Another Part of the City

4

Wednesday morning, December 17, dawned cold and gray and windy. The old coal-burning furnace in the basement of the Fifth struggled valiantly against the Arctic temperatures, but the police station was cold, and the squadroom — because it was on the second floor and the furnace’s fan wasn’t powerful enough to propel heat very far — was only slightly warmer than the streets outside. Gianelli, sitting at his desk typing, was still wearing his overcoat. Reardon was wearing a sweater under his suit jacket. He had put on long johns before leaving for work this morning. Lieutenant Farmer, hunched now over the report Hoffman had typed on the night of the murder, was in his shirtsleeves. Gianelli wondered if the lieutenant was some kind of polar bear or something.

“Where does it say anything in Chick’s report about them asking the old man what his name was?” Farmer asked.

“It doesn’t,” Hoffman said. He was standing at the water cooler, debating whether he wanted a drink of water or not. It seemed too cold in here to drink water. He was still wearing the mackinaw he’d worn to work this morning.

“I only found out last night,” Reardon said.

“Maybe that’s why they shot him,” Gianelli said, looking up from his typewriter. “Maybe they didn’t like the name Ralph.” Across the small room, Ruiz was talking to an old lady who had come to the precinct to report a disturbance the night before. Like all of the detectives except Farmer, he was dressed for the squadroom tundra, wearing a short car coat with a fake fur collar.

“Why shoot a man who’s doing everything you’re telling him to do?” Reardon said. “He was moving over to the bar. just the way they told him.”

“So what?” Farmer said.

“You say this happened at midnight?” Ruiz asked the old lady.

“Yes. twelve o’clock sharp,” she said. She was wearing a woolen hat pulled down over her ears. She was wearing a black cloth coat. She was wearing leg warmers over her pantyhose, but she didn’t look like a Broadway dancer.

“If you come in to rob a place, why do you shoot a man without robbing anything?” Reardon asked.

“He’s got a point, Loot,” Gianelli said.

“Knocked on the door and said he was your husband, huh?” Ruiz said.

“That’s right,” the old lady said.

“Stop looking for mysteries, Reardon,” Farmer said.

“I’m saying...”

“There are no mysteries in police work. There are only crimes and the people who commit those crimes.”

“Maybe it was your husband,” Ruiz said. “Was your husband home at the time?”

“My husband’s been dead for twenty years,” the lady said.

“Oh,” Ruiz said. “Okay, let’s take down some information, okay?”

“You’ve got two hungry punks here who tried to rip off a restaurant,” Farmer said. “And panicked. And killed the owner. That’s what you’ve got here.”

“If they were so hungry...” Reardon said.

“Run it by the book,” Farmer said. “Ask your questions, check your M O. file, find out which punks just got paroled after doing time for armed robbery. You got a man commits an armed robbery, he’s going to do it again and again ’cause it’s the only line of work he knows.”

The phone on Hoffman’s desk rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Fifth Squad,” he said. “Detective Hoffman.”

“I wouldn’t have shot a man before I cleaned out the register,” Reardon said. “Not if I went in there to steal.”

“Me, neither,” Gianelli said.

“Uh-huh.” Hoffman said into the phone. “Just a second, okay?”

“Who says thieves have to make sense?” Farmer asked, and tossed the D.D. report onto Reardon’s desk. “Get a copy of this to Homicide,” he said. “And Reardon...”

“Bry? For you,” Hoffman said.

“Find those punks,” Farmer said, and limped into his office.

Reardon picked up the extension phone.

“Hello?” he said. “Oh, Martin, good, glad you got back to me.”

“What apartment was this?” Ruiz asked the old lady.

“Apartment fourteen,” she said.

“And you say this was around midnight.”

“Midnight exactly,” the lady said.

“Well, what I want to know is does she have the right to send my kid to Jersey,” Reardon said into the phone. He listened. “Her parents there,” he said, and listened again. “Sixty-five, something like that. Her father used to work for the phone company, he’s retired now.” He listened again.

“Has this happened before?” Ruiz asked.

“All the time,” the lady said.

“What?” Ruiz said.

