CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) (7 page)

T
HIRTEEN

I
got back outside in time to see Mrs. Wyckoff drive up in a late-model Lincoln. Bobby was already there, watching as the paramedics loaded Howe’s draped body through the ambulance doors.

Bobby looked terrible. His face was gray and drawn, his eyes
sunken. He leaned on a cane. I hadn’t seen him use the cane in over a year.

“Hey, kid,” he said quietly as I came up next to him.

“Hi,” I said. “You okay?”

“Feel like shit.” He nodded toward the ambulance. “You get a look at him?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what Mike looked like, too.”

I lit a cigarette. The ambulance backed out of the gate with insistent beeps.

“I talked to Turner,” I told Bobby. “He’s over there in the patrol car. And Morales; he’s still at his post.”

“And they didn’t see a damn thing. Right?”

“That’s what they say.”

“What was Howe doing outside? Either of them got any idea?”

“Turner says he went to make a phone call. Morales says he went out for a sandwich.”

“A sandwich? Around here in the middle of the night?”

“A phone call? In the parking lot?”

Bobby scowled. “I guess I better talk to them.”

“Bobby, tell me something first. Do your guys wear beepers?”

“Beepers? No. Sometimes radios, if there’s no phone around, but mostly not. Why?”

“Maybe nothing. But Howe was wearing one.”

I wanted to tell him Turner’s whole story, but that would have to wait. Homing in on us, wrapped in a beige trenchcoat, wearing a beige-and-green silk scarf to hold her piled hair against the wind, was Mrs. Wyckoff.

Her eyes were small slits in her stark-white face, her jaw clenched so tight I could see the white line of her jawbone running up to her ear. She came on with her head down and shoulders forward, like a fighter looking for an opening. I pitched my cigarette away.

“Mr. Moran!” Mrs. Wyckoff’s bark was thrown at us by the wind. “What’s going on here? How could this possibly happen?”

“I wish I knew,” Bobby said, in flat tones.

She jammed to a halt, her body quivering as though she were trying to keep herself from plowing right through us. “What sort of security firm are you? My God! You expect me to tell people they’re
safe here when you can’t even keep your guards safe? You’re useless! Worse than useless! I should have let you go when—” She stopped suddenly. She swallowed, with effort; maybe she was swallowing words she really wanted to say.

The corner of the parking lot went black like a closed film set as the technicians turned off the lights, began packing up.

Mrs. Wyckoff breathed in deeply. Her body straightened and her head tilted back. She resumed the posture I’d seen that afternoon, the one where she looked down her nose.

“Well, that’s as may be,” she said. “I’m letting you go now. I’ll be calling another firm in the morning. As soon as they’re ready to start, I want your guards off this property.”

Since he’d first seen her coming, Bobby’s eyes hadn’t left her face. He didn’t answer her now, but he didn’t look away either.

She flushed, as though silence was the one answer she hadn’t been prepared for. “Really, Mr. Moran, this situation is unacceptable!” she sputtered.

“Mrs. Wyckoff, I don’t think much of it either.” Bobby held her eyes a moment longer. Then he turned, and, leaning on the cane, walked slowly toward the patrol car where Turner still sat.

The Crime Scene wagon rolled into the lot. Lights clanked and electrical cords thudded as the technicians loaded it. Mrs. Wyckoff slipped a sidelong look at me. In a defensive tone she said, “I suppose you’re thinking I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly to an old man.”

“He’s sixty-one,” I answered. “And you have no idea what I’m thinking.”

She flushed again, a deep crimson. Narrowing her eyes, she asked me, “Just who are you?”

“Smith. I work for Mr. Moran.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “Why are you here?”

“Mr. Moran asked me to come help handle this.”

“There are men who’ve worked here a good deal longer than you. I would have thought one of them would have been a more appropriate choice.”

“Since you just fired this firm, what difference does it make to you how Mr. Moran runs it?”
Oh, shut up
, I told myself angrily. You’re just what Bobby needs now, a big-mouthed idiot to completely alienate the client.

Mrs. Wyckoff seemed to agree with that thought. She stared at
me a moment longer, then dug her hands into her coat pockets, spun and stalked away.

It didn’t seem to be my night for making friends, so I thought I might as well have another shot at Lindfors.

