Victims (12 page)

“This is
your
room?”

“This is
mainly
my room. My kids have been known to use it. And my wife.”

“Your wife?”

“Ex-wife. Mother of my four firstborn. This is her house.”

“Her house? And you live here? And she lives here, too, and your...four children live here, all of you here?”

As he encouraged her to make a collection of books, he explained: At twenty-one, he had married a college classmate whose family owned one of the most successful chains of department stores in the country. The founding grandfather had been a Russian immigrant who had believed in real estate.

“This town house has been in the family since it was built. Turn of the century. The old man had four daughters; each one was left a piece of property with the proviso that it be kept in the family. My wife was an only child. This house, someday, will go to my kids. And their kids. It’s practically a commune. We all use it.”

“And you have four children?”

“Five. My youngest son you might call my fortieth-birthday celebration.” Mike shook his head, and his smile was sad. “My wife and I had been leading separate lives for a long time. She’s a very active VP in the family business and we decided on a friendly divorce, meaning no significant changes in lifestyle. Until one of us got married. She did first, so she relocated to a condo in midtown. But she keeps a studio on the fifth floor. Our kids are all grown. The oldest is a GP in Vermont. And the father of my three granddaughters.”

“You are a grandfather?”

He ran his fingers through his thick white hair and hunched forward. “I am a grandfather. Had no say in the matter. My kids come from a heritage of kids. So this house is usually pretty busy. Two are still in college. Right now, my son-the-actor is in from the coast shooting New York background for a TV series. He’s staying here along with his girlfriend and a couple of the crew members. Beats a hotel.”

“And your youngest son? What did you say—your fortieth-birthday celebration?”

“I did two things to celebrate turning forty: first, I married the scriptwriter who was helping me turn my novel into a movie; and I fathered my last-born. Who is rapidly approaching ten. And who is living with his Vermont brother while
his
mother copes with turning thirty by marrying a Hollywood stuntman turned producer four years younger than she is.” He suddenly realized that she hadn’t been collecting or selecting books. “Hey, c’mon, Miranda. You picked out only three so far.”

He reached out, ran his finger along titles, slid some out, stacked them on his desk. He picked a book off the shelf, turned the cover toward her. It was a copy of his Korean War novel.

She reached for the book, held it, smiled and handed it back to Stein.

“I have a copy of your novel, Mr. Stein. I read it when I was in high school. And I’ve reread it—parts of it—over the years. It is very fine. I also have a copy of your book about the murder of Chief Cordovan’s son. You are a very good writer.”

He was surprised to realize how important her approval was to him. “Well. How about that? Well. Hey, are you going to just stand there or are you going to grab some books? Here, let’s put them into this satchel. It belongs to somebody in the house. Anything around here is up for grabs.”

He loaded the satchel with books and slung it over his shoulder. “Come on, kid. It’s about that time. And it’s Friday. So let’s go eat.”

The restaurant wasn’t what she expected, and Miranda felt a slight letdown followed by a certain relief. It was a somewhat shabby, rundown, overcrowded, extremely noisy and smoky establishment in Little Italy. Mike pulled her through a series of small, dark, narrow rooms.

“We go to the back, a private room,” he said.

He stopped at the bar, which was oddly located in the rear of the restaurant. From the street, passersby wouldn’t know that Pisani’s had a bar. It was a small, dark, narrow enclave backed by a dark-blue mirror which cast sinister shadows on the faces of the men who stood, in groups of two or three, holding drinks but not drinking. Miranda’s observations were fast and sharp and concise. These were men who wore dark glasses in dark rooms, who wore expensive, custom-made clothing that fit them just slightly off, as though the tailor could not quite disguise what they were. The haircuts were standardized razor-cut; even the toupées were blow-dried. They smoked cigars, long and expensive, and their pinkies glittered as the mirrored light hit the rings which seemed part of their fingers. They were men who never looked at the person to whom they spoke. Restlessly, they checked the room so as not to miss anything.

