Victims (25 page)

“Apparently I do think it’s necessary or I wouldn’t be sitting here across the desk from you, Detective Torres.”

There was a moment’s silence before she spoke. Carefully. “I’m not sure what you require of me, Captain. My reassurance that I fully understand the limitations of Mr. Stein’s accessibility privilege? I fully understand and have worked under the guidelines you set for me at the very beginning.” She took a deep steadying breath. “I really
don’t
understand what it is you are asking me, Captain.”

When it got down to it, Captain William O’Connor wasn’t too sure himself. He trusted Miranda, as far as he trusted any other detective in his squad: totally. With reservations. It was the nature of the job. It was based on years of experience with people in a variety of situations that average people would never encounter in several lifetimes.

Besides being beautiful in a way he could not clearly define to himself, Miranda Torres was exotic, intriguing, tempting, because of her very self-contained inaccessibility. He had never before felt such awe and respect for a woman as he felt for her. She was a puzzle to him: intelligent, better educated than most of the others in the squad, yet open and willing to learn, to absorb, to listen and to share her knowledge, without flaunting, without any indication of awareness of her superiority. She was also highly connected. And never once, in all the time she had been in the squad, had she ever, in any way, by any slightest suggestion or indication, given the impression that she was aware that it was general knowledge that she had a powerful ‘rabbi’ watching out for her. He had expected a certain arrogance, veiled perhaps, but not even a fleeting glimpse of power had ever shown.

He wondered about her. He wondered about himself and his interest in her.

Then he wondered about Miranda and Mike Stein, and in fairness to her, resentfully, he decided that as long as she stayed within the official guidelines, as long as she did not violate the confidence he had placed in her professionally, he had no right to question her.

Because what he was asking her was personal and he knew it.

Miranda knew it, too, and in her quiet, firm and decisive way she was telling him to mind his own business. Not with the arrogance of a power that protected her, but as one who knew and exerted her own rights.

“Miranda. Go on home. You and Dunphy pick up on this business of the girl, Maria Vidales, tomorrow. Do you know where she is right now?”

She took her cue from him. “As far as we know, sir, she is staying at Parker Towers, with some of the stewardesses. They have gathered around her, but I think...”

He tapped his finger on a typed report. “This memo about protective custody for Maria Vidales. You realize that it has to go through the D.A.’s office? That would require the cooperation of Sonny-Boy Waters.”

“Yes. Yes, I know.”

“Well, we’ll see. Keep me informed. And, Miranda...”

She waited. When he waved her out, she nodded. The moment passed between them as clearly as if he had spoken.

He had apologized.

T
HE HEAT HAD BROKEN
, the inversion had lifted, the sky was painfully blue, the clear sunshine was welcomed by the residents of Inverness Street. People who had been imprisoned by the poison of pollution puttered about on their tiny lawns, tried to revitalize dying flowers and took advantage of their small but pleasant patios. They watched the odd couple carefully: many strange things had happened in and around that particular house. The girl seemed much younger than the man. At least, she kept a pleasant face on her. The man scowled and frowned, but, when he spoke, he seemed nice enough.

The tension broke once the couple identified themselves as police officers. Everyone seemed eager to talk about their neighbors, the Galvez family.

“Absolutely totally gone,” a large gray-haired woman told them. “I don’t mind telling you, we’ve had some strange ones in that house, but they were the strangest.”

“But nice-looking people, you have to admit that,” a woman from across the street said.

“Who cares, nice-looking,” Mrs. Wyman, the next-door neighbor, said. “What I want to know is what were these people up to, anyway?”

The residents of Inverness Street had been apprehensive when they saw the latest family move in. The house had been rented through the years to an unstable collection of people, from welfare mothers, their children and their boyfriends to a group running an illegal limo service from this one-family-house-zoned area. They watched, worried, as the Galvez people moved in.

It had turned out better than they could have dreamed. The family was quiet, neat, polite. The children were beautiful, well-mannered, replied shyly when greeted. The wife was gorgeous, always so well groomed, always with a smile, a nod, a good morning.

The husband?

