Murder in Alphabet City (20 page)

27

S
HE WAS EXHAUSTED
, but she knew she wouldn't sleep. Her body and brain were so keyed up, she needed to keep moving. She went home, took a shower and changed her clothes, then went to Centre Street. It was ten o'clock when she walked into her office. Captain Graves was there, leaning against the wall and talking to Defino and MacHovec. Annie and McElroy were there too. They all turned as she slipped inside.

“You should be sleeping,” McElroy said.

“I can't sleep. I was at the morgue with Mrs. Brusca. I just cleaned up and came here. What do you want to know?”

“What did Maria tell you?” Graves asked.

“Zero. Rinzler was helping her with her problems, whatever they were, then she disappeared and someone else took her place. I don't think she even knew Rinzler was dead.”

“Can you talk to the mother?”

“She said she'll talk to me, yeah. I can't bother her today, Cap. She's making arrangements. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe after the funeral.”

“I've asked for priority on the autopsy.”

“When we get the tox screen,” Defino said, “we'll find out what her drugs of choice were. That'll be a while.”

Jane hung up her coat and slid into her chair. A sketch of a man lay front and center. She drew in her breath.

“What?” the whip said.

“Is that Fletcher?” She felt her shoulders quiver.

“Yeah,” Defino said. “Angela says it's a good likeness.”

“I know him. He ran into me, purposely, I'm sure. Last Thursday night, the night he saw your daughter.” She told them about the encounter, the man in the street who barged into her, who asked if this was where she lived.

McElroy muttered something blasphemous and Graves concurred in cleaner language. Annie just opened her eyes wide.

“Sending us a message,” Defino said. “He knows where we live. Vale gave him a heads-up, that swine.”

Jane held the sketch in her hands and looked into the eyes of the good-looking man who had murdered Maria Brusca last night. “You think we ought to ask Rose if this guy ever hung around the laundry?”

“Don't do that yet,” the captain said. “Wait till we know more. We blow the laundry, we're stuck. Sean, that laundry ever attract any police attention?”

“No, sir,” MacHovec said firmly. “The sector cops know where it is, they've dropped in, but there's never been any trouble.”

“No fires?”

“No record of any.”

“Maybe we should shove that sketch under Vale's nose and see what his response is,” Defino said.

“He won't respond.” Jane heard how tired her voice sounded. “He's learned his lesson. We show up, he's on his guard. We're not getting any more from him.”

“Right now my greatest concern is the safety of the three of you.” Graves was serious. “It's possible Fletcher is the only one tailing you so he can't be in two places at once.”

“If he's followed me,” MacHovec said, “he knows I go home at night and go to work in the morning. That's it. He can shoot me, but it won't stop the investigation. And that's what he wants, to shut us down.”

Jane's phone rang. Graves nodded and she picked it up.

The woman at the other end was sobbing. “What's going on? I just got home and my apartment's a crime scene. Where's Maria?”

Jane glanced at Defino. “Darlene, there was a shooting in your apartment last night.”

“Where's Maria?”
she shrieked.

“Maria died. I'm very sorry.”

“You came here to talk to her and she's
dead
?”

“Yes. That's what happened. Can I come and get you and we can go somewhere and talk?”

“You can fucking stay away from me.” She slammed the phone.

“Maria's roommate,” Jane said, hanging up. She rubbed her forehead. “We should call the Midtown North detectives and see if they found anything in their canvass.”

“Right,” Graves said. “And I'll be back when the autopsy's faxed to us.”

Annie stayed behind as the men left. “You OK?” she asked in a small, wavering voice, leaning over Jane's desk.

“I'm fine. Thanks, Annie.”

Annie left, MacHovec watching her. “You and Annie tight?” he asked.

“Not at all. She was just being polite,” a concept MacHovec would have a hard time understanding. She took her bag out of the drawer and found the cards last night's detectives had given her and handed them to Defino. “I don't remember which was which, Ramirez and Fanelli. I was just glad it wasn't Lew Beech.”

Defino took the cards and made the call, asking for Fanelli. Jane sat back and listened. No one in the build-ing saw anyone go in or out of Brusca's apartment, and that included Jane. When he got off the phone, he said, “Someone heard you when you got there to talk to Brusca, but she didn't open her door.”

