Cuts Through Bone (10 page)

“No, I couldn't. And really I still shouldn't. This guy's in the wind, and maybe he ain't feeling like talking. I'm looking for him, and I don't need cops getting in my way.”

Tommy set off a long string of fireworks, and Guthrie dialed down the volume on the phone. “He comes by that mouth honest,” he said to Vasquez. “His mother talked just like that. I think it's an Ohio thing.”

When the phone grew quiet, he turned it up again. “Here's the rest of what's going on. The witness spooked before he could finger anyone. I have to get a follow-up interview—and he don't like cops. His handle is ‘Ghost Eddy,' and he seems to be mostly around Washington Heights and Morningside. They can check that, but otherwise they need to stay away. He ain't no drunk loser, Tommy. He's more like David Morgenfeld, you remember?”

“Holds his liquor. I got it.”

“You got all that?”

Grumbling, Tommy Johnson repeated, and Guthrie corrected. “And you don't know if this vagrant saw Olsen?”

“Nope,” Guthrie replied. “That brings me to my other problem, now that we've done a little something about yours. Olsen's in jail on the Bowman murder, but I'm pretty sure—”

“I hope you're not about to ask me for anything on the Barbie dolls,” Tommy interjected.

“You could at least give me time to come out and say it.”

“Wasting your breath.”

“Boy, when I get something else to give you, you gotta give me that stuff.”

“If this works,” the young man said after a pause. “If I'm still getting walked on, you're getting crap.”

The little detective frowned when he cut off the phone. “Major Case is laying on those files real hard,” he said. “I guess we need to pull what we can pull from the newspapers.”

*   *   *

Another search of the NYPD reports didn't reveal additional clues. The Garment District had closed down around them and become silent while they studied. Guthrie's cell phone chattered as he was gathering his things to leave. Black-haired John was waiting on 153rd Street, near the cemetery. The phone call lasted only a few seconds—long enough for the vagrant to give his location—and then ended abruptly. The little detective explained that they would have to meet him face-to-face. Black-haired John was afraid of telephones. Guthrie had seen him use one once, and he'd held it arm's length while shouting at it.

Vasquez drove. The traffic was light in the late afternoon, but the sky was cooling as slowly as a pan left carelessly on a stove. Along the way, Guthrie explained that John liked to keep his family close to the river, so he didn't often go below 130th Street. Vasquez turned on 153rd and cruised along the cemetery. Black-haired John slid from an alley alongside a bodega and turned to pull them back the other way. Vasquez followed him until he walked into an abandoned lot off St. Nicholas, and she parked. They climbed from the old blue Ford and cut across the lot behind him.

A couple of kids watched Guthrie and Vasquez suspiciously as they followed John into an alley on the far side of the lot. The alley was suddenly dark, long with winds and bends from jutting redbrick buildings on each side, which hid everything but a narrow slice of hot sky far above. Farther down the alley, they came to an open space that once had been a porch for one of the old buildings, long since enclosed from an ancient street. The door onto the porch, wrapped behind an iron railing, seemed painted shut. The sounds of the street were far away and faint. More kids lurked down the far side of the alley. On the porch, Cindy's slender form was wrapped around a huddled youngster.

Black-haired John slowed and began orbiting a crusted drain, a bit off center in the hidden space. “Ghost Eddy don't want to be found,” he said.

“But you found him,” Guthrie said.

John nodded. “He don't want to be found,” he said again. “Ghost Eddy ain't friendly.” He waved toward Cindy, shoulder-high above them on the porch. “She wants to hurt him now.”

“Then maybe you all better stay away from him,” Guthrie said.

The drifter relaxed but didn't stop moving. “I know,” he said. “He woulda killed Danny. That's what he aimed to do. He aimed to teach us a lesson about following.”

“What happened?”

“Like this,” the drifter said, his orbit slowing a bit as he recounted. “Closer to the park, there's a drunk called Stoop-O, and he would cling like a crumb to Ghost Eddy's whiskers. I thought that out and Cindy agreed that been a good place to start. There's an old sandwich shop on One Thirty-eighth called Villa's. Stoop-O usually starts out there, digging for not good enough—leftovers, huh? Not good enough to eat. That's what's in the trash there. The river flows by the cans and drops off not good enough.