He was leaning on a car drinking coffee from a cardboard cup. Two other full cups and two half-full sat in a box on the hood; a dozen or so empties were being pushed around the parking lot by the wind.

Lindfors’s hard eyes followed my approach. He said nothing as I leaned next to him on the car, but he nodded his head in the direction of the coffee box.

“Sure?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Taxpayers won’t mind.”

“Thanks.” I peeled the plastic lid off a cup. The coffee was only lukewarm, smelled and tasted burnt, but it was coffee.

Lindfors’s eyes, from close up, were bloodshot, and he squinted as though even the four a.m. darkness hurt. He kept his gaze on Robinson, whose shoulders sagged as he stood across the parking lot talking to Mrs. Wyckoff. Sipping coffee, Lindfors said, “You’re gonna ask me if he was shot.”

I watched Mrs. Wyckoff wave her arms like a bird threatening to peck out Robinson’s eyes. “Was he?”

Lindfors drained his cup, crumpled it in his fist. He tossed it in a high arc over the fence. I heard it bounce on the sidewalk on the other side.

“Maybe.”

“Oh, Christ, Lindfors, give it a rest. We’re after the same thing, you and I.”

Lindfors pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyes. “Ah, shit. I got a headache the size of New Jersey, and a fucking P.I. preaching to me. The problem I got is, which is worse?”

I straightened up from the car. “Thanks for the coffee.” I started to walk away.

“Smith!”

I turned.

“In the foot. But not with his own gun.”

“I didn’t know he was wearing one.”

“In his back.” Lindfors pressed his hand to the small of his own back. “They missed it.”

Behind Lindfors, on the street, one of the patrol cars pulled away. The excitement here was winding down.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

“What do I think? I think they were so fucked up and stupid they forgot the rules.”

“That means it wasn’t LeMoyne personally?”

Lindfors grinned nastily. He held up an invisible something between thumb and forefinger. “This is LeMoyne.” He mimed cracking an egg, dropping it in a pan. He made a sizzling noise in his teeth. “This is LeMoyne on drugs. Any questions?”

I looked at the hard glint in his eye, at his scornful grin. “If I have any,” I said, “I’ll know where to call.”

Bobby was working his way out of the patrol car when I walked over. Turner still sat pressed against the door on the other side. I put a hand under Bobby’s arm; he let me help him stand.

We walked a few paces from the car. The wind was bullying the paper birches, not letting them rest, though their branches drooped wearily. I asked, “How is he?”

“He’s a twenty-two-year-old kid who’s thinking he could’ve been dead two hours already.”

I looked over at Turner, back to Bobby. “How are you?”

Lips pressed tight, he shook his head impatiently, waved away the question without giving it an answer.

All right, then. “What do you think of Turner’s story?”

Bobby glanced over his shoulder into the car. “I think it’s true.”

“So do I. Can I ask him something else?”

“It’s your investigation, kid. Ask him whatever you want.”

“Bobby …” I paused, thinking of Howe, who he might have been; Mike, what he might have been doing. “Bobby, are you still sure you want an investigation?”

“Why the hell not? Because we’ve been fired? So what?”

“Lindfors thinks there’s nothing to investigate. He thinks it’s the Cobras, doing what they do.”

“You believe that?”

“It could be true.”

“Do you believe it, kid?”

“I don’t know.”

Bobby looked down at the ground, whacked at a stone with his cane. “Shit, kid. Maybe that bitch is right. Maybe I’m fucking useless. But Mike didn’t know that and Howe didn’t know that. I let those guys down, kid. I can’t live with that.”

“Jesus, Bobby!”

Turner, in the car, looked up; Lindfors swiveled his head in our direction. I lowered my voice. “What the hell do you think would be different if you could walk right? You’ve had guys working night shifts for years, and God knows you’ve had guys in trouble before. Whatever happened to Mike and Howe didn’t happen because you had a stroke.”

His eyes flared. He seemed about to say something, but he didn’t. With a jerky motion he turned his back on me, started across the lot. I stood for a moment, then loped after him, grabbed his arm.

“Bobby, wait.”

He stopped, but he didn’t look at me.

“I don’t know what happened out here,” I said. “My brain says Lindfors may be right and my gut says he’s wrong. But whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault.”

Bobby’s voice was harsh and low. “I owe those guys, kid. I owe them and I can’t pay by myself.”

“You don’t have to.”

