Rubbed Out (15 page)

Q
uintillo. frowned, crossed his right arm over his waist, leaned his left elbow on it, and tapped his chin with the fingers of his left hand. “This is going to bother me. I know I've seen you before.”

“I live around here,” I said.

“That must be it,” Quintillo replied. There was a tinge of doubt in his voice. But he didn't pursue it. I was a possible customer, after all.

After exchanging a few niceties, I explained what Dr. Ozma wanted for his waiting room. Preferably something French. Something tasteful. Something soothing.

“Ozma.” Quintillo cocked an eyebrow. “I don't remember hearing that name.”

“Well, you should.” I acted surprised. “He was mentioned in
Vogue
and
Elle
recently. Why don't we go in your office and discuss things.”

Quintillo demurred. “I usually prefer to talk to my clients directly. That way I can get a feel for their personalities. I find it works better.”

I gave him my most winning smile.

“I'm sure in most cases it does, but Dr. Ozma was very specific in his delegation of this responsibility to me. Unfortunately, his time is taken up with the press of his commitments.”

Quintillo smiled back, but it was a teeth-only smile. His heart wasn't in it. I could see he didn't like having his way of doing business interrupted.

“Fine,” he said. “Perhaps I could have a phone consultation with him at some time.”

“I'm sure that can be arranged.”

At this point the receptionist, who had been following the conversation, suggested using one of the rooms off the main gallery. If we'd been in a car dealership, they would have called it the closing room. I don't know what they called it in the art world, but the principle was the same. Get in there and make that sale.

Quintillo gave her a grateful look. I followed him into one of the rooms along the periphery of the gallery. Quintillo closed the door behind us. The colors were the same as the colors outside, but the walls were bare and the lighting was subdued.

I gave him my jacket and he hung it on a hook by the far wall and did the same for his.

“We don't have a closet,” he said apologetically as we both sat down.

A moment later, the receptionist knocked and opened the door. She was carrying a tray with two white bone-china cups, a silver coffeepot, sugar bowl and creamer, and a plate of cookies. Quintillo gave her another smile. We were all doing a lot of smiling around here.

He poured me a cup of coffee and put it in front of me. I added cream and two teaspoons of sugar and took a sip. It was good. It was better than good.

I was reflecting that the rich live better than you and me as he poured himself a cup. “I'm afraid I didn't get your name,” he said.

“I'm sorry. It's Robin. Robin Light.”

“Now,” he said, beaming at me. “Robin, can you go into a little more detail about what it is that Dr. Ozma wants.”

“Love to.”

He waited.

I took another sip of coffee and said, “You, my friend, are in some serious shit.”

A flash of recognition shot through his face.

“Jeez,” he said. “You're the woman . . .”

“Who had the wrong building,” I finished for him.

Better late than never.

“I knew you looked familiar.”

“I was wearing different clothes.”

His eyes flicked across my face and back. Suddenly he wasn't Mr. Smooth-Talking Art Dealer anymore. He was working-class New Jersey.

“Fuck. There is no Dr. Ozma, is there?”

“Nope.”

“Ozma from Oz,” Quintillo said. “Not a bad name for a plastic surgeon.”

“I like to think of myself as a genius in my own quiet way.”

“And you're—”

“Oh, I'm still Robin Light.” I took out my card, the one that said I was a private detective, and shoved it across the table. “Right now, I'm working for a guy called Paul Santini.”

“You don't look like a private detective,” Quintillo said.

“Then I guess we're even because you don't look like an art dealer.”

“Fair enough. Now that we've established that we don't look like we should, I want you to get out.” And he jerked his thumb toward the door.

“I don't think so.” I took another drink of coffee. “What blend are you using? This is really very good.”

He started to rise. “I'm getting Amanda to call the police.”

“You can if you want, but that would be a profound mistake on your part.”

I snagged a cookie and bit into it. I tasted butter and oatmeal and walnuts and raisins and something I couldn't define. Then I got it. Orange peel. I reached for another cookie and ate that too as Quintillo considered what I'd said.

“All right,” he said as I tried out what looked like a brown-sugar shortbread. “You got five minutes to tell me what you want.”

I dusted the crumbs off my mouth and wiped my hands on the linen napkin the receptionist had so thoughtfully provided.

