Toured to Death (14 page)

H
ome for Amy was a tree-lined block of Barrow Street. The narrow, unassuming lane was all but ignored by the hordes of revelers that invaded the local bars and cafés after their own towns and boroughs had closed up for the night. About half the brownstones on the block were single-family homes, owned by the same middle-class clans for decades before the excess of demand turned them into multimillion-dollar properties. It was a stubborn slice of old Greenwich Village. Conservative Italian householders and aging socialists lived in harmony with the occasional gay or lesbian family. And all of them barely tolerated the few lawyers and brokers who had managed to buy their way into the enclave.

It was the last Monday in September, a bright, warm morning that prompted Fanny Abel to open up the rear French doors to the patio. She brushed the debris from the wrought-iron table and set up an alfresco breakfast, arranging the two place settings so that they faced the communal garden, one of the few left in New York.

Beyond the tiny patio that lay nestled up against the rear of each brownstone was this common area, the local pride and joy, a garden carved out of the block's interior and accessible only through the houses themselves. It was maintained by common fees and was the force that preserved the block as a true neighborhood.

A communal garden gave you the right—nay, the duty—to mind everyone else's business. And that, according to Amy's thinking, was the defining characteristic of a neighborhood. The garden was part of their backyard, and every new dog or window box or live-in boyfriend became the subject of endless discussion, a kind of informal disapproval process. Some of Amy's earliest memories were of her mother shaking rugs off a balcony as she carried on conversations with both adjoining balconies and simultaneously eavesdropped on a domestic squabble. When people complained about the isolation of the big city, Amy knew what they meant in theory. But not really.

Amy emerged through the French doors, testing the brisk air and the temperature of the day's first cup of coffee.

“We'll open the office a little late,” Fanny said as she motioned her daughter to an inviting array of bagels and butter and jam. “You never finished telling me about the tour. Do you think they had a good time?”

Amy nearly choked. “Mom, there was a murder.”

Fanny made a face. “Don't be condescending. We put a lot of effort into this. I'd like to know if it was a success. Is that too much to ask?”

Amy sat on a cushioned wrought-iron chair and gazed out at the stone fountain bubbling in the garden's epicenter. “As ghoulish as it sounds, I think they had a great time. We could fill a tour like this every month if we could guarantee a real murder.”

Fanny appeared to give the idea serious thought as she lit her second cigarette of the day—although if Amy asked, it would be her first. “And what about this Marcus Alvarez?” she asked with purposeful nonchalance. “Is he a nice boy?” During their few long distance conferences, Amy had mentioned Marcus.

“Very nice, yes. And in jail.”

“You shouldn't hold his lying against him. People lie.”

“Look, Mom. Anything in that department is on hold. Did I neglect to mention—”

“In jail. Yes, I know. There's always some excuse.”

Amy looked up. “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing.” Fanny pursed her lips and fell silent, but not for long. Never for long. “Rita Crenshaw across the garden has been asking about you again.”

“Mrs. Crenshaw.” Amy smiled. “How is she?”

“People like her don't change until they die.” Fanny inhaled, creating a new half inch of ash, then exhaled a ribbon of smoke. “She asked if you were dating. I would have mentioned Marcus just to shut her up, but I don't know much about him.”

“Good.”

“So I told her you were confused.”

Amy selected a sesame bagel from the tray. “Confused?” She had no idea where this was going. “About what?”

“Well, it's not normal for a young person to cut herself off for so long. I told her the trauma of Eddie's death might have turned you into a lesbian.”

“I see.” Amy was mentally prepared. This was par for the course. “How'd she take the news?”

“Pretty well. I did not take it well. I want grandchildren.”

“Lesbians can give you grandchildren.”

“You're not a lesbian, dear. But you have to admit, it's a better explanation than saying you're not interested anymore. It makes you sound like an old maid.”

Amy laid the odds at fifty-fifty that the Crenshaw conversation had never taken place, though you could never tell with Fanny. “Would you rather I be an old maid or be in love with a murderer? Not that I'm giving you a choice.”

“He's not a murderer, for heaven's sake. Murderer? Killer? Which title do you think they prefer as a rule?”

“I don't know. I'll ask him.”

“This will get straightened out in a few days. Does Marcus live in Manhattan?”

“I'm not so sure . . . about the few days. The evidence against him . . .”

Fanny dismissed it with a wave of the hand. “What evidence? From what you've said, all this goes back to that dinner party. That's the reason you came home, isn't it? Instead of staying in Italy? The real investigation is here.”

