Dear Old Dead (24 page)

Now it was fifteen minutes after twelve noon on Friday, and Ida had no one she wanted to go to lunch with. It had been a quiet morning. She had used her unusual free time to get her paperwork done and to look over the notes for her pharmacology class. Ida had something close to an eidetic memory. She could repeat her own notes back to herself verbatim, even without studying. Her mind was still on that scene in the lawyers’ offices yesterday, with Victor in shock and Martha brewing steam and vitriol. She got up and walked to the door of the nurses’ station and looked out. She went far to the other end of the hall, walking into what seemed to be the linen closet. She told herself she wasn’t getting enough sleep and searched around in the pocket of her smock for her cough drops. Michael was in his office, free for once, but Ida didn’t have anything to talk to him about. There was nobody else around.

Ida found her cough drops, popped one into her mouth, and made up her mind. There was a phone at the station desk. Ida picked it up, dialed the east building and asked for Martha. She didn’t say it was Ida calling because Martha might refuse to answer, just the way she had refused to answer Grandfather on the night he died. Ida said she was Augie.

“Sister?” Martha asked, coming immediately on the line.

“It’s not Sister Augustine,” Ida said, “it’s me. I want you to meet me in the cafeteria right away.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Martha said.

“I’ve got plenty to say to you,” Ida told her. “Stop acting like a jerk. Come on downstairs.”

“Why should I come downstairs? Why should I talk to you at all? You knew all about it.”

“Yes, all right. I knew all about it. That’s not the point.”

“It’s the point to me.” Martha was working herself into a grand passion. “You let Victor and me make absolute fools out of ourselves. Victor. Your own brother.”

“My own brother is an ass,” Ida said impatiently. “Will you listen to reason for once? It doesn’t matter what Grandfather intended to do. He didn’t get around to doing it.”

“He might have. And Victor and I were having meetings with you, getting together to formulate strategy, intending to head him off at the pass. And you never had any interest in heading him off at the pass. You were going to pick up eight hundred million dollars and—and laugh at us.”

“Maybe I would have and maybe I wouldn’t have. Can’t you understand that that isn’t what we have to be worried about now?”

“No.”

“This is just what the police want, you know, Martha. The police and the Cardinal and that Demarkian. They want us fighting with each other. They want us divided.”

“They don’t care about us at all,” Martha said. “They think Michael did it.”

“Maybe they did before Rosalie died, but they don’t now. And after all, Martha, I’m not the one that silly kid with the sign saw going into Michael’s first-floor office just before Grandfather died.”

“What?” Martha said.

There was a chair pulled up against the counter farther along toward the door. Ida got it over to where she was standing and sat down on it. She had heard the panic in Martha’s voice. It had made her feel instantaneously better. Panic was exactly what she needed.

“What are you implying?” Martha asked now. “I was nowhere near that examining room on the night Grandfather died.”

“He says you were,” Ida told Martha. “Robbie Yagger. That’s his name. The one who carries the sign about how abortion is the same as the Holocaust. I heard him tell Gregor Demarkian.”

“Robbie Yagger is a loon,” Martha said indignantly. “And you couldn’t have overheard him tell Gregor Demarkian anything. I saw him the day he talked to Gregor Demarkian in the cafeteria. You weren’t anywhere around.”

“It wasn’t in the cafeteria. It was outside on the sidewalk. They were just standing there talking.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I don’t care who told who what,” Martha said. “The only time I was in the west building that whole night was when Victor and I went to the cafeteria. And then later I was there with you.”

“If you came in and out by the front door the way you are supposed to, you probably went right by Michael’s examining room. I’m not denying that you didn’t go in there, Martha, I’m just telling you what Robbie Yagger said. And I’m trying to make you understand how it’s going to sound.”

“Why should I care?”

“Martha, for God’s sake. Of course you have to care. We all have to care. We’re in the middle of a murder investigation.”

“You don’t have to care, do you?” Martha said. “You’re the one who never would have done it. Assuming you can prove you knew it was you Grandfather was going to change his will in favor of, instead of Rosalie.”

Ida looked down at her nails. They were without polish, bitten to the quick. “I have a letter,” she said.

“From Grandfather?”

“Yes.”

