Where Nobody Dies (31 page)

“Is it? What about—”

“Cass!” Flaherty was getting angry. “I knew them!”

“How many years ago?” I shot back. “You said yourself that Aida's changed.”

“Yes, but not …” he broke off, lost in thought.

I pressed my advantage. “That would explain her running away from you at the fundraiser,” I urged. “She was afraid you'd recognize her close-up.”

Pat remained silent. I continued to think out loud. “It fits, Pat, it really does. Remember those discrepancies in Aida's application to the drug program? They make sense if you realize that
Nilda
was trying her best to remember the details of
Aida's
past. It also explains how she became the star of the drug program—she was never an addict to begin with!”

Other details began to come back to me, details Donna Healy had put her own interpretation on, but which now had a new significance. “It explains why Mrs. Lucenti's not too keen on visiting the relatives in Puerto Rico. They're Aida's family, but she plays the Nuyorican so they think she's just Aida gone Anglo.”

When Flaherty finally spoke, it was with a hollow voice that told me he was taking the possibility very seriously. “It was summer when she died,” he said, “and the body was there for over a week. Bodies swell in the heat, and the maggots come. Not to mention the rats.” I had the distinct feeling this was not the first time he had thought about a body rotting in a South Bronx tenement. “Nilda's mother was a junkie,” he continued, lifting anguished blue eyes to meet mine. “She'd have identified anything they put in front of her as a daughter.”

“And the medical examiner does a fingerprint check only when he hasn't got a family member's ID,” I remembered. Pat gave me a funny look, but said nothing. Then I recalled the rats: no fingers, no fingerprints.

“All she had to do,” Pat said, “was switch their clothes and identification. They looked enough alike that they could pass for one another if you didn't know them,” he added. “And jewelry,” I agreed slowly. It was a grisly thought. One girl pulling earrings out of dead ears and putting them into her own, then putting her own gold rings through the holes in the dead girl's ears.

“Pat,” I exclaimed, “when did Nilda die?”

“August.” He frowned with concentration. “August—somewhere around the fifteenth. I remember going to church—holy day of obligation.”

Whatever that was. “Aida applied to the drug program on the eleventh of August,” I said.

“But could she really pass herself off as Aida?” Skepticism was returning to Pat's face and voice.

I gave it serious thought. “She'd have Aida's birth certificate and her Medicaid card. She deliberately went to another borough, where she wasn't known. And—”

“And she changed her looks,” Pat finished. “New hairstyle, modeling classes. She didn't look like the old Aida
or
the old Nilda. She was okay as long as she didn't get busted.”

“Fingerprints!” I all but shouted. “That's it! That's the clincher. That no-show job that caused all the fuss?” Pat nodded. “She
had
to quit that job. They were after her to come in and be fingerprinted. It's routine.”

“It's routine”—Pat shook his head—“unless you happen to be wanted for murder under another name.”

I took my thoughts one step further. “Linda,” I said confidently. “I'll bet that's what started her wondering—and snooping. She was working for Art when the whole no-show job thing blew up. She must have sensed that Aida was afraid, and, with her instinct for the jugular, she decided to find out why.”

“But how would she have known about Nilda?” Pat asked. It wasn't an objection, I realized, just a question.

I answered it with one of my own. “Did Nilda Vargas have adult arrests? On-the-record stuff, not sealed?”

Pat nodded.

I explained. “There was a second NYSIIS number scrawled on Aida's rap sheet along with Nilda's name. Linda could have checked it, seen Nilda's record, and her physical description, and—”

Pat interrupted. “You know those dark glasses Aida always wears?”

Puzzled, I nodded.

“Nilda's eyes were green,” he said with finality. “Bright green in a dark Spanish face. You couldn't miss them.”

25

Eight inches. School-closing weather in the city; a dusting back in my snowbelt Ohio hometown. I sighed and stretched my arms to the ceiling. No lazy Saturday for me. Shoveling was the first priority. The last thing in the world I could afford was a lawsuit.

