Invisible Ellen (21 page)

Except for the Crows. This year, Christmas had come again right before Easter.

Rosa said, “I'm sure the hospital can contact social services for you.” Elbowing Kiki aside, she patted Irena's shoulder. “They'll find him a nice foster home while they work out the legalities. Don't you fret, sweetie.”

Ellen clenched her jaw and ground her teeth. Maybe it wasn't fair that Irena had been deserted by the father and was stuck with the baby, but discarding the child to what, even with her limited knowledge, was almost certainly a grim fate touched Ellen's rawest, bleeding nerve. She didn't know much, but her time in the foster care
system had taught her a few of its legal obstacles. Without the birth father or mother to sign off, the baby couldn't be adopted and would most likely be sent back to Russia and an orphanage. She wanted to shout at Irena,
Don't do it!

“But I cannot give him up. If the father find out,” Irena continued in a terrified whisper, “he will kill me.”

“Now, why would you say a thing like that?” Kiki asked as though reprimanding a child for exaggerating.

“Because he did before.” Irena had spoken so softly that Ellen almost didn't catch it.

For just a second, the Crows were speechless. This was more than entertaining gossip. This was scary and real. “He killed someone?” Rosa asked in a horrified whisper. “You can get a restraining order, it's the law—”

From her crumpled depths, Irena laughed mirthlessly. “Georgi don't care for law,” she said. Ellen's ears pricked up at the mention of the father's name. “He do what he like,” Irena said.

“Can you go somewhere he won't find you?” Rosa asked almost timidly, clearly out of her realm.

Irena's hands, limp by her sides, rose an inch then flopped hopelessly back to the bench. Ellen was reminded of the death throes of two small, pale fish desperate for water.

Kiki cocked her head at Rosa, indicating that they should move on. “Well, try not to worry. Something will come up.”

Irena sighed and nodded weakly. She lifted her earbuds and inserted the tiny speakers, canceling out the world. Then she slammed the locker shut and left without acknowledging the other women further.

The Crows watched her go, clucked a bit, and then Kiki said, “Poor thing.”

They'd said it before, but this time Ellen believed that they meant it.

They retreated from the locker room. Ellen sat motionless until she thought the other three would be done in the supply room, and then she pulled herself up, wincing at the pain in her knees.

Checking the assignment list, she saw that she had the front. That meant the checkout registers, followed by the public restrooms. She wrinkled her nose. The “public” was habitually disgusting in its bathroom abuse. The extra-strong cleaning supplies would be necessary.

The last few checkers were finishing up their final counts when she got to the registers, so she started with the lanes that had been shut down. Staying away from the balding, red-haired manager and the two slowest cashiers adding their totals at the far end, Ellen swept out under and around the register station farthest from them. She cleaned the conveyor, which she enjoyed, because it involved using the foot pedal to make it turn as she wiped. She emptied the trash bin, then moved on to the next register station. When she'd finished it, she made her way toward the customer restrooms. She'd start those while she was waiting for the area to empty of employee habitation.

She blocked the restroom door open with the cart and was pulling out the toilet cleanser when she saw the Boss rounding the camping display. He called out, “Billy,” and raised a hand in greeting. Following his gaze, Ellen saw the red-haired manager look up in surprise from the register.

The Boss waited until he had closed the distance between them. In the doorway of the women's restroom, Ellen wasn't more than twenty feet from them, and the small anteroom that led to the bathroom made a perfect sounding board for their voices.

“Hey, maybe you already have tickets, but one of our suppliers
gave me two for Saturday's game, and I don't want them, thought maybe you might.”

“Really? Oh damn! I work Saturday.”

The Boss pulled the two tickets from the breast pocket of his suit and slapped them against his hand as he regarded them thoughtfully. “Ah, too bad. They're supposed to be really good, and I don't want to give them to just anybody.”

Billy took the tickets from him and peered at them through squinted eyes. “These are courtside!” he exclaimed. “You have to wait for somebody to die to get these seats. Why don't you go?”

“Oh, never liked basketball. They'd be wasted on me, and besides, with all this, you might have heard, divorce stuff going on, I'm just not up to going out, especially in crowds, you know.”