“Grandfather never wrote letters.”

“Well, he wrote this one to me. Martha, for God’s sake. Will you please meet me in the cafeteria? For one thing, I’m starving. For another, we have to talk.”

Out in the hallway there were footsteps, the brisk footsteps of a nurse, the halting ones of a patient coming in off the street. Ida looked at the clock and tapped her foot. If a real emergency exploded around this place, she would never get her lunch.

“Martha?”

“All right,” Martha said. “I’ll meet you downstairs. For a minute.”

“For as long as it takes. Don’t be stupid, Martha. Hurry up before somebody comes along and wants you to do something.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

There was a click in Ida’s ear, sharp, too sharp. She hung up and stared at the phone. Maybe she had overplayed her hand. Martha was so impossible. Maybe she shouldn’t have made it sound so—definite—about what Robbie Yagger had said to Gregor Demarkian. If she were Martha and she were the murderer and she’d just heard something like that, she’d get Robbie Yagger into a safe place and do him in.

Ida got off the chair she had been sitting on, stuffed another cough drop into her mouth, and went out into the corridor again. The patient she had heard was sitting at Admitting, looking morose. He was an ancient man in tattered clothes who looked as if he hadn’t had a coherent thought in years. Ida didn’t understand Michael Pride. Why did he want to save these people? What was left in them worth saving?

She went to the back of the hall and down the stairs to the cafeteria.

O
UTSIDE, AT EXACTLY ONE O’CLOCK
, Robbie Yagger found himself getting tired. No, he was worse than tired. He was confused. He was confused with a confusion so violent and so lawless, it was as unlike his usual state of mental chaos as a full-grown jaguar was like a domestic feline kitten. Back at the Holly Hill Christian Fellowship, they had warned him not to talk to anybody at the center except to tell them what he wanted them to hear. Back at the Holly Hill Christian Fellowship, they had warned him that talking was dangerous, because the devil could just as easily defeat you as you could defeat the devil. Now he had been defeated, not by the devil, but by a girl, and he didn’t know what to do. He had been carrying his sign all morning, up and down, up and down, just like always. Instead of feeling like a soldier, Robbie felt like an absolute fool. Between six o’clock this morning and now, fewer than a dozen people had gone in and out of the center. Nobody paid attention to him. There had been no traffic on the street. Usually, deadness like that made him frustrated. It made him feel as if he were talking to dead air. Today, he had welcomed the emptiness. His sign looked odd to him. His attitude felt all wrong. He didn’t know what he wanted.

The girl’s name was Shana Malvera, and Robbie supposed he shouldn’t call her a girl. Girls liked to be called women now, especially when they were all grown up, which he was sure Shana was. He didn’t think she was much more grown up than he was, though. He couldn’t be sure. She moved around a lot and talked a lot and wore a lot of jewelry. She had half a dozen charm bracelets on her left arm that made musical silver sounds when she gestured with her arm. Shana was always gesturing with her arms. Shana did not like his sign.

It was hot out here. It had been hot this morning, and it was getting hotter. Robbie could feel the sweat on his forehead and his neck. Walking past the small, square, basement level windows of the center, he could see the reflection of his scuffed shoes and his pants legs that didn’t reach down far enough. He’d bought both new at a discount place in Brooklyn, but the discount didn’t seem to have been worth much. He was falling apart. Why would a girl like Shana Malvera, who could afford to wear all those charm bracelets, want to talk to somebody like him?

Robbie had his jacket with him, just in case. He had a stack of leaflets stuck into one of the pockets, printed up by the Life Project Committee at Holly Hill. These had the picture of a forlorn looking young man on the cover and the words, “FATHER’S DAY IS COMING, BUT HE’S NOT CELEBRATING.” Inside, it told the story of how the young man’s wife had wanted to fulfill herself and didn’t have time for children, so when she got pregnant she had an abortion and didn’t even tell him until afterward. Robbie had cried the first time he had ever heard that story, and he wanted to cry right now just thinking about it, but then the confusion started at the back of his brain and he didn’t know. Shana had told him a whole lot of stories that had made him want to cry, and they were nothing like this one. He didn’t know whom to believe.

