Where Nobody Dies (32 page)

Aida Lucenti opened the door a crack, then opened it wider and let me in. Her face looked haggard under the oversized sunglasses. For a wild, hysterical second I wanted to rip them off her face and reveal her green eyes.

I didn't. I didn't have to. Her face told me the truth. It was an exposed face now, the makeup and the contoured cheekbones insufficient to gloss over the street-smart South Bronx toughness.

“Good morning, Mrs. Lucenti,” I said formally, then added, “or should I call you Nilda?”

26

If there's one thing I know on God's green earth, it's how to talk to skells.

She began with bluster. “Nilda's dead,” she announced with a sullen, defiant edge to her voice. Her stance was wary, at odds with the designer suit and blood-red silk blouse.

“Don't bullshit me, Nilda,” I said with bluff good humor. Speaking not to the sophisticated façade but to the scared ghetto kid inside, I went on, “It's like I tell my clients. You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool your lawyer any of the time.”

“What proof you got?” she challenged, beginning to walk around the room. Her movements were lithe, sinuous, unthinking—like a cat's. “I tell you what proof—none.” She rapped her knuckles on the passing desk for emphasis. “And I tell you why—there's no proof 'cause there's no truth.”

I watched her with a deliberate stare that started a tiny blush across her dusky cheeks. “You know,” I said conversationally, “you really are beginning to sound like one of my criminal clients. The kind who never says he isn't guilty—he just says the cops didn't see him do the crime. I'll tell you what I tell them: It's not much of a defense. Besides,” I added, looking at my purse on the floor, “how do you know what I can and can't prove?”

“Prove it, then,” she snapped, resuming her pacing. A caged panther in an Anne Klein suit.

“What's the point?” I asked, my tone deliberately weary. “Your fingerprints will tell the whole story. Either you're really Aida Valentin or you're not.” I shrugged my indifference to the outcome.

She stopped moving. As still as an animal in hiding, she whispered, “They can't fingerprint me unless I'm under arrest. That's the law.”

“Good,” I approved. “You'll make a terrific jailhouse lawyer, Nilda.”

“Stop calling me that!” There was a note of near-hysteria in her voice that told me I was coming close to provoking the mental state I wanted her in.

“The only problem with that reasoning,” I continued in the same unhurried voice, “is that you could be arrested any minute. If not for the murder of Linda Ritchie, then on the old Nilda Vargas warrants. The cops could arrest you, print you, and then”—I locked eyes with her—“if you're really Aida, you get an apology from the mayor and a nice big lawsuit for false arrest. On the other hand, if you're Nilda …”

I didn't have to finish. The despair in her face told me mayoral apologies wouldn't be necessary.

She started pacing again. Faster this time, with stiffer, more constricted movements. It was as if the panther had been moved to a smaller cage.

Finally, she confronted me. The defiance was back in her face in full force, but I was experienced enough to know it masked surrender. “Okay,” she announced, “so I'm Nilda Vargas. That doesn't mean I killed Linda.”

“What about that phone call—the one that got your husband out of the office?”

“It was from Linda,” she replied. “He lied when he told me it was from Pete.”

“Is that what you told the police?”

Her melon-tinted lip curled with contempt. “Of course not. Do you think I would betray him?” She was genuinely indignant. It was either a sincere belief that Art was guilty, or a very clever acting job by a known killer. As far as I was concerned, the jury was still out.

“Why don't we sit down?” I suggested, “and talk about your legal position?”

Nilda seemed reluctant to give up her freedom to move, but she docilely sat on a hard chair next to the desk. I went behind it and sat in the swivel chair. The lawyer-client relationship having been reinforced, I got down to business.

“If you didn't kill Linda,” I began, “then all you have to worry about are the old warrants.”

“All I have to worry about,” she repeated with a sardonic laugh. “Lady, those warrants weren't for shoplifting. They were for murder.”

“It was a long time ago,” I pointed out. “Who knows whether the DA could make out a case or not anymore? Witnesses die, cops retire. There may be no statute of limitations on murder, but that doesn't mean the DA's got an automatic conviction.”

