Come Out Tonight (19 page)

So I had better get someone over there ASAP, Jackman was telling me, prior to O’Donnell snuffing her out before she could put the finger on him.
 
That guy has definitely watched too much TV.
 
Jackman may have caught something I hadn’t, but that didn’t mean I should listen to his crackpot conspiracy theories.
  
I thanked him for his information but told him we’d take it from here.

“You gonna station someone at the nursing home to protect her?” he pressed.

“Yes,” I said.

“You don’t want me to meet you up there?”

“No.
 
I think we can handle it now.”

Then he asked me for my cell number, which of course I wouldn’t tell him in a thousand years, and hung up.
  

I was practically in front of the steps to my apartment, but this whole episode gave me the excuse I wanted not to go upstairs.
 
Instead, leaning up against the brick of my building, I called Ricardo back, asking him to send some late night protection up for Sherry at Parkhill Nursing Home in the
Bronx
.
 
Not that I believed Ryan was capable of attacking two young women, but it always paid to take precautions.
 
And, by the way, I asked Ricardo, could you find out Ryan O’Donnell’s cell phone?
 
It should be in the Jessica Finklemeyer file.
 
He called me right back with the number.
 

My back braced against a brick wall still warm from the summer sun, I typed in the sequence.
 
It rang and rang and finally went to message.
 
I left word who I was, that I had one question I had forgotten to ask, and to call me back at this number.

I stepped back from the building and peered up at the second floor windows, the glass mirroring the last rays of summer sun.
 
I moved off to the side, surveying it from an angle, and was rewarded with a glimpse of a lithe shadow traversing the living room, back and forth, back and forth.
 
Julian was waiting for me.
 
Too bad, I wasn’t going up there tonight, not if I could help it.
 
I’d rather interrogate a possible murderer than confront Julian.

What can I tell you?
 
When I’m away from Julian, all I see are negatives: he’s a lying, irresponsible, undependable, good-time Charlie who is there for the fun and out the door when there’s work to be done.
  
But when I’m with him, Julian’s something else entirely: this handsome devil with crinkly eyes, gourmet tastes, good cheer, high style, magnetic charm, and SEX.
 
He’s my drug, my addiction.
 
The competent adult in me evaporates, along with crime, good, evil, and the state of the nation.
 
Nothing else matters. That’s why I can’t be near him.
 
And that’s why I’m not going up there tonight, not if I can help it.
 

Beneath my apartment is a little Turkish restaurant.
 
Over the years, it’s been Armenian and Greek, Italian and French.
 
They come; they go. If only someone would take the divine hint and turn it into an electronics shop, a dress shop, even a Gristedes.
  
But no, failed or not, its karma is to be a restaurant.
 
So be it.
 

I sat down at the long, polished bar.
 
They had a row of bottles of red wine from
Turkey
which weren’t half bad.
 
In its Turkish reincarnation, I’d been in there with Julian half a dozen times, though never alone.
 
I signalled Demir the bartender, a dark young man who’d come here three years ago and already spoke English with all the slang and verve of a native.

“What’s your pleasure?” Demir asked.

I pointed to the row of Turkish reds.
 
“Whichever you think,” I said.

He selected one and poured me a half an inch for tasting.
 
“Saw your ex- the other day.
 
Are you two back together?”

I hadn’t remembered ever telling him that we’d split.
 
“No,” I said.
 
“He just needs a place to stay for a few days.”
 
I tasted the sample.
 
“This is good.”

Demir filled the glass half-way.
 
“He came in to get the name of the wine you two drank the last time you were here.”

That was two years ago.
 
The guy’d have to have a photographic memory to summon up what we drank.
  
”Did you actually remember which one?” I asked, incredulous.

He grinned and lifted up the bottle he’d just been pouring.
  
“Doluca Kav 2004,” he said.
 
“I sold him a bottle.
 
Julian said it was for tonight to go with the osso bucco.”

“Cheers,” I said lifting the glass.

“But you haven’t gone upstairs yet,” Demir scolded.

“No.”

“Too bad,” he said, turning away to put the bottle back on the counter.
 
I didn’t want to talk tonight, and he could tell.
 
Bartenders could always tell.

I drank in silence for about twenty minutes, when my cell phone rang. “Sirken.”

“Hi.
 
This is Ryan O’Donnell.
 
You said you have another question?”

“Do you mind if I come over again tonight?” I asked.

It took a beat or two before he answered.
 
“Come on over.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said.

I could see a cab barreling down the block with its light on.
 
I stepped off the curb with my arm out.
 
The cab swerved around me, screeching to a stop at the curb, where I got in.
 
We sped up
Lexington
till 97
^th
, then on till Fifth where 97
^th
turns into the park.
 
We followed the narrow divided Transverse road, bordered on both sides by crumbling stone walls, the trees dark and spidery behind them, old-style lamp posts materializing at rhythmic intervals to puncture the darkness with gauzy halos of light.

I tried to remember the details of what had sparked the argument between Sherry and her parents. Rhonda had said something about….What had she said?
 
Something about people running amok after taking Somnolux, doing crazy things in their sleep.
 
And Vandenberg was trying to hush it up, to stop Sherry from telling the public about the side effects.
 
