Past Imperfect (Sigrid Harald) (21 page)

Sigrid said, “They’ll look at everybody who worked with Cluett or who was stationed here four years ago. And that includes this detective unit as well. Sam Hentz, for instance. He worked with Cluett. I haven’t gone back through all the squad files yet, but it’s my impression that he’s been stationed here at least four years.”

Dismay filled Tillie’s blue eyes. “But that’s true of Eberstadt and Peters and who knows who else?” he protested.

“Exactly. It isn’t just the uniforms and the P.A.A.’s that are going to feel the heat on this one. Half the precinct’s going to be under investigation till this case is solved. So do me a favor, Tillie, and see if you can determine how many of our people are under Rawson’s gun.”

By the end of their conference, Tillie was still unhappy about the situation; but he’d promised Sigrid that she could count on him to help keep up morale in their unit.

Alone in her office again, Sigrid took an apple from her desk drawer and bit into it thoughtfully. She seldom went in for deliberate and conscious self-psychoanalyzing, but she knew now that she hadn’t avoided Cluett’s clumsy attempts at familiarity merely because she disliked the man personally. (Which she did, she reminded herself grimly.) She was sorry he’d been shot, but his death didn’t alter the facts of his life. He’d been lazy, sloppy, and nearly useless on her squad and she wasn’t going to elevate him to sainthood simply because he’d been killed.

Nevertheless, that still small voice of conscience compelled her to admit—to herself, if to no one else—that she’d deliberately discouraged Cluett because he could have told her about the past, and she didn’t want to deal with whatever had happened between McKinnon and her father.

Two days past her birthday though, and wasn’t it about time she finished growing up?

The picture of Leif Harald lay sealed in an envelope in her desk drawer. Balancing the apple on top of her coffee mug so that sticky juices wouldn’t gum up any papers, Sigrid drew the silver-framed photograph from the envelope and looked around for a place to put it.

She had done very little to personalize the small boxy office assigned to her when she arrived. The previous occupant had painted it off-white, a change from the dark and light tones of blue throughout the rest of the building, and a fluorescent light recessed behind frosted glass in the ceiling above lent an artificial brightness. There were the usual file cabinets, desk, and bookshelves; a swivel chair upholstered in black vinyl for herself, some mismated straight chairs for visitors. Except for an administrative flowchart, a map of the city, and a drawing of the five boroughs divided by precincts, the walls were bare. The window ledge behind her desk held a neat row of police manuals and bulletins, not plants or whimsical knickknacks.

The only personal items visible were a brass lamp with a green glass shade, a large brassbound magnifying glass, the blue-green pottery coffee mug, and a small glass bowl that held a tangle of brass steel and silver puzzle rings which often served as worry beads for her fingers when her mind was elsewhere.

She pushed aside the bowl of puzzle rings and set the picture there so that Leif Harald faced her. In uniform. He’d died in an ordinary business suit though, died a plainclothes detective. In some down-at-the-heels cheap hotel. Would he still be a blond Viking if he’d lived?

She took another bite of apple and swiveled her chair around to look out at the cold crisp day. Thanks to snowplows and shovels, dirty snowbanks three and four feet high lined the curbs.

Nothing stayed pristine in this city very long. Even things that started out pure and clean.

The apple was her lunch and when she’d finished it, she swiveled back and dropped the core into her wastebasket.

An empty wastebasket. Sometimes the cleaning crew were too damned efficient.

Didn’t matter. Tillie had mentioned that the contact person for the Viking Association was a lieutenant over in the First Precinct. She pulled the phone to her. It took less than five minutes to track him down, to say, “My father might have been a member years ago. Can you give me the names of some members who would have known him?”

CHAPTER 19

Revving up for the turnaround shift was never easy, and Bernie Peters and Matt Eberstadt were both yawning as they checked in Saturday morning. Bernie had been up early with his infant son, and Matt’s cold seemed to be settling in his chest. There were bags under the older detective’s eyes and his long face looked almost haggard.

“I’m gonna use some of the comp time I’ve got coming and take off early,” he told Bernie. “Frances’s plane gets into JFK at two and I want to pick her up.”

“Sure,” said Bernie, riffling through the files on his desk. “Guess we’d better get statements from some of Caygill’s associates, see when they last saw him wearing that ring Cohen found in Jackson’s body.”

Matt Eberstadt lifted a doughnut from the box, stared at it moodily and then put it back. Usually he could have eaten the whole box by himself. Today they looked as appetizing as wet sawdust. “Bernie?” he said.

“Um?” His partner was busily jotting down names and addresses.

“Yeah?” he asked as he opened another file folder.

“Ah, never mind,” said Matt. “Shove some of that stuff over here and let’s see what’s on the docket for this morning.”

Roman Tramegra had already written another four pages of
Freeze Factor,
the title he’d finally decided on, and was in the kitchen experimenting with a kiwi omelet when Sigrid came out to the kitchen at eight-fifteen looking for coffee. Not only was she dressed, she was dressed rather well in tailored black slacks, flat-heeled black leather shoes, a slate-blue tweed jacket Anne had given her for Christmas, and a white silk shirt with squared lapels. In one hand she carried a blue scarf, in the other a silver necklace shaped like a flat collar.

Knowing how she often slept till noon when off-duty, Roman glanced first at the calendar and then at the clock. “This is Saturday, is it not?”

