Night Secrets (31 page)

Farouk looked up. “What? See what?”

“This line here,” the fortune-teller said. She touched it lightly, a thin crease near the top of his hand. “That is the dawning of renewal.”

“Is it?” Farouk asked wonderingly.

“It is the sign of survival and recovery.”

“Yes? Recovery?”

“Those who have it,” the fortune-teller assured him, “they will be well in the future.”

Farouk looked at her doubtfully.

“You must believe me,” the woman said. “About such things, I am never wrong.”

Farouk concentrated on the small thin crease. “Recovery?” he whispered. “Survival?”

“The two together,” the woman said happily. “You are very fortunate, sir.”

A small, hesitant smile fluttered onto Farouk's lips. “That is good, then?”

“Oh, very good,” the woman said.

Relief swept into Farouk's face. He took in a deep breath. “Thank you, madam,” he said. He stood up and opened his wallet. “Your fee. I do not know what it is. But please, madam, be generous.”

The fortune-teller smiled. “It is the same for all,” she said sweetly.

“I am happy to pay it,” Farouk said.

“One hundred dollars,” the woman said.

Farouk did not flinch at the amount. Instantly, he plucked a one-hundred-dollar bill from the wallet and handed it to the woman. “I hope this will be of assistance to yourself and the Puri Dai,” he said.

The woman froze, her hand drew back from the bill. “The Puri Dai is in prison,” she said coldly.

Farouk shook his head. “Ah, perhaps I can bring you good tidings, madam, as you have brought them to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

Farouk pressed the bill toward her. “The Puri Dai is free.”

“Free?” the fortune-teller said.

“She has escaped,” Farouk said flatly. He inched the bill closer to the fortune-teller, and she finally snapped it from his fingers.

“Escaped?” she said.

“She may return here,” Farouk said. “To her family, yes?”

The fortune-teller smiled thinly. “Of course, that is possible.”

“Then perhaps you will be so kind as to give her my regards,” Farouk said.

The fortune-teller nodded curtly. “Of course.”

Farouk nodded toward the bill, which remained clutched in the woman's hand. “And perhaps a sweet, as well. I am sure the Puri Dai has not been treated well.”

Again, the fortune-teller smiled. “Yes, a sweet. Of course.” She took Farouk's arm and nudged him quickly toward the door. “Good night, then,” she said.

“Good night,” Farouk said as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. He motioned Frank behind him, then glanced back at the woman. “I wish you well, madam, in all things.”

“Thank you.”

Farouk leveled his eyes upon her. “And may it always be you who shuffles the cards,” he said.

The woman looked at him icily, but said nothing. For a moment her eyes seemed to turn into two brightly shining orbs, then the darkness returned to them and the mask reappeared.

“And you, too, sir,” she said gently. Then she closed the door.

“What was that all about?” Frank asked as the two of them made their way up the avenue toward Frank's office.

“If it works,” Farouk said, “you will soon know.”

“Soon?”

“Yes,” Farouk said. He continued on, moving silently up the avenue until he reached the corner of Forty-ninth Street. Then he turned to the right. A pinkish dawn light had begun to break. He stared at it a moment, then turned to Frank. “The day case is beginning,” he said. Then he walked hurriedly away.

T
he light was considerably brighter a few hours later when Frank pulled himself up from the sofa, walked back into the small bathroom and took a quick shower. Outside, he could see the early-morning pedestrian traffic as it moved east and west along Forty-ninth Street. The old woman was crumpled up near the bottom of the stairs, her body curled up motionlessly against the brick wall. A soda can lay on its side near her shoulders. Along the curve of her back, there was a scattering of crumbs and gnawed chicken bones, the remains from a red Popeye's Famous Fried Chicken box that rested near her feet, its open top slapping back and forth in the breeze from off the river.

As he watched her, he thought of the Puri Dai, trying to imagine where she might have gone, where she could possibly be sleeping. It was possible that she'd left the city entirely by now, that she was already chasing the nomadic Gypsy band that no doubt had her daughter. If she were still in the city, then it was only because they were still in it, too.

He glanced up slightly and let the hard morning light settle on his eyes. They were burning again, but there was nothing he could do about it but draw them away from the light, back down toward the shadowy bottom steps where the old woman remained.

He stared at her for a few seconds, then thought of the day case, and quickly returned to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. His clothes hung in the closet near the window, and one by one he pulled his shirt and trousers from the metal hangers and put them on. Before leaving, he took a quick glance at himself, saw his image in the dusty window, superimposed over the old woman's body, and straightened the loosely fitted knot of his tie.

Once outside, he eased himself up the stairs, carefully stepping over her. Halfway up the stairs, he looked back and noticed that she did not move as she usually did, and as he watched her briefly, he noticed that the single finger he could see jutting out from beneath the long sleeve of her coat was utterly still and very white.

He walked back down the stairs and touched her shoulder gently.

There was no response.

He shook her softly. “Ma'am?” he said.

There was still no answer.

He bent somewhat closer to her. “Ma'am?” he repeated, this time a bit more loudly.

He knelt down, pressing his knees against the edge of the bottom step and shook her more forcefully. The body rocked softly, but the old woman did not stir.

