The Shadow Man (15 page)

‘No, sir.’

‘Look it up.’

Lasser stood and gestured toward the door. ‘First real case, right?’

‘Well, I handled the Williams prosecution, sir, the home invasions. That was in the papers …’

‘I know. That’s what got you assigned to my division.’

Lasser moved out from behind the desk and walked to the wall where the seven photographs of prisoners were hung. ‘You were looking at these. You know who they are?’

‘No, sir.’

‘These are the seven men, I’ve personally put on Death Row. Now I ought to take this guy down, because he was executed last year. A gentleman named Blair Sullivan, who killed so many people I’ve lost count. Twenty-two-hundred volts courtesy of the State of Florida and yours truly. Went to meet his Maker cursing, foul-mouthed and unrepentant, not an approach I particularly recommend. Anyway, I keep him up there with his compatriots for sentimental reasons.’

Espy Martinez couldn’t imagine what those reasons

might be, but she was certain that the one thing they weren’t was sentimental.

‘You find Sophie Millstein’s killer and then you can put a mug shot on the wall of your office and I can call my rabbi and everyone will be happy. Except for the killer, of course. And Sophie Millstein.’

He looked at Espy Martinez.

‘Exodus, 21:12. I’ll want another report by the end of the week. And make sure there’s some progress, okay? Jump on Walter Robinson, and jump on him today. And for Christ’s sake don’t listen to him complain about all the other fucking cases he’s got. Tell him he’s only got one case. My rabbi’s case.’

Then, with a chopping wave of his hand, the chief assistant dismissed her, returning to the paperwork on his desk.

Espy Martinez quickly exited the office, but after closing the door behind her, she turned to Abe Lasser’s secretary.

‘Do you keep a Bible handy?’ she asked.

The woman nodded, reached into a drawer and produced a leather-bound copy of the Bible, handing it to Espy Martinez.

‘Page seventeen,’ the secretary said, turning back to her work.

Espy Martinez flipped the thin, crinkly pages quickly. It wasn’t hard to find the proper passage. It had been marked with a yellow highlighting pen:

He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death …

Walter Robinson ignored the thick pressure of the evening humidity as he stood in the alleyway behind the Sunshine Arms adjacent to the trash canister where Sophie

Millstein’s jewelry box had been discovered.

He spoke steadily and quietly to himself as he dissected the crime, occasionally pausing to make a small notation on a pad of paper. He walked back to the spot where Kadosh, the neighbor, stood and saw the perpetrator. He thought: Kadosh must have seen him as he turned and discarded the box. Eye to eye for just a second. Face lit up by that streetlight over there. Then he ran. Did he know he’d been seen? Yes. So: panic. No thinking. No nothing. Just gotta get outta here panic.

Walter Robinson moved from the end of the alley to a side street.

Well, my man, your blood pressure must have been soaring, ripping a hole in your chest, adrenaline hammering away inside your ears. Breathing short and shallow, just excited, afraid and juiced all at once, didn’t even have time yet to think about the bag of crack you’d be able to buy. You wanted to just get the hell out of there, didn’t you? You were scared as hell, and you just wanted to make tracks. Get safe.

So, what did you do?

His eyes swept down the block toward Jefferson Avenue.

Did you have a car? Possibly. Something old and nondescript. But maybe you sold it a few weeks ago, because you needed the money, didn’t you? So maybe it was something you borrowed? Who would lend a junkie a car? Did you get a friend to drive you? Another crackhead looking for an easy score? Maybe. But I doubt it. Crackheads don’t make for lasting partnerships.

In the distance the diesel whine of a bus coming down the avenue rilled the air. Walter Robinson listened care-hilly, still thinking hard.

Did you ride our nice, safe public transportation system

here and then home again? Did you take the J-50? That would have carried you to Forty-second Street. And then you could transfer to the G-75. That would take you right across the Julia Tuttle Causeway, right back into the heart of Liberty City, and you’d be home and feeling safe.

Walter Robinson felt the night starting to gnaw away at the remains of the day.

Is that what you did, my man? he asked himself. Did you use a goddamn bus to escape from a murder?

If Sophie Millstein’s killing was simply an afterthought to robbery, then yes, absolutely, Robinson told himself.