“What?” Reardon said. “Well, how the hell do I know if we can show they’re unfit?”

“What do you mean by all the time?” Ruiz asked.

“Every night,” the lady said.

“Every night?”

“At midnight. I think he’s in love with me.”

“Uh-huh,” Reardon said into the phone. “Uh-huh. All right, how about this afternoon sometime? No, I can’t right now, Martin. How about lunch? Well, when are you free? Okay, two o’clock, I’ll see you then, fine,” he said, and hung up.

“Do you know who this man is?” Ruiz said.

“Yes. He’s John Travolta,” the lady said.

Ruiz looked at her.

“He’s in love with me,” she said.

“Who was that?” Hoffman asked Reardon.

“My lawyer,” Reardon said. “The fucking asshole.” He glanced quickly to where the old lady was now telling Ruiz about Travolta jumping off the screen one time to kiss her.

“What’s the problem now?” Hoffman asked.

“I’m trying to see my daughter, that’s the problem.”

“Calm down,” Hoffman said. “I’m not the one who sent her to Jersey.”

“Yeah,” Reardon said, but he was still steaming.

Hoffman picked up the report from where Farmer had dropped it on the desk. “There’s something missing from this,” he said.

“There’s a lot missing from it,” Reardon said.

“Calm down, willya?”

“There’s a goddamn family been busted up for no reason at all,” Reardon said.

“Whose family are you talking about, Bry?” Hoffman asked. “The D’Annunzios... or yours?”

Reardon stared at him.

Ruiz said, “I’ll call Mr. Travolta personally and tell him to stop bothering you.”

“No, don’t tell him to stop bothering me,” the lady said. “Just tell him to stop doing it so late at night.”

“I’m sorry,” Reardon said.

“Just don’t let it get to you, okay?” Hoffman said.

“What about the report?”

“Remember the people we were questioning on the street?”

“Yeah?”

“Where was Sadie?”

“Who?”

“Sadie. The shopping bag lady. She’s usually in that doorway across from the restaurant, isn’t she? That’s where she lives. Bry. That doorway is her home.”

“Maybe she went south for the holidays,” Reardon said. “Found herself a warmer doorway on Chambers Street.”

“I think we ought to look for her,” Hoffman said.

“Tell him to bother me around nine, nine-thirty,” the old lady said as she left the squadroom.

New York City’s Bowery was a desperate place at any time of the year, but today, with soot-stained snow piled against the gutters and a harsh wind blowing, it seemed more forbidding than usual. The drunks appeared paralyzed. Normally, they would be out in the middle of the street, offering to wipe the windshields of cars stopped for traffic lights, hoping to pick up a quarter here, a nickel there. Or they would be on the sidewalks, making their pitch to whatever pedestrian happened to pass, people here to shop the various wholesale supply houses that lined either side of the avenue. Below Delancey, you had your stores selling lighting fixtures and a handful of stores selling glassware and cutlery. Above Delancey, the restaurant supply stores took over in earnest — kitchen equipment, cash registers, china, plumbing, pizza ovens — and in the midst of all this, an advance scout probing enemy terrain, was a lone Chinese chicken market. The drunks, the homeless of this city, sat huddled in doorways, staring glassy-eyed into the cold, all of them candidates for freezing to death. The thermometer outside one of the banks on Canal Street had read twelve degrees when Reardon and Hoffman drove past it. It felt colder than that now that they were out of the car.

“It’s the wind-chill factor,” Hoffman said.

They played the canvass by the book, the way Farmer would have liked it.

“Lady in her sixties. Her name’s Sadie. The shopping bag lady. Sadie. You seen her around?”

“What’s her last name?” a drunk asked. He was sitting in a doorway near the Bowery Mission. He had tied newspapers around his trouser legs. He had wet his pants, and the urine had soaked through the newspapers.

“We don’t know her last name. She’s Sadie. She’s around all the time. Everybody knows Sadie.”

“Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” the drunk said.

They continued along the Bowery.

“Cold,” Reardon said.

Hoffman nodded. His eyes were tearing.

Another doorway. This one near Grand Street.

