Little Girl Lost (Hard Case Crime) Page 11

  “Not open yet, champ,” he said. “Another half hour.”

  “Danny Matin around?”

  “This early? You’re joking, man.”

  “So who’s here?”

  “You and me, man.” He finished the box of Budweiser, started in on a box of Coors. “What you want Danny for anyway?”

  I flashed my wallet open and shut, giving him a glimpse of something that might have been a badge. “Girl who used to dance here was involved in a robbery, later turned up dead downtown. We’re investigating the connection.”

  “You talking about Jessie? That girl was bad news.

  Everybody knew it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He came over, rested his forearms on the bar. “She was always asking for trouble. Guys you wouldn’t want to run into on the street, she’d take them in the V.I.P. room two at a time. Nice little white girl like her and she takes these guys twice her size in the back. More prison tats they got, more she likes them.”

  “And what would she do back there?”

  “I don’t know, man, but whatever it was it must have been good, since most of the time they came back for more. Wasn’t the type of repeat business Danny really wanted. He was glad, I’ll tell you, when she stopped showing up. Although we was worried maybe she’d got herself hurt or killed. Which I guess she did.”

  It fit. If she was trying to recruit a pair of strongarm types to carry out a job, this was the sort of place to do it. It sounded like she’d had her pick of the Bronx’s tough male population.

  “What shift did she work?”

  “It varied. Some weeks, she’d be working now, ten to three. Some weeks she’d do the graveyard shift, two a.m. to seven. Never saw her work prime time. She wasn’t a prime time kind of girl.”

  That fit, too: she couldn’t be in two places at once, and the hours he was calling prime time were probably the ones she spent at the Sin Factory.

  I took out a photocopy of the picture that had run in the Daily News, unfolded it, and handed it to him. “Just for the record, is this her?”

  He only looked at it for a second. “Yeah. I mean, she looked different when she was dancing here, but yeah, could be her.”

  “Could be?”

  “Man, you show me a xerox of a photo from a newspaper from when she was in, what’s that, high school? College? Best I can say is could be. You show me a black girl, I’d say couldn’t be.”

  “So all you’re really saying is that this girl and the one you knew as Jessie were both white?”

  “No, man. That girl looks right. I don’t know.” He looked at the picture again, handed it back. “It’s just that she’d grown up a lot since that picture was taken.”

  We all have, I said. But I said it to myself.

  I left a card with him to give to Danny Matin when Matin got in. Martin was the owner; I didn’t expect him to be able to tell me anything more than he’d told Catch, assuming he ever called, but you never find out if you don’t ask. I hadn’t gotten much out of the bartender, but I didn’t consider it a wasted trip. I’d wanted to see the place Miranda had danced, the place where she’d picked up the men who’d robbed Murco. When you put together a puzzle, not every piece is equally important — some just show a bit of the sky, not George Washington’s head. But you don’t have a complete picture until every piece is in place.

  I rode the subway back to Manhattan. It gave me plenty of time to think. When I’d called Murco to get Matin’s name, I’d also asked him for Miranda’s address, and that’s where I was headed now. What would I find there? Probably nothing, because that’s pretty much what Catch had found when he’d searched the place. But again, I wanted the whole picture, and for that I needed to see the place where she’d lived, the place where Murco’s money had gone missing.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Murco had said. “We’ve already been over the place. There’s nothing to see.”

  “With all due respect, you’re not a detective, and neither is your son.”

  “The police have been over it, too.”

  “You’re going to tell me the police never miss anything?”

  This got a laugh out of him, or something like a laugh. It was a nasty sound. “You can look if you want, Mr. Blake. But the clock’s ticking, and I’m not a patient man.”

  “Neither am I,” I said.

  I wondered what he would do if I did find something and what I found suggested that the person who had tipped Miranda off about the buy was someone close to him. A betrayal by one of the men he bought drugs from might not come as a surprise, but what if it was his own son or the club manager he’d worked with for years?