He slowly walked back to where he’d parked his car. He felt there was something terribly wrong in a world where killers rode public transportation. And then he thought how crazy that idea was. Murder is as routine as anything else, he told himself, as ordinary as a bus stop. He got behind the wheel and, after checking his watch, put the unmarked car in gear and headed to the Beach’s bus terminal.

Exhaust fumes seemed to blend with the remains of the day’s heat, creating a thick, sticky, noxious concoction. Walter Robinson felt as if he was walking into a basement or attic, fighting through a tangle of cobwebs. He wondered how anyone could breathe inside the terminal, even though it was constructed like a covered parking area, with huge gaps where walls should have been, ostensibly to let the air breeze through, though Robinson thought that no self-respecting gust of wind would ever volunteer to enter the poisonous space.

Inside a small office the night dispatcher turned through the pages of a logbook. She was a gruff, middle-aged woman, with carrot-red hair teased into a helmet upon her head, who talked interchangeably to herself and to him. As

she searched for the proper log page, Robinson spied a pin-up calendar on the wall. August was illustrated by a not particularly pretty bleached blonde, slightly overweight, with pendulous breasts that were offered toward the camera and a slightly dopey expression on her face. The detective wondered why the dispatcher allowed August to stay on the wall, almost mocking her.

‘Here it is. Jesus, why can’t those dumb drivers ever fill this stuff out right? I’ve got what you need, Detective.’

He leaned toward the logbook, and the dispatcher continued speaking.

‘These are the routes closest to your homicide. Christ, what’s the world coming to, anyway, little old lady, Jesus, I saw it in the papers, Christ, and we were running a single shift on that night, but there was one trainee too, riding in the number six. Ahhh, no one reports any incidents, except one guy, right here, says he kicked a pair of teenagers off near Jefferson, because they were playing a boom box too loud. I hate that kinda music, what do they see in it anyway? Country and western for me. Not this rap shit. That’s surprising…’

‘Why is that?’ Walter Robinson asked.

The dispatcher looked up at him as if he were crazy. ‘Two teenagers. Boom box. You know the kinda weaponry those kids mighta been carrying? I’m gonna stop my bus and kick them off and maybe get a bullet in my chest from some angry punk? No thank you, Detective. Just gonna let ‘em ride, and listen to that crap loud as they like …’

‘But nothing else?’

‘Nah. Not that night. But you know, these damn incident forms take damn forever to fill out, why’d they ever come up with them, triplicate for Christ’s sake, I dunno. So, maybe somebody remembers something, maybe helps you out. Bus drivers see a lot, you know. We see a lot.’

He nodded, and the dispatcher pointed him toward a grimy driver’s lounge, which sported a soda machine, a cigarette machine, and a candy machine, all with handwritten out of order signs taped to their fronts. A couple of drivers were sitting on a beaten, fake leather couch, waiting for their shift to begin. They looked up as Walter Robinson entered and identified himself.

An older man, bald, with a short ring of gray hair, nodded when he explained what he was searching for.

‘That was me and the kid driving that route,’ the bus driver said.

‘Th-th-that’s right,’ a considerably younger man, wearing a much fresher and cleaner blue uniform, stuttered in agreement.

‘You recall that night?’ Robinson asked.

‘All the nights are pretty much the same. Up and down. Up and down. Late at night, mostly tired people. Drunk people. I don’t know if I remember anything special.’

‘A young black man. Nervous. In a hurry…’

‘No—’

‘S-s-s-sure, there was, remember? You hadda yell at the g-g-g-guy to s-s-s-siddown …’ the younger driver interrupted. He looked eagerly at the older man, who rolled his eyes back in frustration.

‘I don’t like to make trouble,’ the driver said, in a halfhearted apology. ‘Ain’t my business. I just drive.’

‘Tell me,’ Robinson demanded.

‘Not much to say. Guy gets on. Slams some change in the box. Bus is nearly empty, but he stands there, looking out, acting nervous, just like you said, and telling me to get going, get going, put a move on it. Like he was in some big fucking hurry. I yelled for him to siddown and he told me to fuck myself, and I told him I’d rip his fucking head off and that kept up for a minute or two, you know, fuck me,

fuck you, so a couple of stops up, I told him to either siddown or get off. He sat down. Not that big a deal, Detective. Happens all the time.’

‘Where did he get off?’

‘Godfrey Road. Transfer to a city bus. Don’t know where he was heading, but I can guess.’

