Nightbird (11 page)

A knock at the door sent a surge of adrenaline into Victor Nuñez and he squeezed harder on Pinto’s skinny neck, the veins
in his forearms popping like blue electric cords. The knock at the door became louder. “Everything all right?” the landlady
said.

Pinto surged and tried to throw Victor off. He rocked him hard, bucking wildly. Thirty long seconds ticked off the clock as
the kicking slowed, then stopped. The gurgling sounds came softer. She kept knocking. “What’s going on in there?” she said.
Pinto’s breath stopped.

Victor rose and stripped off the bloody shirt and pants. Down to his underwear. He took off the gloves, picked up a dumbbell,
and went to the door.

“What is going on in there?” the landlady said.

“Lifting weights,” Victor said, still breathing hard. “Hurt my shoulder… muscle locked. It scared me and I yelled. Sorry I
disturbed you.”

“Do you need the ambulance?”

“No, I’m fine,” he said. He opened the door enough to allow her to see he was dressed in his underwear, his chest soaked with
sweat. She looked away.

“I don’t know if I like any weight lifting on my floors. All the iron banging down on my hardwood.”

“I’ll be careful,” he said, closing the door. “Very careful.”

He leaned back against the door and breathed deeply. When he put the dumbbell back under the weight bench he could see blood
on his forearm. He wondered if she had noticed.

It was after midnight when he finished cleaning the blood off the walls and floor. Nothing worked on the stained throw rug.
He dragged Pinto’s old trunk across the floor and set it on the rug. It covered the stain completely, in case the landlady
decided to snoop. He knew she couldn’t move the trunk with all that dead weight inside.

A
nthony Ryan stood in his second-floor bedroom, looking down at the moonlight shining on his backyard. Spring rains had spawned
a jungle of unknown foliage growing out of control along their back fence, a spot where they’d planted hedges years ago. Rip
had named it the green monster after the left field wall in Fenway Park. Unpruned and untended, it turned untamable. A deflated
basketball protruded from underneath. Rip’s bike and all the sports equipment he was supposed to store in the garage found
itself behind the green monster. Ryan had no idea what else they’d find back there.

“We have to do something about that backyard,” Leigh said. “Before it swallows up the house.”

“It doesn’t look that bad.”

“It looks terrible, Anthony. I’m going to get back there this week, take everything out. Plant some flowers along the fence.”

Ryan looked back down at the old basketball. Rip had played with it so much, he’d worn off the pebble grain. It was as smooth
as young skin. A few nights earlier he’d leaped from his bed, heart pounding, when he’d thought he heard the thump, thump
of a basketball beneath his window. He’d been half-asleep and imagined it. Heard it because he wanted to. Like he’d heard
the words of Gillian Stone. I love you.

“Everything just keeps growing, doesn’t it?” he said.

“I still have that old landscaping plan you drew up. Want to take a look at it, see where you went wrong?”

“You never get tired of that old joke, do you?”

A platoon of fully grown trees surrounded the backyard. The Ryans had bought the trees from a mail-order nursery catalog over
three decades ago. Twenty-eight trees, the price so cheap that he couldn’t help himself. He’d expected a huge truck to make
the delivery, two or three strapping workers, maybe a forklift to handle twenty-eight trees. So when the UPS man handed Anthony
Ryan the package of twigs wrapped in a cardboard sleeve no bigger than a baseball bat, the look on his face sent Leigh Ryan
into a fit of laughter the kids had talked about for years.

“How’s Danny’s shoulder?” she said.

“He’s got his arm in a sling. The doctor gave him only one exercise to do: walking his fingers up the wall. Some heavy-duty
aspirin, that’s it.”

“Youth is grand,” Leigh said. “I couldn’t believe he went downtown to meet you just a few hours after he left the hospital.”

“Surprised me, too.”

“It must have been very important to him.”

Barefoot, in a short pink summer nightgown, she padded back and forth, folding socks and underwear, stacking them neatly in
dresser drawers. Streaks of silver glittered in her hair, which had gone completely gray in her early forties. He loved her
hair this color; it seemed to glow around her face. It was a good thing he loved it, because no amount of persuasion could
ever convince her to color it.

