Known to Evil

9

I pondered Kitteridge's request on the elevator ride up to the seventy-second floor. Carson was a good cop, maybe the only completely honest senior cop in the NYPD. Turning him down would cause trouble, but walking into his office without a full grasp of the situation would probably be worse. I didn't even know why I was at the murder scene. I was sure that Alphonse Rinaldo didn't want me talking to the cops about his business, and crossing Rinaldo was a mistake that no one had ever made twice.

I realized that there was a scowl on my face because when the walnut elevator doors slid open on my floor I smiled. I almost always grinned upon the lovely features of the Art Deco hallway that led to my offices. It was a wide hall with light fixtures of polished brass and a multicolored, marble-tiled floor.

Obtaining the eight-room suite of offices in the Tesla was the one crime I never regretted.

WHEN I TURNED THE corner I saw her: pretty and pale, slender, and not quite of this world. Mardi Bitterman stood in front of my oak door, an apparition of her own suffering. She wore a green and black tweed business suit that would have been more appropriate on a woman of fifty-fifty years ago.

The teenager smiled when she recognized me.

"Good morning, Mr. McGill," she said softly. "I guess I was a little early."

If this was a job interview it would have been over then. A young employee who comes in early is a rare commodity in twenty-first-century New York.

"How are you, Mardi?" I asked.

"Fine, thank you. Twill helped me get an apartment from some friends of his in the Bronx. Me and Marlene moved in last week."

I was busy working keys on the seven locks of my door.

"And you want to work for me?"

"Yes, sir," she said. "Twill said that you always wanted a receptionist, and I studied office sciences in high school."

I pushed the door open and gestured for her to go in.

"Are you planning to go to college?" I asked.

"This is beautiful!" She was referring to the reception antechamber of my suite.

There was an ash desk backed up by a trio of cherrywood filing cabinets. The double window looked out over New Jersey, and the walls were painted a subtle blue-gray.

The desk even had a little plastic sign that read RECEPTIONIST.

"I thought Twill said that you never had a secretary," she said.

"I haven't. But I've always wanted one. It's just that the kind of work I do means that somebody would have to give a little extra effort. I mean, it's not easy working for a guy like me."

Mardi was running her pale fingers across the white wood.

"I'd love to have this job, Mr. McGill. The lady, Mrs. Alexander, who lives in the place downstairs, said that she'd look after Marlene if I was ever late, and I know about the kind of work you do."

"How old are you now, Mardi?"

"I turned eighteen last May."

Thinking of the terror and humiliation that Twill's friend had endured, the words of my father came to me: Tragedy either makes or breaks the will of the proletariat.

I had planned to pawn the child off on Aura when Twill made his request the night before. But now I couldn't imagine talking to my ex. And seeing the resolve in Mardi's face, I believed that she might well be made for a job like this.

"Let's try it out," I said. "We'll talk salary and hours later on. There's a laptop computer in the bottom drawer of the desk and an Internet connection in the wall. Why don't you set that up and make yourself at home."

I went to the fireproof brown metal door that led to my inner offices and entered a code on the digital keypad.

"There's a code to this door," I said before entering. "If you last two weeks I'll give it to you. For today I'll just leave it unlocked in case you need to come down and ask me something. And, oh yeah, whenever you walk in the front door three hidden cameras take pictures for about eight minutes. Just so you know."

I left the girl looking up at the ceiling, trying to find the secret eyes.

MY OFFICE DESK WAS made from ebony, its back to a window that looks south, on lower Manhattan. It was a clear day and you could make out the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

I tried my virtual answering machine but the growling bear from before had left no message.

For a while I counted my breaths, making it up to ten and then starting over. After maybe fifteen minutes I called information on my cell phone and they agreed to connect the call for no additional charge.

"Oxford Arms," a severe woman's voice said.

"Mr. Strange, please."

"One moment," she said, as if I were put on earth to irk her. And then, "We have no Mr. Strange in residence."

"Really? He told me that I could call him there at any time. Maybe you have another number for him?"

"Please wait," she said, managing to insinuate her agitation in the sound of the click that put me on hold.

Forty seconds later she was back. "Mr. Strange checked out this morning. He left no messages."

I paused there, wondering what this wrinkle meant for my involvement in Rinaldo's business.

"Is that quite all?" the woman asked.

"Aren't you supposed to be polite or something?"

The lady hung up.

I SHOULD HAVE FELT relief at Strange's departure. If he was gone, didn't that mean the investigation, whatever it was about, was over?

But when working around Rinaldo, loose ends were never a good thing.

I logged on to the New York news engine that the computer whiz Tiny "Bug" Bateman had written for me. This customized piece of software allows me to connect various newswire accounts of specific crimes and criminals-it even taps a special police website using keywords from newspaper and wire accounts.

Wanda Soa had been a cocktail waitress and student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The man found stabbed to death in Wanda's apartment carried no identification and the police had yet to identify him. No one heard the shot that killed the woman, but the door had been left wide open and a passing neighbor got worried and called the super-a woman named Dorothy Harding. Police were asking for anyone with information to come forward.

There was no mention of the name Tara Lear.

The crime made very little sense. It was unlikely that Wanda stabbed the button man before he shot her, and she certainly couldn't have done it with half her face gone. From what I remembered, the door hadn't been broken open, so someone had probably let the killer, or killers, in.

And what was I doing there? That was my existential question, in hindsight.

A buzzer that I'd never heard before sounded-quite loudly. I nearly jumped out of my chair.

"Mr. McGill?" bodiless Mardi Bitterman said.

It took me a moment to remember the intercom box on my desk. I hadn't used it in the twenty- one months I'd had the office.

Pressing a button, I said, "Yes?"

"There's a man out here who says that he's the new financial officer for the building. He wants to talk with you."

I remembered the guards at the front desk telling me that there was a new bookkeeper who was going through everyone's overtime. They didn't like him, and I still had enough of my union-organizing father's background to side with the working class.

"Send him in, Mardi. Tell him to follow the hall to the far end."