“Yeah, I heard. I'm sorry, man.”

“Well, too bad. I guess I can try to sell them online.” The Boss took the tickets back and started to turn away, and Billy's face had the look of a kid who'd had his all-day sucker ripped from his sticky little hands.

“Wait, maybe I could get someone to cover for me,” Billy suggested.

“Hey, hold on,” the Boss said, turning back. “I don't work this Saturday, but I could come in for a few hours. Better than sitting in a hotel room alone.” He shrugged, making a show of shaking it off. “So—just an idea—if you want, you could leave early, in time to get to the game, and I can come in and cover for you. You usually get out of here about, what? Ten thirty, eleven? Hell, that's an early night for me. I mean, if you thought I could handle it.”

Billy grabbed at the suggestion. “It's just collection and deposit. The checkers give you the totals from each register, you add them up, record them on the master ledger and put the cash in the safe.”

“Whoa.” The Boss's hands went up as though Billy had pulled a gun. “I don't know if I want to be responsible for the safe combination.”

The balding man laughed. “It's on a time lock. You just open the slot in the top, drop the bag in, and when you release it, it rolls back up, like a mailbox, only made of two-inch-thick iron. I can give you my key card for the office door. Are you sure?”

The Boss laughed sadly. “Yeah, I'm sure. I'd just be miserable, might as well work.”

He handed over the tickets, got a grateful slap on the back, and strode away toward his domain in the back of the store.

Saturday,
Ellen thought. That was no coincidence.

And speaking of coincidences . . .

I
t was light when Ellen got off the bus on her street. She had been nervous about coming home alone after Temerity's warning, but there was a police car parked in the entrance to the alley, so she felt better. Still, she opened the door to the apartment slowly, poking her head in cautiously. Mouse got up and meowed loudly, but other than that, no living thing stirred. Ellen reached down and patted Mouse on the head twice. He twisted away and looked from side to side, then pushed his head up again, his tail raised and twitching. So Ellen patted him twice more, allowing him to stroke his cheek against her fingers. His fur felt soft and slightly greasy, but she enjoyed his vibrating purr on the pads of her fingertips. Then she put food in his bowl and went to check the now barless kitchen window.

It was undisturbed. She had left a note for the super last night, telling him that the bars had fallen off and needed to be replaced. She hoped it wouldn't take long. Then she looked through the back door's small window.

The place was swarming with police, though they were so quiet she'd had no indication they were there. It was as though whatever excitement had brought them here was past. They seemed to be
focused on the curtain lady's apartment, of which Ellen could see only the steps to the landing. So that was where she saw them bring the body out.

Not that she could see a body; it was just a black plastic bag, secured with three straps to a gurney. Ellen watched, silent and appalled, as it was carried down the steps, across the courtyard and loaded into a nondescript van that Ellen could now see bore the words
COUNTY CORONER
.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. Then watched as a white truck with vented side panels parked in the space vacated by the van's departure. A woman in a light green uniform got out, opened one panel and removed a crate. Ellen saw now that a policeman was holding the dead woman's miserable little poodle under one arm. He passed off the shaking creature to the animal control officer, who cooed to him and petted his head reassuringly before placing him in the crate and loading him onto the truck. Grabbing the binoculars, Ellen read what was printed on the side.
ANIMAL CONTROL, EAST CITY SHELTER
. Snatching up one of her notebooks, she hurriedly recorded the information.

Below her, Ellen noticed the same detective that she had seen at the hospital draw aside a man in jeans and a jacket—his partner, Ellen assumed. They stood in the shadow of her back stairs for a conference.

“Preliminary coroner report says he thinks heart attack is what actually killed her, brought on by extreme physical distress. She also had heavy bruising on her upper torso, she'd been roughed up. But the coroner doesn't think the blows themselves were fatal. She'll let us know after the autopsy. What do you think?”

“She may have had a heart attack, I don't doubt it, but somebody broke into this old lady's apartment and beat her up. If she died of heart failure, it was because she was literally scared to death.”

“And she was the only one who could have ID'd the shooter.” He sighed, and Ellen remembered the man with the pierced eyebrow, who had overheard this information at the hospital. The detective went on. “Besides our victim, Tunney, who doesn't seem inclined to butt heads with the Germenes gang.”

