Kiss Her Goodbye (10 page)

There was no hassle about getting in. The guy went ahead, opened the door in the first-floor rear, then left. Pat flipped on the light, we both stood there like dummies, then Pat took the kitchen and I checked out the bedroom.

Ginnie Mathes had nothing much to brag about except maybe cleanliness. Her chief possessions were the clothes in her closet and two drawers of a dresser; to this estate, you could add a little portable TV and a clock radio and not much else. Everything was neatly arranged, the few items of food in the refrigerator fresh, and no garbage in the trash container.

Pat said, "This place has been turned."

"What?"

"Look at the rug."

I hadn't noticed, but it was in a pretty awkward position. Under the sink, the cabinet doors were slightly ajar and he nudged them open with his toe. I saw what he meant. A real tidy girl wouldn't have left them that way.

I shrugged. "Guess I've been away too long, Pat."

"Look at the bathroom."

That one was easy. Somebody had lifted the seat, taken a piss, and didn't flush.

I knew Pat was waiting to see what I'd do next, so I went over and looked at the lock on the door. There were no scratches on the metal, no marks on the woodwork, so I closed the door and leaned against it.

"Okay, Pat—it's a cheap lock and easy pickings, but at the least it was a minor pro job. I don't think they expected to find anything, because she was dead before they got here."

"All right then, Mike—what did she have on her
before
they got here?"

"Thirty-five bucks and tips in cash."

"Somebody was after more than a waitress's weekly pay and tips."

I caught his eyes and got the point. "This wasn't random."

"I'll make a detective out of you yet," he told me.

"Something big enough to kill for?"

"Come on, Mike. In this town
anything
is big enough to kill for."

I nodded. If the mugging had been deliberate, and the killer hadn't gotten what he was after, he still had the girl's address in her purse and figured she wouldn't be I.D.'d until the following day. So he had time to go over her place....

But what was he looking for?

"So whoever shook this place down," I said, "had a whole night to do it in."

Pat was thinking. "We don't buy the possibility that the mugging and a break-in here are two separate events?"

"No way."

"Then there's still something that bothers me."

"Street muggers and B-and-E guys are two different animals."

"Right on," he said. "The only time a mugger breaks and enters is when he's smashing a window in an abandoned building to flop for the night."

I was nodding. "That girl got off a shift after the supper hour on a pay night. It was something she had been doing for a long time. If some creep spotted her routine, saw an easy mark, and followed her just for the cash she had on her, that would be one thing."

"Only she's mugged well away from where she lived and worked," Pat said. "What was she doing there, in that combat zone?"

"That's the question."

"Still could be two people," Pat said. "A mugger is hired to grab her bag, and somebody else is hired to toss her apartment."

"That's
three
people—including whoever hired both of them. Unless it's somebody who did this all himself."

"Or herself."

"You can kid yourself and say Doolan is a suicide, Pat, but
this
is a murder."

"Of course it's murder..."

"Not a mugging murder—a murder that needs solving. Are you going to help?"

He raised his hands in surrender. "I'm simply going to make sure you get your fill of this before the system gets it sorted out the old-fashioned way."

I gestured around the sad little apartment. "Really? Then how come the captain of Homicide is messing with a chintzy kill like this?"

"Humoring an old friend. Ready to go over and see Ginnie Mathes's mother?"

I felt my eyebrows go up. "You've been doing your homework, little boy."

"Plain old-fashioned cop stuff, friend. Lots of manpower and the right questions."

Six blocks away, we made a call on Mrs. Lily Mathes, whose dead husband had left her an entire four-story brownstone. Three floors were rentals, so you might think she was well-off; but rent control meant it took Social Security, too, for her to manage a modest living.

Mrs. Mathes was a plump sixty-something in a dark blue dress that may have been as close to black as she had handy. Her white hair was mixed with remnants of the blonde that, along with her attractive face, she'd passed along to her late daughter.

