The City of Strangers (27 page)

‘Mr Zwillman would like a word with you.’

Stefan and Kate simply looked; the words meant nothing.

The man moved to the Pontiac’s rear door and opened it.

‘He’d very much appreciate it.’

Sitting in the back of the Pontiac was a man neither of them knew. He was older than Stefan, but not much. He had sharp, dark features, and small, enquiring eyes. There was a kind of smile, a half smile. He didn’t look very appreciative; he looked like he expected people to do what they were told.

‘I think you must have mistaken us for someone,’ said Stefan.

It wasn’t very good; he could see Kate didn’t think so either.

‘Get in the fucking car,’ said the man in the back.

The young man in the overcoat was still holding the door open, and still smiling, but his other hand was in his coat pocket. Stefan knew it was holding a gun.

The Pontiac pulled away towards Vanderbilt Avenue. In the front the man with the gun lit two cigarettes. He passed one to the driver. No one spoke. In the back Stefan sat beside the sharp-featured man; Kate sat on the other side.

‘I know who she is,’ said the man. ‘Who are you?’

‘This is a mistake,’ replied Stefan. It still wasn’t very good.

‘Let’s hope it’s not yours. My name’s Zwillman, Longie Zwillman. That’s the introductions. You tell me who you are and what the fuck you’re doing. We’ll take it from there.’ He snapped at the driver. ‘Keep driving.’

Stefan glanced round at Kate. She shook her head. She had no idea what was going on either, but she did have some idea who Zwillman was.

‘Mr Cavendish and me had some business together. It was unfinished business. I liked him too. I’m disturbed by what happened to him, naturally. I’d like to know why it happened. So when people start breaking into his apartment and going through his private affairs, I don’t think that’s right.’

Stefan had no idea who Zwillman was, but he didn’t need to know to work out that the truth, or some version of it, was going to be a better bet than any kind of evasion, or that smart answers needed to stay in his head.

‘I knew John Cavendish too. I’m an Irish policeman. I’m liaising with the NYPD, in the investigation into how he died. I’m here because the Irish consul general asked me to look through his things, for anything personal, anything that ought to go back to Mrs Cavendish in Ireland – when I leave.’

‘What do you call yourself?’

‘Stefan Gillespie.’

‘Lieutenant, Captain?’

‘Sergeant.’

‘OK. He didn’t give me a name. He said there was an Irish cop.’

Zwillman took a leather cigarette case out. He offered one to Stefan, ignoring Kate. Stefan shook his head. The American pulled out a cigarette.

‘So, with all this liaising, where are the Headquarters detectives? I mean what are they saying? They been looking at this a couple of days.’

‘He was drunk. He got up on to an empty floor. He was drunk. There was a terrace without any railing. He was drunk. It was dark. He was drunk.’

Finally Zwillman’s smile looked like a smile.

‘New York’s finest haven’t impressed?’

‘I’m not saying it’s not true. But he didn’t look pissed to me.’

‘And they’re not looking too hard, is that right? I hear that.’

‘What’s to look for?’ said Stefan. ‘They’ve made up their minds.’

‘So did you get anything personal then, Mr Gillespie?’

Stefan Gillespie frowned, not understanding for a moment.

‘Captain Cavendish’s belongings.’

‘There were some letters from his wife, some photos of his children.’

‘OK.’

There was silence.

In the middle of all this, there really was a dead man.

‘You were in there a long time. I’m told you were moving furniture. The captain must have kept his personal items in some fucking odd places.’

Stefan didn’t offer an explanation.

‘And what were you looking for, Miss O’Donnell?’

Longie Zwillman leant round to look at Kate.

‘Boat tickets, boat tickets to Ireland. I’ve told him already.’ She looked at Stefan. ‘Do you need to know why? What does it matter to you?’

‘It’s all right, Miss O’Donnell, boat tickets is fine. I know about boat tickets. They make a lot more sense than moving the wardrobe to find Mr Cavendish’s photographs of his kids. Or is that just me, Mr Gillespie?’

‘If I asked you what this is about, Mr Zwillman, I don’t suppose you’d tell me, would you? Maybe I should know who you are. I’ve got no idea.’

Longie Zwillman offered no explanation.

‘So where are you two going now?’

Stefan looked across at Kate; she understood no more than he did, but she felt the danger even more acutely. She didn’t wait for Stefan to answer.

