Little Girl Lost jb-1 Page 11

  “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 chunks 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 po
ckets 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 her?”

  “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.”

  “Did Miranda open the door?”

  “I don’t know, I imagine so.” She thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I remember I heard the door close.”

  “And you don’t remember anything about this woman?”

  “No,” she said. “Just that she was holding flowers.”

  “Flowers?”

  “Wrapped up in paper, like you get in the street. I remember that.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, grimaced as she settled into the new position. “That’s all I remember.”

  “Did she have dark hair, blond hair-”

  “Blond hair, I think. She was wearing one of those hats, like the teenagers wear, but under it I’m pretty sure her hair was blond.”

  A woman with blond hair wearing a hat and carrying flowers. The flowers made me think of Jocelyn, but that was silly – it could have been anyone.

  The hat, on the other hand, made me think of the cap I’d found on the inside of Miranda’s door. “Do you remember what color the hat was?” I asked.

  She strained to remember. “Red? Dark red, almost purple.”

  That was the hat, all right. Whoever had worn it had apparently left it behind. Which was all well and good, but it didn’t tell me anything about what happened to Murco’s money.

  “Are you sure there was no one who visited her more recently than that? Maybe on the afternoon of the thirtyfirst or the morning of the first?” I tried to picture how large a package containing half a million dollars in hundred- dollar bills might be. Also how heavy. “Maybe someone carrying a shopping bag or a satchel, or maybe a suitcase?”

  She shook her head helplessly. “Just the man from the cable company. He had one of those cases on wheels, the kind you pull with a handle. But no one with a suitcase or a bag.”

  “The cable company sent someone on New Year’s Day?”

  “No, this was Saturday, maybe five o’clock. I was surprised, too. Usually their service is terrible, and on a holiday evening, forget it. But the reception’s been so bad, someone must have complained.”

  “And he went to 4-J?”

  “I don’t know, maybe it was 4-H – I just saw him coming this way on his way out. I tried to get him to come take a look at my cable, too, but he said I’d have to call for an appointment. He was quite rude.”

  “And he was pulling a case?”

  “Sure, for his equipment.”

  “Mrs. Krieger,” I said, “what did this man look like?”

  “I don’t know. He was young – not like you, but young. Maybe forty. Very short.”

  “When you say short… was he shorter than me?”

  “Oh, yes. Much shorter.”

  Much shorter.
“Did he have dark hair? Slick, dark hair?”

  “Oh, yes. It looked very greasy. These workers they send over aren’t very clean, you know.”

  Very short. Greasy hair. That could describe any of ten thousand men in New York, maybe more. But not in this case. In this case, it described one man: Wayne Lenz. “What made you think he was with the cable company?” I asked.

  “Well, he told me, of course. When I came out in the hallway and asked him what he was doing. And he had those things hanging on his belt, those tools they use.”

  God only knew what he’d hung on his belt, and God only knew what he’d told this old busybody when she’d stuck her head out in the hall and asked him to fix her cable. But I had a feeling I knew what had been in the rolling case.

  Five hundred thousand dollars.

  Chapter 19

  I was on the street again, and suddenly it was freezing. The wind had picked up while I was inside and I could feel it through my clothes. I pulled my jacket closer around me, felt the weight of Leo’s pistol inside the pocket.

  Lenz. It made sense. Here you had a two-time loser, a two-bit con man working in a strip club because he’s never managed to make a real score, and along comes the score he’s been waiting for: his boss is about to make a buy for a million dollars in cash. He had to go for it.

  But not by himself, because physically he’s not exactly a powerhouse, and anyway what if he gets caught? He knows what Murco would do to him. So he gets one of the girls to work with him. He picks a loner who doesn’t talk to the other girls much, a girl who doesn’t entirely fit in. Because no matter how many years she’d been doing it, I couldn’t believe Miranda would ever entirely fit in – she’d been a pre-med at Rianon, for God’s sake.

  And then he cooks up a plan that gives both of them an extra layer of protection: she’ll recruit some toughs from another part of the city to do the dirty work, they’ll get their cut, and Miranda and Lenz will split what’s left. Yes, Lenz will only walk away with a few hundred thousand instead of a million this way, but by his standards that’s still big money, and it beats taking the personal risk of being the guy who actually holds Murco Khachadurian at gunpoint.