That her father had told her to take responsibility and tell the public before it went any further. At least I thought that was what she said. That they had argued and Sherry ran off into the dark.
 
I didn’t remember any more, and my notes were back at the office.

Even assuming that Sherry was not in love with that dope Jackman as Ryan had allegedly told Henry, there was an outside chance that O’Donnell might have been strong-arming Sherry on behalf of Vandenberg.
 
Could it have been Ryan who followed Sherry out of the restaurant and pursued her to Henry’s place, engendering an argument that Henry did not hear because he was deeply sedated? But then what motive would he have had in killing Jessica?
 
Besides, Ryan’s alibi had checked out – he was indeed out of town the night that Jessica was strangled.
 

We were just coming out of the park onto the bright lights of Central Park West.
 
The cab made the first right onto 96
^th
, went another two blocks and pulled up in front of 119, this time lit up on the top floor only.
 
I got out and walked up the stoop, opened the door and pressed the button to 3A.
 
Ryan buzzed me in.

As I trudged up to the third floor, I could detect the smell of food.
 
I rang the bell, and Ryan opened the door.
 
Behind him his dining table held one dirty plate and a half-read newspaper.

“Sorry,” said.
 
“I interrupted your dinner.”

He shrugged, leading me to the couch.
 
“Can’t be helped.
 
So what was that question you said you needed answered?”

I hadn’t really figured how I would do this, maybe just play it by ear.
 
“I understand you work at Vandenberg,” I said.

“Is that the question?” he asked.

“I’m getting to it.
 
You were one of the discoverers of Somnolux?
 
That’s a blockbuster of a drug.
 
You must have made a lot of money from it.”

Ryan’s mouth sort of twisted, but all he said was, “Not me. I don’t have any rights to it.
 
Vandenberg does.”

“So
they
make the money.”

“In a matter of speaking.
 
It goes back into the research process. Vandenberg is non-profit.”

“So it’s a cash cow at this point?
 
It helps to support Vandenberg?”

“Well, again in a matter of speaking.
 
The research process takes a lot of money.
 
Look, Detective, where are you going with this?”

I decided to ignore the question.
 
“So if Somnolux were found to have serious side effects, and it had to be withdrawn, that would create a serious hole in Vandenberg’s budget?”

“Why are you….Oh, I get it.
 
You’ve heard about a couple of parasomnias that showed up out of a hundred million prescriptions.
 
Listen, Detective, with a drug like Somnolux and the many millions of patients taking it, a few side effects have got to show up, if only by chance.
 
That’s the business.
 
Somnolux didn’t cause them.”

I tried again.
 
“But if it were publicized, wouldn’t it hurt?”

“It
was
in the papers, Detective.
 
It’s just that there were so few incidents that nothing ever came of it. Vandenberg has nothing to worry about with Somnolux.
 
It’s a great product.
 
Next question?”

I decided to drop that for the moment.
 
I doubted that I could do justice here to either Somnolux or its maker, anyway.
 
Vandenberg was like the elephant in the room: of such magnitude that the two of us who were pretending it was not there clearly had chosen to discuss mites and flyspecks rather than to deal with the giant beast that loomed above us. “Okay. I’ll take your word for it,” I said instead.
 
“Were you the sole discoverer of Somnolux, Mr. O’Donnell?”

“No,” he said.
 
“There was another scientist.”

“And her name was Sherry Pollack, wasn’t it?”

You could see his jaw muscle begin to tense up, his left leg begin to jiggle.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“What about her?”

“She doesn’t work with you any more?”

“From the sound of it, I think you know as well as I do, Detective, that Sherry has been in a vegetative state for months.”

“True,” I said, deciding that subtlety wasn’t working either.
 
“Mr. O’Donnell, where were you on April 30, the night that Sherry Pollack was attacked?”

“Ah,” Ryan said, almost smiling.
 
“Is that the question?”

“That’s the one,” I said, smiling back.
 
“And what’s the answer?”

“I was home alone, just like tonight.
 
I got home a little before seven and I didn’t leave till I went to work the next morning.
  
I don’t have an alibi, if that’s what you’re getting at, Detective, but what kind of motive would I have?
 
Sherry and I were good friends.

“And besides,” Ryan said, warming to the topic, “why are you looking at anyone else except Henry Jackman?
 
It was in his apartment she was attacked!
 

I bet you think that dummy couldn’t hurt a fly.
 
Well let me fill you in on some of things that Sherry told me about him.
 
Like that he has a violent temper.
 
She said he’d fly off the handle at the dumbest things. She was really afraid of him.
 
Of what he might do to her.
 
She told me so.”

Could Ryan have been simply jealous of Henry, so jealous that he would resort to attacking the very thing he desired and pinning it on Henry Jackman?
 
And, after all, an alibi is only effective until it is found to be false.
 
O’Donnell may have had an ironclad alibi in being out of town the night of Jessica’s murder, but we cops know that he could have managed to be back and forth in any number of ways.
 
Then there was the fact that Vandenberg was ostensibly trying to prevent Sherry from telling the public about the side effects. Who would they have sent to stop her, I wondered?
 
All that said, I couldn’t see Ryan O’Donnell as the one who did it.
 
Nor could I see him showing up late that night at Sherry’s nursing home to “snuff her out,” as Jackman so poetically put it.