Glitz

8

THE OLD MAN, MR. BERTOIA, said to Vincent, no, it didn’t have to be closed. He breathed and sighed through his nose. He said, the poor girl. Fifty years on Oriental Avenue, it broke his heart every time, see a young girl like this taken from us. He said, yes, of course it should be open, glancing at his middle-aged son. Friends, love ones, they want to see the departed, they don’t want to look at the coffin.

The younger Mr. Bertoia said it wasn’t a coffin, it was a casket. Saying this to his father in front of Vincent. The terrain of the old man’s face was weathered and creased; Vincent thought of him as a stonemason or a mountain guide, a man who spent his life outdoors. The son was balding, sallow; he stood with his hands behind him in the pose of a minor official, always right, the assistant principal whose literal mind lies in wait. He made his statement now, saying, “Let me remind you, the pelvis, the spine, the hips, you could say they were pulverized. You could say she literally broke every bone in her body.”

The old man said, “Yes, but her face is good.”

“Her face is, well, it’s okay.” The younger Mr. Bertoia shrugged. “You could show it. The rest of her though, I wouldn’t show to her worst enemy.”

The old man’s eyes flared and he whipped his son with a burst of words in Italian.

The younger Mr. Bertoia straightened. “I’m only trying to explain the condition of the deceased. You want me to fill her out? Fine. I’ll pad her, make up her face for viewing. But it’s going to take some work, and it isn’t specified in the contract.”

“This gentleman,” the old man said, “is requesting this. You don’t understand it?”

“Fine. I’m only saying we have a contract,” the younger Mr. Bertoia said, “and the girl that brought her in is paying the bill.” He thought for a moment and said, “Linda Moon. If that’s her real name. She still owes us money.”

Vincent said, “You think you can get it open today?”

The old man said, “Sure, of course. Right now.”

But the younger Mr. Bertoia didn’t move. “The appearance of the deceased is only one consideration. There’s also the cost. This person Linda Moon signed a contract for our minimum plan, including cremation. She has not yet selected an urn.” He looked at the bare casket made of wood-grained, high-gloss plastic shining in fluorescent light. “What she’s getting is exactly what she hasn’t paid for yet.”

Vincent listened, aware of the casket, the worn linoleum floor, the empty rows of metal folding chairs, the closed venetian blinds. It was cold in the room. He motioned to the younger Mr. Bertoia to follow him as he turned to the door. The younger Mr. Bertoia said, “Yeah? What is it you want?” and Vincent motioned to him again, finally bringing him out to the hall to stand between gold-framed paintings of the Good Shepherd on one side and the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the other. Over the younger Mr. Bertoia’s shoulder Vincent could see the old man watching from the doorway to the parlor, where Iris waited in that plastic box.

Vincent said to the younger Mr. Bertoia, “Nothing’s free, is it? Anything you have to do I expect to pay for. Anything that’s owed you I’ll take care of that too. I’ll give you a check before I leave. But right now, what I’d like you to do if you would please, is go in there and open the fucking coffin. You think you could do that for me?”

Vincent looked at the Inlet neighborhood through venetian blinds, at old frame houses and empty lots, telephone poles standing alone on streets named after states and oceans. He saw homes that looked like barns with bay windows and dormers stuck on, built in a time when tourists came here in the summer and the Inlet offered rooms only a few blocks from the ocean. Step up on the Boardwalk right here and stroll down-beach for miles-the old man told Vincent, standing behind him. To Vincent the area looked as though it had been fought over in a war, house to house, and half the people had packed up and left. See? Way over there, look down the telephone poles. Those are the casinos, the old man said. Hotels with a thousand rooms and a casino you could play football inside if it didn’t have a ceiling. Glass ceiling where they watch you you don’t cheat. Towering shapes against the gray sky. Six P.M. near the end of March, overcast today, a high of 47 predicted. The casinos would be here soon, Mr. Bertoia said. They would force him to sell. They don’t want a funeral home next to a casino. His son was going to Linwood, live in a colonial house. Mr. Bertoia didn’t know where he would go. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve now, they were coming this way.

The invasion of the casino monsters, Vincent thought.

The younger Mr. Bertoia, his French cuffs turned up, said he was finished and walked out of the room. Then the old man left and Vincent was alone with Iris.

