The Chelsea Girl Murders (20 page)

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“Nadia warned me not to breathe a word of this, that her life was at stake. I didn't like the girl, but I didn't want her death on my conscience.”

“She was here two days. And then?”

“I asked her to leave. She was making a play for Stinky,” Irene said. “I take her in, she makes a play for my husband. Is that ungrateful?”

“A lot of women make plays for Stinky?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah. It's worse than ever since he started taking Viagra. Women go for him now like bees to honey,” she said.

“Where did Nadia go next?” I asked.

“I put her in a cab to go to my sister's in Queens. My sister's a widow, and believe me, she can use the company and the help around the house ever since her leg went gouty. Nadia stayed there until yesterday. Don't know where she went from there.”

“Where did she stay while she was here? Did she leave anything behind?”

“Follow me,” Irene said.

We went back with her, through a doorway covered by a blanket, to the back hallway, lit with one bright, naked bulb. The door was open to the staff washroom, where a tap dripped loudly, and there were peeling health department posters on the cracking white walls.

“Stinky and I, we live upstairs,” Irene said. “I didn't want her up there with us, so I put her in here with the dry goods.”

She opened a door to a storage room where huge bottles of pickled eggs, giant cans of ketchup, towels, and jugs of wine were stored. In the middle of the room was a small cot. There were barely two inches of space between the cot and the walls.

“It was a tight squeeze, but she was safe here. This door locks. The storefront is barred and alarmed at night,” she said. “After we close up, we bring the dogs, two Dobermans, down to the bar. That's why Tamayo chose us, I guess.”

“Did Nadia make any calls? Mention any names? Discuss any business?”

“She said was just staying until things were okay at the place she was staying before, then she was going to go back to pick up something,” Irene said. “I don't know anything more than that.”

Before we left, I asked, “How do you know Tamayo?”

“Stinky and I met her in Atlantic City. She was doing her act in one of the big hotels, and afterward we talked to her and her boyfriend at the time,” Irene said.

“Did Tamayo hit on Stinky?” I asked.

“No, she never did, wonder of wonders. She joked with him that the reason he got his nickname was because he smelled bad. That always cracked me and Stinky up.”

“How did Stinky get his nickname?”

“His poker buddies gave him that name because he stinks at poker,” Irene said. “Don't you be going to the garage to see Stinky now.”

“Okay, Irene. We won't,” Maggie said.

“You promise?”

“We promise.”

Irene let us out the back way. We reversed our coats and hailed a cab.

“She's a jealous bitch, Irene, but I can't help liking her,” Maggie said. “She doesn't have a clue about her husband, eh?”

“No, and I was tempted to tell her. ‘Your husband is not that attractive, Irene. I wouldn't worry about him stepping out on you, unless there's a whole bunch of women out there who lost their senses of smell in pesticide-plant accidents.' The problem is, nobody tells her. Everyone is too polite I guess.”

“Where are these imaginary rivals of hers?”

“My theory is, Stinky flirts with women, who get a kick out of the fact that he's a smelly old bastard who still flirts, and they're nice to him because they're polite and he seems harmless, and Irene mistakes that for interest on the part of the women.”

“I'm sorry I missed meeting him. Why weren't you honest with her?” Maggie asked.

“I dunno. It's kind of romantic, in a weird way; he smells, but she has no sense of smell, he thinks he's irresistible, and she thinks he's irresistible. It works for them somehow.”

“Are they happy?”

“My quick impression of them together was that they were happy, in a weird way …”

“Of course.”

“I wonder if he's a serious flirt, or if he just does it to keep Irene interested. He can't be doing it because it works,” I said.

“Love is mysterious,” Maggie said, sighing. “Maybe Rocky and Nadia are happy in a weird way too.”

Maggie was determined to view the young lovers as romantic. She seemed so nice, so humane, that I wondered for a moment if Mike had exaggerated her viciousness. But then I remembered what he'd told me about her spring-coiled rage, how she could go along, sweet as pie, thoughtful and humane, and then suddenly shoot fire through her nostrils. I've had a few moments like that myself, but evidently Maggie had these fiery outbursts regularly, like clockwork.

