Murder in Hell's Kitchen (19 page)

“I'm OK, Marty. I just want someone in the world to know my number, and I can't give it to Dad or he'll call me all day to check up on me.” She wrote down the number and handed him the slip of paper.

“OK, Janey. You know you can count on me.”

“That's why I'm giving you the number.” She sighed unintentionally and he picked up on it.

“So what else?”

“Flora called last week.”

“Chief Hamburg?”

“One and the same. She heard I was retiring and she's not happy.”

“More to the point, are you?”

“I guess that's the question. Being down here with you . . . the job is half my life, Marty. The Six is half of that. I keep thinking of all the guys I partnered with, the busts, the collars.”

“The good times and the bad.”

“Yeah.” She looked at her watch. “Not like me, is it?”

“It's OK. I know there's a heart of stone under the soft exterior.”

She smiled and gave him a light punch.

They finished their beers and Marty paid for all, not accepting Jane's money. “You get it next time,” he said affably.

“Just one thing,” Jane said. “Let me go first. Give me a few minutes to get to the subway.”

“You being tailed?”

“It's possible. And if I am, I'd rather he not know who I met here.”

“Hey, I'll go out the back way. But I'll wait awhile first.”

“Thanks, Marty. And don't worry.”

He grinned and patted her hand.

23

WHEN SHE GOT home, she went downstairs to the basement. She had a bin assigned to her for which she had to buy a padlock. Every apartment in the building had a bin, and one after the other they were padlocked. Basements were not her favorite places in city buildings. Without dwelling on the inhabitants, she knew they were four-footed, and she had had enough confrontations in twenty years on the job not to want another. And then there were the roaches.

What she was looking for was a way out of the building besides the front door. If she was being watched, she didn't want to be seen Monday morning leaving for Penn Station. But the basement was entirely below ground, and she was not going to attempt to leave through a window.

She went up to the ground floor and knocked on the super's door. His wife opened it and invited her inside. Then she got her husband.

“Hey, Miss Bauer. How's it goin'?” He was middle-aged, white, and had been helpful in the month before she moved in.

“I wondered if anyone had asked about me since I moved in, Frank.”

“I don't think so. You want me to ask my wife?”

“Sure, if you don't mind.”

He left the living room and his wife came back with him. “You expecting someone?” she asked.

“Sort of. Anyone ask about me?”

She shook her head. “Nobody while I was home.”

“Have either of you let anyone into my apartment, like the phone man or the electric guy?”

They both said, “Nobody.”

“OK. Just asking. If anyone does ask to be let in, tell them they can't get in till you check with me, OK?”

That was OK with them.

When she left, she walked along the ground floor till she came to what looked like a delivery door. It was marked NO EXIT in big red letters and happily did not have a crash-bar alarm that sounded when you opened it. Jane pushed it open, then stepped back inside. The door closed swiftly and securely. Once outside, there was no easy access; one would have to go around to the front of the building.

She opened it again and held it open with her foot. Outside was a small concrete area between this building and the back of the one facing the far street. Off to the left, a concrete walkway led to the other apartment house and seemed to continue in a narrow alley between it and the one to the left. That meant she could walk out the back door, keep going, and end up a block away from the front of her building. It occurred to her that she could call the Sixth Precinct and speak to one of the cops driving the sector car. They knew every in and out, every alley, every connection in their sector. This was survival information, and every good sector cop and foot patrol officer knew his own area.

But visually, it looked good. She didn't want to try it out right now, because the only way back in was through the front, and if she was being watched, she didn't want her tail to know she had left the apartment house by another door. Next week would be time enough for that.

The wind was starting to chill her. She turned back inside and stood by while the door hissed to a perfect close. She had her exit for Monday morning.

At seven she called the number for Carl Johnson, the man to whom Soderberg's body had been released. A woman answered and said he wasn't there. She wasn't sure when he was coming home, and wouldn't Jane like to leave a message?

Jane wouldn't. In the background Jane had heard a sports broadcast. She wondered if the woman who answered the phone was listening to it or if a man was there, a man who didn't answer phone calls.

