Murder in Alphabet City (14 page)

17

S
HE REACHED THE
restaurant just before six-thirty. Flora Hamburg was sitting at a table for four, her ubiquitous shopping bag on an empty chair. Jane found her way herself, gave Flora a hug, and sat at right angles to her.

“You look good, Jane. I was worried about the abrasions.”

“Everything seems to have healed except this thing over here on my right cheek.”

“I didn't even see it. Put a little color on it; no one'll notice. Drink?”

“Maybe some wine.”

“I can't tell you how relieved I am that you decided not to pull the pin.”

A few months earlier, Jane had been ready to leave the job and work for an insurance company. She had looked forward to the larger income, the office with the window, the regular hours, the kind of life most Americans lived. Her twentieth anniversary was coming up and with it the pension. Also, she would be spared running into Hack. At this moment, that seemed a long time ago.

“I think there's an artery in my gut that's tied to the job.”

“Maybe it's in your heart.”

“Maybe.” She wasn't anxious to talk about hearts.

Flora ordered two glasses of wine and they studied the menu. Flora's tastes ran to simpler food. Mention sushi and she turned green. “Ah. A small filet steak. How does that grab you?”

“I'll do it.”

“Tell me about the new case.”

Jane went over it. Flora had a retentive memory and nothing got past her. Her looks were so deceiving, one might think she was a homeless old woman (packing a rod) or a grandmother whose mental capacity stopped at reading knitting instructions. In fact, those were merely her looks. Her mind was as sharp as Hack's, and her decades-long consuming commitment was moving women along on the job. If not for Flora, Jane would never have gotten her degree, or she would have started much later and perhaps given it up.

“So you've gone from thinking this was nothing but a busybody's intervention to acknowledging this Stratton may have been murdered.”

“We still have nothing that says murder, but the suicide of the Rinzler woman has got us on edge.”

“Interesting working on cold cases,” Flora said, sipping her wine. “The crime scene's gone, half your witnesses are dead or gone, and if there was a wife, she's probably remarried twice since then.”

“But the phone records will still exist. And tomorrow afternoon the super will give me his new version of the truth.”

Flora smiled. “My little girl is a cynic.”

“Would you have me any other way?”

“No, I suppose not.” Flora reached into her shopping bag and pulled out a neatly folded tissue and blew her nose. What was in that bag had stirred the imagination of two generations of cops.

They had both begun with salads and now the meat was placed before them, an appealing dish with a mushroom sauce, baked potato, and a mélange of barely cooked vegetables. Jane was glad she had ordered red wine. Flora drank nothing but white.

“I surprised you last week, didn't I? Asking about your love life.”

Her love life was no one's business, especially not Flora's, but Jane didn't know how to change the subject without being obvious. You didn't need to be as sharp as Flora to recognize a diversionary tactic when it hit you. “You surprised me, yes.”

“I feel a little responsible, Jane. I pushed you into college. I read you the riot act whenever I thought you were wavering. Now I look back and I think maybe I kept you from meeting some guy and having a real life.”

“You didn't. Everything I've done for the last twenty years came from me.”

“From that artery in your gut or your heart tied to the job?”

“That's part of it.”

“You're almost forty-one. You may regret never having had a child.”

Jane took a deep breath. She had not told Flora, simply because the appropriate moment hadn't occurred. Maybe this was the time. “I have a child, Flora. A daughter.”

Flora coughed and put her fork down noisily. She didn't say anything for almost a minute, as though she were running scripts through her mind. “You don't have to tell me, Jane. I didn't mean to pry. I was only trying to help.”

“It's OK. I never told anyone. Only my parents knew. I got pregnant one summer before I came on the job and gave up the baby. She wrote to me a few months ago and I took a quick trip out to the Midwest last month to meet her and her parents.”

“It takes something to shock me, you know that? Not that what you've said is shocking, just that I had no idea.”

