Night Secrets (26 page)

Almost an hour later, the risk paid off, and Mrs. Phillips came through the revolving door. He was only a few feet from her, and as she lingered a moment on the sidewalk, he was able to get a long, concentrated look at her face. Her eyes were light blue and strangely moist. Her lipstick was bright red, and in contrast to her smooth, white skin, it made her mouth look like a wide gash. From a distance, she might have looked like a sleek East Side model, someone who knew how to wear clothes, how to stand with an elegant defiance amid the pedestrian traffic that swirled around her. But she was very near to him now, and all of that looked like nothing but a pose that was less grand than the woman who assumed it. He could feel a curious power in the way she stood very still and let her eyes stare out across the moving crowds as if they were troops under her command. She seemed as if she were the focus of her own concentration, as if some kind of spotlight beamed down upon her constantly, singling her out from the mass, and as Frank continued to look at her, it was easy for him to imagine her raising money for her charities, ordering wine from the respectful sommelier, or conducting complex deals in a room full of cigar-chomping men who never for one moment doubted her right to stand among them.

Suddenly, in a quick, darting movement, she turned to face him, her eyes concentrating on him with an unmistakable intensity, bearing in like the twin barrels of a cold blue shotgun. “The time,” was all she said.

Frank quickly glanced at his watch. “It's ten-fifteen,” he said.

She nodded quickly. “Thank you.” Then she turned and headed down the avenue.

Frank stepped forward, then stopped, realizing mat he could not follow her now, that she had held him in view too long not to recognize his face. So he simply craned his neck above the swirling crowd and watched her disappear into its sea of gently bobbing heads.

F
arouk looked at him, astonished.

“The thing is, this time I'm pretty sure she made me,” Frank told him. “Yesterday, across from her place, I'm not sure she noticed me. But today, she looked right at me.”

Farouk thought about it. “Perhaps she had already made you, Frank.”

“I've thought of that, too,” Frank said. “It's possible. But I don't know when or how.”

Farouk fell silent, his eyes drifting toward the ceiling. “And she said only, ‘The time,' yes?” he asked when they dropped toward Frank again.

“That's right.”

Farouk smiled at the mystery of it. “A woman of codes.”

“Codes?”

“Codes. Passwords.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is possible, is it not, that she thought you were someone else.”

“Someone else?”

“A contact of some kind. As they say, a secret agent.”

“A contact,” Frank repeated, almost to himself. “But for what?”

Farouk lifted his hands, palms up. “I do not know.”

Frank took a moment to consider the possibilities. “She could be some kind of middleman.”

Farouk nodded.

“A go-between, or something.”

“It is a world of go-betweens,” Farouk said. “And Mrs. Phillips could be such a person.”

“Or just a packager, like Devine.”

“Always possible.”

“But of something secret, illegal.”

Farouk smiled faintly, but with an obvious delight. “The day case is taking on something of the night, yes?”

“Enough for me to need your help on it,” Frank admitted.

“I am pleased to be of assistance,” Farouk said matter-of-factly. “What is it that you wish?”

Frank handed him the license number he'd recorded from the white limousine. “For starters.”

Farouk glanced at the paper, then handed it back.

“And some legwork, too,” Frank told him.

“Because you cannot follow her now,” Farouk said.

Frank nodded. “All I can do is go through this,” he said as he held up the copy of Mrs. Phillips's address book, which her husband had given him.

“But the woman's address,” Farouk said. “What is it?”

Frank gave it to him.

“When do you usually arrive?” Farouk asked.

“She's never left before eight-thirty.”

“From what place do you observe?”

“There's a little brick wall almost directly across from her house. I usually stand there.”

“Then I will avoid it.”

Frank nodded. “Yeah, I think you should. I'd have changed positions again myself, if I were going there tomorrow.” He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out the camera. “If you see her with anybody, I'd like a picture.”

Farouk took the camera. “Very well.”

“That's all,” Frank said. “Just keep track of her and let me know where she goes, who she sees, everything.”

Farouk nodded quietly. “And what are you to do?”

“I'll do some work on Powers,” Frank said. “Try to find out what her connection to him is.”

Farouk did not seem entirely satisfied. “About the night,” he said. “About the Puri Dai.”

She strode into Frank's mind, tall and furious, inexpressibly in need, but utterly beyond him also, as if she lived on a distant planet which only once in a thousand years aligned itself with him. “She still doesn't want me to work the case,” he said quietly. “But I still believe she's innocent.”

“Then that is the thing that you must prove.”