“You think I could beat the cases?” I tried not to smile. I'd heard those words many different times in many different contexts, but never from a woman who dressed better than I.

“I didn't say that,” I cautioned. “I'd have to know more. But there could be a good chance of pleading to manslaughter, at least. Who's still around from the gang, for one thing? They could help you or hurt you, depending on whether any of them needs a break from the DA's office.”

She wrinkled her forehead in thought. “Nelson's dead,” she said, no part of her conveying the slightest hint that she was talking about her former lover. “He got stabbed upstate. I don't know about the rest. But a lot of them were junkies and they were all into fighting and shit like that, so they could be dead too.”

“Well, that's the first step,” I said. “Find out what kind of case the DA has. Then there's the question of what you did—you personally, not the gang—to cause those people's deaths. Did you ever take part in the killing?”

She shook her head. Behind the dark glasses, her eyes were wide. “I was too scared,” she said in a small voice. “I tried not to let Nelson see because he wanted his woman to be strong, but it made me sick. All I wanted to do was run away and throw up, but I had to stand there and look anyway. Because that was what Nelson wanted.”

“And you always did what Nelson wanted,” I said wryly. Not my favorite defense: The devil made me do it. But then I considered Nilda's sultry good looks, suitably toned down by her business clothes. Young impressionable girl, mother a junkie, led astray by an older man. An older man who happened to be a vicious killer who liked an admiring audience for his crimes.

I recalled Pat Flaherty's remark, “She was good at roles, Nilda.” She'd been a Galatea in search of a Pygmalion. First Pat, then Nelson, then the rising young lawyer Art Lucenti. For each she'd unearthed and developed a new personality. What I wondered now was, how far had she gone to prove to her killer lover that she was his kind of woman?

“I suppose you were afraid of Nelson sometimes,” I murmured.

Nilda picked up her cue; she'd be great on direct. “Of course,” she said, her voice low. “He said he'd kill me if I tried to leave him. He said no woman ever walked out on Nelson Rodriguez.”

“And did you,” I asked, “try to leave?”

“Once,” she whispered. “He cut me.” She looked up, her face pleading. “I could show you the scar,” she offered.

I shook my head. “Not now,” I replied, abstracted by the vision of Nilda in the witness box, modestly unbuttoning her silk blouse to reveal a nasty, jagged scar. “
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Nilda Vargas
tried
to leave the depraved killer who made her an unwilling partner in his crimes
—
and look what he did to her! Is it any wonder, ladies and gentlemen, that she never tried again?”

I stepped out of my imaginary courtroom and fixed Nilda with a confident smile. “So far,” I said hopefully, “we've got three possibilities. One: The People have no case after all this time. Two: You weren't guilty because you were acting under duress. Three: A motion to dismiss in the interest of justice. You tell the court all about how you've gotten your life together and led an exemplary existence since the crimes were committed, and ask the judge to throw out all the charges.”

“You mean …” Hope began to dawn in the drawn face. “I might not go to jail?”

“It's possible,” I said. “I'd have to know a lot more before I could be sure, and even then there are no guarantees, but it looks pretty good.”

“I'd kill myself before I'd go to jail.” She said it in a matter-of-fact voice that carried its own conviction. From what I'd seen of her compulsive pacing, it was the simple truth.

“But,” I went on, a stern quality entering my voice, “you
do
have to turn yourself in to the police. You have to tell them who you really are.”

She turned away. I expected an argument, but what I got was a whisper. “I have to tell my husband first.”

“Of course,” I replied. I'd been willing to bet Art still thought the woman he married was Aida Valentin, and now I knew I was right.

“I need some time,” she went on, her voice intense. “I have to think.”

“How much?”

I wasn't sure how much I was willing to give. I kept hoping Art Lucenti would walk in the door and help me with this.

A knock on the door had both of us jumping out of our skins. I turned to see Dawn Ritchie's face, looking anxious but determined, peering through the glass.

