ER - A Murder Too Personal (7 page)

Her reply was swift. “Sure.”

That was it. That was about all the damage I
could do here. I gave my hand to the professor. He took it and held
it tight between his two hands like he was measuring me for a
glove. That lasted for an uncomfortable time. He looked deep in my
eyes. I thought he was going to hug me. Instead, he suddenly
released me and said, “Your spirit is just. Your motives are pure.
Your soul is at peace. I wish you Godspeed in your quest.”

It was the most gracious dismissal I’d ever
gotten.

I led Rachel out the door and gladly left
behind the goddam noise, smoke and darkness.

It was past midnight. I didn’t know if we’d
find a place nearby, but there were two all-night coffee shops on
the block. One was cleaner and newer than the other. It was called
Athena. There was a Hellenic motif on the walls and on the plates.
The aroma of garlic was strong enough to knock you back ten
hectares.

Rachel slid into a booth and said brightly,
“I’m famished, you know. I haven’t had anything to eat all day.”
She looked up at me the way a child looks at an adult. “Is it
alright if I indulge in like some red meat?”

I sat down opposite her. Somehow her question
seemed in character. “Sure,” I nodded. “How about a slab of
tenderloin?”

She was older than I had thought. In the
candlelight of the professor’s apartment, she looked to be in her
early twenties. I wondered what Alicia would have had in common
with a girl that young. Now, in the fluorescent glare of truth, I
could see she was on the backside of thirty. She had the kind of
skin that looks fresh and dewy when it’s young, but looses its
moisture quickly and develops fine lines around the eyes and mouth
as it ages. She had the movements of a younger woman but the
presence of one who’s lived through a few of life’s more
educational experiences.

A waitress hovered over us and made a
perfunctory wipe over the Formica with a greasy rag. Then she
shoved a couple of worn plastic menus at us. Rachel shook her head
and said, “Let me have a big hamburger, half a pound, and make it
like red rare.”

“Same for me,” I said, “but put more fire on
mine. And give me a Bud.”

The waitress put her hands on her hips. “No
beer,” she said.

“OK. Cup of coffee, then.”

The waitress grunted, nodded and shuffled
away.

“I thought with all this ashram business
you’d be a vegetarian,” I said to Rachel.

“I am. But sometimes I just have like such a
craving for red meat,” she said with a wicked grin. She was one of
those people who had to emphasize certain words with a dramatic
flair.

I didn’t waste any time. “How do you know
everything about me?”

She flushed. “What I meant was that Alicia
told me a lot about you two…about your marriage, I mean. About how
you lived…” She held my gaze for a minute and then looked down. The
set of her jaw was determined but her eyes gave away her
uneasiness.

I nodded slowly to reassure her. “Tell me
more about what Alicia was doing. About how you met her.”

She nodded. “At the New School. It was like
last year in a night class called Contemporary American Fiction. We
sat next to each other and started talking and never stopped. You
know what I mean?” She looked up at me. Her eyes were deep and
dark. “About how you meet a person and, you know, start talking and
you just can’t stop talking and you have so much in common.” As she
spoke, her hands made delicate movements in the air. Her fingers
were long and fine. The nails were manicured and covered with clear
polish.

“We became good friends. As a matter of fact,
she was probably like the best friend I’ve ever…”

Suddenly, out of the blue, she started to
cry. Her body shuddered with the sobs. She put her face in her
hands and bawled like a schoolgirl.

Just then the waitress came by. The woman
grunted again, but this time in sympathy. “There, there,” she said.
She put the food on the table and shot a dirty look at me. It was a
look that would have made Attila the Hun crap in his britches. She
patted Rachel on the shoulder and asked, “Is everything all right,
sweetie?”

Rachel managed a small nod and a sniffle.
That seemed to satisfy the witch and she shuffled away again. It
took a couple of minutes for Rachel to pull herself together. She
dabbed at her eyes with a tissue using short, quick strokes.

When she got back to normal, she attacked her
burger with a ferocity that had to come from some primordial swamp.
She didn’t even bother to put ketchup on the meat.

