Fresh Kills (16 page)

“Maybe someone in there knew her,” he said, lighting up like a kid expecting to see Santa. He took a step toward the store, and I knew he had to go in and try his luck.

I waited outside; his quest for a sidebar held no interest for me. One thing I was sure of; Amber hadn't confided her plans to a fellow salesgirl. She was a keeper of secrets.

Artie came back out, disappointment written on his freckled face. “They're all new,” he said. “No one remembers Amber.”

We came to the center atrium, which boasted a fountain and two escalators on either side, rising to the mall's second level. We stepped on and were wafted upwards, as sun poured through a skylight onto the tinkling water below. Friendly's was right there; it had a corner location that beckoned shoppers to take a break and try the Wattamelon, an imitation watermelon slice made of raspberry sherbet with a lime sherbet rind and chocolate-chip seeds.

It was an off-time, somewhere between late lunches and early snacks, so the place was pretty empty. A boothful of teenaged girls sat in the front, giggling over large sundaes topped with mountains of whipped cream. A young mother spooned orange sherbet into the eager mouth of a toddler in a stroller, while an older child sat next to her and licked chocolate from his spoon with single-minded concentration.

At the cash register a middle-aged man the color of iced tea perched on a stool and counted receipts. His hair was cropped short, with gray tufts at the ears. His face was pockmarked, like pancakes ready to turn. He wore a brush mustache with more than a hint of gray.

“Are you the manager?” I asked. I hoped Artie would have the sense to stay in the background; I had the feeling this was not a man who wanted to see himself in the media.

“Who's asking?” he replied, not looking up from the receipts. His name tag read “Herman Tolliver.”

I sized him up and decided on the truth. Something about him said he'd resent being jerked around. “I'm a lawyer,” I explained. “I represented the woman they found in the swamp.”

He raised his eyes from the receipts and lifted a single eyebrow. “Go on,” he said.

“Well, I guess I feel—” I looked down at the counter, at the receipts in neat piles.

“—responsible,” came out in a tiny voice I wasn't sure was audible.

I looked up; Herman nodded understandingly. So understandingly I had to blink and grab my lower lip with my teeth.

“Had a nephew,” Herman Tolliver said. “Nice kid. Gave him a job in here, had him cooking in the back. Hoped I could change his ways, get him away from the street trash he was running with. Damned if they didn't find him dead of an overdose, from shit he copped right here in the mall, from some fool down at the Chess King.” His head moved from side to side, sorrow and regret etched in the lines of his moon-pocked face. “Thought I was giving the kid a break; I was only bringing him closer to his death.”

My turn to nod. The fellowship of the responsible. This meeting of the “I was only trying to help” society is now called to order.

“Did you see my client in here Friday night?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Herman said. “She and her husband and the baby came in about eight-thirty, stayed till almost nine. I sure hope they find that baby,” he added.

I wasn't going to touch that one. I could only do this if I didn't think about the baby. “Did you see anyone else with them?”

“Sure. Like I told the cops, first they were alone. Then a man came in and joined them. They all left together.”

“Where was the baby all this time?”

“In a carrier thing. Like a car seat. I remember when I first saw them, I was worried about the baby. People can't relax and enjoy their food if there's a screaming baby in the place. I figured he was bound to wake up and start bawling any minute, but he never did.”

“Did you see them leave?”

“Sure. I took their money, said something nice about the kid. People like it if you talk nice about their babies.”

“Do you still have their receipts? Did the other people order anything?” I was getting eager, sure I was on to something.

“Gave them to the cops.”

Artie decided he'd been quiet long enough. “Do you know who waited on them?”

Tolliver pursed his thin lips and I thought he'd refuse to answer. But finally he said, “Her name is Sonia. She only works nights on account of her mother. Alzheimer's,” he explained. “She lives right near the mall, over in Heartland Village.”

Tolliver gave Artie the address. “She's home all day, comes in here at six, three nights a week. Not tonight, though, so you'll have to catch her at home.”