A girl they said was Iris. The face in the casket bore a resemblance to a face he remembered, but this one was a coloring book face. The younger Mr. Bertoia had colored in reds and pinks, purple around the closed eyes, not going out of the lines but bearing down to color an Iris cartoon. For a moment it was in Vincent’s mind to color the younger Mr. Bertoia. Paint him chalk white, draw black eyelashes on him, round red circles on his cheeks and a clown mouth, make the little son of a bitch smile. This couldn’t be Iris. The Iris he knew was alive…

Except that the police Summary Report form stated in black ballpoint she was found at 1:10 A.M. in a condition that indicated no apparent signs of life. The Atlantic County Major Crime Squad’s summary said dead on arrival at Shores Memorial, Somers Point, and the medical examiner’s report confirmed it. She was dead, all right.

You can’t go off the top floor of a high-rise condominium, hit the pavement from 18 stories up and be anything but dead.

Vincent still had his suitcase with him. A raincoat over Florida clothes. San Juan to Tampa-St. Pete to the Atlantic City airport and a taxi to Northfield, New Jersey-“offshore” they called it, inland from Atlantic City on Absecon Island-to the county facilities in Northfield where the Major Crime Squad was expecting him. Waiting to look him over, ask him questions. Vincent could feel it when he walked in. They were patient, the way cops can be patient. Courteous, too. Vincent knew what they were doing, but didn’t know why.

Until a captain named Dixie Davies said, “A girl dies with a man’s name and address written on an envelope that’s stuck in her panties, we want to have a talk with him.”

Lorendo Paz hadn’t said anything about a note.

“No, we asked Puerto Rico not to mention it,” Dixie said. “They told us about you and we checked you out. Still, if you hadn’t come we would’ve invited you.”

They showed it to him, his name and San Juan address, the Carmen Apartments, on a plain white number ten envelope that was creased and bloodstained.

“Folded twice in her panties. Which is all she was wearing at the time.”

“Iris wrote it,” Vincent said. “I’m pretty sure.”

“That was our guess,” Dixie said. “But why would she keep it in her panties?”

“I don’t know,” Vincent said.

“She trying to tell us something? Get a cop?”

“I doubt it.”

“She have any friends here, from Puerto Rico?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Shit, I was hoping you’d open the door for us,” Dixie said.

What happened in Northfield-Vincent had the feeling it was Dixie Davies who opened a door. A few minutes with the guy, just the two of them cop to cop in a pale-green interrogation room away from phones, Vincent was back on familiar ground. He could relax with this guy, the Major Crime Squad’s homicide star, and feel his confidence return. Because they were alike. Dixie was twenty pounds heavier with a weathered sandy look, big full mustache, more presentable in his brown suit than the bearded, suntanned, gunshot cop in the raincoat. But they were alike and they both knew it. They could be partners who’d worked together ten years. Dixie said, “I was hoping you’d open the door for us,” and Vincent had felt himself smile because it was something he might have said. Dixie described the investigation of Iris Ruiz’s death. Vincent listened, stored facts to think about later… now.

In the funeral home. Alone in this room since he’d arrived a few hours ago.

He would begin to go over in his mind what the county police had and what they didn’t have, the holes in the case, and he would see Iris falling through dark space, alone. He could see her eyes and then see the ground coming up as she would see it, alone, trying to hold back. But he couldn’t see her going off the balcony alone. Someone had been there with her. About one A.M.

There were traces of semen in her vagina.

The medical examiner couldn’t tell if she’d been assaulted, sexually or physically. Blood, fingernail scrapings, tissue samples of vital organs had been sent to the state police lab in Newark. They’d wait for the report, learn the apparent cause of death before trying to determine the nature of the girl’s death. Homicide, suicide…

“Or she could’ve been on something,” Dixie had said. “Acid, angel dust. She might’ve thought she could fly. If she was dead before she hit, that’s different. But if it was the fall killed her then we have to consider it might even’ve been accidental.”

“Somebody picked her up,” Vincent said, “and threw her off. Somebody who came to see her. Walked in the building, went up to her apartment.”

“Except she didn’t live there,” Dixie said.

See? You think everything’s going to fall in place…

“Nobody did. The place was suppose to be empty. Furnished apartment but nobody staying there. Iris was living in a rooming house on Caspian Avenue. First question, how’d she get in the apartment? There’s no sign of forced entry. Next question, what was she doing there?” Dixie said, “You want my guess, based on I talked to Puerto Rico and I know they have a sheet on her? She was turning a trick. Is it all right to say that? I’d rather I didn’t have to, ’cause if the guy was a john it’s gonna make my job a hundred times harder, isn’t it? Who’re we looking for? A guy came in on a junket? If he was staying overnight why didn’t he take her to his hotel room? Or was the guy a friend? Either way, from what we’ve got, at least from the semen traces, we know Iris was fucking somebody. Right?”

