Losers Live Longer (34 page)

Detectives are investigating

robbery as a motive.

The assailant or assailants may

have gained entrance with keys

obtained earlier that day when

a purse belonging to the victim's

niece, Celia Janssen, was stolen

outside an East Village cafe.

Police are seeking a young

female suspect in connection

with both crimes...

I read another account in the
Times
that provided a lengthy obit for Marburger, highlighting his career as an autograph expert (his crowning achievement the denouncement of a diary purported to be Hitler's). I dropped the papers back in the trash.

I had to hand it to myself. I was really giving the Strichs their money's worth, an hour on the job and already trying to tie their daughter in with a homicide. Brooding over it did no good. I got out the white pages and looked up Celia Janssen, but she wasn't listed. I did find a Charles Marburger on East 20th Street though. I dialed the number, closed my eyes, and let it ring.

Long after I'd lost count, a woman's voice answered, standoffish at first, until I assured her I wasn't "yet another reporter" (not that being a private investigator endeared me to her).

"I'm calling about the purse-snatching."

I could hear her breathe. I wondered what she looked like.

"Well, what about it?"

I hate interviewing witnesses over the phone: Half of what you can learn from somebody is lost on their unseen gestures and facial expressions. I told Ms. Janssen I had to see her in person, offering to meet at her convenience the next day.

"If it’s that important," she said. "I could see you now."

I glanced at my watch. Nine o'clock. I said that would be fine.

The neighborhood of Gramercy Park appears like the last holdout to a forgotten age of gentility in Manhattan, the elegant era of Edith Wharton. At its center is the park, completely enclosed by a wrought-iron fence, its locked gates protecting the green grass, gravel lanes, and flower gardens from the outside world. Its small forest towered above the surrounding buildings, two- and three-story townhouses dating back to the 1800s in Italianate, Greek revival, and Victorian Gothic styles. It must've been a quaint place to live until Marburger's murder.

Curved white marble steps led up to the entrance of the dead man's townhouse, a gaslit globe flickered over its doorway. There were separate buzzers for Marburger and Ms. Janssen. I touched hers once and the door opened to a black-haired young woman with long, coltish limbs and a boyish physique. She had on a dark blouse and a white satin skirt that clung to her like a layer of thick cream.

She looked at me with a kind of happy relief. I don't know what she saw in my eyes, but her dazzling smile was easy to take.

"Mr. Sherwood?"

I handed her my identification. As she read, I looked over her shoulder into a hallway of cozy Victorian decor. To the right a spiral staircase led to the upper floors, the walls decorated with autographed photos of celebrities and statesmen. Over her other shoulder, I saw down the facing passage to a closed oak door wrapped up like an unwanted present in yellow ribbon: CRIME SCENE—DO NOT ENTER.

Grabbing a black knee-length coat and a Chanel shoulder bag, Ms. Janssen stepped out and closed the door behind her.

"I'd rather not talk here, Mr. Sherwood. We can go to the park."

The gates to the park are locked twenty-four hours a day, keys belonging solely to the residents of the square. When I first moved to the city, I'd occasionally climb the fence late at night, usually drunk. I'd grip the spearhead tips of the fence and hoist myself up, over, and down into the soft black earth on the other side. In an instant the stink of exhaust would be replaced by the aroma of dirt, dewy grass, and cedar chips. Back then it felt like breaking into the Garden of Eden.

Celia Janssen had a key.

We went in the east entrance. When I started toward a statue I remembered, a surreal copper sculpture of a two-faced sun/moon, she tugged my sleeve and led me along another path, into shadows.

"I had to get out of there," she said. "The phone kept ringing. I finally took it off the hook after you called."

"I'm lucky I got in under the wire. I'm sorry I have to disturb you at all."

"Are you? People only say that when they want something. What do you want, Mr. Sherwood?"

"I'm trying to locate a young girl. A runaway. I think you might've seen her the other day."

She stopped in a patch of light. Eyeing me, she fished in her shoulder bag for a thin brown cigarette, lit it, and let the smoke drip from her wide, dark lips.

"You mean the girl who stole my purse?"

"Well, that's what I'm trying to determine." I handed her the photo of Melissa Strich.

She angled to catch more light from a streetlamp, studied the photo, then handed it back without a change of expression.

"Could have been her. If so, she's changed a great deal."

"In what way?"

"Dirtier. Much dirtier. There's a green tint to her hair now, sort of chartreuse, and braided into dreadlocks. It's hard to tell from the photo. Also she had a silver stud through her nose and silver rings that looked like barbed wire pierced through her lower lip."

"How tall?"

"I was seated at the time. Maybe five-three."

"Color of her eyes?"

"I didn't really get a good look. A glimpse as she turned away. Then my eyes were drawn to her nose and mouth. I didn't even know my purse was gone until she was halfway down the block."

"How much did she get?"

"A couple hundred dollars and my credit cards."

"Cancel them?"

"Naturally." She blew out smoke. "What makes you think it's the same girl?"

"Timing."

