Mitchell Smith (47 page)

Ellie shared the elevator going up with a young couple and their little boy. The husband was slim, snub-nosed and handsome . . . he smiled at Ellie as the elevator rose. His wife was pretty, in an angular auburn way. She had freckles on her wrists, just below the cuffs of her green sweater. Ellie supposed she had freckles on her face, too, under her makeup.

The little boy-about eight years old, Ellie thought-in dark blue corduroy pants and a blue-checked flannel shirt, had hands as thin and white as bone, but his face was fat, his cheeks puffed out as if he were holding his breath, filling them with air. He was wearing a white knit watch cap pulled down to his ears, and no hair appeared from under it.

He noticed Ellie looking at him, and glanced sideways to look back at her. He had light blue eyes; the pupil of his left eye was bigger than the right’s.

These people got off at the fourth floor, and a tall, stooped, balding doctor in a wonderfully cut dark blue suit with real button cuffs on the jacket, got on and rode one floor up. He had his cuffs unbuttoned and folded back-to examine a patient, or, Ellie thought, show what a wonderful suit it was. His stethoscope was stuffed into the jacket’s right side pocket.

On the fifth floor, no one else got on, and Ellie rode up alone to seven.

On seven, she stepped out onto shining, waxed white flooring, streaked with patterns of black, and immediately felt guilty satisfaction at just visiting, at being all right, and not sick at all. Seven-fourteen was down the long leg to the left, past the nurses’ station, and Ellie stopped at the station as the oriental woman downstairs had said she should. A nurse-very pretty, blond, with cheekbones like a Ukrainian girl’s—was sitting at the station counter, making some sort of notes on a page in a small black loose-leaf notebook. There was very faint blond down on her upper lip.

Ellie said, “Excuse me . . .” and the nurse looked up and said, “Be with you in a second . . .” looked down, and went on entering her notes. She hadn’t been as pretty, full-face, as she’d seemed with her head bent.

Ellie heard a soft announcement on a speaker above and behind her. They were asking for a Mr. Carlson . … or Dr. Carlson. It was hard to tell.

“Yes?” The nurse put her notebook away in a drawer.

“I’m here to see Mrs. Audrey Birnbaum.”

“Are you a relative?”

“I’m a friend.”

“Well … you’ll have to sign a disclaimer, Miss … ?”

“Klein.”

“You’ll have to sign a disclaimer, Miss Klein, since Mrs. Birnbaum has a serious communicable disease.”

She tugged a small gray form out of a slot below the counter, and reached up to put it in front of Ellie to sign.

And reached up again with a black Bic pen.

IL

“I thought Mrs. Birnbaum had cancer,” Ellie said, and signed the form.

“Well, she does. But she’s suffering from AIDS as well, and the hospital’s been sued by a few people who claim they caught it visiting patients-which is ‘a lot of nonsense, but this is to protect us against that.”

Ellie pushed the form back over the counter. “O.K.?”

“O.K. Just go down the hall; her room is fourth on the left. -And you probably don’t want to stay too long. She tires kind of easily.”

Ellie walked past three doors on her left, and paused at the fourth; it was open a few inches, and a small white cardboard sign reading Communicable Disease in red letters, was thumbtacked to it.

Ellie took a breath-floor wax, food (smelled like sweet potatoes), and some sharper, chemical odor-and pushed the door gently open to go in.

“Toddy … ?”

“No … I’m sorry,” Ellie said to lustrous gray-black eyes set in an elegant dark brown skull. The skull rested propped on a blue satin pillowcase, and beneath it a narrow rack of shoulders was draped in a bed jacket of lighter blue satin, bordered with cream lace. The arms were long, brown, nobbed sticks, blackly bruised-the hands, large, skeletal, an IV needle taped onto the back of the left one. A white open-weave cotton blanket mounded down over more bones in a long, slight, irregular ridge, almost to the bed’s foot rail.

“The lady cop.” Mrs. Birnbaum had a Southern woman’s husky voice and complicated vowels, not yet ruined to match her. She wore a pale cream turban, the same shade as her jacket’s face.

“That’s riiht,” Ellie said. “My name’s Ellie Klein. —O.K. if I come in?”

“I’d be plenty P.O.“d if you didn’t,” Audrey Birnbaum said. ‘-Except for Toddy, an’ a gay friend who’s too insane to fear anything’ I have found myself resoundingly short of visitors.”

Ellie walked in, and hesitated about taking off her raincoat.

