Night Work (33 page)

“You're sure? No beef with anyone? No arguments about work?”

“No. He was a good worker. No one ever complained.”

“Did he owe anybody money?”

“No. We were doing good. We were saving. He was going to buy a pickup or a van so he could haul stuff himself and not pay.” She straightened. “Who did it? Why would anyone do that?”

“Do you know the people he was working for, Robert and Jane Hopkins?”

“Me? No. How would I know them?”

“Maybe you were in the city and you went over to say hello to Casey.”

“Uh-uh. Nah.”

“Did he talk about them at all?”

“No. Not much. I mean, he said they were fancy people with a lot of money. He said the guy had really nice clothes.”

“Did he say anything about her?”

“No. Not really. He said she was nice. She wasn't stuck up or anything.”

“That's it?”

“Yeah. That's it.” Flatly. Looking straight into his eyes the way people do when they want to convince you they're not lying. Orso saw it too, because he gave a tiny gesture with his head. Cassidy got up from the table in front of Theresa, and Orso moved in and began to talk to her quietly in Italian as Cassidy left the room.

He walked down the hall to the kitchen and drew a glass of water from the sink and stood looking out the back door while he drank it. The yard was half concrete and half grass, and flowerbeds ran along the wooden fences that separated it from the identical yards of the neighbors. The grass was sparse and weedy, but the flowerbeds were newly planted with flowers. He had never noticed so much spring planting in the city before. Now everywhere he looked someone was putting in flowers. Had it always been like that? His mother had planted flowers in the backyard of the brownstone on 66th where they had lived until her death, but he had paid no attention and he could not name the ones planted here, though they seemed familiar. Where had he seen some just like them recently? At Leah's? Yeah, maybe there. He opened the door and went down the steps into the yard and ducked under the laundry hanging on clotheslines and walked out to the small garage that backed the yard. The garage was Casey Allen's carpentry workshop. A workbench ran along one wall. Hand tools hung from a pegboard above it. Paint cans lined the shelf underneath. A drill press, band saw, router, and table saw stood along the opposite wall. Double doors gave out to an alley.

When Cassidy came back into the house, Orso was waiting for him in the front hall. Theresa Allen lay on her back on the sofa in the living room with a wet towel on her forehead.

“Her sister's coming over. Be here in ten minutes. She'll be okay. Wops are tough.”

“And?”

“I told her we'd let her know the minute there was anything.”

“All right. Good.” He gestured with his head toward the door. Orso nodded.

“
Theresa, addio.”
She did not answer and did not watch them go.

They walked to a bar Orso had noticed on Jamaica Avenue. It was a workingman's joint, quiet, dark, smelling of spilled beer and ancient tobacco smoke. At this time of the day the place was almost empty. Four men playing dominoes at a table near the back of the room slapped the tiles down with sharp cracks. A solitary drinker nursed a beer at the far end of the bar. The bartender slid a cloth back and forth across the polished wood while he watched them come. He was a sharp-faced, foxy-looking man with fading red hair.

“What'll it be, Officers?” He wore a slight grin as if savoring a private joke.

Orso studied him for a moment and then nodded in recognition. “O'Malley, right? You worked the Seventy-ninth in Bed-Stuy back in, what? Forty-eight.”

“Yeah.” He pointed a finger. “Orso, right?” His grin got wider. “Yeah, I never forget a guy I worked with. So you must be Cassidy. Threw that fuck Franklin out a window. Twice!” He laughed. “What a fuck that guy was. Running whores and working Vice at the same time. I mean, pick a side of the street and work it, but don't do both. Beating up those women too, wasn't he? What a shit. Too bad you weren't a couple of floors higher when you tossed him. What can I get you?”

“Beer for me,” Cassidy said.

“Yeah,” Orso said.

“Knicks okay?”

Both men nodded and O'Malley went to the cooler to draw a couple of bottles, brought their beers, and then went off to carry drinks to the dominoes players.

Orso and Cassidy banged bottles and then took the first long, cool pulls.

“What'd you get from her when you were speaking Italian?” Cassidy asked.