  “How sure are you that Miranda got half the money?”

  “Very.”

  “They couldn’t have been lying to you, trying to hold something back?”

  “Oh, they tried. That didn’t last long.”

  “Well, if she had the money in her apartment at one point and it’s not there now, that means someone took it. I don’t think it was the police — they’d be working harder on this case than they are if they’d found half a million dollars in cash in a murder victim’s apartment. That means the money was probably taken out of the apartment by whoever killed her. And if that’s the case, someone in the building might have seen something, or heard something—”

  “You’re just fishing.”

  “Of course I’m fishing — what do you think detective work is?”

  “All I have to say, Mr. Blake, is that you’d better catch something. Soon.”

  Before heading up to the Bronx, I’d also called Leo and brought him up to speed on where things stood. I figured maybe he’d be able to see some connection I’d missed or suggest a path I hadn’t thought of pursuing. But all he’d said was the same thing Susan had, which was that I should be careful.

  “You’ve already managed to get two dangerous men angry at you. Wayne and Roy. You seem to be in good for the time being with the Khachadurians, but who knows how long that will last. Then there’s this girl you’ve planted in your mother’s apartment — she seems okay, but the truth is you don’t know whether you can count on her.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” I said. “But Murco’s another story. On one hand, what’s he going to do to me if I don’t turn up the killer? On the other hand, what if I do and it turns out to be someone close to him, which it pretty much has to be?”

  “Like we used to say in the army, one way you’re screwed, the other you’re fucked. That’s why I’m telling you to be careful.”

  “Don’t you have any other advice?” I’d asked. “You always have advice.”

  “I gave you my advice five days ago. I told you to stay out of it. You didn’t listen. Now you’re just going to have to see it through to the end.”

  The train squealed to a stop, and a voice over the loudspeaker said, “Eighth Avenue, last stop. Transfer for the A, C, and E lines... “

  I pushed out of the car, joined the midday crowd elbowing its way up to the street. I kept one hand firmly on the flap of my jacket pocket as I climbed the crowded stairs.

  “Can I at least come by,” I’d asked Leo, “and pick up the other gun?”

  “Yeah,” he’d said, “maybe you’d better.”

  Chapter 18

  I checked the address against the slip of paper I’d written it down on. It was a converted loft building on the far West Side, one of the neighborhoods in Manhattan that still looks the way it did fifty years ago. On the outside, at least — inside, the building had new elevators, a lobby sporting wire sculptures and recessed track lights, and no doubt rents that weren’t easy to pay even if your income was tax-free. I watched through the glass panel of the door as a man in a heavy overcoat came out of the elevator. I stepped out of his way as he left the building, and he held the door for me. I thanked him and went inside.

  The slip of paper said 4-J, so I rode the elevator to the fourth floor and followed the corridor past the gerrymandered ch
unks of what had once been warehouse space. Landlords in New York know a thing or two about making silk purses: throw up a few sheetrock walls and your derelict industrial building can rent for thousands to hungry young things who can’t afford to live in midtown but don’t want the indignity of moving to Brooklyn or Queens. 4-J was the last apartment on the floor, and having been in a few loft buildings before, I knew it was probably the smallest, made up of whatever space had been left over after the rest of the floor was laid out. I had no key, but Catch Khachadurian hadn’t had one either. I slid an expired MasterCard between the door and the jamb and drove it up sharply against the tongue of the latch. If the deadbolt had been on, it wouldn’t have done me any good, but why would anyone have locked the deadbolt on a dead woman’s apartment? In any event, no one had. The door popped open.

