No Colder Place (24 page)

“
Shot
him? When? Who?”

“When I was there. I don’t know who.” I told her about Hamilton, about how I’d gotten to him, about the deal we’d almost made, and the shards of glass.

“Oh my God,” she said softly. “Are you okay? Do you want me to come over?”

I lit another cigarette off the end of the first. Yes, I thought. “No,” I said. “No, it’s late. Talking about it is good. That’s what I wanted.”

“Bill?” Her voice was tentative. “The police …”

“I didn’t see the guy,” I said. “What I know about Hamilton might help them figure out who killed him, but not because I was there.”

“But you’re not telling them what you know.”

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Why?”

It was time to tell her now. “Because of Chuck.”

“Mr. DeMattis?” she said. She hesitated, then asked, “Why? What about him?”

She sounded as though she wanted to hear what I had in mind; but she didn’t sound surprised.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But something’s not right. Something hasn’t been right from the beginning. I saw him tonight, too.”

“You saw Mr. DeMattis? When?”

Through another cigarette and another bourbon, I told Lydia about the Vault.

“But you don’t believe him,” she said softly, when I’d gotten to the end. “You don’t believe his reason for keeping us there is in case we can turn up something that will protect that project and the jobs of all those men.”

“Honest to God,” I said, turning off the lamp I was sitting near, “I don’t know.” The light still on, the one by the piano, cast long shadows down the room, crossing the shadows the streetlights threw in. “That would be like Chuck, something he’d do. But from the beginning, there’s been something strange … or maybe not. I don’t know.” I reached for the cigarettes, made myself pull my hand back. I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t know,” I said again, my words cloudy with liquor, smoke, and uncertainty. I thought about Chuck, about the plane cutting through the clear sky above the river out his office window, about watching through the Vault’s black glass as he walked away, just a few hours ago.

“Tell me why,” Lydia said calmly.

I was almost startled when she spoke; exhaustion and bourbon had been carrying me elsewhere, into a place where shapes moved in the darkness and the cool wind brought echoes of sounds that were not words.

I took another swallow, brought myself back. “From the beginning,” I repeated, trying to make the shapes take form for her, reaching for something solid in the darkness; “and you saw it too. He turned the case over to us too fast. Remember, you said you never met a cop who didn’t want to know? And I said he wasn’t a cop anymore.”

“He said he had other cases he was working on.”

“Then why take this one and then farm it out, give it to us and say he didn’t want to know? Why not just send Crowell to someone else? Me—if he thought I was the right guy for the job—or someone else?”

“He said he saw them as a repeat client he didn’t want to lose just because he’s too busy to deal with them now.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see it, appreciating what she was doing. She probably didn’t believe a word she was saying, but she was forcing me to look past whatever theory I had going. When we worked together, it was what we always did.

“Maybe,” I said. “But there’s the Pelligrini thing.”

“Pelligrini?” she asked. “What about him?”

“Sal Maggio told me Pelligrini was involved with some mob guy. Louie Falco. Falco’s connected to Chuck somehow. From the old neighborhood.”

“He is? How do you know that?”

“Doherty told me.”

Lydia was silent for a few moments. “This is what you haven’t been telling me.”

I pried off my shoes, lay back on the couch, eyes closed, phone to my ear. I didn’t ask how she’d known there was something, didn’t try to pretend there wasn’t. “I’m sorry,” I said. I expected an outburst, anger, a jabbing reminder that this wasn’t the way our partnership worked. I deserved it, but that’s not what happened.

“Not telling me,” she said softly; “that was a way to make it not true, right?”

I moved on the couch, felt my back and shoulders relax into the comfort of the cushions.

“If I didn’t talk about it,” I said, “I didn’t have to think about it.”

“But now you do.”

“Leaving Hamilton,” I said, “being there when he was killed, and leaving … I had to be sure I wanted to do that.”

“It could make a big problem for you,” she said. “If the police find out you were there.”

“And it could be dangerous for other people, if what I know could help them find his killer and I’m keeping it back.”