“So we went down early. The kids did a look-see, like they were searching for cops, and sure enough found Stoop-O. We laid on him and didn't say because—well, we could have given him an ice cream, even though they were all melted and he woulda had to drink it, but he's a craphead and he don't never share with nobody except himself—and so we laid and didn't say. One of the boys thought we should clean the cans in front of him, but I said he would just move along and we wanted to watch him. Cindy said so, too. We watched Stoop-O.

“After he filled his fat belly, he moved on. He was belching and rubbing his mouth like it was set for wine. That meant he was going to steal or bully, on account that Stoop-O is too lazy to bag cans. That be part of why he wants to sit beside Ghost Eddy, because he always has whatever he wants, even good enough if he wants, or so the story goes.” The drifter frowned. “I didn't see until now, but Ghost Eddy must've liked him until earlier, because he never could've bullied Ghost Eddy for no wine.”

Vasquez crossed her arms and started to say something, but Guthrie gestured for her to be quiet. The light was failing fast, and there was no streetlight in the alley. At full night, the alley would be almost pitch-dark. Black-haired John didn't notice. His orbit, and his story, rambled on.

“And we trailed Stoop-O. He didn't see nothing. He gets grabbed all the time because he can't see cops coming. I say he's too lazy to look. He moved along like he had something in mind, not like he was just going round somewhere to check, but knows it's there and where, and we follow him right into the trap because we're looking at him. How stupid is Black-haired John? So stupid he has to watch what anybody could see—Stoop-O—instead of watching for Ghost Eddy.” The drifter's voice edged up and crested at an angry shout. Spittle flew from his mouth. His orbit reversed, then quickened.

“Down by the station on One Fifty-first, that's where he went. Ghost Eddy done gone mole, spooked before he knew we was looking. That's how smart Ghost Eddy is—too smart for Black-haired John. He seen Stoop-O coming. He seen us trailing Stoop-O. Ghost Eddy seen it all. Can't give him no ice cream to make it better!

“But anyway, we ain't knowed.” The drifter's voice settled, and his feet slowed again. “Cindy knowed something was queer when Stoop-O stopped by that old lot with the manhole on One Fifty-first, looking round like his momma should be by, and puzzled. Then we heard Danny screaming like the devil had him. He was gone so quick … by me one moment, then down the street screaming the next, as if the wind gusted him there.”

In the darkness, Cindy stood and peered down at them from the railing surrounding the old porch. On quiet feet, she slipped down the stairs. Her pale shirt was speckled with dark droplets. Dark puddles on the cloth trailed small, dark handprints on her body like a mockery of walking by someone with dirty hands.

“Then we forgot all about Stoop-O,” Black-haired John continued. “You can recognize a scream, you know, if it's someone's voice familiar, near to you. So we all knowed it was Danny and we ran down the street—and damn Stoop-O anyway. Many's a night you can't avoid seeing him, as well he might be following you, as constant as the moon. We ran, and there's another lot down that way, where they's fixing something, or building on it. Danny's hanging high on the wall. He's screaming still, but softer. I climb up the scaffold there and catch him, 'cause he couldn't pull up on the bricks, nor jump back to reach the scaffold.

“He clung so desperate, he wouldn't let go even after I had him. I had to wrench him loose, and he left his nails on the bricks. Ghost Eddy had jumped out and got him. He kept Danny quiet and carried him off. When he held him out to the bricks, he told him catch on or get dropped, no matter which. Then he told him to hang on till we was close enough to see the drop, and laughed.” Black-haired John's orbit stopped for a moment, and he looked directly at Vasquez for the first time. The alley was dark, and all of them were only dim shapes. Then he started moving again.

“Once we had Danny safe, some of the boys remembered Stoop-O. They went back and found him. He was stretched out like an old bottle, top missing. Back when I drank, that was the sorriest sight I could come upon. His face was touched up, and a good number of his teeth was gone. Once we was standing over him, Ghost Eddy started laughing out in the dark. He called out to me, called me a loser. Told me don't try looking for him in
his
city.”