She put her coat on and went downstairs. Her 9mm Glock automatic was holstered on her hip, a blazer covering it. She walked briskly over to Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street and went down into the subway. If someone was following her, he'd get a little exercise. An uptown B train was pulling into the station just as she reached the platform, and she hopped on it. Carl Johnson lived on Central Park West in the Sixties. She rode up to Seventy-second and got off. Coming up to the street level, she saw the Dakota, the huge nineteenth-century apartment house where John Lennon had lived and outside of which he had died. It reminded her of being young and in love with Paul Thurston. She remembered the music that was playing that summer, and she could see the faces of the four young men who had overwhelmed the music scene when she was a kid.

She walked south on Central Park West, staying on the west side of the street. The east side bordered Central Park. Carl Johnson's apartment house was old, but not nearly as old as the Dakota. A uniformed doorman was helping a woman out of a cab as she approached. She waited till he had ushered the woman inside before walking up to the front door.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

“I'm here to see Mr. Johnson.” She had her hand on her shield deep in her coat pocket, but she left it there.

“Mr. Johnson?”

“Yes. Carl Johnson.” She took the shield and ID out and watched his face change. “Is he home?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What apartment does he live in?”

“Ten C.”

“Don't announce me,” she said. “Just show me where the elevator is.”

The elevator was new and streamlined. She was on the tenth floor in seconds and down the hall to apartment C in a few more. She rang the bell and heard someone running.

“Who is it?” a woman called.

“Det. Jane Bauer.”

“Who?” The woman opened the door, looked at the shield, and said, “What is this?”

“I'd like to talk to Mr. Johnson.”

The woman gave it some thought before saying, “Come in.” She then locked the door noisily behind Jane. “I'll get him. Wait here.”

“Here” was the foyer. To her left, just after the door, was a kitchen with a dinette at the far end. The appliances were fairly new and the floor was a shiny tile with a floral pattern. Beyond the kitchen, also on the left, was a dining room with a large table in its center and a chandelier hanging above it.

The woman had gone to one of the bedrooms in the back of the apartment. Now she returned, a man behind her. He was wearing casual pants and a sweater over a shirt, although it was warm in the apartment. A slim man of a little more than medium height, he had thinning pale hair and the slight stubble of a man who had shaved early in the morning. His wife stepped back as they reached the foyer.

“I'm Carl Johnson. What can I do for you?”

Jane showed her shield. “I'm Detective Bauer, working with a special squad on the death of Henry Soderberg.”

“Henry. My goodness”—he smiled slightly—“that was a long time ago. Have you reopened the case?”

“We have, Mr. Johnson. May we talk about it?”

“Of course. Lena, dear, would you make us some coffee? You'll have some coffee, Detective Bauer?”

“Thank you, yes.”

They went down two steps into the sunken living room to the right at the end of the foyer. There were windows on two sides, but none overlooked the park. The room was furnished comfortably, with attractive pieces of crystal and ceramic pottery on all surfaces.

“You were the person who took charge of Mr. Soderberg's body.”

“That's right.” Not another word, not any explanation.

“Are you related to him?”

“Not at all. We worked together.”

“Did his family ask you to pick up the body?”

“I'm not aware that he had any family.”

“How did you come to be the person who made the arrangements?”

“As I said, we worked together. When he didn't show up for work, naturally we called him at home. When there was no answer, we called the police. They had a record of his having suffered a tragic accident.”

“You said ‘we' a moment ago. Who else were you referring to?”

“Three of us worked together. The other man was Ray Kellner. He's long gone.”

“He died?”

“No, excuse me. I mean he left New York. We haven't been in touch.”

Mrs. Johnson brought in the coffee, carrying it in a glass carafe. She poured it into two brightly colored ceramic cups and offered Jane cream and sugar. Jane took a drop of cream and thanked her. Mrs. Johnson retreated from the living room, leaving the carafe on a warming candle.

“What were the three of you doing?”

“Trying to be Bill Gates, I suppose.” He smiled. “Didn't work out. After Henry died, we broke up. Ray went his way and I went mine.”

“What were you working at? Software? Hardware? Something else?”

“You could call it software. Without Henry, we couldn't make a go.”

“Who were you working for, Mr. Johnson?”

“Just ourselves. We were three not so young men who thought we had a good idea. We used our own cash to back us up. That's about it.”

“What part did Mr. Soderberg play in your work?”

“Henry was the marketing man. He was very good. He was lining up buyers for our product.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Well enough to trust him, not well enough to know much about him personally.”