The neighbors took turns: He was handsome, a big man, a fine, well-dressed, very what? courtly man? with manners that seemed out of an old movie.

Their furnishings had been glimpsed on the day they moved in: expensive. No one had ever been inside their home, but it was obvious these people knew how to live.

The mystery was, why were they living on Inverness Street?

“Wait, I’ll get Mrs. Ferguson. Her husband works in security in Alexander’s. Mrs. Ferguson knew how to get information. Wait.”

Dunphy and Torres drank homemade lemonade and ate freshly baked cookies and listened to more testimonials to the Galvez family.

In the matter of automobiles: given the experience of a limousine-service operation in their quiet neighborhood, hearts turned to lead when three large black automobiles appeared in front of the Galvez residence and the attached houses on either side.

Mr. Morris, a neighbor to the left, was a man who thought well of everyone until he had proof otherwise. He approached Mr. Galvez on the street and explained the problem. There was no place for the women to pull up to unload the marketing before putting the car into the garage around back. His large automobiles, they took up so much room, could he perhaps...?

“Mr. Galvez apologized, oh, he was so very nice about it. He had some men working for him, they drove the cars, very quiet, never a sound from them, and he went over, said something, they nodded, very respectful, and that was that. The cars never caused a problem again. They pulled up in front of the house, the family came out, into the cars and away. Came back the same way. They only parked in front sometimes at night. And not even very often. Very cooperative. A very nice fellow.”

It was indeed Mrs. Ferguson, the ex-policeman’s wife, who managed to put together a story. She had spoken to the housekeeper, chatted with her as she hung laundry, in the small garden in the backyard. Mrs. Ferguson shared her tomato crop and her flowers with the woman and got information. In strictest confidence and over a period of time.

Galvez was not their real name. Their real name could not be told. They were political refugees from a South American country that had been taken over by a Communist dictatorship. Mr. “Galvez” had been a very important member of the overthrown government: if not the actual president, then the power behind the throne. He had been a general or something very high like that.

The various drivers dropped bits of information to Mr. Morris, the friendly neighbor, as he admired the automobiles. Why did the family always stay together, yet they separated into three cars whenever they went anywhere?

For safety. That was all that was said. For safety.

“They used other cars too, sometimes,” Mrs. Ferguson told them. “My husband noticed that on his days off. Sometimes, just regular Chevies and Fords would pull up, the family would rush into the cars, and then the three big black cars would join up at the corner. Like an entourage. They were bodyguards, those men.”

No one had ever had a conversation with the wife. The children were never seen without an adult. And then, one night a week ago, a moving truck pulled up, at night, just before darkness, and quickly, soundlessly, everything from the house, neatly boxed and wrapped, had been taken away.

Cars pulled up, the family—and this time the housekeeper too—got into the cars and disappeared. Forever.

“And God knows,” Mr. Morris said sadly, “God alone knows what’s going to move into the house next!”

That seemed to be the matter of gravest concern. Given the history of the house, they had every reason to worry.

B
LOATED WITH LEMONADE AND
cookies, both Miranda and Dunphy turned down the coffee offered to them by Captain O’Connor: They both felt a little queasy confronting the gusto with which he attacked his hot-pastrami sandwich.

“So, okay,” O’Connor said, holding up his hand, chewing and gulping and swallowing. “Boy, I haven’t had a pastrami for weeks. My wife keeps reading all these articles. I tell ya, if I gotta die, let it be from too much pastrami instead of too little. Okay, what the hell have we got here?”

The two detectives looked at each other. It was obvious they had a difference of opinion. Dunphy tended to believe the political-refugee story—to a point. He had set in motion inquiries through various federal agencies.

“Of course, if this story is right, I wouldn’t be surprised if any knowledgeable agencies refused to confirm it. If the guy is here incognito, for asylum, and he is in danger from political enemies, they’re not about to tell us too much about him.”

“No more than he would have permitted anyone he employed to reveal what the people of Inverness Street believe they found out. It doesn’t work that way,” Miranda said firmly.

Dunphy stared straight ahead and said, “Uh-huh.”