“I think you already know. I need to locate Janet Wilcox.”

“Unfortunately, I don't know where she is.”

“I don't believe you. By the way, where did you get these cookies? They're delicious.”

“A bakery on Third Avenue between 79th and 78th Streets. I've already spoken to the police. I'll tell you what I told them. I came home from work, and Janet Wilcox wasn't there. I have no idea where she went.”

“It's very important that I find her.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that has nothing to do with me. I sell art, I don't run a missing-persons bureau.”

“Perhaps you should.”

And I leaned forward and told him about what had happened to Wilcox. I could see him getting paler as I spoke.

He opened his jacket and loosened his tie.

“How do I know you're telling the truth?”

“Call Paul Santini and ask him.” I gave him the number.

He looked even worse when he got off the phone.

“I can't believe it,” he said to me. “People like that. They should take them out to the Pine Barrens and cap 'em.” He shook his head. His voice trailed off.

I popped another shortbread cookie in my mouth. It literally melted on my tongue. I wondered how much a pound of them cost. Probably a lot. On the other hand, what else was expense money for?

“Here's something else to consider. The people who did that to Wilcox are really anxious to have their property returned. Right now, they don't know about you, but believe me, I can remedy that in an instant.”

“So what? I have nothing to do with this.”

“I don't think they're exactly discriminating in the fixing-blame department, if you get my meaning.”

“But they don't know who I am,” Quintillo protested. Then enlightenment struck. “You wouldn't,” he said, looking at my face.

I smiled again. Given the atmosphere, it seemed like the right thing to do. “I will if I have to.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Why?” I pointed to my breasts. “You're making a mistake if you think that having these automatically makes me a compassionate person.”

“Shit,” Quintillo said.

He bit his thumbnail.

I took another sip of coffee while I was waiting and watched Quintillo dab at a nonexistent spot on his tie.

“I knew I should never have said yes when she called me up,” he told me. “See, this is why it's hard to be nice. The only thing it gets you is in trouble.”

“I don't think the Pope would agree. Why did she leave your place?”

Quintillo put his cup and saucer back on the tray. “My apartment is really small. A tiny one-bedroom. After a while she got tired of sleeping on the sofa.”

“So you and she aren't . . .”

“God, no.” Quintillo shook his head. “She's not my type. I'm not sure that she's anyone's type. We're just friends.”

“I heard she doesn't have many of those either.”

“I don't think she does.”

“So how come you and she were?”

“We were never
friend
friends. She has an interest in art. I think I'm the only person she knows she can discuss it with. But we hadn't talked in—I don't know.” Quintillo stopped to calculate. “At least five years.”

“And then she just pops up. Weren't you surprised when she called you?”

“Sure I was.”

“And you just let her come down.”

“Hey, I'm a nice guy.”

“So you said.” I got up and leaned against the wall and folded my arms across my chest. “Here's what I think. I think she offered to pay you to let her hide out in your place, and you said okay.”

“Why would I do something like that?”

“Because you need the money.”

Quintillo gestured around the room. “Does this setup look like I'm a guy who needs money?”

“No. But this isn't your setup. I'd wager you're just renting the use of the space and the receptionist. Given what you do, you couldn't afford something like this. If you could, you'd be living on Park Avenue instead of 81st Street. So how much did she offer you? Five hundred? A thousand?”

Quintillo pursed his lips.

I walked over to the table and sat back down. “Hey, this is New York City. Everyone hustles. That's one of the things that makes this place so great.”

I could see Quintillo thinking over what I'd said. “Fifteen hundred,” he told me after a moment had gone by. “She offered me fifteen hundred.”

“Hard to resist.”

“Exactly.”

“And did she tell you why she was doing this?”

“Janet said she was leaving her husband, and she was afraid he'd find her. In my place she'd be harder to trace. She said she only needed to stay there for a couple of nights.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“While she was there? Mostly she talked about her husband. About what a creep he was and how'd she'd given him the best years of her life and now he'd taken up with this slut. Frankly,” Quintillo told me, “I stopped listening. It reminded me too much of what my ex-wife said to me before she took me for every friggin' thing I ever owned.”

I tried to keep the conversation on course. “Where did Janet go?”

