Songs of Innocence

Chapter 19

The Food Emporium was where I’d been told to expect it. I looked around at all the buildings along Second Avenue as the cab pulled up to the corner. Lots of three-and four- and five-story holdovers from the turn of the century—the previous century—when this whole area, the east fifties near the river, had been an Irish slum. Back before the El came down, back before John D. Rockefeller bought up 17 acres of land that had once held slaughterhouses and, with no sense of irony whatsoever, donated it to the United Nations to use for their headquarters, certainly long before Stephen Sondheim and Katharine Hepburn and Kurt Vonnegut had decided the little buildings would make quaint and comfortable private residences, they’d been home to brawling generations of workingmen and their mates. Hints of this history still lingered—on this one block alone, a man with a taste for whiskey could bend an elbow at Jameson’s or Murphy’s or Clancy’s or the St. James Gate Publick House. Or he could buy microgreens and ten flavors of mustard at Food Emporium. You pick your poison.

I was wearing a new shirt—two new shirts, actually, a button-down in white polyester over a cotton wifebeater, each only $4.99 at the import/export store closest to Vivacia. I’d dropped my old shirt in a cardboard vegetable box that was waiting for garbage pickup at the curb and stepped out into the street to flag down the first cab I’d seen. It was just past noon. I’d managed to stay at Vivacia till the lunch-hour crowd began showing up; by the time the staff had started hinting I’d overstayed my welcome it had been time for me to leave anyway. I’d snatched a bit more sleep in the meditation room in the early hours of the morning, and though I wasn’t well rested, exactly, I felt as though I ought to be able to face the day.

But the first thing I saw when I stepped out of the cab shot that all to hell.

It was a newspaper vending box, the front page of today’s New York Post staring at me through the glass. Me staring at me, I should say: They’d dug up my mug shot from when I’d been arrested on suspicion of murder three years back. The headline next to my face said “gay slay?”

The Daily News, in the box immediately to the right, had gone with “killing on carmine street.” Their article began on the cover, and phrases from it jumped out at me: ...the victim, Jorge Garcia Ramos, 27, of Jackson Heights...found after an anonymous 911 call tipped police off...Blake, 31, has a record of two prior arrests...viciously slain...

I dropped a quarter in the Post box, pulled out every copy in there, seven or eight of them, and then took the one clipped to the inside of the glass as well. I dumped them all in the garbage can at the corner, taking care to make sure they landed face down. Then I went back and did the same with the News. It was a futile gesture, even a dangerous one, because what if someone had noticed me doing it and wondered why, but I did it and it made me feel better. Stupidly. There were hundreds of these boxes around the city. I couldn’t empty them all.

At least, I told myself, I’d had a full head of hair in the photos they’d run. And my old glasses, with the thicker, darker plastic frames. Now I wore sleek little wire rims and had a shaved head, and nobody could possibly tell I was the same person they’d read about over their corn flakes and toast. Jesus.

The sidewalk was packed, swarming with office workers on lunchtime errands, and every face I looked in looked back at me with what I was suddenly sure was a knowing stare, as if they were all mentally comparing me to the mugshot they’d seen in the paper. I tried to keep my face averted; but how, in a crowd like this? A woman walked past, talking furtively into her cell phone, and I couldn’t help the paranoid impression that she was talking about me, telling an eager 911 operator where I could be found. I ducked into a payphone, grateful for the small degree of privacy its narrow metal walls afforded, and dialed the phone number I’d gotten from Rodeo the night before. It rang three times before a woman said, “Hello?”

I struggled to remember the name I’d given last night. I couldn’t. “I have an appointment with Sharon at one,” I said.

“Is this Douglas?” Douglas. That was it.

“Yes,” I said.

“Where are you?”

“Right here,” I said. “At the Food Emporium. Where the woman I spoke to said I should—”

“On the payphone?”

“That’s right.”

“I need you to turn around, honey.”

I turned, reluctantly. The building across the way had sixteen windows. No telling which one she was in. No telling who might be looking out the others.

“All right,” she said after a pause that probably lasted less no more than a few seconds but felt endless. “You’ll go to 260 East 51st, ring the bell for 1FW.”

“1FW,” I said.

“See you,” she said and hung up.

For a moment I thought about whether I should go, whether it was too risky. What if she had read the paper this morning? But it didn’t take me long to realize that the risks were much worse for me out here. If nothing else, given what she did for a living, she’d be less likely to call the cops than the people around me now.

