Liberty Falling-pigeon 7 (36 page)

"No ghostly stuff?" Anna prodded. "Music, odd sightings, strange sounds?"

"No. I never said any of that. Oh, maybe I made a joke about it and now everybody makes it into this big deal." Sullen, boyish; he'd dropped ten years before her eyes. His voice was petulant, his body posture changed. He looked and sounded like an unpleasant twelve-year-old.

"You weren't joking when you told me about it that morning on the boat," Anna said.

He took another twig and began pulling the leaves off.

"Corinne was behind all that," Anna said. "She was gaslighting you. Trying to scare you, make you think the place was haunted. Or you were nuts."

Billy didn't reply. Anna let the words lie. Half a minute ticked by, pushed along by the movement of the shadows.

"Yeah. Well. Maybe it was Corinne and maybe it wasn't," he muttered at last. "That's easy to say. Everybody wants to believe it. Big joke on Bonham. Ha ha. Very funny. Like I wouldn't know if some half-baked actress was screwing with my mind."

Anna was now sure of two things: Billy had heard Corinne's cries and would never admit it, not even to himself; and he was not Corinne's attacker. Billy wasn't ashamed of something he'd done, but of something he'd left undone, a hollower and more cowardly crime.

"Good talking to you," she said, and levered herself up out of the dirt. "I've got to be going."

Billy didn't say goodbye, just leaned to one side to let her pass.

Vile as the prospect was, Anna was headed back to the Upper West Side. She had a couple more assignments for Frederick Stanton.

She smiled to herself.
If you want to marry into the Pigeon family, there are dues and responsibilities.

22

Anna, it's not that simple. I'm an FBI agent, not the President of the United States. I can't just walk in with an unidentified safety pin and demand a fingerprint and DNA test run on it, no case number, no explanation, no nothin'. Besides, I doubt there's enough matter on your pin to get a reading. Science is still science, it's not yet magic."

"Do you still have the engagement ring?" Anna asked.

Frederick's face flashed three emotions in such rapidity that it looked as if he were morphing from Jekyll to Hyde. "Is that a threat?" he asked quietly.

Anna thought about it. "No," she admitted. Molly's happiness was not something she would bargain with. "But it could have been."

"In that case, I'll see what I can do." Frederick accepted the envelope and tucked it in his purse, a brown canvas shoulder bag he carried despite the ribbing from his peers.

"I'm in a hurry," Anna said.

"So, what else is new?"

"It's different this time. I feel..." She stopped to discern what it was she felt. "Rushed. Clock ticking. Time of the essence. That sort of thing. I can't tell you why."

"Ranger's intuition?"

"Maybe."

It was late. Visiting hours at Columbia-Presbyterian were over and even Frederick, with whatever special status he'd managed with the nurses, had been tossed out. In Molly's big and beautiful apartment, with its spacious rooms and tasteful decor, Anna and Frederick were hunched over a cramped breakfast table squeezed into one end of what Anna had heard referred to in the South as a "one-butt kitchen." In the 1920s designers of New York apartments must have counted on the residents sending out for Chinese a lot.

Anna was tired the way only a day of being bombarded by people could make her; tired of bone and spirit, not of body. Thoughts troubled her and the anxiety she'd felt in Corinne's garden threatened to return. Sleep was a ways away. In spite of the day with its crush of sweaty city bodies, she did not want to be alone.

"What with one emergency and another, we've not really had a chance to talk," she said, to prolong the evening.

"What about? Us? There is no
us."

Frederick was churlish. Anna had scared him. She took the hit with good grace. "Sorry I made that crack about the engagement ring," she said. "I was out of line."

"Way out of line," he said, but he softened and, in that moment, looked terribly old. Keeping a face of hope and good cheer for Molly was costing him.

"Are you sleeping?" Anna asked on impulse.

"That's where you close your eyes and don't think for a while?" He smiled wearily. "Not so's you'd notice."

"There's drugs. Molly--or David--could write you a prescription."

"You know me. I like to suffer."

They sat for a while, at peace with each other, sipping tea. Anna had purposely made hers weak. There were no foodstuffs in her sister's kitchen that weren't loaded with sugar, caffeine, cholesterol or fat. That, coupled with whiskey and cigarettes, constituted a true health professional's menu.

"Molly doesn't take care of herself," Anna said. "She takes care of everybody else."

"You." Frederick had not yet totally forgiven her.

"Among others."

Rani climbed Frederick's bare leg and he squealed.

"You scream like a girl," Anna commented.

"They're the best screamers."

Rani jumped from his lap to the table, settled her furry tummy on the Formica between their teacups and began to purr.

"We probably shouldn't let the cat on the table in Molly's house," Anna said.

"Probably not." Neither of them made a move to disturb the kitten.

"You say you don't sleep nights?" Anna asked again.

"Nope. But it's good of you to ask."

"What I was thinking was, if you can't sleep anyway you might as well check out the fingerprint--should we be so lucky as to get a good one--tonight."

Frederick looked at her, his face impassive. "You know, Anna, you have a heart as big as Texas."

"I've always suspected that about myself. Finish your tea and let's go."

Emmett was in his precinct house on the East Side--not the posh yuppie Upper East but way up, Harlem. DNA tests were costly, time-consuming, and required forms to be filled out, forms asking questions Anna didn't have answers for, such as who authorized the lab work. From the frown that met them, it looked as if Frederick was pushing his luck asking for it. Adroitly, he passed the blame to Anna where it belonged.

