Little Girl Lost

Chapter 25

If you read the Village Voice, it sounds like Alphabet City has become hopelessly gentrified over the past ten years, all the quaint, stoop-sitting crackheads and heroin addicts replaced with Starbucks junkies out for a double latte. It’s only true up to a point. I still wouldn’t want to be caught east of Avenue C after dark.

But that’s where I was headed, and the sky wasn’t getting any lighter. In the summer you’d see guys with boomboxes hanging out till eight, nine at night, and though you knew some of them were up to no good, you also knew some of them were just enjoying what passed for fresh air in this part of town. You’d see some women on the streets, too, and not only hookers. You didn’t get the feeling that all the honest people were locked up indoors, leaving the streets to the predators. But it was not summer now, and in the winter the combination of the early darkness and the bone-chilling cold kept everyone off the streets who had someplace better to go.

I didn’t. I had one place to go and only one, and it was on Avenue D, as far east as you could walk before you hit the waterfront housing projects, the FDR Drive, and then the East River itself. The wind blew harder as you got closer to the water. There were few tall buildings here to block it, mostly just red brick tenements and little Spanish churches. When the wind came from the east, you could smell the river on it. It stank of diesel fuel.

I wasn’t the only one on the streets, but in some ways I’d have preferred it if I had been. I passed two young men walking together, and we all eyed each other as we passed. It was at times like this that I wished I looked older, bigger, harder. Tracy wasn’t so far off with her description, and this was not a neighborhood for slumming prep school kids.

I crossed Avenue C and walked east on Sixth Street, where the concentration of churches was highest. Iglesia Cristiana, Abounding Grace, Emmanuel Presbyterian, all on one block – it was a little safer, I figured, than the blocks on either side. But then the churches were behind me and the avenue I turned onto had nothing warm and welcoming on it. A few bodegas, some shuttered with metal gates, some open behind grimy windows. One Chinese restaurant. There were two men in khaki jackets transacting some business under the awning of what had once been a butcher shop and now had a big “Store for Rent” sign in the window. The one who pocketed the money fell into step beside me as I passed.

“Smoke, smoke,” he muttered under his breath – though why he bothered to keep quiet, I don’t know. There wasn’t a cop for blocks around.

“No, thanks.” I shook his fingers off my sleeve.

“Come on, man. I’ve got good shit.”

“I’m sure you do. I’m not buying.”

“That’s cool, man. How about just helping a brother out, cold night like this.” He had a hand out, and I was tempted to give him something just to make him go away, but that was a path I knew better than to go down. Not because he was a drug dealer – the hell with that. Just because once I took anything out of my pocket, he’d want whatever else I had in there.

“Sorry,” I said. “Try someone else.”

“No,” he said, and suddenly his voice wasn’t so quiet any more, “how about I try you, motherfucker?” He whipped something out of his jacket pocket, and I heard the click-click of a butterfly knife swinging open. Butterfly knives are illegal in New York, but then so are drug deals and muggings. If there had been a cop around, I could have had this guy booked for all three.

I held my palms up. “Don’t do this.”

“Shut the fuck up and give me your wallet.” He gestured with the knife. It was a short blade, only four inches or so, but you can do plenty of damage with a short blade. Simon Corrina had always used a knife like this.

I looked around, but there was no one in sight. The guy who’d made a buy just a minute ago had vanished, and I didn’t blame him.

I reached into my pocket for my wallet, held it out to him. I thought about flipping it open and showing him my license, but I wasn’t sure whether that would get me my wallet back or a knife in the guts.

He snatched it. “Come on, come on,” he said. “What else you got?”

He reached under my jacket to pat down my pockets. He found my cell phone in its holster on my hip, popped it out, and slipped it into his own pocket. He slapped my right pants pocket. “What’s that?”

“Just my keys,” I said. “You don’t want my keys, man. Come on.”

“Show me.”

I pulled out the keyholder, opened it for him. He gestured with the knife. “Okay.” I put it back. “Give me your watch.”

“I don’t wear a watch,” I said.

“Bullshit,” he said. “This can’t be all you’ve got.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It is.”

