Murder in Alphabet City (28 page)

She pushed away the passport application, then turned it over and covered it with a magazine. Her mind was growing fuzzy, but it was still functioning.

“I'm Harry Jones,” the detective said. He was tall and black and looked like he could punch you through the wall to the next apartment if he had a mind to. She liked his looks. “Let's start at the beginning.”

“The beginning of tonight or the beginning of the case?”

His face showed confusion. “Let's start with tonight.”

“I took the elevator up,” Jane said. “I had two bags from the grocery. My key was in my right hand. I think I saw her, like a shadow down the hall. She may have come from the stairwell; I'm not sure. I put my key in the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open. That's when I felt the gun in my back.”

She described the whole encounter, hearing her thin voice recount a tale of terror as though it were a recipe or the reading of an article in the paper.

“You want a glass of water?” Jones asked.

“Yeah, I'll get it.”

“Stay there. I don't want you in the kitchen.”

“Lots of ice,” Jane said.

He came back and she drank it all, sucking a piece of ice at the end. She looked up and saw Marty come into the apartment.

“Marty.” She went over and hugged him, feeling tears.

“It's OK, honey,” he said. “You're gonna be OK.”

“Oh Marty. I'm so glad you're here.” She introduced him to Defino. “Marty and I were partners for about a hundred years,” she said. Then she remembered Harry Jones and went back to the sofa and her story.

Hours passed. She went over the story again. I came up in the elevator. I had two bags of groceries. The key was in my hand . . .

“You want to fill me in on this case you were working on?” Jones asked.

“Give her a break, Detective,” Lieutenant McElroy said. “I can tell you about it. Detective Defino here is also on the case. Detective Bauer has been more than cooperative and she may need some medical attention. She looks like she's about to drop.”

The phone rang and someone answered it, spoke briefly, hung up. “She's dead,” he said and a current charged through Jane's body.

She started shaking, put her hands in front of her face, and willed herself to be calm.

“OK, that settles it,” McElroy said. “The interview is over now. You can talk to her tomorrow. She's told you everything she knows.”

“Somebody get her out of here,” Jones said.

Jane shook her head. “I'm not going anywhere. I live here. I'm staying. I just want to get to sleep.”

They backed down but it was another two hours before they left. McElroy, Defino, and Marty all tried to convince her to leave, but she remained firm. She bolted the door after them, took a hot shower, and went to bed.

I came up on the elevator, she heard herself say. I had two bags of groceries. The key was in my hand. I put it in the lock and opened the door. . . .

Over and over the scene played itself out like an old black-and-white movie. She saw them all, Jones and Gordon, Marty and McElroy, the uniforms, the lieutenant from the Six, the other detective, the crime scene detectives. I took the elevator up. I had two bags of groceries. The key was in my hand. . . .

When she finally fell asleep, it was one in the morning or later. When the phone rang, she answered groggily.

“Are you OK?”

Her throat constricted. “I'm fine.”

“You don't sound fine. I'll be there in half an hour.”

“Don't, Hack. I'm too out of it to hold a conversation.”

“Half an hour,” he said and hung up.

He let himself in and called to her. She had tried to sleep again but couldn't. She had brushed her teeth, splashed cold water on her face, wrapped herself in a robe, and was sitting in the dark living room, where he found her. He dropped his jacket on a chair, sat down, and drew her to him.

“You want to tell me about it?”

“She came here to kill me.”

“OK. OK, baby. Don't talk.”

Leaning against him, she fell asleep.

41

B
Y THE TIME
she arrived at Centre Street on Monday morning, they had all been informed. Everyone had something comforting to say. Captain Graves, who had called twice over the weekend, said, “Make an appointment with a shrink.”

“Uh—”

“See a shrink,” he ordered.

Shit. Hack had said the same thing. “I'll call Psych Evaluation at John Jay and arrange it,” she promised. John Jay College of Criminal Justice was a short subway ride uptown.