Jane sipped her coffee and made a show of flipping pages in her notebook. “You had his body sent to the Navy League.”

“That was his wish.”

“He told you that?”

“At some point, I suppose he must have. It's several years ago and I can't remember exactly what he said or when he said it.”

“It seems a very personal thing, telling someone you'd like your body sent to the Navy League if you die.”

“When you don't have a family, you have to think of those things.”

“What do you suppose the Navy League did with Mr. Soderberg's body?”

“I couldn't tell you. I felt it was my duty to deliver him into their hands. That's what I did.”

“Do you have any files from QX Electronics?” she asked.

“Files? We weren't the best-organized people, Detective. We didn't keep any files.”

“You had a filing cabinet in your office.”

He looked at her, not smiling. “Well, of course we had records of who Henry talked to when he was out selling. When we disbanded, I think we just shredded those papers. We had no product, nothing to sell. There was no reason to keep anything.”

“You shredded them?”

“They had names and addresses on them. You can't be too careful these days.”

“I don't understand why you and Ray Kellner didn't just continue to work on your product after Mr. Soderberg died.”

“It just wasn't the same anymore,” he said. “We'd been a threesome. After Henry died, we just didn't have the enthusiasm to go on.”

Johnson was winging it, and not doing well at it. She had let him know they were aware of the office, that someone had told them it contained a filing cabinet. He would be on his guard now if he had anything to hide, which she was pretty sure he had. “You made a lot of phone calls for an office that had nothing to sell.”

“Henry made appointments with prospective clients,” he said quickly. “Ray and I needed equipment; we had experts to talk to. Of course we made phone calls.”

“Are you aware that Mr. Soderberg was murdered?” Jane asked.

“Murdered? Surely you're mistaken. The police told me he fell down a flight of stairs.”

“He was pushed down a flight of stairs. We have a lot of evidence that points to homicide, Mr. Johnson.”

“This is very hard to believe.”

“Believe it, Mr. Johnson.”

“Henry said . . . some months before he died, Henry said a man living in the same building had been murdered. Do the police think there was a connection?”

“We believe the earlier murder was an error. We think the killer was out to get Henry Soderberg and killed the wrong man on the first try.”

Carl Johnson's lips were a straight line and his eyes had become colder and darker than they had been. “Are you sure of this?”

“We are, Mr. Johnson. It's why I'm here tonight. If there's anything else you know about Henry Soderberg, anything in his past that might help us, you should tell me about it.”

“I know nothing.”

“Who do you work for now, Mr. Johnson?”

“I'm self-employed.”

“Still trying to be Bill Gates?”

“Trying to make a living, Detective Bauer.”

“Good luck,” she said. It was the end of the interview.

The doorman was inside when she got down to the lobby. He was sitting on an armless bentwood chair. When he saw Jane, he jumped up to open the door.

“How long have the Johnsons lived here?” she asked.

“Long time. Ten years anyway.”

She said good night as he opened the door and she went out to Central Park West. It was cold now, and she stopped and pulled her collar up. OK, she thought. Get a good look at me, tail. I'm on my way home.

She walked to the subway, went downstairs without looking back, showed her tin at the booth, and went through the exit in reverse. It was one of the perks of the job.

She didn't look around much as she rode downtown. If he was there, he already knew what he wanted to know, that the team had located Carl Johnson and she had talked to him. Her thoughts turned to Lisa, the child whom she had given birth to. In the twenty years since that event, she had not prepared herself for the moment of confrontation. Something in her wanted achingly to see the girl. Something else wanted her to get rid of the letter and pretend she had never received it.

She had lived such an independent life, alone in an apartment, engaging in relationships and breaking them up, earning her own way and paying her own bills, that she had been caught off balance by something that she had no control over. The letter had had the impact of a flash flood. She was surprised and somewhat shaken, too, by the emotions that accompanied her reading of the letter. Maybe if it had happened at a different time, when she was not changing squads, anticipating changing jobs, breaking up with Hack, moving to another apartment, she could handle it better. She smiled to herself as she thought of all the things going on in her life simultaneously. Never a dull moment. Perhaps when she was sitting behind her desk at the insurance company, she would find out what a dull moment felt like. She might even take pleasure in it.