He turned to face me. “You’re still with me?”

“Oh, Christ, Bobby, of course I’m with you. But I’m not going to start watching what I say to you because of that goddamn shillelagh you’re leaning on.”

Bobby looked down at the cane, then up at me again. “That’s good. Because if you ever did, I’d brain you with it.”

We grinned at each other in the wind, in the parking lot, in the middle of the night.

And about the cash in Howe’s locker and the gun in his belt, I said nothing.

F
OURTEEN

I
n the Home’s dim corridors the silence was as thick as a blanket, but not as comforting. Behind the security desk I zipped my jacket against the chill that comes from exhaustion, not weather. I shifted in my chair, looking for a position uncomfortable enough to help me stay awake. I couldn’t find one.

There was a cop out front and a cop out back, Robinson’s way of placating Mrs. Wyckoff and getting out of here. Bobby had intended to finish Howe’s shift himself, but I’d talked him into letting me do it. I’d told him the three hours’ sleep I’d get if I went home now and came back at eight would be worse than none at all. That would have been true when I was younger; but I’d been in this hushed, dim hall for half an hour now and the idea of any sleep, even ten minutes’ worth, was beginning to have the appeal of a watery mirage in Death Valley.

As I thought about mirages one formed at the limit of my vision, in the shadows down the hall. I squinted, blinked. Human-shaped, draped in pale cloth, it crept toward me with halting, soundless steps. Just beyond the small circle of light cast by the desk lamp it stopped, peered at me with its chin thrust forward.

“It’s you,” it whispered.

“Mrs. Goldstein?” My voice was surprisingly loud.

Ida Goldstein, in a light-blue robe and crocheted slippers, put her finger to her mouth. “Shh!”

I stood, asked softly, “Mrs. Goldstein, what are you doing down here?”

“That’s a stupid question,” she snapped in a stage whisper. “Who could sleep with all this commotion?”

“The commotion’s over,” I said. “It’s been quiet for half an hour.”

“Well, of course. I had to wait until it was quiet or some snooty
nurse would have sent me back to my room like a bad little girl. What are you doing here?”

“I work here.”

“You work here during the day. Don’t patronize me.”

“I didn’t mean to.” I thought about what to say to her. “I’ve had to take over this shift, just tonight.”

“Something else terrible has happened, hasn’t it?” Her sharp blue eyes drilled into mine. “Someone else is dead.”

I didn’t answer right away. I saw her jaw tighten and thrust upward again, and I saw fear behind her eyes.

“Yes,” I said. “The night supervisor. Henry Howe.”

Her chin quavered, but otherwise she didn’t move. “Was it—was it like the other time? In the garden?”

“It was like the other time. But not in the garden. Out back, in the parking lot.”

“Did the police wake the people on that side? Did anyone hear the argument?”

“The police will be back in the morning to talk to the residents. There probably wasn’t an argument.”

“Why wouldn’t there have been?”

“I—” I wasn’t sure how to tell her what I wanted to. “Mrs. Goldstein, this wasn’t the kind of thing where people who know each other argue and one loses control and attacks the other. It was a different kind of crime. I know it seems more frightening, but—”

“You said it was like the other time.”

“It was.”

“The other time there was an argument.”

I stopped, my clumsy reassurances unfinished. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying there was an argument,” she answered impatiently. “It woke me up. When I came down for my cocoa I asked Mr. Howe—” Her already pale face paled further. “Oh, dear. Poor Mr. Howe …” She pulled her bathrobe closer, turned away from me.

I went around the desk, touched her bony shoulders. “Mrs. Goldstein—”

“Oh, call me Ida, if you’re going to put your hands all over me.”

“Ida. Sit down.” I pulled the chair close. She clung to my arm
as she lowered herself. I perched on the edge of the desk. “Ida, tell me about the argument.”

“You said there wasn’t one.”

“The other time.”

She gave me a sly sideways look. “Maybe there wasn’t one the other time either.”

“Ida, please. This may be important.”

“That’s what I thought, but everyone else thought it was just Ida being a busybody.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“Mr. Howe,” she said. “The Boss Lady. And that crude police detective, the one who drinks.”

“Hank Lindfors?” I described him.

“Yes, that’s him.”

“And the Boss Lady, that’s Mrs. Wyckoff?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me what you told them.”