“I don't know. Nothing much. She said she loved Casey Allen more than anything in the world, but every once in a while, something really angry would come through. Nothing specific, but I bet that one can go off like a rocket. Sicilian. Man, some of them have tempers. She seemed pretty goddamn torn up.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Yes. At least until I saw the sofa. Did you notice?”

“I can't say that I did. What about it?”

“It's new.”

“No.”

“Not new, new. New to the house. There are deep dents in the rug where the old sofa used to be. The new one doesn't match them.”

“Wow. Sherlock fucking Holmes. No detail gets by you.”

“Elementary, my dear Cassidy.”

“Maybe they just moved it around.”

“No. It can't match them. The new one's legs are much farther apart.”

“The piss sofa.”

“Could be.” Orso looked pleased with himself.

“I'll give you one more. The garage out back is a workshop. Paint. Sawdust. One thing's missing. There's no chair. If you had a workshop you'd want a chair for when you got tired, a chair you didn't care about. Get paint on it. Sawdust. It wouldn't matter.”

“The chair he was sitting on in the park.”

“Could be.”

“She did it. She popped him.”

“Maybe. But how did she get him from a Hundred forty-fifth and Jamaica Avenue to Central Park and Seventy-second?”

The bartender brought them two more beers and a bowl of popcorn. “On the house. You guys on the job?”

“Yeah,” Orso said. “You been in here long?”

“Bought the joint the year after I put in my twenty. Six years ago.”

“Do you know Casey Allen lives over on a Hundred forty-fifth?”

“Sure. Good-looking Irish guy. Drinks Jameson, beer back, sometimes a Guinness stout. He comes in a lot, except lately I ain't seen him.”

“Do you know his wife, Theresa?” Cassidy asked. “Does she come in here too?”

“Oh, yeah.” He shook his head wearily. “Times I wish she didn't.”

“Why's that?”

“That woman's got a temper on her. Casey lived around here all his life. He's got friends. Some of them are women, you know, but friends. I mean, who knows what went on in the past, but now friends. They come by to say hello, it don't matter if they're with husbands, boyfriends, Theresa goes nuts. She went after one with a beer bottle. I finally had to tell her to stop coming in here.”

“What about him? Did he play around?”

“If he did, I never saw it. Man, he couldn't get enough of her. What do they call it? Besotted? The way he talked about her, it was like he couldn't believe how lucky he was. Loved her. Loved her. What's this all about?”

“Somebody shot him.”

“No shit? You think she did it?”

“It's beginning to have that smell.”

“Did she grow up around here?” Orso asked.

“Nah. Bushwick, Rego Park, somewhere over there where the Italians live.”

“Keep this under your hat, okay, Tim? We don't want to spook her.”

“Yeah. Sure. I can keep my mouth shut.”

After the gloom of the bar, the afternoon sun was like a slap in the face. “Do you think he'll talk about it?” Cassidy asked.

“I don't know. Probably not. He was a good cop.”

“Okay.”

They walked back to 145th Street where they had parked the car. The old woman was still tending her front yard a few doors down from the Allen house. She stopped what she was doing and watched them as they came down the street. Cassidy veered over to speak to her. She stood ramrod straight with her hand clenched around the top of her rake handle like a warrior with a spear. She was tall and lean, and her sharp, pointed face was topped by a cap of gray curls sprayed to the hardness of china. Her mouth was a smear of dark red lipstick. She wore trim blue cotton trousers and a white shirt open at the collar that revealed a gold crucifix on a thin gold chain.

Cassidy stopped at the metal gate. “Ma'am, my name's Michael Cassidy. I'm a detective with the New York Police Department. This is my partner, Detective Orso. We'd like to speak to you for a moment, if you don't mind.” He flipped his wallet to show her his ID.

“Kelly,” she said. “Moira Kelly. I saw you speaking to that Theresa Allen. What has she done?”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“God forbid that I should say something bad about another person”—she touched the crucifix for support—“but she is not a good woman.”

“How's that?”

“She is short-tempered, unfriendly, and she is unkind to her husband, Casey, who is a good man, always a friendly hello, or an offer to help carry something. Last month he came over and dug up a small tree that died in my backyard and refused to be paid. God forbid that I should judge”—another quick hand to the crucifix—“but she does not deserve him.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

“No. Not for two weeks. Two weeks ago Thursday.”

