Silent Mercy (37 page)
“New girls? Doing what? I mean we always bring on some locals—you know, as ushers or ticket takers. But I don’t have anything to do with any of them.”
“I wouldn’t think so, you being a pro and all.”
I might as well have been on another planet. Mike seemed totally taken with his Dallas cheerleader. Maybe it was the bareback thing.
“There must be lots of guys hanging out at the stage door for you, Kristin.”
“Yeah, if you’re into twelve-year-olds,” she said with a laugh. “Not so much as you’d think.”
“And girls, looking to hook up with guys?”
“Occasionally.”
“Anyone been coming around named Naomi since you’ve been at the Garden?”
“Nope.”
“Ursula? Or Chat—short for Chastity?”
“I’d remember that one for sure,” she said. “Are all these girls missing? That’s so weird. But then, my mother warned me that New York was like that.”
“Not usually. Not with me on the job.”
“People always joke about running away to join the circus, but that’s not how this works, Mike. There’s all kinds of training before anyone gets hired. We don’t pick up any strays along the way. We’re a family, is what we are.”
“Tell me about this family, Kris. We got a long ride ahead of us tonight.”
“You both coming to Providence?” she asked, shooting me a sidelong glance.
“Yeah. What should we know?”
Kristin Sweeney was practically gushing now. “So, think of this as an apartment building. Like, thirty-five stories tall, except it’s horizontal. The only thing we don’t have is a zip code.”
And, I guessed, a police department.
“Doesn’t look like you have any privacy,” I said. “Eight of you to a suite? No bathroom?”
“There are just a few cars like this. Works fine if you’re single, like I am.”
“Who gets to ride the train?” Mike asked.
“The artists, of course. Cooks and stagehands and prop guys. Mechanics and electricians. Elephants, horses, wild animals. The costume lady and all our glitz. Cast and crew, Detective. We’re all here.”
“Some of the rooms are larger?”
“Yeah. Some of the couples have their own little apartments. They bring their kids along, or their in-laws. Flat-screen TVs and toilets and all that. Kitchenettes, which is something I miss a lot,’cause I enjoy cooking. The rest of us eat in the Pie Car. That’s what it’s called, but it’s really a diner. Mr. Delahawk even has an electric fireplace in his suite.”
“You like this kind of life?” Mike asked.
“I like it fine, for now. Better than what was waiting for me home in Spur after my cheerleading days were over. Better than circus life used to be, moving from hotel to hotel, always packing and unpacking. I’ve made friends here. I said it’s like family, right? Well, for me it’s better than hanging with most of my family.”
“How about the guys, Kris? You know all of them?”
“I sure do. It’s not like I date any of them, if that’s where you’re going. Most of us in the troupe are pretty young. Hardly anybody over thirty-five. We work together, we live together. Spend a lot of time with each other. Some of them have grown up in this business, Mike. They’ll have kids who’ll be Ringling babies.”
Kristin Sweeney stopped talking and pointed at me. “She’s looking at me like it’s all strange, what we do. It’s not. It’s really not.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” I said. “I apologize. Your life sounds really interesting to someone like me who sits at a desk a lot of the time.”
I was actually thinking how lucky we were to get such a cooperative talker in the first room at which we stopped. And trying to remember the last time I’d spent a full day at my desk.
“You ride this train from town to town?” Mike asked.
“All over the country.”
“Can you—do you—ever get off?” Mike asked. “Have you been into Manhattan on your own?”
“Oh, sure. They run a shuttle bus for us, almost wherever we go, so we can get around. And there’s a flatbed freight train that travels behind us. It’s got some motorcycles and cars on it. Lots of guys use those for their socializing and such.”
Everything suddenly went dark and I clutched the edge of the desk. Two seconds later, the lights went back on and I realized we had gone underground, into the vast tunnel system that fed an endless flow of trains below the Hudson River, across to Manhattan to be routed around Penn Station for the trip northeast. For a little while, we might arguably have a claim to proper jurisdiction.
“So, let me ask you about a guy I’m looking to talk to, Kris,” Mike said.
“Okay.”
“He’s a performer. Maybe worked with the troupe a few months back. Maybe still does.”
She sat up straighter and listened attentively.
“He’s a tall guy, very thin. Has dark hair, keeps it long—sometimes tied back like a ponytail. Don’t know what kind of artist he is, but he moves real smooth and graceful.”
Kristin Sweeney wasn’t smiling at Mike any longer. She had her right arm raised to the wall next to her before he finished his description, and was pounding on it with her fist as he spoke.
“He’s got bad skin, some kind of blisters—”
“I don’t know a guy like that, but why do you want to talk to him anyway?” She was quick to answer, and there was almost a snarl in her voice. “About those girls? About?”
The door opened and a hulking six-foot-six-inch man put a foot forward in the room. He had the torso of a comic-book strongman.
“Nico,” Kris said. “Thanks for coming in. These guys are cops.”
If someone had posted a Doric column in the doorway, it would have been easier to work my way around it and out of the room.
“Nico Radka. Pleased to meet you.”
So he was the Czech performer in the next room, whose surname had been on the whiteboard. To the rescue, as Kristin had hoped.
“Mike Chapman. Alex—”
“Nico, they’re all into asking questions about some missing girls and stuff. That’s why I was answering them at first. Now they want to know if we got a guy that looks such and such. Tall, ponytail, red face or something. Maybe you should find Mr. Delahawk. I don’t know anyone like that.” She was talking to Mike but staring at Nico Radka, as tense as if Mike had struck a nerve underneath a bad tooth.
