The cold room

TWENTY-SIX

I was back in Riverside Park at seven thirty on the following morning, striding through a heavy fog in search of a bench close to the street. The sun was a pale orange disc and the morning air, dead still, clung to my body. My pants and the back of my shirt, when I sat on a dew-slick bench were instantly soaked.

Though it was the beginning of the work week, the park was crowded with committed runners tracking their miles before heading off to the job. I thought of Adele then, as I’d thought about her last night after I settled in front of the TV. I felt guilty. I should have called her, at least to bring her up to date, but I hadn’t. My reasoning was very simple. Suppose she finally opened up, told me what was bothering her. Suppose the issue required my immediate attention at a time when I had no attention to spare. What would I do? Better not to know.

I remained where I was for the next three hours, until I could no longer distinguish between the mist and my own sweat, watching drops of water form on the ends of the pine needles, then drop to the ground. Behind me, the West Side Highway was running full out, but the traffic produced no more than an inconstant hum that seemed part of the swirling fog. On another day, driven by New York’s prevailing westerly winds, the reek of automobile exhaust would cover the narrow strip of park between the highway and Riverside Drive, but the only odors to reach my nostrils on that day were of wet earth and decaying vegetation.

At ten fifteen, Ronald Portola, the elder of the two brothers, came out of the house. He wore an off-white linen blazer over a black polo shirt and white pants that bunched around his shoes and ankles. I watched him from a park bench right across the street. He was sporting that same bemused smile and he had that same dismissive look in his intelligent eyes, as though he were observing the game of life the way a scientist observes a colony of ants. I wondered how I’d appeal to him if the time ever came to make an appeal. Ronald would appreciate a creative approach, a bit of high theater, of that I was sure. As I was now sure that bludgeoning was not Ronald’s style and I would have to look elsewhere for Mynka’s killer. Ronald was glancing at his watch for the second time when a black Lincoln Towncar from one of Manhattan’s many car services pulled up in front of the townhouse. The driver popped out an instant later, ran around the vehicle, opened the back door with a little flourish. Ronald shot his cuffs before climbing inside.

David Portola made his appearance a little after eleven, carrying a skateboard. In marked contrast to his brother, he wore a pair of cutaway denim shorts, the hems ragged, and a t-shirt that had once been white but was now a dingy gray.

I was back in the park by then, a good hundred and fifty yards from the townhouse, but I didn’t have to shift my position for a better look, or even raise my binoculars. The youngest Portola walked directly across the street, dropped his skateboard onto the sidewalk and came straight down the path in front of my bench. He looked neither right nor left as he passed, his lower lip curled into a nasty pout, eyes hard-fixed on the path ahead. David’s hair was moussed into a little forest of quills and he was skimming the few strollers in the park, his head bent forward as if intending to impale them. Finally, he came within inches of a female jogger who yelled at him to slow down. All she got for her efforts was a raised finger.

I knew from experience that sullen can sometimes become outright defiance, that David’s hatred for authority figures might extend to all cops all the time. The challenge, if I chose to approach him, was to re-route his anger, to focus it back on his family, on the people who’d provoked his anger in the first place. The rest would be easy. After all, he’d loved Mynka.

A little after noon, I left my post in search of a bathroom and something to drink. I found a reasonably clean restroom several blocks to the north and a vendor near a deserted playground who sold me a can of soda, two bottles of spring water and a couple of boiled hotdogs. I carried the food back to a convenient bench, opened a bottle of water, then leaned forward to pour the cold water onto my head and neck. I told myself that weather is never an excuse, not for a cop; that standing up to the elements is a matter of honor. I wasn’t consoled and the water didn’t cool me off all that much either.

I was just about to bite into the first hot dog when the door of the townhouse opened and the Portolas’ maid emerged. I recognized her without difficulty. At Blessed Virgin, she’d covered her head with a gold kerchief before going inside.

Without pausing, she turned south on Riverside Drive. I dumped the hot dogs and the soda in a wire trash basket and trotted after her, opening and draining the last bottle of water as I went. The water seemed to come out through my skin as I drank, as if my stomach were somehow directly connected to my sweat glands. But I had little choice except to quickstep down Riverside Drive. The little maid was moving right along, arms swinging, legs churning. Without slowing down, she turned left on 74th Street and continued on, pausing briefly on West End Avenue to let the traffic pass, until she finally entered the very upscale Fairway Market on Broadway.

