I don’t think I’d ever fully grasped the concept of reverse engineering. There was more to it than just breaking something down into its component pieces and putting it back together. There were more subtle aspects to it. Even inanimate things are more than the sum of their parts. Pam understood that. Carmella understood it too. Me, Mr. Stumbler and Bumbler, I didn’t get it until now. Alta’s murder was proving to be a lot more than a series of connected events. I wanted to trace it back to its point of origin, to the first falling domino, and now I thought I knew where that domino had fallen.
It was a five-minute walk and a one-minute drive from where Maya Watson and Alta Conseco were stationed to Piccadilly. Piccadilly was the bar next door to Kid Charlemagne’s and the chick behind the bar recognized Maya’s face immediately.
“Used to be in here all the time.”
“Used to be?”
“Haven’t seen her in here since February maybe. She was so hot and so cool-guys used to be all over her like flies.”
“Hot and cool. How do you mean?”
“Come on, man. With those mixed-race looks and that long lean body, are you kidding me? But she was also aloof, you know?”
Yeah, I knew. She was now as aloof as aloof could be.
I hadn’t had to search for a picture of Maya to show around because it was on the front page of all the local dailies. Detective DiNardo was right, word of her suicide had become news. And with the news of her suicide came the nightmare, the public rehashing and communal hand-wringing over the death of Robert Tillman. It was a field day for the pundits and talking heads, a second bite at the apple. But this time around Alta and Maya, and even Robert Tillman, were like deep sea dwellers, beyond the reach of the tempest roiling the surface.
So now I knew where it had all started, where Maya Watson and Robert Tillman had crossed paths last February. And given what Abigail had told Pam, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Tillman had probably slipped something into Maya’s drink. It was the mechanics of what followed that I was curious about and there was only one person who could help me find that answer.
…
Pam had to cajole her way into meeting with Natasha. I took a more direct approach and badged my way into her building. I told the doorman to call ahead to let her know I was coming up. Would it freak her out, the notion that a cop was coming up to her apartment? Maybe. That was the idea.
Natasha Romaine, dressed in cut-off jean shorts and a pastel pink tank top, was waiting at the door for me when I got off the elevator. I could see what Pam meant about her fragility. No older than twenty-one or — two, with wispy red hair, freckled, almost translucent skin, watery blue eyes, a button nose, and pale lips, she was pretty in a delicate, hothouse flower sort of way. She was very slight of build and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. She’d probably always played an angel in her church’s holiday pageants. I felt immediately protective of her, a reflexive reaction that I imagine she elicited from most men. Most, not all. That reflex was going to make what I knew I had to do even harder.
“I don’t have to talk to you,” she said, girding herself, thrusting out her chest. Her breasts were evident, but as small as the rest of her.
“You don’t even know what I came to talk about.”
“Yes, I do,” she said, staring into my eyes, “and I don’t have to talk about it.”
“I guess you don’t have to, no, but part of you wants to. May I come in or are we going to have this talk out in the hallway so all your neighbors can hear?”
Her apartment was typical Manhattan fare: a cluttered studio that was probably not much bigger than her bedroom back home-wherever that was-and probably more money per month than most folks’ mortgage payments. But the clutter was of fine things. Her computer, an Apple desktop, had a huge monitor and every peripheral known to mankind. The futon and chairs were high end. No IKEA in here. The clothing and shoes strewn about were SoHo boutique, not Aeropostale. The art on the wall, mostly pieces from famous street artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey, was either original or a signed and numbered print. Any one of the things in the studio cost more than a restaurant hostess could afford. Natasha came from money. Helps when you’re being blackmailed.
I sat on the futon. The delicate flower pinballed back and forth from the front door to the bathroom door like a trapped fly banging against a closed window. Just my being here had raised her anxiety level into the red numbers.
“What do you want?” Natasha fairly barked at me.
I opened the paper, but hid the headlines. “Do you recognize this woman?”
Her eyes got gigantic and she buried a trembling hand in her armpit. “No.” She was lying and she knew I knew it.
“Listen, Natasha, let’s stop lying to each other, okay? I used to be a cop, but I retired a long time ago. I’m a private investigator now and not a very good one anymore.”
“Get out!”
It was my turn to say no. “I’m not going anywhere until you talk about this, about what happened to you. I have a daughter a little bit older than you and I would hope that if she had trouble in her life and couldn’t talk to me about it, that she would be able to talk to someone else, someone who would listen, who would care and not judge.”
The steel was going out of her, but she wasn’t at the point of surrender. “Please go.”
I showed her Maya Watson’s face again. “Do you recognize this woman?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all, just yes?”
“Why is she in the paper?” Natasha asked, a lot of fear in her little voice.
I ignored the question and pushed her harder. “How do you know her? Have you seen her in the papers before or on TV?”
Natasha tilted her head at me like a confounded puppy. “What?”
“She committed suicide a few days ago,” I said, answering the earlier question. “She couldn’t take the secrets and the lies anymore. Swallowed two bottles of pills. They found her in her bed in a hot apartment. The insects had gotten to her.”
She bent over at the waist, letting out a strangled gasp, and began dry heaving. She covered her mouth as I had in my dream.
I kept at her. “You knew her from Piccadilly, right?”
She nodded yes.
“She drank there sometimes after work like you and the other people from Kid Charlemagne’s. That’s how you met, right?”
She nodded again.
“You knew that she was one of the EMTs who let Robert Tillman die at the High Line Bistro.”
She nodded.
“He had been blackmailing you and he had been blackmailing Maya and probably a lot of other women too.”
Now Natasha fell to her knees and the heaving was no longer dry. She vomited up whatever she had eaten in the last few hours, but she kept heaving. I got down beside her and held her head, stroked her hair and hugged her like I used to do with Sarah. When she was finally done, I laid her down on the futon, and got her a cold bottled water out of her fridge. I wiped her face and put a cold cloth on her forehead. After cleaning her floor, I sat in a chair across from her as she napped for about half an hour. When she got up, she didn’t say a word. Instead she went into the bathroom. I listened to her brush her teeth, gargle, and take a quick shower. She came out of the bathroom in a robe, went directly to her computer, and began tapping at the keyboard.
“Can you please come here.” She uttered her first words in nearly an hour. “See this email?” She pointed to a line in her inbox. It was from RT6969@constop. com. Didn’t take Einstein to figure out who RT6969 was. The subject heading was Ebony and Ivory.