“Why don’t you step out with me, Mr. Mike?” Nico asked the question politely, almost as though he was giving us a choice.
“We met Mr. Delahawk on the way in. He has no problem with helping us,” Mike said, foolishly assuming that we wouldn’t encounter the manager in our passage through the cars.
“Very well then. We shall get him.” The young man’s accent was thick. So were his lateral deltoids.
“What’s your gig, Nico?”
“Tumbling. Acrobatic tumbling.” Nico turned sideways to wriggle his way down the narrow corridor of the train as it emerged from beneath the river and hurtled north on the tracks that ran parallel to the Jersey Palisades. “Come, please. Lock your door, Kristin. Is best you do.”
We followed Nico down the length of the hallway, across a platform with protective railing on both sides that linked to the next car.
This one seemed to be divided into two suites, obviously larger than the cubicles in which Kristin and Nico lived.
“So you know this guy I was talking to Kristin about?” Mike asked.
“Which guy?” Nico’s head went from side to side as he walked toward the rear of the car but continued to turn back to Mike, whether to answer questions or make certain we were staying in line behind him.
“One of your buddies. Tall and lean, ponytail—”
“Why you want to know who we know? Somebody does something wrong?” His muscled arms braced against the window as the train rocked along the tracks.
We hadn’t been so lucky with our first contact after all. Kristin and Nico had joined forces to circle the wagons around their extended family the moment she figured our interest had shifted from finding missing women to fingering one of the men in their troupe.
“We’re looking for people, that’s all. We think one of your friends may have known them.”
The first whiteboard we passed bore the names RAMON AND RAMON under the hand-drawn images of two stars. I heard Mike ask Nico who they were.
“Illusionists, Mr. Mike. Best in the world.”
Good enough to occupy half a train car. The other label at the far end said THE FLYING ZUKOVS. Again, someone had added a sketch, this time of a stick figure hanging from a trapeze.
Nico opened the door to pass into the next wagon. On the platform, which was like a small open vestibule, a man sat in a folding beach chair, looking at the scenic vista as we raced along the Hudson River.
We entered another dormitory-style car, and I scanned the names of the eight occupants as we hurried past.
Another platform and there was the brass nameplate, a more permanent fixture than in the other cars: FONTAINE DELAHAWK.
Nico faced the door and rang the buzzer.
Mike saw a chance to get around him, grabbed my hand, and pulled me in the direction of the next twenty-odd cars in the long train as we heard the deep voice of Delahawk ask who was at the door.
I looked over my shoulder as I ran behind Mike. Nico appeared to be stunned as he waited for Delahawk to open up for him. We were already through the rear of the car—a solo apartment—and into the next one.
Here the names were also illustrated by an amateur artist. The four suites seemed to hold the all-important costume designer and three performers who worked with animals.
“Keep running, Coop,” Mike said as he led the charge forward. “Let’s get as deep into the company—as many cars back as we can—before Delahawk lumbers along. We just need to talk to somebody. Anybody who’ll point us in the right direction, or tell us we’re off base.”
I paused to catch my breath. “We can’t be too far wrong, Mike. Kristin only called for Nico, only knocked on the wall to summon him, when you described our suspect. She was eating out of your hand till that very moment.”
We were on the move again, working our way back through the train. Three cars later, Mike stopped to adjust to the darkness as we entered another subterranean tunnel. We were crossing under the narrow strip of water that would take us east and out of Manhattan, into the Bronx, for the trip to New England.
I was leaning against the window and skimming the eight names on the whiteboard that faced me. One of them was familiar, not just because it was more American than the foreign surnames. I repeated it to myself silently, then said it aloud. “Bellin.”
“What?”
“That name. Bellin.”
“Yeah?”
“Daniel Gersh,” I said. “You told me to call his mother this morning.”
“So?” Mike was ready to move ahead. He pushed off from the wall.
“That’s her name now. Bellin. His stepfather is Lanny Bellin.”
Mike made an abrupt about-face and stepped in front of me to open the door to the suite of cubicles.
“It’s the fourth name on the list,” I said to him.
He counted three doors and banged his knuckles once on the fourth one, twisting the handle at the same time. I was at his shoulder, peering in.
Reclining on the single bed, listening to his iPod and looking almost as surprised as I did, was Naomi’s brother, Daniel Gersh.
FORTY-TWO
“THE
elusive Daniel Gersh,” Mike said. “Aka Bellin.”
elusive Daniel Gersh,” Mike said. “Aka Bellin.”
Gersh backed himself up into the corner of the bed and removed the earphones. “What do you want?”
“I know you told us you were going to take acting classes in the fall, but somehow I didn’t figure you for clown school.”
“I’m not—”
“A real Pagliacci, huh? A homicidal clown. Great act to take on the road, Daniel.”
There was a crackling noise overhead and I could see a small speaker in the ceiling, next to a recessed light fixture.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” There was a cough as the person cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentleman, good evening. This is Fontaine. I need your attention for a moment.”
“You’re out of your mind, Detective. You got this all wrong,” Daniel said.
“It would appear that two officers of the New York Police Department have joined us for the next leg of our trip. This is no cause for alarm. None at all. I’d ask that you all stay in your rooms for the next hour or so. We will of course keep the Pie Car open later into the evening. Do not—I repeat—”
“Make it right for me,” Mike said. “Tell me what you’re doing here. Tell me about your friend and what cubicle he’s holed up in, Daniel.”
“Do not have any conversation with these officers,” Delahawk continued. “I suggest you keep your doors locked and do not have any conversation with them, nor answer any of their questions.”
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