“What about the gunshot?”

“Several of them heard it. No one opened up. One person called nine-one-one.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“Yeah.” He looked at his notes. “No one saw anyone going down the fire escape but most people sleep with the shades down and it was outside the bedroom windows. Not too productive.”

“They start canvassing early?”

“Yeah. The Boro Task Force guys hit everybody in the building early this morning. Fanelli had all their notes.”

And nobody saw anything, or nobody wanted to get involved. Par for New York. “Gordon, you up for an early lunch? I don't think I've eaten since last night.”

He pushed himself away from his desk and went to get his coat.

They returned to Centre Street after lunch. Graves had just received a preliminary report on Maria Brusca's autopsy.

“One bullet, markings like an S&W, close range, chest entry left side, nothing surprising. No recent sex, no needle marks.”

“She was avoiding me,” Jane said. “Her mother told her I was looking for her and her roommate told me where to look when she was working so she kept away from the stroll last night. Her friends hadn't seen her.”

“She had a smoker's lungs, no sign of disease. Reasonably healthy.” He scanned the sheet in his hand. “The ME thinks she gave birth to a full-term baby.”

“When?”

“Not recently.”

“She's a pross,” MacHovec said. “It goes with the territory.”

“Anything else?”

“Put yourself in a cab and go home.”

She smiled, almost laughing. “See you all tomorrow.”

* * *

The cabbie was Pakistani and kept his mouth shut. She came close to nodding off as he drove across town, but he braked suddenly and woke her up. In New York, it was more dangerous to ride in a cab than to have a killer on your tail. No one was following her now; she checked several times.

Riding up in the elevator she thought about what the ME had determined. The toxicology screens wouldn't be ready for so long that if they pursued this, they would find the killer before they learned Maria's drug preferences.

She started shedding her clothes as soon as she locked the door, dropping her coat on a chair in the living room and pulling her sweater over her head as she stumbled toward the bedroom. God, she was tired. She thought about having a taste of Stoli, but decided she didn't need any help falling asleep. She was right. All she had to do was close her eyes.

The phone woke her. Disoriented, she thought it was morning, but it was too dark and the clock said eight something. She grabbed it before she lost the call.

“It's Hack. You all right?”

“I pulled an all-nighter. Just trying to catch up.”

“Sorry. Shall I call back later?”

“No. Talk to me.”

“I was thinking about those little beads you showed me last week, the ones they found in the Stratton apartment.”

“So have I.”

“When my daughter was born, she had a bracelet with her name on it. In between the beads that spelled out Hackett were beads like the ones you showed me.”

“They came from a baby.”

“They could have.”

“Rinzler was selling babies.”

“Could be.”

“Jackie Warren sold hers.”

He didn't respond.

“You know what happened last night?”

“The shooting on Forty-third?”

“That one, yeah. I was followed, Hack. The girl was shot just after I left that building. She must have opened the door thinking I'd come back to ask her something else.”

“You better watch yourself, Jane.” He sounded stern, almost angry.

“I am. I took a cab home from Centre Street and no one followed. Graves said I could voucher it. He was afraid I'd collapse on the way.”

“You want me to come over?”

“I always want you to come over. Where are you?”

“On the train to Long Island.”

“Don't come back. I'll see you another night.”

“Watch yourself.”

“Thanks.”

She hung up and rested on the pillow, the room still dark. Several of the clients in Rinzler's file had been pregnant or had had babies. Here was another. Whether Maria's baby had been born eight years ago or two would have to be determined. If it was the former, her mother would know. But maybe Maria's problem was that Rinzler had promised to sell the baby and then she left the department before the sale was completed.

Jane got out of bed and dressed. She ate some cheese and drank a Coke, hoping the combination—protein, sugar, and caffeine—would give her enough energy to do what she had to. Bellevue Hospital was over on the East Side. She needed a maternity department, a nurse to look at the beads and confirm what Hack had observed.

The streets were busy, people walking, stopping in shops that kept late hours, leaving restaurants. A cab zipped down the street and Jane flagged it down. “Bellevue,” she said briskly.