I went for my coat, but before I put it on, I looked long and hard at the telephone. To call or not to call. To warn or not to warn. I'd been through it all with Flaherty the night before.

“We could be wrong,” he'd said quietly, his face troubled. I'd felt a rush of pleasure at the “we,” but I also heard the pain in his voice. “And if we are, if everything in her past is raked up for nothing …” He'd broken off and looked at me with a face full of misery. “I'd feel like a first-class bastard,” he said, his voice low.

I remembered being sharp with Flaherty, reminding him that Nilda Vargas had been no saint, and that somebody had killed Linda Ritchie. I hadn't said in so many words that I was going straight to the cops, but I'd implied it.

Now I wasn't so sure. The theory that had seemed so brilliant the night before looked pretty thin in the light of morning. Maybe Aida Lucenti
did
deserve a chance to explain. I picked up the phone.

I put it down again. What, I asked myself, was I planning to say to her? And what if the phone was answered not by Aida, but by Art? Part of me still considered him the prime suspect; I didn't think he'd appreciate my interest in him or his wife.

My afternoon in Lucenti's headquarters came back to me. I'd picked up a flyer from the edge of Donna Healy's desk. I fished it out of my purse and read that Art was planning to appear at a rally to save a neighborhood firehouse in Fort Greene. I smiled sourly; given his track record, I decided wryly, Todd Lessek probably had plans to turn the firehouse into a luxury co-op.

Then I remembered Donna Healy's bitchy remark about Aida's penchant for coming to the office in the early morning. At the time, I'd assumed she did it to see Linda in private, but now I wondered whether instead it was a way for Aida to be close to her husband's work without running the gauntlet of jealousy put up by all the Donna Healys who worked for Art.

I dialed again, a different number this time. I let the phone ring a long time and was finally rewarded with a “hello” that had a definite tinge of Spanish.

“Mrs. Lucenti?” I asked, getting a murmured yes in response. I plunged ahead. “This is Cassandra Jameson. I was in your husband's office yesterday?” I made it a question although I was sure there was no danger of her forgetting.

“I remember,” she replied in a voice that was cool, ironic. I could picture a touch of amusement on her face.

“I'd like to talk to you again,” I said. “There are some new developments we should discuss.” I was talking, I thought with an inner smile, as though the phone were tapped. The smile left my lips when I realized it probably was.

“I don't believe we have anything more to say to each other.” She said it nicely, still with an undertone of amusement.

“Oh, I think we do,” I countered softly. “You see, I talked to Pat Flaherty last night. He told me all about a girl you and he used to know—Nilda Vargas. Of course,” I added insinuatingly, “you knew her better than he did—a lot better.”

Silence. The sound of breathing. Maybe a heartbeat, but that may have been imagination.

Then the question. “Have you told anyone else?”

“No,” I said, keeping my voice level. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Come here,” she ordered, her tone ragged. “Right away.”

“As soon as I can,” I promised, putting down the receiver with a bang.

I could have won a gold medal for Olympic speed-shoveling. Eight inches never disappeared so quickly.

I dashed back into the office to deposit the shovel and take a quick trip to the bathroom. I almost ignored the ringing phone, but then picked it up, thinking it might be Aida Lucenti.

It wasn't. It was Marcy Sheldon, sounding more agitated than I'd ever heard her.

“Cass, is that you?” Her voice was strident. “Cass, it's awful. I don't know what to think, what to do. You've got to help me.”

“Marcy, I'm on my way out. Can I call you—”

“It's Dawn,” she wailed, cutting off my protests. “She's run away.”

My first thought was: Not now! My second was that it didn't surprise me in the least. Dawn must have felt so alone, so rejected ever since she'd heard Marcy's plan to send her to boarding school. Running away must have seemed the only alternative. But now, I decided reluctantly, was hardly the time to lecture Marcy Sheldon on her shortcomings as a guardian.

“Where'd she go?” I asked. “Florida?” I was thinking of the tennis academy she'd described with such longing.

“Of course not!” Marcy snapped. “How could a twelve-year-old get to Florida?”

If she didn't know, I wasn't going to tell her. “Did she leave a note?”