Frank drew his lips down close to the pile of smelly clothing. “Mother?” he called softly. “Mother, arc you awake?”

No answer.

He could feel a trembling in his hands as he turned her body toward him very slowly, his eyes searching for her face amid the smelly mound of clothes mat engulfed her. When he found it, the eyes were staring lifelessly into the morning light and a line of red hung with an odd, affecting beauty, like a child's Christmas ribbon, from the unmoving, silent comer of her mouth.

It was nearly eleven o'clock by the time they finally took her, and Frank was still standing in the small cement square that led from the stairs to his office, his eyes fixed on her body as the two men heaved it onto the stretcher, then laboriously hauled it up the stairs to the waiting EMS ambulance.

“So you didn't know her, is that right?”

Frank pulled his eyes from the stretcher and let them settle back on Tannenbaum again. He shook his head. “No, I didn't know her,” he said.

“The autopsy'll tell us if anything happened to her,” Tannenbaum said, “but you don't have any reason to be suspicious, do you, Frank?”

“No.”

“You didn't hear anything, see anything?”

“No, nothing.”

“Was she sleeping here when you got home last night?”

Frank nodded.

“And when was that, do you remember?”

“Early morning.”

Tannenbaum smiled. “Like always, right?”

“Like always,” Frank said.

Tannenbaum closed his notebook, then shrugged. “Well, we get a lot of this kind of thing these days,” he said, “but mostly in the winter. Freezing, that's usually what does it.” He glanced up toward the EMS ambulance. A bright mid-morning sun was shining silver on its chrome bumpers. “You expect them to make it through the spring.”

Frank nodded slowly.

“But sometimes, they don't,” Tannenbaum added casually. He looked up toward the ambulance. They were shoving the old woman's body into the back of it. “My guess is, it was her heart. Sometimes they just pop, like a balloon that's been stretched too far.” He shook his head as he looked back at Frank. “She looks like she'd been stretched pretty far, doesn't she?”

Frank said nothing.

Tannenbaum looked at him pointedly. “I heard you were the one who found out about that Gypsy, the one who escaped last night.”

Frank nodded.

“Funny, you being there and all,” Tannenbaum said. “As a matter of fact, why were you there?”

“I had a few things to tell her.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Things about the murder.”

Tannenbaum's voice took on a tone of warning. “You wouldn't hold anything back on your old friend Tannenbaum, would you, Frank?”

Frank shook his head.

Tannenbaum's eyes narrowed in concentration. “There's a felony warrant out on her now,” he said, “so any way you look at it, she's in deep, deep shit.”

“I know.”

“With only one way out, Frank,” Tannenbaum added. “To get her ass right back over to the Women's Center.” He shook his head. “There's no way she's not going to do a hell of a lot of time, but if she turns herself in, it might go a little easier on her, you know?”

Frank said nothing.

Tannenbaum continued to stare at him intently. “I'm going to ask you straight out, Frank, and I hope you have sense enough to tell me the truth, because if you don't, I'll pull your PI license so fast you won't even see it pop out of your pocket.”

Frank anticipated the question. “I don't know where she is, Leo,” he answered.

For a moment, Tannenbaum seemed to doubt him, then suddenly the doubt dissolved from his face, and his eyes drew back down to the littered area where the old woman's body had just been picked up. ‘‘Well, it's over for her now,” he said. He closed his notebook and headed up the stairs. When he got to the top of them, he looked back toward Frank. “You know, it's like they say, Frank,” he told him. “Life has a way of making you want revenge.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. And once in a while, he thought, someone ought to get it.

A few minutes later, the ambulance pulled away and Frank found himself entirely alone outside his office. For a while, he thought about walking back in, lying down on the sofa, and simply trying to sleep for at least a few minutes, enough to ease himself back into his steadily ebbing strength. But even as he thought about it, he dismissed the idea, and headed up the stairs instead. He knew that Farouk had been trailing Mrs. Phillips for several hours by then, all during the long morning while he'd waited for the old woman to be picked up, and the interrogations after that. For all that time, Farouk had been working on the day case, and now it was his turn to work on it too.

The offices of Pentatex Laboratories were on East Twenty-eighth Street, and as he walked toward them, shifting incessantly through the crowded midtown traffic, he went over the nightmare jumble of facts he'd collected on the day case, old theories lingering persistently, as if he were afraid to dismiss them from his mind.

He traced her movements again day by day, from the meeting at the Pierre Hotel, to Powers's house in the Village, then on to the next day, the Dakota, the long stroll across Central Park, the small black purse she'd left at the Alice in Wonderland statue.

He shook his head and continued walking, meticulously going over all the details of the case once again. He thought of Devine, then of Business Associates, the small, unlisted business that Mrs. Phillips had called immediately after returning from Connecticut. Why had she called Devine? Was he expecting a drop, or was she supposed to pick one up? He remembered that she'd looked strangely distressed after leaving the telephone booth on Madison Avenue.

He thought of Burroughs again, of the limousine that had picked Mrs. Phillips up, then taken her to Trump Tower. He wondered if Burroughs owned an apartment in the Tower, or if he and Mrs. Phillips simply met in the one owned by Devine.