“I told them I heard an argument outside in the garden. It woke me. Well, everything wakes me. That’s why they moved my room, because it was so noisy on the street side of the building.”

“Yes, you told me about that.” I tried to curb my impatience. “Tell me about the argument. When was it?”

“I
was
telling you, if you’d stop interrupting. It was just after three.”

Mike Downey had died sometime between three and four.

“How do you know?”

“I can still read a … a … I can tell time!” She blew out an exasperated sigh. “I tried to get back to sleep, but I couldn’t, so I came down for a cup of cocoa. I always check the time first, because when there are people around it’s risky. Closer to morning, I wouldn’t have come.”

“Risky?”

“If they think you’re wandering—” she raised and fluttered her hands when she said this, in a minstrel-show evocation of fright—“they lock your room at night.”

“They lock you in?”

She looked at me, her jaw set, the fear in her eyes almost hidden but not gone. “I have some advice for you,” she said. “Don’t get old.”

I had no answer to that. I watched the pattern on the carpet as it disappeared beyond the light.

She cleared her throat. “I didn’t hear the words.”

“Sorry?” I pulled my eyes back to meet hers.

“The argument. It was two men, I think, but I couldn’t hear the words.”

“Did you recognize the voices?”

“Not really. I thought one of them was … the boy who was killed….”

“Mike?”

She nodded. “I thought that when I heard them, but maybe that’s only because I expected him to be in the garden.”

“And the other?”

“It wasn’t very loud. It could have been anybody.”

“And you told the police about this?”

“I said I did.”

I rubbed my chin, thinking. I reached for a cigarette, to help; then, remembering where I was, I started to put it back.

“Oh, smoke the stupid thing,” Ida ordered. “It won’t bother me. I gave it up before you were born. Besides, I’m going to get my cocoa.” With an ungraceful motion she hoisted herself out of the chair.

I watched her move off slowly down the hall. I realized she wasn’t so much lifting her feet as sliding them along the carpet. I wondered if a cane or a walker would help her; but as I wondered I also knew that, until the last possible moment, Ida Goldstein wouldn’t use one.

I did smoke the cigarette, fashioning an ashtray out of a sheet of paper from the desk. I drank in the smoke, thinking about Mike Downey, and Henry Howe, and whether the brutal sounds of bravado and fear could be classified as an argument.

A few minutes after the cigarette was gone Ida Goldstein came shuffling out of the kitchen door at the far end of the hall. Very carefully, in both hands, she gripped a tray, and on it two cups rattled in their saucers. I hurried down the hall and took the tray from her.

“Well, that’s good,” she said with relief. “I didn’t make you cocoa. I made you coffee.”

“I didn’t expect you to make me anything.”

“Don’t you want it?”

“Desperately. But I don’t think you’re supposed to be making me coffee at four in the morning.”

“Actually I’m not supposed to be in the kitchen at all and you were very bad to let me go there.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” She sat herself on the chair again, sipped at her cocoa. She didn’t look at me.

I picked up the coffee cup. Coffee had slopped out over the side; the bottom of the cup was wet. I said, “Ida, are you all right? There are police outside, and the doors are locked. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“I’m afraid,” she said, in a voice so low I had trouble hearing her. “But that’s not why.” She cradled her cup in her lap, looked into the darkness that led to the glass entrance doors. Outside, in the garden, the black forms of branches swayed with the wind, obscuring, revealing, obscuring the streetlights that glowed beyond the garden wall.

“Why then?”

“Because,” she said, with an angry quaver to her voice, “because I’ve been talking to you for half an hour and I still can’t remember your name.”

Into the endless, empty silence I said, “Bill. Bill Smith. It’s an easy name to forget.”

“No, it’s not! Damn you—!” She clinked her cup onto the tray, struggled to her feet. “I’m going back to bed.” Without another word, she started jerkily down the corridor she had come from.

“Mrs. Goldstein?” I called. “Ida?”

She stopped, half turned. “What do you want?”

“Thank you. For the coffee.”

She didn’t look at me, but after a moment she said gruffly, “You’re welcome. Good night.” I watched as she shuffled down the corridor, past the elevator, to the stairwell door at the far end. It must be a long climb, I thought, up two flights, at four in the morning. The elevator would have been easier, though risky: someone might hear it.

But I would have bet that wasn’t why Ida didn’t use it.