We thanked him and turned back to the mall, back to the bustling shoppers and the carts full of useless little objects: crystals hanging from black silk cords; neckties with the Three Stooges on the front; rubber stamps and colored ink-pads.

One cart stood twenty feet or so from the entrance to Friendly's. A bored-looking Asian woman of about twenty perched on a stool next to it. Rainbow crystals in different shapes and colors winked at me.

Artie walked straight to the cart and started fingering the hanging pendants.

“You like?” the salesgirl asked in a high, birdlike voice.

“Nice,” Artie replied. Then he dropped his pretense of interest and asked, “Were you here Friday night?”

“When lady with baby here?” she chirped. “Cops all over place, ask everybody.” She deepened her voice and put a frown on her doll-like face to act the part of the police officers. “‘What you see? You see baby?'”

Then she gave an enormous grin and said, “Just like on TV.
NYPD Blue
. Favorite show.”

“So did you see the baby?” Artie persisted. He had his steno pad out; she eyed it with avid interest.

She nodded. “First see woman with baby come out of Friendly's,” she said, gesturing toward the entrance. “One man she with go this way,” she added, pointing in the direction of Sears.

But Josh Greenspan had gone to the entrance at Macy's, so the man who went in the opposite direction had to have been Scott.

“Younger man?” I asked, falling into her habit of omitting articles. Artie gave me a glare, but the cart owner didn't notice the change of interrogators.

“Yeah,” the girl replied, nodding vigorously. “Lady stay with other guy, while blond guy go down escalator.”

I pressed my luck. “Did you see the older man give the woman anything?”

“Someone come to buy,” the crystal seller said with a regretful nod. “I sell bracelet with pink heart. When I look back, man going that way.” She pointed toward Macy's.

It made sense; Josh, following instructions, headed for the Macy's entrance, where he was supposed to take possession of Baby Adam. Scott, planning an ambush at the loading dock, sprinted down the rear escalator to get there first, while Amber, who had already taken Josh's money, went—

“Where did the lady go?” burst out of me. “The one with the baby? Did you see her?”

“Go toward kid place,” the Asian girl said, pointing toward a mall exit to the right of where we stood. It was an entrance that wasn't connected to a large department store, but led straight to the parking lot.

“Kid place?” Artie echoed. He lifted eager eyes from his steno pad; he looked as if he were writing his lead paragraph in his head.

“I show. Mary, you watch cart?” she called out. The plump gray-haired woman at the necktie cart gave a nod. The girl bounced off the high stool and headed toward the exit. There were food places lining the way, and the last storefront was occupied by miniature amusement park rides for children.

The kid place.

“She go out here, sit on bench,” the crystal seller explained. She pointed to a cement plaza with royal blue metal benches. “I go out, too; time for cigarette. So I there when she get into car; tell cops all about it.”

Car? Artie and I looked at each other in wild surmise.

“What car?” I demanded.

Artie cut in. “Can you describe it?”

The girl rolled her eyes toward heaven, as though seeking divine guidance, but the beatific smile on her face said she was only too glad to be the center of an admiring audience.

“Japanese car,” she said. “Not brand-new but pretty good shape. Silver-color car.”

I drew in a sharp breath.

The girl kept on. “License plate was—”

“PIZZA twenty-one,” I interrupted, unable to contain myself. “It has to be.”

She shook her head, her smile fading. “Was going to say, couldn't see plate. Covered in mud.”

Artie took down the girl's name and thanked her; she went back into the mall with obvious reluctance, relinquishing her role as star witness with difficulty. Then the boy reporter turned to me and said, “What's all this about pizza?”

I told Artie about the silver car outside the group home, about the curly haired man who'd argued with Doc Scanlon at the hospital, about the vanity plate as reported by the security guard.

“If we can get to this guy before the cops,” he said, bouncing on the bench like a kid anticipating a ride on the roller coaster, “we can—”

“We can get ourselves busted for obstructing governmental administration,” I finished brightly, as if the prospect delighted me.