They moved on to fingerprints. Emmett relaxed. The print was easy. Every flunky cop and ranger was taught to lift prints. Most weren't any good at it. Like any precision skill, lifting fingerprints off different surfaces was easily screwed up. Fingerprint evidence was notoriously fragile. Once bungled, the print was forever lost. Emmett was not a flunky cop. In his career he'd lifted hundreds of prints, but he impressed Anna by refusing to do it himself, insisting they give the task to a man who specialized in collecting trace evidence.

Detective Mallow was working that night. There was a case pending, but as Emmett led them up worn and dingy stairs smelling of antique cigarette smoke, he told them Mallow was almost always at the precinct house. Detective Mallow had no life but police work. He wasn't hiding from alcohol or failed marriages--things that plagued a lot of police officers--he was simply a man with one overweening interest.

They found him behind piles of folders at his desk in the corner of a room housing four desks, all neater than Mallow's. Clamped over his left eye was a jeweler's lens. A gooseneck lamp spotlighted the area between the file folders.

"Don't breathe," he said out of the side of his mouth when he heard them approaching. They stopped at a safe distance while he meticulously covered what looked like dandelion fluff. Pushing the lens up on his forehead, he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in a neat steeple. He was slight and old, wrinkled of skin and clothes, with eyes that bespoke a formidable intelligence. "Now, what can I do for you, Emmett?"

Emmett told him what Anna wanted and they waited while the detective digested the information. "Mmhmm," he said finally. "Checking out a theory before going public with it. Never a bad idea." He stood and Anna handed him the envelope. He held it aloft, pinched between two fingers more bone than flesh. "However," he said in his deliberate way, "this could put you in a quandary. Should it turn out to be nothing, all you've wasted is time. If it turns out to be something, you are then in the uncomfortable position of having to admit you went through unauthorized channels or having to withhold evidence. I, on the other hand, am merely an innocent soul, handed an item to process yet knowing nothing of its origins." His eyes twinkled. "There will be, in either case, no flies on me."

They followed him to a windowless room at the back of the fourth floor of the building. Unlike Mallow's desk and most of the precinct house, this room was spotlessly clean, well organized and well lighted. Since Mallow unlocked the room before entering, Anna got the impression it was his special domain.

The detective tweezed the safety pin from its paper and, while they watched, dusted the head, brushed away the excess powder with a soft brush, then with a piece of clear tape lifted the residue from the plastic and transferred it to a clean white square of cardboard. He repeated the exercise on the other side of the safety pin.

"The deed is done." He handed the card to Emmett. "One is quite a nice print. I hope it answers your questions. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's some lint waiting to tell me many things."

Emmett took over from Mallow. He scanned the prints into the computer and typed in the commands that would set it to matching with prints on file. "It's not instantaneous," he said, when it looked as if Anna intended to wait for the results. "I'll call you tomorrow."

Frederick thanked him. As they were being ushered firmly toward the door, Anna said, "May I borrow a field fingerprinting kit? I've got a hunch."

Emmett shot Frederick an annoyed look.

Stanton shrugged. "She's like this. It's a sickness."

"This is the family you want to marry into?" the policeman asked.

"I do." Frederick mocked himself and the marriage service.

"It's your funeral." Emmett found a spare kit. Before handing it to Anna, he said, "You promise you'll return it?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

"You will if you don't." Emmett gave her the kit. As the elevator doors were closing, he said, "I don't want to know how this turns out."

Gentrification hadn't moved much above 110th. Buildings were worn and tired, posters plastered over posters. Graffiti splashed violent wallpaper on storefronts and lampposts. Broken glass scratched at sidewalks in need of repair. Few people were on the streets and those who were scurried like prey. The predators leaned in doorways, smoking, owning their night turf. Petty princes in a kingdom they'd clawed apart because they had no way out.

"One question has been answered," Anna remarked.

"Yeah, what's that?"

"I know where all the poor people who used to live on the West Side went. They're being pushed into the East River."

"Just keep walking and be ready to rescue me from bad guys," Frederick said. After they'd reached the subway, laid down their tokens and waited on the platform, he said, "I bet you enjoyed that. You're an adrenaline junkie, Anna."

"I didn't," she said honestly. "When the wildlife is sad it takes the fun out of it."

There was no good way to take the subway from East Harlem to the Upper West Side. Unless one went north over the river and back, it took at least three trains. This late, trains weren't running with any frequency. "We should have hailed a cab," Frederick grumbled.

"Think they're pretty common in East Harlem after midnight?"

At least there were plenty of seats. A majority of the ride they had the car to themselves. STOPMUDP4J: the string of letters and the number tickled a seed in Anna's psyche that gave her a feeling of impending disaster. Try as she might, she couldn't coax the seed into flower. Ignorant and nervous: an all-too-human condition.

New York's underground flickered by, an industrial strobe blackened by dirt and use. Anna considered staying on the subway downtown to follow through on her hunch. In the end she had to give it up till morning. Dead of night was no time for sleuthing in public places. One needed the protective coloration of business as usual.

Emmett called at nine a.m. Frederick had left for Columbia-Presbyterian, the engagement ring in his pocket,
Tom Sawyer
under his arm. Anna had been up since six, passing the time staring at the phone, pacing and harassing Rani and, until he escaped, Frederick.

"Emmett," she said, and knew she was talking too loudly, holding the phone too tight.

"Got your print results," he said shortly. "No match."

"Did you check the boyfriend, Ma--" Anna started to say "Macho Bozo," then took a second to dig up his real name: "Underwood, Michael?"

"His prints are in the system. They were run just like the others. No go. Sorry."

The "Sorry" was very final.

"Are you working back-to-back shifts?" Anna asked, to create the illusion she cared about him as a person. "You were on late last night."

"I'm on late tonight too. I came down to check this out, since you had your undies in a bundle."