She deserved better than Barry Amiel.”
“But why did she leave so suddenly?” he said. “And why would she leave everything she owned behind?”
“That I can’t tell you.” She glanced at a wafer-thin gold watch. “Now, I have a lunch date…Is there anything else?”
He described Nick Lawrence for her and asked if she recalled seeing him.
“That sounds like the man whose wife was killed,” she said. “The man Gwen worked for.”
“Ever seen him here in the building?”
“I don’t think so,” she said with a shudder.
“You wouldn’t by any chance have a photo of Barry Amiel?”
“Why in the world would I have a—wait, I just might.”
She left for a moment and returned carrying a carton filled with papers.
“One of our shareholders always takes photos at the annual building Christmas party. We run a few in the co-op newsletter.” She began looking through the box. “Not that we ran one of Barry Amiel; he wasn’t exactly popular here. But I do recall they attended with their little—here we go.” She handed him a color photograph. “Barry’s the one on the right.”
Barry Amiel was taller than the other two men in the photo, with a swag of dark hair over his forehead. His eyes were also dark, and sleepy, his smile thin and cynical.
“May I keep this?” Hawkins said.
“Of course. Now, if there’s nothing else…”
He walked to the front door, still glancing at the photo.
“I almost forgot,” she said. He turned back to her. “I mentioned before that the Amiels owed two months’ maintenance when they left. About three thousand dollars total. We had hired a collections agency, but never got very far. Then a few weeks ago we received a check for the full amount.”
He walked back into the foyer. “Who signed the check?”
“It was a cashier’s check.”
“Was there a note?”
“Just a line to the effect that the enclosed check was to cover back maintenance. I…threw it out, actually.”
He couldn’t conceal his disappointment.
“Well, I didn’t realize back then that she was involved in that kidnapping. Someone brought it up at our last shareholders meeting.” She stepped toward him. “She was involved, I take it.”
He shrugged, which was about as honest an answer as he could muster just then.
“I’d appreciate the name of your co-op’s bank, and your account number. I might be able to trace the check, at least find out if it was drawn on a New York bank.”
She frowned, left him for a minute, and returned with a slip of paper. “Our bank and account number,” she said.
“Thanks.” He took the paper and left the apartment, wondering how Gwen Amiel—or her husband, for that matter—suddenly acquired three thousand dollars. And why pay off the co-op now? Guilty conscience—or a keen desire not to be pursued by a collections agency?
Waiting for the elevator, he heard the step class resume.
One, two, three…don’t give up, girls, lift those knees high, one, two three. Higher, two, three. Higher, two, three.
Chapter 26
It’s happening, Gwen decided Thursday night as she painted the trim around the door between the dining room and kitchen. Jimmy was upstairs in bed, finding Waldo with a flashlight. If she didn’t get the hell out of Penaquoit, she was going to end up sleeping with Nick Lawrence.
All evening a debate had been raging inside her head.
So what if you sleep with him? Where’s the harm?
“It would be wrong.”
Why?
“Why? Let me count the ways. His wife died barely a month ago. I’m his kid’s baby-sitter, for God’s sake. I mean, this is insane.”
That’s two reasons, not counting insanity.
“Okay, so I’d more or less promised myself that I’d steer clear of men for a while.”
Because of what that sick fuck did in New York.
“Because of Barry, yes.”
Is there anything about Nick Lawrence that reminds you of him?
“They’re opposites, in a way. Barry was out of control. Even before he started drinking he couldn’t control his temper, couldn’t say no to any kind of temptation. Nick is completely self-possessed. I get the impression that every step he takes is choreographed.”
Like kissing you the other day?
“No, that was spontaneous. At least it felt spontaneous.” Then how did he find you in the secret garden? Did he search the entire estate?
“Good question.”
Well, if he’s so completely different from Barry, what do you have to lose?
“I don’t trust myself. I made such a horrendous decision the last time.”