I found the building and she buzzed me in. She was waiting just inside, standing in the doorway of the front, west apartment. She was about my height, slim, with brown hair tied back in a tight ponytail and a spray of freckles across her cheeks. She looked like she was in her late thirties—maybe even early forties, though that could just have been the toll the job had taken on her. She had on a thin summer dress and her nipples were tenting the fabric thanks to the cold air I’d let in from the street.

I waited for a moment of recognition, a sign of fear, some indication of danger, but I didn’t see any.

“Sharon?” I said.

She held a finger to her lips and didn’t say anything till she’d ushered me inside and closed the door behind me. Even then she spoke softly. “Sorry, I just don’t want to bother the neighbors. We’ve had some complaints.”

“I understand,” I said, quietly. “That’s fine.”

“Want to get comfortable?”

Even if I’d wanted to, the apartment wouldn’t have made it easy. It was tiny, even for a studio. There was just room enough for a massage table and a single folding chair, barely any other furniture; the phone was on the floor under the table.

But that was fine. I wasn’t here to get comfortable. I sat in the chair.

“Sharon,” I said. “A woman you used to know suggested I contact you. She calls herself Rodeo. I don’t know if that’s what she called herself when she worked here.”

“Sure. I remember Rodeo. She’s a good kid.”

“She told me you might remember another woman who worked here. A friend of mine. Her name was Dorrie Burke. You might have known her as Cassandra.”

As I said this, Sharon’s hand crept up to her mouth and she backed away. She couldn’t go far, not with the massage table behind her.

“I’m not here to get anyone in trouble,” I said, “I’m just trying to help, trying to find out what happened to—”

“You’re John Blake, aren’t you?”

Damn. “Listen, whatever you read in the paper, it’s not true. I swear.”

“The paper?” she said. “What paper?”

“The Post, the News—wherever you read my name.”

“I didn’t read your name,” she said.

“Then how do you know who I am?” I said.

“Dorrie told me,” she said. “She said you’d find me.”

“She what?”

“You’re the detective, right? She told me...oh, man.” She walked around to the other side of the table, bent over to open a small cabinet wedged in next to the radiator. When she came into view again, she was holding a laptop computer in one hand and a handbag in the other. The laptop was connected to the wall by a phone cable. She set it down on the massage table and reached into the handbag, took out a slightly creased envelope. The envelope had something written on it in blue ink. I couldn’t read it because Sharon’s hand was shaking.

“She told me she was going away. She said you might try to find her, and that when you were looking for her you might find me. And that if you did, I should give you this.” She held the envelope out to me. I could read what was written on it now. It was my name. The handwriting was Dorrie’s.

“You know she’s dead, right?” I said it softly. I’d have said it that way even if she hadn’t told me about the neighbors.

“Yes.” It came out almost like a sob. “I know.”

“How long have you had this?”

“Since Saturday,” she said.

“Why didn’t you get in touch with me? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

She shook her head, back and forth, kept shaking it as she spoke. “I tried. Your phone number’s not listed.”

“You could have tried up at Columbia.”

“I did. I went there on Monday afternoon. I waited for more than an hour. You weren’t there.”

“You could have left a message for me.”

“I did leave a message. I left it on your desk.”

I thought of the pile of pink message slips I’d seen on my desk. None had looked obviously urgent or important. “What did you write?”

“My name and number,” she said, “and that it was about Dorrie.”

All the messages had been about Dorrie. Everyone had been calling with condolences. Another name, another phone number—it hadn’t stood out.

“I’m sorry, Sharon” I said. “I didn’t realize—”

“It’s okay,” she said.

I took the envelope from her. As I ran my thumb under the flap to break the seal, I thought of Dorrie licking it shut. This envelope must have been one of the last things she’d ever touched. It was probably the closest I’d ever be to her again.

There was a single sheet of paper inside.

John,

Please, please, if you’re reading this I know you’re trying to understand why I’m gone, but don’t. Darling, don’t. Sharon doesn’t know, and she can’t know, and you can’t know either. For your sake, not mine.

You’ve been so good to me, John. You deserve someone better than me. Find someone. Or don’t, if that’s not what you want — but forget you ever knew me. Please. I don’t want you hurt.

I know how badly you must want answers, but please, John, this once, just let it go.

D

I folded the page, tucked it back into its envelope, then saw the look on Sharon’s face and took it out again. Reading it wouldn’t make her happy, but not reading it would be worse.

She handed it back a moment later.

Let it go, she’d written. Like hell I’d let it go.

