Seven Minutes to Noon (26 page)

Down in the precinct’s basement was a small room that was empty except for a table and a tall metal cabinet with double doors padlocked together in the middle. Giometti undid the lock and opened the metal doors. Inside were shelves neatly stacked with electronic devices Alice didn’t recognize. Frannie and Giometti selected equipment from the shelves and laid it out, piece by piece, on the table. Dana meanwhile foraged through another cabinet for an assortment of fresh batteries. Long thin wires were attached to a two-inch-long, rectangular transmitting device. At the end of one wire was a tiny black microphone, the size and shape of a button.

Giometti squatted down and rummaged around the bottom shelf. “Found the tape.” He stood up holding a roll of black electrical tape, which he handed to Frannie.

“The department’s got a requisition in for fully wireless, you know,
modern
equipment,” she said to Alice
and Mike. “But this being New York City—” she shrugged. “Maybe next year.”

“Something to be said for the tried and true, though,” Giometti said. “We know this set
works
.”

As the three detectives proceeded to assemble the listening device on the table, separating wires and testing batteries, Alice began to think about the last two weeks. She felt like she had passed through a lifetime in fast-forward, uphill all the way, carrying a ton of stone on her back. Though she was nervous about today, even scared, it was a relief to have been deemed not only sane but able. Tired and scared. But not insane.

Sitting on two chairs the detectives had set up for them, Alice was surprised by the sudden warmth of Mike’s hand slipping into hers. She squeezed his hand, greedily drinking in the rich warmth of Mike’s skin, the solidity of his bones and muscles. He leaned closer, twinning himself to her until it would be time for her to go the next step alone. She wished he could go with her but knew it was impossible; a woman alone was vulnerable, and that was the whole idea.

“Okay, ladies,” Giometti finally said. “It’s showtime.”

Mike smiled and almost pulled a voice, a
lady’s
voice Alice guessed by the hitch in his expression the moment Giometti called them all
ladies.
Who would it be, she wondered? He did a fierce Julia Child and Katharine Hepburn. Alice herself began to smile in anticipation of a little levity. But as quickly as Mike’s humor rose, it now fell, and instead of speaking he seemed to deflate against the back of his chair. Alice squeezed his hand.

“Get out of here, Paul,” Frannie said.

Giometti left the room and Dana shut the door behind him.

Alice took off her dress and stood there, exposed, as Frannie placed the transmitter box between her breasts and Dana taped the wires securely against her skin. The little black button would be hidden just beneath the neckline. When she was all rigged up, Frannie stood a few paces away and in a casual voice — as if in normal
conversation, or shopping for dinner at the local butcher’s — said, “Testing, testing, Mary had a little lamb.” She circled Alice, reciting nursery rhymes. The same rhymes Alice lulled her children with at bedtime or to pass long hours in the car. Here, the poetry lost its innocence, like a bouquet of lollipops held by a lurking, parkside stranger. The candies and the words, stripped of their promise to anoint the sweetest of dreams, became beacons of every mother’s worst fears.

Giometti knocked three times on the door. “All set,” he called in.

Apparently, he had been testing the remote end of the device, heard the nursery rhymes, and now they were ready.
Ready.
Alice would never be ready for this but she would do it anyway.

Dana opened the door. Giometti was standing on the other side, hands jammed in his pockets. He glanced at Alice, issuing a smile that abruptly turned him handsome through the mask of pocked, toughened skin. His tiny gesture was the warmest he had offered her yet and it fortified her immensely. If cool Giometti was on board, then the plan was right. Maybe her errand
would
somehow advance the search for Ivy and slow the danger to herself and her babies. Maybe, in the end, no one else would come to harm.

Frannie assessed Alice, who took a deep breath, feeling the wires cinch her skin.

“Ready?” Frannie asked.

“Ready.”

Alice moved along Court Street’s concrete sidewalk feeling like she was in another body, another life. Dana was with Frannie, Giometti and a technician in a white Van Brunt Bakery van that had parked at a meter across the street from Cattaneo’s. Alice sharply missed Mike, who was back at the precinct, reading wanted posters or staring into the fish tank or just sitting there, waiting.

