Serial

23

New York, the present

On Quinn’s instructions, Vitali and Mishkin revisited the apartments of both Millie Graff and Nora Noon. Something might have been overlooked. Something that linked one or both women to the New York underworld of seamy sex, or to each other.

The two detectives were in Nora’s apartment. It was bright and warm from sunlight beaming through the windows.

Vitali was sorting through the stifling second bedroom, stuffed with hangered garments and bolts of fabric. Mishkin, in the other bedroom, was carefully removing, then replacing, intimate wear in the dresser drawers. He handled the dead woman’s silk and lacy items with his fingertips, a faintly disturbed and embarrassed look above his bushy gray mustache. Sal, glancing in now and then from the room across the hall, reflected as he had many times that his partner shouldn’t have become a cop. The tedious and often repugnant part of the job too often got to Mishkin.

The results were in from the NYPD nerds who’d explored the victims’ computers. Millie Graff’s hard drive was mostly full of dancing and dancers. Restaurant hostess though she might have been, her dream of professional dancing was still strong. There was a site about “the art” of pole dancing, but it actually did seem to concentrate more on the techniques of dancing with a pole than on eroticism. Her e-mail account was mostly about business matters, and discussions of dancers’ progress or lack of same. Her personal account suggested she didn’t have a lot of friends in the city, and at the time of her death no romantic involvement. While online, Millie visited the Drudge Report almost daily and read the digital version of the New York Times. Fair and balanced.

Nora Noon also had visited the Times online. In fact, it was her home page. Illustrations from several fashion magazines were on her computer, along with a downloaded book by Susan Isaacs. She had visited an online dating service a few times but hadn’t signed up. Like Millie, she had a business e-mail address as well as a personal account. The business account was completely about business. The personal account revealed nothing helpful. Nora had also been on Facebook, but most of her input was a thinly disguised ploy to establish business contacts.

“These women,” Mishkin said loudly so Vitali would hear in the other room, “seem to have been normal human beings, but very, very busy.”

“It’s a wonder they found the time to get killed,” Vitali rasped. Lint or something in the air of the crowded little room kept making him almost sneeze.

“They were career women,” Mishkin said. “A dancer and a designer.”

“Wannabe dancer.”

“Same thing. Just a matter of timing.” Harold the optimist.

“Everybody’s got a career, Harold. Even if they just call them jobs.”

“I mean more than a job, Sal. More like a calling. That’s why both victims led such busy lives.”

Sal shoved his way out of Nora N.’s storage room. Or oversized closet. He wasn’t sure what to call it. Whatever, it was sure full of lint. He sneezed as he entered the other bedroom, where Mishkin toiled.

“God bless,” Mishkin said. He was holding up a black thong. “This isn’t part of a swimming suit, Sal. It’s too fragile.”

“Those thong things are popular as underwear, too, Harold. Which is what that one is. Probably most women under seventy have got at least one in their wardrobe.”

“How do you know that, Sal?”

“I just do. Like I know red buttons often turn things on.”

Mishkin found something else interesting in Nora’s dresser drawer. “What are these things that look like halves of hollowed-out cantaloupes with foam in them.”

“That’s a bra, Harold. It’s used when women wear a gown that doesn’t have straps.”

Mishkin held the attached shallow foam cups out at arm’s length and studied them. “They don’t look as if they’d support anything.”

“They do, though, Harold. And they make it possible to have bare chest, back, and shoulders above the dress without a brassiere strap showing.”

“Got it,” Mishkin said. “They work on the principle of the cantilever. Like those houses on the hills in California, where half the place hangs out over a long drop to the valley below.”

“Harold.”

“Yeah?”

“Put the damned thing back in the drawer and let’s get out of here.”

Mishkin did that, and was shutting the drawer when he noticed something on the floor. A slip of lined paper that looked as if it had been torn from a small spiral notebook. He picked it up and looked at it.

“Here’s something, Sal. It must have dropped on the floor when I was pulling stuff from the drawers. There’s writing on it. A man’s name and a phone number.” He beamed at Vitali. “I think it was in the same drawer as the thong and cantilever bra. Maybe we got something big here, Sal.”

“If he isn’t an insurance salesman or plumber,” Vitali said.

He liked to keep Mishkin’s expectations low. Harold could be crushed and depressed for days when something this promising didn’t pan out. A real pain in the ass, given to brooding.

Vitali slipped the folded piece of paper into his shirt pocket so Mishkin wouldn’t think too much about it.