We both heard a buzzing sound then. It started quiet and got louder. He looked down toward his pocket, and so did I, but only for a second. Before he could look back, I stepped in, braced his knife hand with one forearm, put my other hand around his throat and ran him back against the wall of the building next to us. He swung at me with his free hand, but it was a weak punch and I blocked it with my elbow. I hammered his head against the wall until his grip on the knife loosened and it fell to the sidewalk, and then a few more times just because it felt good. I brought my knee up, aiming for his crotch, but got his stomach instead. He folded up all the same. I let go of him and he collapsed on the pavement. I kicked the knife out of his reach and then squatted next to him to go through his pockets. I found my wallet and phone in one and some loose bills and a baggie full of plastic vials in the other. The phone had stopped buzzing. I took it all, rolled him into the doorway of the butcher shop, and left him there.

I shoved the baggie deep into the garbage can on the corner. The butterfly knife was lying in the gutter, so I picked it up, folded it shut, and pocketed it. Now I was the one breaking the law, but what the hell. It probably wouldn’t be the last time tonight. I checked the readout of my phone, but all it said was “Missed Call – Unavailable.” Well, there was nothing I could do. If it was important, whoever it had been would call back.

I crossed to the next block and checked building numbers till I found 51. It was a grey stone building with a fire escape zigzagging down the front. The windows were all dark, and on the ground floor some were boarded up. I didn’t see any intercom buttons next to the front door, which said something about how old this building was – it must have been from the throw-the-key-down era. I looked up at the top-floor apartment. Was Jocelyn in there? If she were, I thought, the lights would be on – she wouldn’t be asleep at five o’clock, and she wouldn’t be sitting in the dark, either. Or would she? She might if she knew I was coming. But how could she know? Tracy wouldn’t have called her – would she?

Of course, all of this assumed she had come back here at all. Just because Susan thought that was what she would do in Jocelyn’s place, it didn’t mean Jocelyn had actually done it. The most likely case was that the apart- ment was dark because it was empty, and that it was empty because Jocelyn knew better than to come here.

There was only one way to find out. I jumped for the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder. On my second try, the ladder slipped its hook and clattered down. I pulled myself up and started climbing. At the first landing, I crouched between the two windows to catch my breath. I figured the noise would draw some attention, but the street was empty now and none of the windows around me flew open, no angry tenant stuck his head out to see what the racket was. I climbed up to the second landing, and then slowly, working hard not to make any noise, went on to the third. I felt very conspicuous. It wasn’t broad daylight, but anyone who happened to look this way would spot me. Who knew what neighbor might be calling the police right now to report what they were seeing? But I kept going.

The top floor was next, and I took each step gently on the way up. The window on my right looked into a bedroom, the one on my left into a kitchen, and I dodged away quickly after risking a glance through each. Both rooms were dark and looked empty. I tried raising the bedroom window, but it was locked. I opened the blade of the butterfly knife and slipped it between the upper and lower panes, forced the latch of the lock sideways, then shifted the blade to the bottom and used it to lever the window up enough to give me a fingerhold on the frame. I slid the window all the way up, climbed inside, and pulled it down behind me.

The room was empty, all right – but at some point recently it hadn’t been. On the queen-sized bed a crumpled comforter was pushed to one side. And on a table next to the bed there was a quarter-full glass of water.

I kept the knife ready as I slid the closet door open, but there was no one waiting inside to jump out at me. No one was in the living room either, or the bathroom when I quickly looked inside. The apartment was empty. I was tempted to turn on a light, but that would have been crazy – I didn’t know when Jocelyn would be back, and if she saw the light from the street, she’d know someone was there. I went back into the bedroom and gave it a more thorough once-over. The room’s one dresser was nearly empty and so was the closet – lots of empty wire hangers and drawers with only a shirt or two in them. It looked like Jocelyn was planning a quick departure.

I was about to close the closet when I noticed something on the floor in the back behind the sliding door. I pulled it out to get a better look at it. It was a wheeled luggage cart, lying on its back, unzipped and open, crammed full of clothing. It was too dark to see anything on the hard rubber wheels, but I had a feeling I knew what the police would find if they scraped them. Wayne Lenz’s blood.

I pawed through the clothing, but that was all the luggage contained, all the way to the bottom: T-shirts, underwear, two pairs of shoes, some costumes of the sort I’d seen on the video and in Miranda’s apartment. There was a small cosmetics bag, but it contained nothing but cosmetics. There was no sign of the money.