“I know that. I just don't know where to begin.”

“Don't be such a baby.” Fanny mulled over the possibilities as she warmed up her daughter's coffee from the carafe. “Otto and Marcus did research. You'll take a look at their notes.”

“No notes were found in Otto's apartment. That's what the cops said. The place was ransacked. If there was something there, Otto's killer removed it.”

“What about Marcus? Maybe he kept notes. You know, gratitude is a very strong emotion.”

“Are you this desperate to get me a boyfriend?”

“I'm trying to help an innocent man.”

“Maybe you should take a road trip to Sing Sing. Line me up a few dates.”

“Even if nothing happens romantically, you still want to help him. That's what you said.”

“Of course I want to help.”

“Then what's the problem? I've never understood people who just whine and worry. If you want to do something, do it!”

And, as if to illustrate her point, she grabbed the bagel out of her daughter's hand and boldly sliced it in half. Amy had often wondered where she had gotten her indecisive nature. Not from Fanny.

 

The superintendent of 640 Eighth Avenue unlocked the door to apartment 5C, flipped the light switch, and motioned for the prospective tenant to make herself at home. “The place is move-in ready,” he said in fast, fluent English tinged with a Spanish accent.

The woman stood on the threshold and peered inside. “Move-in ready?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It's a mess.”

“Well, the last guy here . . . His niece was supposed to clear out his stuff. If you need to move in right away, we can junk the stuff, you know. It's junky anyhow, huh?” And he laughed.

This lady made him nervous. She was short and well fed, with clipped, old-fashioned henna-red hair that had probably been stylish when she was a young
chica
maybe forty years ago. Dolled up in a tweed dress and short white gloves, she looked like she belonged in the suburbs, not in a one-bedroom roach trap a few blocks off Times Square. He had tried to talk her out of even looking at the apartment, but what the hell. It was a changing neighborhood, even if this particular slum hadn't seen a fresh coat of paint in twenty years.

“You know these people. They say they gonna come and move stuff out, even give you a time. Waste your time is all. I wanna get tough with 'em, but . . . you know how it is. You gotta be sympathetic.”

“The man who lived here died?” the woman asked as she glanced around the dingy living room. “He died here?”

“No, no.” The super laughed, his eyes perusing the floor for any trace of the bloodstain. “In the hospital, you know. Heart attack.”

She took a few steps into the dust-covered clutter. “Do you mind if I spend a few minutes looking around? It's so hard to visualize. I won't touch a thing.” She shuddered, as if to say that touching was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Visualize,” he said, already halfway back into the hall. “You visualize. Knock yourself out. I be downstairs. You come ring my bell. Ring hard on account of the TV. Okay?”

Fanny waited until she heard his footsteps negotiating the second set of stairs and the landing below that. Only then did she ease the door shut, straighten her gloves, and set about her mission.

Otto's living room was a shambles, although it was hard to say how much of that was from his slovenly habits and how much was from the murder, or from the searches. There had been at least two, she theorized. One by the killer—what had he been looking for?—and one by that nice Sergeant Rawlings and his men.

Fanny knew her chances were minimal. But she had always trusted in her own superior luck. Stan had been regularly infuriated by her insistence on looking under the hood herself or grabbing the pickle jar from him and trying the lid. “What makes you think you can do better?” he would ask. But then with maddening frequency, at her magic touch the car would start or the jar would nudge open. Although . . . although in this case . . . She tiptoed around the squalid room and honestly couldn't see much reason for optimism.

A plywood bookcase lay sideways on the beige shag area rug. The hundreds of books that had once rested on its shelves were now in scattered heaps on the floor, just neat enough to show they'd been inspected.

Undaunted, Fanny spread her handkerchief on the floor and sat down by the first pile. These were assorted reference works:
The Handbook of Poison; Crime Scene Investigation; Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing. Secret writing?
She prayed that Otto hadn't disguised his notes in some sort of code. Even her luck wouldn't help out there.

The books in pile two, although of varying thickness, were all about the height and width of college yearbooks and were identically bound in red leather. Custom-bound, she saw at a glance, like the prized original scripts that her brother-in-law, the producer, preserved along the walls of his Broadway office.

