Night Film

6

A little over a week later, at 3:00 A.M., I boarded a Harlem-bound M102 bus—#5378, as Sharon Falcone had instructed — and took a secluded seat in the back.

If the city had one spot where murmured conversations and dubious glances went ignored, it was this bus at three in the morning. Whatever passengers were present, they were likely to be dead tired, strung out, or involved in shady dealings themselves — so you could bet they wanted to remain as incognito as you did. I’d never understood how Sharon had arranged it, but now, I swore it was the same driver from the last time we’d done this, some nine years ago.

I first met Detective Sharon Falcone back in 1989 when I was a green reporter for The New York Post and she was a rookie cop helping out on the Central Park jogger case. Even now, more than twenty years later, I still knew just snippets about her, but those bits went a long way, like a pinch of Cajun powder in your food. She was forty-six and lived alone in Queens with a German shepherd named Harley. For the past decade, she’d worked for the Manhattan North Homicide Squad, a specialized unit that helped other precincts with homicides that occurred north of Fifty-ninth Street, and she served her deceased victims with a devotion that seemed old-fashioned in its selflessness and dedication.

The bus turned west onto East One hundred sixteenth, passing abandoned housing projects, empty lots, tattered churches — SALVATION AND DELIVERANCE, read a sign — men loitering on corners.

Something must be wrong, I thought to myself. The last time we did this, Sharon had boarded by now. I checked my phone, but there was no missed call, no text. The conversation we’d had the day before had not been promising, nor had she made any real commitment to helping me.

“Tomorrow night. Same place and time,” she’d said curtly and hung up.

The bus was turning down Malcolm X Boulevard and I was just beginning to think she’d blown me off, when we abruptly pulled over in front of a ramshackle townhouse, a lone figure standing by the curb. The doors opened, and within seconds Detective Sharon Falcone was hurrying toward me — as if she’d known precisely where I was sitting all along.

She looked the same: still 53″ and grim, lips thin and unsmiling, a button nose that curved up at the tip like a wood shaving. She wasn’t unattractive. But she was strange. Sharon could pass for a pale nun staring out from a fifteenth-century portrait in the Flemish painting wing at the Met. Only the artist hadn’t quite mastered human proportions, so he’d given her an elongated neck, uneven shoulders, and too-small hands.

She slid next to me, eyeing the other passengers, letting the black shoulder bag fall to her feet.

“Of all the M102s in all the towns in all the world, you walk into mine,” I said.

She didn’t crack a smile. “I don’t have much time.” She unzipped the bag, pulled out a white 8 × 10 envelope, handing it to me. I slid out the thick stack of papers, the first page, a photocopy of a file.

Case No. 21-24-7232.

“How’s the investigation going?” I asked, slipping it back and tucking the envelope into my pocket.

“Fifth Precinct’s handling it. They’re getting a hundred calls a day. Anonymous tips, but they’re bullshit. Last week Ashley was spotted at a McDonald’s in Chicago. Three days before, a Miami nightclub. Already they got two homicide confessions.”

“Was it homicide?”

Sharon shook her head. “No. She was a jumper.”

“You’re positive?”

She nodded. “No sign of a struggle. Fingernails clean. She took off her shoes and socks, placed them together at the edge. That kind of methodical preparation, very consistent with suicide. They haven’t done a postmortem. Not sure they will.”

“Why not?”

“The family attorney’s all over it. Religious reasons. If you’re Jewish it’s a sacrilege to desecrate the body.” She frowned. “I noticed some shots missing in the file. Front and back torso. My guess is they’re being held in a separate file so some creep doesn’t leak them to The Smoking Gun.”

“The cause of death?”

“Standard for any jumper. Massive hemorrhaging. A broken neck, lacerated heart, multiple broken ribs, and a skull fracture. She was there for a few days before they found her. She’d been admitted last month to some swank private hospital upstate. They filed a missing-person’s report for her ten days before she jumped.”

I stared at her in surprise. “Why? She ran away?”

She nodded. “A nurse confirmed Ashley was in her room, lights off, at eleven o’clock. At eight the next morning, she was gone. Somehow she appeared on just one security camera — crazy, because the place is outfitted like the Pentagon. You can’t see her face. She’s just a figure in white pajamas running across the lawn. A man was with her.”

“Who was he?”

“They don’t know.”

“Why was she at the hospital? A drug problem?”

“I don’t think they knew what the hell was wrong with her. A few pages of her medical evaluation are in there.”

“When did the hospital report her missing?”

“September thirtieth. It’s in the report.”

“And when did she jump?”

“Late night on the tenth. Eleven, twelve midnight.”

“Where did she go during those ten, eleven days in between?”

“No one has any idea.”

“Any activity on her credit cards?”

Sharon shook her head. “Cell was off, too. She must have known not to turn it on. Seems like she didn’t want to be found. There was just one confirmed sighting in those ten days. When they found the body, she was wearing just jeans and a T-shirt. They found a plastic ticket in her pocket. A tree insignia on the back. It was traced to the Four Seasons Restaurant. You know, that little shack on Park Avenue?”

I nodded. It was one of the most expensive restaurants in the city, though it played out more like a rare wildlife reserve. One paid an exorbitant entry fee ($45 for crab cakes) to observe — but never disturb—New York’s privileged and powerful as they fed and fought among themselves, displaying all the recognizable traits of their species: hardened expressions, thinning hair, gun-gray suits.

“A girl working the coat check identified her,” Sharon said. “Ashley came in around ten but left minutes later, without her coat, and never came back. A few hours later, she jumped.”

“She must have been meeting someone.”

“They don’t know.”

“But someone will look into it.”

“No. There’s no crime here.” She eyed me sharply. “To get to that elevator shaft the girl had to enter an abandoned building, which is a notorious squatters’ hangout, the Hanging Gardens. Then, on the roof, she squeezed through a skylight about a foot wide. Few are small enough to get through such a narrow opening, much less if they were holding someone against their will. They combed the place for trace evidence. There’s no sign anyone was there but her.” Sharon continued to watch me — or perhaps the right word was investigate, because her brown eyes were slowly moving over my face, probably in the same methodical grid pattern she used with a widespread search party.

“This is when I ask why you want this information,” she said.

“Some unfinished business. Nothing for you to worry about.”

She squinted at me. “You know what Confucius said?”

“Remind me.”

“ ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’ ”

“I’ve always found ancient Chinese wisdom overrated.” I took out an envelope and handed it to her. It contained three thousand dollars in cash. She shoved it inside her bag, zipping it closed.

“How’s your German shepherd?” I asked.

“He died three months ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

She brushed her spiky bangs off her forehead, scrutinizing an elderly man who’d just boarded.

“All good things must come to an end,” she said. “We done here?”

I nodded. She looped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and was about to get up when I thought of something else and grabbed her wrist.

“What about a suicide note?” I asked.

“They didn’t find one.”

“Who identified Ashley at the morgue?”

“An attorney. The family hasn’t said a word. I hear they’re out of the country. Traveling.”

With a look of regret but little surprise, she stood up, moving to the front of the bus. The driver instantly pulled over. Within seconds, she was scurrying down the sidewalk, though she didn’t walk so much as plow, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on the ground. As the bus took off again with a belch, veering into the road, Sharon became just a shadowed figure moving past the closed stores and barred windows, swerving quickly around a corner — and she was gone.