“Take it off, sugar, and hang it over there in the closet. -Where’d you get that?”

“Tabouri’s.”

,‘That shit costs a fortune. -Have you been a naughty little cop?”

“No,” Ellie said, hanging the raincoat up, “-it was a birthday present from me to me.” She came back to the bed, and sat to the right of it in a small armless chair upholstered in maroon plastic. She put her purse down on the floor beside her.

“Toddy told me about you,” Audrey Birnbaum said, -but it got so late, I thought you just decided to skip it.” A small black machine, a white tube coiled and clipped to its top, rested on a steel bedside table.

Kleenex, paperback books, and a six-ounce bottle of Fleurs, Fauves were lined up in front of it.

“No,” Ellie said. “-I had a lot of work to get done before I came over.” The walls of the room were covered with pictures. All pictures of flowers. Reproductions of Van Goghs, Eugene Tillerys, Redon and de Heem. Some, Ellie didn’t know. -There were no real flowers in the room.

Slowly, carefully, the skull finished turning on its blue satin to face her. “-See all these pretty paintin’s? I told Toddy I didn’t want to be seem’ cut flowers die, so he’s buyin’ me these. Every few days I get a new one.

“They’re beautiful.”

“Which one you like the best?”

Ellie looked at them, looked over her shoulder to see the ones on the opposite wall.

“I like the de Heem. -That one.” The picture was between the far window and the door to the bathroom.

“You know who painted that paintin’?”

“I just happened to recognize it,” Ellie said. ‘-I like that one because he makes the whole vase of flowers seem to be still growing. As if the flowers were still alive.”

“That’s right,” Audrey Birnbaum said. “-It does look like that. Either he was real good, or those flowers were real fresh.”

:‘Which is your favorite?”

“Depends how I feel. If I feel good, I look at the bright ones, where it really looks like summertime. If I don’t feel so good, I just pick one of the dark ones doesn’t hurt my eyes. -Listen … how much did you pay for that raincoat?”

“A hundred and ninety-two dollars,” Ellie said.

“I had my eye,” Audrey said, “-I had my eye on a light brown leather coat over there-you know, light cocoa? But it was a trench-coat style, and honey, at the time-I had not yet had my pecker removed-I just couldn’t afford to be dressin’ so butch.”

“I think I know the one you mean,” Ellie said. “Did it have a sort of woven belt ? Light and dark kind of ropes of leather?”

“That was it! Did you see the price tag on that mother?”

“No.”

“Six hundred and sixty-one dollars. -I mean, give a girl a break!”

“It was very pretty.”

“Oh, honey-it was beautiful. It was Italian or Brazilian, some place where those people know leather.”

Having said so much, Audrey appeared to tire. Lids curtained down over anthracite eyes. She’d been made up carefully; a tongue tip, very pale, almost white, came out to touch lips tinted tropic coral.

Ellie sat quiet, thinking the woman might be drifting off, sleeping. .

. . She was surprised to find the small room—sunlit, as clouds drifted away over the river-restful after all. The dying woman’s silence restful as well. Ellie sat at ease in the maroon chair, relaxing, looking at the pictures on the walls.

After two or three minutes, Audrey said, “Well? -What’s the news?” She didn’t open her eyes.

“We don’t know who killed her. We’re still digging.”

“Well, sugar, you are going’ to have to dig deep-because there was no one, as far as I know, who disliked Sally, let alone hated her enough to do that. -To do what they did.” Audrey opened her eyes, and they shone with such luster it seemed impossible they were soon to rot. She appeared to put all she had left of beauty into them.

“-Only person I know who had any motive for that, was me.”

“How so?”

“Well—you want to hear a confession?”

“You bet.”

“Well, here it is. I loved Sally Gaither like a sister, and better’n a sister. An’ if I had a choice whether I was going’ to be the one lyin’

here, or she was, I honest-to-God don’t know which I would choose.

-However, an’ here’s the confession … I’m happy she died before me, an’ died even harder than I’m going’ to. -And that, sugar, is how lonely dyin’ is, how desperate a dyin’ person gets for company. I’d take the whole damn world with me if I could-except for children, and my Toddy. An’ I was raised in the Church an’ a Christian, too.”

“We’ll all feel like that,” Ellie said.

“But I feel like it now. Do you mind if I tell you something’?”

“No,” Ellie said.

“-Because you’re a woman, I suppose. Lance is a real easy crier-but there’s not much else to Lance. An’ Toddy … well, I’d never hurt Toddy by tellin’ him some things I feel.”

