Murder in Alphabet City (18 page)

24

J
ANE KEPT HER
daytime clothes on for the appointment. Usually, she changed into jeans or sweats, but she decided to look as though she was working. After dinner, she walked over to the address for Jackie Warren. It was in the West Village, as her apartment was, but farther west in a run-down area just ripe for gentrification, which would mean the end of tenants like Jackie Warren.

The front door was ajar, a hole where once a lock had protected the tenants. Jane rang the bell for Warren. No one answered but she had no guarantee that the bell had sounded upstairs. She walked up to the fourth floor and rang the doorbell. That one sounded loud and clear. Inside, there wasn't a sound. Jane rang again and knocked. “Ms. Warren? Jackie?” No answer. She looked at her watch. Five after eight. No one had come out of the building as she walked down the street and she had seen no one inside. She leaned against the wall, then thought better of it. Roaches crawled up and down walls; she could do without that.

She knocked on the other door on the floor. It was opened by a small Hispanic woman. Jane asked her about Warren and the woman shrugged and answered in Spanish. Essentially, she said she didn't know, but she gave a lot of peripheral facts to embellish her answer.

Jane gave it till eight-thirty, then left. As she walked through the dark streets, from the less safe to the safer, she thought about what had just happened. Jackie Warren knew she was coming. She had spoken English with native competence. She had ascertained the time of Jane's arrival so she would be sure not to be home. Finally, Jane thought, she had stirred something up. The case of Erica Rinzler's homicide had taken a small step forward.

“How long did you wait?” McElroy asked the next morning.

“Half an hour. She knew I was coming at eight. She didn't want to talk to me.”

“What's next?”

“We're going through Rinzler's work file, checking out her clients. The Warren woman was one. I talked to two other women and the daughter of a man who died last week. The man liked her; the women had beefs.”

“Well, keep it up. Captain Graves talked to Mrs. Constantine yesterday and said we were continuing the investigation, so she's happy for the moment.” And he was off.

Jane and Defino went through Rinzler's work records and pulled out the names that appeared in the spiral notebook. They were all female. Jane checked the address book, but found none of them there. They were clients, not friends.

Before they got to calling anyone else, Jane's phone rang.

“Are you the detective who called me yesterday?” a woman asked.

“I'm Detective Bauer. Who is this, please?”

“Maria Brusca's mother.”

“Mrs. Brusca. Thank you for calling back.”

“I found her. Were you telling the truth when you said she wouldn't get in trouble?”

“Mrs. Brusca, we're only interested in her social worker of several years ago. I think Maria has information we can use.”

“All right, I'll give it to you.” She read off an address in the West Forties. “Listen to me. I'm telling you the truth. My daughter is a, you know, she's a call girl. Don't tell her I told you. I cry about it every day of my life.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Brusca. That must be very difficult.”

“It's not difficult; it's impossible, but what can I do? She comes from a good family. We gave her everything we could. When the trouble started, it looked like that social worker woman was going to help, but she made it worse. I don't know what else to say. She'll tell you what she wants to tell you. Don't call till after noon. She's sleeping now. She needs her sleep.”

“Does she live alone?”

“No, she's got a roommate, another woman. If you talk to Maria, would you tell her to come home?”

“I will. Thank you, Mrs. Brusca.” Jane hung up and closed her eyes. “Her mother says she's a call girl.”

“Who?” Defino asked.

“Maria Brusca. She's in Rinzler's book. I talked to her mother yesterday. Want to go over this afternoon?”

“Sure. We'll have lunch first.”

MacHovec checked out Maria. She was a known prostitute but otherwise had never been convicted of anything else. The first time she had been hauled in was seven years ago, about a year after Rinzler's death. The last time Rinzler had seen her was just before the crucial blackout period marking Andy Stratton's death. “Maybe Rinzler was running a prostitution ring.”

Defino looked up. “Yeah, why not? Girls for white men with money.”

