Mitchell Smith (21 page)

reached out, seized Mrs, Classman by her sparse blue hair, yanked her, bent her head so forcefully down that she stumbled to her knees, raised his left hand, fisted, high in the air-and struck down at the back of the old woman’s neck.

When Tucker stepped over her corpse, then ran to the bedroom, Mason, an odd buzzing vibration through his whole body, went to the Lieutenant and found him lying dead, one eye wide and staring, the other sleepy, halfclosed, about to wink. Mason heard noises in the bedroom-Arawers hauled out, things broken-then Tucker came out running, said, “Pick him up!” and went himself to heave the living room’s twenty-one-inch TV off its stand, onto his shoulder. “Move!”

Down the corridor they went, lumbering, trying to trot, lugging their disparate burdens past dadoes of silent, locked, and listening doors-the Lieutenant sagging over Mason’s shoulder, heavier than the world-Tucker acing behind, bent beneath the big TV. They staggered fast to the fire stairs, then down four steep, steep flights of concrete steps, Mason’s sweat running with the single trickle of blood being jounced from the Lieutenant as they descended.

“Jesus!” Mason said at the first-floor landing, gasping, his voice an octave high. “-He sure as shit didn’t have to do that!” He had stopped for just a second to get his balance. He hitched his burden higher up, and the Lieutenant’s left brown loafer fell off onto the concrete. “-It wasn’t my fuckin’ fault!”

“Shut up and move,” Tucker said-and, balancing the TV carefully, bent his knees, reached down with his left hand, and retrieved the shoe.

Then they were down the last flight and out the heavy door, laboring across the garage floor as Budreau came running to help them, quacking questions.

The Lieutenant, TV, and shoe dumped safe into the back with Mason-Tucker, beside Budreau, sitting composed, lips pursed-they drove up the long ramp and out into the sounds of the streetlamped night, casual traffic … the distant, yelping squad cars hurrying near.

Already dressed, scrambling an egg to go with a piece of whole wheat toast, Ellie thought of driving over, then decided not to. It was more of a hassle to walk to the garage and get the car out, drive around and across the river and try to find a parking place on the West side, than just to take the tram over and catch a cab. -She missed the issue car, and Tommy driving, and no insurance problems in case of a fender bender.

. . . Needed to remember to put in for a new faucet in the kitchen-and, hopefully, for a new toilet seat. There was a little chip out of the side–-out of whatever the thing was made of-that she’d tried to disguise with a dab of white paint. All that did was make you notice it more.

Maybe go to Zabar’s afterward, bring some stuff home.

If there was a pet store, get a rubber mouse or something for Mayo. A catnip mouse . . . ?

Elbe ate her breakfast standing up at the kitchen counter, had another half cup of coffee, and considered a second piece of toast, then decided not. She’d stopped using margarine after reading in Consumer Reports how it was made, and bought sweet butter instead. It was difficult not to have a second piece of toast with that butter.

Mayo, silent, wove through her ankles all during breakfast, and when Ellie’d finished eating, she got a Kitten Delight biscuit out of the box in the cabinet, and gave it to him. Then she sat at the kitchen table and put on her makeup, a little powder, pearl-pink lipstick, mascara, light blue eyeliner, same shade shadow.

Ellie walked out into a warm morning-ruffles of light gray clouds marching slowly overhead on steady, high western winds, allowing only intermittent flushes of sun shine, fading just as fast. She thought of going back for her umbrella-she was wearing a powder-blue cotton summer suit, and rain spots would look terrible on it but the bus came (all seats taken) and she rode standing to the tram station, then took the next car up and over with the going-to-work crowd.

She’d been near the front of the line and gotten to stand by an upstream window to see the river below-an estuary, really, according to Serrano-flash and sparkle in the shuttling sunlight like sword blades, bayonets in some old military poem. She thought of riding the tram back and forth all day, or most of the day-maybe next weekend-painting the river. -Have to get permission from somebody. Paint streaming ghosts of river flowing over and under each other by different lights as the sun’s light shifted. All of one day’s rivers, morning to night running, running down across the canvas with tugs, slender sailboats captured in it (dots and broken pieces of white and red-lead paint stuck in the iron and silver, flashes of gold). Whiie gold, whiter than the water, even where it foamed. The sun and the river. Estuary. Call it Estuary.

