Mitchell Smith (18 page)

bills … receipts in this one - Her jewelry and shit. ” He flicked that shoe box with a large forefinger. “An’ if you think this is good news-CSIU already packed up all her stuff in the bedroom …

probably finished Saturday. Man, I wasn’t looking’ forward to doin’

that for a couple of days.”

“He could have taken something.”

,‘He didn’t take the book, if she had a goddamn book which I’m startin’

to doubt. That’s one thing I know damn well wasn’t here to take. -We didn’t miss that one.”

Ellie knelt beside him, fingered through Sally Gaither’s jewelry. There wasn’t much of it-all costume or cheapies, as far as she could tell (one playgirl who’d gotten’ no diamonds, no emeralds, no pearls … ).

Ellie’d assumed a call girl would want to have some good jewelry. Sort of an insurance policy, stuff she could sell if things got VA tough. -Not Sally Gaither. Or she’d had some fancy stuff once, and had to sell it.

“Strange woman - . .” Ellie said.

The jewelry had been inventoried on a folded sheet of typewriter paper-typed (probably on Gaither’s old SmithCorona), listed, and signed off by Micky Newsome, Keneally’s partner, and countersigned and dated by Kenneth Keneally, in a loop-lettered scrawl.

“She had a buddy was even stranger,” Nardone said. -Guy wired her to that chair, an’ turned the water on.” He sat down on the floor and crossed his legs, studying a receipted bill.

“We need to take this stuff downtown, Tommy, keep it in second-floor Evidence. . . .”

“Some job Mick and Kenny did here,” Nardone said, reading. “They finished out the inventory on all this shit. -Must have been in here all mornin’.”

“And why the hell would they do that, except to get Maxfield’s nose into out case?” There was one pretty piece, a big brooch, an oval stone that looked almost like an opal,-it glimmered when she turned and tilted it-a clear, watery gray, with a cracked thread of red running through the center.

tlKenny’s crazy, is why,” Nardone said, sitting at ease, his back against the wall, looking through a shelf of Sally Gaither’s bills. “.

- . Big phone bills-big bill from that registry. Take a look at this.”

There were two envelopes of photographs, drugstore developed snapshots.

Most were of a younger Sally Gaither-thin, lofi&-haired, almost very beautiful, except that her eyes (blue-gray, they seemed, narrow, shy as a fox’s) were very slightly too close together. In these pictures, she was dressed in cheap summer dresses, jeans, sweaters; friends as young as she stood beside her in many. One photograph had been torn diagonally across-leaving only her smiling face-fuller than it had been-her right shoulder in a figured blouse, the crook of her bare bent right arm.

“Could be something’ there,” Nardone said, and slid the pictures back into the envelopes, “but that’s old stuff No pictures of her family, her parents-notice that?” The flesfi around Nardone’s right eye was colored mottled plum. Small streaks of blood showed below the tar-black im pupil. ‘-Don’t ask me about Kenny … why he does anything.” He smiled. “—Could be Kenny likes you.”

“Oh, right-that’s got to be it.” Ellie’s knees were starting to hurt, crouching there. She stood up. Clara had said she was crazy not to wear Light Support, instead of plain sheer. “Let’s take all her stuff downtown. -That’s the best advice we got from him. Maxfield wants to get into it down there, let him talk to Anderson about itsee how far he gets. We can load the car up-take two, three trips.”

“Got her bank statements … all of ‘em since the beginnin’ of the year.” Nardone put a bundle of those back into the second shoe box. “Let me tell you something’ -it’s real good we’re not getting’ rushed on this one, because no way are we going’ through this case like a six-man Division team would do it. It’s going’ to take us a month just to enter a real good workup on it, let alone we get a case Leahy’s going’ to want to take upstairs,”

:11 know it.”

“We better hope those ladies you’re talkin’ to can give us a boost …

maybe put that book on the table, or a couple guys went with this whore.

Prostitute. -We can’t squeeze some of her johns, we got nothin’ but bullshit paper’ll take weeks and weeks to run down. Know what I mean…

?” He picked up a different bundle of paper, started riffling through it. “-That faggot from Fingerprints didn’t sound too good about the way stuff was wiped down in here, either. -That’s something’ else; guy who did this wasn’t a wild man; he was careful. Fingerprints guy told Kenny the perp did a damn good job dustin’.” Nardone put the bundle of papers back into the third shoe box, picked up another. “O.K., here you go-medical shit. Got a receipted bill from a dentist guy in Connecticut. Got a doctor’s bill from here. Got a receipt from an optometrists pair of glasses … two pair. One’s sunglasses.” He stretched out, propped on an elbow, leafing through the bundle. ‘-Maybe the dentist killed her; those guys’ll do anything. You got a dentist, you got a desperate guy, is my experience.”