Cindy took something from her pocket and handed it to him. The drifter held it out to Guthrie: a cell phone and some money. “We can't look for him no more,” he said gently, “and we don't feel right about it.”

Guthrie grunted and took some more bills from his own pocket. He pressed them atop the phone and other money. “Stay away from Ghost Eddy, Black-haired John,” he said. “But you still need to call me when you need something.”

“I guess,” the drifter said, taking back the handful.

“Can I take Danny to a doctor?” Guthrie asked.

Cindy shook her head. “Done asked him,” she whispered. “He ain't want to. Wants to be tough.” John nodded in agreement.

The city was tough. It made the kids want to be tough. After Guthrie and Vasquez left the alley, noise and light rushed in to surround them. Black-haired John had a refuge in the alley, like an island away from the city, an island on the city's island. The kids watched them suspiciously as they walked back across the lot to 153rd Street. They were watching for Ghost Eddy now. The gray-bearded drifter wouldn't catch another.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

“This morning I woke up and realized I was chasing the wrong rabbit,” Guthrie said after Vasquez closed the passenger door of the Ford.

The young Puerto Rican answered with a sleepy grunt and slid her rolled-up gun belt and windbreaker onto the floorboard. She added cream and sugar to a cup of coffee waiting in the console.

“The Bowman file is thin because Olsen had a registered gun,” he continued. “Once NYPD put him with her as the boyfriend and looked into his alibi, the gun jumped out. That was the end of the Bowman investigation—about as quick as it began.” Guthrie turned onto Clinton Street. His window was cracked for a hiss of air that included a faint whiff of car exhaust from the workingmen pouring from the Lower East Side.

“Wrong rabbit,” Guthrie repeated. “That ain't the one NYPD started with, and it ain't the one they're hunting now. Bowman started out as a Jane Doe—a Barbie doll—and that's who NYPD's hunting now. Monica got what they threw in a file and labeled Bowman, but that wasn't all they were working.”

Vasquez grunted again, drinking coffee.

“Burn yourself?” The little detective smiled as she gave him a sharp look. “Anyway, we gotta look at where NYPD found the gun. Someone used it. We gotta pick it up.”

“We're not going to look at the students?” she asked.

The little man turned onto Canal Street. The sidewalks were crowded with people hustling in the soft morning light. Coming from the East Side, they were mostly Spanish, splashed with colors brighter than the gray and brown stones of the city. A bit of green or yellow, maybe some red, they were as necessary as an outthrust chin and a swagger.

“Sure,” he said. “Just not yet. They ain't going nowhere.”

Vasquez nodded. The night before, that part had seemed simple. Somebody had killed Camille Bowman. The college students had a reason to do it—motive. A bunch of half-grown men could push one another to do anything. She had seen it with her own eyes too many times. They would jump from fire escapes into trash cans, or whatever. One of them would brag about the killing, or one of them would feel bad and give the others up. That was barrio kids; rich kids wouldn't hold air any better. Someone would crack as soon as fingers began pointing. It was that simple, until she thought about the gun.

“Whichever muchacho thought to get his gun was a genius,” she muttered.

“Unless it was Olsen,” Guthrie rejoined.

She shook her head, then reached to the floorboard for her gun belt. She strapped up, tucking her Smith & Wesson into the kidney holster, and then shrugged into the windbreaker she used to hide it. While she rummaged in the backseat for the doughnuts, he drove into Greenwich Village. The town houses were tidy, the streets quiet. Pedestrians moved quickly, faces frozen and teeth clenched, disappearing into cars and taxis.

Guthrie shot into a parking place south of Washington Square, a beat ahead of a balding man in spectacles driving a Mercedes. The other driver honked in frustration, then roared away. “I hate this car,” Guthrie said. “No, I hate driving in this city.” He grinned when Vasquez shot him a look.

“You got powdered sugar on your chin,” he said before handing her the keys to the Ford. “Wasserman said I was fixed on the notion of having a car. He said it showed how Middle America I was. He didn't mean middle class. He meant Midwest or anyplace outside the city. Wasserman always walked or rode the trains, but every once in a while he took a taxi.”

“Wasserman?”