“You sick?” the cabbie asked.

“No. I have to see someone there. Don't go through any red lights.”

She found the maternity floor and went to the nurses' station. One nurse was sitting with her head in her palm, catching some shut-eye. Another was writing on a chart. She looked up.

Jane had her ID out.

“Something wrong?” the nurse asked, looking edgy.

“Just want to ask you a question. Do you have a baby name bracelet around?”

“Sure.” The nurse rummaged in a drawer. “Here's one.” She pulled out a box and opened it. “This what you're looking for?”

Inside the box were dozens of bracelets that looked like tiny watchstraps. They had Velcro closings and a little white strip on which a name could be written.

Jane had the plastic bag in her hand with Mrs. C.'s beads. “I thought you used beads,” she said, her disappointment audible.

“When you were born. No more.”

“Thanks.”

“That's it?”

“I'm afraid so. Have a good night.” She dropped the beads in her bag and walked to the elevator. She had been so sure the beads meant something. It was the wrong night to think. Maybe someone would come up with a clever idea tomorrow.

28

“S
O YOU THINK
she was selling babies,” Captain Graves said. They were gathered in his office, the bag of beads in his hand.

“I thought so,” Jane said. “Now I'm not so sure. She held up the bracelet she had taken from the nurse. “I still can't figure where those beads came from.”

“Maybe they're nothing,” Defino said. “She could still have been selling babies.”

“Until something happened and she had to stop.”

“How does the laundry fit in?” Captain Graves asked.

“Maybe that was the transfer point. The new parents came to the laundry and picked up their baby. We'll never get anything from the owners.”

“Or Rose,” Defino said. “She was an innocent. You think she was carrying babies in the laundry bag?”

Jane shook her head. “Too heavy, too dangerous. But Rinzler may have been sending messages back with her. We never asked her, Gordon, if she took anything back. We only asked about her delivery.”

“What kind of messages? Rinzler wrote English.”

“They understood days of the week and lots of other things. And maybe the messages were passed on to Fletcher.”

“Fletcher was young eight years ago.”

“Old enough to shoot Rinzler, if we're right.”

“Find a client of Rinzler's who'll come clean,” Graves said. “We need evidence, not theories.”

They all pitched in, MacHovec going carefully through the address book once again, from the
A
's. Peripherally, Jane was aware that he was having little success. Defino had grabbed some of Rinzler's files and was attempting to reach old clients, also with no success. The remainder of the files lay in front of Jane, some of them going back ten years. She picked a name and number.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Tedesco?” The sound of the woman's voice had startled Jane, whose attention was divided three ways.

“Yes. Who's this?”

“I'm trying to reach Andrea.”

“Andrea doesn't live here anymore. Who's this?”

Jane identified herself.

“You're a cop?”

“Yes, ma'am. I need information on a social worker your daughter saw about nine years ago, a Ms. Rinzler.”

“I remember her. She's the one—” The voice turned off like a bulb going out.

“The one who what?”

“What is this about?”

“We're looking into some irregularities in the Department of Human Resources. We need a little information about Ms. Rinzler. We're not investigating your daughter.”

“I don't know if she'll talk to you.”

“If you give me her number, I'd like to call her.”

Silence. “I have to call her first.”

“Where is she living now?” Jane asked conversationally.

“Out of state. Give me your number and I'll call you back.”

“Got one,” Jane said, hanging up. “The girl's out of state, or at least her mother says she is. Gordon, give me that spiral notebook. Something just occurred to me.”

He handed it over and she went to the last page and inspected the dates yet again, the dates that had not made sense the first several times she read them. Using her fingers to count with, she reversed chronological direction on two of the women who had been Rinzler's clients.

“I've got it,” she said. “Remember I thought it was crazy that these women hadn't seen Rinzler for several months before she quit? That it was too long a time?”

“Yeah. As if they'd dropped out of the system.”

“They didn't. I was looking at these dates as if they were in the past. They weren't. They were in the future. These were the women's due dates. Look at this.” She shoved the book and her calculations over to his desk.

“Nice,” he said. “So it wasn't that she had seen these girls last spring or summer. It was next spring or summer when they were expecting. She was seeing them right along.”