“She's a lovely girl. She treats her parents a lot better than I treated mine.”

“You treated them fine. Your father is lucky to have you.”

“That's now. I used to be a teenager.”

“Well, you've got one on me. I never was. I was born, I went to school, I became a cop.” It was a typical Flora recitation. Cut and dried, that was Flora's world.

“If you're forty today, you were a teenager twenty-one years ago. Anyway, this has all turned out to be right for me. I'm not sure I could handle a baby. I know I couldn't deal with a teenager. Christ, she might be like me. Lisa's a good student. She's going to have a degree in a couple of years. I'm proud of her and I'm glad she landed with the people who raised her. And who love her.”

“Accepted. And I'm glad for you. This gives me some peace of mind. Eat your steak before it gets cold.”

Jane smiled. No one knew whether Flora herself had a husband and family. She lived in Brooklyn, just over the bridge. Jane had never been invited there. They always met in the city, usually in a restaurant for dinner. Years ago, she had been summoned from time to time to Flora's office, generally to talk about career paths and college.

“You might like having a man in your life,” Flora said. “A lot of women do.”

Jane laughed. “You still after me? I have had men, Flora. I have had good ones and bad ones.”

“Don't fuck where you work.”

“You've told me that before. I've been out with cops and I've been out with civilians.”

“And stay away from married men. At your age, they're all married or they have been or they're useless.”

“You're really a treasure chest of directives tonight.”

“I worry about you. I worry about you alone in that great apartment of yours with a fireplace. You're an only child. There are no nieces and nephews. Who'll look after you when you retire?”

The shack on the beach, Hack holding her hand as they walk through the sand. “That's a long way away.” Her voice came out low, as though she were troubled. “Not everyone can live with another person, Flora.”

“I know.”

“Are you all right?”

“Me? Never better. I smoke too much, that's all. I get my annual X ray and I don't worry. Why?”

“You seem so concerned with my mortality tonight—”

“That you thought I was concerned with mine.”

Jane didn't answer.

“I'm fine, sweetheart. Just wanted to get a few things out of the way. Finish your steak. It's good for you. They have great desserts here.”

“Not for me, thanks. December was devastating. People came with candy and cookies. I want to be careful.”

“OK. You can have a bite of mine.”

The conversation moved to department gossip. This one was getting a divorce, that one was thinking of retiring. The gorgeous Captain Graves was driving hell-bent for his goal, chief of detectives. “But to become chief of D, he'll have to leapfrog over Hackett or kill him in a duel.”

Jane hoped her face didn't show her thoughts the way Vale's did. Only this time it was red, not pale, that would give her away. “A duel would be interesting.”

“Yeah. They could sell tickets and get rid of the deficit.”

“OK, Flora. You're up to par.”

“Glad to hear it.” She motioned the waiter over and ordered dessert and coffee. Jane declined both. When Flora had finished her second cup, she looked at her watch. “You know what? It's early yet. Let me go over and see this great place of yours. Make me a fire. I'll take a taxi home or at least back to the subway.”

Shit. Hack could be there. Hack could arrive while Flora was there. Hack could run into Flora in the lobby or the elevator or out on the street and it would be immediately apparent to Flora where he was going and why.

“The place is a mess, Flora. Really. I'd love for you to see it but come when it's in order.”

“Nonsense. You're a neat person. And I never see clutter. It's one of my blind spots.”

“It's filthy. I haven't run a vacuum since this case started. I spent all last weekend working on the case.” She heard herself babbling, getting herself in trouble, but she couldn't allow a visit.

“OK. I know when I'm not wanted. I guess you've got the boyfriend I never met snuggling up in your bed.”

“Hardly.”

Flora got up, put her coat on, and took her shopping bag. As she stretched to get her arm in the coat, the holster at her hip flashed and a woman at a nearby table saw it and raised her eyebrows.

“This has been a good dinner, and I don't just mean the food.”

“It was great. I'll cook for you next time. And make a fire.”

