Painted Ladies

51

We hadn’t had a big, serious snowstorm all winter. It had snowed moderately, and often, and it was doing it again. The cumulative effect of moderate and often was pretty much the same as big, serious. The snow was steady but not dense, and the flakes were small. But it was enough to cover up the compacted dirty snow that had preceded it, and for a little while the city would look clean again.

I walked up Berkeley Street wearing my plaid longshoreman’s cap and a fleece-lined leather jacket. Because I had the jacket zipped up, and people were seeking to do me ill, I had taken my gun off my belt and put it in my side pocket. I also looked around a lot. At Columbus I turned right and went in the big arched door of Shawmut Insurance Company and rode up in the black iron elevator to see Winifred Minor.

She was in the same office I’d seen her in before. The door was open. I knocked on the outer edge of the door opening and stepped in. She looked up at me and saw who it was and stiffened and looked at me some more without speaking. I sat down.

“Hi,” I said.

She continued to look at me silently.

“You never finished your lunch,” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

“How ’bout that snow?” I said.

Silence.

“If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute,” I said.

She looked down at her desk.

“Everybody talks about the weather,” I said. “But nobody does anything about it.”

She looked up from her desk.

“All right,” she said. “Enough. I’ll talk to you. What do you want?”

“Thank God,” I said. “I was almost down to singing ‘Stormy Weather.’”

She almost smiled.

“At least I escaped that,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Know a man named Ariel Herzberg?” I said.

“No.”

“Your daughter does,” I said.

“So?”

“I saw him visiting her at Walford last week,” I said.

“So?”

“He’s killed two people that I know of, and tried twice, so far, to kill me.”

She kept looking at me, and her breathing became harder, as if she was short of breath.

“If she’s involved with a man like that...” I said.

“Who did he kill,” Winifred asked.

Her voice was raspy.

“He killed Ashton Prince,” I said. “And the superintendent in my building. Super’s name was Francisco Cabrera.”

“Was that part of the attempt to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Did the super interrupt them?” she said.

“No,” I said. “They interrupted him. Apparently they rang the bell. When he answered, they put a gun on him and forced him to open my door. Then they took him to the cellar and shot him in the head.”

“Did Ariel do this himself?”

“Probably not,” I said. “He probably had people do it for him.”

“And you’ve seen her with him?”

“Missy,” I said. “Yes.”

“And you assume they’re involved.”

“They were people who knew each other,” I said.

“Is there anything I could say... or do... to make you leave this alone?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“You have an office just down the street,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go there to talk,” she said.

“Okay.”