We both finished eating and stared at each
other. Something cold and distant quickened behind her eyes. I
touched her hand. I wanted to feel her skin. She didn’t move her
hand but she bit her lip. There was a long silence. She didn’t
lower her gaze this time.

“I want you to lead me through Alicia’s
life,” I said finally. “Tell me everything you know about her. What
she did. Who she saw.”

I stared into those deep dark eyes. “Will you
do that for me?”

She finally cast her eyes down. “Yes,” she
said softly.

Outside the coffee shop, we turned north and
walked up Fifth. At that time of night, there wasn’t anybody on the
street. When we reached Fourteenth Street, she reached out and held
my hand as we walked. That little gesture surprised the hell out of
me. Christ, no one had held my hand since the sixth grade. Her hand
felt as small as a child’s.

It was the kind of night that was perfect for
walking. Cool and clear. It almost made the city look good. At a
certain hour, and in a certain kind of light, New York was like a
hooker who can trick you into thinking she’s passably fuckable.

As we walked, Rachel told me about Alicia.
About her conversion to feminism, her joining some kind of Earth
Mother cult, her visits to a psychiatrist who held a bizarre
fascination for her. When she talked about the shrink, her tone
took on a strange animation.

There was hardly anybody around on Fifth in
the Twenties and Thirties. We passed darkened showrooms and grimy
office buildings, some with bums passed out in the doorways. An
occasional taxi would slow down as it passed to ask if we wanted a
ride, but I waved them on.

There were a few more people on the streets
when we hit the Forties. And there were always the Senegalese
hawking Rolexes for ten dollars and Hermes scarves. Mostly, I let
her do the talking, but I stuck in a question now and then. She was
good at sorting out the details and highlighting what she thought
were the important parts. When I asked her where Alicia got the
coke, she gave me a blank stare. I told her if I could nail the
supplier, I’d have a few more answers. That didn’t seem to impress
her a hell of a lot.

Fifth Avenue had more people when we reached
the Fifties. Some of the stores were open. Mostly electronic
rip-off joints that reamed the tourists.

As she spoke, I got a sense that she wanted
to help but that she wasn’t opening up completely. And I couldn’t
tell if what she was holding back was worth anything.

The streets became deserted again in the
Sixties. We crossed Madison and walked north a couple of blocks
past small overpriced boutiques and then turned left on Park.

She told me about Chisolm and Stallings, or
at least how Alicia had described them. Then she said that Alicia
had told her she would never be dependent on a man again and that
she was willing to take certain risks to achieve that. How much
risk would she have taken? Rachel shook her head. She had no idea.
In my experience, some people would risk a lot to be
independent.

When we reached Seventy-second, I stopped and
turned for a minute and looked South toward my office building some
thirty blocks away down Park Avenue. I could see my window still
lit up. How many evenings had I sat in that room? Close to ten
years worth. Putting pieces together, asking questions, jumping to
hasty conclusions, busting chops. I shrugged without moving my
shoulders. It all meant very little, after all.

Then Rachel told me she lived at Park and
Seventy-third. It was a pre-war building with huge apartments that
cost large sums of ill-gotten money.

“You own your apartment?” I asked.

She nodded wordlessly. The girl obviously had
some independent means. What I was curious about was how she got
it.

“You live alone?”

She nodded again.

“I want to see you tomorrow,” I said. “I need
more answers.”

She gave me a look that asked why at the same
time that it knew the answer. “Is that all you need?” She laughed a
sweet, delicate laugh.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said.

She nodded. But her eyes were tough to
read.

It was almost seven in the morning and I was
finishing my second cup of real coffee when the doorman buzzed me
from the lobby.

“Detective Forgash is here to see you, Mr.
Rogan,” came John’s voice with its rich Irish brogue over the
intercom.

“Send the lowlife up.”

When I opened the door, Forgash brushed past
me and walked through the foyer into the living room. He didn’t
look like he was bringing me any chocolate chip cookies.