Inside the market, the air was cold enough to bring goose bumps to my forearms. It was refrigerator cold. I let my eyes sweep past stacks of piled grapefruits that looked as if they’d been spit-shined, past strawberries that might have been sculpted by Faberge, to the back of the store where I found the maid standing with a small group of customers. At that point, I was supposed to call it quits, having verified exactly what I’d come to verify: the Portola’s maid was allowed to leave the home unaccompanied. But I found myself moving closer, despite the looks I drew from the other customers.

The maid was standing in front of a twenty-foot counter devoted entirely to salmon — Nova Scotia salmon, Irish salmon, Maine salmon, Scotch salmon, wild Scotch salmon, wild Columbia River salmon, wild Canadian salmon. She’d taken a number and was impatiently awaiting service, shifting her weight from foot to foot. I walked past her, to a display of cooking oils that included walnut, hazelnut and pumpkin seed.

In her twenties, she was as plain as Mynka, with narrow downcast eyes, a long nose, broad at the tip, and a heavy jaw that would become her defining feature as she grew older. She kept glancing back and forth, from a cheap watch held to her wrist by a pink band, to an LED screen displaying the number of the patron currently being served. I couldn’t tell how far she was from the front of the line, only that there were half a dozen customers standing before the counter. But I could see that she was afraid and I had to wonder whether Aslan charged a premium for a domestic servant who could be abused, as well as used.

I left a few minutes later, heading back downtown to pick up my car. Then it was off to Maspeth, where I found Father Stan in the rectory. He looked me up and down, his smile rueful. The air conditioner in the little Nissan, never all that efficient, had been unable to overcome the heat of the sun pouring through the windows on my side of the car. My hair was plastered to my head, my clothes to my body.

‘Still sinning, I see.’

‘I’m nothing if not faithful to my obsessions,’ I admitted. ‘But I didn’t come to confess. I’m looking for Sister Kassia.’

The priest gestured to a narrow hallway. ‘First door on the left. Her new office.’

Sister Kassia’s new office must have been a broom closet in its prior incarnation. Between the desk, the file cabinets and Sister Kassia, there wasn’t room for a second chair and I was forced to stand.

‘Please don’t lean against the wall with your wet clothes,’ the nun began. ‘It was just painted.’

‘Did you ever teach school, Sister?’

‘Third grade, at Sacred Heart in Bayside. Why do you ask?’

‘I was just trying to imagine what went through a kid’s head when he walked into your classroom for the first time.’ I hesitated, but she continued to stare at me. ‘I didn’t change my clothes before coming over,’ I explained, ‘because I want you to know what you’re up against.’ I peeled the front of my shirt away from my chest. ‘This is what happens when you spend six hours on a stake-out in Riverside Park.’

‘Does that mean you’ve found them?’

‘It means I’ve found one of them. She’s working on the Upper West Side and I intend to approach her tomorrow, assuming she leaves the house. If you want to be there, you’ll have to put up with the elements.’

I’d underestimated Sister Kassia. Her bird-bright eyes softened at the news and the smile on her face was positively beatific.

‘Tonight,’ she announced, ‘I’m going to collect.’

‘Collect what?’

‘Collect on that bet I made with Father Stan. He was certain that we’d never see you again. I told him you’d be back. I told him that underneath your dissembling exterior, there lay a primitive code of honor. Once you gave your word, you’d keep it.’

‘That’s nice, Sister, but when you made the bet, did you tell him the other part? Did you tell him that I’d also be returning to Blessed Virgin because I still needed you?’

The nun’s smile broadened as she arched an already rounded eyebrow, then winked. ‘Nope,’ she declared, ‘I must have forgotten about that one.’

The phone was ringing when I walked into the house. I picked it up a moment too late and the answering machine came on. I listened to the announcement, then heard Adele’s voice.

‘Corbin, where have you been? I’m dying to know what’s going on.’

I picked up the phone and shut off the machine. ‘Adele, I just walked into the house.’

‘Busy day?’

‘Busy two days. But everything’s falling into place.’

I went on to describe the various things and the various places into which they’d fallen. Adele responded with an ‘uh-huh’ from time to time, but saved her questions until I’d finished. Then she asked for the game plan.

‘Tomorrow, Sister Kassia and I will make contact with the maid, assuming she leaves the house.’

‘Toward what end?’

‘What I’m hoping is that she’ll be anxious to improve her circumstances. Say, for instance, by getting as far away from Aslan as possible. If that’s the way it goes down, I’ll pull the women out on Saturday night and hand them over to Sister Kassia.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘Then I’ll take her into custody.’

‘Sister Kassia?’

Though I didn’t laugh at Adele’s joke, I finally paused long enough to take a breath. ‘It’s gettin’ a little crazy,’ I admitted.