“And making arrangements to sell their babies for them. That's why she worked only with white and Asian women. Their babies are more salable. She took them on as clients knowing they were pregnant with babies she could sell easily for a good price. And when whatever happened to stop her from seeing the clients, several of them were left holding the bag. They had expected to give birth and get rid of the child right away. Suddenly, someone else showed up from Social Services, they had a baby coming, maybe in a week or two, and it was theirs and they didn't know what to do.”

“Makes sense. But we still don't know what the event was.”

“The connection broke down. Whoever was matching babies to adoptive parents got cold feet. Someone found out about it and threatened to blackmail them and they stopped cold turkey. There are lots of possibilities.”

Defino's phone rang and he picked up. Since last Friday, he and his wife spoke many times a day. As Jane went back to the files, her phone rang.

“Detective Bauer? It's Mrs. Brusca.” The woman sounded on the verge of tears.

“Yes, Mrs. Brusca,” Jane said gently. “What can I do for you?”

“You want to talk?”

“Anytime you're ready.”

“Can you come here?”

“Sure. Give me the address.”

The apartment was in Little Italy, a section of Manhattan north of Chinatown and south of the Village, between Soho on the west and the Lower East Side. It was closer to Centre Street than Alphabet City and was known for its Italian restaurants and occasional gangland killings. People who lived there said you could walk the streets at night and feel safe and that was true, most of the time. But as the city changed, so did Little Italy. It was shrinking as the larger Chinese community, which bordered it on three sides, spread.

The residential buildings were old, dating back to the early part of the twentieth century. The ground floors were largely stores, Italian groceries with cheeses and spices and all the things Defino thought life was not worth living without. Jane found the doorway with the number Mrs. Brusca had given her and went inside and rang the bell. An answering buzz opened the inner door.

Jane had suggested that she go alone. The woman was in a fragile condition and might not want to speak with a man around. Defino didn't seem to mind, as though taking on another person's burden was too much for him at this time in his own life.

The woman who opened the door looked even more ashen than she had the previous morning at the morgue. She was wearing a limp cotton housedress and slippers and she apologized for the way she looked.

“I didn't have it in me,” she said. “I couldn't get dressed. I couldn't make my bed. My cousin is coming over this afternoon. She'll help me so I can get to the funeral home.”

“I'm so sorry,” Jane said. “Can I make you something to eat or a cup of coffee?”

“I don't think I could keep it down.”

They sat in the living room. Pictures of the dead husband and the dead daughter were on every surface. Jane paused and looked at a few.

“She was very pretty. She looked like you, Mrs. Brusca.”

The woman's eyes filled and she grabbed a used tissue from her pocket and pressed it against her face. “She did. Everybody said so.” Mrs. Brusca took a deep breath. “I'm going to tell you everything I know, OK?”

“Fine. I want to hear it.”

“She was seventeen that summer. She was so beautiful, better-looking than me even if she had my features. First it looked like she had a lot of boyfriends. Then it was just one, a handsome boy. He seemed nice until what happened. They went out together all summer and then into the fall. He was a little older, you know? Dark hair, dark eyes. All the girls loved him, but he loved my Maria. Sometime in the winter she got pregnant. There was holy hell around here. My husband, I thought he would kill her. He wanted to kill the boy too. We talked about an abortion but I didn't want her to do that. That was my grandchild she was carrying. How could I let her do that?”

“It must have been very difficult.”

“Difficult,” she repeated with bewilderment. “It was a nightmare. It was like a zoo around here. Nobody was talking to anybody except when they were screaming. Somebody I know told me to call Social Services, they would help. They talked to her, they sent someone over. Then one day there was this new woman, this Miss Rinzler. She took over Maria's case. She sent her to a doctor. She said if Maria didn't want an abortion and didn't want to keep the baby, she could arrange to place it. That's how she said it, to place the baby. We thought that sounded good. The baby was due in the fall. Miss Rinzler said she found a good Catholic family, Italian Catholics; my husband didn't want Irish, and we agreed.”

“Did you meet them?” Jane asked.

