Victims (16 page)

Maria bowed her head and nodded. Miranda softened, became the friend who was needed, who could be trusted, the person to confide in. Trust me, trust me.

“Then what? Are you worried about Arabella? Did she tell you she would be in touch with you and you haven’t heard from her?”

“She told me not to come back to the apartment that she would call me and tell me when I could come back and I don’t know why she told me that and I don’t know where she is and I don’t know what to do I love my sister Arabella is so good to me she takes care of me and pays for this, the rent and everything and my tuition and she tells me to keep whatever money I earn for my personal things for makeup and concerts and she takes good care of me and I am frightened I don’t know where she is she said she’d call and she didn’t and—”

“If she was in trouble, who else would she call? Maybe a relative or a good friend to help her?”

“Maybe Carlos Galvez. He lives down there on Inverness Street. Maybe he—” Suddenly, Maria clamped a hand over her mouth and shook her head. She grabbed Miranda’s arm. She blinked rapidly. “Our cousin. That’s why I said him. It was stupid. She wouldn’t go to him. That was stupid, about Carlos. She would
never
go to him. I don’t know why I said—”

“Carlos Galvez. Your cousin. On Inverness Street.”

“We do not see him. Look, he only helped us the one time, he got this apartment for me, so I’d have a nice place not too far from St. John’s, that’s all, we haven’t even seen him in more than a year and—”

“And he lives so near, and is family?”

Maria bent forward, arms wrapped across her stomach, then pulled herself away from Miranda and rushed to the bathroom to be sick again. She stayed in there for a long time.

Maria had washed her face and combed her hair and, if Miranda was any judge, had taken something to steady and control herself. She stood straight and expressionless, her voice more steady, more angry than frightened now.

“I want for you to leave, Detective Torres. I have nothing more to say to you, and you cannot stay here if I ask you to leave. I wasn’t here Wednesday night, and that is all I can tell you which is of any concern to you. Leave now. Please.”

Miranda nodded. She took a card from her pocket and extended it to Maria Vidales. “Take it, Maria.” When the girl didn’t move, Miranda reached for her hand. “Here. Take it. The number is my office, and on the other side is my home phone number. I want you to have both numbers.”

“I do not want—”

“Maria. Listen to me. I know something is wrong. Yes, it has nothing to do with this thing of the other night, all right. And probably it is something personal and private in your life between you and your sister and nothing at all to do with any police matter. But still, take this card and if you want to talk to someone, to me, as an older friend, as someone just to listen, as someone who might be able to offer you some help somehow—”

“Yes. Yes. All right, thank you. I’ll keep your card.”

She closed the door behind Miranda, and the locks clicked into place, but suddenly the door opened the few inches allowed by the chain.

“Detective Torres,” Maria called. Her voice sounded ragged and as frightened as a small child’s voice calling out in the darkness, afraid of the very sound of her own words.

Miranda came back from the elevator door and went as close to Maria as she could, straining to hear the nearly whispered words.

“Listen, just one thing. Forget what I said about our cousin Carlos. It was stupid. Neither Ara nor I would
ever
ask him for anything. Please. Please. Forget I even said his name.”

“Yes. All right. Yes. Maria, all right. Is there anything that you—”

The door slammed shut and there was no sound at all from inside Maria Vidales’ apartment.

The elevator was noisy, rattling and clanging, as it left the sixth floor. Miranda noticed how clean it was, spotless, tended by a careful, caring staff of maintenance people. The tenants on Barclay Street were lucky.

So, who the hell was Carlos Galvez?

W
HILE WAITING FOR MIKE
, Miranda flipped through a Queens telephone directory in the cramped old-fashioned neighborhood candy store on the corner of Barclay and Sixty-eighth Avenue. Carlos Galvez was not listed. Yes, Directory Assistance did have an unlisted number in that name on Inverness Street, but, sorry...

Miranda thought for a moment, consulted the list of special numbers in her notebook, then dialed the squad’s special contact at the phone company. After promising a covering letter from her squad commander, she jotted down both the phone number and the house number. She let the phone ring a number of times before hanging up and putting the information into a small pocket on the inside cover of her notebook. She probably wouldn’t even mention anything at all about a Carlos Galvez at this time: it was just another name to be checked out.

