Known to Evil (14 page)

"This is crazy," the nameless super said.

"Are there any good Indian restaurants around here?" I replied.

Anger flinched in the super's face.

"Go on up," he said. "If the tenants let you in then I guess you can do what you want. But I will tell you right now that there isn't any leak."

I smiled.

He grimaced.

I went up to the locked front door and pressed a buzzer at random.

"Yes?" a tremulous woman's voice inquired.

"Con Ed."

25

R
egular as clockwork," Isabella Katinski told me as I pretended to study the back of her stove.

After a pleasant conversation concerning the history of the building, I had asked her about the absent upstairs neighbor, Miss Lear, on the pretext of needing to check out her gas line.

I'd already cleaned the pilot lights on the stove.

". . . she's out her door at eight-ten every morning and back at six on Mondays and Wednesdays, eight on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and nine on Fridays unless she doesn't come home that night."

"Fridays are for the boyfriend, huh?"

The diminutive septuagenarian smiled at me with pearl-gray teeth. Her dress was hippie vintage turquoise-and-plum-colored flannel that had her covered from shoulder to ankle.

"She's out late if there is no boyfriend," Isabella told me. "When there is one, she's on the clock there, too."

"How so?" I asked.

"Can I get you some ice water, Mr. Dolan? I only have tap and cubes. If you're one'a them that needs your water from a plastic bottle I can't help you."

"WHAT WAS I TELLING you?" she asked when we were seated at the small triangular table that took up a good part of her Lilliputian kitchen.

"You were saying how your neighbor's got some kind of pattern with men."

The window we perched near looked down on the cavernous area between the buildings north of Twelfth and south of Thirteenth. There were fire escapes and tiny little sun-starved gardens, clotheslines strung between the buildings, and tatters from nameless things left outside too long.

Angelique's building was one of the smallest structures among its huge brick tenement brothers.

"When she first meets a boy you can hear 'em from ten to about two every Friday for the first month," Ms. Katinski said. "After that there's a couple'a months of creaking from ten to midnight. Then there's only footsteps for a month or so more. After that the boyfriend moves on and she stays out all night now and then again."

"She's a wild one, huh?" I said.

"Don't get me wrong, Mr. Dolan," Ms. Katinski proclaimed. "She's a very nice girl. When I had trouble with the noise downstairs she took care of it for me."

"SHE COMPLAINED ABOUT MY music even though Mrs. Katinski's apartment is between me and her," Seth Martindale told me while I drained the rusty water from his decades-old radiator. "Said that the old lady was hard of hearing or something."

"I was just in Katinski's apartment," I said. "She seemed to hear me all right."

"You see?" the sixty-something retired insurance adjuster said. "And here she almost got me evicted from my apartment. I've been living in this place for thirty-eight years, longer than she's been breathing."

"She almost got you evicted? How'd she do that?"

"City marshal came over with papers. I didn't even know we had a city marshal, but there they were, all dressed up in uniform. Told me that I had gone over the allowed decibel level and if they got another complaint the city was going to evict me."

"SHE'S A GODSEND," NYLA Winetraub, on the second floor, told me.

Nyla was Isabella's age but a bit more shaky. Her eyesight was going, nearly gone, and she liked to be near a wall to grab on to if she started to fall. She wore dark clothes and only had a single lamp on in the living room. I didn't know if she was trying to save money on utility bills or if maybe it was just that electric light no longer did much to illuminate her world.

"She helps me fill out all of my forms and answer correspondences," Nyla was saying. She was a dark-skinned white woman with lots of ageless character in her thin face. "She writes checks for me and even put in an answering machine so I can tell who's calling. You know, there's so many salesmen on the phones nowadays."

She paused and cocked her head, as if listening to faraway soft murmuring.

"You aren't really a Con Ed man, are you, Mr. Dolan?" she said.

"No, ma'am."

I wasn't surprised that it was the blind woman who saw through my disguise. Winetraub, I would have bet, was almost as perceptive as my new receptionist.