“But you’re doing that,” she said, “for the same reason Mr. DeMattis says he wants us to stay on the site. You want to protect him, unless you’re sure, the same way he wants to protect Crowell.”

“Yes,” I said into the warm, dim room, grateful for a partner whose thoughts moved along with mine, who understood. “Because the question is the same. If he’s mixed up through this guy Falco in whatever the hell is going on on that site, why did he bring us in in the first place?”

She waited, then asked, “What are you going to do?”

The next question, the next step. I didn’t know the answer.

“Jesus,” I said. “I’m exhausted. I can’t think. But I want to go back to work tomorrow, up there. At least one more day. Are you with me?”

“You know I am.” In the darkness, her voice smiled.

“Thanks,” I said, and we said good night.

I turned over on the couch, settled in, too tired to try for the bedroom. As the night sounds moved in the room around me and the colors began to float behind my eyes, I thought I sensed the freesia scent of Lydia’s hair. I started to reach for the phone, to call her again, to tell her something important; but my arm was heavy, too heavy to lift. I felt as though I were piled with weight, much more than my own body, too much weight to carry, even to move under. I couldn’t pick up the phone; the weight kept me from Lydia. It kept me here, in the place where I’d lived for years, the place where I’d come, almost by accident, when things went bad, the place where I’d been so long that the place and I were part of each other now. From the darkness outside me, where the weight was, I heard the sounds, traffic and my own breathing and the ticking of a clock, that I knew I’d hear. I smelled the bourbon and sweat and cigarettes I’d put in the air. From the darkness inside me, I heard, softly, other sounds: dim voices, some I knew and some I didn’t; a long, thin scream, that could have been from years ago, or from this morning; and the crunch of broken glass under my own feet as I turned and walked away.

sixteen

i
was stiff in the morning, hurting all over, from the fight and the bourbon and the night on the couch. My dreams had been troubled but not clear, and I woke with the Scriabin études in my head, phrases from one piece calling up another, nothing finishing; the connections that would make the pieces make sense for me, elusive and ahead.

I put up coffee and I showered. Dry, shaved, and half dressed, I threw back the first cup standing at the counter. Before I could pour myself more, the phone rang.

It stopped immediately; that meant my service had gotten it, which is what they’ll do unless I check in with them and tell them to go off duty for a while. Lydia scoffs at me for using the service instead of a machine, but I started with them eighteen years ago, in the days when people—clients—didn’t believe an investigator wasn’t just a fly-by-night operation if he didn’t have a secretary. As soon as a human voice answers the phone, people conjure up images of waiting rooms, inner offices, file cabinets, carpeting, and conference tables. It’s never been more than my apartment, me, and whomever I take on to work a particular case with me, but I’ve gotten used to hearing a human voice at the other end of my phone, too.

I let them take it, finished the coffee. Then I called in.

“Good morning,” a cheerful young man wished me. This was Tommy, one of the underemployed actors who irregularly staffed the place. “You’re up early. Phone wake you?”

“Just about,” I told him. “I was mainlining my coffee.”

“You really should turn off the ringer before you go to bed,” he scolded me. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“I forgot. Anyway, who the hell was that, at this hour?”

“Please. This is the third time she’s called. Twice late last night, and then now. What did you do, stand her up?”

“Who?”

“A lady named Denise Armstrong. And I mean a lady, too.”

Denise Armstrong. Oh, Jesus.
Go see Chester Hamilton
, she’d said.
Report back to me before the police get involved. I’ll be waiting to hear from you
.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I did, in a way.”

“Well, she left a phone number. She certainly sounds awake and alert. I’d recommend another hit of coffee before you call her.”

“Thanks, Tommy,” I said, but I didn’t have the time to act on his recommendation, and it probably wouldn’t have helped anyway.

I dialed the number he gave me, Denise Armstrong’s office. She answered herself; I was glad, though a little surprised, to see that she didn’t demand that her office staff come in at six
A.M.
just because she did.

“Mr. Smith!” she snapped into the phone when I told her who it was. “What in the hell did you do?”