That face wore no makeup at the moment—perhaps it never did or maybe she just was saving herself the trouble of having it run and smear. Her eyes were red, but dry.

She seemed almost glad to see us—maybe it was a relief just to have someone to talk to.

There wasn't much she could add to the picture. Her daughter had been living alone for over two years. During that time, Ginnie had several jobs as a waitress, moving on only when a place closed. No, her daughter had never been in trouble. As far as the mother knew, Ginnie dated once in a while, but lately whenever she had time off, she spent it taking dancing lessons someplace across town.

Pat said, "Did she ever dance professionally?"

"Oh, no," the seated woman told us. "She was too shy for that."

Pat glanced at me, but didn't mention anything about the cabaret license on her daughter. Some things were better left unsaid.

While Pat was getting background, I made a casual circuit of the room. Like most women her age, Lily had her family photos on display. Her late husband was in several with her, a few were of mother, father, and daughter growing up, and one was six snapshots of teenaged Ginnie in a homemade montage—Ginnie and a stocky, blonde-headed guy in two, and with a skinny, shorter guy in the other four.

Lily Mathes smiled when she saw me looking at them. "Those were taken right after Ginnie got out of high school."

"Boyfriends?"

"Oh, you know how girls are."

"Ginnie still see either of these boys?"

She waved a hand dismissively. "That blonde one, he's married and lives in Jersey now. Joseph Fidello, the other one? He's been gone a long time. I think he became a seaman."

When I put the picture back, she said, "I'm afraid you gentlemen are wasting your time. Nobody...
nobody
who knew Ginnie ... would ever...
ever
want to ... to
hurt
her."

A tissue-filled hand covered her eyes and she let her head droop. She went on: "It was just this ... this terrible city ... these awful muggings ... they happen all the time. It's like ... like living in hell."

I wasn't the best guy to give her an argument.

Pat bent over and took her hand gently. "Just one more thing. Did your daughter always walk home?"

"Yes. On nice nights. If it rained, she took a cab."

"On a nice night—would she go walking farther afield? Or take a cab somewhere, maybe to go to a restaurant or club, or see a boyfriend, and then walk by herself...?"

She shook her head vigorously. "Where they found her, Ginnie wasn't anywhere near her apartment. She wasn't near to her work."

"Yes, we know...."

"She would never,
never
go down a street like where they found her. They tell me it was all torn up and not a safe place at all. I
knew
my daughter. She'd never go down such an unsafe street."

We didn't have to go any further. We said a gentle goodbye and left.

Once outside, Pat said, "So what do you make of it?"

"Three possibilities," I said with a shrug. "Ginnie was going to meet somebody, she was trying to elude somebody, or somebody was chasing her."

"All for thirty-five bucks and tips?"

"For something," I said.

F
OR A WHOLE YEAR
I had taken the ordered medication, capsules at regulated times, that were gradually being reduced in frequency and intensity as the physical damage repaired itself. The pain was gone, but so were my dreams. It took two months before I noticed it, and a direct inquiry pinned it down: my unconsciousness was being medicated as well as my body, but since there were no apparent side effects, I let it pass. Missing those surrealistic meanderings was no great loss, unless there were some lovely dolls involved.

But I had forgotten the meds on this night, and for the first time in a year, dreams came through. The first one was a jumble of guns blasting and orange flame chewing the night and exploding skulls and bursts of scarlet and white and gray, and then Velda, and me getting shot, and Velda, crying now, and me, dying now.

This faded into a new dream that wasn't scrambled at all. There was a continuity to it with an aim and a direction, but the light was fuzzy and I couldn't quite make it out. I was back on that war zone of a street looking down at the sand covering the awful puddle of blood on the sidewalk, feeling sand sift through my fingers.

Then it stopped being a dream and I realized I was half awake and thinking.

I kicked the sheet back and hung my legs over the bed. The pain was back again, a big hand feeling for a good grip. I got up, found my pants, and got the vial out of the side pocket. I flipped the cap off, shook one out, and swallowed it, then stuck the vial back.