"Why are you here?" the old woman asked.

"I'm surprised that you don't just ask me to leave," I said.

"Why would I do that?"

"Well, I am a stranger in your house under false pretenses."

"If you were going to hurt me or steal from me I couldn't stop you," Nyla said reasonably. "And if I cried out you might hit me. Anyway, you're here to find out about Angelique, and I'm worried about her. She's been gone for over a week. Do you have any news?"

"No, ma'am. But I am here looking for her . . . for a friend of hers."

"John Prince?"

"No."

"John's a nice boy. He called here looking for her a few days ago. But I couldn't help him."

"Do you have his phone number?" I asked.

"No. I forgot to ask," she said. "Sorry."

"Do you have any idea of what happened to Angelique?" I asked.

Nyla turned her gaze, such as it was, toward my voice. We were sitting across from each other in front of a window that was completely covered, ceiling to floor, by dark-brown drapes. It was clear to me that her nearly sightless eyes were struggling to make sure of my intentions. Her hands reached out toward me and so I took them gently in my paws.

"You have strong hands," she told me.

"My father was a union organizer," I said. "Before that he was a sharecropper's son."

Nyla smiled. "You have your father's hands."

For some reason my throat closed up a moment. Nyla seemed to intuit this physical response and squeezed.

"Angelique came down to me just before she left," the elderly woman said. "She told me that she was in trouble and would be gone for a while."

"Did she say what kind of trouble?"

"There were men who wanted her to do something, but either she didn't know or wouldn't tell me what. She is in deep trouble, though. Angelique is a very responsible girl with both feet firmly planted. If she's hiding, it's from something real. I'm afraid for her welfare."

"Did you call the police?"

"What would I tell the cops? She's not my daughter. She's an adult."

I was surprised at the word "cops" from the old woman's mouth and reminded myself that I shouldn't make assumptions.

"Did she give you any other details?" I asked.

"No. Nothing. Have you heard anything about her?"

"She hasn't been to work, and her most recent boyfriend, Shad Tandy, doesn't know where she is. She might have been staying with her friend Wanda for a while there."

"Wanda Soa," Nyla said with a smile. "One night, a few months ago, Wanda and Angelique came down and made dinner with me. Wanda is from South America somewhere. They once traveled down there together, for Carnival. Have you asked Wanda about Angelique?"

"She isn't answering her phone," I said.

"Oh."

"You think the super might know something?" I asked, to pass on from any suspicions I might have aroused.

"Mr. Klott? He's a piece of work, that one. He tried to get me put out, on the part of the landlord, when I went to visit my daughter in Florida--told the city that I had a residence out of state. It was Angelique who helped me get the right aid."

"Can I do anything for you, Ms. Winetraub?"

"Find Angelique," she said. "Make sure she doesn't come to harm."

26

P
rominent in my red metal toolbox are three huge key chains that have the masters for ninety percent of the locks in New York. I update my stock every six months. For those locks that take a little more I have special lock-picking keys that were designed by my personal engineer and hacker, Bug Bateman.

I used one such special key on Angelique Lear's lock. It was a simple mechanical adjustment, and I made it into her top-floor apartment in under a minute. All I had to do was insert the key mechanism and rotate a bolt on the base until the tumblers fell into place.

The first thing I did was go to the kitchen, blow out the pilot lights, and turn a couple of the burners up high for thirty seconds or so. Then I went through the place quickly, looking for immediate clues.

I gathered all the mail I could see and secreted the envelopes in the false bottom of my red toolbox. Then I cruised through the apartment, scanning bureaus and tabletops, going through any drawers as I came across them.

Two of Angelique's bedroom walls were hung with many framed photographs. The wall to the left of her bed had photos of her with either a blond-haired, olive-skinned, blue-eyed woman or a slender and pale young man with black hair and piercing eyes. She was laughing with Blondie at Carnival in Rio, and arm-in-arm with the intent young man in Rome. My unaware, maybe even unwilling, client was smiling or laughing in every photograph. Not one picture looked posed or insincere.