Not that Jocelyn would be likely to leave five hundred thousand dollars in cash lying around in the closet of a tenement apartment. I tried to guess how much space that much money would take up. About as much as two reams of typing paper, maybe three, even if you packed it tightly. I went through the luggage again, felt around the bottom of the closet, glanced under the bed.

It was disappointing, but only slightly. The money was why Murco was after her, and if it didn’t turn up he would be very unhappy, but otherwise it meant nothing to me. What I was after was Jocelyn. I wanted to hear her admit what she had done, and then And then what? I felt my hand tighten around the knife. And then I’d call the police, damn it. And then I’d have her arrested, have them test the luggage, have them clear my name and put her in jail where she belonged. There was a part of me that ached for a rawer sort of justice, the sort Murco and his son would deal out – part of me felt Miranda deserved that sort of retribution. But I was not Murco. Justice didn’t have to come at the point of a knife.

I pushed the luggage back into place and drew the closet door in front of it. I went back into the living room, searched through the small pile of mail I found on a table. A clothing catalogue, a credit card bill, a belated Christmas card, all addressed to “Jessie Masters.” I left them where they were.

There was an answering machine on the table, showing one message on its digital readout. I pressed the Play button and heard a woman’s voice. It took me a second to realize whose it was.

“Hey, beautiful,” Miranda said. “It was really good seeing you again. I know it was strange for you. For me, too. But I’d like to do it again, okay? Maybe we could watch the fireworks tomorrow. We should be able to see them from where I’m working. Maybe we can get some dinner first, before I have to go on. Give me a call, okay? Or I’ll call you, if you don’t.” Pause. “I love you, you know.” The machine clicked. A mechanical voice said, “Received Friday, December 30, at seven thirty-four p.m.”

She sounded so eager, so happy. Why? Why had Miranda been so trusting, so willing to take Jocelyn’s overtures at face value, so quick to forgive? I pictured Jocelyn getting this message and laughing, unable to believe her good luck. We should be able to see them from where I’m working. She hadn’t even had to come up with some excuse to lure Miranda to a secluded spot. New Year’s Eve meant fireworks on the Hudson, and sure, maybe you could see them from the roof at the Sin Factory – it was a short building, but it was far enough west that at least you’d see some of the show over the tops of other buildings. And how hard would it have been for Jocelyn to get behind Miranda while they were both watching the show, press the gun to the back of her head, and pull the trigger? For God’s sake, the fireworks would even have masked the sound of the shots. Jocelyn couldn’t have set it up better herself.

And where was she now? Collecting the money from wherever she’d hidden it, in preparation for leaving town? Or was she finding some horrible new way to do damage? The note she’d left at my mother’s building frightened me – who knew what she might do to carry out that threat?

With that in mind, I dialed Susan’s number on my cell phone. When she didn’t answer after four rings, I called my mother’s number.

“Hello? Who is this?” It wasn’t Susan’s voice, it was my mother’s, and she sounded unsteady, frightened.

I spoke as quietly as I could and kept an eye on the front door. “Mom, could you put Rachel on?”

“John! My God, are you okay? Are you safe?”

“Yes, I’m fine – what’s wrong?”

“Oh, my God, I was so worried about you, when Rachel said that woman was threatening to kill you-”

“She’s threatening all of us,” I said. “We all have to be careful. That’s why I asked Rachel to stay with you.”

“But she called!”

“Who called? What are you talking about?”

“She called,” my mother said again. “Just a little while ago. She told Rachel she was going to kill you-”

“Jocelyn called?”

“I didn’t talk to her, Rachel did. She said it was the same woman who left the note. John, she told Rachel she had a knife to your throat and was going to kill you.”

“Well, it wasn’t true. I’m fine. Can you just put Rachel on the phone, please?”

“She’s not here,” my mother said. “She went to find you. She tried to call you first, but there was no answer.”

My blood went cold. The call that had come in while I was being mugged. That had been Susan. And when I hadn’t answered “Mom, please think carefully, did Rachel say where she was going?”

“Yes, yes, I have it here. Hold on.” I heard papers rustling. I wanted to scream. “She wrote it down. She said she was going to Corlears Hook Park, to the bandstand. She said I should call the police if I didn’t hear from her in an hour. It hasn’t been an hour yet. Should I call them?”

“Yes,” I said.