Ellie walked out of Headquarters into early evening.

The sun, setting, lit the sidewalks at an extreme angle, so that the pavement, dull gold and glittering with a myria of mica chips, seemed, as she glanced down, to rise rhythmically to strike her shoe soles as she stepped. She walked east, to the subway.

Al Torres, once a patrolman-until he’d been struck by a vehicle on Clarke Street; it was believed a deliberate hit-and-run-presently was Property & Evidence clerk on the second floor, where an additional records and storage area had been opened the year before, squeezing two long rooms of offices into one.

Torres had gimped actively back and forth behind the counter, producing this form and that form for both Ellie and Nardone to sign-the wall camera taking everybody’s picture every twenty seconds, printing the time and date on each frame, to make property-room thefts too awkward, the Hair-bags hoped, for even small amounts of narcotics to be moved and removed before their court appearances.

In this way, with a constant exchange of paperwork, Nardone and Ellie had slid across the counter eleven paintings and prints-three of which Ellie had recognized as copies of Ricciardis, one as a Mondrian, a numbered limited run-and heavy plastic bags of clothing on hangers, of shoes taped in pairs, linens and towels; lighter plastic bags stuffed with panties, bras, washcloths, dish towels, Tshirts, blouses, slips, stockings, panty hose, gloves, scarves, and an exercise outfit (maroon, with white piping). -All this, the bed sheets particularly, to be vacuumed and examined for stray hairs, odd dander, tiny flakes of skin, minute blood spots, dried semen, and dried saliva, if Central Lab considered that useful.

Had slid as well, two Samsonite suitcases, a Samsonite makeup case (all in light blue), a sewing basket, and seven large cardboard cartons filled with paperback and hardcover books of all sorts (cheap romances, histories, biographies, novels, and paperback books-of poetry) along with odd objects from the closet shelf, the closet floor, the dresser top, the top dresser drawer—six rented VCR tapes (The Cruel Sea, Neon Nights, The Enchanted Cottage, The Other Side of Julie, Pandora’s Mirror, and The Fallen Idol); several bottles of perfume (Chanel No. 5, Ambiance, Fleuve, Mary Chess); brushes and combs (very fine wisps of blond hair caught in the bristles, the teeth, of these); old Newsweek magazines; two vibrators (one short and sleek, a slender white with fluted shaft, the other more brutal, thicker, its oily black-rubber surface ridged with improbable veins); Chap Sticks, lipsticks, lip gloss, cold cream, skin cream, deodorants—cream and roll-on, and a separate carton of makeup, nail clippers and scissors, files and emery boards, brushers, false eyelashes, nail polish (Misty Pink), nail-polish remover, pencils, pens, tweezers, fine brushes, powders, liquids, hair sprays and bottles of shampoo, brightener, two wigs in their own boxes (one wig long-haired and blond one brunet and shorter); conditioner and moisturizers, with-in the same carton, but separate in a stapled plastic bag-the contents of her medicine cabinet: aspirin, Metamucil, a box of regular Tampax, bottles of multivitamins, calcium tablets, vitamin C, B

vitamins, Anusol suppositories, Bufferin, Alka-Seltzer, Ivory soap, Vaseline, Kaopectate, Albolene, several boxes of Massengill douche, bottles of witch hazel, K-Y jelly, rubbing alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide lay jumbled among a dozen or more prescription medications, eye drops, tablets, capsules, antiseptic ointments, all in various bottles, plastic containers, and tube&-some brandnew, some so old their labels had worn away.

Ellie thought her possessions would be much the same, if they were someday paraded over Torres’ counter, bagged, boxed, receipted and accounted for.

“Don’t come in here, now,” Torres said, as he had said many times before, and to Nardone and Ellie more than once, “-don’t come in here and tell me you don’t have your pinks. . . .” He meant the form copies of the Feceipts. “You don’t have your pinks, you don’t see shit in here; I don’t care if you just brought it in. Then, you come in without ‘em, you gotta go see Manugian.” (That formidable Armenian was Headquarter’s Inspector in charge of Records.) “-An’ let me tell you, man-you don’t want to go see Manugian . ‘cause he sure as shit don’t want to see you.”