Mike pulled up in his car, smiling as he spotted her. She was wearing a fine lightweight linen shirtwaist, pale green with a wide bright orange-and-yellow paisley sash around her narrow waist. Her long honey-brown legs were bare and smooth. She wore flat orange sandals and she smelled of oranges and lemons. Citrusy Miranda: clean and delicious.

“You are a cool lady on a hot day,” he told her, slipping the lock on the lobby door while Miranda punched the bell marked “G. Randall, Apt. 2A.”

The furniture in George Randall’s apartment was in good taste. He had taken a few chances, mixing stripes with plaids, but the colors balanced and the whole effect was pleasant and light. He apparently knew what he was doing.

When Mike set his tape recorder on the coffee table, Randall shook his head.

“Uh-uh. I don’t think that’s necessary.”

Mike shrugged. “Your choice. I use it for accuracy. Actually, I have a pretty good ear, but in case a question arises, I like to be able to refer to the tape. However, no problem.”

“How come he’s here with you, Detective Torres? I agreed to talk to you. Mr. Stein’s a columnist, not a cop.”

“That is also your choice, Mr. Randall,” Miranda said quietly. “However, Mr. Stein prefers to get his information firsthand. My report will be my version. I try to be accurate, but...”

“Well, all right. It doesn’t really matter. I have nothing at all to tell you about what happened Wednesday night. I didn’t know a thing about it until I left for work Thursday morning.”

“But you were here in your apartment Wednesday night? And you
are
on the second floor fronting on Barclay Street. And the victim, Anna Grace, was stabbed directly across the street from here.”

“So a neighbor told me. I will say this. I didn’t see nothin’. I didn’t hear nothin’. I didn’t know nothin’. And if I did see and did hear and did know, I still wouldn’t have seen, heard or known. You dig that?”

“What kind of work do you do, Mr. Randall?”

“That’s none of your business, Detective Torres. Incidentally, anything I say here and now is off the record. Or we are through talking?”

Miranda stood up so quickly that even Mike Stein was surprised. “Then we’d better make other arrangements, Mr. Randall. What you care to say in Mr. Stein’s presence is one thing. But what you say in response to my questions is another thing. I’m a police officer and I am here in my official capacity to take a statement from you. Here are your choices. You answer my questions here and now with Mr. Stein present. Or he leaves now, and we proceed and he gets
my
version of the interview. Or, if you prefer, I’ll set a time and you meet me at the 112th Precinct. Maybe in an official atmosphere you’ll feel more comfortable. Up to you.”

George Randall stood up to his six-foot height. He shook his head and laughed in surprise. He rubbed his hand over his eyes, walked to the window, then came back.

“Wow. Oh, baby, they really have got you good, haven’t they? You are a real tight representative of the Man. Wow, you haven’t looked in the mirror lately, have you, in a good strong light? You’re beautiful, lady, you got the right tension and timing. So, you are the law and pow-wham-bam-don’t-hit-me-ma’am! You hard and you tough, all right.”

Mike held back and watched the confrontation.

“Listen, you,” Miranda said. “Don’t you pull black-jive-shit with me, mister. Don’t you switch gears and start snapping your fingers, because you are a goddamn high-school teacher. You’re a history teacher at Forest Hills High, and you’re going for your master’s at Columbia and you damn well don’t jive to your professors and I’ve got a good idea you don’t in front of your pupils.”

He laughed in awe. “Wow, you are good, baby.”

“You don’t call me ‘baby,’ Mr. Randall.
Detective Torres,
that’s how you address me. And don’t you talk ‘they’ and ‘us’ shit to me. I’m as black as I’ll ever be and I was born female and Puerto Rican besides, so you want to compare notes with me, now is not the time and this is not the place. You got a statement to make: make it. Otherwise, answer my questions as I ask them.”

“My God,” Randall said, to Mike, “this lady is rough, isn’t she?”

“That’s been my experience.”

“Okay, Detective Torres. I am sorry. I do apologize. All right?”

Yes, he had heard the commotion,
after
the event. He had not seen or heard anything to do with the attack. He heard someone yelling, “Call 911, what’s the matter with you people, what kind of people are you?”