“She was walking the streets the first time they brought her in. Maybe she upgraded.”

“We'll find out,” Jane said. She called Jackie Warren.

The phone was answered sleepily on the fourth ring.

“Ms. Warren, this is Detective Bauer.”

“Who?”

“We had an appointment last night at eight.”

“I couldn't make it.”

“I may have to take you down to the station house if you don't cooperate.”

“Look, I don't know anything about the Rinzler woman, OK? So get off my case.” She hung up.

“Let's get over there, Gordon. She knows something.” Jane was putting on her coat as Defino pushed away from his desk. “Yesterday she'd never heard of Rinzler. Today she used her name. I want to get there before she runs out again. Sean, tell Annie where we're going.”

They ran down the stairs, hailed a cab, and went across town. Manhattan was narrow at that point but it took time. Streets in the Village were one-way and garbage trucks held up traffic on narrow streets with cars parked on both sides, legally and illegally.

“That's it,” Jane said, shoving bills through the small opening in the transparent plastic divider that protected the cabbie from them or them from the cabbie; you couldn't always be sure.

They went out their respective doors, into the building, and up to the fourth floor. Defino was breathing normally at the top of the stairs. He was in good shape. Jane took a moment to regain hers, then pounded on Warren's door.

“Police, open up,” she called.

Inside, something dropped with a metallic sound, a man started shouting, and a toilet flushed. Then the door opened.

The woman was white, dark-haired, and angry. “What do you want?” She pulled her bathrobe around her.

“We need to talk to you, Ms. Warren. Do we come in or do you come out with us?”

The woman opened the door all the way and slammed it hard behind them. “Sit down and ask your questions.”

“Mind if I look around?” Jane asked.

“What for? You got a warrant?”

“I'm not taking anything. I just want to look.”

The woman said nothing. Jane walked into the kitchen, where a man in an undershirt was sitting at a table drinking coffee. He gave her a one-second glance and then turned toward the window with its view of a fire escape. A bathroom was off the hall and the bedroom was the last room in the apartment. A queen-sized bed was unmade, clothes lying on the floor, a large television set opposite the bed.

Jane went back to the living room where Defino and Warren were looking at each other warily like boxers in the ring. “Where's your son?” Jane asked.

“What son?”

“The son the Department of Social Services sends you checks for.”

“He's in school.” Jackie Warren's face now looked more scared than angry.

“Show me his bed.”

“Uh, he doesn't have one here. He's with my mother.”

Jane took out her notebook and a pen and made a show of flipping pages. “Her address?”

“Look, you can't see her now.”

“Why not?”

“Because she's moving. She's not feeling well.”

“She's not feeling well and your son lives with her?”

Warren put her face in her hands. She was digging a nice little hole for herself.

“Where's the boy?” Defino said. “We need to know now.”

“Jeez.” Warren sat down on the sofa. She looked disoriented. “You have no right coming here like this.”

“We had an appointment last night,” Jane said. “I think you're the one who broke it.”

“Look, the boy— I put him up for adoption.”

“When was this?”

“When he was about two months old. I just never told Social Services he was gone.”

“You've been getting checks for him for eight years?” Defino asked.

“Something like that.”

“Terrific.”

“Look, I need it. I don't earn much. Jack has problems.”

“Tell me about Ms. Rinzler,” Jane said, sitting on a chair.

“I don't know what to say. She was OK. She started coming when I was expecting and after I gave birth, she stopped. I don't know why. Then someone else started coming. I borrow my neighbor's kid if I know they're coming and I keep a folding bed in the closet. It's not a lot of money, but it helps.”

“Did Ms. Rinzler know you gave your baby up for adoption?”

“Honest, I can't remember. It's a long time ago.” She looked pitiful but maybe she had practice. She needed the social worker to believe she had serious problems. “How could she know? She would have stopped my checks, right?”

Defino was getting restless. “Maybe you were sharing the checks with her.”