“You can tell me anything you want,” Ellie said. She felt tired, the backs of her knees ached, but in other ways she was quite at ease, rested. She sat back, her head turned as the dying woman’s head was turned, so they could look into each other’s eyes.

“Well, like that song-Fin sorry to be going’, but I’m pleased with where I been. -It’s not nothin’ for a little sissy nigger boy from Birmin’ham, didn’t know beans when the bag was open, only thing different he was suckin’ dicks when his friends were suckin’ pussy, turn out to be a wife to a fine, fine brave man, went to Harvard College.

It’s not nothin’ get all that done when you’re twenty-six years old,

‘cause that’s all I am. An’ I had two, three other very important men in love with me. -An’ I’m not jus’ talkin’ about sex, either.”

“It n er is just about sex, is it?”

The s ull smiled and showed wonderful teeth. “Now that,” Audrey Birnbaum said, “-that’s something’ sounds like Sally.”

“You have no idea at all who might have killed her?”

“Not one. An’ not for lack of tryin’. -There was a Greek man liked to beat up ladies, a few years ago. He beat up Sally, just once. -She didn’t mind a paid-for spankin’ sometimes. You know what she said to me? She said, ‘It’s a pleasure, once a year or so, to lie across some silly man’s lap an’ get what we all have comin’, with kisses to follow.”

-isn’t that nice?”

“What was his name?” Ellie thought of Clara, her strong, smarting little hand, her busy fingers.

“Oh, lieff-Mike something’-orother. He didn’t bother her any after that. Sally told him, ‘Man, you rented-you didn’t buy.” She told him she was going’ talk to some people, he didn’t stay away. So he stayed away.”

“Who was she going to talk to?”

“Oh, you know-some guys. She wasn’t out there on a limb, sugar. Not back then. She had people watchin’ out for her-more ways than one.

“Not a pimp, though.”

“Not the way you mean it,” Audrey said, and lay looking at Ellie, silent. After a while, she said, “You’re a pretty woman. Isn’t it weird to have people always after your ass? Tryin’ an’ put their hands on you? -That was the worst thing I found out about being’ a woman.

Everybody wants to be touchin’ you all the time, and whether they do or they don’t, that’s always in the air. -Isn’t that so?”

“As long as women look good, I suppose that’s true,” Ellie said.

“Well, ain’t nobody wants to touch my ass now, you better believe that,”

Audrey said. “-Th’ at’s something’ I don’t have to worry about, a-tall.”

“Who were those people watching out for her?”

“Same folks watchin’ ‘out for everybody,” Audrey said, smiled, and closed her eyes. After a few moments, with her eyes still closed, she said, “Listen, you find some money at Sally’s?”

“Yes. We found a lot-in the closet.”

“She was scared of taxes. ‘Bout the only thing that lady was scared of…. But you didn’t find nothin’ in no closet. Ain’t nobody hide shit in a closet. -That’s the first place any fool’s going’ to look.”

“That’s where we found it.”

“How much money you find in that closet?” Her eyes still closed.

“We found fourteen thousand dollars,” Ellie said.

Audrey Birnbaum’s large, brown, skeleton’s hands stirred on the cotton blanket. “I know it’s time for My shot,” she said, “-an’ I’m not even hurting’ too bad. But it’s stirrin’. It’s like I had a little dog or something’ in my insides, an’ he wakes up hungry and starts eatin’ on me in there-in my hips? You see how a dog breaks a bone … ?”

“Yes . . .” Ellie said.

“Breakin’ live bones … eatin’ on me like he hates me. Just hates me in there. She slowly turned her face from Ellie.

Audrey Birnbaum was quiet for several minutes after that, though her hands were restless.

“That Sally,” she said, finally. `-She put that in the closet, make some jackass think he got it all.”

“There was more money in the apartment?”

“You go look in her big coffee maker … She didn’t drink any coffee.

Sally just drank tea. Anybody wanted coffee, she had a little Melitta.

-Just you remember that’s for Sonny. Don’t you go stealin’ that child’s money. - - .”

“We looked in the coffee maker, Audrey. We looked in there.”

You motherfuckers,” Audrey Birnbaum said, her eyes stiii closed, her hands, raised slightly off the cotton blanket, playing some instrument of air. “-You stole Sonny’s money.”

Ellie got up and put her hand on Audrey’s arm. She felt two cool narrow bones wrapped in skin. “-Audrey.