The cold room

TWENTY-EIGHT

There was no good reason to get out early on the following morning. The Portolas wouldn’t be leaving their home until noon. But I was too restless to sit still. I was up at eight o’clock, scrambling a couple of eggs, washing them down with coffee. Then I dragged the vacuum cleaner out of the closet and went to work. I needed to keep busy.

I was in my office, the vacuum cleaner so loud I failed to hear the house phone until the answering machine kicked on, then off. A second later, the cell phone in my pocket began to ring.

‘Corbin, it’s me.’

I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter to nine.

‘Adele, I was gonna call you later.’

When she hesitated, I felt my stomach churn. I was sure she’d challenge me, that she’d claim I was avoiding her. The accusation would be ironic, of course, since she was the one who had left town. But it would also be true.

Instead, she changed the subject. ‘Did you make contact with the maid?’ she asked.

I smothered a sigh of relief. ‘Tynia Cernek. That’s her name. Sister Kassia and I spoke to her on the street for a few minutes. We’ll have a longer session today around noon while the family’s out of the house.’

‘You think she can help?’

‘Not with the murder investigation, not directly. She didn’t even know that Mynka was dead.’

‘What about indirectly?’

‘Once I put this business with Sister Kassia behind me, I’m going to take a shot at one of the Portolas. If I pick the wrong one, I’m in big trouble. So, the more I know about them, the better.’ I went on to describe the family, each of them, in detail. ‘Margaret’s out of the question,’ I concluded. ‘She’ll lawyer up right away. It’s between the two kids.’

‘Do you think Margaret killed Mynka?’

‘It’s too early for that. Plus, right now, I’m trying to concentrate on the deal I made with Sister Kassia and Father Stan.’

‘Actually, that’s why I called. I can’t stop thinking about what you said yesterday.’

I glanced through the window, at a wall of brick across the way. I told myself not to be distracted, no matter what came next. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Corbin. You plan to wait until Saturday night, when the women and their children are together, then force an entry in order to pull them out.’

‘If there’s another option that accounts for them, I don’t know it.’

‘That’s not the point.’ Adele gave it a few beats, then said, ‘The point is that you’re going in alone. And don’t deny it.’

‘Well, I definitely deny it. I’m not going in alone. I’m going in with Sister Kassia.’

Adele laughed, in spite of herself. ‘That’s good. That’s you. But what about Hansen?’

‘First, I promised to keep the priest’s name out of it. Second, I have no idea what Bill Sarney will do if he gets his hands on those women before I do.’ I stopped for a moment as I collected my thoughts. ‘Look, I’m assuming that Aslan’s presence in this country, if it ever becomes public knowledge, would embarrass somebody high up on the food chain. But I don’t know why or who, and I don’t ever expect to know. This does not bother me, Adele. I can live with it. But there’s still a question. If I call in Sarney and Hansen, whose interests will they represent? A bunch of illegal immigrants and their snot-nosed brats? Or that top-feeder I just mentioned?’

I paused long enough to catch a breath. ‘On the other hand, if I get them away from Aslan and if Sister Kassia supplies them with a lawyer before Sarney knows what’s happening, the potential for negative publicity will force the bosses to cooperate.’

There was nothing more to be said on the subject and Adele remained silent for a moment before returning to her original point. ‘What you’ve said, Corbin, doesn’t affect the bottom line one bit. You plan to go in alone. How do you know that Aslan won’t be waiting for you?’

‘Aslan doesn’t live with his workers. Most of the time, they’re chaperoned by a woman named Zashka Ochirov, who also cares for the children. I’m going to arrange some sort of signal with Tynia — maybe a window up or down — to let me know if there’s anyone in the apartment besides Zashka. And I don’t plan to kick the door open. Tynia will open it when I knock.’

Adele’s tone sharpened. ‘Have you bothered to count the number of things that can go wrong?’

‘I stopped when I ran out of fingers. But, hey, Tynia gave me the address of the apartment where she stayed last weekend. I went there yesterday and spotted Zashka Ochirov. Now, it just so happens that I have witnesses who can put Zashka at Domestic Solutions when Barsakov was killed. That gives me an excuse to detain her, to put her in the box. Adele, Zashka’s a petty con artist. If I was willing to let Tynia and the rest fend for themselves, I could break Zashka in an hour. You hear what I’m saying? If I forget about these women, I can put Aslan behind me in a couple of days without taking any serious risk. Remember, it was you, Sister Kassia and Father Stan who insisted that I protect their interests.’

The outburst surprised both of us. I found myself carrying the phone into the bedroom, too wired to stand still.

‘I’m sorry,’ I finally said.

‘It’s my fault, Corbin. I should be there with you.’