Adele took pity on me. ‘I have to give you credit, Corbin. A week into the case, I didn’t think you had a chance. Now you’re almost there.’

I got off the phone a few minutes later, then took a long shower, finally pulling on shorts and a t-shirt. The apartment was relatively cool, the sun having passed behind my building while the clouds were still thick enough to shade the windows. I settled down in my office, flicked on the computer, finally sat back while it booted up.

I began with an Internet search using the single word Portola. That got me 264,000 hits, for the town of Portola (‘Gateway to the Sierras’), for Portola Packaging, for the Portola Railroad Museum, for the Portola School District, for Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish soldier who’d served as Governor of Los Californias from 1768 until 1770.

A more specific search, for Margaret Portola, produced no hits at all, and I struck out on Ronald and David as well. But I wasn’t discouraged. I jumped to the New York Times website and ran a general search for the name Portola through their archives. This time I got a mere eighty-five hits, a manageable number that allowed me to plough through several dozen abstracts before I found the obituary of a man named Guillermo Portola.

The abstract revealed only that Guillermo Portola, born in Portugal, was survived by his wife, Margaret, and his two sons, Ronald and David. For the full text of the article, I had to fork over two dollars ninety-five. But the pay-off more than justified the investment. Guillermo Portola had died in 1998, at age seventy-three, five years after suffering a massive stroke. At the moment of his passing, he’d been lying in his own bed, in his own home, surrounded by his loving family.

The obituary included Guillermo’s photograph. A man just approaching middle-age, he stood on the deck of a sleek, three-masted yacht, wearing shorts and sandals and a fisherman’s cap with a long brim that shaded his face. An Ernest Hemingway beard added a touch of bulk to his weak chin, while a broad smile revealed a set of horsey white teeth. Cradled against his chest, a brass trophy gleamed in the sunlight.

Aside from his support for the usual charities, yachting was Guillermo’s one claim to fame. In 1958, he’d won a race from New York to San Francisco that traced the route of the old clipper ships around Cape Horn. In 1963, he’d finished third in a competition that traced the route of Magellan across the Pacific. In 1974, his yacht had capsized in a squall thirty miles outside of Bermuda. All aboard were rescued after passing several harrowing hours in a life raft, but the vessel was lost.

Oddly, there was no mention of Guillermo’s business activities, leaving me to wonder if he’d inherited his money, if he’d lived the life of an aristocratic playboy. Guillermo had been married four times, the last to his personal assistant, Margaret Applewood of Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1984. He’d been fifty-nine on the day of the wedding, his blushing bride a mere twenty-four. Or maybe she wasn’t blushing; maybe she was just as bold as could be. Certainly there’d been no hiding the fact that she was pregnant. According to the date of birth on his driver’s license, Ronald Portola was born three months to the day after Guillermo put the ring on his mom’s finger.

According to his Times obituary, Guillermo Portola had died at home. Dying at home, especially if there’s no doctor present, raises all kinds of flags for criminal investigators, and so much the worse if the deceased was too feeble to resist an attack. Of course, Guillermo’s obituary hadn’t mentioned an investigation, but that possibility had reared its tantalizing head when the obituary also failed to mention the name of a funeral home, a memorial service, or the date of the funeral. Maybe the Portola family had instructed a crematorium to drop the old man’s ashes into the nearest dumpster, maybe they just wanted to be rid of him. And maybe his burial had been awaiting the outcome of an autopsy.

The New York Times prides itself on avoiding sleaze. If the ME had termed the death a homicide, the paper would have reported the facts, but the rumor mill was beneath its collective dignity. Not so the New York Post, a Murdoch-owned tabloid whose most complex stories begin and end on the same page. The Post runs on sleaze the way locomotives run on diesel fuel.

The New York Post did not disappoint. The paper’s first story, datelined May 17, 1998, six weeks after Guillermo’s passage, ran beneath the headline: ‘UNDETERMINED!’

What was undetermined was the cause of Guillermo’s death, which the ME had failed to pinpoint after an autopsy that included a tox screen. But there was no mention of the ME’s findings in a far more pertinent area, manner of death, which includes natural, homicide, suicide and accidental among its classifications. I knew from experience that individuals die for reasons that cannot be divined by even the most thorough autopsy, and that pathologists commonly rule the manner of death undetermined and the cause of death natural.

Nevertheless, my persistence did not go unrewarded. The story concluded with a description of Guillermo’s will, written a full year after his stroke. The estate was to be divided between his wife and two children, with Margaret receiving fifteen percent of the estimated forty million dollars in assets. The kiddies would split the rest, but not until they reached the age of forty. Until that time, the estate’s executor, Margaret Portola, would run their lives.