“Smart guy.”

“Yeah, not smart enough to stay away from them. He didn't take a bullet in the shoulder by steering clear of trouble.”

“So, he's what? Dealer? Fencer?”

“Most likely, but we don't have any product—no drugs, no stolen goods, nothing to hold over him to make him testify. Says he just wants to get out of town. Claims he never got a look at the guy.”

“He let him in the apartment!”

“I know.”

“Have we got the report back from forensics on the gun from the tipster?”

“Prints are a match to the kid we released on bail. Ballistics aren't in. They're backed up, big week for shootings. Should get to it tomorrow. But five will get you twenty that it's the weapon that shot J. B. Tunney. We'll send someone to pick him up on an illegal possession charge. If I'm right, and he hasn't skipped bail, we'll get him for the Tunney shooting. But Tunney was only injured, and juries can be a little lenient about shooting a drug dealer, so the shooter will get five and walk in two. But beating up a little old lady and causing her death is another ball of wax, and I'd love to tie the old lady's death to him. But, so far, I got nothing.”

“Was she the one who called in the tip about the gun?”

“Don't think so. The informant wouldn't give a name. This lady couldn't wait to have her name stamped in capital letters on the crime report last time.”

“Who found her?”

“A state health worker who comes by twice a week to give physical therapy to the guy in 1C. She saw the officer who responded to the call about the gun. She told him she was concerned about the dog whining, said that was unusual. The uniform checked it out, noticed the lock was broken and found the body.”

“What about the neighbors? Anybody see anything?”

“We haven't talked to the girl upstairs—works nights, apparently—but everybody else says no. Not surprising.”

Ellen drew back from the window. Quickly, she collected a few things, snatched Temerity's card from the wall above her bed and went to the door. Cracking it open, she peered out and then hurried down the stairs, merging into the sidewalk foot traffic just as one of the officers returned to the patrol car. She walked to the corner, crossed the street and booked it.

She didn't slow down until she had put several blocks between herself and the apartment. Then she pulled out Temerity's card and looked around. Pay phones were scarce these days, when even the guys selling fruit on the corner had mobiles, and there were none to be seen. With no other idea, Ellen kept walking. She looped back around to the main thoroughfare and picked up the bus.

When she got to Temerity's building, she stood in the alley looking at the door for a moment. It was so solid, so metal, so intimidating that Ellen turned away, but as she stared blankly at the dumpster against the alley's dead end, she knew that any place she went would end in a thicker brick wall than the one in front of which she stood.

Ellen turned back to the door and pressed the buzzer.

“Hello?” Temerity sounded surprised to have an early visitor, but Ellen was relieved that she didn't sound like she'd been sleeping.

“It's me,” Ellen said. “He killed the old lady.”

There was an audible gasp, and then the door buzzer sounded. Ellen pushed it open and went up the stairs, taking them far more easily than she had the first time she'd been there.

The door at the top of the landing was standing open and Temerity had come out to the railing.

“What happened?” she asked when Ellen was still on the flight below.

Breaking the words up to allow for the mandatory sucking in of air, Ellen said, “They think she . . . had a heart attack, because . . . he, or . . . somebody broke in and attacked her.”

“How horrible,” Temerity said. Her face was grim and set. “It
had
to be him. Of course it was. I hope they get him soon. Did they find the gun?”

“Yeah, they found it, but . . . they are waiting for some kind of test results.”

“Ballistics,” Temerity said. “You know, like in a detective story. They can tell if a bullet was shot from a particular gun. And they'll have to get the fingerprints.”

Ellen knew from her reading what “ballistics” meant, but it was strange to use the word in her life. “Yeah that, but they do have the fingerprint results. I heard the detective say that they match.”

“Well, one mission accomplished, I suppose,” said Temerity with a sigh. “I'm only sorry we didn't get fifteen seconds to feel good about it.”

“I know,” Ellen said. “And they took the dog.”

As though the word “dog” had produced the real thing, Runt bounded onto the landing and jumped up, placing both paws on Ellen's chest. She braced herself against him and felt an odd cheering
sensation at seeing the funny, shaggy head so close to hers. “Hello, Runt,” she said.