The words smacked into me, opening a hole through which Adele poured. I felt a rush of emotion, a longing deep enough to drown in, as though a floodwall had broken. It was the last thing I needed. I glanced at my watch as I pulled myself together. ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I have to meet Sister Kassia. This is a big day for us.’

‘I understand. It’s all right. I only wanted to catch up.’

Sister Kassia and I found seats on a convenient bench in Riverside Park a little after ten. We proceeded to wash down a bag of cheese blintzes with large containers of coffee picked up at a nearby Starbucks. Sister Kassia had prepared the blintzes early that morning and they were incredibly soft and delicate.

‘I thought,’ she told me as she unwrapped them, ‘that we might do better than a bag of stale doughnuts.’

She was right, and I showed my gratitude, once our breakfast was consumed and I’d cleaned my fingers, by reviewing the items I wanted our impending interview with Tynia Cernek to include. Sister Kassia was slated to conduct the interview, which meant she and Tynia would be speaking Polish. The point was to establish trust, to head off any last-minute resistance when I finally came knocking on that door in Astoria.

This time around, I was unable to banish Adele, at least not entirely. She continued to work on me, an itch I couldn’t scratch. The worst part was that the dangers she’d described were very real. Aslan would kill me if he could.

The nun and I were still at it when a stretch limo, a white Mercedes, rolled up to the townhouse across the street. Ten minutes later, the Portola family emerged. Margaret was dressed in a dark suit which she’d complemented with pearls at her throat and ears. Leonard also wore a suit, double-breasted, black and immaculately tailored, over a blood-red shirt. By contrast, David’s olive-green suit fitted him badly and his striped tie was poorly knotted and askew. Dress-up was not his favorite game and he was unable, or unwilling, to fake it.

I rose from the bench as the limo turned onto 82nd Street, draped my bag across my shoulder, finally offered my hand to Sister Kassia. Together, we walked to the door of the townhouse, which opened before I could knock.

I followed the nun inside, past Tynia, who slid the door closed behind us. Tynia was wearing an apron over her blue dress and she wiped her palms across the front, but did not offer her hand. We were standing in a large entrance hall paneled in dark wood. There were side chairs flanking the door leading into the house, with oval seats and backs, and four oil paintings on the wall above the wainscoting. The paintings, all landscapes, were surrounded by enormous gilt frames and seemed vaguely familiar.

Without a word, Tynia led us to a stairway against the northern wall, then down into a basement kitchen. I came last, hanging back when I reached the bottom of the stairs. For a moment, I failed to register any of the kitchen’s details except for one. On the other side of the room, directly across from where I stood, a wooden door rose to the height of my head. The door turned on hinges made of hammered iron and the gap between door and frame was sealed with rubbery gray insulation.

I waited where I was until Tynia and Sister Kassia were seated at a long table, lost in conversation. Then I crossed the room to run the fingers of my right hand over the front of the door. The faint mahogany stain was flaking and the surface felt dry and rough. Around the handle, a black semicircle attested to decades of wear. Setting down my bag, I gave the handle a yank. It released with a satisfying ka-chunk and the door turned effortlessly on its hinges. I was left staring into a room about ten feet deep, with shelves and bins, some open, some covered, to my left and right. The room was narrow, not more than four feet wide, including the bins, and I had to turn my shoulders when I stepped inside.

Instinctively, I reached out to keep the door from shutting, but I needn’t have bothered. Unlike most refrigerator doors, which close by themselves if left ajar, this door was weighted to swing outward. Just as well, because there was no inner latch. If the door shut behind me, I’d have to rely on a red button, labeled EMERGENCY, mounted on the wall.

The button was a great idea, no question, but as a means of escape, it depended entirely on the good will of the individual, or individuals, on the other side of the door.

The cold air cut its way into my skin as I edged toward the back of the refrigerator. I found myself wanting to jam my hands into my pockets. Instead, I began to pull out the bins, to examine them closely, along with the shelves beneath them. I was looking for blood evidence, which I didn’t find, but I was struck by the number of empty bins. There was a lot of food in the refrigerator, including a dozen varieties of cheese and enough fruit to stock a pushcart, but the unit was only a third full. Clearly, it was too large for a single family.

My fingertips and toes were growing numb by the time I gave up the search. My forearms were rapidly following suit. I was wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt, loosely woven, and lightweight tropical slacks, both seemingly as porous as fishnets. The temperature inside the refrigerator could not have been more than a few degrees above freezing.

For a moment, I stood in the doorway, letting warm air from the kitchen wash across my body. Sister Kassia and Tynia were still seated at the table, still engaged in intense conversation. But now the empty space in front of Tynia was taken up by a set of silverware, a service for twelve by the look of it. Tynia was working on the knives, one at a time, coating them with polish, then buffing them until they gleamed. She worked quickly, leaving me to suppose that she’d been assigned a number of duties, and that she faced consequences if they were not completed before the return of her employer.

