“Did you buy another residence?”
“Prove it.”
On Saturday afternoon when he was finished with Len Parker, Vince D’Ambrosio drove to 101 Christopher Street and rang the bell. Gus Boxer, his face set in surly lines, came to the door. He was wearing a long-sleeved undershirt. Tattered suspenders held up shapeless trousers. He acted unimpressed by the FBI badge. “I’m off duty. What do ye want?”
“I want to talk to you, Gus. Your place or headquarters? And drop the righteous indignation. I have your file on my desk, Mr. Hoffman.” Boxer’s eyes darted nervously. “Come on in. And keep your voice down.”
“I wasn’t aware I’d raised it.”
Boxer led the way to his ground-floor apartment. As Vince had expected from the way the man dressed, the apartment was a further extension of his personality. Shabby, stained upholstery. Remnants of a once-beige rug. A rickety table piled with porn magazines.
Vince riffled through them. “Quite a collection you have here.”
“Any law against it?”
Vince slapped down the magazines. “Listen, Hoffman, we’ve never gotten anything on you, but your name has an unhealthy way of coming up on the computer. Ten years ago you were the super of an apartment where a twenty-year-old girl was found dead in the basement.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“She’d filed a complaint with the management that she found you in her apartment going through her closet.”
“I was looking for a water leak. There was a waterpipe in the wall behind that closet.”
“That’s the same story you gave Erin Kelley two weeks ago, isn’t it?”
“Who said that?”
“She told someone that she was going to move as soon as possible because she’d found you in her bedroom.”
“I was-“
“Looking for a water leak. I know. Now let’s talk about Claire Barnes. How many times did you drop in on her unexpectedly when she lived here?” “Never.”
When he left Boxer, Vince went directly to his office, arriving there just in time to get a call from Hank. Was it okay if he didn’t get in until eight or so? There was a basketball game at school and some of the gang were going out for pizza afterward.
A great kid, Vince told himself again as he assured Hank that was fine. Worth all the years of trying to make a go of his marriage to Alice. Well at least she was happy now. The pampered wife of a guy whose wallet was as fat as his waistline. And he? I’d like to meet someone, Vince admitted to himself, then realized that Nona Roberts’s face was suddenly filling his mind.
His assistant Ernie told him there’d been a break. A detective from the Midtown North Precinct had picked up Petey Potters, the derelict who lived on the pier where Erin Kelley’s body was found. They were bringing Petey into the precinct for questioning. Vince turned and ran for the elevators.
Petey was having trouble with his vision. Seeing double. That happened sometimes after he’d had a coupla bottles of dago red. That meant that instead of three cops he was seeing three sets of twin cops. Nobody’s eyes were friendly. Petey thought about the dead girl. How cold she’d felt when he’d lifted the necklace.
What was the cop saying? “Petey, there are fingerprints on Erin Kelley’s throat.
We’re going to compare them with yours.”
Through a haze, Petey thought of one of his friends who’d happened to stab a guy. He was in prison for five years now and the guy he stabbed had hardly been scratched. Petey had never been in trouble with the cops. Never. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.
He told them that. He could tell they didn’t believe him. “Look,” he volunteered in a burst of confidence. “I found that girl. I didn’t have enough money to buy even a cuppa coffee.” Tears formed in his eyes at the memory of how thirsty he’d been. “I could tell the necklace was real gold. It had a long chain with lots of fancy coins attached. Figured if I didn’t take it, the first guy who found her would. Including some cops I’ve heard about.” He was sorry he’d added that.
“What’d you do with the necklace, Petey?”
“Sold it for twenty-five bucks to that big dude who works Seventh Avenue around Central Park South.”
“Buy-and-Sell Bert,” one of the cops remarked. “We’ll pick him up.”
“When did you find the body, Petey?” Vince asked. “When I woke up late morning.” Petey squinted. His eyes took on a crafty expression. Everything was coming into focus. “But real early, I mean when it was still pitch dark, I heard a car drive onto the pier, pass my place, and stop. I figured it might be a drug deal so I stayed inside. Honest.” “Even when you knew it was driving away?” one of the detectives asked. “You didn’t even peek?”
“Well, when I was sure it was going…”
“Did you get a look at it, Petey?”
They believed him. He knew it. If he could only tell them something else to make them feel like he was trying to cooperate. Petey forced the alcoholic haze to retreat for a split second from his brain. All the days of standing with a bottle of sudsy water and a squeegee at the Fifty-sixth Street exit of the West Side Highway rushed through his mind. He’d had plenty of chance to know what the backs of cars looked like.
Again he could see the taillights of the car disappearing off the pier. Something about the rear window. “It was a station wagon,” he said with a triumphant wheeze. “On Birdie’s grave, it was a station wagon.” As the haze rushed back, Petey had to force himself not to cackle. Birdie was probably still alive.
Darcy and Nona had planned to have dinner together on Saturday night. Other friends were calling, inviting her to join them, but Darcy was in no mood yet to see anyone.
They arranged to meet at Jimmy Neary’s Restaurant on East Fifty-seventh Street. Darcy arrived first. Jimmy had saved the left back corner table for them. “A damn shame,” he said as he greeted Darcy. “ Erin was one of the prettiest lasses ever to walk through this door, God rest her.” He patted Darcy’s hand. “You were a grand friend to her. And don’t think I don’t know it. Sometimes when she’d come in for a quick bite, I’d sit with her for the moment. I told her to watch her step answering those crazy ads.”
Darcy smiled. “I’m surprised she told you about them, Jimmy. She’d have known you wouldn’t approve.”
“Be sure I didn’t. She reached in her jacket pocket for a handkerchief last month and pulled out one that she’d torn from a magazine. It fell to the floor and when I picked it up, it caught my eye. I said to her, ‘Erin Kelley, I hope you’re not into that foolishness.’”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Darcy told him. “ Erin was a fabulous jewelry designer but not much of a record keeper. The FBI is trying to trace anyone Erin wrote to or met, but I’m sure the list isn’t complete.” Darcy decided against saying that she was also answering personal ads. “Do you remember what that ad said?”
Neary’s brow furrowed in thought. “No, but I got a fair glance at it, and I will. Something about singing or-ah, it’ll come. Look, here’s Nona and she has someone with her.”
Vince followed Nona to the table. “I’m only going to stop by for a minute,” he told Darcy. “I don’t want to interfere with your dinner, but I was trying to reach you, phoned Nona, and found out you were here.” “It’s fine, and I wish you’d stay.” Darcy noticed that Nona’s eyes had a brightness she had never seen in them before. “You got the message about Erin ’s telling one of her dates that she’d found the superintendent in her apartment again?”
“I saw Boxer today.” Vince raised an eyebrow. “Again?” “ Erin told me he pulled that last year, but she always dismissed him as being harmless. Apparently as of two weeks ago she changed her mind.” “We’re following up on him as well as other people. I’d like to hear about the guy from last night.”
“He was a nice guy…”
Liz came to take their orders. She gave Darcy a quick, sympathetic smile. She always took such good care of us, Darcy thought. She had told Erin that growing up in Ireland she’d been a redhead too.
