Night Secrets (4 page)

The old woman shifted fitfully, then drifted back to stillness, and not long after that, Frank returned to his office and tried to do the same. But it was no use, and so after a time he sat up at his desk and began going over what he would need to do tomorrow.

He thought of the address Phillips had given him. He would begin there, with the wife. He would follow her trail wherever it led, while all the time hoping it led to that “something extra,” the sort of case that called to him, that involved a truly deep detection.

The sun had not yet risen when Frank made his way over the old woman and up the stairs. The air was faintly pink with the approaching light by then, but the retreating darkness clung to it insistently, as if fighting for a position it could no longer hold.

He headed west, toward the river, moving slowly down the nearly deserted street until he could see the massive pillars of the West Side Highway. Just beyond them, the Hudson swept out in a long black strip, a single tugboat chugging northward, its rugged hull framed against the twinkling shoreline of New Jersey. For an instant, Frank felt the impulse to raise his hand and wave to the pilot, then realized that from the distant vantage point of the wheelhouse, he could only appear as a ragged shadow, his waving hand a vague, barely perceivable movement against the city's wall of sprinkled light.

He dropped his hands into his jacket pockets, then turned back east. He thought of going to Toby's after-hours place, perhaps sitting down across the table from Farouk. But the thought didn't really appeal to him, and so he decided to walk the streets instead, until he was ready to begin work.

At the corner of Tenth Avenue, he glanced to the south. Several police cars were parked on either side of the avenue between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh streets. The orange stripes of an EMS ambulance were clearly visible in the revolving flash of their lights, and just to the right of it, Frank could see the blinking pale-blue neon of the fortuneteller's window.

He turned and headed down the avenue, moving more quickly as he crossed Forty-eighth Street, and faster still by the time he came to Forty-seventh. From there, he could see several men gathered in small clusters on the sidewalk. Several of them were uniformed patrolmen. Some were stringing yellow strips of
CRIME SCENE
tape. Only one detective was on the street, but even from nearly a block away, Frank could tell mat it was Leo Tannenbaum from Manhattan North.

Tannenbaum turned toward him as one of the uniformed patrolmen stopped him with a quick “Who are you, pal?”

“Let him through,” Tannenbaum said. “It's a local PI.”

The uniform stepped aside grudgingly and let Frank pass.

“Out for a little stroll, Frank?” Tannenbaum asked as he offered his hand.

Frank shook it absently, but didn't reply.

“Strange time of day for it,” Tannenbaum added.

“I don't sleep much,” Frank said. He glanced toward the window just as a flash from the Crime Scene Unit camera exploded behind the blue curtain.

Tannenbaum smiled. “Haven't seen much of you since Farouk iced that Riviera bastard.”

“I've been around.”

“Crawling the night,” Tannenbaum said matter-of-factly. “You must give a few people the creeps.”

Frank said nothing.

“Covallo got twenty-five years,” Tannenbaum told him. “I guess you heard that.”

“Yeah.”

“My guess is, she'll do about a dime, then she'll be released. Powerful friends, Frank. It's the way of the world.”

“Maybe,” Frank said indifferently. He nodded toward the line of police cars, the EMS ambulance. “What happened?”

“Nothing you'd be interested in,” Tannenbaum said. “We got the smoking gun.” He smiled. “Only it was a razor.”

Frank glanced back at him. “Man, woman, what?”

“Woman,” Tannenbaum said. “Early fifties, I'd say.”

Frank thought a moment. “Gray hair?” he asked finally. “Toenails painted purple?”

Tannenbaum's face tensed. “Right on the button. How'd you know?”

“I saw her this afternoon. Farouk had his fortune told.”

Tannenbaum laughed unbelievingly. “I didn't know Farouk was into that kind of stuff.”

“It was just for the experience, he said.”

Tannenbaum took out his notebook. “When was this?”

“Around four in the afternoon.”

“See anybody else?”

“Another woman.”

“What'd she look like?”

Frank thought a moment. “She was very … Very …”

“Beautiful?”

It wasn't the word he'd been looking for, but he let it go. “Yeah, I guess,” he said.

Tannenbaum nodded. “Well, it won't do anybody any good now,” he said. “She's the smoking gun. We got her cold. Everything but the blade in her hand. We're going to book her, then take her downtown for arraignment. My guess is, she'll break somewhere on the way.”

Frank's eyes shifted to the right slightly, peering just over Tannenbaum's shoulder, so that he saw her clearly when suddenly she came out of the door, very erect, with a single lumbering detective at her arm, his faded-green suit pressed against the radiant embroidery of her dress. At first she moved forward very deliberately, her face held high, her eyes staring straight ahead. Then she stopped, and Frank watched with amazement as her eyes shot over to him, then clung briefly like two dark hooks before they abruptly let go.

“That the woman you saw, Frank?” Tannenbaum asked immediately.

She moved forward again, and Frank's eyes followed her as she made her way to the car, the detective still walking closely at her side. At the door she paused a moment, as if gathering herself together, then bowed her head slowly and got in.

“That the same woman, Frank?” Tannenbaum repeated. “The one you saw?”

