dropping him at the corner of Madison and 96th Street. He walked into the first store he could see, a women’s shoe store, spent exactly ninety seconds examining the shoes, simultaneously peering through the plate glass window surreptitiously, awaiting the light on the corner to change. As soon as it did, he exited, walked across the street and flagged down another cab. He instructed this driver to head south, all the way to Grand Central Station.
Grand Central wasn’t particularly crowded for midday in the summer. A steady flow of people dispersed through the cavernous interior toward commuter trains or subway connections, avoiding the occasional singing or mumbling homeless person wandering about near the entranceways, ignoring the large vibrant advertisements that seemed to fill the station with an otherworldly light. Ricky entered the stream of people trying to hesitate as little as possible in their transit through the way station. It was a place where people tried not to show indecision, and he joined that parade of determined, directed folks, all wearing that midtown steel-and- iron look, that seemed to armor them from all the other people, so that everyone traveling was like a little emotional island all to themselves, inwardly anchored, not adrift, not floating, but moving steadily with a distinct and recognizable current. He, on the other hand, was inwardly aimless, but pretending. He took the first subway train to arrive, heading west, rode it a single stop, then bounded from the train swiftly, rising out from the stifling underground into the questionable superheated air of the street and again flagging the first cab he could spot. He made certain that the cab was pointed south, which was the opposite from where he was heading. He wanted the cabbie to make an around-the-block trip, heading down a side street, dodging through delivery trucks, all the time with Ricky peering through the rear window, watching who might come up behind him.
He thought if Rumplestiltskin or Virgil or Merlin or whoever else might be working for the man pursuing him was able to follow that path undetected, then he was without any chance whatsoever. Ricky scrunched down in the seat, and rode in silence to the Transit Authority Police substation at 96th Street and Broadway.
Riggins stood up as he walked through the door to the detective bureau. She looked significantly less exhausted than she had the first time they met, although her outfit had not changed much: fashionable dark slacks above contradictory running shoes, a man’s pale blue button-down shirt with a red tie loosely fastened around her neck. The tie flopped to the side of the brown leather shoulder harness she wore, with a small automatic pistol riding to the left of her breast. It was a most curious appearance, Ricky thought. The detective combined men’s clothing with a feminine streak, she wore makeup and perfume to contradict the masculinity of her apparel. Her hair fell in languid waves to her shoulders, but her running shoes spoke of urgency and immediacy.
She offered her hand in a firm shake. “Doc, glad to see you, although I must say this is a bit unexpected.” She seemed to assess his appearance rapidly, measuring up and down like a tailor inspecting a poorly conditioned gentleman who wants to squeeze into a stylish and modern suit.
“Thank you for agreeing-” he started, but she cut him off.
“You look lousy, doc. Maybe you’re taking Zimmerman’s little confrontation with a subway train a little hard.”
He shook his head, smiling a little. “Not sleeping much,” Ricky admitted.
“No shit,” Riggins replied. She gestured with a wave of her arm toward a side room, which was the interview area that she’d mentioned earlier.
The interview room was bleak and unforgiving, a narrow space devoid of any adornment, with a single metal table in the center and three steel folding chairs. A fluorescent overhead light filled the room with glare. The table had a linoleum surface, marred by scratch marks and ink stains. He thought about his own office and in particular the couch, and how each item within a patient’s view had an impact on the process of confession. He thought that this room, as barren as a moonscape, was an awful place to come to the act of explanation, but, then, he understood, the explanations that emerged in that particular place were terrible to begin with.
Riggins must have noticed the way he was assessing the room, and she said, “The city’s decorating budget is very lean this year. We had to give up all the Picassos on the walls and the Roche Bobois furniture.” She gestured at one of the steel seats. “Pull up a chair, doctor. Tell me what’s bothering you.” Detective Riggins tried to suppress a grin. “Isn’t that more or less what you would say?”
“More or less,” Ricky answered. “Although I’m at a loss as to what you find so amusing.”
Riggins nodded, losing some, but not all, of the edgy humor from her voice. “I apologize,” she said. “It’s just the role reversal, Doctor Starks. We don’t usually get prominent, uptown professional folks such as yourself in here. Transit police deal with pretty routine and ugly crimes. Muggings mostly. Gang stuff. Homeless folks get into fights that become homicides. What’s troubling you so much? And I promise to try to take it extremely seriously.”
“It amuses you to see me…”
“Under stress. Yes, I’ll admit it does.”
“You don’t care for psychiatry?”
“No. I had a brother who was clinically depressed and schizophrenic and in and out of every mental facility in the city and all the doctors just gabbed and gabbed his life away, never helping him in the slightest. This experience prejudiced me. Let’s leave it at that.”
Ricky paused, then said, “Well, my wife died several years ago of ovarian cancer, but I didn’t hate the oncologists who were unable to help her. I hated the disease.”
Riggins nodded again. “Touche,” she said.
Ricky was unsure where to begin, but he decided Zimmerman was as good a location as any. “I read the suicide note,” he said. “To be frank, it didn’t sound much like my patient. I wonder if you could tell me where you discovered it.”
Riggins shrugged slightly. “Sure. It was found on the pillow of his bed in his own apartment. Folded nicely and neatly and impossible to miss.”
“Who found it?”
“Actually, I did. After dealing with the witnesses and talking with you and finishing the paperwork, I went over to Zimmerman’s apartment the following day and saw it as soon as I went into his bedroom.”
“Zimmerman’s mother, she’s an invalid…”
“She was so distraught after getting the initial phone call, I had to send paramedics over to transfer her to a hospital for a couple of nights. I gather she’s going to be moved to an assisted-living center in Rockland County within the next day or so. The brother’s handling those arrangements. By phone from California. I gather he’s not terribly bent out of shape by all that took place and doesn’t seem to possess much of the milk of human kindness, especially where his mother is concerned.”
“Let me get this right,” Ricky said. “The mother is transported to the hospital and the following day you find the note…”
“Correct.”
“So you have no way of knowing when that note was placed in that room, do you? The apartment was empty for a significant amount of time?”
Detective Riggins smiled wanly. “Well, I know Zimmerman didn’t put it there sometime after three p.m. because that’s when he caught that train significantly before it slowed down, which is an altogether poor idea.”
“Someone else could have put it there.”
“Sure. If you’re the type that sees conspiracies in the woodwork. The grassy knoll approach to investigations. Doctor, he was unhappy and he jumped in front of a train. It happens.”
“That note,” Ricky started, “it was typed, right. And unsigned, except for the typed signature.”
“Yes. You’re correct about that.”
“Written on a computer, I presume.”
“Yes, again. Doctor, you’re beginning to sound like a detective.”
Ricky thought for a moment. “I seem to remember from somewhere that typewriters