“She didn't tell me. Honestly.”

I smiled at him. “You know, whenever anyone says ‘honestly,' it makes me think the opposite.”

“Are you saying I'm lying?” Quintillo demanded.

“Lying is a harsh term. Maybe obfuscating.”

If you can't scare people with a gun, wow them with big words, I always say. I poured myself a half cup of coffee and drank it before continuing.

“Here's what I think you're thinking. You're thinking instead of telling me where she is, you're going to race up to where Janet Wilcox is and get more money from her. Don't do it. Don't be stupid. You don't want to wind up like Wilcox. You don't want to get involved with these people. It's not worth it.”

Quintillo sighed. I watched him weighing his options.

Finally, he said, “She never told me where she was going, but I saw the address. She wrote it down on a slip of paper. I think I can remember what it was.”

I grabbed three more cookies on the way out.

I
went back to my car and checked in with Manuel. “So how are things going back in Syracuse?”

“Nothing new. Except Calli came by the house.”

“What did she want?”

“To talk to you.”

I really had to call her. I reached for the pack of cigarettes on the seat, took one out, and lit it as Manuel continued chatting.

“Bethany asked her if she could have one of Lily's puppies, and she said probably yes. We're going over there this afternoon to look at them.”

“Do you know how much time and money it takes to raise a puppy, especially the first year . . .”

“Don't worry about it,” Manuel said.

“Because I'm not getting stuck. . .”

“You won't. It'll be fine. Bethany wants to name the puppy Tara. What do you think?”

“I think I don't want to talk about this right now.”

“Well, when can we talk about it?”

“When I get back.”

“You promise?”

“I swear.”

“We'd better,” Manuel said. “And Robin,” he added, “don't worry. Bethany and I already cleaned up the wax on the stove.”

“What wax?”

But Manuel didn't answer because he'd already hung up. I could have called Manuel back and asked him what he was talking about. But I didn't. Because the truth was, I've learned there are some things it's better not to know. As I stubbed out my cigarette and chucked the butt out the window, I decided that if Sam Spade had to deal with teenagers, he wouldn't have been so cool.

I checked in with Paul next. He didn't pick up his phone or his cell. I wondered if he was in the hospital again with another kidney stone. As I was leaving a message on his voice mail filling him in on what was going on, it occurred to me that maybe he was at the casino.

I'd had a black-sheep uncle who couldn't keep away from the poker table. Eventually, a fisherman found his body floating in the East River a year after he'd disappeared. Hopefully, Paul would wise up before something like that happened to him. Probably wouldn't, though. Most people have to be looking at the abyss before they decide it's time to change.

I was sitting in my car thinking about my next step when a guy in a Range Rover pulled alongside of me and rolled down his window. I don't know. Maybe he thought he was going on safari. I hear there are lots of lions in Central Park.

“Hey, lady,” he yelled. “You pullin' out or what?”

“Pulling out.”

I let him have the parking space and went to find Janet Wilcox. Maybe I'd do better with her.

According to the address Quintillo had seen, she was hiding out on Belmont Avenue in the Bronx. When I'd lived in New York City, Belmont Avenue was in the borough's Italian section. The section probably still was Italian, since Italians tend to hold on to their territory. Turned out I was correct.

Ethnicity aside, it was an odd choice for Janet to have made, and I was surprised that she had ended up there. Even though the area is mentioned in guidebooks, it's definitely off the beaten path. Being an out-of-towner, I would have thought Janet Wilcox would have stuck to Manhattan, maybe venturing as far afield as Park Slope in Brooklyn at the most. The only thing that people who don't live in the City know in the Bronx is Yankee Stadium. Maybe Quintillo had suggested it.

As I turned onto the Madison Avenue Bridge, I thought about how my mother and I used to drive up this way to see my aunt, years ago when she and her husband had lived in the Bronx. And then I thought about the fact that George's mother and sister lived not that far away from where I was heading.

I'd met them once in passing three years ago. I suppose the fact that I hadn't met them again should have told me something. Of course, I'd never had much to do with Murphy's family either. Hadn't wanted to. Or my own, for that matter. I'm not big on families. In my experience they tend to bring out the worst in people. Or at least the worst in me, if we're being precise.