The desperation in Dorrie’s voice, the fear—I could hear it as if she were standing next to me speaking.

“Sharon, I need to know exactly what she told you,” I said. “When she said she was ‘going away.’ Did she say where she was going? Why was she going?”

Sharon was shaking her head again. “I don’t know. She didn’t say. She just said she was going somewhere far away. But isn’t it obvious what she meant?”

“What?”

“Well...” Sharon stopped. “You know. She killed herself. That’s where she was going. Far away.”

“That’s very poetic,” I said, “but there’s one thing wrong with it. She didn’t kill herself. Someone made it look that way, but that’s not what happened.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” I said. “Really. And based on what you’re telling me and what she wrote, she obviously knew she was in danger. That’s the only reason she’d leave in a hurry and not tell anyone where she was going.” What I meant was: not tell me. “The question is who she was in danger from. Did she say anything at all...?”

“No. Nothing.”

“When did she say she was planning to leave?”

“Right away. That’s why she had me forward her mail for her.”

“Her mail?”

She pointed to the laptop. “She asked me how to set it up so that all her mail would come to my address. I showed her how to do it, from the Options screen. Yahoo makes it pretty easy.”

“You’re talking about her e-mail.”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

She opened the machine, brought up a Web browser. The familiar Yahoo mail page appeared, the same one I’d looked at in Michael’s storeroom. I couldn’t see the password Sharon typed in, but the address was “hotsharon85.” She angled the screen toward me.

“See?” She pointed. “I made a folder for her mail, showed her how to set it up so her mail would get forwarded. This way each time someone sends a message to her, Yahoo sends it here instead. She’s gotten, let’s see, ninety-six messages, all since Saturday. I haven’t deleted any of them.”

I glanced through the list. Lots of spam, lots of unfamiliar addresses. But in the middle of the list a familiar address stood out. Mine. I clicked on it and my message came up, the one I’d sent on Monday. This is a test, it said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did she want you to get her mail?”

“She said she didn’t know when she’d be coming back. She didn’t want messages piling up, she didn’t want her customers to get angry when nobody responded to them. Of course when I read about...about what happened, I figured she was really just setting things in order before...well, you know.”

“Before killing herself.”

“Yeah,” Sharon said softly. “It was like she was giving away her things. Sending her customers to me because she knew she wasn’t going to need them anymore.”

“That’d be true if she just moved away, too,” I said. “She wouldn’t need customers in New York if she’d gone to the other side of the country.”

“That’s what I figured she meant at first, sure.”

And it’s what I figured now. She’d decided to run, so she put her customers in the hands of someone she felt she could trust to service them, to keep them warm. It seemed to me it was a clear sign that she’d planned to come back at some point, because otherwise why bother?

Of course, Dorrie had done more than just forward her mail. She’d also taken the trouble to clean out her system, to erase all her old messages—every message she’d ever written, every message she’d ever received, all gone. Like leaving an apartment broom-clean when you moved out. No personal items for the new tenant to find. But in this case, who was the new tenant she was afraid of? Who had she been afraid might one day be poking through the old e-mail she’d exhanged with her clients?

“Have you talked to any of her customers yet?”

“I’ve seen one so far. I’ve written back to a few.”

I wondered if any of the ones Sharon had written to were the same regulars Susan was trying to contact right now. It could be awkward—some guy hears from two separate women, each claiming to be a former colleague of Dorrie’s. On the other hand, who could say, maybe that would be exactly the extra pressure it took to drive Dorrie’s killer out into the open.

“Sharon,” I said, “have you read all these messages?” She nodded. “Were there any that struck you as odd or suspicious...?”

“They’re pretty much what you’d expect. A couple of guys saw the articles about her in the paper and wrote to say Was that you? or I hope that wasn’t you, and I wrote back to say I’m sorry but it was. There was one...hang on.” She bent over the keyboard. “There was one I thought was a little funny. Sort of misspelled and rambling, like maybe the guy was drunk or high or something, but it was obviously someone who knew her, since he used her real name.” She found the message, brought it up on the screen.

I read it. I didn’t say anything.

“You see what I mean?”

I saw what she meant.

I didn’t know whether the man who wrote it was drunk when he typed it or just suffering from the condition that had made him switch from typing to dictation, but I sure as hell knew that rambling, misspelled style.

dorrrie, sweet grl, poor sweet girl, what man could willngky caus you grirf/ forgive me pls my importunate illjudgd attentions. my photo hid too mch but so did yrs dear girl so did yours