‘The tickets weren’t in the apartment. I’m going to the World’s Fair, to look in his office. They must be there. I have to find them, Mr Zwillman.’

‘And you’re helping her?’ Zwillman looked at Stefan.

‘Yes.’ There didn’t seem much else to say.

‘You know your NYPD friends are looking for her, and her sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you’re a helpful sort of guy for a cop, I’ll say that for you.’

Stefan said nothing. He still didn’t know what any of this meant.

‘I’m a helpful sort of guy too. What if I come with you?’

Kate and Stefan exchanged glances; there was nothing they could do.

Longie Zwillman leant forward towards the driver.

‘Get us to the Fair. You need to find the Irish Pavilion.’

He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and sat back in the seat.

‘It’ll be closed I guess, Miss O’Donnell?’

‘It will be now.’

‘That’s OK then. You haven’t been to the Fair, Mr Gillespie?’

‘No,’ replied Stefan.

‘It’s something else, I tell you, some-fucking-thing else!’

As the Pontiac drove through Queens towards Flushing Meadows on the Grand Central Parkway the nightly firework display that closed each World’s Fair day began. The night ahead of them was exploding with light and sound. The sky was full of bursting stars of every colour, appearing and disappearing only to be replaced by more. For a moment, just a moment, Stefan saw only what was in front of him. Kate, tense and uncertain next to him didn’t have even those seconds to spare; she had seen enough of the fireworks to be unsurprised. But the two men in the front seat were laughing, enjoying the show, talking about when they were going to bring their children out to see the Fair.

The car turned off the Parkway.

‘We’ll take the Corona Gate,’ announced the driver. ‘I guess the broad’ll know where we’re going once we’re in the place. OK, boss?’

‘All right, Miss O’Donnell?’ asked Zwillman.

‘They won’t let us just drive in,’ said Kate. ‘I have got a pass –’

Nobody seemed interested.

The Pontiac approached the main gate along the highway that skirted the Fountain Lake, looking across to the lights of the rides and roller-coasters and theatres and restaurants of the Amusement Zone. Cars were heading in the opposite direction, away from the Fair, leaving the parking lots on the outskirts of the grounds. Fireworks were still shooting up and filling the night; red, white, green, yellow, blue; light and smoke, fountains of fire, star clusters. At the gate a World’s Fair policeman flagged them down with lazy irritation. The driver wound down the window, smiling.

‘We’re closing. If you want the Amusement Zone, you turn round, go back down the Parkway and you put your car in the Boulevard Field or the 69
^th
Road parking, like everyone else. You don’t just drive in the place.’

‘Mr Zwillman is here on business.’

The driver was still smiling. The policeman’s irritation had gone. He looked past the driver to the back of the car where Longie Zwillman sat. Zwillman nodded a greeting. There was no expression on his face except the same expression Stefan had seen. He expected people to do what they were told.

‘I guess that’s OK. You know where you’re going?’

‘Yeah, we know where we’re going.’

The car drove on through the gates. Quite suddenly there was silence. The night sky was black and the lights of the World’s Fair around them brought everything back to earth. Crowds were walking towards the gates. To the left, in front of them, Stefan registered the narrow, tapering spire of the Trylon and the great ball of the Perisphere beside it, startlingly white against the night sky, the Trylon rising up, taller than anything else at the Fair, like a white needle. Further on he could see something else that was floodlight-white, a head, the top of the sixty-foot-high statue of George Washington, and beyond it the lights of the tree-lined avenue that was the centre of the Fair. It was something else he had read in the paper. He tried to remember; the Lagoon of Nations and the Court of Peace. John Cavendish had said something about the Four Freedoms, somewhere on that mall. He had wanted to show Stefan some of this. He was seeing it now, at gunpoint.

Kate directed the driver right, on to the Avenue of Pioneers, past the General Cigar Company and American Tobacco and the Triangle Restaurant. The streets and avenues were almost empty away from Constitution Mall now. Stefan registered some things. The clean, square lines of buildings; the white stone of statues and sculptures; as they drove through the Court of States a great circle of flags he thought must be countries he didn’t know, then realised were the American States.

