miles before heading off to the job. I thought of Adele then, as I’d thought about her last night after I settled in front of the TV. I felt guilty. I should have called her, at least to bring her up to date, but I hadn’t. My reasoning was very simple. Suppose she finally opened up, told me what was bothering her. Suppose the issue required my immediate attention at a time when I had no attention to spare. What would I do? Better not to know.
I remained where I was for the next three hours, until I could no longer distinguish between the mist and my own sweat, watching drops of water form on the ends of the pine needles, then drop to the ground. Behind me, the West Side Highway was running full out, but the traffic produced no more than an inconstant hum that seemed part of the swirling fog. On another day, driven by New York’s prevailing westerly winds, the reek of automobile exhaust would cover the narrow strip of park between the highway and Riverside Drive, but the only odors to reach my nostrils on that day were of wet earth and decaying vegetation.
At ten fifteen, Ronald Portola, the elder of the two brothers, came out of the house. He wore an off-white linen blazer over a black polo shirt and white pants that bunched around his shoes and ankles. I watched him from a park bench right across the street. He was sporting that same bemused smile and he had that same dismissive look in his intelligent eyes, as though he were observing the game of life the way a scientist observes a colony of ants. I wondered how I’d appeal to him if the time ever came to make an appeal. Ronald would appreciate a creative approach, a bit of high theater, of that I was sure. As I was now sure that bludgeoning was not Ronald’s style and I would have to look elsewhere for Mynka’s killer. Ronald was glancing at his watch for the second time when a black Lincoln Towncar from one of Manhattan’s many car services pulled up in front of the townhouse. The driver popped out an instant later, ran around the vehicle, opened the back door with a little flourish. Ronald shot his cuffs before climbing inside.
David Portola made his appearance a little after eleven, carrying a skateboard. In marked contrast to his brother, he wore a pair of cutaway denim shorts, the hems ragged, and a t-shirt that had once been white but was now a dingy gray.
I was back in the park by then, a good hundred and fifty yards from the townhouse, but I didn’t have to shift my position for a better look, or even raise my binoculars. The youngest Portola walked directly across the street, dropped his skateboard onto the sidewalk and came straight down the path in front of my bench. He looked neither right nor left as he passed, his lower lip curled into a nasty pout, eyes hard-fixed on the path ahead. David’s hair was moussed into a little forest of quills and he was skimming the few strollers in the park, his head bent forward as if intending to impale them. Finally, he came within inches of a female jogger who yelled at him to slow down. All she got for her efforts was a raised finger.
I knew from experience that sullen can sometimes become outright defiance, that David’s hatred for authority figures might extend to all cops all the time. The challenge, if I chose to approach him, was to re-route his anger, to focus it back on his family, on the people who’d provoked his anger in the first place. The rest would be easy. After all, he’d loved Mynka.
A little after noon, I left my post in search of a bathroom and something to drink. I found a reasonably clean restroom several blocks to the north and a vendor near a deserted playground who sold me a can of soda, two bottles of spring water and a couple of boiled hotdogs. I carried the food back to a convenient bench, opened a bottle of water, then leaned forward to pour the cold water onto my head and neck. I told myself that weather is never an excuse, not for a cop; that standing up to the elements is a matter of honor. I wasn’t consoled and the water didn’t cool me off all that much either.
I was just about to bite into the first hot dog when the door of the townhouse opened and the Portolas’ maid emerged. I recognized her without difficulty. At Blessed Virgin, she’d covered her head with a gold kerchief before going inside.
Without pausing, she turned south on Riverside Drive. I dumped the hot dogs and the soda in a wire trash basket and trotted after her, opening and draining the last bottle of water as I went. The water seemed to come out through my skin as I drank, as if my stomach were somehow directly connected to my sweat glands. But I had little choice except to quickstep down Riverside Drive. The little maid was moving right along, arms swinging, legs churning. Without slowing down, she turned left on 74th Street and continued on, pausing briefly on West End Avenue to let the traffic pass, until she finally entered the very upscale Fairway Market on Broadway.
