Bad Love (38 page)

“How about in a mental institution?” I said. “Twelve years old, out on his own. God knows what could have happened to him out on the street. He might have suffered a mental breakdown and got put away. Or, if he was at the school the same time as Delmar Parker, maybe he observed Delmar’s death and broke down over that.”

“Big assumption, he and Delmar knowing each other.”

“It is, but there are some factors that might point in that direction: he and Delmar were around the same age, both were Southern boys a long way from home. Maybe Gritz finally made a friend. Maybe he even had something to do with Delmar stealing the truck. If he did and escaped death but saw Delmar die, that could have pulled the rug out from under him, psychologically.”

“So now he’s blaming the school and de Bosch and everyone associated with it? Sure, why not? I just wish we could push it past theory. Place Gritz in Santa Barbara, let alone the school, let alone knowing the Parker kid, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Any luck finding Parker’s mother?”

“She doesn’t live in New Orleans, and I haven’t been able to find any other relatives. So where does this Silk-Merino thing come in? Why would a Southern boy pick himself a Latino alias?”

“Merino’s a type of wool,” I said. “Or a sheep — the flock following the shepherd, and getting misled?”

“Baaa,” he said. “When are you planning to see Rosenblatt’s kid?”

“Couple of hours.”

“Good luck. And don’t worry, everything here’s cool. Ms. Castagna lends a nice touch to the place, maybe we’ll keep her.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Sure,” he said, chuckling. “Why not? Woman’s touch and all that. Hell, we can keep the beast, too. Put up a picket fence around the lawn. One big happy family.”

New York was as clear as an etching, all corners and windows, vanishing rooflines, skinny strips of blue sky.

I walked to the law firm, heading south on Fifth Avenue, swept along in the midtown tide, comforted, somehow, by the forced intimacy.

The shop windows were as glossy as diamonds. People wearing business faces hurtled toward the next obligation. Three-card monte players shouted invitations, took quick profit, then vaporized into the crowd. Street vendors hawked silly toys, cheap watches, tourist maps, and paperback books stripped of their covers. The homeless squatted in doorways, leaned against buildings. Bearing crudely lettered signs and paper cups, their hands out, their eyes leeched of expectation. So many more of them than in L.A. but yet they seemed to belong, part of the city’s rhythm.

Five Hundred Fifth Avenue was a six-hundred-foot limestone tower, the lobby an arena of marble and granite. I arrived with an hour to spare and walked back outside, wondering what to do with the time. I bought a hot dog from a pushcart, ate it watching the throng. Then I spotted the main branch of the public library, just across Forty-second Street, and made my way up the broad, stone stairs.

After a bit of asking and wandering, I located the periodicals room. The hour went fast as I checked four-year-old New York newspapers for obituaries on Harvey Rosenblatt. Nothing.

I thought of the psychiatrist’s kind, open manner. The loving way he’d spoken about his wife and children.

A teenaged boy who’d liked hot dogs. The taste of mine was still on my lips, sour and warm.

My thoughts shifted to a twelve-year-old, leaving town on a one-way ticket to Atlanta.

Life had sneak attacked both of them, but Josh Rosenblatt had been much more heavily armed for the ambush. I left to see how well he’d survived.

Schechter, Mohl, and Trimmer’s decorator had gone for Tradition: carved, riff-oak panels with laundry-sharp creases, layers of heavy moldings, voluptuous plaster work, wool rugs over herringbone floors. The receptionist’s desk was a huge, walnut antique. The receptionist was pure contemporary: midtwenties, white-blonde,
Vogue
face, hair tied back tight enough to pucker her hairline, breasts sharp enough to make an embrace dangerous.

She checked a ledger and said, “Have a seat and Mr. Rosenblatt will be right with you.”

I waited twenty minutes until the door to the inner offices opened and a tall, good-looking young man stepped into the reception area.

I knew he was twenty-seven, but he looked like a college student. His face was long and grave under dark, wavy hair, nose narrow and full, his chin strong and dimpled. He wore a pinstriped charcoal suit, white tab shirt, and red and pearl tie. Pearl pocket handkerchief, quadruple pointed, tassled black loafers, gold Phi Beta Kappa pin in his lapel. Intense brown eyes and a golf tan. If law started to bore him, he could always pose for the Brooks Brothers catalogue.