“I'll try,” Frank said. “But it's really closing down. I only have one more place to go.”

Farouk looked at him very seriously. “Then go there right away,” he said.

The Food Palace was located on Forty-third Street. Its night manager was a large black woman whose hair stuck out in a thousand different directions, as if she'd just been hit with forty thousand volts.

“Private eye?” she asked incredulously as she stared at his identification. “For who?”

“A private client,” Frank said.

“This got something to do with the store?”

“One of your deliveries,” Frank said.

Her face filled with recognition. “Oh, you mean Pedro. How he seen that woman that killed her mother. The police already axed him a million questions about that.”

“I got a few more,” Frank said. “Is he here?”

“Maybe so,” the woman said. She lifted her head slightly and called the cashier, who stood at a register a few feet away. “Hey, Angela, you seen Pedro?”

“He's on delivery,” Angela called back, without ever taking her eyes off the cash register.

The manager looked back at Frank. “He should be back pretty soon. You can wait for him.”

“Thanks.”

“He's a little short guy,” the manager added. “Seventeen, something like that. Sort of wiry-looking, with bad skin.” She looked repulsed. “Oily hair, too,” she said with a short mocking laugh. “Gives me the creeps.”

Frank smiled. “Thanks a lot.”

“No problem,” the manager said. She stepped back into the small raised booth from which she could observe the entire store and pointed to the far right-hand corner. “He'll probably show up over there,” she said. “By the dairy section.”

Frank walked down the nearest aisle, then wheeled to the right and stood by an enormous cooler of milk and cheese. There were two double doors to the left of the cooler, and he kept his eyes more or less focused on them. Other customers passed him, pushing grocery carts before them. Sometimes they gave him a wide berth, as if sensing something dangerous in him, contained, but potentially explosive, a creature who lived by different rules.

Pedro came through the double doors about fifteen minutes later. He was wearing blue jeans, cut out at the knees, and a fishnet shirt to display the pectorals he'd clearly been working to develop.

Frank stepped over to him, blocking his movement down the aisle. “Are you Pedro Ortiz?” he asked.

Ortiz's body tightened, as if he were preparing to receive a blow.

To ease the young man's mind, Frank quickly pulled out his identification. “My name's Frank Clemons,” he said. “I'm a private investigator.”

Ortiz continued to look at him apprehensively, as if the line that divided a private investigator from a cop had never been made clear to him. “Hey, man, I ain't done nothing,” he whined. “Why you bustin' on me, man?”

“I'm not busting you,” Frank assured him. “I just have a few questions, that's all.”

Ortiz didn't look as though he was buying it. “Questions? What kinda questions you got, man? 'Cause I ain't done nothing.” He raised his hands and waved them back and forth. “No way, man. I'm clean.” He'd begun to sweat. “No way, man. I mean it. I'm clean.”

Frank had seen that kind of sweat before. He knew where it came from. “How much time have you done, Pedro?” he asked.

“I did two years, that's all,” Ortiz said. The whine was still in his voice, but had taken on a childlike, petulant edge. “It was a bummer, too, man. A rush job, tha's right.”

“Where'd you do it?”

“Allentown, man.”

“That's federal.”

“Fucking post office, man.”

“Two years?” Frank said. “For mail fraud, or something like that? You must have copped a plea.”

Ortiz said nothing. He hunched his shoulders resentfully.

“You must have sent Uncle a package, Pedro,” Frank said pointedly.

Ortiz's eyes shifted about nervously.

“There must be some people you'd rather not see,” Frank added. “But let me tell you something, I'm not working for them.”

Ortiz's eyes suddenly settled on Frank. “Who you working for, man?”

“Nobody you need to hear about,” Frank said. “But I have a few questions for you.”

Ortiz shifted from one foot to the next. “Not here, man. I got a job, you know. I mean, you got to see how it is, you understand what I'm saying?”

Frank said nothing.

“I mean, you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?” Ortiz asked. “You got a look to you, man. It ain't normal.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I'll meet you when my shift's over.”

“When's that?”

“I got second shift today.” Ortiz told him. “I'll be off at midnight.”

“Okay,” Frank said. “Smith's Bar over on Forty-seventh and Eighth.”

“Yeah, okay, man, tha's good.”

“Don't hang me up, Pedro,” Frank warned him. He gave him a psychotic stare. “I don't like that.”

“No, no way, man,” Pedro sputtered. “You'll see me, man. I'm stand-up, you know?”

Frank smiled thinly. “I'm sure you are,” he said.
On your mother's grave
, he thought.