“Slept? Made coffee? It depends what you mean.”

“Don’t even try to be cute with me. Chester Hamilton is dead. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.”

“No, I did. How do you?”

“The police called me, just after midnight last night. They wanted to tell me they’re pretty sure he was the one who brought those men to my building.”

“Did you tell them you knew that already?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Did you shoot him?” The question sounded as cold and direct as any she might ask in a business negotiation.

“No,” I said. I didn’t know how convincing a denial that single word was, or how convinced she was by it, but she went on without missing a beat.

“Did you speak with him?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Not much,” I said. “We didn’t get far.”

“How far?”

“Only one thing: He just about admitted he and his men were hired to come wreck your site.”

A short silence was the only evidence that she was digesting what I’d said. “It wasn’t a true job action?”

“Looks that way.”

“Did he tell you who hired him? Did he say why?”

“No. Do you have any ideas?”

“Of course not. Why would I?”

“Well,” I said, “it seems to me, one reason to do a thing like that would be to send a message. If that’s what happened, most likely the message would be for you. So what did it say?”

“I have no idea.” Her voice was icy, her words stiff.

“Someone’s unhappy,” I said. “I suggest you think about who, and why.”

“And I suggest,” she said, “that you tread very carefully, especially where my affairs are involved. Have you spoken to the police?”

“Why would I?”

“Because you saw him. You might have gone to them, running scared, thinking about your license and your reputation.”

“And my neck,” I said, “as possibly”—definitely—“the last person to see Hamilton alive. Which is a more and more risky position to be in, the longer I wait to come in.”

“So you haven’t spoken to them.” Under the cold control, I thought I heard relief. “If you do, how will you explain how you found him?”

“You don’t give a damn, as long as I don’t tell them it was you.”

“I’d like to point out that in the discussions I had with them last night, I didn’t mention you.”

“As a favor to me, no doubt. Let me ask you something.”

“What is it?”

“What would you have done if I’d said I’d shot him?”

“I hadn’t decided,” she said. “But you can be sure I would have found a way to handle it.”

I was sure.

After we hung up, I looked at the time and the piano, tried to tell myself that fifteen minutes’ practicing, ten, would be worth it, but I knew it wasn’t true. Sore as I was, it would take me a half hour just to loosen up enough to feel comfortable reaching for the notes. The Scriabin was still there, in my head, and I sensed—heard—that it was almost at the point of understanding I’d been reaching for; but it needed focus, complete attention, the kind that only comes when time is meaningless, when five minutes or five hours or whatever you need is what you can have. If I wanted to get to Broadway and Ninety-ninth to start my shift, I didn’t have that now.

I was on the site before Mike DiMaio this morning, so I was the one to pull off the tarp and wave over the guy with the mortar. The sky was clear and the sun, even this early, was direct and hot. I’d checked the detail drawing on the column inside and was laying out my tools when DiMaio came up.

“Hey,” he said, stopped on the scaffold, studied me. “You’re back.”

“Shouldn’t I be?” I asked, maybe more sharply than I meant to.

His response was a half-second slow, surprised about something in me, reacting to that. “I don’t know.” He moved past me, slung his bag onto the board between us, spread his own tools out. “I thought you was here because of Joe.”

“I was.”

“Then what now? He’s dead, your client is gonna keep paying your bill to be here? Or that was bullshit from day one?” He grinned, showing me he thought it probably wasn’t bullshit; we knew each other better now than when I’d started a few days ago.

“No,” I said, reining it in, my tone more reasonable. “But I’m not finished.”

“Not finished doing what?”

“Building this wall.”

DiMaio glanced at the brickwork, seemed not sure how to take what I’d said. “I’m the bricklayer,” he told me, pulling on his gloves. “You’re the guy I cover for.”

“That’s true,” I said. It hit me how tired I was, though the day was new. “I’m the guy who came here to do one thing and got caught up in other things, so many I don’t know what the hell is going on. But I don’t think I’m finished.”

He picked up a trowel, turned over some mortar on the board between us.

“Reg?” he asked.