Several of them embraced Mike Stein in a standard brotherly hug of affection, but the attention went directly to Miranda. She didn’t have to hear them. The words whispered into his ear would be: Who’s the broad?

He introduced her and she was greeted with greatly exaggerated and somewhat clumsy courtesy. She drew back, wary and tense.

“Hey,” Stein told her, gently pushing her along to the next room, “we’re just passing through. They’re part of the atmosphere.”

The greetings here, in the last room, which had a half-wall revealing the busy kitchen, were far more enthusiastic. The embraces were of long-lost friends, survivors of wars and battles who had given up hope of finding each other.

It was a weekly ritual.

He seated her at the end of a long wooden table filled with people she couldn’t quite make out: cop faces; a huddling of loud, explosive storytellers who apparently were accustomed to audiences and resented anyone not leaning forward to listen; a couple of guys on the make talking rapidly to a couple of women who were deciding if they were worthwhile.

And then, scattered throughout the crowded room, a suddenly familiar face: a genuine movie star, eating enthusiastically from a heaping plate of pasta, nodding, accepting the shoulder pat, the whispered words. She took Mike at his word: “We don’t have to order, the food will arrive and it will be wonderful and I’ll be right back.”

Miranda realized that she was in a special room with special people. From time to time, others, tourists out for the night, birthday celebrants who were noisily serenaded in the outer rooms, peeked in and watched, pointed, waved, took a couple of flash-snaps until a guy with dark glasses told them not to. There were faces she recognized and was surprised by: a State Supreme Court judge, handsome and glamorous, stopping his fork midway between his plate and his mouth, politely listening to something being put to him by a man hovering at his shoulder. A cop—no, an actor who played a cop on TV—standing, arm around a beautiful woman but giving his fullest attention to another woman, whose eyes stayed on his mouth as they spoke. Coming toward her, Mike, leading the way for a tall, thin angry woman in her forties, wild hair, dressed in rock-star chic that didn’t do a thing for her that was flattering. She was digging her fingers into the arm of her husband, who was trying to hug another man he hadn’t seen since they’d parted in L.A. two days ago.

Large platters of food were placed family style down the center of the long table, and Miranda took a sampling of everything, but mostly she watched the action and the exchanges all around her.

People approached the table, identified quickly by Mike as to their occupation. She exchanged handshakes with a nightclub comic, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a vice-president of a major motion picture producing corporation, a master thief turned lecturer—his topic: how to protect your home from thieves.

An incredibly handsome older man, tall, erect, with a dramatic mane of yellowish-gray hair and glitteringly bright dark eyes, approached, exchanged hugs with Mike, then took Miranda’s hand. In a casual, for him natural, courtly, flattering gesture, he brushed his lips over the back of her hand. Miranda was stunned by her own reaction: she felt thrilled, intensely feminine. And then he pressed the back of his large, slightly shaking hand to the side of her face, slid it down along her cheek to her chin.

“Ah,” he whispered with obvious pleasure. “This is a face. This has bones and character and mystery. You are a beautiful woman, my dear. That rarity of nature: the true beauty. Enjoy your life, my child.”

He brushed his dry lips again, across the back of her hand, saluted Mike with a nod and left.

“He was so beautiful, that old gentleman,” Miranda said.

He was among the most famous of all international film producer-directors, and Miranda, who had not heard his name in all the noise of the dynamic high-level conversations around them and the rattling plates and shouting from the kitchen, was stunned.

“Oh, but, Mr. Stein. He is a very eminent—oh, he is so gifted. I know his work, I admire... Oh, and I did not say anything to him. I did not realize.”

“It’s okay,” Mike told her. “He’s practically deaf and he disconnects his hearing aid in noisy places. I think he got a message from you, Miranda. The look on your face. Are you enjoying this? Are you having fun?”

“This is all...somewhat overwhelming. All these beautiful people. I’ve never seen such people in real life—just on the television or movie screens.” She shrugged. “For a girl from the Bronx, it is a bit much.”