Fanny examined the top volume.
Mohonk Mystery Weekend, 1992
was emblazoned in gold leaf along the spine. Flipping through the pages, she saw that, true to its spine, the book held a printed copy of the game Otto had constructed for that long-ago event, the dialogue and plot and instructions, even research notes, all mapped out and ready to use. Dozens of other parties, weekends, and assorted contests were similarly preserved in red leather, the shorter ones often squeezed two to a volume.

One by one, Fanny leafed through the books, restacking them into a new pile. She'd never been one for much introspection, unlike her husband or daughter. But this exercise was turning her just a bit melancholy. Here, within the span of her arms, was the whole of a man's life. His obsession and pride. The sum total of it, here on this ugly beige shag. In all probability, no other record of his work existed, except perhaps in someone's dusty scrapbook or dustier memory. Fanny tried to think of other things.

There was no
Monte Carlo to Rome Mystery Road Rally,
she noted, hardly surprised. If such a book had ever existed, it was now long gone, the spoils of murder.

She set aside the very last one, laying it unevenly on top of the others. The book teetered. Then it lost its balance and toppled, sending the red leather tower into an avalanche. Mortified by her sacrilege, Fanny scrambled to retrieve the splayed volumes and saw that one of them had suffered a tear on the rear flyleaf.

“Sorry, Otto,” she whispered.

That was when she noticed. The words were printed small and modest at the bottom of the torn page. She checked several other volumes and found them identical. The rear flyleaves all carried the same declaration. “Stage Duplicating and Binding, 426 West 44th Street, NYC.”

It was hardly a revelation. Otto wasn't a bookbinder. He would naturally go to a service like this to preserve his treasures. But the label's implication was enough to make Fanny scratch the fringe of her pageboy and smile. Her luck just might be infallible, after all. The motor was starting to turn over; the jar lid starting to budge.

A
my took a break from cleaning the squid to check on the cake in the oven. She didn't cook much. It was easy to survive without it, thanks to telephones and take-out menus. But after work today she'd gone on a little errand, which had left her in a good mood and in the vicinity of the Morton Williams on Bleecker Street. A display of fresh squid on ice had reminded her of the one dish she made that Fanny actually liked. It might be nice, she'd thought, to repay her for last night's welcome-home dinner.

Hers was a new kitchen, installed a year ago, when she'd moved back in and they'd divided the brownstone into separate living quarters. Fanny kept the lower two floors, while Amy claimed the upper two, turning a small bedroom into a kitchen, as well as throwing up a few well-placed walls and doors.

Before that, she'd lived in a one-bedroom co-op in the heart of the Village, a few blocks away. She and Eddie had found it together, scrimped to make the down payment, and compromised over furnishings and decor. Everything there held a memory. After his death she'd refused to use the bed and had slept on a pullout sofa in the living room. It was Fanny who finally called the real estate agent and the kitchen renovation people and forced the issue.

There was a certain comfort to returning home, she had to admit. And the accommodations couldn't be beat. A roomy one-bedroom with two baths, dining room, sunroom, and a terrace overlooking the garden.

“No smoking in my kitchen!”

Even over the smell of cake and raw mollusks, she could tell that Fanny had invaded her living room and was heading her way. For the first few months, Amy had tried training her to call ahead, or at least to knock. She'd even resorted to locking her door, which had resulted in alternating bouts of pouting and suspicion. So she had learned to remain dressed at all times and to accept the intrusions philosophically.

“You left work early,” she observed.

“You, too.” Fanny appeared in the doorway, stubbing out a cigarette in an ashtray that she'd appropriated from the Showboat Hotel in Atlantic City. “I called the shop at four thirty, but you'd already closed.”

“I was running an errand.” Amy could barely repress a grin.

“Me, too. Good lord, you're cooking. Squid, I hope.”

“No. Calamari. If you have the evening free, milady, please do me the honor of joining me.”

“Hmm. You're feeling no pain.”

“I think I know where the master script is. Otto's script with all his notes from the Carvel case.”

“Really?” Fanny sounded impressed, though a little subdued. “How did you track it down?”

“Well, I spent the morning trying to get in touch with Marcus, but between the Italian bureaucracy and the Italian phone system. . . So I changed tactics.” Amy had rehearsed all this, a concise explanation of how she'd been so brilliant. “In my records I have Marcus's address and home phone. I called the number, to see if maybe he has a roommate, but it went to voice mail. So I just walked over there. It's only eight blocks, over by Morton Williams.”

“Did you pick up any of those South American snow peas I like?”

“Mom, I'm telling a story. Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Good. Steam them with a little lime juice.”

“Are you listening?”