“What? No Good Morning greeting?” I gave him
what I thought was a real warm grin. I was always told that a host
should make his guest feel welcome.

“Listen, scumbag. Stay out of my fucking
case. You understand me clearly?”

I used to dislike him intensely. Now I was
starting to like him even a little bit less.

“I thought by now you’d be pounding a beat on
Tremont Avenue.”

He scowled at me. “Don’t be a wiseguy.”

“I’m not. For you that would be a
promotion.”

He sized me up. Contemplating… Those thin
little seamstress fingers were clenching and unclenching rapidly.
“Somebody made an unauthorized entry into that fucking apartment.
Somebody who didn’t belong there.” He looked like he wanted to slug
me one. “I know it was you. It had to be you. Nobody else would be
that dumb.”

His eyes made darting glances around the
room. “You think you’re a real fucking hotshot, don’t you?” he said
in a squeaky voice that rose as he kept talking. “I could bust you
for a stunt like that.”

“If you don’t have some sort of signed and
sealed document from a judge in your sweet little hand, I’d suggest
you depart the premises,” I said. “Right now, if not sooner,
cretin.”

He blinked a couple of times and started to
talk. “Listen to me, Rogan…”

I’d heard just about all I needed or wanted
to hear from him. I slapped my right hand on his left shoulder and
spun him around before he had a chance to get his balance, like I
was going to give him a prostate exam. His muscles tensed. He was
considering whether it was worth it to take me on.

What were the odds?

I was bigger and heavier. My hundred
ninety-five to his, what?, one sixty-five. I could probably put him
away inside of a minute. Besides, how could he explain a fight in a
premises he’d entered without legal justification?

His body relaxed under my grip. That was my
cue to grab his other shoulder and shove him out the door. He
didn’t resist. One final push and he was halfway out into the
hallway.

“Your ass is grass, scumbag,” he yelled. “You
ain’t quit with me yet. I’m gonna prove you killed her, Rogan. I’m
gonna take you down.” A vein was throbbing in his forehead.
Perilously close to a stroke, he was. He pointed his finger at
me.

I was sorely tempted to break it for him, but
I didn’t know if he had a good medical plan.

“Don’t let yourself get overexcited, my
friend,” I said as I slammed the door in his face. “It’s bad for
your digestion.”

Rachel opened the door just a crack and
peeked out. Her eyes were half-closed and it looked like she’d just
been rousted from the comfort of her cozy bed. It was after noon
and she was still wearing a nightgown. White lace with little pink
roses, thigh length. She opened the door wide. It didn’t seem to
bother her in the least to greet me like this. She didn’t even take
the trouble to put on a robe. Her hair hadn’t been combed and she
wasn’t wearing any make-up. Her face was dry and clear. She was
barefoot.

“I’m going to make a Bloody Mary,” she said.
“Would you care for one?”

“Sure, as long as you put in two shots of
vodka.”

She eyed me. “On the road to becoming an
alcoholic?”

“The path of excess leads to the palace of
wisdom.”

She nodded. “Come with me,” she said as she
led me down a long hallway. The place was huge and expensively
decorated. To my practiced eye, the apartment was worth at least
three million, maybe four. Two or three bedrooms and a maid’s room.
The decor was classical—obviously professionally done. There wasn’t
a jarring note. Everything fit together like one of those homes in
the decorating magazines that you thumb through, looking at the
glossy pictures of perfect rooms that nobody lives in. You figure
it out. The girl lives like an empress and then goes downtown and
smokes pot in a broken-down cold-water flat.

She led me into the living room and I sat on
a sofa that was as almost large as the H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth. Over
the fireplace in front of me was a Constable. It was a pastoral
scene of a countryside with cows grazing in front of a large hay
wagon. If I were English, it would’ve put me in a real King and
country mood. I didn’t have to get a close look to know it was an
original. I whistled to myself without making a sound.

She caught my reaction. “It was my Daddy’s,
you know. He died a long time ago. Do you like the painting?”

“Magnificent,” I said. “And your Daddy left
you some money too?”