Another drunk.

“Sally, did you say?”

“Forget it.”

And yet another.

And another.

The wind howling through the Bowery with a vengeance.

Nearing the northernmost boundary of the precinct now, the Salvation Army-Booth House between Rivington and Stanton. A man there told them he’d seen Sadie on Monday.

“Monday when?” Hoffman asked.

“The afternoon sometime.”

“She didn’t come in Monday night, did she? After seven o’clock?”

“Not while I was here,” the man said. “Why? What’d she do?”

Doubling back on the other side of the avenue now, a hotel near the corner of Broome Street, the room clerk telling them she’d taken a room there on Monday night.

“Is she still here?” Reardon asked.

“No, she only had cash enough for the one night.”

“When did she leave?” Hoffman asked.

“Early yesterday morning.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“Yeah, Paris, France,” the clerk said drily. “There’s lots of garbage cans in Paris, France.”

It was warmer in the car, even though the heater wasn’t functioning properly. They cruised the streets, looking. Plenty of shopping bag ladies, but none of them Sadie. Plenty of men lying in doorways. Plenty of people passing by them hurriedly. The wind lashed the snow piled against the curbs, sent eddies into the air so that it seemed it was snowing again.

“Lost souls,” Hoffman said. “Every fucking one of ’em. Some of these guys, they’re probably doctors, lawyers, maybe, lost themselves in a fuckin’ bottle.”

“You want to break for lunch?” Reardon asked.

“Let’s hit a few more places,” Hoffman said.

“You bucking for Commissioner?”

“Fat chance. In this city, unless you’re Irish or black, you haven’t got a prayer above Captain.”

“You mean I might make Commissioner?” Reardon said, grinning.

“Sure, go talk to your rabbi.”

The men fell silent. The heater rattled and clanged.

“Fuckin’ jungle out there.” Hoffman said.

They continued riding in silence.

“You talk about promotions,” Hoffman said, “that robbery bust ain’t helping me, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“That missing cash.”

“Come on,” Reardon said.

“They think I bagged that fuckin’ loot,” Hoffman said.

“Nobody thinks that.”

“They don’t, huh? I’m fifty years old, I broke that case nine years ago. Nine fuckin’ years, Bry. I was Detective/First at the time, and I’m still Detective/First. Somebody up there’s got his eye on me, Bry. There’s a folder up there at Headquarters, it’s marked Chick Hoffman, and under my name it says ‘Hold.’ I’m in a holding pattern, Bry. I could find Judge Crater tomorrow, and I still won’t get a promotion. You know what it feels like to be in a job you know you do pretty damn good, and there ain’t no future in—”

“Up ahead,” Reardon said.

“What?”

“There she is.”

Sadie was standing in front of a building near Hester Street, picking through the garbage can out front. They pulled the car to the curb. Hoffman was already on the sidewalk as Reardon turned off the ignition. Sadie looked up as Hoffman approached, recognized him right off as a cop. and seemed about to run.

“Hello, Sadie,” Hoffman said. “How you doing?”

Sadie held her ground, her eyes shifting to Reardon as he came up.

“Got a few minutes?” Hoffman said. “We’d like to talk to you.”

“I’m busy just now,” Sadie said.

“Come on, we’ll buy you a drink,” Reardon said.

“Why not?” Sadie said at once.

At a little before one that afternoon, the Cathay Bar on Bayard Street was virtually empty. Three Chinese men sat at the bar on stools, but that was it. There were two empty shot glasses in front of Sadie. She had downed each of the shots in something like two seconds flat, and was working on the third one now. savoring it this time, lingering over it.

“Where were you Monday night, Sadie?” Reardon asked. “How come you weren’t in your doorway?”

“I was out with some friends,” Sadie said.

“Doing what?” Hoffman asked.

“We went to a movie.”

“What movie?”

“I forget the name. It was cowboys.”

“Cowboys, huh?”

“Yeah, cowboys,” she said, and smiled, pleased with her answer. Her blue eyes were shrewd in her face. She peered out at them from behind a scarf wrapped around her head and under her chin. She sipped at her whiskey again, gauged what was left in the shot glass, wondering how long she could keep them here buying drinks for her.