Sometime or other while I'd been inside the gallery talking to Quintillo, the morning sun had disappeared. It had clouded up again. The water in the Hudson River looked choppy and cold. An empty barge, muscled along by a tugboat, was making its way downstream to the ocean. The buildings across the way on the Palisades seemed mirage-like in the thin winter light.

These days the City has turned its back on its rivers. When I was growing up, New York City was still a major world port. I remember going down to the piers to see the ships offloading when I was twelve. Seeing the names. Cairo. Karachi. Bangkok. Vowing I would travel to those places one day. Who'd have thought I would end up in Syracuse.

By now it was a little after eleven-thirty and traffic was still fairly light. I was on East Tremont Avenue when Paul called me on my cell.

“So where is she?” he asked.

I told him.

“Belmont Avenue? Where the hell is that?”

There was static on his line, and his voice pulsed off and on.

“In the Bronx.”

“The Bronx? Isn't that crack land? I didn't think people lived there anymore.”

I glanced at a small boy holding his grandmother's hand as they crossed the street.

“Some do.”

“Well, just remember. I'm not paying you to do anything cute. Verify the address and call me.”

I told him I would and clicked off. For the next twenty minutes or so, I drove around trying to find Janet Wilcox's address. The houses, neat and tidy, looked the way I remembered them. Despite the weather, the stores on Arthur Avenue were bustling with people bundled up against the wind, pushing those mesh shopping carts on wheels that I've only seen in New York City. The live poultry market was still there. So was the pizzeria where Murphy and I used to go. The pharmacy that had had the bottle of leeches in the window with the sign leaning against it saying, F
OR
M
EDICINAL
U
SE
O
NLY,
was still there as well.

I finally located the house Janet was supposed to be staying in. It was a compact, two-family brick affair with a tiny front yard enclosed by a chain-link fence. An attached garage stood off to the left. The driveway was empty. In the downstairs window, someone had posted a sign that read, A
PARTMENT FOR
R
ENT
. I
NQUIRE WITHIN.

I found a parking spot about a block away, maneuvered my car into it, and walked back. You could have eaten off the streets. All the houses I went by had curtains on their windows and doormats with cute little sayings on their front steps. Some of the people hadn't taken down their Christmas decorations yet.

The house I was looking for had a picture of Santa Claus on his sleigh pasted across its front window. A small spotlighted statue of the Virgin Mary sat in the yard off to the right. The gate groaned when I opened it. I went up the path to the front steps. There were two mailboxes attached to the front wall. One had the name Lazzarro neatly printed on the name slot. There was no writing on the other one.

I was about to ring Lazzarro's bell when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Janet Wilcox rounding the corner. She was wearing a brown cloth coat with a bright turquoise woolen scarf wound around her neck and matching suede ankle-length boots on her feet. The scarf and the boots looked expensive and were designed to catch the eye. Part of her new look, no doubt, though in her circumstances I would probably have gone with inconspicuous.

Her shoulders were stooped against the wind and her arms were full of grocery bags. When she saw me, her eyes widened and she slowed down fractionally. So much for calling Paul, I thought as I watched Janet Wilcox bend her head and begin studying the pavement as if the cracks in it could provide the answer to her problems.

Obviously, she remembered me from the other night. She kept on walking, slowly increasing her pace. By the time I'd gotten through the gate, she'd left the pavement, wormed her way between two parked cars and was halfway to crossing the street. I caught up with her just as she reached the other side.

“Janet Wilcox,” I said.

She looked up at me. Her features seemed softer somehow. Her skin was blotchy from the wind, but her hair wasn't moving. I guess her hairspray habit was hard to break.

“I'm sorry,” she told me in a pleasant voice as she shifted her parcels around slightly. “You're mistaken. You have the wrong person. My name is Cecelia.”

“Well, Cecelia you must have an identical twin.” I dug the picture of her that Wilcox had given me out of my backpack and showed it to her. “See. Same mouth. Same eyes. Same chin. Same overreliance on hairspray.”

She took the picture and gave the appearance of studying it before handing it back. “She does look like me, doesn't she?” Janet allowed.

“She is you.”

“I can see where you'd make a mistake.”