‘Sister?’ I waited until the nun turned to me. ‘I’m going to close the door. I want you to open it in five minutes. Not before, understand?’ I shifted my gaze to Tynia. Initially, I found her eyes questioning, but then her doubts were replaced by simple recognition. We understood each other now.

When the door closed and the refrigerator went dark, I took several steps back. I couldn’t shake a feeling that the room was contracting around me and I instinctively hunched over, as if avoiding a blow. In that moment, the cold became organic, an alive and hungry parasite burrowing down through my skin.

I was tempted to fight back, to jog in place, to flap my arms, as I knew Mynka had been tempted, as Tynia had been tempted. But there was just so much oxygen in that little room and the harder I worked the sooner it would be exhausted. The only question was which would kill me first, would I freeze to death or would I suffocate?

But these were questions that didn’t need answering. After a time — which I was unable to measure — I began to shiver, a reflex which became more and more intense as the seconds ticked by. Eventually, conserving oxygen ceased to be a viable option. I started to run in place, slowly at first, than faster, until my body produced enough heat to drive the cold away. The effect, as I well knew, would only be temporary. As long as that door remained closed, the cold was an enemy that couldn’t be defeated, or even kept at bay for any length of time.

Literally blind, I groped my way toward what I hoped was the room’s door, only to discover myself up against the back wall. I turned on my heel, aiming to re-trace my steps, but was unable to walk a straight line. I kept lurching into the bins on either side as I shuffled along. By the time I reached the door, I was breathing hard. Because the adrenalin was pumping? Or because my lungs weren’t getting enough oxygen?

I let my index finger rest on the emergency button, wondering how many times Mynka had stood here, how many times she’d pushed the panic button? I wondered if she’d become angry when no one responded. Whether she’d held the button down, smashed her fist on the door, demanded release. Or if she was in fear of some greater punishment, something worse than the cold room.

When I pressed the button, a buzzer sounded on the other side of the door. The buzzer was loud even in the sealed refrigerator; in the kitchen, it must have been ear splitting. I tried to imagine Mynka’s tormentor on the other side of the door, knowing it might have been Margaret or Ronald, or both.

The sound of the buzzer, of course, would only inspire a true sadist to persist, to confine Mynka long enough, before she was killed, to produce an unforeseen consequence. I’d noted this consequence at the crime scene, as had Dr Hyong at the autopsy: lividity that should have been purple-black was rosy pink. That single anomaly, more than any other factor, was responsible for my presence in the Portola townhouse.

I didn’t panic, didn’t pound on the door or repeatedly press the emergency button, as I imagined that Mynka and Tynia had, but I felt an overwhelming sense of relief when Sister Kassia opened the door and I stepped out. The nun was holding a mug of hot coffee and smiling faintly, while Tynia stood by the table, polishing cloth in hand.

I took the mug, cradling it between my fingers until I stopped shivering. ‘Who did it?’ I asked Tynia. When she shook her head, I added, ‘Who put you in the cold room?’

‘Madame,’ she answered.

‘Not Ronald?’

Her sudden smile was contemptuous. ‘Never.’ She turned to Sister Kassia and spoke in rapid-fire Polish.

‘Tynia says that Ronald is a coward, that he only does what his mother tells him to do. She says that when Margaret’s angry, she calls her son, “La Bamba.”?’

‘What about David? Did she have a pet name for David?’

‘Jerk,’ Tynia responded. ‘Always she is saying, “Jerk, do this, do that.” David is hating this, but is also fearing the mother. She is beating her sons from time they are babies.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Mynka is telling me this and I am seeing Madame for myself. When becomes angry, she is crazy woman. Punch, kick, slap. Her sons are pushing her away, but they are never fighting back.’

I nodded, then turned to Sister Kassia. ‘Are you and Tynia finished?’

‘We have a bit more ground to cover. I’ve spent most of the time describing what comes after the women and their children arrive at the shelter.’

‘What’d you tell her?’

‘I told her that we’ll get them jobs as soon as they’re settled in, that their children will be cared for by professionals while they work, that we’ll help them find housing, that legal assistance will be available.’

I left it there and began to search the kitchen for any trace of blood evidence. I didn’t know whether or not a servant has the right to allow a cop into her employer’s home, or if a cop, once admitted, has the right to seize evidence. But if I discovered traces of Mynka’s killing in that kitchen, I intended to document them. Unfortunately, the only evidence I found was evidence of a thorough cleanup, a cleanup that included the floor beneath the refrigerator and beneath a huge dishwasher. In the broom closet, every item, from the dustpan to the mop, was new. That didn’t mean there was no evidence to recover, only that recovery demanded a level of expertise that excluded Harry Corbin.

When I took a chair at the kitchen table next to Sister Kassia and settled down, Tynia was finishing up the last of the teaspoons. By then, we’d been inside the townhouse for about an hour.