“Gimme a hug and I'll be on my way.”

“I'll walk you to the subway.”

“And leave the boyfriend all alone?”

“That's his problem.”

Hack turned up at the stroke of nine. Jane turned the coffeemaker on at the sound of the downstairs doorbell. She opened the apartment door and listened for the elevator or his footsteps on the stairs. These were the moments in her life that she had come to live for, the sounds of the doorbell ringing, the coffee dripping, the elevator rising, the door sliding open.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

The voice of her lover, his arms wrapped around her, the door kicked shut. And then, because he was a cop, he left her for one brief moment to double lock the door.

My darling Hack. “Hi.”

They went into the kitchen, where the smell of coffee was inviting, and Hack put the pint of ice cream in the freezer. He kissed her and kissed her again. There was more that was inviting besides the coffee. They went to the bedroom.

He touched her hair afterward, her ears, the sweat between her breasts. “Does the face still hurt?”

“No.”

“Then I can rub against it.”

“Only if you've shaved.”

He laughed. He always shaved before he came over, almost always. He rubbed his cheek lightly across hers.

“Let's go get some ice cream and coffee and a dash of Flora.”

He put on a pair of jeans he left in her closet and they sat at the table together. She told him about Flora, that she had almost come home with Jane.

“I know you love her, but she's a devious old gal.”

“I'll have her over when this case is finished, let her see the apartment. How are you?”

They talked quietly. The ice cream was vanilla with rich chocolate syrup running through it. Hack was trim, with the muscular legs of a man who shunned elevators to low floors and taxis for short hops, a man careful with the calories, but ice cream was his downfall, or at least one of his deepest earthly desires. He asked her about the case. She went to her desk and got the copies Defino had made of the spiral notebook pages.

“You have to break the code. Looks like people's names.”

“I'm talking to a friend of Rinzler's tomorrow morning. There was a period of time there, at least four weeks, when Rinzler may have stopped coming to see Stratton and he died of starvation. When the news came out about his death, either she was fired or she quit. Something happened in that period of time and we have to find out what.”

“Maybe someone died of an overdose, maybe a lot of people—tainted drugs—and they shut down the operation.”

“Could be.”

“So you figured out that the
L
here is the super.”

“Larry, yeah. Did I tell you he called this afternoon? He wants to talk to me minus Defino—Defino sets him on edge, poor guy. He wants to tell me the truth.”

“And he thinks you're a soft touch. He may have a surprise coming.”

“He's the key to this, Hack. I don't know what the hell they were doing, but he knows.
L
has got to be for Larry. It's on every entry. It's when she met with him, made an exchange, something like that. We'll figure it out. It'll just take time.”

“You said a private eye investigated the case.”

“A former cop.”

“Why didn't he dig up what your team did?”

“One reason.” She had thought about it; Shreiber was a good detective. Why had he trusted Vale and learned nothing about Rinzler? “When we first talked to the super—Shreiber told us to see him; he knew Stratton—we asked Vale who visited Stratton and he mentioned the little Chinese girl who brought Stratton's clean shirts to him. Vale made a mistake telling us that. We asked him how he knew the girl was going to Stratton's apartment. She could have been going anywhere. He said he saw her one day and he asked her.”

“And that led you to her and she told you about Rinzler.”

“Right. And then we learned everything else. Vale never told Shreiber about the child. If he had, Shreiber would have followed up on it, I'm sure. Vale slipped up.”

“Lucky break. Even luckier that she remembered the Rinzler woman well enough to do a sketch.”

“She's a smart girl. I like her. Rose. She's in college now.”

“Looks like a good case.” He pored over the Xeroxed pages as though the abbreviations might open up and make sense to him. “You think Vale killed Rinzler?”

“I think there's a good chance. They were involved in whatever the business was and probably sexually as well.”

“Being involved sexually isn't always bad.” He leaned across the table and kissed her.