“How come you haven’t been back to Mulberry Street?” Reardon asked.

“I been there,” she said.

“Not in your usual doorway.”

“Yeah, but I been there.”

“You don’t like that doorway anymore?” Hoffman asked.

“I like it fine,” Sadie said, and shrugged. “But there’s plenty other doorways this city.” She looked at the shot glass hesitantly and then, apparently deciding she could take a chance on their generosity, swallowed the rest of the whiskey in a single gulp. She looked into the empty glass mournfully. She looked up at the detectives. Her eyes were startlingly blue. Reardon suddenly realized that she must have once been a very beautiful woman. He signalled to the bartender, pointed to Sadie’s glass. The bartender was not accustomed to giving table service, but he knew the Law when he saw it. He hurried over with a bottle.

“Leave the bottle,” Reardon said.

“So how come?” Hoffman said.

“How come what?” Sadie said, pouring for herself.

“How come you ain’t been back to that doorway?”

“I got tired of that doorway,” she said, drinking. “I like to try different doorways every now and then.”

“You haven’t tried a different doorway for the past three years,” Reardon said.

“Well, time for a change, right?” Sadie said, again pleased with her answer, her blue eyes twinkling.

“Where you living now, Sadie?”

“Well, I found a nice doorway on Kenmare the night after the...”

She stopped dead.

“The night after the what?” Reardon said.

“Snowstorm,” she said at once.

“You talking about last night?” Hoffman said.

“Musta been.”

“Or Monday night?”

“No, no. Monday night, I slept at the Chelsea.”

“How come no doorway?”

“Well, I had a little money, so I figured...”

“Were you afraid to sleep in a doorway on Monday night?”

“Why would I be afraid?”

“You tell us,” Reardon said.

“No, I wasn’t afraid.”

“What were you afraid of, Sadie?”

“Did something scare you, Sadie?”

“Did you see the shooting, Sadie?”

“I didn’t see no shooting Monday night,” Sadie said.

“Who said the shooting was on Monday night?”

“You just asked me...”

“Where were you on Monday night, Sadie?”

“I told you,” she said. “At the movies.”

“Which movie?”

“The cowboys.”

“Not the picture, the theater,” Hoffman said. “What theater was it?”

“The one on Bowery and Hester.”

“The Music Palace?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a Chinese theater,” Hoffman said.

“It only shows Chinese pictures,” Reardon said.

“Yeah, it was Chinese cowboys,” Sadie said.

“You were in your usual doorway on Monday night, weren’t you?” Reardon said.

“You saw the shooting, didn’t you?” Hoffman said.

“What’d you see, Sadie?”

“Were you in your doorway as usual?”

“Nossir,” she said, and poured herself another drink.

“You’ve got nothing to be afraid of,” Reardon said. “If you saw something, you can tell us.”

“Sure, and get in trouble,” Sadie said.

“A man’s been killed,” Hoffman said. “We want to lock up whoever did it.”

“Sure, and they’ll be out in six months.”

“They?” Reardon said.

“How do you know there was more than one of them. Sadie?”

“I don’t know how many there was. I didn’t see nothing.”

“Sadie, if we catch these men, we’ll send them away for a long, long lime. You don’t have to worry, Sadie. If you saw something...”

“I don’t want no trouble,” Sadie said. “I got a good life, I don’t want no trouble.”

“Did you see them?” Hoffman asked.

Sadie looked down into her shot glass.

“Sadie?” Reardon said. “Please help us.”

She kept staring into her glass.

“I got a good life,” she said.

The detectives said nothing.

“I don’t want trouble,” she said.

They waited.

At last she looked up. There were tears in her eyes.

“I saw them,” she said.

“Where were you?” Hoffman asked.

“In my doorway. They pulled up in a car.”

“How many of them?”

“Three. One stayed in the car.”

“Were they wearing masks?”

“Not when they pulled up.”

“What’d they look like?”

“They were Puerto Ricans.”

“All three of them?”

“All three.”