“No. I don't even know where they lived, but I think it was out of state. She took care of everything. She said Maria would get five thousand dollars for the baby. Maria dropped out of high school in the fall; she was this big.” Her mother placed her hands six inches in front of her own stomach. “She couldn't go to school no more. She went into labor in October and she had a little girl. What a beauty that baby was.” Mrs. Brusca pulled out the tissue and used it on her eyes. “I just saw her once, right after she was born. My husband wouldn't even go to the hospital.” She sniffed. “When we left the hospital, we gave the baby to Miss Rinzler outside on the street, all wrapped up in a bundle. She made all the arrangements. Maria got five hundred dollars before she gave birth and she would get the rest when she came home. But it never happened.”

Jane waited. The dates were right according to MacHovec's time line. The birth had occurred during the period that Rinzler stopped seeing Stratton and her other clients. “So Miss Rinzler took the baby with her,” Jane said. “Did anything happen after that?”

“She called a couple of times and asked us to be patient. Then she came and told us a crazy story and then she came back a day or so later and told us another one. But she never paid us.”

“Do you remember what the stories were?”

“First she said the new parents backed out. So I said, where's the baby? She said the baby was fine and she would find other people who wanted her. There was a long waiting list for newborns.”

“And then?”

“And then she came back and said she couldn't find a set of parents and I said, what have you done with the baby?”

“What did she say?”

“She gave us a lot of claptrap. I didn't believe her, Detective Bauer. My husband wouldn't be a part of any of this, so it was just me and Maria that talked to her. I don't think people back out of adoptions. That was a healthy, beautiful baby. Why would they back out?”

“What did she say she had done with the baby, Mrs. Brusca?”

“She said it was in a safe place, that it was being cared for, but she couldn't pay us till someone adopted it. I could understand that, but nothing ever happened. We never heard from her again. She stole our baby from us. We were left with five hundred dollars and no baby. I think maybe she kept it for herself.”

In her mind Jane could hear Mimi Bruegger saying how much Erica wanted a baby. “Did you ever hear from her or anyone else about the baby?”

“No. I called her office and she wasn't there. I couldn't tell Social Services what had happened because Miss Rinzler said that what she was doing wasn't exactly legal, and if she did it the way the law said you should, there would be lawyers and contracts and complications and maybe Maria wouldn't get the five thousand.”

And maybe Maria would get more, Jane thought. Five thousand wasn't a fortune for a healthy white baby. Rinzler was probably pocketing a good bit herself. “How did it end up?”

“They sent someone else over maybe a week or two after I complained that Miss Rinzler had stopped coming, and we never saw Miss Rinzler again and never heard from her. I almost had a nervous breakdown over that, and you know what happened to Maria. You think that woman stole our baby?”

“It's possible, but I don't know for sure at this point. Did you ever tell anyone at Social Services what happened?”

She shook her head. “We were afraid of trouble. Maria was like in a stupor. She cried all the time. I was a wreck. I didn't know who to talk to over there. You could go to their office and wait hours to see someone. I didn't like the new woman they sent over. We told her Maria had a baby and she gave it up for adoption and that was the end of it. She stopped coming and I was glad to see the last of her.”

“I'm sorry about this, Mrs. Brusca.”

“She'd be eight years old now.” The eyes filled with tears. “Then my husband had a heart attack six months later and he died. I had to go to work full-time and Maria never really got over it. She took a job, but it paid nothing and she hated it. Then a friend of hers told her how to make good money.” The damp tissue came out again. “I don't think good money is worth what she did, even if she was high class. It's so dirty. How could she do a thing like that?” She put her head in her hands and cried quietly. Then she said, “Why did my daughter die, Detective Bauer?”

“Because we've opened an investigation of Miss Rinzler's work and we've found out some things that are very troubling. We think someone involved with her doesn't want the truth to come out.”

“An investigation?” She sounded incredulous. “My daughter died because of an investigation? Something troubling happened and my daughter is dead?” Her dark eyes pierced Jane's.

“I'm sorry.” Jane felt worse than she sounded. “I can't go into it, but it's a very serious situation, as you can see.”

“So now they'll be after me, you think?”

“No one saw me come here. I made sure of that.” Jane stood and Mrs. Brusca put her hands on the arms of her chair and raised herself to a standing position although she looked a little wobbly.