Robbie walked wearily up the front steps of the center and looked in. There was nobody around that he could see, although somebody would come out if he went inside. The door had an electric eye that rang a little bell in the back just in case all the nurses were busy. Robbie felt in the pocket of his pants and came up with fifty cents. That was just enough money for a cup of coffee in the cafeteria. If he went to the cafeteria, Shana might be there.

Down at the end of the hall, a young woman came out of one of the offices or one of the examining rooms—Robbie didn’t know which was which—and hurried toward the staircase at the back. Robbie did a double-take. It was the same young woman he had seen the night Charles van Straadt died, and she was doing now what she had been doing then. She was carrying one of those paper funnels you put in coffee machines. It looked full and sopping wet.

Robbie stepped past the electric eye, heard the bong, and winced. Gregor Demarkian had to be right. There was nothing the least bit strange about a young woman carrying a funnel full of coffee grounds. It was just his imagination that made the scene seem so strange.

H
ECTOR SHEED ATE LONG
lunches, talking all the time in that oddly English accent of his that had nothing to do with anything Gregor had ever known about New York, talking about Michael Pride and the center and the Homicide division and the three children his wife was looking after out in Queens. By the time Hector was finished with three pastrami sandwiches on rolls with Russian dressing, two orders of french fries, two orders of cole slaw, six large garlic pickles, and a piece of chocolate pie, Gregor was getting desperate. How could the man eat like that? Why wasn’t he fat? It hardly seemed fair. But Hector Sheed wasn’t fat. His massiveness was all muscle and bone. His appetite wasn’t accompanied by stupidity, the way it often was in movies and books. Gregor didn’t think Hector noticed what he ate. He just ate.

By the time Hector was finished and ready to release Gregor into the wider world, it was after one o’clock. Hector called the waitress over and asked her to call Gregor a car. “A car” seemed to be the neighborhood euphemism for a gypsy cab.

“Gypsy cabs are supposed to be illegal,” Hector explained, “but without them, half the people in this town couldn’t get where they were going. Never mind the prices.”

“I take it gypsy cabs are cheaper,” Gregor said.

“They run to about half the cost. We’re looking for a Black Dragon Enterprises car. They used to have these great streaks of red fire across their hoods, but it made them too conspicuous. They kept getting picked up. They’ll be here, though. Just give it a minute.”

Gregor gave it a minute. This street was still an interesting place to be. Now it was full of people, by no means all African-American or other minorities. Farther west, Central Park North was 110th Street and 110th Street was Morningside Heights, which meant Columbia University. Gregor saw dozens of young white college students in jeans and T-shirts. He saw dozens of everybody. The young man with the ties who had called out to him when he first got up here had put out a sign. The sign said,

SHOP HERE FOR ALL YOUR FATHER’S DAY NEEDS.

The gypsy cab turned out to be a nondescript Plymouth in gunmetal gray. It looked at least half a century old. Gregor got into it and thanked Hector Sheed for his help.

“Don’t mention it. I’ll see you later. I want to go down to the center this afternoon anyway. I got some things I want to check. You be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“That’s not what they say about you in
People
magazine.”

Gregor didn’t pursue a discussion about
People
magazine. The gypsy cab driver was eager to go. Gypsy cabs didn’t have meters. Payment was what had been agreed on up front. That meant there was no incentive to let the customer sit at the curb talking to his friends. The only way to make any real money was to drop this fare as quickly as possible and get on to the next one.

“As quickly as possible” was the watchword here. Gregor had heard stories about lunatic New York cabbies, careening through the traffic at ninety miles an hour while reciting involved epics on their troubles with the city government, but he had never been the customer of such a cabbie until now. Lunatic was putting it mildly, and ninety miles an hour was an underestimate. They shot onto a main thoroughfare Gregor couldn’t put a name to and went straight uptown. They kept doing crazy loops around lumbering buses and tailgating cyclists. The only good thing about the trip was that it was short. In no time at all, they had reentered the landscape Gregor now associated in his mind with Harlem. They were surrounded by abandoned buildings, empty lots full of rubble, blank windows that looked out on nothing and kept nothing in. The South Bronx was supposed to be worse, but Gregor didn’t see how it could be. The only thing worse would be a neighborhood that had been reduced to stone and ash.