Things happened at once. Nilda went for the door with a speed that left me behind. I was only halfway out of my chair when she yanked the door open. The look on her face made it clear she intended to get rid of Dawn as quickly and as rudely as possible. Which was all right with me; the last place I wanted Dawn was in the company of Nilda Vargas.

“Cass!” Dawn's face was a study in shock. “What are
you
doing here?”

“What I've been doing for some time now,” I replied acidly, “trying to find out who killed your mother so I can get your father out of jail.”

Dawn had the grace to blush. “I thought you'd given up,” she murmured, her eyes on the ground.

“I know you did. You were wrong.” I gave her a penetrating glance, trying to convey some sense of urgency. Then I said sharply, “Now get the hell out of here.”

A man stepped up out of the shadows. I turned hoping to see Art Lucenti, but the man approaching the door was dressed in blue. Cop blue.

Fury gripped my soul. Nearly shaking, I grabbed for Dawn. Damn Marcy, I thought, hoping I could get Dawn out of there and send the cop away before Nilda panicked.

It was too late. Quick as a cat, Nilda blocked my way, and hissed, “You bitch! You called the fucking cops! You lied to me!”

“No,” I shouted. “It wasn't me, It was Dawn's aunt. I told her—”

It was a mistake to mention Dawn. Nilda made her move so quickly she was like a blur, over to where Dawn stood.

The cop stepped up to the door. “I'm looking for a Dawn—” he began, then stopped cold as he saw Nilda.

I looked, and my heart turned sick. Nilda grabbed Dawn in a choke hold, pulled something from her pocket, and flicked it into a gleaming knife. Holding the knife to Dawn's throat, she shouted, “Get the fuck out of here! Come one step closer and she's dead!”

27

“Nilda, are you crazy?” I ran toward her, the unwisdom of calling someone holding a knife “crazy” not apparent to me at that moment.

“Get back, bitch,” Nilda cried, “or I'll kill her!”

“Don't do it, lady,” the cop begged. His raised hands were trembling and his voice cracked. He had the veiny red nose of the chronic drinker.

Nilda turned toward him, yanking Dawn with her in a swift motion that looked vicious but was probably just nerves. “Get out,” she shrieked. “Get out and don't come back.”

“I'm gone,” the cop said. He backed out the door as though leaving the queen, then turned and ran. Toward the nearest phone, I hoped.

“Nilda, what the fuck?” Shock, fear, and rage were equally mixed; my voice sounded raucous in my own ears. “I thought we were talking! I thought you were going to turn yourself in. I thought …” I broke off at the hint of triumph in Nilda's manic smile. Rule number one: Skells will break your heart.

“Oh, God,” I said, deflated by my sudden understanding, “you
did
kill Linda.”

Dawn, already pale and trembling as if in a deadly fever, began to whimper. Nilda cuffed her on the side of the head. I winced, but Dawn stopped her keening noise.

“This still makes no sense.” I said the first thing that came into my head. “There's no future in it, Nilda. What do you expect to gain?”

“I'm not going to jail,” Nilda replied, her calm tone belied by the uncharacteristically high pitch of her voice. “No matter what I have to do, I'm not going to jail.”

She meant it. Taking a hostage may have been a drastic move, but I could see now that Nilda had been desperate, convinced that the cop had come, at my instigation, to put the finishing touches on my brilliant deduction that Aida Valentin and Nilda Vargas were one and the same person. She hadn't planned to escape jail at the point of a knife, but she'd do it that way if she had to.

Calm was my weapon, that and my mouth. “Flaherty was right,” I said casually. “You're a hell of a natural actress. You almost had me convinced you were the loyal wife covering up for her guilty husband. The funny thing is, I would have given you the time you asked for. The time you'd have needed to book passage to South America, I suppose. What I wonder is”—I gave her a penetrating look—“would there have been one ticket or two? Were you planning on leaving Art or taking him with you?”

No answer. The hand holding the knife was rigid. It appeared rock-steady, but I suspected the stiffness was a rigidity born of pure fear. The blade was so close to Dawn's neck that one hard swallow would nick the skin.

“Nilda,” I said in a tone I worked hard to soften, “can you move the knife a little, please?”