“What kind of car were they driving?”

“A brown Mercedes-Benz.”

Hoffman looked at Reardon.

“Armed robbers in a Mercedes-Benz?” he said. “You sure it wasn’t a Chevy?”

“I know my cars,” Sadie said. “It was a Mercedes-Benz.”

“Did you happen to notice the license plate?”

“No. I mind my own business.”

“Was it a New York plate?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Three Puerto Ricans in a Mercedes-Benz,” Reardon said.

“Grand Larceny, Auto,” Hoffman said bleakly.

“Okay, Sadie, thanks,” Reardon said, and both men got up.

“Could you leave the bottle, please?” Sadie said in a very small voice.

It was close to one-thirty m the afternoon when Sarge let himself into the brownstone on East Seventy-first Street. He took his key from the latch, put it back into his trouser pocket, and then hung his overcoat on the brass rack just inside the ground-level entrance door.

“Jessie?” he called.

There was no answer.

He draped his muffler over the coat, called “Jessie?” again, and walked into the living room. There was the aroma of dead ashes in the room. And stale cigarette smoke. Unwashed brandy snifters were on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. A woman’s high-heeled shoe rested on its side on the hearth.

Sarge walked to the staircase leading to the upper stories.

“Jessie?” he said again, and started up the carpeted steps. A stained-glass window on the first-floor landing, sunlight streaming through it. To the right, the dining room and kitchen. He went up to the second floor, where the bedrooms were. An oak door at the end of the hallway, a brass doorknob. He twisted the doorknob, opened the door a crack.

“Jessie?” he whispered.

She was asleep in the canopied four-poster bed on the other side of the room, quilt pulled to her chin, long black hair spread on the pillow. He stepped into the room, stood watching her silently for a moment, the exquisite nose and high cheekbones, the fair complexion, exactly the picture of their mother when she was young. “Jessie?” he said again.

She stirred.

Sleepily, she said, “What time is it?”

“Half past one,” Sarge said.

“Crack of dawn,” Jessica said, and rolled over, her eyes still closed.

He stood watching her.

“Late party last night,” she mumbled into the pillow.

“You ought to get up, though,” he said. “Day’s half gone already.”

“What time did you say?” Her eyes still closed.

“One-thirty.”

“Mmm,” she said. One eye opened. “I feel awful,” she said, and eased herself to a sitting position. “Oh, boy, do I feel awful.”

“I’ll make you some coffee,” Sarge said.

“I don’t want any coffee,” Jessica said.

She threw back the quilt, swung her long legs over the side of the bed, and sat there a moment, her hands folded in her lap, head bent, long black hair hiding half her face. She was wearing a pale blue babydoll nightgown. She curled her toes, stared at her feet.

“Has Olivia gone back to Phoenix?” she asked.

“Early this morning.”

“Good riddance.” she said, and got off the bed. She was wearing no panties under the nightgown. There was a flash of dark pubic hair as she came off the bed. stretched, yawned, and then padded silently to the bathroom. Sarge heard her spitting into the sink. He heard the shower starting.

“What’s going on. Sarge?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What?”

“I said...”

“I can’t hear you. Come in here, will you?”

He went to the bathroom door, stood in the doorframe. She was reaching into the shower stall, testing the stream of water with her right hand.

“Why can’t I go to Switzerland?”

“Because you’re needed here,” Sarge said.

“Since when am I needed anywhere? It’s my signature that’s needed, isn’t it?”

“Well... yes. Or perhaps not. It depends. Your signature won’t be needed unless it’s asked for. But in that event, the Captain wants you here in New York.”

“Are we buying something?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“But is that why you sold all your paintings?”

She pulled the nightgown over her head, stood there naked a moment, her back to him. and then stepped into the shower.

“Is it?” she asked.

“Let’s say we needed some ready cash,” Sarge said.

He could see her soaping herself behind the frosted glass door of the shower stall. He remembered once — when they were both children — the beating his father had given him because he’d been in the bathroom while Jessica was bathing. Six years old. she was then. Playing with a rubber toy in the bathtub, suds all around her. Sarge sitting on the toilet bowl, the lid down, watching her as she bathed. Eight years old at the time.

