4
Jess On the Van Wyck Expressway, peering out of Aaron Greenberg's beaten-up Chevrolet, Janek felt malice in the air. Traffic was heavy. People sat rigid and angry in their cars. Cold rain pelted the asphalt through noxious yellow fog, while all around he could hear the biting sound of horns and, in the distance, competing sirens, perhaps a fire truck and an ambulance at odds.
He touched the window. Ice-cold. The wiper slapped back and forth. The city ahead, toward which they were moving at such erratic speed, could not yet be seen, but Janek could feel it, could feel its nasty breath, its rancor.
He turned back to Aaron, who sat straight in his seat, concentrating on the road. A short, taut, wiry man with weather-beaten skin, his eyes and smile were sweet. My partner and best friend, Janek thought. Kit would gladly have sent her car, but only Aaron, he knew, would come out to Kennedy Airport on such a day to meet him and bring him in. 'New York's got no gender.' Aaron peered ahead curiously.
'What?' 'Venice is a 'she.' New York's an 'it,'' Janek said. 'Well, what do you expect, Frank? I mean, Venice is pretty. New York's not supposed to be.'
Janek glanced at him. 'You haven't told me anything.'
Aaron continued to stare ahead. 'Been waiting for you to ask.'
'How bad was it?' He held his breath as he waited for the reply.
Aaron exhaled. 'I don't know how to put it quite.'
'Try.' The floor pads in the car smelled wet and old.
'Worse than you think, Frank. Worse than you think.' they rode in silence for a time; then Janek asked Aaron to give it to him straight. Never mind the niceties. Just straight, like they were starting out on a case and Aaron was filling him in.
'All I got so far is what I heard around. The detective in charge didn't get back to me yet.'
'What's his name?'
'Ray Boyce.'
'Never heard of him.'
'Neither have I.'
'Well…?'
Aaron winced. 'She was done with an ice pick in Riverside Park, not far from her dorm room at Columbia. It was early evening. She went out jogging alone. That wasn't approved; but she did it a lot, and she wasn't the only one. Plenty of other kids run alone in the dark. I don't know where they think they're living. Nicetown, USA? Anyway, it was about seven. No witnesses. Nobody saw nothing. She never returned to her room. She didn't have a roommate, so she wasn't missed. In fact, well I don't know if I ought-' 'Don't try and spare me, Aaron.' Aaron nodded. 'Understand, Frank, this is just what I heard. Seems she spent a lot of nights away. She had boyfriends. Again, she wasn't the only one. Other kids-'
'Okay, I get the picture. Go on.'
'Every morning, early, the Columbia men's crew goes running as a group. they found her and called her in. Apparently nothing was taken, not that she was carrying much. But she had a watch and a Walkman. If it was a mugger, that's what you'd expect him to take.'
'So it wasn't a mugger?'
'Doesn't look like it.'
'Who was it then? Pack of animals on a wilding, like the ones smashed up that stockbroker a couple years back?'
'Doesn't look like that either.'
'What does it look like?'
'Take it easy, Frank. You're closing in too fast. I don't know what it looks like. Like I said, Boyce didn't get back to me yet.'
'Check him out?' Aaron nodded. 'He's okay.' 'So-so's what you mean.' Aaron shrugged. 'they can't all be stars, Frank. Boyce got the call. So it's his.'
Aaron was right, that's the way it worked, and it was a stinking system, too, because a good 20 percent of the detective force was barely so-so, and when it came to Janek's goddaughter, so-so wasn't going to be good enough.
He turned to the back of the car. Aaron had spread the tabloids across the rear seat. Janek's eyes flew across them. The headlines shrieked.
'If it wasn't a mugger or a pack on a rampage, who the hell was it?'
'Could have been a mugger,' Aaron said. 'He could have gotten spooked.'
'Mugger with an ice pick? Where did they find it anyway?'
'What?'
'The pick.'
'It was left embedded.'
'Oh, Christ!' Janek moaned. Just hearing that made him hurt.
'You know how I felt about her, Aaron.'
Aaron nodded, then paused a moment before he spoke.
'Tell you what I think, Frank, just based on what I heard. There wasn't any reason. It was just, you know, one of those lousy goddamn things. We get them all the time. You know-'
'Yeah. – -.' Janek knew all right. He knew all about them, though they weren't the kinds of cases he ever worked. A unique phenomenon of American cities, of which New York, on account of its population, had a greater share than anyplace else, they were the homicides that were rarely solved because there was nothing about them to solve. they had no point. they were the meaningless murders committed by madmen stalking people alone at night in public parks.
There was a TV news unit with a transmitting device on its roof parked across the street from the James O'Hara Funeral Home. Aaron stopped the car; Janek ducked out into the rain, then wound his way between the waiting limos, past the cameras at the door, and into the lobby. A stand on the far wall was stuffed with wet umbrellas. A dour man in a cutaway stepped forward and asked if he was there for the Wentworth funeral. 'The Foy,' Janek said.
The man looked him over carefully. 'You're the godfather?' Janek nodded. 'they waited long as they could. They're about halfway through it now. West Chapel, up the stairs, second door on the right.'
When he got there, Janek stood in the back and listened. An intense, frizzy-haired young man in ecclesiastical garments was speaking with bitter scorn of the horrors of New York. this Cultural Paradise, once so gracious, now choked with the downtrodden and the homeless. This Imperial City, once so elegant, now ridden with rape and murder. Just this past week a grandmother was dragged to her death by a purse snatcher at midday on Madison Avenue. And a brilliant young intern, with a great future before him, was shot at dusk outside New York Hospital because he refused to hand over his coat. And now our dear Jessica, beloved daughter of Laura, beloved stepdaughter of Stanton, and goddaughter of Frank, has been struck down… and we ask: What madness has been set loose in our city? Why must such a tragedy happen? For what reason? What cause? How can we allow it? What can we say? What can we do? And our voices are mute, for we have no answers…'
It was a long, narrow, overheated room, crowded mostly with younger people. Janek recognized a few: Jess's friends from high school and college, her cousins on Laura's side, and Stanton Dorance's two older sons, children from an earlier marriage. He also saw Tim Foy's mother, a thin veiled Irish woman in her sixties who now had lost both son and granddaughter to violence.
Ten or so well-dressed middle-aged men with well trimmed hair sat together in a row. Must be Stanton's law partner, Janek thought.
Laura and Stanton sat at the front in the bent, broken postures of the bereaved. There was an empty seat beside them. Janek waited until the minister paused, then crept forward to it. He hugged Laura, shook Stanton's hand, then settled back in time for the final words of the eulogy, which ended unexpectedly, not with a plea for reconciliation but on a shrill note of inexplicability and despair.