When he looked out the window, he saw the bus pulled up, he saw the bus driver, he saw people at windows across the street. He surmised that the girl—he could see her slumped against the lamppost—had been hurt. At first he thought she’d been hit by the bus. Then he saw all the police arrive, and then the ambulance, and all the people on the street.

“You didn’t come downstairs? You didn’t go to the street?”

“Now, don’t go getting mad at me, Detective Torres, but come on. I am the one and only black person, of either sex, who lives on Barclay Street. I am subletting this apartment from a friend who relocated on the Coast. There was a great deal of interest in my arrival, and I imagine there’ll be a great deal of relief at my departure, but I come and I go and I mind my own business.”

“Weren’t you even curious about what had happened?” Stein asked him.

“Curious, yes. Overwhelmingly curious, no. Not enough to want to go down the street and mingle with the neighbors. Come on, give me a break. With all those policemen—and policewomen—in uniform and in plainclothes. I just have a very strong feeling that my presence down there on that lily-white street, my
presence
would have elicited an inappropriate response. Valuable time would have been wasted in checking me out. You see how considerate I am.”

“Then why the hard time when we first got here, Mr. Randall? If you have nothing to contribute? No information of any kind?”

George Randall was a very dark man with large, expressive black eyes. He barely smiled, yet his entire expression was warm and amused, even tolerant. He spread his arms, turned his hands palms up.

“When anyone comes to my door with a police officer’s badge and a well-known journalist with a tape recorder, come on, Mr. Stein. I read your column regularly. I would not relish seeing myself, in any way, shape or form, transposed into your version.” Then to Miranda, “I learned what happened from an elderly neighbor, who I met in the hall, Thursday morning. His name is Mr. Klein, first floor. He’s a Jewish man,
but
very nice.” Randall laughed. “Mr. Stein, that was meant as a joke. You see, when I first moved here, he was the only one who spoke to me. The other people were uneasy, they felt maybe if they ignored me I’d go away. But Mr. Klein was very kind. He told me that he talked to his wife about me, and what he said was, ‘I told her, Mr. Randall, that you’re a black man,
but very nice.’”

They took a coffee break, and for the first time Mike asked her, “Miranda, how the hell did you get all that background information on Randall? How’d you know he was going for his master’s and that he teaches at Forest Hills High?”

Miranda smiled. “Why, Mr. Stein. Before you arrived, I met a neighbor of Mr. Randall’s. A little old man, named Mr. Klein. Jewish,
but really, very nice.”

A
FTER A LONG DAY
, before heading home, just a what-the-hell shot, Miranda drove over to Inverness Street. There was a collection of large cars parked in front of the house of Carlos Galvez. She drove past the house, found a parking spot, thought for a moment, then doubled back on foot and went to his door.

From the moment the door opened, Miranda knew there was something wrong. Carlos Galvez was too large, in every way, for his surroundings. Carefully, he examined her credentials, glanced at her ID photo, then flicked a measuring eye quickly and efficiently over her, head to toe. He missed nothing. Reluctantly, he permitted Miranda to enter his home: his domain.

The air of well-ordered opulence overwhelmed the small dimensions of the attached pseudo-Tudor six-room house. The Persian carpet was genuine; there was a definite feel not only of well-spent money but of menace. It emanated from the man.

He was tall and heavyset without the slightest trace of fat. His large balding head was well tended, carefully styled, as was the thick black mustache that would have dominated the face of a lesser man. His eyes, black and large and steady, fastened on Miranda, took her measure, gave lie to his expressed courtesy.

“And how may I help you, Detective Torres?”

She began to speak, but he interrupted her. Two children, a boy and a girl, school age, had come from the dining room beyond. They were beautiful children, radiant, with strong yet delicate faces. They had their father’s black eyes and fine manners.

“Yes?” he asked them softly.

The girl spoke. The boy stared without expression at Miranda.

“Papa, Mama excused us from the table. Will you hear the music with us now? We have the records all arranged.”

He reached out with a well-manicured hand. His fingers glittered with diamonds: the only vulgarity about him.

“Later. Soon. Go. Papa will join you soon, yes?”