“Yes. Marcus's apartment. I assume he has a roommate and the roommate was at home. Otherwise, this story would be pointless. Male or female?”

“Male. He was there. And before you ask, his name's Terry and he is not Marcus's boyfriend.” Amy was trying hard to maintain her enthusiasm. “If I may continue . . .”

“Sorry.”

“Marcus had mentioned my name, so Terry knew.”

Fanny seemed impressed. “So . . . Marcus mentioned you.”

“Mother, stop it. You can clean the squid.”

Fanny put her ashtray on the kitchen table, reached for an apron, and didn't say another word.

As they stood side by side at the double sink, Amy outlined her conversation with Terry. Marcus had told Terry plenty of anecdotes about the eccentric game maker. “For every one of his mysteries, Otto put together a master script, complete with all the research material. In our game there was a lot of research, all the documents from the Carvel case, the police reports, interviews.”

Fanny took another handful of squid from the plastic bag, threw them into the colander, and rinsed them. “All this is in the master script?”

“All in one neat package. Otto had each script professionally bound and on display in his apartment.”

“The Road Rally script is probably gone,” Fanny said. “I mean, either the killer or the police—”

“I know. But Otto was killed so soon after finishing the game.” Amy paused dramatically. “What if the script is still at the printer's?”

“Oh, my.” Fanny stopped cutting and peeling. “That's brilliant!”

“There can't be many services that still do it. Uncle Joe has his Broadway shows printed and bound, right?”

“I believe so. Why don't I check it out for you?”

“You?” Amy looked skeptical. “I'm not sure I want you involved in this.”

“Nonsense. I'll call Joe, get a list of printers, and track it down. Otto Ingo. Road Rally. Red leather. It shouldn't be hard.”

“Red leather?”

“That's what you said, isn't it? Otto had them bound in red leather.”

“Actually, no. I didn't say that.”

“Oh, I'm sure you did.”

“I couldn't have. I have no idea what color they are, or even if they're leather.”

“My mistake, then. Maybe it's Joe . . .”

“Uncle Joe's scripts are black leather.” Amy turned off the water, removed her oval Anne Kleins, and squinted quizzically.

To Fanny's credit, she didn't flinch. “What?”

“What aren't you telling me?” Her mind raced over the possibilities. “Have you been talking to Marcus? No. Did you break into Otto's apartment? Is that how you know what color his scripts are?”

“I didn't break in.”

“Good lord, you did.”

“I didn't. The super . . . oops.”

“What? The super let you in?”

“In a way. I was thinking of renting it.”

Amy was almost hyperventilating. “I can't believe it. That's what you were doing this afternoon. Breaking and entering. What do you think? You can just run around being a detective?”

Fanny had had about enough. “Yes. That's exactly what I did. I got into Otto's apartment. Perfectly legally. And I came to the same conclusion you did.” She slapped the paring knife down on the cutting board. “And what on earth is wrong with that—besides the fact that I beat you to it?”

“So, you know where the master script is?'

“It's in my bedroom.”

“You have it? When were you going to tell me?”

“As soon as I could figure out how. You don't make it easy.”

“So, you were just listening to me ramble on about how clever I am.”

“That's a mother's job.”

Amy was speechless, which was Fanny's cue to keep talking. “Harold, the man at Stage Duplicating, is very sweet, a courtly sort. He's been doing Otto's binding work for years, and they long ago stopped fooling around with claim checks. If there'd been a claim check, someone would have figured this out weeks ago.”

“And he just let you take it?”

“Well, I had to pay for it. Not cheap. Harold knew about Otto's death. He'd been expecting a member of the family to drop by. I told him I was Otto's sister, and he saw the resemblance, which I resent.”

“Mother!”

“You're not the only Abel with some imagination.”

“We have to turn it over to the police—after reading it.” Amy ran a hand through her hair. “How do we tell them we got it? We can't let them know we've been sniffing around. They don't like that.”

“Well . . .” Fanny thought. “The script was a gift. Just arrived. Otto mailed it to us before his death, and the post office screwed up delivery.”

“That's good,” Amy had to admit. “But no more detective work.”

Fanny looked genuinely hurt. “Why not? We make a great team. Me to do the thinking and the legwork, and you, well . . .”

“No more detective work. Do you hear me? You're fearless and impulsive and old. You could get yourself hurt.”

“Old?”

“I appreciate you finding the master script. That was great. But no more.”

“Old?”

“You could get yourself killed.”