The little tram castle was crowded, and Ellie had to wait for a second car to come gliding in-the first had been too full. On the ride over, wedged between slightly swaying people avoiding each other’s gaze, she’d been able to see only a distant stretch of the river far upstream, near the projects-the water dark gray in the shadows of buildings on the west bank, flashing crimson where the sunset light could touch it.

Ellie’d recognized two of the people riding the car. -A man standing on the same side, two people down, had asked her to dinner, once, when they’d parked side by side in the garage. He’d been married, and said so-had been very talkative, and seemed relieved when she’d said no. And there was an older woman standing near one of the cable car’s windows.

They’d spoken a couple of times in Gristede’s…. Not even aquaintances, really….

She caught Mayo with her right hand when he scooted out the apartment door as she opened it. He bent his head, pretended to bite at the base of her thumb-and did bit . e, a little. Ellie felt the long muscles of her back ease as she walked into her apartment, out of the sight of anybody. Alone and private. -As if she no longer had to stand so straight.

She set her purse on the hall table, dumped Mayo on the floor, doublelocked the door, and put her hand up under her hair to the back of her neck, rubbing there, rolling her head, hearing the subtle sounds the small linked bones made as they moved.

Mayo followed her into the kitchen, and sat watching while she opened the far left cabinet, chose Chicken Liver Delight for him, took the lid off, and served it to him out of the can, under the table. He would take treats out of hand anywhere, but the regular meal had to be set under the table. -Ellie had considered getting a female; neutered males were supposed to get too fat. But Mayo didn’t get fat, no matter how much he ate. She thought the hunting he did, roaming the apartment at night maybe all night-might be what kept him thin. He was small, too-even for a Siamese. Once the Persian (Woose) was dead, Mayo hunted alone.

Clara had suggested a live white mouse for Mayo’s Christmas—let it loose in the apartment, so that the Siamese, hunting in the dark, might at last find a prey, have one startling, unforgettable success.

Blood on a corner of the carpet … little stains …

little pieces. Mayo would have to do without it.

An image of the mouse came to Ellieas she raked through Mayo’s litter box, combing out his few small, neat turds; (each coated with spearmint-scented sand so it looked like a tiny toffee rolled in crushed pecan)-the mouse, let loose at dark. White, fat, tiny, all its small extremities pink (Misty Pink?-lost in a forest of great furniture, scurrying over moonlit streaks along the floor.

Hearing … hearing with its fine sense that had survived a thousand generations in small cages, something odd, some soft steps somewhere nearer than they had been, commence-just over there-and stop. Stay silent long enough to be almost past remembering, then commence again.

An acrid smell (not a mouse smell) drifting with those soft steps along the carpet pile, so rough, so difficult for the travel of a mouse.

Then, deeper into the night, after the longest silence of all, so long a silence that all had been forgotten-would come a sudden gusting breeze, and orange eyes.

Ellie heard the small can slide slightly, under the table.

Mayo had almost finished his dinner.

Clara had left an envelope with Ellie on it by the phone. A letter inside, written in her sleek, racing hand.

I love you, my darling, my sweet girl. Great breakfast great French toast. My tongue longs for your little belly bution-but alas, Tve got to go to Chicago instead. Again forgive my asininity on the phone. The weekend was heaven, and your Clara will return in about two weeks, depending on how slowly the Prosecutorial staff of the Federal Fourth District considers. Play with Mayo’s sister, darling, and dream of me.

I swear I won’t be bad with any creature in Chicago—even if she plays tennis!-Yours forever. C.

Clara liked to sit with Ellie on the couch, sometimes, and neck while they watched the women tennis champions play on television-Clara commenting on their grim faces … their wonderful tan, smooth, round-muscled arms and legs.

“How would you like those legs wrapped around you?”

‘lara would say, as one of these lionesses paced her back court. ‘-She’d eat you up.”

Ellie checked her answering machine, found two messages on it-one from her aunt in Rochester, the other from Mary Gands, a friend, a social worker she’d met years before. Mary’d had a thing with Lennie Spears before Ellie’d had a thing with him. -Mary wanted to know if Ellie wanted to go see a movie this Wednesday night. Also had something to tell her about Joseph, and what he was up to, now. Joseph, a funny man, was an accountant and a drinker-and Mary had hopes of marriage.