There was an edge in his voice, and the tension in the posture of both detectives caused Captain O’Connor to wrap up the rest of his sandwich for later. If he was going to eat pastrami, he was damned well going to enjoy it.

“Detective Torres, what’s your feeling about this guy Galvez? All you got is the fact that the girl, Maria Vidales, mentioned that he was her cousin and that he might have heard from her sister, the stewardess, on the night that Anna Grace was killed. You went to see the guy and got what? Nothing, right?”

Miranda hesitated. She studied her fingertips and then looked up at the captain. “I went to see him. And from that meeting received nothing but an impression. Which made me feel very uncomfortable, very...” She shrugged, searching for the right word. It would not come. “There was a something. One could not put a name to it, but with Galvez something was not right. Something... very wrong.”

O’Connor’s voice was as deadpan as his expression. “Something very wrong. What? You can’t say. And you haven’t seen him since. He pulled out before his cousin’s body was found, right?”

“I don’t think the Vidales girls were his cousins. In fact, at the morgue, Maria made certain admissions to me—but again, what she said there and in my apartment she will not repeat. She denies. I have no proof.”

“If you tell me that Maria Vidales made certain admissions to you, Miranda, I believe you. Not necessarily her admissions, but that she did make them to you. Why she was so frightened of this guy—whether he was or wasn’t a cousin—I don’t know, but...”

“He is a frightening man,” Miranda said. They held it there, midair: a statement with nowhere to go. Finally she said, “Whatever reason Maria Vidales had to be so frightened of him, I can understand her fear. More than that I would have to get Maria Vidales to verify.”

“If he was a highly placed political refugee from a maybe violent-power background, wouldn’t that be enough to scare a young girl? Or anyone, for that matter?”

It was a reasonable suggestion, and yet Miranda knew that Dunphy was wrong. She shook her head.

Captain O’Connor asked her, “Why do you doubt the story that went around Inverness Street?”

“Because if it
was
true, the information would never have surfaced. This information, this story, was deliberately put out. He knew the people on this street were naive, nice, sweet, quiet people who were curious about him and his family and the cars and the trips. Inexperienced people who were curious and who thought themselves so clever to learn all this top-secret information. If he was what he allowed them to be told, he would be invisible, and his family—”

“What we have here, Captain,” Dunphy said, “is not only an expert in the world of the narcotics conspiracy but in international intrigue. She knows all about how these people would live. Look, you want to explain it some more to us dumb Queens yokels so that—”

Miranda turned in her chair to face Dunphy. She spoke slowly and clearly and precisely. “That is not why I have tried to tell you about this thing. I know certain things and how they are done. I am trying to put all of this out before us so that with an exchange of information—”

O’Connor moved his hand too quickly and knocked over his container of coffee. It soaked what was left of his pastrami sandwich.

“Goddamn it, damn it.” He dug out a handful of tissues and began blotting the mess. He dried off his sandwich and took a large moist bite, grimacing. Finally he said, “We will wait on this for verification, any kind of verification or information from Washington. And I want to assure you, Detective Torres, that there
are
people in Washington, D.C., in certain federal bureaus, who will give me confidential information when I need it. So I wouldn’t worry too much. You let
me
worry about all this from now on, okay? You people got your reports up-to-date?”

“On your desk, Captain.” Dunphy pointed to a folder stained with the coffee. Dunphy leaned forward, extracted some typed papers, shook the coffee from them. “I’ll get you a clean copy.”

“Fine. Then go home. Both of you. Just go on home. And let me eat the rest of this mess in peace.”

Before he left the office that night, Captain O’Connor received a telephone call from a highly placed federal official in Washington. Without any further explanation, he was told that the matter re Galvez was being handled at a high governmental level. O’Connor and his people were to back off.

A second call, from his friend in a position to know about such things, informed O’Connor that there was no information confirming or denying anything about anyone named Galvez. No one seemed to know when, where, why or how Galvez and his family had come to the United States. If, in fact, they
had
come to the United States. O’Connor’s friend told him, in essence, to forget the whole thing.