The Oxygen Murder (15 page)

Lori is marching off to her bedroom, behind the new Japanese screen she bought with money from an Amber payment. She wants to knock the screen over, to throw it out the window, down four stories to crash on the street.

She gets dressed. It’s early, but she’ll walk in the park, then go for breakfast. Later she’ll pound the ice, stay away from Amber, and feel better.

Amber is already in the darkroom; she’s turned the sign on the door to read
STOP
. She’s singing a Christmas song:
He knows if you’ve been bad or good . . .

Lori bangs on the door. “I don’t want to see you here when I get back,” she shouts.

Sitting on her rocker, teary eyes closed, Lori heard the elevator reach the third floor, where it hit that jagged piece of metal a few inches from the gate.

She got up and went to her closet. She took her black leather jacket from the hanger and then put it back. Too nice. She pulled on a fleece-lined parka with a button missing.

By the time the cage bounced onto the fourth-floor threshold, Lori had her scarf on and her gloves ready. She turned off the lights and looked out at the amazing array of buildings. New York was the best city in the world for making films, she thought. She remembered the first rule of New York filmmaking: When in doubt, cut to the skyline. She imagined the lines in a teleplay:

Young woman leaves brownstone with uniformed officers.

[Cut to skyline.]

She waited until they rang the tinny bell. She opened the door.

“Lori Pizzano?”

She felt a jolt of fear, then drew a resigned, almost relaxed breath.

“That’s me,” she said, and followed New York’s finest into the caged pen.

C
HAP
R
T
HIRTEEN

M
att and I walked arm in arm up Sixth Avenue toward Fiftieth, where we were to meet Rose for ice-skating (her) and spectating (us). We’d already seen the Rockefeller Center tree, illumined by Rose’s detailed knowledge of it. She knew exactly how many lights (thirty thousand) adorned the spruce, and how big the tree was (seventy-one feet tall, weighing nine tons). And just as she was the historian of Revere, she’d recounted for us the tree’s lineage, grown this year by a family in Suffern, New York. How she did all this research without the Internet, I couldn’t fathom.

Neither Matt nor I was in a mood for holiday cheer, and as we strolled amid happy faces, I found the plethora of twinkling lights—in store windows, on lampposts, and draped around buildings—nerve-wracking, though I was sure the merchants paying the utility bills were hoping for a different response. The bulbs that blinked on and off, as if their fuse boxes had gone haywire, seemed to mimic my state of mind.

Buzz had said only a few words about why they were bringing Lori in for questioning. Something about her financial records and an unusually large amount of money in the loft had set them on the path of connecting Lori to the blackmail scam Amber was running.

“It could be nothing, Matt, so I don’t want to get you all riled up,” Buzz had said. “We’re doing a routine questioning, based on what’s turned up. Take your bride here and go about your business.”

It was not the time to react to his designation of me—retired, and never having worn a long white dress and veil—as a bride.

Matt wrote his cell phone number on one of his business cards and handed it to Buzz. “I’d be glad if you’d keep me in the loop.”

Buzz slapped Matt’s back. “Will do, buddy.”

“Buddy” was good, I thought. Not the term you’d use with a guy if you were ready to throw the book at his niece.

“Blackmail,” Matt said to me now, as we crossed West Forty-ninth Street. “I just can’t get my head around it. That Lori was getting a piece of . . . whatever kind of scam Amber had going.”

“I guess that’s what she was holding back on us the other night,” I said. “That sentence she wouldn’t finish. Lori will just explain everything to the police, and we can all unwind and have a good time. Maybe they asked Lori back because her apartment was the crime scene and they have more questions about it.”

I talked on and on, hoping to find the right phrase to relax the muscles in Matt’s arm.

Matt squeezed my hand, his touch barely noticeable through two pairs of thick gloves, his and mine. “I know the buzzwords, no pun intended, and Lori’s already had her
routine
interview, on Sunday.” He blew out a breath against the cold air and seemed to watch carefully as the fog he created drifted away. “When a cop says ‘something’s turned up,’ he means the person has gone from being a witness to being a suspect.”

“But not for
murder,
” I said.

Matt shrugged and breathed heavily. “I don’t know.”

“But what about that letter Buzz showed us, sent to Amber at the loft? Didn’t we agree that whoever killed Amber probably didn’t know where she lived? Why would Lori kill Amber in her own apartment?”

No answer forthcoming.

Blip blip blip. Blip blip blip.

Rose, calling my cell phone. I found it under several layers of warm knit and clicked
TALK
, becoming part of the large fraction of pedestrians holding phones to their ears or talking into headsets.

“Are we late?” I asked her. “I hope they didn’t run out of skates for us to rent.”

Rose had gone to see Frank off at La Guardia for his trip home, and she was ready to skate, the next thing on her to-do list for this vacation. I was ready to take her picture doing it.

“Funny, Gloria. I know you two have no intention of skating. Did it go all right with the NYPD Blue?” One of Rose’s favorite rerun shows on television. “Did you get to teach and draw pictures of little atoms?”

“I might have helped a little, but . . .” The qualifier was out before I knew it, along with a little catch in my voice that I knew Rose would pick up.

“What’s wrong?”

It was hard to talk with the hubbub of shoppers and traffic on Sixth Avenue, so I kept it short.

“Matt must be upset.” I heard the concern in her voice and in the clicking noises she made while she thought of a way to help. “Well, we’ll have to distract him. I’m already in a queue to get my skates. The line was long, long, long, so I decided to get in it right away before you came. I’m wearing my hat, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding me. I’ve been reading a magazine and also that hotel brochure while I’m standing here. Did you know the star on the tree this year is covered in twenty-five thousand crystals and has a diameter of nine and a half feet?”

“Amazing. All that math.”