“So could you if you keep calling me old. You're just afraid I'll steal all the glory.”

“Glory? Ha!”

“It's the truth.”

“You want the truth? Okay, I am afraid. I'm afraid you'll be a loose cannon, running around and getting us killed. What am I saying? A loose cannon would be safer.”

“Your own mother! Fine.” Fanny tore off the apron and threw it on the floor. “Reimburse me for the script and we'll forget it. You try to help your kids and what do they do? I wash my hands. That's it. I wash my hands.”

And, setting action to her words, Fanny tossed the knife into the sink, rinsed off her hands, and stormed out. “Let me know when dinner's ready.”

 

It was about six months ago, shortly after opening the agency, that Amy started using the fourth-floor sunroom as a home office. Inside the rectangle of steel and glass she'd placed an old oak desk facing a wall of windows that looked out onto a narrow balcony and the communal garden beyond.

Amy sat at the desk, oblivious to the smattering of bedroom lights peering out from the rear of the brownstones across the way. Her stomach, probably her whole body, was attempting to digest the squid, a meal that had not been eaten under the most congenial of conditions.

In front of her lay open the red bound script. She was trying her best to concentrate, but the bangs and clatters drifting up from the third floor weren't helping. Fanny was doing the dinner dishes by hand. The dishwasher wouldn't make enough noise, Amy surmised. She got up to close the door—it barely helped—then returned to the desk and her view of the shadowy garden below.

Deep down she knew why she'd been so upset. Her mother didn't even know Marcus, had no connection to poor Georgina. And yet she had leapt into the fray, conning her way into Otto's apartment and charming a vital clue out of the printer's hands—things that Amy herself might have done.

She had always thought of herself as levelheaded and rational, much like her father. But there was another side to being rational. Was she, at the end of the day and of all her rationalizing, just a coward? She winced at the word. So melodramatic. And should it even apply to women? Weren't those manly terms,
hero
and
coward?
Despite all the progress between the sexes, this seemed to be the final, entrenched vestige of inequality. Women were allowed their natural cowardice.

Still it bothered her. The contrast between her lame investigation and Fanny's fearlessness. Then there was the incident with Marcus and the rock. And, of course, two years ago with Eddie.

It had been a warm November night, a Saturday, after a party at a friend's place. On the way home, they'd got into an argument. At 1:00 a.m., they were back in their claustrophobic apartment, still fighting, trying to keep their voices down. And then Eddie stormed out, slamming the door.

Amy caught up with him blocks away on Minetta Lane, at the spot where the narrow street bent out of sight from a Sixth Avenue still busy with traffic. She grabbed Eddie's arm and offered a halfhearted apology. Amy recalled that distinctly, even though she'd forgotten the reason for the fight.

But the fight only got worse. Accusations, name-calling, and all in public view. Street theater of the worst sort, something they had seen hundreds of times in New York but had never before taken part in, too civilized and controlled for that, until now.

“You always say that, but you never mean it.” Those were the last words he ever said to her. She recalled them so perfectly, the biting intonation, the expression in his eyes. But again, the context was gone. What did she always say but never mean? And then he disappeared, striding away down a narrow brick alley.

Amy had just stood there, staring at her feet, too ashamed and angry to look up. And then she was suddenly following him down the alley, with something new to shout out. Something hurtful but half true, whatever it was.

When she saw Eddie next, maybe twenty seconds later, he was being mugged. They had discussed what to do if they were ever mugged. “Give them what they want,” Eddie had instructed. “Don't make eye contact. Don't get emotional.” But now, with his anger overpowering his common sense, Eddie disobeyed his own rules.

The gang of three must have come in from the other side, from Carmine Street. They were young, Amy later told the police, probably teenagers. She had always assumed it was a mugging, but maybe they were just trying to push past Eddie in the alley. Maybe someone bumped someone and words began flying, an outburst of his Irish temper meant for her, left over from just a minute before.

Should she have spoken up? she often asked herself. Shown her presence and broken the cycle? A woman, a witness? She hadn't even thought of it but had stood transfixed, even after the gun came out. Why? Why hadn't she . . . ?

The police would say he died before hitting the ground. That was meant to be comforting, and it was, to a degree. Her last little pause before dialing 911 meant nothing. The slow arrival of the ambulance meant nothing. She was probably smart not to have drawn attention to herself. And yet she had let Eddie down. She had made him fighting mad and had let him run off down an alley and then had just watched.