Humidity cloyed at her skin and she could feel sweat dripping down the wires taped under her dress. She wanted to puff out the fabric around her sore, swelling breasts, to create a little breeze, but was afraid she would disturb the transmitter. So she did nothing, simply willed herself to walk forward along this familiar yet suddenly foreign street. Nothing looked real; it was like a movie set with flat fronts whose simple signs and offerings misrepresented the true stories behind them. Not even the people seemed the same. As she walked, she waved to old Mrs. Foglia across the street, plodding along with her shopping bags. Alice said hi in passing to an acquaintance from the park, as she would on any day, trolling Court Street, running errands.
Going to the butcher shop to find out if her landlord’s secret partner wanted her babies or her blood.

Alice kept walking.

She was a survivor. She had survived abandonment by her father, she had survived the film industry and she was surviving motherhood. She had cleared every hurdle
so far, despite obstacles, and she had to continue. Put aside her fear.

Nothing could happen to her; she was protected.

The wires clung to her damp skin.

She kept walking.

Two small boys she recognized from the playground zoomed toward her on their bicycles. Their babysitters, jogging to catch up, smiled at Alice as they passed.

She crossed Warren Street, past the locksmith, an antique store, and the old vegetable place. The front door to Cattaneo’s was closed to seal in the air-conditioning. She pulled it open, feeling suddenly faint. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside and let the heavy door fall shut behind her.

The rotund young man behind the counter smiled. “How can I help you?”

“Is Sal around?”

“In the back.”

Alice braced herself. “Could I see him a minute?”

The young man pushed through the swinging door that separated the shop from a back area. A moment later, Sal Cattaneo appeared, looking more like a butcher than Alice had ever seen him. His white apron was saturated with dark red blood and his clear plastic gloves oozed with something yellowish and thick.

“How can I help you?” Sal offered his usual bright smile.

“Could we talk privately?” Alice asked.

Sal hesitated a moment but never lost his courteous smile. “Come on in the back.”

She followed him through the swinging door into a back room that was both an office and a dry-goods storage area. The room had a rough, comfortable, old-world feeling, with a poster of Sicily tacked to the wall, and completely lacked the gourmet luster of the front shop. To the left was a metal door with a long handle that Sal pulled. He held the door open for Alice, who hesitated
a moment before going in. Three feet out of the refrigeration room, she could feel the chilly draft.

Sides of beef and pork hung by their back legs from the ceiling. Clear, heavy-duty plastic bags in bins on the floors held massive clumps of chickens. Even the free-range pesticide-free kind Alice bought — displayed so neatly in the refrigeration case in the front of the store, flagged by their high-end price — were lumped together in the bins. There was a raw, tangy smell in the air. Two stainless-steel butchering tables stood in the center of the space, one of them holding the partially butchered carcass of a skinned pig. A bloody cleaver lay next to it on the table.

“After you,” Sal said.

Alice held her breath and walked in.

The cold slammed her. Sal shut the door behind her and she turned around, wondering, suddenly, if there was a latch to let you out. For a split second she thought he might have shut her in here alone, but he hadn’t. He walked slowly over to the center butchering table and picked up the cleaver. And yes, Alice noted, there was a latch to open the door from the inside.

Sal picked up his job where presumably he had paused to greet her, slicing off the pig’s second ear. He tossed it into a stained white bucket, where Alice saw the feet and a long, yellow coil of intestine.

She thought of the homemade apple pork sausages she sometimes bought here — they were delicious grilled — and realized she could never touch them again.

“What can I do you for?” Sal kept his eyes on his slicing blade, which parted muscle from bone at the shank. Droplets of blood collected in the cleavage of the pig’s flesh. Alice noticed blood caked under Sal’s wedding ring.

She gathered herself to the moment. This was the man they had been looking for, the silent partner in Metro Properties. Lauren and Christine Craddock’s landlord. Julius Pollack’s cohort. Someone special in Judy Gersten’s
life. This was the man who seemed to be the common denominator. The man inside the black hole that had stolen Lauren, swallowed Ivy and put Pam in a coma.

“I was hoping you could reason with Julius Pollack for me,” she began.

