Come Out Tonight (29 page)

“You were the one who opened up today?”

“Yeah.”

“Who, other than you, has access?”

Just at that moment, Carl walked in.
   
“That would be Nadia and myself.” He put out his hand. “Hi, I’m Carl Mullins, the owner.”
  
Then he excused himself and walked over to the back to see for himself what was missing.
 
In a moment I could hear a muffled scream.
 
“Shit! I knew it! They got the Oxycontin!”

“So,” Koslowski asked me, “Where is this Nadia?”

“She should be here any moment,” Carl said, coming out, his face all white.
  
“But there’s no way it’s Nadia.
 
She’s been working here for six years.”

“Unless we can figure out how someone got in from the outside without forcing the lock on the gate, Mr. Mullins, we’ve got to figure it’s an inside job,” the officer said.
 
“Does Nadia know the alarm code?”

“Yeah,” Carl said. “But it’s not her.” He looked over at me.

“Well, it’s not me!” I cried.

“Nah, it’s not Henry, either,” Carl said to the two cops.
 
“He’s too much of a wimp.
 
And it’s not me.
 
So where are we?”

“Nowhere,” said
Anderson
, closing his pad.
 
“Maybe check our informants to see if a load of Oxycontin shows up on the street....”

“We’ll get back to you if we have any leads...,” Koslowski said.
 
“Have a nice day.”
 

The rest of the day went as usual, except for Carl asking every other hour where I had stashed the Oxycontin.
 
“Very funny,” I said the first few times, but finally I just stopped answering him.
 
My mother used to say, when my older brother and sister teased me, not to pay any attention and they’d go away.
 
It didn’t work then, and it sure didn’t work now.
 
Carl just kept it up until I finally exploded and told him to shove it.
 

“Can’t take a joke, can you, Henry?” Carl said.

I wondered, as I walked home, did he really think it was me?
 
What
about
Nadia, anyway?
 
Maybe her husband’s gas station went bankrupt, and she needed the drug money to put food on the table.
 
Or maybe Carl’s jokes were just camouflage, and all the while, he had taken the stuff himself to cash in on the insurance.
 
Or maybe, I thought, as I pushed my shopping cart through Food Emporium, it was an outside party who worked at the alarm company, who somehow managed to get a copy of the key to the gate.
 
By the time I got home, I was so confused, I didn’t know who to blame.
 
I dumped my keys on the kitchen table, turned on the TV, pulled out the bottle of scotch, and poured myself a big double.
  
Then I collapsed on the sofa and watched mindless shit for the rest of the evening.

It wasn’t till I was ready to go to sleep: padding into the bathroom and opening the medicine cabinet with the intention of taking one of my last, lonely tablets that I figured anything out.
 
Jammed into four little shelves sat sixteen boxes of Somnolux.

DONNA

Koslowski was sporting a Mona Lisa smile as he peeked through my open door.
 
“FYI,” he said.
 
“Anderson and I just got back from responding to a break-in at the Duane Reade on Broadway and 108
^th
.”

“So?” I said, not even bothering to look up from my stack of papers.
 

“That’s where Henry Jackman works.”

“Really?” I said, looking up with newfound interest.
 
“Tell me about it.”

Koslowski handed me a copy of their report.
 
“A lot of stuff was taken.
 
A case and a half of Demerol and codeine.
 
Some Valium.
 
Some sleep drugs, mostly Somnolux….”

“Somnolux,” I echoed, wondering who would steal a drug like that.

“Yeah, and two cases of Oxycontin.”

“Whoa.
 
You know what’s that’s worth?” I cried.

“Yeah, exactly what we said.”

“Interesting,” I said.
 
“Wasn’t the alarm set?”

“Well, that’s what makes it interesting.
 
The alarm didn’t go off, even though the proprietor, Carl Mullins, says he set the alarm himself. The gate was locked, with no signs of forcing.
 
Jackman was the one to open up today.
 
He says everything looked normal.
 
All three of the employees knew the alarm code, but, of course, they all deny any involvement.”

“Any alibis?”

“Everyone was home in bed with spouses,” Koslowski replied.
 
“So they say, anyway.”

“Except Henry, whose girl friend is in a nursing home.”

“Yeah, that sucks, don’t it?
 
Anyway, I guess we’ll just have to check our informants to see if a load of Oxycontin shows up on the street,” the officer said.

“Or,” I said rolling my chair over to the computer on the other side of my desk, “we could go for a search warrant.”

“For the pharmacy?” he asked.
 
“You think one of them’s hiding the goods in the store somewhere?”

“Not the pharmacy.
 
Henry Jackman’s apartment,” I said, clicking on a desktop icon labeled “search warrant.”

“You think Jackman did it?” Koslowski said, laughing.
 
“How do you prove probable cause with a guy like Jackman?”

What he meant was that to obtain a search warrant, an officer must prove to a judge or magistrate first that probable cause exists, i.e., that there is evidence to establish the need for the search.
 
“Well, let’s see,” I began.
 
“Not only was his girl friend attacked in his apartment; but he waited till the morning to report it. He’s reported to have a violent temper.
 
And he’s got several mysterious girl friends squirreled away around the city, whom he invariably visits late at night.
 
And, oh yeah, the guy takes Somnolux himself but has no current prescription.
 
Now this: a break-in at the pharmacy he works in that’s obviously an inside job.
 
Oh yeah, I think I can prove probable cause.”

Koslowski whistled.
 
“And here I thought he was such a nice guy!”

*
   
*
   
*

It must have been a couple of weeks later around dinner time I drove myself down to Sherry’s nursing home.
 