They turned into an avenue dominated by the gigantic figure of a man on top of a towering plinth. The sculpture was as high as the Trylon. The man was the colour of bronze; he wore a worker’s overalls over bulging muscles; his right hand reached to the sky, holding a star. It was the pavilion of the Soviet Union. They passed a low building of glass and concrete panels. There was nothing very distinctive about it, except for its bright and simple modernity.

‘That’s something you won’t see anywhere else,’ said Zwillman.

Stefan looked round.

‘The flag, the little red, white and blue one there.’

He looked back towards the low building as they passed.

‘The Czechoslovak Pavilion. They got no country to go with it now.’

Just beyond the Soviet Pavilion the Pontiac stopped.

The driver got out and opened the door for Longie Zwillman.

The young gunman got out and opened the other door.

The Irish Pavilion was a high, curved wall of glass, brightly lit inside. Three tricolours fluttered in front of it. At one end there was a wall of stone and a sculpture of a naked woman rising out of the sea. The building was in the shape of a shamrock, though no one would ever see it was, except by flying over it. Stefan Gillespie, Kate O’Donnell and Longie Zwillman walked to the doors. They were locked. Kate took a key ring from her bag and opened one of them. She seemed very calm, but Stefan had felt the tension in her body, sitting next to her in the car. As they walked into the pavilion a woman was walking through the entrance, pushing a cleaning trolley. She was black, in her fifties. She seemed unsurprised to see them.

‘They’ve all gone, Miss.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Kate, trying to smile her most normal smile.

‘You see the main lights go off? I ain’t meant to leave them on.’

‘I will. Thank you.’

The woman carried on, pushing the trolley of buckets and mops.

Kate walked through a door into a short corridor. She passed several more doors then stopped at the last one. She tried the handle. It was locked.

‘Obviously I don’t have a key to –’

Longie Zwillman moved her aside. He put his shoulder to the door, pulled it back a little, and then smashed against the wood above the lock.

They walked into the office. Kate turned on the light.

As the two men looked round she sat on the desk.

‘So, I guess you two are the expert searchers, one way or another.’

Stefan attempted a reassuring smile; she was on her way back.

Zwillman was walking round the room. John Cavendish had been a man of orderly habits. It wouldn’t be a difficult room to search. He stopped, looking down at a small safe that was built into the wall behind the desk.

‘You start with the desk, Mr Gillespie. I need to get Sam in.’

He walked out.

‘Who the hell is he?’ demanded Stefan. ‘You seem to know him.’

‘He’s a criminal, a gangster. I don’t know him. I’ve heard the name.’

‘I suppose I’d worked out he wasn’t John’s bank manager.’

‘Why ask me then? You know as much as I do. If you think I’ve got the faintest idea why he was waiting for us outside John’s flat –’

‘Why, is one question. How, is another. But that’s easily answered though. The caretaker you got so much sympathy from as a bereaved sister!’

Kate felt that one hit; but she was still on her way back.

‘I don’t think he’s here because of my bloody boat tickets, he’s –’

She stopped as Zwillman came back in with the driver.

‘Drawers,’ he snapped. ‘Get it done. We haven’t got all night.’

Stefan turned to the desk. He started to look through the paperwork. Kate was still perching on the edge. She opened her handbag and took out her cigarettes. Whatever was happening she felt safer. Stefan did too. Whether explanations were likely to come or not, it felt less dangerous now.

Longie Zwillman was in front of the safe with Sam.

‘It’s no big deal,’ said the driver. ‘It’s a piece of crap.’

He knelt down beside the safe, pushing his ear up against it. He took the dial between his fingers and began to turn it, slowly, evenly, caressingly.

‘So, how are you going to get to Albany now, Miss O’Donnell?’

‘Are you just trying to show me how much you know about me, Mr Zwillman,’ replied Kate, ‘or do you have a special interest in my welfare?’

‘Let’s say I have an interest in your sister’s welfare.’

‘And why would that be?’

‘The same reason Mr Cavendish did. I know what the deal was. Like I told you, John and me had some business together. The deal was he helped you get your sister out of New York, out of the country, and on a boat to Ireland. You were going to hide up at his apartment, after you got her out of the psych ward, and then he was going to drive you to Albany. You were going to pick up the New York train to Montreal in the middle of the night, when everyone on it was asleep. He got you the fake passports you needed, and the boat tickets in the fake names to go with them. And you had something to deliver in return. Or your sister had. Death notwithstanding.’