After Barry started drinking, all of her friends had tried to console her with the same basic line: How could you have known he’d turn out like this? How could you have known he’d end up a drunk, and a cruel drunk at that?
But she’d known. Oh, not about the alcohol. But she’d known his weakness from the moment she met him. Barry kept his insecurities and his anger tightly coiled inside; she knew they’d unravel eventually, and that it wouldn’t be pretty when it happened. It was booze that ultimately set his demons free, but it could have been anything: drugs, a business failure, some deep personal rejection. She’d felt the danger in that coiled anger every time she held him, and she’d married him anyway.
“It’s just that…”
Say it.
“It sounds like dime-store analysis, but I tend to fall for guys who are bad for me.”
It’s not dime-store analysis when it applies to you.
“Remember Ken, the married guy before Barry? He told me right off that he wasn’t leaving his wife. Somehow I didn’t care.”
Years of analysis that set her back far more than a dime had yielded all sorts of explanations for her weakness for unavailable men: her parents’ divorce when she was six; her mother’s chronic depression after that; two much-older brothers who had basically ignored her. Even early puberty had been offered as a possible reason; she’d shot up to five-eight in the sixth grade, and been subjected to the cruelest ridicule until the boys caught up. She had a dozen explanations for always choosing men who ultimately couldn’t reciprocate: married men, gay men, emotional zombies. And still she chose them.
Are you positive Nick Lawrence is wrong for you?
“No. And yet his very self-possession, that feline detachment, seems dangerous, somehow. Getting involved with a man who appears to need nothing from anyone has to be hazardous, doesn’t it?”
The doorbell ended the conversation…and set her heart racing; she still couldn’t think about Jimmy’s panda without shuddering. She opened the curtains by the front door and relaxed.
“Am I interrupting something?” Sheila asked. She was still in bank unif
orm: navy suit, white silk blouse, sensible black shoes.
Gwen almost laughed. “Just a really intense conversation.” Sheila looked around, puzzled. “With myself,” Gwen said.
“It’s the paint fumes. I mean, the dining room looked perfectly fine before you started.”
“I hated the color,” Gwen said.
“The color? It was white. It’s still white.”
“Ecru,” Gwen said weakly, feeling a pang of empathy for the local dairy farmers and auto mechanics and contractors who applied to Sheila Stewart for loans.
“Ecru.” Sheila rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I stopped by on the way home because—”
“Mama?” Jimmy called from upstairs. “I’m thirsty.”
“Get a cup of water from the bathroom,” she shouted back at him.
“I want you to.”
“There’s a cup in the bathroom.”
“Please?”
She sighed as she headed upstairs. “He swears there are monsters living under the bed. At least he says he does. Sometimes I think he’s just lazy.”
“Men!” Sheila said as Gwen reached the second floor. She gave Jimmy a cup of water, which he gulped down as she left the room.
“Mom?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Sorry I snapped, honey. It’s very late. What is it, Jimbo?”
“Does Daddy know where we live?”
“No,” she said quickly. He put the cup down and snuggled under his blanket. “Why?” she asked quietly, her throat suddenly dry.
“I saw him.”
“That’s not possible.”
“He was at the diner. I saw him sitting there, eating.”
“You thought you saw him, Jimmy. Daddy doesn’t know where we are.”
“I guess.” She saw him shrug in the dim yellow glow of the nightlight.
“Are you…I mean, do you miss him?”
“No.”
She waited until his breathing slowed to sleeping tempo, wondering if he’d ever feel completely safe, if he’d ever understand that while monsters really do exist, they’re not under his bed.
She went back downstairs. Sheila was still standing by the front door.
“I just thought you should know. Dwight Hawkins came by the bank the other day—our fearless police chief? He asked a few questions about the money transfer, for the ransom. I told him I’d been through this a hundred times with the FBI. Then it hit me, later in the conversation. What he really wanted to talk about was you.”
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