By now the media had all but lost interest in her, and the place was pretty deserted.
 
A middle-aged woman in a white coat crossed the lobby on her way to one of the long hallways that radiated off the central hub like a star. Off to the side, a cluster of blue-haired old ladies gossiped, leaning on their walkers.
 
A dark man in blue pushed a wheeled garbage pail squeakily past the deserted front desk. With no one to turn me away, I shoved my badge back in my jacket pocket and took myself down the hall to Sherry’s room.

I found her still in her bathrobe but awake and out of bed, propped up in the armchair, watching TV.
 
Her hair was uncombed, and her dinner tray was relegated to the corner, mostly uneaten.
 
I wondered whether Sherry needed help to dress herself and to eat, the daily tasks we take for granted.

“May I come in?” I said.

She seemed a total blank as to who I was.
 
I reintroduced myself, describing how I’d been there shortly after she woke up, when her parents had been there.

“Okay,” she said.
 
Nothing I said seemed to ring a bell.

“It must be a relief not to have so many people clamoring to see you all the time,” I volunteered.

“Yes, but now no one visits,” she replied, a wave of sadness crossing her face, that she seemed unwilling or unable to cover up.

“Not your parents?” I asked.

She shook her head.
 
“Back in
California
.”

“Not Henry?”

She hesitated for a moment, as if she couldn’t quite put a face to the name.
 
“Oh, Henry.
 
Yes.
 
He comes sometimes.”

“Doctors?”

“Yes.
 
Daddy had some spesh…some specialists come to examine me.”
  
She shrugged.
 
“I don’t know what they found.
 
No one told me.”

I could see why her father had said he couldn’t stand to see her like this – his brilliant, talented biochemist of a daughter who no longer knew what was going on.….
 
“If you don’t mind, Sherry, I’d like to ask you about the night you were attacked.”

“I don’t remember it,” she replied.

“Nothing at all?
 
Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt you?

Sherry thought a minute, then shook her head.

“Do you remember the birthday dinner you had with your parents?”

She seemed more amused than bewildered.
 
“Oh, were they here?”

“You told your parents about the side effects of your new drug Somnolux?
 
You wanted to tell the newspapers?”

Her forehead furrowed mightily in the exertion of remembering, but there seemed nothing to recall.
 

“There was an argument?” I persisted.

She looked at me then and laughed.
 
“There was…always an argument with Father.”

 
“Tell me,” I said.

We sat huddled together while she gave me a halting account of her upbringing, her father’s need to control her, to control everyone including her mother, who never seemed to mind so much and did mostly as she was told.
 
That Sherry herself could not.
 
How she had needed to prove herself to the world. And so she did.
 
Sherry spoke eloquently but simply, stuttering over a word here and there, but able to speak fluently from her heart.
 
Somewhere in this broken body a real person still lived.

“Did he ever hurt you?” I asked when she was done.

“My father?” Sherry asked, a bitter smile on her face.
 
“Not fis…fis….physically,” she stammered.
 
“But in words.
 
Many times with words.”
 

Just then I heard footsteps behind me.
 
I turned around to see Henry Jackman, an irritated look on his face.
 

“What were you two talking about?” Jackman asked.

I really didn’t want to stand here, listening to the whole thing all over again. Besides, now that Henry was here, I could think of something I’d much rather be doing. “I guess I’ll be going,” I said, making my way to the door.

“No! Don’t go,” he shouted, running after me.
 
“Tell me about the investigation.”

“No new leads,” I said.
 
“By the way, I heard about the break-in.”

Henry hissed, “You heard about that?”

“I know everything,” I told him, smiling.
 
I didn’t, of course, but if a suspect wants to think that about me, far be it for me to disabuse him of the notion.

I could see him sweat.
 
“Did they find the Oxycontin?” Jackman whispered.

“Nope,” I told him.
 

“What break-in?” Sherry asked from across the room.

“Oh, didn’t I tellya?” Henry called back.
 
“There was this break-in at the pharmacy.”

I was out of there.
 
“Nice talking with you, Sherry,” I said, and disappeared out the door, down the hallway and across the parking lot.
 
I sat in my car for a few minutes before I decided definitively what I was about to do.
 
I had signed out the car, and I had to return it to the precinct.
 
But perhaps I could make one more stop before I handed it back.

I checked my tote for the search warrant I’d received two days ago, and there it was: signed and stamped by a federal magistrate, authorizing me to search the apartment of Henry Jackman for drugs, legal or illegal.
 
I guessed that at night I could get back to the
Upper West Side
in twenty minutes.
 
Figuring Henry would stay with Sherry an hour and then spend another forty minutes on the subway going home, I should have more than an hour to get into his apartment, search all his hiding places and be out and gone.
 
Easy.

I cruised down the Cross Bronx in the dark, rush hour traffic long gone, and any cars that remained headed in the opposite direction.
 
I pulled in front of Henry’s apartment building within eighteen minutes.
 
I didn’t bother trying to find a parking space.
 
There never were any.
 
Alternate parking restrictions forced people to move their car from one side of the street to the other on alternate days. For instance
no parking from 9AM - 10:30AM Mon & Thurs. means you must move your car no later than 9AM on those days.
 
What most people do is to idle down the street, double-parked, waiting for the street-sweeping truck to come through, and then scoot back into your own or someone else’s intended space before they realized you were there. Of course idling any longer than three minutes in a double-parked position is strictly illegal.
 
And, of course, scooting into someone else’s spot would get you a glare with a middle finger stuck high into the air; occasionally a threat gesture, with or without profanities.