Vincent didn’t say anything.

“She was a cocktail waitress at Spade’s Boardwalk, worked days, ten A.M. to six P.M. Which doesn’t mean she couldn’t have been moonlighting. We talked to Personnel. They tell us she missed two days in a row, didn’t call in.”

“The day she died,” Vincent said, “and the day before that?”

“No, one-ten in the morning they found her. Don’t count that day. They mean the two days before that. She took off, didn’t call in sick or anything.”

Vincent nodded. He said, “You talk to Donovan?”

“He’s got something like thirty-five hundred employees,” Dixie said. “I don’t think he keeps track of ’em all.”

“Donovan hired her, personally. Brought her up from San Juan.”

“Yeah?” Dixie seemed to like that. “We’ll put him on the list.”

“Told her she was gonna be a hostess.”

“Maybe she was. We’ll find out.”

“If you don’t, I will,” Vincent said.

Dixie looked at him but let it go.

“Girl she roomed with identified the body. They only knew each other a couple weeks. Iris worked days, the other girl works nights, in the band that’s staying in the same house. She says they hardly knew each other.”

“How’d you find her to make the I.D.?”

“She called in a Missing. Morning of the day we found the body. Like eight hours later, nine o’clock. She called the city cops and they let us know. Her name’s Linda Moon. She’s with a band plays at the hotel.”

Vincent worked the name around in his mind because it was familiar. After a moment he said, “Let’s go back to the scene. If nobody was staying in the apartment, and none of the building tenants know anything or heard anything outside of maybe a scream…”

“No scream,” Dixie said. “I would’ve screamed, I would’ve tried to fly.”

“No scream,” Vincent said. “So where are you?”

“Still talking to the doorman, old guy in a rent-a-cop outfit. We’re checking on deliveries made that day. We’re talking to everybody who worked with Iris, might’ve known her. And we got our snitches to talk to yet.”

Vincent said, “You mind if I pick through what you’ve got? I won’t do anything without telling you first.”

“I never turn down professional help,” Dixie said. “Long as the chief doesn’t find out.”

All they knew as fact, so far:

Was that Iris had gone off the balcony of Apartment 1802 in a high-rise condominium that stood on the corner of Surrey Place and Atlantic Avenue in Ventnor.

That the apartment was owned by a manufacturing company in Trenton that made janitorial supplies, cleaning compounds. Guy with the company said as far as they knew the apartment was vacant, hadn’t been leased or rented since last season. Yes, the company had contracts with several hotels in Atlantic City, including Spade’s Boardwalk.

That the apartment was relatively clean and did appear to be vacant. Except that one of the beds had been slept in and remade. Though not made the same as the bed in the second bedroom, tight, with fresh sheets. The slept-in sheets were at the lab.

Vincent saw Iris in a bedroom…

That a black cocktail dress was hanging behind the door in the bathroom. Silver high heels on the floor. A purse with cosmetics on the back of the washbasin.

He saw Iris on a balcony…

That a lady’s black wool double-breasted coat was hanging in the bedroom closet, the room where the bed had been used. A few pieces of costume jewelry were in the top drawer of the dresser, in the same room. Cut-glass earrings, two bracelets, a necklace. Cheap stuff.

He saw Iris falling.

A young woman wearing a raincoat entered the parlor, her gaze holding on the casket.

Late twenties. Dark hair pulled back. Pale skin, delicate features cleanly defined. No makeup, not bothering on this rainy day to make herself more attractive. Still, as he watched her, Vincent saw a glamour shot of the same girl and a name with it. Now Appearing in the Sultan’s Lounge, Linda Moon. Then saw her in a soft blue spot that diffused her clean features, but it was this girl. It had to be. He watched her stop short of the casket.

“Why did you have it opened?”

“I wanted to see her,” Vincent said. “Make sure it was Iris, not somebody else.”

“It’s Iris.” She said, “I don’t know if I can look at her again,” but moved almost cautiously toward the casket to stare into it without moving. “God, whoever did her makeup…”

“Ought to be arrested,” Vincent said.

The girl he knew was Linda Moon looked over at him, taking her time now. She said, “You’re the one from Puerto Rico,” with some surprise. “Iris’s friend. I came in, I didn’t recognize you.” She turned away, walked over to the empty rows of folding chairs, hands in the pockets of her raincoat, and sat down before looking at him again. “Where’s your cane?”