That was when my fingers found the pebble, the souvenir of a lousy, dirty kill on the sidewalks of New York. It was an irregular oval, the size of a kid's marble, oddly colored with a frosted surface, and there was a distorted picture in my memory of something flashing near the short-sleeve cuff of the dead girl's dress.

Under my fingertip was a flat spot on the stone, and when I turned it over I knew what it was.
What it meant.
Slowly turning it to just the right place, I held my souvenir under the nightstand light and looked into a window that opened onto the pure brilliance hidden in that scruffy little stone.

What I had in my fingers was an uncut diamond with one hell of a carat weight, and somebody had ground a spot on it for absolute proof of what it was.

Ginnie Mathes's death had just taken on a new dimension.

There was a legal probability that I was withholding evidence, but not being an expert in the determination of precious stones, my accountability was limited. Which was nice phrasing, but probably a load of crap. What the hell, I hadn't mentioned to Pat the little arsenal squirreled away in Doolan's desk either.

What was the use of being a private cop if you had to go public with everything? Anyway, Captain Chambers had all sorts of murders on his desk to attend to. I had two. "
Balls!" cried the queen.

Off Sixth Avenue on Forty-seventh Street is a curbside exchange in the most literal sense, where fortunes in diamonds and cash are traded daily, carried in the pockets of worn coats, wrapped in tissue-paper coverings, and displayed openly to proper customers ... and the only security is that custom, and the New York police.

It's one of the damndest things you've ever seen, if you are lucky enough to see it at all. A million might change hands when all you thought you saw was two humble Jewish merchants passing the time. It's an ethnic area where all the divisions of the international jewelry trade are busy at it, extending into the buildings on either side. Despite the wealth concentrated in that one block, it is as unpretentious today as it was fifty years ago.

David Gross was an old friend. In 1954 he had retired and left his thriving business to his son. But retirement almost killed him, so he started another business; and in 1965 he retired again and left this one to his grandson. Still he couldn't take retirement, so he went back out on the street, where he had started as a young man, hassling with the diamond traders.

Even among the common black rabbinical garb and the long gray beards, David was easy to spot. His beard had an uncommonly pure black streak on the right side that somehow marked him as the presiding patriarch in the business.

"Well, David Gross," I said. "You never change."

His head craned out and he peered at me through his thick, slightly magnifying glasses. It was hard to make out his smile through the nest of beard. "We have
both
changed, my friend, Michael. But we will pretend otherwise. How nice to see you again! And
alive.
"

We shook hands warmly. "Good to see you too, Mr. Gross. Not bad being alive either."

"Since when to you am I
mister?
"

"David, I'm just a goyim trying to be respectful."

"No—a mensch." He shook his head and the smile became manifest, beard or not. "You have been gone a long time, Michael. Sometimes I would think about you and worry. I remember well what happened in that trouble you had." He paused, the smile gone, looking around uncertainly as if a sniper might be lurking, and said, "This is not an accidental meeting, is it?"

"Not really."

"Nor a social call."

"There's an element of that, but—"

"But there is something we have to talk about?"

"Yes. You got a roof we can sit under, David?"

The old man nodded, his eyes flicking to a building across the street. "My grandson, his office is there. Not that
he
is. Too much money for that boy, it overwhelms him. Oh, he worked for it, but now he wants to spend it all. Always vacations. He's getting fat. That tan—don't tell me
you've
been on vacation? You're not fat."

"No. I've been sick."

"You look good to me. The city, it's good for you. Follow me."

"Sure. Do I have to keep my hat on in there?"

He let out a guttural snort. "That thing you wear with that awful name—what is it?"

"A porkpie. But I'm not asking you to eat a slice, David."

"Better you should eat it than wear it."

"Hey, it's brand-new."

"Then at least do an old friend the courtesy of changing its name."

I laughed. "Okay. Stetson makes it. We'll call it a Stetson."

"Perfect. Michael Hammer, western gunslinger."