“Dr. Delaware, Josh Rosenblatt.”

No smile. One arm out. Bone-crusher handshake.

I followed him through a quarter acre of secretaries, file cabinets, and computers to a broad wall of doors. His was just off to the left. His name in brass, on polished oak.

His office wasn’t much bigger than my hotel cubicle, but one wall was glass and it offered a falcon’s lair view of the city. On the wall were two degrees from Columbia, his Phi Beta Kappa certificate, and a lacrosse stick mounted diagonally. A gym bag sat in one corner. Documents were piled up everywhere, including on one of the straight-backed side chairs facing the desk. I took the empty chair. He removed his jacket and tossed it on the desk. Very broad shoulders, powerful chest, outsize hands.

He sat down amid the clutter, shuffled papers while studying me.

“What kind of law do you practice?” I said.

“Business.”

“Do you litigate?”

“Only when I need to get a taxi — no, I’m one of the behind-the-scenes guys. Mole in a suit.”

He drummed the desk with his palm a few times. Kept staring at me. Put his hands down flat.

“Same face as your picture,” he said. “I’d expected someone older — closer to . . . Dad’s age.”

“I appreciate your taking the time. Having someone you love murdered—”

“He wasn’t murdered,” he said, almost barking. “Not officially, anyway.
Officially
, he committed
suicide
, though the rabbi filed it as an accident so he could be buried with his parents.”

“Suicide?”

“You met my dad — did he seem like an unhappy person?”

“On the contrary.”

“Damn
right
on the contrary.” His face reddened. “He
loved
life — really knew how to have fun. We used to kid him that he never really grew up. That’s what made him a good psychiatrist. He was such a happy guy, other psychiatrists used to make
jokes
about it. Harvey Rosenblatt, the only well-adjusted shrink in New York.”

He got up, looked down on me.

“He was
never
depressed — the least moody person I ever met. And he was a great father. Never played shrink with us at home. Just a dad. He played ball with me even though he was no good at it. Couldn’t change a lightbulb, but no matter what he was doing, he’d put it aside to listen to you. And we knew it — all three of us. We saw what other fathers were like and we
appreciated
him. We never believed he killed himself, but they kept saying it, the goddamn police. “The evidence is clear.’ Over and over, like a broken record.”

He cursed and slapped the desk. “They’re a bureaucracy just like everything else in this city. They went from point A to point B, found C and said, good night, time to punch the clock and go home. So we hired a private investigator — someone the firm had used — and all
he
did was go over the same territory the police had covered, say the same damn thing. So I guess I should be happy you’re here, telling me we weren’t nuts.”

“How did they say it happened?” I said. “A car crash or some kind of fall?”

He pulled his head back as if avoiding a punch. Glared at me. Began loosening his tie, then thought better of it and tugged it up against his throat, even tighter. Picking up his jacket, he flipped it over his shoulder.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You in shape?” he said, looking me up and down.

“Decent.”

“Twenty blocks do you in?”

I shook my head.

He pressed forward into the throng, heading uptown. I jogged to catch up, watching him manipulate the sidewalk like an Indy driver, swaying into openings, stepping off the curb when that was the fastest way to go. Swinging his arms and looking straight ahead, sharp-eyed, watchful, self-defensive. I started to notice lots of other people with that same look. Thousands of people running the urban gauntlet.

I expected him to stop at Sixty-fifth Street, but he kept going to Sixty-seventh. Turning east, he led me up two blocks and stopped in front of a red-brick building, eight floors high, plain and flat, set between two ornate graystones. On the ground floor were medical offices. The town house on the right housed a French restaurant with a long black awning lettered in gold at street level. A couple of limousines were parked at the curb.

He pointed upward. “That’s where it happened. An apartment on the top floor, and yeah, they said he jumped.”

“Whose apartment was it?”

He kept staring up. Then down at the pavement. Directly in front of us, a dermatologist’s window was fronted by a boxful of geraniums. Josh seemed to study the flowers. When he faced me, pain had immobilized his face.

“It’s my mother’s story,” he said.

Shirley and Harvey Rosenblatt had worked where they lived, in a narrow brownstone with a gated entry. Three stories, more geraniums, a maple with an iron trunk guard surviving at the curb.