“Did you see Katie’s postcard?” she said.

“I did. I never thought our daughter and granddaughter would both get to Ireland before us.”

“Nothing stopping us from going,” she said. “You have enough vacation time to travel around the world a dozen times. You just
have to take some of it.”

“Maybe this fall.”

“The sun is shining now.”

Finished folding clothes, Leigh pulled back the bedcovers. She grabbed the hem of her nightgown and yanked it over her head.
After all the years of their marriage he was still surprised at the size and fullness of her breasts. She dressed to disguise
her breasts, not because of shyness, he thought, but because she loved the look on his face. Her magic trick. Voilà!

“You owe me a back scratch,” she said, kicking her panties across the room.

He slid into bed and pulled her against him, face-to-face, both on their sides. She buried her face in her usual spot against
his shoulder, her face tucked under his chin as she nibbled at his neck, murmuring about its softness. He wrapped both arms
around her and slowly, in circles, he grazed her back gently with the tips of his fingernails. Her breath was warm and steady
against his chest.

“Danny came to see you about Gillian Stone, didn’t he,” she said.

“He feels guilty. Thinks he should have helped her somehow.”

“Now he’s going to try to make up for it by helping you.”

“He wants to do something, Leigh. I can understand that.”

“But he’s too close to this situation, Anthony. You wouldn’t allow a cop to investigate the death of someone he cared for.”

“He’s not investigating anything. He just wants to write a story about her. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Ryan knew that Leigh meant that he was too close as well. She was getting to him. Circling around. She would have made a great
interrogator.

“Why don’t you let someone else work this case?” she said, directing his hands to a specific spot below her left shoulder.
A spot she called her left wing. She sighed when he found it, as if he’d pulled a thorn from her back.

“Everyone in the office has as much work as we do. Or even more.”

“Gregory can handle it alone. We’ll fly to Ireland and surprise Katie and Margaret.”

“The case won’t last that long. Not more than a couple of days. We’ll talk about it then.”

Leigh had a natural intuition that Ryan couldn’t fathom. She was a mixture of qualities dominated by strength of character
and an unbending stubbornness. She was sweet and funny and was uninhibited sexually long before it was chic. But no one he’d
ever met in his life held on to their beliefs as ferociously as she did. Ferocious was the right word. Angry, she could be
fearsome.

“I hope you’re not staying with this case for Danny’s sake,” she said.

“I wouldn’t do that, Leigh.”

“Maybe he needs to be dealing with someone who’s not close to him. Someone more objective. If you weren’t there, Joe Gregory
would just tell him to butt out.”

“Gregory might do that anyway.”

She moved her hand between his legs. Stroking him gently, almost as an afterthought, knowing exactly how to touch, rub, withdraw,
touch again. A touch so practiced and delicate, so knowing. The exact right pressure, the exact right time. She had complete
mastery of his mind, his muscle, blood, and bone. And he reveled in it.

“Maybe I’ll give him a call,” she said. “See if he wants to have dinner with me tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow night he’s flying to Arizona for Gillian’s funeral. You’ll see him on the boat ride on Sunday.”

“But then I won’t be able to ask him personal questions.”

“I’m sure he can’t wait for that.”

Ryan rolled over and got to his knees. It was the way he reached her lower legs; she wanted to be touched all over. First
one foot and he massaged it, kneading the rough skin of her heel, the tender instep, running his fingers between her toes.
Then scratching again, back down her ankles, her calves. She reached up and took him in her hand. Her eyes focused intently
on the fruits of her labor.

“I started cleaning Rip’s bedroom today,” she said. “I took down all those Cal Ripken posters. I’m going to change it to a
girl’s room. Katie can have her own room when she’s here.”

He nudged her over onto her back. He continued scratching, reaching down her thighs, while his tongue and lips alternated
on the brown skin of her nipples.

“Is that okay with you?”

“Shut up,” he said.

He entered her slowly, holding himself above her while he kissed her, pulling his head up, letting her reach for him with
her lips. She put her arms around his neck and tried to pull him down, but he resisted, wanting his own pace. Wanting to feel
each sensation of her body as he touched it.

“Go look at the room, Anthony.”