The cab dropped us in Corona, Queens. Irene's sister Daisy lived in a semidetached yellow brick house with a small, weedy yard. It took her a while to come to the door, due to her “gouty leg,” which she apologized for as she hobbled a few feet back to a big green vinyl recliner, patched over with brown fiber tape in several spots.

From the outside, it looked like a perfectly normal person lived here. And almost everything about the inside was pretty average, from the JC Penney oak-finish furniture and the Irish-lace doilies on the tables to the crocheted red-and-white afghan thrown over the brown houndstooth sofa. All very ordinary looking, except for all the dwarves—a hundred or so ceramic dwarves. It was kind of creepy, all those jolly, fat-cheeked dwarf faces staring at us from bookshelves, atop the TV, the mantel, end tables and corner tables. This confirmed my theory that there are no truly normal, ordinary people in the world—scratch the surface, go behind their closed doors, and everyone is an oddball in some way.

“Nice dwarves,” I said.

“Thank you. I've got over seven hundred of them. I've been collecting them for three years. So you want to know about the girl?”

“Yes. She was …”

“She was here. Irene told me she'd help me out, get things for me. I don't get around so well anymore, and I need some help salving my sores, because I can't bend down to reach my lower leg. The nurse only comes in part-time.…”

“How long was she here?”

“Just a day, and then she disappeared. I asked her to go into the bathroom and get my salve and heat me a towel in the dryer. She got up, walked away, and the next thing I know the door slammed. She never came back. That was last night.”

“Any idea where she might have gone next?”

“I don't know where she could go, Robin. She didn't have much money,” Daisy said.

“Are you sure?” Maggie asked.

“That's what she said.”

“Did she talk about her homeland or her friends here in America, anything?”

“She complained,” Daisy said. “The bed was too hard, I don't have the right kind of soda, my TV programs are stupid, the dwarves scared her. The dwarves scared her! My adorable dwarves!”

“Where did Nadia stay?”

“In the back bedroom.”

“Did she leave anything behind?”

“She left a canvas bag,” Daisy said. “She musta transferred her stuff into the suitcase. So she could travel lighter. Go on in there.”

The bedroom was even eerier. There were a few dozen more ceramic dwarves there in a much smaller space. Nadia's black canvas duffel bag was sitting on the bed.

“Bloody hell. It's empty,” Maggie said.

“Take it anyway,” I said.

“While you're here, would you mind going into the kitchen and getting me a celery soda? Save me a trip,” Daisy called.

“I'll get it,” I said.

“I'm going to check the bathroom and see if Nadia left anything there,” Maggie said.

In the kitchen, dwarves sat on counters, on the refrigerator, and between pots in a cabinet.

“Thanks for your time, Daisy,” I said, handing her the celery soda. “You don't have anyone to help you here?”

“A nurse comes in four days a week but the other days and evenings I'm on my own. I've tried calling neighborhood kids in to help salve me for a quarter but they all just run away.”

“You ask the kids to salve your sores for a quarter and they run away?”

“Yeah. I don't think they speak English, those kids.”

“I'm sure that's the problem. That's a shame though. What's the name of your nursing service?” I asked.

“Mercy Visiting Nurses of Queens. They're run out of the diocese, St. Anne's,” she said.

“You have a good nurse?”

“Yeah, Consuela, there's a picture of her, over there, and her husband, Rene, and their kids. Those are good kids.”

“You don't have kids, Daisy?”

“No, I married late, and then my sister and I were both hurt in an accident at the pesticide plant where we worked,” she said. “We couldn't have kids.”

“I can't either,” I said.

“Would you like a dwarf?” she asked, brightening. “Take a dwarf with you. For good luck.”

These hundreds of dwarves hadn't brought poor Daisy much good luck, though who knows, maybe the bad things that had happened had prevented something worse.

She gave Maggie a dwarf too. A dwarf for the road.

As soon as we left, I called my assistant.

“Tim, can you arrange for three days of nursing service for someone?” I said.

Sometimes, it's fun to have power. I gave him Daisy's name and all the other particulars and said, “Put it under miscellaneous promotion.”