Inside the market, the air was cold enough to bring goose bumps to my forearms. It was refrigerator cold. I let my eyes sweep past stacks of piled grapefruits that looked as if they’d been spit-shined, past strawberries that might have been sculpted by Faberge, to the back of the store where I found the maid standing with a small group of customers. At that point, I was supposed to call it quits, having verified exactly what I’d come to verify: the Portola’s maid was allowed to leave the home unaccompanied. But I found myself moving closer, despite the looks I drew from the other customers.
The maid was standing in front of a twenty-foot counter devoted entirely to salmon — Nova Scotia salmon, Irish salmon, Maine salmon, Scotch salmon, wild Scotch salmon, wild Columbia River salmon, wild Canadian salmon. She’d taken a number and was impatiently awaiting service, shifting her weight from foot to foot. I walked past her, to a display of cooking oils that included walnut, hazelnut and pumpkin seed.
In her twenties, she was as plain as Mynka, with narrow downcast eyes, a long nose, broad at the tip, and a heavy jaw that would become her defining feature as she grew older. She kept glancing back and forth, from a cheap watch held to her wrist by a pink band, to an LED screen displaying the number of the patron currently being served. I couldn’t tell how far she was from the front of the line, only that there were half a dozen customers standing before the counter. But I could see that she was afraid and I had to wonder whether Aslan charged a premium for a domestic servant who could be abused, as well as used.
I left a few minutes later, heading back downtown to pick up my car. Then it was off to Maspeth, where I found Father Stan in the rectory. He looked me up and down, his smile rueful. The air conditioner in the little Nissan, never all that efficient, had been unable to overcome the heat of the sun pouring through the windows on my side of the car. My hair was plastered to my head, my clothes to my body.
‘Still sinning, I see.’
‘I’m nothing if not faithful to my obsessions,’ I admitted. ‘But I didn’t come to confess. I’m looking for Sister Kassia.’
The priest gestured to a narrow hallway. ‘First door on the left. Her new office.’
Sister Kassia’s new office must have been a broom closet in its prior incarnation. Between the desk, the file cabinets and Sister Kassia, there wasn’t room for a second chair and I was forced to stand.
‘Please don’t lean against the wall with your wet clothes,’ the nun began. ‘It was just painted.’
‘Did you ever teach school, Sister?’
‘Third grade, at Sacred Heart in Bayside. Why do you ask?’
‘I was just trying to imagine what went through a kid’s head when he walked into your classroom for the first time.’ I hesitated, but she continued to stare at me. ‘I didn’t change my clothes before coming over,’ I explained, ‘because I want you to know what you’re up against.’ I peeled the front of my shirt away from my chest. ‘This is what happens when you spend six hours on a stake-out in Riverside Park.’
‘Does that mean you’ve found them?’
‘It means I’ve found one of them. She’s working on the Upper West Side and I intend to approach her tomorrow, assuming she leaves the house. If you want to be there, you’ll have to put up with the elements.’
I’d underestimated Sister Kassia. Her bird-bright eyes softened at the news and the smile on her face was positively beatific.
‘Tonight,’ she announced, ‘I’m going to collect.’
‘Collect what?’
‘Collect on that bet I made with Father Stan. He was certain that we’d never see you again. I told him you’d be back. I told him that underneath your dissembling exterior, there lay a primitive code of honor. Once you gave your word, you’d keep it.’
‘That’s nice, Sister, but when you made the bet, did you tell him the other part? Did you tell him that I’d also be returning to Blessed Virgin because I still needed you?’
The nun’s smile broadened as she arched an already rounded eyebrow, then winked. ‘Nope,’ she declared, ‘I must have forgotten about that one.’
The phone was ringing when I walked into the house. I picked it up a moment too late and the answering machine came on. I listened to the announcement, then heard Adele’s voice.
‘Corbin, where have you been? I’m dying to know what’s going on.’
