Victims (11 page)

Arabella Vidales had a younger sister: Maria? Maybe Maria. A college girl. Queens College? No. No, wait: St. John’s College. Yes, a Catholic university. Sonyia remembered that last year Ara had rented a small apartment for the girl, somewhere in Forest Hills. Close by, so that she could keep an eye on the girl when she was on layover. Was that helpful information?

Miranda thanked the Avianca stewardesses and left her phone number with them.

“If Arabella turns up, please have her call me. It probably isn’t at all important, but when I talk to her I can check her name off my list. We all have our lists, yes?”

It wasn’t a long walk, even on a hot afternoon, to Barclay Street. Maybe Miranda would get lucky. She’d check out Arabella Vidales’ apartment. Maybe she’d come up with her college-girl sister.

It would seem that Maria Vidales was the only Spanish girl living on Barclay Street, and enough people seemed to have thought she was the victim of last night’s attack.

Miranda wondered what Maria, or her sister, would have to say about that. If anything.

It was a waste of time. No one was in the top-floor apartment. Miranda rang a few bells and left her card with neighbors, who promised to call should anyone return to “the Spanish girl’s” apartment.

M
IKE STEIN HAD MADE
an intuitive decision to interview Frank Palermo, the bus driver, alone. He had seen him briefly at the murder site and had read his initial police interview.

Frank Palermo led the way into the cool neat interior of his small house. There was a group of women seated around a dining-room table. They were too intent on their activity to look up.

“Hey, Ange,” Palermo called, “bring a coupla cold ones into my den.”

One of the women sighed loudly, shook her head with annoyance and left the table.

“Here we are,” Palermo announced, “my den.”

It had once been a garage, and despite the renovations it still looked like a garage.

“So wadda ya think? My game and communications room.”

He pointed to various items: a large-screen TV, a VCR, a collection of video games, a music system, the works.

“They got real sophisticated, ya know, not like when they first came out, these video games. I got the games all catalogued to sort of, you know, trace the progress these game-makers come up with. They keep you on your toes, these electronics whizzes. And then, when I wanna relax the old brain”—he pointed with pride—“I just lean back in the old contour chair. Only old thing in the room; like it just fits my body, ya know? And I play an old movie or sometimes just put on an old record, stretch out and reeeelax. Ya know?”

“Yes. I know,” Mike said.

There was an impatient kicking at the door. “Open up, Frank, I got my hands full.”

He yanked the door open, and his wife put the tray down on the large desk that dominated the wall opposite the entertainment center.

“Watch my papers, jeez, watch it,” Palermo told her.

“I didn’t touch your papers. There’s your beer and your cheese puffs and your pretzels, so that’s it, right? I can get back to my own business now?”

He gestured toward his contour chair, but Mike declined with thanks. The hard wooden desk chair was better. He put his tape recorder on the desk, in full view but without mentioning it. That would be up to Palermo. It was his den.

“So,” Palermo began after a good gulp of beer. “I seen you looking at my street map up on the wall and the schedule. I’m the coordinator. For the Neighborhood Watch Committee. And treasurer. Not that we have any money; just expenses, like for flashlights and ID cards and things like that.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it,” Mike suggested.

“Yeah, well, I’ll tell you.” Palermo was serious now. He leaned forward from his contour chair, dangled his beer can between his legs. “What happened in Forest Hills last night would not happen in our neighborhood. We take care of our own. We take care of each other. We don’t need to hire some fancy paid security service like they got in some places, like Forest Hills Gardens or Jamaica Estates. We...

“Forest Hills Gardens? You mean they have a private security patrol there? Where the hell were they Wednesday night?”

“Nah, nah. You don’t know Queens too good, right?”

“I don’t know Queens, period.”

“Okay, so here’s the story. Forest Hills Gardens is that ritzy section around the Forest Hills Inn. You know where that is? The square?”

“Right. I know the square.”

“Okay, so all those streets startin’ there, they give ’em names like Deepdene and Greenway Terrace, ya know, all that phony Old English stuff, so anyway, once you’re past the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium you’re out of the Gardens. In just plain old Forest Hills. Got it?”