-Then in a small gallery on Seventy-first …

Some woman noticing it, saying to the gay guy. ‘-Whose is this? Now, this one’s special. Where in God’s name have you been hiding it?” He’d be embarrassed. -Had given Ellie lots of shit about accepting

“something from someone with no track record whatsoever, dear.” Had accepted it finally, because it had “definition.”

“It does have something more than that,” he’d said to her.

“—Though heaven knows what.” Now, he felt like a fool. “—I want my husband to come and see this. ” A rich, beautiful Jewish woman.

European. Tanned. A face like a beautiful hawk’s. She knew everybody.

Had been a dancer when her husband saw her in a ballet in Monte Carlo.

“-My husband has got to see this. Do you have anything else of hers-anything at all?”

“Of course; she’s doing several things for us.

Lying. He’d come to Roosevelt Island that evening-not even call, just talk his way past the night man and ring the bell-and not even come in, just stand in the doorway in his beautiful custard suit, and say,

“Sweetie, you are lucky beyond belief-and you’d better turn in your badge and nightstick, or whatever, and get those pretty buns to hummin’, because Sarah Rothstein loves your work. -That means, sweetie, you’re going to be famous, and we both-thank God-are going to be rich.” He brought champagne with him-so he did come in, and they had that. He had a cat, too, a part-Burmese. And turned out to be nice, under that snottiness … had lost his lover to AIDS. “-Well, it nearly killed me. Jerry and I were a great deal more than lovers…. That was the least of it.”

He became a really good friend, very close. They’d go shopping together, Ellie so rich she could buy anything. -That wasn’t important to her at all, anymore. She’d bought gifts for everybody. Bought Tommy and Connie a new car. -She and Sarah became friends, too. It was through Sarah Rothstein, at one of her parties, she met … the man who came to Anderson’s office to get her, who’d been in China. Stocky, handsome, hair bronze -and silver … Jack.

At one of her shows, Klein would be there with a tired-looking girl.

Ellie’d be with Jack, talking to somebody important. Klein would come up to say hello, talk about his cases and bore poor Jack to death, but Ellie would be very nice to him . gracious.

The Donegal was a huge, quiet, slightly shabby apartment building built of streaked gray stone-the corridors twice as wide and almost twice as high as the halls in Ellie’s building on the island. Plaster molding running along the sides of the corridor ceiling. Old maroon carpets.

-Susan Margolies’ door, like all the others, was painted nearly the deep worn red of the carpet.

Ellie buzzed-then, after a while, buzzed again. She heard faint sounds inside. Then coming closer. Pause.

Ellie smiled at the little peep lens. The rattle and clack of the Fox lock. Another lock, before the door swung open.

“Oh, I think she was right!” Small bright blue eyes in a long, pale, wrinkled face. Some freckles. A really ugly dress, the wrong blue for her eyes-had green in it white floral pattern. Susan Margolies was almost elderly, very tall, a big-boned woman, lanky, big-hipped. Seemed to be in her early sixties … iron-gray hair to her shoulders. A big, plain old woman. “-You have to be one of the best-looking, at least.

You are pretty . . .” She watched Ellie like a cop, the talking not interfering with the watching. Then she smiled. “Well, we can continue our inventories inside, can’t we?” and led Ellie in.

“Where did you get that purse? -I’ve been promising myself a new purse forever. It’s too late to get myself a straw; but I’m determined to get a really good leather bag for autumn.” She was leading down a long high-ceilinged hall with small, elegant lamp tables right and left along the way, eighteenth-century engravings, little ones (German or Austrian, Ellie thought) low on the walls between the lamps. Music-room scenes.

Guests and musicians.

Then the woman walked before Ellie out into greater space, nimbused by the momentary sun in a living room twice the size of Ellie’s. This had high cream ceilings, plants in fine china pots in rows along the deep windowsills of four big windows looking out over the Hudson. A small white-marble fireplace … Ellie doubted that it worked. Tall, glass-front bookcases along the walls on either side of the fireplace.

Plants up on top of those, too-hard to water. And a wonderful big rug-Turkish or Persian with a whole flower garden woven into it, the pile dark green on the borders, and deep as grass. -If the rest of the apartment was like the living, room, so big, airy, so perfectly done, then Ellie wished she had it. - Probably worth putting up with the trendy West Side to have it; it made hers, on the island, seem cramped.