“I forgot it,” Vincent said.

He sat down with a chair between them, the girl staring at the casket again. She said, “Isn’t that pathetic? Last seen in this life in a genuine wood-veneer plastic box.”

Vincent studied her face in profile, dark hair tied back, giving him a good look at her features, hollow cheeks, delicate nose, long dark lashes-a girl who knew things about him, knew Iris well enough to pay for her funeral.

He said, “You are Linda Moon.” Wanting to be absolutely sure but sounding like a lawyer or a court clerk.

She said, “I didn’t make too big an impression, huh? You should see my act now. I wear an orange outfit, with ruffles.” Very dry. Staring at the casket.

He said, “You did a weather set ‘Stormy’ and then ‘Sunny’…”

She turned to look at him.

“Then you did ‘Where’re the Clowns.’ “

“ ‘Send in the Clowns.’ I thought you’d left.”

“I stopped at the bar for ‘Send in the Clowns.’ I thought you were great.”

“Weren’t too broken up, uh, after your talk?”

“Do you want me to tell you about Iris and me? It’ll take about two minutes.”

“But you’re here,” Linda said.

“To bury her. You beat me to it.” Looking into quiet blue eyes, and those long lashes. “I didn’t know you were friends.”

“We met that night. We flew up together and roomed in the same house.”

“But you’re paying for her funeral.”

She glanced around. “I didn’t see anybody breaking down the door. I still owe three hundred, which I don’t happen to have at the moment.”

“I took care of it,” Vincent said. “I’ll give you a check for what you paid them.”

She said, “You don’t owe me anything. If you want to go halves on it, fine, I won’t argue with you.”

“You knew her two weeks,” Vincent said.

“Yeah? How long did you know her? You say you can tell me all about it in two minutes.”

“Don’t get mad.”

“I’m not mad. I’m in a shitty mood, that’s all.” Looking at the casket again. “It’s pathetic, the whole thing. The little party girl, looking for excitement-she gets two people at her wake.”

Vincent waited a moment. “What about Donovan? Hasn’t he been here?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Have you talked to him?”

“About what, Iris? Why would I? It’s an idea though. Shake him down, get him to pay his share.”

“She thought she was going to be a hostess,” Vincent said. “Is that an in joke in the casino business, a hostess?”

“She was a cocktail waitress.”

“During the day,” Vincent said, and paused. “What was she doing in that apartment?”

“I don’t know.”

“She tell you she was going?”

“You know what we talked about, the few times we saw each other? Clothes. Iris borrowed things and never returned them.”

“A black wool coat,” Vincent said.

Linda didn’t say anything.

“You tell the cops it’s yours?”

After a moment she said, “I haven’t yet.”

“Why not?”

He could hear the silence, the sound increasing gradually, becoming the hiss of a radiator. She was staring again at the casket. Something to hold onto.

“Linda?”

Her hands in the pockets of the raincoat, her legs crossed. She wore narrow jeans, scuffed brown boots that were creased with age and looked wet. It was still cold in the room.

“You don’t need your coat?”

“They didn’t mention it,” Linda said, “when I talked to them. I guess they think it’s hers.”

“What was she doing in that apartment?”

“I don’t know.”

“She see much of Donovan?”

“I have no idea.”

“Or talk about him?”

“I told you what we talked about.”

“You mentioned,” Vincent said, “I wondered why you called Iris a party girl. You said, ‘The little party girl, looking for excitement.’ “

Linda stared at the casket and he was aware of the radiator again, the steady hissing sound higher pitched than before. She turned to look at him and paused another moment, those nice blue eyes calm but narrowing a little. She said, “You’re a sneaky mother, aren’t you? I don’t know why I didn’t remember right away, as soon as you started asking questions… She talked about you on the plane. Not a lot but enough. How she was leaving this American who was so in love with her, this guy Vincent, the cop.”

“In Miami Beach,” Vincent said, “not here. Atlantic City I’m only a civilian.” He touched her arm and said, “But, Linda? I’ll bet I can help you.”

She said, “Now wait a minute-”

“You don’t have anybody to talk to. You need a friend,” Vincent said. “Tell me if I’m wrong. And you need somebody who can get you your winter coat, before you freeze your ass. Boy, it’s cold up here in New Jersey, isn’t it?”

Linda said, “If you can get the coat I’d love it. Beyond that, I don’t need any help.”