‘What about the relatives?’ I asked. ‘The ones in the old country who co-signed for the debt.’
But Sister Kassia had been all over this topic. Once the women were settled into real jobs that paid real wages, they would send money home to those relatives. The point wasn’t to avoid the debt. The point was to avoid involuntary servitude.
The nun concluded with a direct appeal to my conscience. ‘These women were born with the same hopes and dreams as you and I,’ she declared, her tone firm and steady. ‘They have a right to their lives, a right we take for granted. Now you have it in your power to affect those lives directly. You’ve become responsible, whether you like it or not.’
The women came first, five of them in their Sunday best, the oldest in her mid-twenties, the youngest in her late teens. They wore simple cotton dresses, knee-length and brightly colored, and flat-heeled shoes with tiny white socks that barely covered their ankles. Make-up was held to a minimum, a hint of blush in the cheeks, a pale gloss across the lips, a touch of color in the brows.
Snap judgements, especially of strangers, are a hazard for cops. But as I searched their faces, I knew I wasn’t making any mistake about these women. There was nothing hard in their expressions, no element of cold calculation. They were not whores.
Pleased with this conclusion, I focused on the man who walked behind the women, the shepherd tending his flock. I watched him turn onto the path leading up to the church, then pass within twenty feet of where I stood. He seemed as ordinary, at first glance, as the women who preceded him. His face was noticeably thin, his cheeks hollow, his mouth squeezed between a strong nose and a cleft chin. Though he appeared no older than thirty-five, the top of his head was bald except for a dark fuzz at the very front which might have been better shaved. As he passed me, I watched his eyes criss-cross the landscape in little jumps. They never stopped moving and only the fact that I was standing well away from the window prevented my being discovered.
‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘do you know their names?’
‘One of the girls is named Katrina. The man is named Aslan.’
‘Aslan? Is that a Polish name?’
‘No. In Turkish and Farsi, aslan means lion. I know because I became curious the first time I heard the name and ran a search on the Internet.’
‘You said they’re sometimes escorted by a second man. Can you describe him?’
‘Tall, middle-aged, heavy-set, with very narrow eyes. Really, you can’t mistake him.’
I stifled a burst of nearly infantile glee, then changed the subject. ‘Can I assume they drive to church, the girls and their minders, that they don’t take a bus?’
‘They come in a van.’
‘Can you describe the van?’
Forty-five minutes later, I followed the van back through Maspeth and into Greenpoint, virtually retracing the route I’d taken a few hours earlier. I gave the van plenty of room, passing by the corner of Eagle Street and Franklin Avenue in time to watch it disappear through a roll-up door into the interior of a warehouse. The warehouse was two stories high and no more than twenty feet wide. As decrepit as its attached neighbors to the east and west, the entire face of the building, including the steel door in front, was covered with graffiti. This corner of Greenpoint was mostly Hispanic and poor, a place where folks minded their own business, which was definitely not the plight of a few blanquitas who didn’t even speak English, much less Spanish.
While Aslan and the women were still in church, I’d briefly inspected the van. I called in the plates, first. They came back registered to an outfit called Domestic Solutions. Jane, it appeared, was somebody’s servant. That done, I checked the well-worn tires. I’d photographed a tire impression at the crime scene. Now I had something to compare it with. Finally, I looked inside the vehicle, just in case there was a kilo of cocaine lying in plain view. Instead, I discovered a pair of car seats in the back, one clearly meant for an infant. Children, of course, would add another layer of control, especially pre-schoolers who could be kept out of sight.
As I passed by Eagle Street for a second time, a light went on behind the curtains in the two small windows on the second floor. This was a violation of the building code I could turn to my advantage. Industrial structures cannot be used for residential purposes, not without going through a complicated conversion process that requires a thorough renovation, inside and out. That the home of Domestic Solutions and its workers had not undergone that process was obvious at a glance. A wooden sign running across the building’s facade looked as if it was about to drop onto the street below. Eagle Street Roofing was what the sign said, and I didn’t grasp its significance until I was on my third circuit of the block. Bottom line, there’s very little call for walk-in refrigerators in the roofing business. That meant Jane was killed somewhere else and the only somewhere else she could have been killed was at work. Again, I remembered the Roach’s prediction: there’s a sadist in the mix.
I kept at it for another twenty minutes, certain of only one thing: come tomorrow morning, bright and early, I’d be staking out Domestic Solutions. The single issue to be resolved was the vantage point from which to do it. Tradition would have me sitting in an unmarked car, pretending to read a newspaper. But this block of Eagle Street, between Franklin Avenue and West Street, was only fifty feet long.
I pictured Aslan as I’d seen him walking into the church, his eyes in constant motion. If I was parked in plain view he’d spot me in a minute. And I didn’t want to be spotted, not before I had a better idea of what I was up against.
Eventually, I settled on a place and a plan. Across from Domestic Solutions, a narrow yard was closed off by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The yard ran back at least sixty feet and was littered with everything from bags of garbage to sheet metal boxes and tubes. There was even a cracked toilet. I didn’t have to guess where the debris came from. The squat brick warehouse on the eastern side of the yard had been long abandoned and long ago looted. Whether or not it was also unoccupied remained to be seen.
b
TWELVE
At one time in the not too distant past, I was good-old Harry Corbin, friend to all. My favorite hang-out was a cop bar in Brooklyn where my drink was waiting before I took off my coat, where no one had a bad thing to say about me. That all stopped when I busted Dante Russo and his cronies. Now it was just Adele Bentibi and Conrad Stehle, and Conrad was somewhere off the coast of Alaska with his girlfriend.
Any port in a storm. When I finally arrived home at eight thirty, the first thing I did was pick up the phone and call Adele. I was riding a high which had yet to crest and the urge to blow off steam was too great to resist.
‘Corbin, I’m glad you called. I thought you’d forgotten me.’
Adele sounded weary, almost resigned, the effect so pronounced I came close to asking her what was wrong. But I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want any distractions.
‘I caught a break, Adele. I’m gonna nail the case.’
‘You did? Wait, wait a second. I want to take this in my room.’ A moment later, she said, ‘Okay, I’m alone. Let’s hear the story.’
It was as if she’d become another person, engaged now, interested, and I realized, suddenly, that engagement was what I had to offer. Life on the street, where it mattered.
I laid it out for her, taking my time. Sister Kassia, Father Stan, Aslan and the women, Domestic Solutions, the Eagle Street Roofing warehouse. Adele didn’t comment until I finished. Then she said, ‘You know, Corbin, your victim wasn’t killed in that warehouse.’
‘No refrigerator, right?’
‘Ah, you’re already there.’
‘Look, starting tomorrow morning, I’m gonna put Domestic Solutions under surveillance. There’s an abandoned building across the street. I’ll set up shop inside and see what develops. Remember, without the man Clyde Kelly saw at the disposal site, there’s no case. So, if he doesn’t live in the building or come there to do business, I’ve still got a long road ahead of me. Sister Kassia told me that she hasn’t seen the man in two weeks, which was when he tried to put Jane’s body in the water. Did he take off? He had plenty of reason.’
Adele laughed. ‘You wouldn’t be telling yourself to slow down, would you?’
‘It’s that obvious?’