“Don’t start with me, Roman,” she warned. She held out the scarf and necklace. “Which one?”

“The necklace,” he answered promptly; but when she’d clipped it on, he cocked his head and examined the effect with a critical eye. “It’s nice, yet something’s lacking. More color?”

She looped the blue scarf around her neck and tucked the ends inside her shirt.

“No,” Roman decided. “That’s not right.”

“Oh God!” she said and yanked it off again.

“Wait, wait!” he said, suddenly inspired. “I have just the thing you need.”

He hurried through the door to his quarters and soon returned with a dark wool tie. “Power red. All the TV anchors wear one.”

Sigrid took it out to the hall mirror, buttoned her shirt all the way up to the top, slipped the tie under her collar, and promptly ran afoul of the knot.

“No, no, no,” Roman called from the kitchen. “Leave your shirt open as it was before, with the necklace showing, and knot the tie below the vee.”

Obediently, Sigrid did as she was told. It was difficult to get the square knot to come out flat and she wasn’t crazy about the way the ends drooped when she was finished. Especially since one end was wider than the other. “This isn’t working, Roman.”

“Well, of course, it isn’t,” he rumbled in his deep voice, as he came out to supervise. “You’ve tied it like a Girl Scout’s neckerchief when you want a regular four-in-hand.”

Her fingers were so clumsy trying to tie a four-in-hand at that length that Roman said, “Oh, do let me. Stand still now.”

He unknotted her first effort and began anew. “Oh dear. Do you know, I’ve never done this for someone else. I shall have to—”

Feeling like a child, Sigrid found herself staring into the mirror while Roman stood behind her, his arms encircling her thin body as he too looked in the mirror to tie a perfect knot: over, under, around, and through, so that the wide end fell properly over the narrow and the knot wound up precisely at the vee of her shirt.

“There!” he said, stepping back. “You look quite nice. What is the occasion, may I ask?”

Sigrid continued to gaze at her reflection.
“The mirror cracked from side to side
,” she quoted gloomily.
“‘The curse has come upon me,’ cried/The Lady of Shalott.”

“Ah,” Roman said with instant, and sympathetic, understanding. “A dental appointment.”

“Worse,” she moaned. “A fashion appointment.”

Clothes and cosmetics couldn’t have been further from Dinah Urbanska’s mind as the young detective jogged along the Promenade, a cantilevered esplanade built out over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Today was warmer than yesterday even though the sun came and went fitfully. Another cold front was supposed to roll in after midnight, but the morning weather report predicted a high of forty-five today. After the bone-numbing chill of the past few days, forty-five felt almost balmy.

Even with no sunlight to sparkle on the water, the view from high above the piers was spectacular: Brooklyn Bridge to the north, wearing its hundred years with massive grace; the towers of lower Manhattan directly across the East River; and Governors Island just to the south, with the bay and the Statue of Liberty beyond.

The Promenade was about a third of a mile long and each time she reached one end, Dinah usually stopped and jogged in place, pumping the half-pound weights on her wrists as she savored the view. Although she’d grown up in Long Island’s Levittown, Dinah was as dazzled by the city as any starstruck kid who ever fled a farm. She had made it as far as a tiny studio apartment on the edge of Brooklyn Heights and hoped to find someplace affordable in Manhattan before another summer was gone,
if
—and a very big if, she warned herself—she didn’t screw up again and get busted back to patrol duty.

Not that it was her fault, strictly speaking. Cluett had been the more experienced one on the case. He was the one responsible for maintaining the chain of evidence. Yet she was the one who’d had to accept the command discipline and the mark against her record.

Every time she remembered Cluett, she got angry all over again.

Why’d he want to hang on for forty anyhow? Police work wasn’t for stupid old men too lazy to carry their own weight.

She turned and began jogging toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Its stones were as gray as the sky above it. Snow lay melting in dirty piles on either side of the esplanade and wind stirred the bare branches of the trees beyond. More snow predicted before morning, thought Dinah. She and Sam Hentz went on duty at four. With luck, it would hold off till their tour was over.

Thinking of Sam Hentz made her warm all over, made jogging feel like dancing. Her ponytail streamed out behind her like a golden mane as her sturdy legs, sheathed in electric-pink lycra, pounded along the Promenade. Such a difference working with him. Silly the way she’d been so scared of him at first, when now—

Oh, not that Sam gave a good goddamn about her. She knew he didn’t. Not yet anyhow. Nevertheless, she couldn’t stop daydreaming about him, wishing he could know that she’d do anything for him.

Any
thing.

Despite the gray skies, Sam Hentz was sorely tempted to put the top down as he tooled back across the George Washington Bridge in a sleek black Jaguar, returning from his aunt’s house a few miles up the Hudson. Half the fun of driving a racy car was the feel of wind streaming across one’s face. He thought of Elaine Albee, always mouthing about a Lamborghini, and wondered what she’d think of his XJS if she saw him driving it.

A
red
Lamborghini yet, he thought scornfully. Black would be miles too subtle for her. With his free hand, he stroked the soft butterscotch leather of the other seat. If Albee ever did get a Lamborghini, she’d probably have the interior reupholstered in leopard skin.

Like a cubic zirconia in a platinum setting,
Imagine You!
was tucked into a second-floor suite with floor-to-ceiling mirror glass windows that fronted onto an exclusive section of Fifth Avenue in the mid-Fifties.