“No private security patrol in just plain Forest Hills.”

“Right.”

Frank Palermo was relaxed and expansive and in a confiding frame of mind. He glanced at the tape recorder, admired it and kept talking.

“See, we provide our own protection here. Eighteen signed-up members.”

The Neighborhood Watch Committee kept to a tight schedule. When Palermo worked nights, his next-door neighbor came over to babysit the phone and keep the records. Two cars patrolled in the daytime; four cars at night. No one, not anyone at all, not family friends, friends of the kids, cousins, invited guests, not even clergymen, entered the neighborhood without his presence being recorded and his movements monitored. All this within an eight-block sector of Howard Beach. They maintained close contact with the police department, and no one messed with them. Not anymore. Before they organized, there had been break-ins, muggings, and one very serious beating and attempted rape.

“We got a coupla punks when we first got going. Boy, I’ll tell ya, we was a little too enthusiastic. They were
glad
to see the cops by the time they got here. Word gets around, ya know? They keep clear of us now.” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “They move on, keep going until they’re clear of this neighborhood.”

“Operate in the next neighborhood over, huh?”

“You got it,” Palermo said with a grin.

After a few seconds of silence, Mike Stein leaned forward and shook his head. “Terrible, about that poor girl on Barclay Street.”

Palermo made a small grunting sound, carefully dropped the empty beer can into the waste-paper basket next to his contour chair. “Jeez,” he said.

“So, Frank. What’s the story? You see the guy or what?”

Palermo flexed his heavy shoulders and rubbed a rough hand over his face and shook his head.

“Hell, no. I seen the guy, I tell you that guy would be sitting in a cell right now. Or in a hospital. No. What I seen was the girl...”

“You saw her staggering around, or what?”

He looked up and said sharply,
“No
. Uh-uh. She was down, sitting there against the lamppost, when I seen her. Hey, you read my statement—what I said at the police station?” His small dark eyes, set close together at the bridge of his large nose, focused on Stein. Mike nodded.

“Lissen, can I level with you?”

“Absolutely.”

Palermo glanced around, checked the walls, then back to Stein. “They let that girl sit there and bleed to death, ya know?”

“That’s how I figure it, too.”

“What kind of people would do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know how long my run is from Barclay Street to Metropolitan and back again? Oh, yeah, you don’t know the neighborhood. So Metropolitan is the turn-around; the layover, then I head back over my route the opposite way, right?”

“Right.”

“So okay, a good fifteen minutes from Barclay to Metro. God alone knows how long she was there before I come along.”

“A while, I’d guess. She wasn’t screaming or crying out when you saw her, right?”

Palermo shook his head.

“No, I mean the
first
time. She was staggering. A lot of people thought she was drunk.”

“Hell, they knew she wasn’t drunk. The kid was crying. Like she was—” Palermo tensed; his large face froze for a moment. He licked his thin lips and moved his head slightly as though to focus better on Stein.

Stein’s voice was reasonable and reassuring: a pal. “Hey, Frank, look. The whole thing took place over a certain time period, right? So, if it takes you fifteen, twenty minutes to pass Barclay Street, go to your turn-around and come back to Barclay Street, it figures, right? Hell, look, the first time, whatever the hell was going on at the moment, you were just driving the bus, doing your job. You weren’t in a position to find out what was going on, right? It must have been a real surprise to see the girl
still
sitting there, against the lamppost, and no one around her. That must have really knocked the hell outa you.”

Palermo hunched forward, and his tone was confiding. “Look, I’m not even sure I actually seen anything the first time, ya know? I mean, so you pass by some girl and she looks a little drunk, ya know? So she’s yelling a little, right? Hell, she’s right outside all these buildings, all these people can see her and hear her same as me, and I’m just passing through.”

“The guy was gone by then?”

“Like I tole ya, if I seen him, he’d be in a lotta trouble right now.”

“But the girl was in a lot of trouble when you first saw her, right?”

The bus driver stood up with some difficulty. It was hard to jump up from a contour chair.