Josh produced a ring of keys and used one key to open the gate. The lobby ceiling was coffered walnut, the floor was covered in tiny black-and-white hexagonal tiles backed by etched glass double doors and a brass elevator. The walls were freshly painted beige. A potted palm stood in one corner. Another was occupied by a Louis XIV chair.

Three brass mailboxes were bolted to the north wall. Number 1 said,
ROSENBLATT.
Josh unlocked it and drew out a stack of envelopes before unlatching the glass doors. Behind it was a smaller vestibule, dark paneled and gloomy. Soup and powdered-cleanser smells. Two more walnut doors, one unmarked, with a mezuzah nailed to the post, the other bearing a brass plaque that said
SHIRLEY M. ROSENBLATT, PH.D., P.C.
The faint outline of where another sign had been glued was visible just above.

Josh unlocked the plain one and held it open for me. I stepped into a narrow entry hall lined with framed Daumier prints. To my left was a bentwood hall tree from which hung a single raincoat.

A gray tabby cat came from nowhere and padded toward us on the parquet floor.

Josh stepped in front of me and said, “Hey, Leo.”

The cat stopped, arched its tail, relaxed it, and walked up to him. He dropped his hand. The cat’s tongue darted. When it saw me, its yellow eyes slitted.

Josh said, “It’s okay, Leo. I guess.” He scooped up the cat, held it to his chest, and told me, “This way.”

The hall emptied into a small sitting room. To the right was a dining room furnished with mock Chippendale, to the left a tiny kitchen, white and spotless. Though the shades were up on every window, the view was a brownstone six feet away, leaving the entire apartment dark and denlike. Simple furniture, not much of it. Some paintings, nothing flashy or expensive. Everything perfectly in place. I knew one way Josh had rebelled.

Beyond the sitting room was another living area, slightly larger, more casual. TV, easy chairs, a spinet piano, three walls of bookshelves filled with hardbacks and family photos. The fourth was bisected by an arched door that Josh opened.

“Hello?” Josh said, sticking his head through. The cat fussed and he let it down. It studied me, finally disappeared behind a sofa.

The sound of another door opening. Josh stepped back as a black woman in a white nurse’s uniform came out. In her forties, she had a round face, a stocky but shapely figure, and bright eyes.

“Hello, Mr. Rosenblatt.” West Indian accent.

“Selena,” he said, taking her hand. “How is she?”

“Everything is
perfect
. She had a generous breakfast and a nice long nap. Robbie was here at ten, and they did almost the full hour of exercise.”

“Good. Is she up now?”

“Yes.” The nurse’s eyes shifted to me. “She’s been waiting for you.”

“This is Dr. Delaware.”

“Hello, doctor. Selena Limberton.”

“Hello.” We shook hands. Josh said, “Have you had your lunch break yet?”

“No,” said the nurse.

“Now would be a good time.”

They talked a bit more, about medicines and exercises, and I studied the family portraits, settling on one that showed Harvey Rosenblatt in a dark three-piece suit, beaming in the midst of his brood. Josh around eighteen, with long, unruly hair, a fuzzy mustache, and black-rimmed eyeglasses. Next to him, a beautiful girl with a long, graceful face and sculpted cheekbones, maybe two or three years older. The same dark eyes as her brother. The oldest child was a young man in his midtwenties who resembled Josh, but thick necked and heavier, with cruder features, curly hair, and a full, dark beard that mimicked his father’s.

Shirley Rosenblatt was tiny, fair, and blue-eyed, her blond hair cut very short, her smile full but frail even in health. Her shoulders weren’t much wider than those of a child. It was hard to imagine her birthing the robust trio.

Mrs. Limberton said, “All righty, then, I’ll be back in an hour — where’s Leo?”

Josh looked around.

I said, “I think he’s hiding behind the couch.”

The nurse went over, bent, and lifted the cat. His body was limp. Nuzzling him, she said, “I’ll bring you back some chicken if you behave.” The cat blinked. She set him down on the couch and he curled up, eyes open and watchful.

Josh said, “Did you feed the fish?”

She smiled. “Yes. Everything’s taken care of. Now you don’t worry yourself about any more details, she’s going to be fine. Nice meeting you, doctor. Bye-bye.”