‘You’re not going to like this, Harry, so let’s get it on the table.’ Sister Kassia’s brows formed twin arches above her eyes, arches that mirrored the curve of her downturned mouth. ‘Tynia has been in touch with some of the other women.’

I looked over at Tynia. She shrank back in her chair and dropped the spoon she was polishing. I listened to it clatter on the tabletop, thinking that she was right to be afraid.

‘Harry?’ The nun tapped my arm. ‘There are five women staying in the Astoria apartment. Tynia only contacted two of them.?.?.’

‘On whose phone?’

‘The Portolas’. But she made the calls when the family was out of the house.’

‘And how do we know somebody wasn’t eavesdropping on the other end? You understand, if Aslan gets wind of our plans, not only will the women and the kids vanish, the Portolas will be notified, at which point they’ll lawyer up and my case against Mynka’s killer will also vanish. Even if I eventually prove that she was murdered in this very room, I’ll never be able to prove who did it. My entire strategy is based on catching the family unaware.’

Sister Kassia’s eyes dropped to her hands. I can’t be sure, but I suspect that she’d finally grasped the magnitude of the risk I was taking. In any event, it was Tynia who broke the silence. ‘Mynka, this is where she was dying?’

‘Yes, Tynia, your friend died in this very room. Does that frighten you? Do you want to leave right now? Because if you do, I can arrange to have you taken directly to a detention center.’

Tynia took Sister Kassia’s arm and began to speak in Polish. She spoke very quickly, but her tone was even. I settled back in my chair and waited until she paused.

‘Tynia says that last weekend she and the other girls were taken to a place they’d never been. Aslan wasn’t there, nor was a man named Konstantine. But there were other men there. They offered the girls new jobs at a motel in Los Angeles.’

‘They say to us it will be better,’ Tynia interrupted. ‘Time off every day to be with children. These men, they have nothing in their eyes. They are looking at you like you are dead.’ Suddenly, she reached over the table to take my hand. ‘We are ready, all of us. For a long time we have been ready. We cannot live more like this, every second afraid. Help us.’

The refrigerator’s motor kicked on at that moment and I listened to what might have passed for a death rattle before it finally settled into a low-pitched hum.

‘Listen, Harry,’ the nun said. ‘The women Tynia contacted are old friends of hers. They knew each other in Poland and came over together. They’re eager to cooperate.’

‘Fine, now tell me the rest of it. What, exactly, have these ladies cooked up?’

‘On their day off, when they’re in Astoria, they’re watched by a woman named.?.?.’

‘Zashka Ochirov.’

Tynia jerked back in surprise, but Sister Kassia merely smiled. ‘Tell me about Zashka,’ I continued. ‘Is she armed? Will she fight?’

‘Zashka takes care of the children when the women are at work. According to Tynia, she treats the children kindly and they respond to her without fear. The only threat she’s ever made against the women is to call one of her bosses.’

I nodded. ‘Did you make arrangements for a signal?’ This was another topic I’d asked her to explore.

‘There’s a window in Tynia’s bedroom that faces the street. If Ochirov is alone when you arrive at ten o’clock, the window will be raised. If there’s someone else in the apartment, but Tynia will be able to let you in, the window will be closed. If she can’t let you in, the window will be halfway down.’

‘Good. Did you tell her that you won’t be there when I come through the door?’

‘I told her that I’d be waiting downstairs, ready to take her and the others away. She was suspicious at first, but she finally accepted it.’

I turned back to Tynia then. My sense was that I’d done about as well as I could have, given the constraints, and it was fast closing in on the time for Sister Kassia and me to leave. I just had a few more questions.

‘Tell me how old Mynka was?’

Tynia’s expression clouded for a moment when I said Mynka’s name, but then she grew sober and her eyes lit up. I liked what I saw in her eyes. When the time came, she would not back down.

‘Are you knowing Mynka is pregnant?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Then this is two peoples who are dying. Two lives are being killed.’

I nodded agreement, then repeated my question. ‘How old was Mynka?’

‘She was eighteen years, still a girl only.’ Tynia rattled off several sentences in Polish, which Sister Kassia promptly translated.

‘She says that Mynka loved romance novels, that she dreamed of true love. Mynka thought that love would save her.’

Yeah, right.

‘One last item, Tynia, and we’ll be gone. David Portola. Tell me what he’s like?’

As she considered her reply, Tynia put the last of the spoons into a mahogany chest and closed the top. Then she rose to put the chest away.

‘David is father of Mynka’s child.’

‘I already know that. I want to know what he’s like, as a person.’

Tynia thought it over for a moment. ‘This boy is with anger every minute. Sometimes, I think he is ready to blow up, like bomb. But on nights when I am coming past his room, I can hear him inside and he is weeping. It is for Mynka that he weeps.’