“Hey, listen, I thought you was a nice guy. I read your column sometimes, how you keep track of all the crimes in New York City and all, and I thought you was a good guy.”

“I am a good guy, Frank.”

“Yeah? Well, what I told you, everything what I told you, that’s... ‘privileged information,’ right? Like between a doctor and a patient or something. I mean, I’m just trying to be helpful. I told the cops all I know, and that’s it.”

“Why didn’t you stop and help the girl the first time you saw her, Frank? When she was still alive. She was screaming and staggering and bleeding. Why didn’t you help her then, Frank?”

“Me?
I was the only one who
did
stop, never mind
when.
In all that time, nobody from her block helped her, not even to call the cops. If it hadn’t been for me, that girl’s body would still be propped up there and they’d ignore it, ya know?”

“She bled to death because no one helped her, Frank. You might have saved her life.”

“Me? Me? I might have saved her life? Me? Hell, I had a schedule to keep. I was just passing through.”

S
HE ACCEPTED HIS CASUAL
invitation to supper after a long and tiring day. “There are some pretty good restaurants in this neighborhood. Greek, Korean, Cuban, Italian, Chinese—”

He grabbed her arm and led her toward his car. “It’s Friday night. There’s only one place to eat on Friday night. First, I have to stop off at my house, check in with one of my kids. It’ll take about a minute and a half, and then you’ll see where we eat on Friday nights.”

He double-parked in front of a wide brick-and-limestone town house on Seventy-third Street off Fifth Avenue. He inserted a key into the lock in a heavy grilled door, stepped aside for her to enter the narrow marble-floored vestibule guarded by another door: a heavy oak with a wide viewing panel.

“This one no one could slip. Guy I know, used to be a burglar. Now he’s consultant to a security company. This lock is his invention.”

Mike worked several heavy odd-shaped keys in a particular sequence, then pushed the door open onto a magnificent interior.

The huge room was paneled in rich dark wood from floor to shoulder height; from there to the high beamed ceiling it was covered by an expensive brocade. There were paintings on the wall in heavy frames, lit by brass lamps which made them look old and valuable and important. Set among them, there were modern glass-covered posters which you could buy for under fifty dollars in any of a hundred places. There were chairs and sofas and tables: it was a room without definition so far as Miranda could determine. To one side, a wide curved staircase; directly ahead was a cagelike elevator, big enough for two or three people. The sliding grill door was brass and gleaming.

“Your apartment is in this building?” Miranda asked.

“Well, sort of. Wait a minute.” He stood still, listening. Voices could be heard from somewhere upstairs.

He went to the elevator shaft and yelled, “Hey. Dennis! That you, kid?”

A young man’s voice answered, “Yo, Pop. Up here. Third floor.”

Mike led her to a library off the main entrance. “Here, Miranda. Make yourself comfortable. This’ll take about four minutes. If anybody looks in on you, just wave. It’ll be one of my kids. Or one of their friends. There’s a gang using the house this week. Relax.” His hand swept the room. “Enjoy.”

He caught the expression of enchantment that transfixed her face into the unguarded pleasure a child might show.

Miranda moved slowly into the most wonderful room she had ever seen in her life. The walls were bookcases, floor to ceiling, continuing around doorways and windows, every inch available for books. There were magazines piled on library tables, books, periodicals, manuscripts. There was a huge, beautiful partners’ desk set into the wide alcove topped by a triple stained-glass window that went from shoulder height to the high ceiling. The furniture was English: leather couches and chintz-covered old comfortable lived-in easy chairs, all with tables near to hand, lit by brass lamps.

But it was the books that drew Miranda, intoxicated her, transfigured her. She stood in awe; reached out, dropped her hand, shook her head with pleasure. Her eyes swept the tides: classics, old and leather-bound in matching sets or first editions; textbooks, encyclopedias, history, art, politics. And hundreds of current books, best-sellers, novels, self-help books, cheap romances; even shelves of paperbacks. He had collections of everything.

He watched her for a moment before he spoke. “Help yourself,” he told her. “I mean it. It’s a standard offer to any true book lover who gets invited into this room. The first editions you get to borrow, anything else you want you keep. So?”