Frank continued to peer over Tannenbaum's shoulder, staring intently as the detective pulled himself in beside her, groaning softly as he did so. He could still see her face in vivid profile behind the glass, and for a moment he concentrated on her once again, taking in the proud line of her nose, the fullness of her lips, the way her hair fell in wild ringlets across her brow.

“Yes,” he whispered, “that's her.”

Tannenbaum leaned toward him quickly. “What?”

Frank turned his attention back to Tannenbaum. “The woman I saw.”

“You're sure?” Tannenbaum asked insistently. “This afternoon, you said?”

Frank nodded.

“Well, you know the next question as well as I do, Frank. Did anything look suspicious?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all, even just a mood?”

“I didn't notice anything.”

“Where was she?”

“Sitting in a chair.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did she say anything to you?”

“No.”

“And the old woman was there, too, right?”

“She was there.”

“Telling Farouk's fortune,” Tannenbaum added with a short dry laugh.

“Yes.”

“Did you see anybody else?”

“No.”

“Did you hear her say anything to the old lady?”

“No.”

“Did she say anything to you?”

“She was in another room.”

“How about Farouk? She say anything to him?”

Frank shook his head.

“So, as far as you know, she …” Tannenbaum began.

“What's her name?” Frank asked, interrupting him.

Tannenbaum smiled. “Well, that's the funny thing, Frank. We don't know yet.”

Frank glanced toward her again. “No name?”

“Oh, she's got a name all right. She just won't give it to us, that's all.”

“She won't talk?”

“She wouldn't even acknowledge that we'd read her the Miranda warnings,” Tannenbaum said. “My guess is, she's doing what she figures is a great imitation of a fruitcake. You know, working up an insanity defense.”

Frank nodded.

“But it's not going to do her any goddamn good,” Tannenbaum said confidently. “Because we got blood all over her blouse, and good solid fingerprints on the razor, and a guy who saw her with it in her hand.” He shook his head. “No doubt about it, she killed the old lady.”

“Who was she, the fortune-teller?” Frank asked.

“As far as we can figure out, her name was Maria Salome,” Tannenbaum answered. “And there was another old woman who lived here, too.” He pulled out his notebook and flipped to the appropriate page. “Her name was Maria, too. Maria Jacobe. We're talking to her now. She claims she was somewhere else when it happened.” He closed the notebook. “The three of them all lived here, running this fortune-telling scam.” He looked at Frank strangely. “Three women,” he said. “One's dead, one says she didn't see a thing, and one won't talk to us at all, not a goddamn word.”

Frank looked back toward the car as it pulled from the curb, then moved slowly away from him, the taillights burning through the dense gray air like two infuriated eyes.

The old woman was pulling herself to her feet as Frank came down the stairs. She stepped quickly out of his way, grunting softly as he continued past her and headed down the dark narrow corridor that led to his office.

He stopped at the door, pulled out his keys, glancing idly at the rusty metal letter box that hung precariously from the brick wall. Someone had dropped something into it. The slight screech of the small rusty hinges sounded softly as he opened it, reminding him of what had woken him earlier in the night.

He took out the envelope, brought it to his desk and turned on the light. The paper inside was blank, but as he opened it, a small red bead dropped softly onto his desk. He recognized it immediately, saw the woman again through the curtain mat had separated them.

He placed the paper on his desk, picked up the bead and held it gently beneath the light of his desk lamp. It was very delicate, and the hard white light from the lamp seemed almost to melt it into a single moist drop of blood, one which his flesh immediately absorbed.

T
annenbaum had said that she'd be booked, then arraigned, and as the nearly empty subway rattled toward Foley Square, Frank glanced at his watch and calculated that he might already have missed the arraignment, that she might be locked up in one of the tiny cells of the Women's House of Detention by now, standing in the corner, as he saw her in his mind, her face staring silently from behind the bars. Mrs. Phillips wouldn't be up and about yet anyway. He had time.

The halls of the criminal court building in lower Manhattan were already crowded despite the early-morning hour, and Frank found it necessary to elbow his way through scores of milling people as he moved from courtroom to courtroom until he reached Municipal Courtroom 7, where, according to the docket posted outside the door, an unnamed defendant was soon to be arraigned.

Inside the courtroom, a smudgy haze of cigarette smoke engulfed the long wooden benches where people sat silently or muttered quietly to one another. Some were lawyers waiting for their turns at the bench. Others were the relatives of those who'd been arrested during the night. They were the ones he'd always felt sorry for each time he'd seen them trudge wearily into the station house when he'd been a cop in Atlanta. No matter what the hour or the weather outside, they'd seemed always to be shivering with cold or wet with rain. He knew what had happened only a short time before. The phone had jangled, pulling them from the only peace they knew. Then a voice had broken over them, screeching or wailing, telling them that they were in trouble again, that they needed money. Frank knew that in the end they nearly always brought it, that it was often all they had left after the weekly bills, and mat even as they forked it over to the little shiny-headed bondsman, they knew that the voice was lying, had always lied, but that they would still have to spend their lives taking it for the truth.