“You're sure?”

“Of course I'm sure.” A certainty that brooked no argument. “God forbid that I should gossip, but they had a big fight that night.”

“What about?”

“I don't know. I couldn't hear.” Her mouth tightened in disappointment.

“Is there anything else you'd like to tell us? Has she had any visitors?”

“I wasn't here for a few days. I went to see my sister in Armonk, but the day I left she had a sofa delivered. They took away one and brought in another. The only reason I noticed is they bought a sofa from the Parkers across the street when they moved to Florida and that was only last year. God forbid that I should tell others how to live their lives, but that seems extravagant to me.”

“What can you tell me about the delivery? Could you see a company name on the truck?”

“The truck was green, that green like an army truck. I remember that. It wasn't very big. Usually the furniture companies send those great big trucks and they block the street. I don't know why they do that. It had writing on the door, but I couldn't see what it said. I came out with my reading glasses on.” She shook her head in exasperation at that slip. “I was going to get my distance glasses, but…” She shrugged.

“You didn't want to miss anything,” Orso offered.

“Don't be silly. I do not pry into my neighbors' lives.” The phone began to ring in the house behind her. “If you'll excuse me, I have to answer that.”

Cassidy gave her one of his cards. “If you think of anything else, call me. Thank you.”

Orso rattled the car back toward Manhattan. “She did it. The broad clipped her husband. For what, getting a piece off the reservation? Shouldn't be a hanging offense.” It was clear what side of that conflict Orso was on.

“We're not going to nail her with what we've got. We need to find who helped her move the body. She didn't shoot him, stick him in her purse, and carry him over to Central Park.”

“A friend with a car.”

“That'd be some friend. And besides, how do you drive a car into the park and pull out the body and chair and no one notices? Even at five in the morning people are walking around.”

“If we could find the guys who delivered the sofa and took the other one away. We get ahold of the old one it's going to have piss stains and maybe some blood. That would nail her.”

“How many used furniture stores do you think there are in Brooklyn? A store like that is more likely to use a small truck for delivery.”

“Too many. We're going to be on the phone for the rest of the day.”

They were, and at the end of the day they had nothing.

 

21

Drago Peck was a doorman at an apartment building at 73rd and West End Avenue. Peck was the shortened version of a Balkan name that was unpronounceable to the immigration officer who signed him into the country. Drago was a thin, pale man of indeterminate age, opaque nationality, and elastic ethics who had washed up on the shores of America in one of the waves of refugees after World War II. He had never thought of himself as a lucky man, and most of his life had proved him right, but what luck he found landed him in an internment camp in the American Zone in Austria after the war where he had learned English and the useful lesson that Americans were susceptible to flattery and the well-tuned sob story. For a man with no traceable history it was easy to become a victim of Nazi oppression and easier still to exaggerate the dangers that awaited him if he was repatriated to Poland. When offered alternatives, he chose emigration to the United States, the land of milk and honey and easy marks.

Drago held the door for General Alfonso Garza y Mendoza and followed him out under the awning where General Garza y Mendoza bent over with a fat man's groan and put Mitzi down. Mitzi was a four-year-old white Pomeranian bitch a little bigger than the General's shoe and as fluffy as a dandelion. She skittered around the General's feet and demanded attention with a high-pitched yap. “
Basta, Mitzi. Basta ya.
She knows we are going to the park, and it makes her excited.”

“She's a lucky dog,” Drago said, who had a mimic's perfectly colloquial English but spoken with a heavy Balkan accent. “I don't know no one in the building loves his dog the way you love Mitzi.” Drago had a match out and lit it before the general had bitten the end from his cigar. Garza y Mendoza bent to the light and puffed his cigar till it drew. “Well, Mitzi, where shall we go?” The little dog cocked its head to the side at the sound of its name. “To Central Park, or to the river? Ah, no. Not Central Park, Mitzi. They are setting up for that
cabron
, Castro. Do you know this
maricón
Fidel Castro, Drago?”