“Yes, I have it here. She says—”

“Can you read it to me?” I interrupted. “I'd like her exact words.”

I got Dawn's words but with her aunt's exasperated, I'm-wasting-precious-time-here tone of voice.

“‘Dear Aunt Marcy,'” she read, “‘You and Cass don't care about my daddy being in jail for something he didn't do, but I do. I care a lot. So I'm going to find the man who killed Mom, and then the police will have to let Daddy go. P.S., When he gets out, I can live with him. Love, Dawn.'”

It took me a minute to get over the hurt of Dawn's “you and Cass.” How could she, I wondered, lump me in with the aunt who threatened her with boarding school? Then I realized that in her eyes I too had promised but I hadn't delivered. I guessed that made me about even with Marcy.

“I wonder where she's gone,” I mused aloud. “And what she means by—” I broke off as an awful thought struck me. “Do you suppose she'd try to find Art Lucenti?”

“Why would she do a crazy thing like that?” I didn't let Marcy's scornful tone bother me; it was clear she was worried as hell.

“She thinks he killed Linda,” I explained. I did some fast thinking. With any luck, Dawn would have gone to the Lucentis' house, or even to Detective Button. But there was a chance she was headed for the same place I was—Art Lucenti's campaign office, where she'd meet the woman who might or might not have killed several people under the name Nilda Vargas. It was becoming more imperative than ever that I get the truth.

“After all I've done”—Marcy's words held all the bitterness that choice of words usually conveys—“she wants to live with that worthless father of hers.”

“You can bet he won't send her to boarding school,” I shot back.

I regretted the words as soon as I'd said them. Maybe Marcy's coldness was the root cause of Dawn's running away, but now wasn't the time to discuss it.

“I'm sorry,” I said at once, cutting into Marcy's passionate defense of her position. “I shouldn't have said that.”

“You know,” Marcy said after a pause, “when this is over, I think maybe I'd better hire another lawyer.”

“That's fine with me,” I said crisply, trying not to think about the prospect of never seeing Dawn again. “But meanwhile, there's something you should know.”

I told her everything—Art, Aida, Nilda—the whole sordid package. It wasn't easy—I had to talk through a minefield of interruptions, denials, accusations. Yet frustrating as it was, I knew I was doing the right thing. Marcy had a right to know the danger Dawn might be in. And if part of me hoped that the thought of such danger would soften Marcy's frozen emotions, then so be it.

“Listen, Marcy,” I concluded, “I'm on my way over to the headquarters right now. If Dawn calls you or comes home,
don't
, under any circumstances, let her go to Lucenti's. And,” I added, taking a deep breath, “if I don't call you in two hours, get the police. Two hours,” I repeated, “not before and not after.”

I hung up before I could get more arguments. Then I called the number on the firehouse flyer. No, Congressman Lucenti wasn't there yet. Yes, he was still expected. Yes (with a sigh), a message could be left. I lowered my voice and tried to sound impressive as I told the message-taker that Art was urgently needed at his office. His wife, I said ominously, was in trouble and needed him right away. My urgency seemed to impress; I was assured the congressman would get the message the minute he walked in the door.

Next call: the Henry Street Car Service. Yellow cabs don't cruise Brooklyn looking for fares; everyone calls the car service. Including the crooks—I'd once represented a gang of armed robbers who'd made their getaway in a car-service vehicle and then wondered why they were so easily traced. It was smart thinking like that that had netted them five-to-fifteen apiece.

I jumped into the car as soon as it pulled up and gave the address. Adrenaline rushed through my body. I felt as if I were starting to pick a jury in a felony case. I had the same sense of being in a complicated game where brains and nerve were equally crucial, that same anything-can-happen feeling, that same smell of adventure in the air. I tried to tell myself it wasn't healthy to enjoy the feeling, but it didn't help. It was what street cops felt; it was why they loved wearing the tin.

I paid the driver with a perfunctory smile, then got out and forced myself to walk instead of run toward the campaign office. The door was locked; I knocked loudly and waited, tapping my foot with impatience.