Whatever she made of that, she didn't say. We walked to the center of the park to a white flagpole with a bleached-out stars and stripes clinging to the top as if it were afraid to fall. The sky was soft black velvet. Starless to the city. A breeze shook the leafy heads of the high trees with an innocuous sound like waves stroking a pebbled shore.

She said, "I can't believe any of this is happening. It's like living a nightmare."

I asked if she knew what leads the police were working on.

"They're looking for this girl, too, but she couldn't have killed Charles. I mean, he wasn't strong, but...She looked so starved."

"According to the papers, your uncle was a leading expert in his field. Was he working on anything special?"

Her face was shadowed, but a glint of teeth appeared. "The police asked me not to say anything but yes, he was. A lost fragment by Keats, in Keats' own hand, an abandoned poem entitled 'Cupid.' It was taken in the robbery."

"Not the kind of thing your average thief would grab. How'd your uncle come by it?"

"He never said. The police are questioning collectors he dealt with regularly." We rounded the statue of Edwin Booth. She asked, "How will you look for this girl?"

"Trade secret," I said. I had no idea.

"Maybe I could help. I've seen her. And maybe as a woman..."

I spent a moment pleasantly filling in that blank. The offer was tempting for more than one reason.

"I don't think so," I said. "I'd feel responsible for you."

"That's sweet."

We walked along the remainder of the path in silence to the gate at Irving Place. As we reached it, she turned toward me and looked into my eyes.

I leaned in and our lips formed a perfect seal, her mouth moist and sweet. We parted an inch and rested forehead to forehead, breathing each other's hot breath.

"Thanks," she said softly.

"For what?"

She shook her head and turned away from me, out of my arms.

I watched her for a moment against the backdrop of million-dollar homes. She looked very alone. It was time for me to go.

I handed her one of my cards. "In case the police call about the girl," I said, but it wasn't what I was thinking.

It was just after 10 P.M., a busy time, shows getting out, dinners ending, people rushing to get home. I had to wait five minutes for a vacant cab on Third, and then they came three in a row. I rode straight down to the Village.

By the lights of passing neon signs, I looked over Missy's picture again. I couldn't see her involved in any of this. I tried picturing her with green hair and a pierced lip, but it wouldn't take. It gave me an idea though. I told the driver to drop me a St. Marks Place.

For the three blocks between Third Avenue and Avenue A, 8th Street in the Village became St. Marks Place, a major passage through this historic neighborhood. Its string of T-shirt stands, CD stores, and bars attracted the college crowd from NYU and tourists from around the world, who in turn attracted the homeless and the criminal to peddle sob stories or drugs. It was a sultry night for early September and people on all sides were taking advantage of it.

I stepped from the cab into a fog of sandalwood incense snaking from a cardtable set up on the corner. A pack of kids in baggy clothes ground by on skateboards, and jumped the curb, almost hitting a man wearing a black wig, high heels, and a flower-print dress crossing the street. He/she shook his/her parasol at them. Two severe-looking women with close-cropped black hair, walking hand-in-hand, noticed the man, glanced at each other, and broke into giggles like schoolchildren.

Rounding the corner, I saw a young guy sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. He was dressed in grimy fatigues and a torn T-shirt that said "The Dukes of Biohazard" in cracked white letters. As I got closer, he sang out, "Hey, buddy, spare change for beer and drugs?"

I had to laugh. I looked down at him. His flesh was pale, almost translucent. A front tooth was missing from his grin and there was a brass ring pierced through his nose like a bull.

I placed the change from my cab ride into his waxy hand and offered him a cigarette.

"Awesome, man."

I gave him three.

"Nice ring," I said. "You get it done at that shop around here?"

"Naw, did this one myself. Ugly, huh?"

"Oh, very." I admired it. "But there is a body-piercing place around here, right?"

"Sure. My man Lyle's place over there." He jerked his head, not taking his eyes off me. "If you're thinking about getting plugged, it's the place to go. Tell Lyle 'Poker' sent you."

"Poker. Right."

It was a second-floor walk-up over a used-CD store, past a bar spilling over-amped heavy metal and the yeasty stench of stale beer. The front sidewalk was crowded with young people passing a paper bag, smoking, laughing, singing. Sometimes you get lucky; I looked them over carefully and they met my scrutiny with stonefaced tolerance. None of them was Missy.

Posted on the shop's door was an anatomy chart pinpointing the thirty-odd places (some odder than others) where a human being could conceivably be pierced. One, called a "Prince Albert," hurt me deeply just to look at. Inside, a dull buzzer announced my entrance.

"We're closed," a gravelly voice bellowed from behind a red velvet curtain at the rear.

Along one wall of the store was a glass display case filled with an array of exotic body jewelry: studs, rings, ear clamps, miniature chains, and collars. What caught my attention, though, was the wall by the cash register, covered from baseboard to tin-paneled ceiling with hundreds of Polaroid snapshots. A visual record of satisfied customers.

I gravitated toward them, but the velvet curtain parted and the gravelly voice stopped me.