Styx & Stone (19 page)

THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 1960

I woke before Gigi the following morning, Thursday, worried I was falling hard for someone who would just toy with me before moving on to another as beautiful as he. I rose quietly from the bed.

For several minutes, I watched him from across the room as he slept. In his slumber, he looked like an angel, a far cry from the devil I’d spent the night with. His beauty was just too much. Feeling like a voyeur, I pulled my Leica from my purse, focused on the rumpled-haired idol sleeping before me, and clicked off a shot. Then another and another, zooming in on his innocent face, the delicate arc of his closed eyelids, and the pout of his soft lips. A golden light spilled through the south window, cut the bed in half, bathing his face and bare chest in the sun’s rays, and I regretted having no Kodachrome with me. Still, armed only with black and white, I knew these photographs would be beautiful.

Once I’d finished the roll, I stowed my camera in my purse and drew a sigh of relief; he’d slept through it all. I had my stolen memento. Now, dressed only in the bulky turtleneck he’d worn the night before, I glided about the kitchen alcove on soft, bare feet, trying to remember the coffee-brewing lesson he’d given me the day before. I wanted to beckon him to consciousness with the sweetest of reveilles.

“Oh, you’re up,” I said, catching him gazing at me in the bright morning sun. “You like it?” I asked, twisting and stretching over my shoulder to get a glimpse of myself. I laughed. “It’s all right, I suppose. Gives me something to sit on.”

“I like it,” he said. “I’d like to see more of it.”

Sipping my coffee, I asked, “May I use your toothbrush?”

Saint Vincent’s is barely five minutes from Gigi’s door. I arrived at the ICU a little after eight o’clock and found Sean McDunnough waiting for me.

“Thank you for helping me out this way,” I said.

“No need for thanks,” he said. “You’re paying me.”

I explained the routine. He was to watch over my father until a regular nurse or I replaced him. I had arranged for one of the night nurses to sit beside the bed from midnight to six o’clock. McDunnough could go eat, rest, do whatever, so long as he was back by the appointed hour. I reviewed the names of the nurses, the attending doctors, and the medication they were giving to my father. McDunnough listened without a word, as if taking instructions from the nervous hostess of a cocktail party.

I left Saint Vincent’s at eight thirty and made my way quickly back to my father’s apartment at 26 Fifth Avenue. Rodney held the elevator for me, and I skipped across the lobby to climb in. A heavy-set colored woman, dressed in a thick overcoat, was untying the scarf she’d wrapped around her head. At her side stood a pretty little girl of about seven, wavy brown hair hanging to her shoulders, with bangs grazing her eyelids. She stared up at me earnestly, nose pink from the morning cold, unaware that her woolen hat, which she clutched by the chinstrap, was dragging on the floor.

“Good morning, Miss Ellie,” said Rodney. I returned the greeting, silently wondering what time he’d come on his shift. Oh, God, what if he’d started at midnight and was about to punch out? He’d know I’d been out all night.

“Who’s this?” I asked him, motioning to the little girl, hoping to divert attention away from me.

“That’s Miss Susan Farrell,” said Rodney, beaming at the child. He used to look at me that way. “She’s just been out to the park for a stroll with Mrs. Thomas here. Pick up your hat, sweetie,” he chided gently. “You’re dragging it in the dirt.”

“Your hair’s in your eyes, Susan,” I said, reaching out to brush the fringe away. It fell back into place.

“She’s always pushing her hair out of her face,” said Rodney. “Ain’t that so, Mrs. Thomas?”

Mrs. Thomas grunted.

“Here, I have an idea,” I said, fishing in my purse. “What if I gave you this barrette, Susan?”

I held out a simple tortoiseshell barrette with a spring clip for her inspection. Her eyes grew large, and she reached out to touch it.

“I remember when I first wore a barrette,” I said. “I felt terribly sophisticated and pretty. My father told me I was the prettiest girl in New York. May I clip it on?”

I brushed Susan’s bangs to the right and affixed them with a smart click of the barrette. Susan froze, as if afraid the clip would fall off if she moved her head too abruptly. She craned her eyes upward to see, her head still motionless. Then a huge grin spread over her face, and she thanked me in a sweet voice.

“That’s Miss Ellie, Susan,” said Rodney. “She used to run in the park like you do.” Then he looked at me. “Now she’s all grown up.”

The elevator reached the twelfth floor and came to rest. The doors rolled open, and Mrs. Thomas took Susan’s hand and led her out. Once on the landing, Susan turned her body and head as one to look back at me. She smiled again and waved good-bye. I felt a rush of awareness, a sudden recognition that had eluded me throughout my brief interlude in the elevator: I was looking at myself. The little girl had the same hair, the same blue eyes, the same runny nose I had worn as a child. I stood transfixed, transported for one short moment, looking back in time into a mirror at my mislaid innocence. How singularly mesmerizing to stand before a shadow of one’s self and stare blankly for the wonder of it, without intellectualizing or drawing any wisdom or insight from the exercise.

Then I heard a door open down the hall, and a great commotion ensued. There was a rustling and a jingling, panting and then a bark. I couldn’t see the dog, but he sounded big and sloppy. Mrs. Thomas shrieked at the animal to stay away from her, while Susan thrilled at the greeting. I stepped out of the elevator to see a great golden retriever slobbering over the little girl.

“Milo! Milo!”