“So you were the one who had to make the sacrifice, huh?” Jessica said.

“It wasn’t such a sacrifice.”

Wanted to kill his father that night. Lay in bed, aching everywhere, planning how he would kill his father.

“Don’t lie to me,” Jessica said. “I know what those paintings meant to you.”

Soaping herself. Distorted image behind the frosted glass. Hands gliding over her body.

“Was it the Captain’s idea to sell them?”

Water splashing. Her voice sounding hollow in the stall.

“Yes.”

“Really needs money that badly, huh?”

“No, he simply felt they were the most expendable asset.” He shrugged. “This isn’t a big deal, Jessie.”

“Tell me what it is,” Jessica said.

“I’d rather not,” he said.

“Why?”

“Knowing can be dangerous.”

She turned off the water. He heard her sighing deeply. Behind the glass, she ran her hands over her body again, sweeping droplets from it. She opened the stall door then, and stepped onto the tiled floor, naked, reaching for a towel. Tardily, she said, “Turn your back.” And then, the towel wrapped around her already, she said, “Never mind.”

She started out of the bathroom, paused where he was standing in the doorframe, reached up to touch his cheek gently, smiled, and then went into the bedroom. He turned to watch her.

“What’s Olivia giving up?” she asked.

“Well...”

“Nothing, right?”

She went to her dresser, opened the top drawer, took from it a pair of rose-colored, lace-edged panties and a matching garter belt. She rummaged in the drawer, searching for a pair of similarly hued nylons.

“The Captain wouldn’t dream of asking her to sell her precious horses in Kentucky, would he?”

“Well, the horses aren’t worth all that much,” Sarge said.

“Still, he didn’t ask her, did he?”

“No, he didn’t.”

Jessica went to the bed, dried herself, tossed the towel aside, and fastened the garter belt around her waist. She did not ask him to turn his back, and he did not. He remembered the first time he’d seen her breasts. Thirteen years old, she was, the Captain would have killed him. Standing only in panties at the bathroom sink, breasts cupped in her hands, looking at herself in the mirror. Are they too small? she’d asked. He’d assured her they weren’t too small.

“Of course not,” she said, sitting on the bed again and extending one leg, pulling a nylon onto it, smoothing it up over her calves. “You have to sell your paintings, I have to give up my trip to Switzerland, but Olivia just goes her merry way.”

He said nothing. He watched as she put on the other stocking, clasped it to the garter belt, and stepped into her panties. Again, the flash of dark pubic hair. He remembered once — this was later, when they were teenagers — watching her dress for the beach. “My summer trim,” she’d said, smiling, and then stepped into the bikini.

She went back to the dresser, took a half-slip from it, and put it on. No bra. She had not worn a bra for as long as he could remember. She walked to her dressing table, sat, crossed her long legs, picked up a hairbrush and began brushing out her hair.

“I’ve still got all my pre-Columbian stuff,” Sarge said, shrugging.

“How kind of him to let you keep it,” Jessica said. She was looking at herself in the mirror, stroking her hair with the brush, preening for the mirror, sitting straight upright, firm breasts moving only slightly to the rhythm of the brush strokes. She smiled at him. “Tell me what the big deal is,” she said.

“I can’t,” he said. “Not till after Christmas.”

“What’s so special about before Christmas?”

“Big secret,” Sarge said, smiling.

“Surely you can trust your own sister with a secret,” she said. Right hand still moving. Rhythmic brush strokes. Breasts jiggling.

“Not this one,” he said.

“Tell me, Sarge.” she said, her eyes meeting his in the mirror.

“Can’t.”

“You used to tell me everything,” she said, a pouting look on her face. “Tell me, Sarge.”

He shook his head. “No use even asking, Jess.”

“Meanie,” she said, and smiled again. Putting down the brush, she turned suddenly on the stool, her long legs together, toes pointed, hands on her thighs. “When are you going back to Phoenix?” she asked.

“I’ve got to stay in New York.” he said. “Same as you.”

“For what?”

