mentioned her mother. Later she told me that when she was six, her father developed multiple sclerosis and needed a wheelchair. Her mother took off when she was seven. “I didn’t bargain for this,” she’d said. “ Erin, you can come with me if you want.”
“I can’t leave Daddy all alone. He needs me.”
Over the years, Erin completely lost touch with her mother. “The last I heard she was living with some guy who owned a charter sailboat in the Caribbean.” She was at Mount Holyoke on a scholarship. “As Daddy says, being immobilized gives you plenty of time to help your kid with her homework. If you can’t pay for college, at least you can help her get a free ride.” Oh Erin, where are you? What’s happened to you?
Darcy realized that D’Ambrosio was waiting for her to answer his question. “Her father’s been in a nursing home in Massachusetts for the last few years,” she said. “He’s not aware of much anymore. I guess I’m the closest thing Erin has to a relative besides him.”
Vince saw the pain in Darcy’s eyes. “In my business I’ve observed that having one good friend can beat having a passel of relatives.” Darcy managed a smile. “ Erin ’s favorite quote is from Aristotle. ‘What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.’”
Nona got up, stood beside Darcy’s chair, and put her hands reassuringly on her shoulders. She looked squarely at D’Ambrosio. “What can we do to help find Erin?”
Along time ago, Petey Potters had been a construction worker. “Big jobs,” as he liked to boast to anyone whose ear he could get. “ World Trade Center. I usta be out on one of them girders. Tell ye, the wind wuz whippin’ so ye wondered if ye were gonna stay up there.” He’d laugh, a wheezy chortle. “Some view, lemme tell ye, some view.”
But at night the thought of going back up on the girder began to get to Petey. A coupla shots of rye, a coupla beer chasers, and the warmth would flow into the pit of his stomach and spread through his body.
“You’re just like your father,” his wife began to scream at him. “A no-good drunk.”
Petey never got insulted. He understood. He’d start to laugh when his wife ranted about Pop. Pop had been some card. He’d disappear for weeks at a time, dry out in a flophouse on the Bowery, and then come back home. “When I’m hungry, it’s no problem,” he’d confided to eight-year-old Petey. I go to the Salvation Army shelter, take a dive, get a meal, a bath, a bed. Never fails.” “What’s ‘take a dive’ mean?” Petey had asked.
“When you go to the shelter, they tell you about God and forgiveness and we’re all brothers and we want to be saved. Then they ask anyone who believes in the good book to come forward and acknowledge his Maker. So you get religion. You run up, fall on your knees, and shout something about being saved. That’s taking a dive.”
Nearly forty years later the memory still tickled the homeless derelict Petey Potters. He’d created his own shelter, a combination of wood and tin and old rags that he’d piled together into a tentlike structure against the sagging, shuttered terminal on the abandoned West Fifty-sixth Street pier. Petey’s needs were simple. Wine. Butts. A little food. Litter baskets were a constant supply of cans and bottles that could be redeemed for the deposits. When he was ambitious, Petey took a squeegee and a bottle of water and stood at the Fifty-sixth Street exit of the West Side Highway. No drivers wanted their car windows smeared by his efforts, but most people were afraid to wave him away. Only last week he’d heard an old bat explode to the driver of a Mercedes, “Jane, why do you allow yourself to be held up like this?” Petey had loved the answer. “Because, Mother, I don’t want to have the side of this car scratched if I refuse.”
Petey didn’t scratch anything when he was rejected. He just went on to the next car, armed with his squirt bottle, a coaxing smile on his face. Yesterday had been one of the good days. Just enough snow so that the highway became messy and windshields got sprayed with dirty slush from the tires of cars ahead of them. Few people had refused Petey’s ministrations at the exit ramp. He’d made eighteen bucks, enough for a hero sandwich, butts, and three bottles of dago red.
Last night he’d settled inside his tent, wrapped in the old army blanket the Armenian church on Second Avenue had given him, a ski cap keeping his head warm, a tattered greatcoat, its moth-eaten fur collar cozy around his neck. He’d finished the hero with the first bottle of wine, then settled down to puffing and sipping, content and warm in an inebriated haze. Pop taking a dive. Mom coming back to the apartment on Tremont Avenue, worn out from scrubbing other people’s houses. Birdie, his wife. Harpie, not Birdie. That’s what they shoulda called her.