“I will,” he said, then she rolled him over. Easily. Her strength and agility in bed were still amazing. She kissed him, pushing
her tongue into his mouth, grinding her pelvic bone against his. Then she pushed herself up to arm’s length, and he knew she
wanted her arms scratched, and her head, then her back, her shoulders, her legs, everything kissed, rubbed, fondled, massaged.

“You scratch,” she said. “I’ll shut up and fuck.”

B
y the time Anthony Ryan arrived at the Broadway Arms on Friday morning, the corners had been squared with blue police barriers.
The barriers, arranged in the same tried-and-true configuration the NYPD had used for thousands of demonstrations and parades,
allowed the officers to control the flow of foot traffic. In this case they were protecting the entire corner, as Emergency
Services cops yanked a huge canvas mat from a truck.

The cops closed the bus stop while they inflated the mat. Downtown traffic choked into two narrow lanes. Ryan waited under
the Broadway Arms canopy while doorman Irish Eddie from Waterford whistled down a limo. With a courtly bow he whisked a woman
in a scarlet turban and dark glasses into the backseat of a Lincoln Towncar.

Irish Eddie told Ryan that he rarely saw Trey Winters in the building. Then he scanned the list of uninterviewed tenants that
the Mid-Town North squad had shrunk to seven. Irish Eddie was pleased to inform Ryan that five of those missing tenants were
now available; the other two were still out of town. Only one of the newly available resided on Gillian’s floor. Apartment
18L. Directly across the hall from Gillian’s 18K. Ryan started there.

The listed occupant was Stella Grasso, a professional tutor, on the road with
Annie
. She came home often when her show was in an eastern city. Ryan knocked. From inside he heard the sounds of an afternoon
TV talk show, the audience hooting, berating a guest. Heavy footsteps coming to the door. The thin metallic click of the peephole.
He held his shield for viewing.

“What’s going on downstairs?” she said, opening the door. “All those cops?”

“We’re going to simulate Gillian Stone’s accident,” he said. “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Come in, come in,” she said, backing up. “It’s like Carnegie Hall out here, the way voices carry.”

Stella Grasso had brown shoulder-length hair, curled up in a flip popular in the fifties. He followed her into the living
room as she spelled out her name.

“Grasso is my married name. A cop, the bastard. Tommy the cop. Tommy Blue Eyes. Know him? Tall redheaded guy. He had the post
on Eighth Avenue. He’s famous. Famous, I find out later, for banging anything wearing a skirt.”

Ryan was convinced that everyone in the world knew at least one of the thirty-eight thousand New York City cops. And for some
reason they assumed they all knew each other. Ryan said he didn’t know him.

“If you say so. I have no idea why I married him. His dick was the only thing he ever loved, honored, and obeyed.”

Stella said she came to the city as a dancer and appeared in three shows that made it to Broadway. She pointed to the framed
posters on the wall. Her career ended shortly after she’d assumed the role of wife. But Tommy Blue Eyes thought his part was
a walk-on, and he’d walked off.

“I got my kid,” she said. “That’s the one thing I can thank that bastard for. She’s teaching in the Women’s Studies program
in NYU. She lives in Stuyvesant Town, so I see her all the time.”

Abandoned by both her dancer’s body and her blue knight, Stella dusted off her teaching degree and wound up in junior high,
the bloody trenches of public education. Every student jumping out of his or her skin, hormones in turbulence. She hated it,
and her heart was still on Broadway. Then an old friend called and asked if she’d be interested in tutoring child actors in
the road show of
Oliver
. She jumped. Connections bred connections, and that was how she got the apartment in the Broadway Arms.

“How well did you know Gillian Stone?” Ryan said.

“We moved in about the same time, but we weren’t any Mary and Rhoda. Sometimes she was friendly, other times…”

“She was moody, I hear,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, but she was a kid. She didn’t know enough not to start screwing around with that guy Winters. It’s enough to put anyone
in a bitchy mood. Maybe Winters gave her the apartment, but sometimes you bargain with the devil and he wants your soul. I’m
living proof of that.”

“What do you mean, screwing around?”

“Screwing around screwing. What else? The guy thinks he’s the Warren Beatty of Broadway. Throws women away like dirty tissues.”