  The place was small all right, though I’d seen smaller. One wall had a bank of old-fashioned mullioned windows set into naked brick and a rack radiator clanking out heat. A frameless futon lay against the neighboring wall, a few copies of Cosmo and Us piled neatly at the foot. The floor was bare but clean. The walls were empty. Either the apartment’s previous visitors had stripped the place or Miranda had lived a pretty spartan life in it. She probably hadn’t spent a lot of time at home, I figured. There certainly wasn’t much temptation to, and as I looked around I could appreciate the appeal a windfall of five hundred thousand dollars must have held for her. It wasn’t millions, it wasn’t an amount to kill or get killed over, you’d never make a movie about people trying to steal that little, but if you had it, you could get yourself a real bed, a real apartment in a better part of town, a rug for the floor, maybe some pictures for the walls, instead of spending every dollar you earned just to keep the landlord at bay.

  The far side of the room doubled as the kitchen, a small counter separating the two-burner electric stove on one side from the sink on the other. There was a miniature refrigerator under the sink, a pair of cabinets over it. The refrigerator had a couple of apples that had started to go soft, a sugar bowl she presumably kept there to keep the bugs out of it, two cans of tuna, half a lemon. The cabinet contained a half-finished box of Lipton tea bags, a few dishes, two mugs.

  There was no closet. What there was instead was a tall chest of drawers, and inside I found piles of clothing. Not neatly folded, but that was to be expected given that they’d been rifled through at least twice. Lots of T-shirts, a few sweaters, some skirts and dresses. Underwear. It felt strange going through her clothes. This was the closest I’d come to Miranda in ten years, and the closest I ever would. I could smell her on her clothing, the quiet, simple, lived-in smell any dresser full of clothing gets over time, and if it wasn’t quite the smell I remembered, it was close enough to trigger all sorts of memories.

  The bras I found gave me a sense of the size she’d chosen to make her breasts, and it was definitely an increase, though not of the Mandy Mountains variety. I kept waiting to find her costumes, her work clothes, and in the bottom drawer I finally did. Thin gowns, a Lycra bodysuit, g-strings in various colors, front-clasp satin bras, elbow-length gloves. A few pairs of shoes. A tangle of stockings.

  A narrow hallway led to a surprisingly large bathroom. The medicine cabinet was open a few inches, and when I tried to close it the door swung open again. Not much inside — a few tubes of lipstick, some eyebrow pencils, eye shadow. A nasal inhaler for congestion. A small bottle of Anbesol and a large bottle of nail polish remover, a plastic bag of three hundred cotton balls that now held something more like fifty, a small tube of toothpaste squeezed almost to the end. No toothbrush, or hairbrush either, but I figured the police had probably taken those. It was the easiest way to get material for the sort of DNA test Kirsch had told me the police had run. What surprised me more was that I didn’t see any of the things you’d expect from a contact lens wearer — no saline, no lens case, no spares. Maybe the police took those things, too, or maybe I was wrong and she hadn’t switched to contacts. Maybe she’d had laser surgery done by one of the crack ophthalmologists at Rianon, or else one of the dozen who advertised on the subway here in the city.

  I returned to the living room. What else was there to see? There were no other rooms. I lifted the futon, pulled the dresser away from the wall. There were no more torn paper bands. The phone on top of the dresser still had a dial tone and the twelve-inch television sitting on the floor still had reception, so neither the telephone company nor the cable company had switched off her service yet. Maybe no one had notified them.

  I flipped through the pages of the magazines, but nothing fell out other than a few blow-in subscription cards. I put them back. Hanging from a hook on the front door was a maroon cloth baseball cap and a light blue denim jacket. Searching the pockets only produced a crumpled tissue and a foil-wrapped roll of breath mints.

  The apartment was as bare as a hotel room. Some clothes, some bits of food, a portable TV set, a phone — it was the home of someone accustomed to picking up and leaving on a moment’s notice, someone used to carrying everything she owned in the trunk of a car. For how many years had Miranda been on the road? Five? Six? For all I knew, she might only have come back to New York right before getting the job at the Sin Factory. If she’d lived longer, maybe she’d eventually have put down roots, but it hadn’t happened yet.