“The money from Sotheby’s, for one.”

“And your signature?”

“Well...”

“If needed?”

She rose, walked past him to the closet, selected a simple sheath, pulled it over her head, smoothed it over her hips. She knelt to pick up a pair of matching high-heeled shoes. She sat on the edge of the bed, crossed her legs, put on first one shoe, then the other.

“Want to go dancing with me some night this week?” she asked.

“I’m not much good at that disco stuff you do,” he said.

She rose again, walked to where he was standing.

“I’ll teach you,” she said, and kissed him dangerously close to his mouth.

This was the old city.

This was where the Dutch had been. Narrow streets lined with tall buildings, but Reardon could still visualize horse-drawn carts rumbling over these cobblestones. Historic New York. Now the bastion of high finance and the law.

The law offices of Martin Bennett (nee Berman) were in a building on Beaver Street, not far from the Fraunces Tavern. Bennett owned the building, and most of his time was spent supervising leases and collecting rents. Reardon had once done a favor for him, tracking down an errant client by using the Identification Section’s base file at Headquarters, and Bennett was now handling the divorce action gratis. Reardon was willing to take a freebie wherever and however it was offered — unless it was linked to criminal activity. But sometimes he wondered if he wouldn’t be better off with an attorney more skilled in matters matrimonial.

Bennett was a man in his late fifties, perpetually smiling, eternally puffing on one or another huge-bowled pipe with a curving stem. He rather resembled a sharp-nosed Sherlock Holmes, minus the deerstalker hat and the ability to reach conclusions on the basis of sparse information. His brows were thick and shaggy; Reardon suspected he never clipped them, further suspected he thought of them as a sort of trademark, like Michael Jackson’s white glove. His desk was always piled high with papers. Infallibly, he could reach to the bottom of any stack, or the middle, or a spot a third of the way down, and pull from the untidy sheaf the exact document he wanted. A conjuror’s trick. No Sherlock Holmes, but something of a magician in his own right. Sitting behind his barrier of yellowing papers, a cloud of thick smoke floating above his head, he puffed on his pipe and serenely reported on the latest development in the case of Reardon v. Reardon. The clock on the wall behind his desk read 2:10 P.M.

“Why didn’t you tell me this on the phone this morning?” Reardon asked.

“Because I didn’t have it this morning,” Bennett said. “Her lawyer called ten minutes ago.”

“And said they’ve got a court order?”

“Right. Forbidding you to see either Kathy or your daughter.” Bennett puffed on his pipe. “Have you been making a pest of yourself, Bry?”

“A pest?” Reardon said. “She ships my daughter to Jersey, her parents live way the hell over near the Pennsylvania border...”

“The order says you’ve been harassing her,” Bennett said.

“I haven’t. Who signed it?”

“A judge named Santangelo. We’ll have it here in half an hour. I sent a messenger for it.” Bennett paused. He puffed on his pipe again. He looked quizzically at the bowl, and then struck a wooden match and held it to the dottle. Great clouds of smoke surrounded his head, drifted up toward the old tin ceiling in the book-lined room. No, he wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, after all. He was somebody out of Great Expectations. “They found out about your rape case,” he said, puffing, the match still held to the bowl of the pipe, his eyes looking up over the bowl.

“What do you mean?” Reardon said. “Who found out? Found out what?”

“Kathy, her lawyer, who knows? About your roughing up that guy after...”

“What? Who the hell...?”

“It’s a matter of public record,” Bennett said.

“Public record? I testified I never laid a hand on that punk!”

Bennett shrugged and tossed the charred matchstick into an oversized ash tray brimming with pipe cleaners and other matchsticks and the gummy residue of dottles past. “Santangelo apparently read the record and believed what he wanted to believe,” he said. “As far as he’s concerned. you’re a violent man who’s been harassing a woman who wants a divorce. What can I tell you, Bry? He signed the order.”

“So what does that mean?” Reardon asked tightly.

“It means you stay away from them. Period.”

“No way.”

“Bry...”

“No fucking way!”