Petey shook with mirth at the play on words. Wonder where she was now. How about the kid? Nice kid.
Petey wasn’t sure when he heard the car pull up. He tried to force himself to wakefulness, instinctively wanting to protect his territory. It better not be cops trying to knock over his place. Nah. Cops didn’t bother with this kind of shack in the middle of the night.
Maybe it was a druggie. Petey gripped the neck of an empty wine bottle. Better not try to come in here. But nobody came. After a few minutes he heard the car start up again; he peered out cautiously. Taillights were disappearing onto the deserted West Side High-way. Maybe somebody had to take a leak, Petey decided as he reached for the last bottle.
It was late afternoon when Petey opened his eyes again. His head had that empty, throbbing feeling. His gut burned. His mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage. He pulled himself up. The three empty bottles offered no consolation. He found twenty cents in the pockets of the greatcoat. I’m hungry, he whined silently. Poking his head from behind the piece of tin sheeting that served as door for his shelter, he decided that it must be late afternoon. There were long shadows on the dock. His eyes moved to focus on something that was clearly not a shadow. Petey squinted, muttered a profanity under his breath, and dragged himself to his feet.
His legs were stiff and his gait clumsy as he made his unsteady way to whatever was lying on the pier.
It was a slim woman. Young. Red hair curling around her face. Petey was sure she was dead. A necklace was twisted into her throat. She was wearing a blouse and slacks. Her shoes didn’t match.
The necklace sparkled in the fading light. Gold. Real gold. Petey licked his lips nervously. Bracing himself for the shock of touching the dead girl he reached around the back of her neck for the clasp of the elaborate necklace. His fingers fumbled. Thick and unsteady, they could not get the clasp to release. Christ, she felt cold.
He didn’t want to break anything. Was the necklace long enough to pull over her head? Trying to ignore the bruised, blue-veined throat, he tugged at the heavy chain.
Grimy fingerprints streaked Erin ’s face as Petey freed the necklace and slipped it in his pocket. The earrings. They were good, too. From a distance, Petey heard the whine of a police siren. Like a startled rabbit he jumped up, forgetting the earrings. This was no place for him. He’d have to take his stuff, get himself a new shelter. When the body was found, just his being around here would be enough for the cops.
An awareness of his potential danger sobered Petey. On stumbling feet he rushed back to the shelter. Everything he owned could be tied in the army blanket. His pillow. A couple pairs of socks, some underwear. A flannel shirt. A dish and spoon and cup. Matches. Butts. Old newspapers for cold nights. Fifteen minutes later, Petey had vanished into the world of the homeless. Panhandling on Seventh Avenue netted four dollars and thirty- two cents. He used it to buy wine and a pretzel. There was a young fellow on Fifty-seventh Street who sold hot jewelry. He gave Petey twenty-five dollars for the necklace. “This is good, man. Try to get more like this.”
At ten o’clock Petey was asleep on a subway grating that radiated warm, dank air. At eleven, he was being shaken awake. A not-unkind voice said, “Come on, pal. It’s going to be real cold tonight. We’re going to take you to a place where you can have a decent bed and a good meal.”
At quarter of six on Friday evening, Wanda Libbey, snugly secure in her new BMW, was inching her way along the West Side Highway. Complacent in the excellent shopping she’d done on Fifth Avenue, Wanda was still annoyed at herself that she’d gotten such a late start back to Tarrytown. The Friday night rush hour was the worst of the week, a time when many quit New York for their country homes. She’d never want to live in New York again. Too dirty. Too dangerous. Wanda glanced at the Valentino purse on the passenger seat. When she’d parked in the Kinney lot this morning, she’d tucked it firmly under her arm and kept it there all day. She wasn’t fool enough to have it dangling from her arm where someone might grab it.
Another damn traffic light. Oh well, in a few blocks she’d be on the ramp and past this miserable section of so-called highway.
A tap on the window made Wanda look swiftly to the right. A bearded face grinned in at her. A rag began to