“I was just going to take him out,” Temerity said. “Want to come?”

Ellen looked back down the three flights of stairs, thought about going down and then up them again, and was surprised to hear her voice say, “Sure.”

Temerity grabbed a leash from near the door and made the dog sit while she clipped it to his collar. “I don't usually do this,” she said, “it being a little unpleasant for me to locate his public offerings by sense of smell, but Justice had to leave early. I was going to just take him in the alley, but now that you're here, we can take him to the dog park.”

After a short walk, frequently interrupted by Runt lifting his leg on no less than a dozen streetlamps, they closed the gate to the dog park behind them. Trying to sound conversational, Ellen asked Temerity, “Do you know anything about Russians?”

Temerity unclipped the collar and Runt bounded off to join a thorough mutual sniff from a handful of fellow canines. “You mean Irena?” she asked.

“Sort of.”

“Well, I'm no expert on the Slavic peoples, but what did you want to know?”

Ellen considered how best to phrase her question. She settled on, “Is the name ‘Georgi' common?”

Temerity made a
puh
sound. “Common? I think it is. In fact, the translation is ‘dirt.'”

“What?”

Temerity smiled. “Haven't you ever heard the expression ‘common as dirt'?” When Ellen didn't answer, she said, “It's a joke. Never
mind. I don't know for sure, but judging from the number of Georgis in the considerable Russian population of this city, I'd guess that it's a very common name. My butcher is named Georgi, so is Justice's mechanic, come to think of it, and they're both Russian. There was a famous conductor in Minnesota named Georgi, a defector from way back when. So it can't be that unusual.”

“Oh,” said Ellen. “I thought it might be.”

“What does that have to do with Irena? Is that the baby's name?”

“Don't know,” Ellen said. “But it's the baby's dad's name.”

“Father of the Year.” Temerity turned her face up to the weak sun and breathed in the smell of the trees and the air around her.

Ellen watched Runt creep up to a small dog, who snapped at him. Runt tucked his tail and bolted for the far side of the dog run. “So,” Temerity said, “maybe we should go by the store on the way back. I'm guessing you'll need a few things.”

“What for?”

“Well, you are not going to that apartment alone until we're sure the guy is not coming back, so that means you'll stay with us.”

“What?” The word was sucked from her in a gasp.

“It's okay, we've got a room. It's not very big, but it's private, has its own bathroom and you won't have to hang out with us unless you want to.”

Ellen remembered something she wanted to ask Temerity. “Is Justice, uh, okay?”

“Sure,” Temerity said, a little too quickly, and Ellen saw her mouth purse slightly.

“He wasn't mad or anything, was he?”

“Well, let's say he wasn't brimming with enthusiasm about our physical altercation on your roof. Check that, he wasn't enthused
that either of us was on the roof to start with. I told him he has no sense of adventure.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said people die all the time having adventures.”

“And what did you say?”

Temerity's face cracked into a huge grin. “I said people die all the time
not
having adventures. Alone in their apartments.” She sighed again. “As witnessed by this morning's sad happenings. I told him, ‘You're always after me to get out more. So I did. At least we're living life.'”

Ellen was glad that Temerity couldn't see her grimace. Though she admired Temerity's gusto, she wasn't sure that what had happened yesterday fell under the category of “living life.” She would have put it more under the heading of “dancing with death,” and the merest wisp of the memory set her core shivering.

On the other hand, she didn't remember ever feeling quite so alert before. She gazed around at the brighter colors, trying to put a name to the phenomenon. It was, she decided, as though she had been asleep, curious and interested but watching through lazy eyes while dozing her way through life. The events of the last few days—and, to be honest, Temerity's continued presence—had affected her nervous system like downing a triple shot of espresso. She was aware of things now, things she would have dismissed as remote before. The problem was, she wasn't sure if this new alertness, this waking up, was worth the shocking sensation of being doused by a bucket of cold water and the slap on the face that accompanied it. On the other hand, she didn't feel exhausted all the time, which was bizarre really, if she considered how much more she was doing.
Weird,
she thought.