Reardon did not get to the funeral home on Canal Street until almost three o’clock. The shortest day of the year was still four days away, but because of the overcast it seemed as if darkness had already come. The feeling of gloom persisted inside the chapel, lined with sconces of artificial light pretending to be eternal flames or some damn thing, banks of flowers imitating spring, but neither flames nor flowers able to disguise the fact that this was a chamber of death.

At an Irish wake, you told the bereaved, “I’m sorry for your trouble.”

He was here to tell the D’Annunzio family that he was sorry for their trouble.

The chapel was crowded with family and friends. Ralph D’Annunzio’s body lay in an open coffin at the far end of the room. He had been shot four times, but in the back, and the undertaker’s cosmetic art had not been needed to cover any face wounds. He looked very dead, nonetheless. Whenever anyone at a wake said to Reardon, “He looks so natural,” or “He looks like he’s sleeping,” Reardon silently thought, Bullshit. They looked dead is what they looked. He hesitated in the doorway, searching for Mrs. D’Annunzio or her son. He spotted Mark D’Annunzio talking quietly with a small group of people, and as he started toward him, Mark saw him and came to him instead, his hand extended.

“Mr. Reardon,” he said, sounding surprised. “Thanks for coming by.”

“Are you all right?” Reardon asked, taking his hand.

“Well, you know,” Mark said.

“I brought these with me,” Reardon said, and handed Mark a manila Evidence envelope. “Your father’s personal effects. I thought you might like to have them.”

“Thank you,” Mark said, and took the envelope.

“Mr. Reardon?”

He turned. Marie D’Annunzio, the dead man’s wife, now the dead man’s widow, dressed in black, no makeup on her face, eyes vaguely out of focus, tear stains on her cheeks, hand extended. Reardon took her hand in both his own.

“Signora,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

I’m sorry for your trouble, he thought.

“Thank you,” she said.

Awkwardly, he held her hand between his own.

“He brought Papa’s things,” Mark said.

“Thank you,” she said again. Her eyes met Reardon’s. “Have you learned anything yet?” she asked.

“Not very much,” Reardon said. He released her hand. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. “You wouldn’t know anyone who drives a brown Mercedes sedan, would you?” he asked.

“Cosa?”

“That’s a car, Mom,” Mark said, and then shook his head. “I can’t think of anybody,” he said.

“Would your father have had any business dealings with Puerto Ricans?”

“Mom?” Mark said.

“No,” she said.

“Did any Puerto Ricans come to the restaurant this past week?”

“I don’t remember any.”

“To talk to your father, to eat, whatever.”

“That wasn’t a Spanish accent, Mr. Reardon,” Mark said. “I can tell you that.”

“We have a witness who saw three Puerto Ricans,” Reardon said.

“I don’t see how that can be,” Mark said. “Mom? Did they sound Spanish to you?”

“No. not Spanish.” Mrs. D’Annunzio said.

“Can you remember what they did sound like? It wasn’t Chinese, was it?”

“No. not Chinese,” Mark said.

“No,” Mrs. D’Annunzio said.

“Well,” Reardon said, and sighed. “Mrs. D’Annunzio, when I was going through your husband’s wallet... it’s right there in the stuff I brought back... I found a credit-card receipt for an airline ticket. It was dated the fourteenth of December, that would’ve been the day before the holdup. A Sunday. Would your husband have had any reason to fly anywhere on that day?”

“Yes,” Mrs. D’Annunzio said, nodding. “His brother lives in Washington.”

“Is that where your husband went?”

“Yes. We’re closed on Sundays. He figured that would be a good time to go”

“To see his brother?”

“Yes.”

“Would you know why?”

“No.”

“What’s his brother’s name, can you tell me?”

“John D’Annunzio.”

“He’s the maitre d’ at a fancy restaurant there,” Mark said. “I have the name and address at the house, if you want them.”

“Yes, please,” Reardon said, “and his home address and phone number, too, if you’ve got those. I’ll stop by later.” He paused. “If there’s anything I can do for you, anything you need...”

“Thank you,” Mrs. D’Annunzio said, and took his hand again.

He kept thinking I’m sorry for your trouble.