He snickered, but said nothing, didn’t even lift his eyes from the long, smooth cut he was making along the pig’s breastbone.

“Julius is my landlord.”

He put down his knife and forced his fingertips into the front seam of the breastbone. With two hands, he pulled apart the rib cage.

“Not through Metro,” Alice said. “I live in his house.”

Sal scooped out the pig’s heart and tossed it in the bucket. Then he laughed.

“I don’t envy you there!”

“Sal, I’ve lived in this neighborhood a long time—”

His eyebrows rose, and she knew what that meant: she was still an outsider.

“—and I want Julius to understand that he doesn’t have to worry about us vacating. We’ve already found a house. Our offer’s been accepted, but it’s going to take a little time. His impatience has been...” —she was going to say
cruel,
but caught herself— “...unnecessary.”

“I’ve got nothing to do with that.” Sal picked up a smaller knife and gouged out the pig’s right eye, then the left, and tossed them into the bucket.

Alice wished the pig could scream, run, anything. She wished her wire could pick up the subtext, not just the talk, because Sal was communicating beyond words.

“The thing is, we know Julius doesn’t want us there and we
are
moving. We just need a few more months,” Alice said, knowing she would never live in the President Street house again, no matter what. She mustered her best acting skills and continued. “He doesn’t need to start eviction proceedings when the Thirty Day Notice expires. We’re moving out. I was hoping you could reason with him.”

“Who says Julius won’t be reasonable?”

So they had discussed it. A chill zippered up Alice’s spine.

“He acts as if—”

“He’s an old actor,” Sal cut her off. He looked at her and winked, but what did it mean? Was there something she was supposed to implicitly understand, and didn’t?

“We’re buying our new house through Garden Hill Realty,” Alice tried, thinking maybe
that
would get through to him.

Sal brought the edge of his cleaver down along the pig’s haunch.

“I was at Judy Gersten’s house just yesterday.”

The knife stopped moving. Sal’s eyes crept up to Alice’s face. She had never seen his expression so still, and as every shred of civility dropped off his face, he became a different man. He stared at her with eyes that had transformed from blue to steel gray, and seemed to wait.

Alice knew in that instant that Judy was not Sal’s wife. She also knew that Judy was more than just a friend. They were lovers, or she was part of Metro, or both.

“She was in bad shape,” Alice continued.

Despite the frigid room, a new sweat gathered on her skin. She felt the wires tracing a map on her body.

“She was drunk,” Alice said. “It was first thing in the morning. I think she’d been reading the newspaper, it was lying open. It was that long article in the
Times.”

Sal put down his knife.

“Don’t go there again,” he said calmly.

Alice nodded, then remembered she had to speak for the wire. “Okay.”

“I’ll talk to Julius. Don’t worry about the notice. You take your time.”

He crossed the room without looking at her and pulled the latch that opened the door. Alice stepped out of the freezing room into the cool back office, then passed through the shop into the respite of summertime heat.

She headed back toward Union Street, to the Seventy-sixth
Precinct. The Van Brunt Bakery van passed her and drove slowly down Court Street to Union, where in the distance she could see it make the right turn and disappear around the corner.

Mike, Frannie, Giometti and Dana were standing together in the precinct lobby when Alice walked in. Mike hurried over to her, his hair such a frenzy of mismatched direction that she knew he had spent the hour worrying it with nervous fingers. He stared into her eyes, assessing her mood, then pushed a strand of sweat-plastered hair off her forehead.

“How did it go?” he asked.

Alice cringed. “Let’s give up meat.”

His face lifted in smile, crinkling his eyes at the corners, where his wisdom lines seemed to have deepened in the last two weeks. She wanted to tell him everything, recount every detail and nuance so he could
see
it, rewind time half an hour and be there with her. She could still feel the deep chill of the meat locker, the goose bumps on her bare arms. Yet the humidity in the precinct was stifling.

“It’s so hot,” she said. She began to feel dizzy and a little sick. With an arm at her back, Mike led her to a chair at one of the center tables. He joined Frannie and Dana where they stood at a vending machine, drinking small bottles of water. Giometti was banging his fist on the soda machine.