  Of course, she’d already had roots in the city once. Her mother. Me. I couldn’t help wondering whether, if she’d lived longer and had stayed in the city, she would ever have called me. Or even whether she had. Like everyone else, I occasionally found empty messages on my answering machine, was the victim of late night hangup calls. Could one of them have been her?

  Or had she tried to look me up and been stymied by my unlisted number? If I’d been listed, might she have reached me and let me help her?

  Maybe. Maybe. It didn’t make any difference now.

  I looked out through the peephole to make sure the hallway was empty before letting myself out.

  There was no 4-I, and knocking on the door to 4-H produced no result. But 4-G was home: I could hear the radio going through the door and heard its volume drop after I knocked. Footsteps shuffled toward me and I heard the plastic peephole cover slide up.

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “My name is John Blake, and I’m investigating the death of one of your neighbors, Miranda Sugarman.” I held my investigator’s license up in front of the peephole.

  “I don’t know anyone named Sugarman.”

  “She lived in 4-J, just down the hall.”

  “Oh, the girl Winston rented to. That must be why all the police were here on Sunday. I didn’t realize she’d died.” I heard locks turning and then the door swung in, but only a little. In the narrow space between door and wall an old woman’s face appeared. “Are you with the police?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m a private investigator. Also a friend of the Sugarman family.”

  “Oh.” She brought a hand up to scratch her chin. “What happened?”

  “Ms. Sugarman was found dead Sunday morning at the club where she worked,” I said. “I’m trying to find out about anything that might have happened in the days leading up to her death. Did you see her at all, or see anyone else coming or going from her apartment?”

  “It’s not her apartment, it’s Winston’s. But he hasn’t lived there for a long time.” She lowered her voice. “We’re not supposed to sublet, but a lot of people in the building do it. You know, under the table. Everyone looks the other way.”

  “How long had she been living there?”

  “Six months? Seven months?” She looked at me as though I might know which was right. “I said hello to her the day she moved in, so I should remember. Winston was with her. It was in April, so what’s that, eight months?”

  I nodded.

  “She was very pretty. I thought maybe she was his girlfriend, but he said no, she was just someone who was taking the apartment.”

  “Did you ever talk to he
r?”

  “Talk to her? I hardly ever saw her.” She shook her head. “Coming and going late at night, and always in a rush. I’d hear her in the hallway, but by the time I’d look out she was already gone.”

  “Do you remember her having any visitors?”

  “Sure, once in a while.”

  “Recently?”

  “Let me think.” I waited. “The walls are so thin, you can hear everything going on in the hallway. You hear people coming and going all the time. 4-J? I don’t know. The policemen asked the same thing, and I told them I couldn’t be sure.”

  “Do you remember seeing anyone in the hallway on New Year’s Eve or the next day?”

  “New Year’s Eve, sure. There were people coming and going all night. Going to parties, coming home at one in the morning. Very noisy. And then the police came later on Sunday morning, of course.”

  “How about earlier in the day on Saturday? Did you see anyone going into her apartment or leaving?”

  “I don’t stand at the door all day watching who’s in the hallway,” she said.

  “I know, I understand, I just thought you might remember if someone came by—”

  “Just because I’m home all day doesn’t mean I’m one of those busybodies who minds everyone else’s business.”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” I said. “But if you happened to notice anything, if you saw or heard anything, it could make an enormous difference.” I glanced at the label under the peephole. “Mrs. Krieger, this is a murder investigation. If you know anything, it’s important that you share it with us.”

  “The last time I saw anyone going to that apartment,” she said slowly, “was maybe a week ago. I was taking out the garbage, and when I came back from the incinerator room, I saw a young woman ringing the doorbell. I think that’s the last time I saw someone going to 4-J, except for when the cable company sent someone.”

  “What did this woman look like?”

  She shrugged with her eyebrows as well as her shoulders. “I just saw her from the back for two seconds.”