“With Ms. Rinzler? I told you, I needed the money. I still do. I got a lot of problems.”

“So do I,” Defino said, standing up.

“Thanks, Ms. Warren,” Jane said.

“You gonna tell them?”

“We'll make a decision when we get back to the office.”

They walked east, looking for a taxi, finally finding one on Hudson Street. They checked in at Centre Street, picked up the address for Maria Brusca, then left for lunch.

“I'm disappointed,” Jane said as they ate.

“You thought she knew something and all she was doing was covering her ass.”

“Looks like it. Nice scam. She pulled it off for a long time. I guess if she was pregnant, Rinzler wasn't her pimp.”

“Maybe that's how she got pregnant.”

“I'll keep it in mind.”

They took the subway to Forty-second Street and walked west to the address Mrs. Brusca had given Jane.

“This is where a call girl lives?” Defino said. “For five hundred bucks a night I could do better than this.”

Jane shared his skepticism. They went inside the front door, then up the stairs. Brusca's apartment was in the front on two. A bleached-blond woman wearing jeans and a man's shirt tied at the waist and with hair pulled back in a ponytail opened the door and looked from one to the other, then at their shields.

“Shit. What now?”

“Ms. Brusca?” Jane said.

“She's not here.”

“Who are you?”

“I'm Darlene.”

“Can you show us some ID?”

They followed her inside. The living room was a wreck. If a call girl was living here, she must be sending all her profits to a third-world nation.

Darlene went to the kitchen and came back with a handbag. She pulled out a driver's license with a photo. “Will this do?”

Jane nodded. “Where's Maria?”

“I don't know where she is now. Maybe uptown with a friend. Her mother called; and after they talk, she's good for nothing.”

“Where can we find her?” Defino asked.

“I don't know the address. I can tell you where she'll be tonight. And her street name's Sparkle. Don't ask for Maria.”

“Give us the location.”

Third Avenue between Thirteenth and Fourteenth was a hooker stroll on the East Side.

“What does Maria look like?” Jane asked.

Darlene went into the bedroom and came out with a photo. “I can't give it to you. She'd kill me.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Three, maybe four years.”

“Was she ever a call girl?”

“She said she was, but not while I know her. Look, I got things to do. You done here?”

They said they were.

Downstairs, Jane said, “I'll go over there tonight.”

“I'll come with you.”

“Gordon, you've got a family you've got to be with. I can handle myself OK. She's a pross. I'll find her. Shit, that Rinzler really walked on the edge.”

Back at Centre Street, Jane adjusted the time line, adding the new names in pencil and the dates from the official records. She tried some more numbers with no success. Several were reassigned, some didn't answer. MacHovec kept checking the names out, most of them turning up no records. If the women were prostitutes, they had somehow managed to keep their names out of police files. Not a likely scenario considering the number of women.

Something was wrong and they all knew it. Almost in desperation, Jane dialed the number in California for Ellie Raymond.

“Detective Bauer,” she said. “What can I tell you today?”

“Maybe if I knew what to ask, I wouldn't have to,” Jane said, matching the pleasant tone of Rinzler's friend. “I talked to Mimi Bruegger over the weekend.”

“Mimi. I remember her. Erica knew her forever. They were close.”

“Ms. Raymond, we think Erica was involved in some business that she kept to herself.” She let it hang, hoping Ellie would bite.

“She did say she had more money coming in. I remember I said, ‘What are you doing, betting on the ponies?' She laughed and said it was something like that. I didn't press her. If she'd wanted to tell me, she would have. I figured she'd gotten a tip on a good stock. It happens to people, just not to me.”

Jane smiled. She liked this woman. “When did she tell you this? Was it just before she died?”

“No. Could have been a year before. It's hard to pinpoint. She never said anything more about it but she visited us and brought us all presents and took us out to dinner, so whatever happened, it was good.”

“Sounds like it. And she was in a good mood?”