She went to Annie's office and Annie hugged her and said how glad she was that Jane was OK.

“I need to see a shrink; at least the whip says I have to. Can you make me an appointment?”

“Sure. Man or woman?”

The question stymied her. “Just someone who can sign that I've been there so they don't bother me.”

“You need to go right away?”

Jane managed a grin. “Do I look that bad?”

“I didn't mean—”

“I know. Whenever they've got a slow day.”

They went into Graves's office at nine-thirty. Annie came in and handed Jane a slip of paper with a name, time, and address.

“Looks like we cleared the Rinzler case a day too soon,” Graves said. “We all know what happened?” He looked at MacHovec, who nodded. “I have a little information that's going to be useful for Sean's case as well as the Rinzler case. A buddy of mine in ballistics put in some overtime on Saturday and checked the Smith & Wesson Washington had and the test firings confirm that it's the same gun that fired the bullets that killed Maria Brusca.”

Jane said, “Good,” and the others nodded. That, coupled with Washington's statement that Fletcher was her partner, should go a long way to clearing MacHovec. And Sean could dig up phone records that would likely include calls between them.

“So we've cleared the Brusca homicide for Midtown North,” Graves said, “the Rinzler homicide, the kidnapping of Gordon's daughter, and maybe the legendary Judge Crater's disappearance.”

“Only thing we didn't do is clear the Stratton case,” Defino said.

“I talked to Mrs. Constantine over the weekend. She's not happy but I think she accepted our resolution of what happened. I referred to Sean's time line and although I didn't say it explicitly, I think she got the idea that she shares a small amount of responsibility for what happened to her brother.”

They talked about it for a few minutes, MacHovec expressing the strongest opinions.

“That was some apartment,” Defino said of the Park Avenue building. “They don't build 'em that way in Queens.”

Graves smiled. “You should take a few days off, Jane,” he said. “Just to calm yourself down.”

“I'm taking a vacation in March. I don't want to waste any days.”

“Where are you going?” Annie asked.

“Haven't decided yet. Somewhere out of range of New York cell phones.”

“Good idea,” Graves told her. “Well, you folks have paperwork to clean up. I'll see you Wednesday night.”

That was Hack's party. Today he was starting as assistant borough commander of the Bronx, not too far from where Jane's father lived. He would have his hands full but he was taking time in March for Paris.

Flora called, Marty called, Detective Jones called twice. Jane made a note to call Judy Weissman, Erica Rinzler's sister, to tell her how the case had been resolved. Then she ducked out and walked to Little Italy and talked to Mrs. Brusca for an hour. When she was done, she felt exhausted and emotionally wrung out. She took a taxi home, locked the apartment door, poured some Stoli over ice, and put her feet up. This time, it was really over.

The party Wednesday evening was in a restaurant within walking distance from One PP and farther from Centre Street. Defino sprang for a cab. MacHovec went home. Apparently, if there was no free booze, he wasn't interested.

Flora arrived just as they did and they went in together. An attractive buffet table had been set up in a large back room. About twenty people were already there, grouped around Hack. Male laughter resounded in the room. A slim, beautiful uniformed woman with a deputy inspector's gold leaf made her way through the crowd of men, grinning, and hugged Hack like an old flame.

“Guess he can get a piece of anything he wants,” Defino said, watching.

Jane laughed, feeling good. “Guess he can.”

Flora's face made some gyrations of its own. “Think he'd give me a kiss like that?”

“Go for it.”

Flora laughed. Then, seeing someone she knew, she excused herself.

Jane hung with Defino. McElroy joined them and they went through the buffet.

“Just needs a glass of champagne,” McElroy said. “I guess he'll have that later.”

The room had grown crowded. Jane and Defino talked to the other members of the squad, most of whom Jane hadn't said much to in the last month. One original team had left and three new members had come on board at the start of the year. One member was a woman.

“He'll be coming around to say hello,” McElroy said. “The captain's with him.”