“Counselor,” he intoned, adding decades to his age with a drop of his voice, “this is what is known in my business as a scoop. I am therefore going to run this plate, find out who this guy is and where I can find him, and I am going to confront him with the fact that he was seen picking up a woman who is now dead. You can either join me or stay here with your thumb up your—”

“If you don't call Aronson,” I interrupted, not waiting to find out where my hypothetical thumb was going to be, “I will. We can't just—”

“Counselor, we don't know this guy was anywhere near the mall. For all we know, he was having dinner at Gracie Mansion with the mayor and the cardinal. All I'm suggesting,” Artie went on in a tone of exaggerated patience, “is that I find out who he is before we do anything.”

That I couldn't argue with. I started to look for the nearest pay phone, but he reached into his jacket and pulled out a tiny cellular job. It made funny little noises as he unfolded it and punched in a number from memory.

Welcome to the twenty-first century. In less than three minutes, Artie folded the plastic toy and said, “His name is Jerry Califana and he owns a pizza parlor in Tottenville. Which I guess is why he has PIZZA twenty-one on his car.”

“And you want to go out there and talk to him before the cops figure out who he is,” I said.

“Hey, I just got this sudden taste for pizza,” he replied with a shrug and a boyish grin. “You coming?”

“I'm coming,” I said, following him like a puppy. “But if he was anywhere near the mall when Amber was killed, I'm calling Aronson.”

“After I get my scoop,” the boy reporter insisted.

By the time we reached Artie's battered Chevy, I'd convinced myself I wasn't concealing evidence because it wasn't evidence yet. As soon as it became evidence, I'd turn it over to the cops like a good citizen.

This was the kind of reasoning that would have earned me an A in law school, but I had the uneasy feeling Detective Aronson wouldn't be giving me any prizes for it.

“Marla was right,” I said as Artie slid into the right lane, following the expressway sign marked Tottenville.

“About what?” Artie replied absently.

“She said this guy hanging around Amber was bad news. She was afraid he was going to convince her to change her mind about the adoption.”

“But she married Scott,” Artie objected.

“Yeah, but what if she didn't want to go along with Scott's little scam?” I turned in my seat, trying to engage Artie's attention without distracting him from the all-important task of not driving us into a ditch.

“What if she called this pizza guy and asked him to meet her so she could slip away from Scott and save her baby? She knows Scott's going to ambush Josh at the entrance to Macy's, so she meets Mr. Pizza—”

“His name is Jerry,” my companion amended.

“Jerry,” I substituted. “She meets Jerry at the kid place, gets into the car with the baby, and—”

“And good old helpful Jerry drives her to the swamp, bops her on the head, drowns her in a foot of water, takes the money and the baby, and goes home to Tottenville to make pizza.”

“You make it sound stupid,” I said.

“It is stupid.”

“Thanks. Why don't you come up with a scenario that explains it, then?”

“Your client is not out to save her baby from Big Bad Scott, for starters,” Artie began. “Look how she conned Scott into running away while she pocketed the cash Greenspan gave her. She's got buyers lined up out of town, and she intends to sell the kid to one of them. Only she doesn't want Scott in on the deal. So she sets him up with Josh, disables his car—don't forget Scott couldn't get his car started in the parking lot.” Artie lifted a hand from the steering wheel to shake a pudgy finger at me.

“Both hands on the wheel, please, Bloom,” I pleaded.

He complied. “She jumps in the car with Jerry, expecting him to take her to Kansas City,” he went on. “Only Jerry gets greedy, decides he can make money on the baby without cutting Amber in. He drives to the swamp, kills her, and takes the cash and the kid.”

“Which means he's probably in Wyoming right now, and we're making a trip to an empty pizza parlor,” I pointed out. “I knew we should have called Aronson.”

I slumped in the passenger seat, silent as Artie made his way through the narrow streets of the sleepy little neighborhood known as Tottenville. It was at the end of Staten Island, where Prince's Bay met Arthur Kill, the inlet separating the island from the New Jersey mainland.

He took a turn on a side street, and a brick pizza restaurant appeared in mid-block.