“Your friend Quintillo told me I could find you here.”

“Quintillo?” She cocked her head and smiled brightly. “I'm sorry. I don't know anyone by that name.”

“You stayed at his apartment. Remember. I saw you and him in the hallway. He was trying to get his mail out of the mailbox.”

She shook her head. “I don't know what you're talking about. I've been here for a while.”

“Great. But I still need to speak to Janet Wilcox.”

The softness left her eyes. She compressed her lips into a thin line. I could see her weighing the possibilities. Finally she said, “My mother always said: Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. She was right.”

“What a coincidence! So did my grandmother. Maybe we're related three generations back.”

Janet Wilcox sniffed at the suggestion.

“Fine. But be that as it may, I still need to speak to you.”

Looking at Janet's pinched mouth, narrow lips, and suspicious eyes, I could see why Wilcox had gone off with Alima, though I had an idea the only difference between the two women was the packaging. That probably made all the difference, though.

“I'll give you one hundred dollars if you'll go away,” Janet Wilcox told me.

“You think I come that cheap?”

“A hundred dollars is a good amount.”

“Only if you live in Nairobi. Not that it matters because I can't do it.” And I put my card in her hand.

She didn't even glance at it, just let it flutter to the curb.

I bent over and picked it up. “You know you can get fined for littering.”

“Why can't you?”

I turned the collar of my jacket up and stuck my hands in my pockets. “Take your money? For a variety of reasons.”

“All the worse for you.” And she hunched her shoulders against the wind that had started kicking up.

“I think I like talking to Cecelia better.”

“She's not available now.”

“Okay.” I nodded toward Lazzarro's house. “So how did you find this place anyway?”

“That's none of your business.”

Guess my charm wasn't working. “It's cold out here. Let's go inside.”

“Why should we? I just told you we have nothing to talk about.” Janet Wilcox's voice was harsh, but now that I was listening more carefully I heard a tinge of shrillness. Push a little and she'd break. She took a step back. “Now get away from me or I'll call the police.”

“Go right ahead,” I told her. “They've been looking for you. As I'm sure you know.”

“I know nothing of the kind.”

A woman hurried along the street, gave us a casual look, and moved on. We could have been two friends having a minor disagreement.

I waited to see if Janet asked me why the police were looking for her, but she didn't. I took that to mean she knew they'd called Quintillo's apartment, which also meant she knew about her husband being dead. Nice lady. They must have had a great marriage. No wonder her daughter was the way she was.

“How about we go in your apartment before my fingers drop off?” I suggested again.

I reached over and took hold of her elbow. Her body stiffened. I realized she looked like my fifth-grade elementary-school teacher, the one who had made me sit in the corner every chance she got. To teach me to not talk back, she'd said. Obviously her plan hadn't worked very well. Neither was Janet Wilcox's for that matter.

“Don't you dare touch me,” she huffed.

I wasn't impressed. I'd been told a lot worse by a lot nastier people. My backpack was hanging off my left shoulder. I gestured to it with a nod of my head.

“I have a Glock in here. A gun,” I clarified for her benefit.

“I know what a Glock is.”

“Good. Now, I don't want to use it, but I'm cold and irritable and I will if I have to, so I suggest you do what I say.”

Janet Wilcox drew herself up. “You wouldn't dare.”

“Don't bet on it.” She was right, but she didn't know that. I tried to look sufficiently menacing. “Why wouldn't I? Because you're such a pleasant person?”

She was quiet.

“Look around,” I told her, indicating the street. “No one's out. No one would see anything. Think about it.”

Evidently I made the correct impression, because after a few seconds, she turned on her heels and marched back across the street. I followed. We were both silent as she fitted her key into the lock to her apartment.

“They should take down the For Rent sign,” I said.

She didn't reply. Some people just don't know how to do chitchat.

We walked up the steps with her in front. Just in case she decided to run. She fitted another key in the door and we were inside her apartment. Janet headed toward the kitchen and I followed. We went through the living room. The décor was Italian rococo. The walls were covered with flocked wallpaper. A matching sofa and love seat were upholstered in damask. A glass-topped coffee table sat in front of the sofa. A bookcase toward the far wall held a fifteen-inch television. I didn't see a sign of clothes or books or papers.