Hack had begun to make the rounds, a daughter on each side of him. If his wife was there, she was invisible. It took twenty minutes for him to get to where most of Graves's squad was milling around. As he stopped to greet each member, he called him by name. Like the good boss he was, he had studied the pictures before the party and committed them to memory. They would still be there ten years from now.

The daughters were glowing, shaking hands with each guest and engaging them in conversation.

“Detective Defino,” Hack said as he approached, offering his hand. “Good job on the Stratton case. Or was it the Rinzler case?”

“We aren't sure,” Defino said. “Just glad it's behind us.”

“So am I. Detective Bauer. That was some ordeal you went through over the weekend. You're lookin' good. My daughters, Susy and Michelle. Detective Bauer was on the front page of the
News
a couple of months ago, girls.”

“I remember that,” the older daughter said. “Daddy doesn't usually bring the
Daily News
home but he did that day. What a story.”

“I'm glad that's behind me too.”

Hack shook her hand, holding it that extra second, then moved on.

A few minutes later a group on the other side of the room started chanting, “Speech, speech.”

Hack made his way to a lectern that was set up near the buffet table, his hand raised to quiet the crowd. “I actually have a few words I'd like to say,” he said, taking some folded sheets from his jacket pocket and smoothing them open on the lectern. His eyes scanned the crowd until he found Jane and, looking directly at her, he licked his right index finger.

The gesture jolted her. She put the fingers of her left hand over her lips to hide the smile. Hack looked down at the papers as though he hadn't noticed and paged to another sheet. Then he began to speak.

“I'll drive you home,” Defino said. “I'm parked at the Puzzle Palace.”

“Thanks. I'd rather walk. It's a nice night.”

“I'd feel better if I dropped you. You know, New York, the mean streets.”

“Thanks, Gordon, but they're my mean streets. I'd really like to walk.”

They parted outside the restaurant, Defino still concerned. Jane crossed the street and started walking north. She felt good, body and mind, heart and soul. He had done it so she could meet his daughters, invited a whole squad of people he didn't know so she could come with no questions asked. They were lovely girls, the older one about the age of her daughter.

She thought about her daughter and smiled. That was what she shared with Jackie Warren and Maria Brusca and the others; they were all birth mothers who gave up their children. Jane had been only one small step above them economically, and she had had two parents who supported her, the crucial difference in most of the cases.

At Houston Street she turned west. Reaching Broadway, she crossed, sensing at the exact center of the street that she had entered the Six, her spiritual home for ten years and now the place where she lived. It was where she was working when she fell in love with Hack. Hallowed ground, she thought, even though she'd almost died in that precinct five days ago.

She wove through dark streets that had names instead of numbers, names that went back to the beginning of time in New York, Bedford, Bleecker, Barrow. She would never work the Six again because she lived there and even with the bloody kitchen, she would never move. She was a New Yorker, and what New Yorker would move because of a little blood on the kitchen floor? The crime scene people had dug the bullets out of the table, leaving a deep hole from one of them and a small hole in the top where the second one had just pierced the surface. It was the rarest of mementos.

A cold breeze went right through her coat and chilled her. I have a good life, she thought, and I made it for myself. I saved that life on Friday night without any outside help and I hope I never have to do it again.

She crossed another street, heading toward Sheridan Square. This is my city and these are my streets and I will walk them and not be afraid. How many times in the last twenty years had she thought the same thing after a narrow escape? Too many to count. Walking the streets had always calmed her, pushed the jitters away, made her feel almost whole again.

At her building, she pushed the outer door open, sought her keys in her bag, and pulled them out along with something soft and plastic. She opened the mailbox and emptied it, went inside, leafing through the envelopes.
I had the key in my hand. I rode the elevator up to my floor. I put the key in the lock and pushed open the door.

Inside, she looked at the plastic bag in her hand. Little beads were inside, Erica Rinzler's beads.

Tomorrow she would return them to the case file.