Walter Robinson nodded. ‘Recognize the guy again?’

‘Maybe. Yeah, probably.’

‘S-S-Sure,’ said the younger driver.

‘See him, call me. I’ll be back in touch. May want you to look at some mug shots.’

‘I’ll be here.’

Robinson left the bus terminal. He drove a few blocks over to Collins Avenue, parked and walked through to the boardwalk that the Army Corps of Engineers had constructed for the old folks to walk up and down the beach. He stood, leaning up against the wooden railing, staring out toward the waves. There was small surf running, just the mere insinuation of ocean power, rebuking the sand and rough coral stone beach. He let the hot salt air clear his lungs, and he talked to himself with some astonishment: You were right, goddamn it. He rode the damn bus. And now, maybe, you’ve got a chance.

He inhaled long and hard and thought: screw the statistics.

Walter Robinson spoke to the night sky and expanse of dark sea and the man he believed had killed Sophie Millstein. You thought you could just come over here and rob and kill a little old lady. Well, you were goddamn wrong.

I’m going to find you.

The young woman closed a shade, making the room seem gray. There was a moment’s delay while she fiddled with the videotape machine, then an electronic interference bar scarred the television picture. A second later Simon Winter saw Sophie Millstein on the screen.

He leaned forward in his chair, listening carefully. The young woman sat down next to him.

Sophie Millstein wore an expression that mingled a small amount of anxiety with discomfort. Winter noted she was wearing one of her finer, go-to-services dresses and realized that she had fixed her hair carefully. She wore white gloves on her hands and she clutched a matching pocketbook. For an instant he wondered how he had failed to take notice of her appearance on a day when she had left the Sunshine Arms dressed up, as if ready for a wedding.

‘Do I look okay?’ she asked nervously.

A voice off camera replied: ‘You look fine.’

‘I was worried,’ Sophie Millstein said. ‘I’ve never been on television, and I wanted to look nice. This dress …’

Her voice trailed off, its tone a question mark.

‘You look just fine,’ repeated the off-camera answer. Simon Winter recognized the voice of the young woman who sat quietly beside him.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,’ Sophie Millstein said.

‘Just relax and don’t worry about the camera,’ the young woman’s voice reassured.

Sophie Millstein shifted about in her seat. ‘I’m not so sure this is a good idea,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Just ignore the camera, Sophie. You’ll get used to it in no time. Just about everyone is nervous at first.’

‘Really? Everyone?’

‘Everyone.’

‘Well, that makes me feel better. But I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to say.’

‘What do you want to say?’

‘I don’t really have much to say. Not at all.’

‘But you came here,’ the young woman said. Her voice was soft. ‘Something told you to come here and tell us something. What was that?’

Sophie Millstein hesitated again, and Simon Winter could see her eyes narrow with concentration.

‘They should all know,’ she replied.

‘Who should know?’

‘All the people too young to remember.’

‘What should they know?’ the young woman prompted off camera.

‘What happened. The truth. Because it really happened.’

Sophie Millstein’s jaw clamped shut and she folded her arms across her chest.

After a brief quiet, the voice of the young woman, soothing, coaxing, asked: ‘Why don’t you just tell me what happened to you? That’s a good enough place to start.’

Sophie Millstein opened her mouth once, then closed it tightly again. Winter could see her lower lip quivering ever

so slightly. She remained like this for almost a minute, the videotape machine recording her silence faithfully.

Then, finally, Sophie Millstein gasped, as if she’d been holding her breath. A few words trickled out: ‘These are things I wanted to forget so I do not talk about. Not for many years, not even with Leo. I wish he were here now, because he would help me …’

‘But he’s not here, and you’ve got to do it alone.’

Sophie Millstein nodded. Tears forced their way into her eyes and she struggled with her composure. Again silence crept onto the tape, save for a rasping noise that the old woman made as she fought for air.

‘Alone,’ she said finally. She looked across at the camera, and then Simon Winter saw his neighbor on the television screen seem to gather herself. She bit down on her quivering lip, straightened her shoulders and looked out, directly at the camera, shedding discomfort and the terror tyranny of memory, and began speaking, a torrent of words and images bursting through, a maelstrom of recollection. Like a wave, it broke upon Simon Winter, and he gripped the edge of his chair to keep his own balance.