Shitly was the word.

The woman patted the top of the back of a long brown corduroy sofa.

“Here,” she said. “This is wonderfully comfortable. -Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes,” Ellie said. The sofa was a deep bath of warm cloth and cushions.

“Well, I don’t care; I’m toasting some bagels. We’ll have cream cheese and jam with them. You want coffee or tea?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Tea, then. Coffee’s just too harsh for me in the morning.” Susan Margolies said the “harsh” in a very Boston sounding way “haash.” She walked through a door at the other side of the room-another hall, Ellie supposed, to the kitchen-and said something as she went, but Ellie couldn’t hear it well enough.

The apartment smelled faintly of some sort of potpourri., primrose …

something woodsy. There was only one picture in the living room. A Hudson River School copy-probably a copy-over the fireplace. Green hills (looked like up past Tarrytown) rolling down very steeply to the river. The river was clear as glass. It looked from the sofa as though the artist had painted tiny fish under the water, near a skiff two men or boys in white shirts were fishing from. It was a pretty picture.

-The sky not as good as the river. -As my river, Ellie thought. I could have streams of glassy clear threading through the white, off-white grays and charcoals….

Susan walked back in carrying a wooden tray, set it down on the coffee table by the sofa, and sat on the other side in an armchair covered with the same brown corduroy. She’d put several toasted bagel halves on a big white dinner plate, most of a block of cream cheese with a butter knife on a smaller white plate beside it. And alongside that, a small stack of orange paper cocktail napkins. She’d forgotten the jam. Two teacups, pot, sugar and creamer in the same ornate pattern, gorgeous red, blue, and gold.

“You like that? Isn’t that service pretty?”

“What is it?”

“Tobacco leaf-the store at the Met used to have it. I don’t know if they still do. -Would you rather have lemon?”

Ellie would have, but didn’t want to send the woman off on that long walk to the kitchen. “No-this is fine.”

“Well, have a bagel-don’t make me feel like a pig.”

Susan Margolies leaned over and picked a bagel half, then smeared the cream cheese on thick, using the butterknife blade to sculpt the cheese around the toast’s edges.

Then she put the knife down, and holding her bagel in her left hand, poured the tea with her right. “Irish Breakfast,” she said. Then: “I know it sounds stupid-but is there any chance at all there could be a mistake? You know, some other woman staying at her apartment, being killed … like in Laura?”

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said. “The super knew her, and there were pictures of her in the apartment. I’m afraid it was definitely her.”

“It’s just so ridiculous,” the big woman said, and put the teapot down.

“She wasn’t the type of woman to have that happen … ! She was always so damn funny … so lively. -Not one of those mopey types looking for some sordid tragedy.” Susan Margolies’ tone was indignation, and controlled, but tears began to leak from her small blue eyes, and two or three slowly followed the paths of pale, shallow wrinkles down her cheeks. “It’s just a fucking farce—the whole damn thing. . . .” She picked up one of the cocktail napkins and wiped the tears away.

“For one thing, she was beautiful.” The tall woman blew her nose.

“-There, the human comedy-no tribute of tears, without snot to follow.”

She wadded the napkin up and stuffed it into the left pocket of her dress. “Do you people know who did it?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, I don’t care what problem that bastard has-I hope he goes right into the electric chair. I hope they it a professional comment, I guess.” She took out the wadded napkin, fiddled it open, and blew her nose again. “Oh, hell,” she said, “let’s eat.”

When Ellie had her bagel, her tea in her hands-hoping she wouldn’t spill on her skirt (she would have liked a bigger napkin)—Susan Margolies took two large bites of her toast in succession, then chewed her mouthful slowly, with satisfaction. She paused to sip some tea before she chewed again, then swallowed.

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” she said, “to watch someone eat. You learn a lot, doing that. -Whether they’re enjoying at least that much of life, for openers. How aggressive they are? -That sort of thing.

It’s surprising how many people really hate to share their food-a bite from their cake, a section of a tangerine they’re eating. Some people hold on to those morsels as if they’d starve without them. -Won’t give their own kids a bite.” She ate the rest of her bagel, filling her mouth full before she chewed and swallowed.