Mike took her hand and pressed it hard against his mouth. “I’ll tell you a secret, kid. All of the people here are from the Bronx. Or Flatbush. Or the Lower East Side. We all started from the same place. That’s why we all get along together. That’s why we all need to touch base with each other. No matter where they live or work now, when these guys are in New York on Friday night they touch base here. It’s a trip back to the old neighborhood. It gives them a touch of stability. And reassurance.”

“Reassurance? These people are all so very far from where they began. They are so successful and important. What reassurance do they need?”

“Hey, Miranda,” Stein said softly, glancing around at the smiling, loud-talking, back slapping, hugging successful leaders of various industries. “Remember you said to me, ‘It’s all East Harlem.’ Well, let me tell you, kid: we’re all from the Bronx.”

M
IRANDA ATE HER YOGURT
right from the container, being careful not to drip any on the collection of reports spread out on her couch. She had intended to spend a quiet evening at home, trying to put into some semblance of order all the information that was being collected.

There were two separate categories in the case: the victim; the culprit. The background information on Anna Grace, from her birth in Brooklyn through her education in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, her marriage in Queens and her employment record, was a collection of officially available information that told nothing about the personality of the murdered woman.

Miranda noted the list of people to be interviewed in a search for the actual Anna Grace. It was not to be accepted at face value that the victim was a wonderful, perfect, blemish-free angel without an enemy in the world. Very few people have an unkind word to say about a young and vibrant woman who was brutally murdered. But Miranda knew that many people had secrets, even from those closest and dearest to them. Anna Grace was now a public figure, having been publicly murdered. It was valid to violate the deepest privacy she had maintained in her life. The possibility had to be faced and encountered and clarified one way or another: was there any connection between Anna Grace and her murderer?

The search for the culprit, rightly or not, had to begin with his act of violence against Anna Grace. From what the witnesses had stated—almost without exception—the man had yelled and berated Anna as he stabbed and struck her. This was puzzling. It was unusual, and possibly revealing, that her murderer had called her names, thief-cheat-liar-whore-cunt, that among the words he had called out to his victim seemed to be a message, an indication of retaliation of some sort: There! You see! Cheat! You see!

Had the words been intended, specifically, for Anna Grace? Had they been intended for some other woman, specifically, for whom Anna had been mistaken? Or had the murderer’s words been directed toward any female, any woman substituting for the particular or fulfilling the general target of hostility seething within this man?

Quickly and efficiently, Miranda sorted the growing pile of reports: copy for herself, copy for the squad, copy for Mike Stein. In the time they had spent together, at his house and at Pisani’s, they hadn’t discussed the case or exchanged information. It had been a time off, and yet it had had a specific purpose. He had been sizing her up, and she realized he was anxious that she be impressed with him. He was surprised and, she thought, delighted that she was familiar with his work.

His novel was strong and bitter and impressive, written with great drive and energy. His book based on his articles about the murder in Vietnam was blunt and brutal, written at a time when it took great courage to reveal such controversial events. But his columns on crime in New York lacked the passion and drive of his other work. His twice-weekly articles reflected his cynicism, his matter-of-fact capitulation to the inevitability of the downward slide of city life.

She was aware, from the first moment he had encountered her at the crime scene, that this man was taken by the case in a very dynamic way. His interest was far from the pedestrian, monotone repetition of familiar crime-scene facts. He seemed to care nothing about the victim or about the murderer, nor, as Captain O’Connor might have feared, about the police.

Mike Stein was turned on in some strange but very evident way by the witnesses to the death of Anna Grace.

Miranda did not give him copies of everything she had, only those reports to which he had been declared officially entitled. She kept her own notes, comments, private data which she would not share with him or with anyone else. Not at this point.

She was surprised when he called, as if by thinking of him she had willed him to think of her. But it was business.

“I know it’s Saturday night,” Stein said, “and I hope I’m not interrupting anything, but I just managed to pin down this Mrs. Rolland and her husband. I know your people got a statement from her, but I’d like to talk to them myself. She agreed if we’re there by eight—something to do with a TV movie they want to see.”