“It’s the only math I like.”

“I know.”

In what other century, I thought, would we be bantering this way, cell phone to cell phone, in real time? I reverted to my soapbox, lecturing to myself, advancing my theory to an internal audience: If only the so-called sciences of psychology and the human spirit had advanced as much as technology, Amber wouldn’t be dead, there wouldn’t be war, and we wouldn’t need the NYPD Blue or any other army.

Short as she was, we could pick out Rose in the long line for skate rental. She wore a bright red chenille hat she’d bought from a street vendor for five dollars, along with a Gucci-like wallet for ten dollars and a set of watches that was three for twenty dollars. So far, other than dinner and snack food, I’d bought only an Ellis Island Christmas ornament, in case Matt and I put up a tree when we got home to Revere.

Without warning, the line of people waiting to enter the rink was halted, and the ice cleared of skaters. The music changed, and a figure skater in a green and red outfit and a Santa hat entertained us for a few minutes. I had a better shot of Rose without the crowd of amateurs in the way, so I snapped a picture of her in line. I hoped she’d see us and wave, but it was crowded at the street-level viewing area and I doubted she’d be able to locate us, especially since both our hats were black.

Behind us, a group of impromptu carolers bravely started singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” It was hard to ignore their spirit, and Matt and I joined them. We were all a little shaky at the higher numbers, where about twenty weak voices sang,
eleven mumbles a-mumbling, ten la la la-ing . . .
and then belted out,
five goooold-en rings . . .

By the time we turned back, Rose in her fiery red hat was back on the ice and waving indiscriminately to the crowd. For a few minutes, I forgot about ozone, Amber, and a Pizzano in trouble.

Not counting ourselves among those who skip meals when under stress, Matt and I talked Rose into stopping at a deli near our Times Square hotel. We sat in a booth and checked out the framed caricatures hung edge to edge on the red-painted walls. We called out the names of celebrities as we recognized them. Matt and I were good at the classics—Sammy Davis Jr., Barbra Streisand, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra at different ages. Rose had a better grasp of pop culture and was able to identify a couple of young actresses and singers whose names began with Jennifer or Jason or Ashley.

“Do you have anything small?” Rose asked the waiter.

The young man, a caricature himself with his facial hair landscaped in curlicues, shook his head. “Sorry. We’re known for our big.”

When our sandwiches came, we understood what he meant: We were each served approximately a pound of meat between two slices of rye bread. I could hardly wait to see how big the cheesecake portions would be.

Matt looked tired, a consequence of Lori’s plight, I knew.

“You still haven’t told us about yesterday’s conference,” I said.

Not to be too obvious. I might as well have asked,
How can we get your mind off your niece?
I was hoping that a Christmas miracle would
happen back at the precinct and Lori would be free and clear before we finished our carnivore meal.

“We heard all about smart guns,” Matt said, squeezing the last drop of mustard from the container onto his bread. I’d won the no-mayonnaise battle, an effort to get his weight down as his cancer doctor had ordered. Matt was too much a gentleman to suggest what I should do to achieve the same.

“Like smart bombs?” I asked. “With sensors to guide them to their targets?”

“Nope. It’s smart at the other end. The gun recognizes its owner from a thumbprint or some other pattern. It will function only in that person’s hand.”

Rose dropped the small piece of turkey she’d pulled off the edge of her sandwich. “Amazing. Of course! So if the kids find a gun in the house, they can’t use it. I like it.”

“The guy who breaks into your house can’t use it, either,” I said. “Brilliant concept.”

Matt shook his head while he finished a large bite of pastrami. “Not as good as it sounds. Most of us didn’t like the idea.”

I wondered if this were more of the Luddite syndrome, named in honor of those who reject new technology just because it’s unfamiliar and therefore, they reason, probably unnecessary and unsafe. Certainly unwelcome. I thought of my older cousin Mary Ann, who was convinced it was Matt’s cell phone that caused his prostate cancer.

“How come you’re not thrilled with it?” I asked, in a neutral tone.

“What’s not to like?” Rose asked, every day sounding more like her teenaged grandson.
Oops.
Karla Sasso Galigani’s son, I thought, before I could rein in my associative powers. I set up an instant dilemma, ridiculous beyond words, where I was a one-woman jury, having to choose between Karla and Lori—my best friend’s daughter-in-law and my husband’s niece—as Amber’s killer.

“To me, it’s a computer, not a gun,” Matt said. “It’s got this little touch pad on the handle, like an alarm panel.”

“Or the ATM machine,” Rose said. “There’s Milton Berle,” she added, pointing across the narrow aisle between the two rows of booths.

“And Lucille Ball, two up from Uncle Milty,” Matt said. “You’re right about the keypads on the ATMs, in the department stores. I had to key in my Social Security number at Macy’s last week. Codes and PIN numbers are everywhere. I just don’t want them on my gun. Some of these new models store all this data about how strong your grip is and what angle you hold the gun at. It’s called a personal something.”

“Personalization technology,” I said. “That’s one of the new terms in consumer products.”

“It’s nuts.”

“You’re thinking the gun’s going to fail, like a computer, and you’ll be stuck there, essentially unarmed,” I said.

Matt shrugged his shoulders, holding on to the second half of his sandwich. “Yeah, what do you say to the bad guy? Hold on a sec, I have to reboot?”

I laughed in spite of myself, at his comment and at our different technology thresholds. Whenever possible financially, I was an early adopter. I wasn’t negatively affected by the obvious disadvantages of getting the first products on the market: My first cell phone was bigger than the land phones of the time and weighed my purse down more than my flashlight, and the purse-sized laser pointer I bought ten years ago had fewer features and cost ten times more than the one I carried now. As for Matt, he’d only reluctantly allowed me to introduce a microwave oven into our home.