Across from the foot of her bed were her diplomas--from elementary school to her master's from NYU. The bed was neat and made. The orange-and-yellow bedspread was frayed here and there from many years of use.

The night table held some tissues, a box of condoms, and a fuzzy pink pair of handcuffs--no useful clues there.

The floors were bare oak except in the bathroom, which was covered in off-white linoleum flecked with tiny squares of bright and shiny confetti colors.

Her bookshelf was small and crowded with the classics, from the Bronte sisters to Melville, Shakespeare to Flannery O'Connor. The pockets of the clothes hanging in her closet had nothing in them. The purses and suitcases on the shelves above were likewise empty.

I didn't have the time for an in-depth search but after twenty minutes or so I was pretty sure that Angelique lived the uneventful life of most young women her age. She was just a happy-go-lucky girl with an education and a job, biannual vacations, and a healthy interest in men. There were no antidepressants or sleeping pills in her medicine cabinet, no secret stash of hashish, or any harder substance, that I could find.

I wondered how such a normal young woman could be mixed up in murder--or, even worse, with Alphonse Rinaldo.

"Hello?" came a voice from the front doorway.

I pulled a shiny black plastic box from my pocket. It was half-again the length and three-quarters the width of a classic BlackBerry. I pressed a button on the side and a yellow light appeared at the front end of the little faux machine.

I scooted into the hall, situated myself in front of the bathroom door, and said, "In here."

A few heavy, hurried footsteps and Klott was at the entrance of the short hallway.

"What are you doing in here?" he demanded.

"My job." I was holding the little box out in front of me, taking readings.

"How did you get in here?"

"Door was unlocked and I smelled gas. Don't you?"

Klott sniffed the air and turned toward the kitchen. I followed him, holding the box out in front of me like a uranium prospector with a new-century Geiger counter.

When I entered the kitchen I pressed a button underneath the box with my baby finger and the yellow light slowly turned red.

"You see?" I said, pushing the box closer to the stove and secretly pressing the button again. Now the red light started blinking.

"What's that?" Klott asked.

"The newest thing. We use it to detect escaping gas. When it's white everything's okay. I got an amber light outside the front door."

"How did you get in here?" Klott asked again.

"It was open."

"I check every apartment every night. This door's been locked for the last week and the tenant hasn't been here."

"She must've come in when you weren't looking and left in a hurry 'cause the door was unlocked, and you can see that it wasn't broke or anything."

Klott went out to inspect the front door.

"What were you doing in the other part of the house?" he asked.

"You use the detector to make sure the gas is not coming from multiple sources," I said, pretending to be paraphrasing some manual.

"Let me see that thing," he said, reaching for my box as he did so.

I stiff-armed him with my left palm. He went backward eighteen inches. Now that we knew who had the muscle in the room, he wouldn't try to get physical again.

"Don't be grabbin' at me, man," I said, reverting to the dialect he expected of my skin color.

Klott's eyes tightened but he stayed put.

"Are you finished?" he asked.

"Just gotta check out the stove and I'm done."

"You didn't do that first?"

"I save the obvious for last."

I pulled the stove away from the wall and for the next eight minutes or so pretended to check the connections. After that I pushed the unit back into place and relit the pilots.

"That's it," I said.

"I'm calling your supervisor," Klott replied.

"And what are you going to tell her?"

"That you broke in here."

"Lock's not broken and I haven't taken anything," I reasoned. "My boss'll tell you to call the cops, and they'll ask for the proof. You won't have it and the next time you call them they won't come."

A shiver went through Mr. Klott. He'd been living in his little real estate fiefdom for so long that he honestly believed that he was king of the mountain.

"Nice doin' business wichya," I said with a smile.

After that I picked up my red box full of master keys and letters and made my way down to the street.

27

B
ack at my office I found Mardi reading through the files I kept of my honest cases. She looked up and gave me her soft impression of a smile.