“I don't know if that's wise,” Tim said. “Things are heating up here. There is a plot afoot. You don't want to do anything that might look—”

“Tim, I told you, just relax! Jack Jackson is not going to fire me. I promise you. And I promise that you won't take the rap for this.”

“Okay,” he said. “By the way, what did you do in Russia? Jerry's been hinting about it …”

“Nobody told me that you if bring someone flowers in Russia, bring an uneven number of them. The wife of a big guy in Russian TV invited me to their home for a dinner party. I brought a dozen roses for her, and it turns out you only bring even numbers of flowers to funerals. The woman was very superstitious and this freaked her out. Protocol didn't list that one on the sheet they faxed me. It wasn't my fault.”

“Perhaps I should send the Russian TV wife a gourmet food hamper,” Tim suggested. “And forge another apology note.”

“You're the best.”

After I hung up, Maggie said, “Where do we look for Nadia now?”

“I don't know. But Irene said Nadia was planning to hide out until she could go back, presumably to the Chelsea, to retrieve something, hopefully Rocky.”

“So far, this has been a real romantic adventure for Nadia, hasn't it? The broker for her icon sale was murdered, her fiancé got lost, she's had to sleep with pickled eggs and dwarves and salve a widow's gouty leg,” Maggie said.

“And it's been fun for Rocky too,” I said. “He's now living in a convent, scrubbing floors and receiving religious instruction from a cranky laywoman who is more Catholic than the pope.”

“In an odd way, these experiences might better prepare them for marriage,” Maggie said.

“Have you been married?”

“No. I came close with my homeboy, my Irishman.”

“Mike O'Reilly.”

“Yes! Did I tell you his name? Or did Tamayo mention him to you?”

“You mentioned his name,” I said.

“Until my new man, Mike was the great love of my life. He worked in television for a while. Do you know the All News Network?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That's where he worked. What's your network?”

“Worldwide Women's Network, WWN.”

“Michael, Michael, Michael. I still miss him. But if that had worked out, I wouldn't have met … the new one. Oh, I almost forgot. I have to call him. May I borrow your phone?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“It's a long-distance call,” she said.

“My company pays the bills,” I said.

“It's an overseas call. Are you sure that won't stand out on your bill and get you into trouble?” she asked.

“Most of my calls are overseas calls. But thanks for asking.” That was very considerate of her, I thought. If it wasn't for Mad Mike, we could probably be friends. But that kind of bad blood between people, especially when one of those people holds a grudge longer than a Hutu tribesman, rarely turns into real friendship. After this Nadia business was resolved, we'd have to go our separate ways.

She turned away and punched a bunch of numbers into the phone. “Thanks,” she said, while she waited for her party to pick up.
“Allo? C'est Maggie
.”

She rattled off a bunch of French and though I could pick out only a few words and phrases—including
“je t'aime aussi,”
—it gave me a sick feeling in my stomach.

After she hung up, I said, “Your boyfriend is French?”

“Yes,” she replied dreamily.

“Lives in Paris?”

“Yes. It is such a sappy, romantic cliché, isn't it? Falling in love in Paris. But that's the way it was.”

“He a friend of Tamayo's also?”

“Of course.”

Every answer intensified the sick feeling in my gut. “What does he do?”

“I vowed not to talk about him, remember? Don't discuss him with my friends, don't discuss my friends with him. That's from
Man Trap
, and it's good advice,” she said. “So don't tempt me.”

I tempted her. “Aw, come on, you know you want to talk about him. You miss him. What's his name?”

I wanted to ask, Is his name Pierre? Is he a genius? Is he a physicist? Does he live in a little apartment off the rue des Chats Qui Peche—the Street of Cats Who Fish? Is his favorite café the Chez Nous near rue Jacob, which is run by an old, whiskery woman named Madeline who once worked as a licensed prostitute in one of the city's famous brothels between the world wars? Did he wake you in the morning with kisses and coffee? Did he write you sweet notes about “spooky action at a distance” between “empathic photons,” and the quark partners, “strange and charm,” asking, “Which one of us is which?”