The reunion was of the sweetest, with energetic lapping and squeals of joy, both canine and human. Then Susan spoke again:

“Milo, look what I’ve got! It’s a barrette!”

“Mind that dog stays away from me!” said Mrs. Thomas.

“I’m giving this to you, Milo,” Susan said, presenting the barrette for his inspection, and she clipped it onto the poor dog’s head. Instantly, Milo froze in place, exactly as Susan had done when I’d put it in her hair. His big, black eyes grew large, and he looked a bit uneasy and self-conscious.

“You’re the prettiest dog in New York, Milo,” she said.

Then Susan grabbed his collar and pulled him down the hall toward home, the dog still none too pleased to have been tagged with the barrette.

I stepped back into the lift and smiled at Rodney, who still didn’t seem to approve of my grown-up behavior. But in that moment, I didn’t care. Moments later, once the elevator had deposited me on the fifteenth floor, I whisked down the corridor, light in my step and quite pleased with myself. When I reached my father’s door, I fished for my keys, then became aware of a sudden malaise. I turned my head eerily slowly, unlike little Susan’s stiff about-face, and considered the door to my left: Mrs. Farber’s. I had just seen my past, dragging her woolen hat on the floor of the elevator, and I wondered if my future was waiting behind this door, pickled and bitter, used up and left to decay slowly. I closed my eyes and swore to myself; it was too early to have a drink.

I showered, changed, and waited for the locksmith to arrive. By 9:45 he had installed a new deadbolt on the front door and given me three sets of keys. McKeever was waiting for me downstairs, and we were on our way uptown at 9:50.

“We got the lab results back this morning,” said the cop as we crossed Fourteenth Street. “The place was covered with Ercolano’s prints, as you might imagine, and two other unidentified sets, probably belonging to women.”

“I thought you could trace anyone with a good thumbprint,” I prodded.

“Only if we have their prints on file,” he said. “Of course, we could check the samples against the prints of the victim’s acquaintances, but . . .”

“But we don’t know who they are.”

McKeever nodded.

He tapped on the cage to get the attention of the patrolman in front. “Hand me that bag,” he said to the driver as we sped past Twenty-Third Street. The patrolman stuffed a parcel through the slot in the enclosure. Then to me: “These are Ercolano’s personal effects, everything that was in the pockets of his clothes. I ran up to the Twentieth last night after I dropped you off and picked them up.”

A crumpled brown paper bag; somehow I had thought the NYPD handled evidence more carefully. I reached in and fished out a full book of matches,
Crystal Lounge
emblazoned across the top: the bar opposite his apartment. I put the matches aside and retrieved a flattened wallet.

“Can you tell if he kept it in his right or left pants pocket by the curve in the leather?” I asked.

McKeever blanched then, realizing I was kidding him, smiled.

I unfolded the wallet and found a brand-new New York State driver’s license, issued to Ruggero Ercolano of the Eighty-Seventh Street address. A five-dollar bill and three ones were creased neatly into the billfold. I found a recently issued American Social Security card tucked into one of the small pockets, and nothing else. No phone numbers, reminders, receipts, nothing. Again from the bag I pulled his passport and thumbed through the pages, finding nothing more interesting than the pompous photo and an entry stamp from Idlewild on July 19, 1957. Deeper still in the sack was a set of latchkeys: two silver and a small mailbox key. The last item in the bag was a gold tie clip with the engraved initials
RGE
. I flipped open the passport to check Ercolano’s full name: Ruggero Giovanni Ercolano. I hunched over the slim gold bar for a closer look. Very few scratches.

“Either this is almost new,” I said, showing it to McKeever, “or Ercolano hated it and never wore it.”

“What makes you think that?” he asked.

“This gold finish scratches easily. Maybe it was a gift. Any way of tracing the buyer?”

McKeever laughed. “Shall I start there?” he asked, pointing to a jewelry shop on the corner of Thirty-Fourth and Sixth. “There are hundreds of jewelers in Manhattan, more in the other four boroughs, and that’s assuming the clip was bought in New York.”

“It was bought in New York, all right,” I said. “In a little place on Fifty-Seventh and Fifth Avenue. Tiffany’s. This is their signature tie clip. All the smartly dressed preps have been wearing them since I was in school.”

“How can you tell it’s from Tiffany’s?” he asked, dubious of my eye.

“It says ‘Tiffany & Co.’ right there, flatfoot,” I said, shoving the clip under his nose.

McKeever took the tie clip in his hand, turned it over and over. “Hmm, missed that,” he said, then slipped it into his breast pocket. “I’ll check it out,” he said.

“Nothing else?” I asked, tossing the effects back into the bag.

“He was a simple man,” said McKeever dryly. I was beginning to like him more all the time.

The squad car pulled to a stop in front of the Planetarium Branch of the post office, and we climbed out. Never a parking problem when riding with the police.

Joe Fenster, McKeever’s man at the post office, showed us to the caged repository, deep behind the service windows where the postal clerks ripped and sold geometric patterns of stamps. Great wooden cubbyholes held packages and letters of various sizes, all too large or too important to be left in someone’s mailbox. Each piece of mail was numbered, and McKeever and I had a crumpled yellow slip with one of those numbers written on it. Unlit, soggy cigar squeezed between his fat lips, Fenster led us through the rows of boxes, detailing the Planetarium’s operations and traffic figures as if he owned the place. Finally he stopped, plucked the wet cigar from his mouth, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder: