The address on Essex Street was a two-story, red brick row house with a small brick stoop. The wrought iron handrails had been freshly painted in a thick coat of black, but not much else in the way of maintenance had been done to the place in years. The wood around the old single-paned windows was rotting away and the mortar between many of the front facade bricks was missing. What once had probably been a lovely wrought iron and glass front door with side panels and transom had long since been replaced by a simple steel door with a peephole as its major design feature. The new door wasn’t pretty, but it was practical. As Brooklyn neighborhoods went, East New York was one of the roughest and in such places, safe always trumps aesthetics.
I read the names in the slots beneath all three doorbells. A. Conseco was the name on the little black and white plastic label in the slot for the top floor apartment, not that her name being there meant anything. New Yorkers aren’t exactly anal about getting names right on doorbells and mailboxes. I’m not sure why we’re like that. We just are. Maybe we have too much other shit to worry about to fret over the small stuff. And in East New York, there were probably a lot of people only too glad to have someone else’s name on their bell or mailbox. I rang the top bell for the hell of it. No answer. I wasn’t expecting one. The name in the slot under the main floor bell was T. Truax. I held my thumb down on it long and hard and I could hear it ringing through the front windows. Again, no answer. The name in the basement apartment slot was Rodriguez and I held that button down for quite some time as well. And just like the bell for Truax, I could hear it ringing inside the apartment. Same results too.
Depending upon your point of view, I was either batting zero or a thousand. Felt more like zero. Lacking x- ray vision or the will for risking a felony conviction for breaking and entering, I decided to go. I made it down three steps when I thought I heard something at my back. I took a quick peek over my left shoulder and saw the main floor curtains covering the windows closest to the stoop had been pulled slightly to one side. I felt eyes on me, but I didn’t turn immediately around. Instead I took my time reaching street level and then made a lazy about-face. I tried to make myself seem as unthreatening and forlorn as possible. Much more easily accomplished these days than it had once been. I turned my lips down, shook my head, threw my hands up in exasperation, and made to go. The act must have played well for my audience because the front door opened and someone called out, “Hey, mister, you jus’ hold on.”
She was a stout black woman in a well-worn bathrobe and men’s brown slippers, the kind my dad used to favor. She had a fussy hairdo with lots of elaborate twists and curls and it glistened in the midday sun. She didn’t have to touch it for me to see that her hairdo was a source of great pride. She had a lovely, welcoming smile, but wary eyes taking my measure. The problem was I was at a loss. I’d been going through the motions, ringing the bells and all, but I was still preoccupied by the implications of what had happened to me last night and the fear of what lay ahead. I remembered Carmella first telling me about Alta’s murder. I could see her mouthing the word Gravesend in my mind’s eye. Gravesend, indeed.
“Hey, mister, you all right?” the woman on the stoop asked, breaking the trance.
“Fine,” I said for lack of anything else.
The thing was, I’d been so preoccupied that I hadn’t bothered thinking about what I would say if someone answered one of the bells. I knew I had to say something right then or lose her. What to say was the issue. I opened my mouth, but she spoke first.
“I seen you before,” she said, the wary squint of her eyes evaporating. “Where I seen you at? On TV somewhere or the papers?” It wasn’t really a question, not for me anyway. She closed her eyes tight and scrunched up her face as if she were trying to squeeze the memory out of her head. “Tha’s it! I know where from. You the man that saved that little girl, the artist. Your face and hers was all over the news.”
“Sashi Bluntstone,” I said. “Very good.”
She seemed pleased with the both of us. “C’mon up here…”
“Moe,” I said, walking up the steps with my right hand extended, “Moe Prager.”
“Thelma Truax. I own this place. Husband left it to me when he passed.” Her hand was meaty, her handshake genteel. “I imagine you here about poor Alta, such a nice woman.”
“Not many people in this city share your view of Alta, Mrs. Truax.”
“It’s the Lord’s place to judge, Moe, not ours. Alta was never nothin’ but sweet to me and mine. Times when we couldn’t afford to go to the doctor, she’d see to my grandchildren. If it was serious, she would make arrangements with doctor friends of hers. So I hope the Lord shines his light of forgiveness on her.”
“Then you believe the media reports about Alta?”
“Don’t have to believe ’em,” she said. “Alta tol’ me her own self that they was true.”
Thelma’s words hit me like a tire iron. No matter that I’d already come to the same conclusion, that Alta had abandoned her principles and turned her back on her oath. I clung to the hope that I was wrong, that when I waded through everything there’d be some reasonable explanation for her actions or, more accurately, her inaction. Now I had independent confirmation that she had stood by and let Tillman die.
“When did she tell you that?”
“It’s quiet on this street now, but right after it all came down, it was just a shame how them newspeople hounded Alta. There was news trucks all over the street, people be ringing her bell at all hours. She took shelter in my apartment sometimes in that first week. We tried to comfort her, but she wouldn’t have none. She said she deserved what she got, that she had let that man die.”
“Did you ask why?”
“She wouldn’t never say and I figured wasn’t none of my business really.”
“You’re a good woman for doing that for her, Thelma.”
“You don’t turn people away when they need you most, was how I was taught. But why you here, Moe?”
“I was taught like you, I guess. Someone’s got to stand up for Alta.”
She placed her hand on my shoulder. “Bless you.”
“Don’t go blessing me just yet. Do you think it would be possible for me to see Alta’s apartment?”
“Not much to see. Just furniture mostly.”
“The cops take most of her stuff?”
“Them too,” she said.
“Them too? Who else?”
“Her sister. She come round ’bout two days ago with all sorts of papers and things to prove she had inherited Alta’s belongings, but I knew it was Alta’s sister the minute I seen her. She look like Alta, but more beautiful.”
“Carmella?”
“That’s the one. After the police took what they would, which wasn’t much from what I could see, she come and take the rest. She said I could keep the furniture, if it would help me rent the place.”
“Do you remember what Carmella took?” I asked.
“Not in my nature to look. Why? Is it important?”
“For Carmella, probably. For me, not so much. Thelma, can I ask why you haven’t rented the apartment?”
“Haven’t had a heart to, though Lord knows, I need the money. And, to be honest with you, I wanted to wait till people on the block kinda forget. Tough to rent with this so fresh on everybody’s mind, you know?”
“I understand. Thank you for your help.”
“I wasn’t much help that I could see, but I was happy to do it for Alta’s memory. People should know she wasn’t always like that, like she was that day when the man died. We all do things we know we shouldn’t. We all have regrets in our hearts.”
“I know the truth of that,” I said.
Thelma took my hand and stared right up into my eyes so intently I could not look away. “I believe you do, Moe. Yes, I believe you do.”
NINETEEN
Okay, so now I was preoccupied with something else, but I wasn’t clicking up my heels. Why the hell hadn’t Carmella told me she had been to Alta’s apartment and that she’d taken her sister’s things? Was it important? It
