Night Secrets

  “He is the odd thing,” Farouk said. “He must be looked at again. He is the piece that does not exactly fit.”

  “Unless he’s just her doctor.”

  “Whom she does not visit in his office,” Farouk asked doubtfully, “but in his private home?”

  Frank said nothing.

  Farouk shrugged. “Still, you could be right,” he said. “And if I discover nothing of importance between them,” he added, “then I will proceed with this.” He tapped the side of his head. “The license number.”

  Frank nodded. “Since that’s all we’ve got for now,” he said.

  “Oh, not at all, my friend,” Farouk said. He glanced toward the windows as he got to his feet. The last deep blue had darkened into black. “There is always much to discover for those who work the night.”

  But the day case had now begun to linger too, and Frank was still going over its various connections and disconnections when Mr. Phillips knocked at his door.

  “I don’t mean to bother you,” Phillips said, as Frank opened the door, “but I’ve been feeling very anxious.”

  Frank stepped back to let him pass. “Come in.”

  Phillips walked immediately to the seat opposite Frank’s desk and sat down. “As I told you, Virginia and I went away night before last.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I should tell you that she seemed even worse,” Phillips added. He looked curiously drained, as if his worry had been steadily intensifying since their last meeting.

  Frank sat down behind his desk. “Worse? In what way?”

  “As I told you, she’s been distant for several weeks. But Tuesday night it was as if I didn’t even exist. I’d have to say something three or four times before she’d acknowledge my existence, and then it was as if she was surprised to see me there.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do,” he added quietly. “I’m like some pathetic figure in a play.”

  “Did she say anything at all?” Frank asked.

  Phillips shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Did you ask her about anything?”

  “I asked her how she was doing,” Phillips said. “I told her she didn’t look well.”

  “What’d she say to that?”

  “She said she had some pain.”

  “Pain?”

  “In her stomach.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She said she didn’t want to stay on at the country house,” Phillips added. “She said she had to get back to New York.”

  “When was this?”

  “When I told her that I’d like for us to stay through the afternoon, maybe even an extra day.”

  “She didn’t want to do that?”

  “Absolutely not,” Phillips said. “We were going to drive up to our house early that evening. It’s only an hour or so outside the city. Then we were going to spend the night and come back in the afternoon. Normally, of course, we would have stayed longer, but I had a rather important meeting that afternoon, and so we’d only planned the trip for one night and then for a few hours the following morning.”

  “So she was expecting to be back in the city by the afternoon?”

  “Yes,” Phillips said. “But when I saw how she was, her condition, I told her that I would cancel the meeting and that we’d stay the whole day, then spend another night. I thought it would help to relax her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted on returning to New York by noon.”

  “Maybe she had some kind of business.”

  Phillips shook his head determinedly. “No, she didn’t,” he said darkly. “I know. I checked her appointment book.” He looked vaguely ashamed of himself. “Here,” he said as he drew a small leather book from his coat pocket. “I thought you might want to see it, too.”

  Frank took the book and leafed through it quickly.

  “Stealing her appointment book,” Phillips said mournfully. “I never thought I’d have to do that to her.”

  Frank continued to go through the book, noting one appointment after another, most of them with organizations whose functions appeared to be charitable.

  “She’s been very active,” Mr. Phillips said weakly.

  “Was she working with these people when she married you?” Frank asked.

  Phillips shook his head. “Virginia didn’t have any money when I met her. She wouldn’t have had anything to give them.”

  Frank turned to the first day he’d followed her and noted that she’d recorded her morning appointment with the Friends of the Rain Forest, but not her afternoon one with Dr. Powers. “Have you ever heard of a group called Business Associates?” he asked.

  Phillips thought a moment. “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “It puts people together, a sort of broker for various investors. Did your wife ever mention it?”

  “No.”

  “Did she ever mention investing some of your money in anything?”

  Phillips shook his head. “We never talk about money. Only when we talked about the will.”

  “The will.” Frank’s eyebrows went up. “What will? Yours?”

  Phillips nodded.

  “What about it?”

  “Well, originally, Virginia would have been provided for, of course, but we’d had a prenuptial agreement that limited her inheritance. It was drawn up on my lawyer’s advice. Because things had gotten so complicated with my first marriage, he thought it would be a good idea to have things very clearly stated this time.”

  “But something changed?”

  “The more I thought about it, the more unfair I thought it was. So I made a simple right of survivorship document, which means that when I die, everything goes to her.”

  “And you told her about this?”

  “Of course.”

  “When?”

  “About six weeks ago.”

  “How did she react?”

  “There wasn’t much of a reaction,” Phillips said. “She kissed me. That was all.”

  Frank glanced down at the appointment book. “What did your wife do before you met her, Mr. Phillips?”

  “She was a consultant, a kind of free-lance money manager.”

  Frank flipped to Tuesday. She had nothing listed for that day, despite the fact that she’d seen Devine, then strolled through the park.

  “But you never used her to manage your money?”

  “No, of course not,” Phillips said. “I married Virginia, I didn’t employ her.”

  “Do you know who any of her clients were?”

  “No, we never discussed her work much. She didn’t seem to care for it, really, so she was glad to give it up, she said.”

  Frank flipped to the next page. She’d jotted down her trip to their country house, and had even listed the time when she expected to be back in the city: twelve noon.

  “You wanted to stay over Wednesday afternoon, right?” Frank asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And she wouldn’t do it?”

  “Absolutely not,” Phillips said. “She simply wouldn’t hear of it. I’d never seen her so adamant about anything.”

  “Did she give you a reason why she had to get back?”

  “Business, she said. One of her charities. Something about cancer research.”

  “But you didn’t believe her.”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “So you grabbed the book.”

  Phillips nodded silently.

  Frank turned the page to see what she’d scheduled for Thursday morning. Nothing. The trip to Trump Tower was a mystery. He let his eyes drift farther down the page. “She had something listed this afternoon,” he said.

  Phillips leaned forward slightly and looked at him very solemnly. “Yes, I know. But not until almost four in the afternoon.”

  Frank nodded, his eyes still on the open appointment book.

  “Did she go there?” Phillips asked.

  Frank glanced at the page. “You mean to what she has listed here, the Cancer Research Group?”

&
nbsp; “That’s right.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Phillips looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

  “I lost her, Mr. Phillips,” Frank admitted.

  “Lost her? How? Where?”

  “At Trump Tower.”

  “Trump Tower?” Phillips asked wonderingly. “What was she doing there?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “But whatever it was, she didn’t list it in her appointment book.”

  “Who did she see there?”

  “I’m not sure,” Frank told him. “Devine, maybe. He has an apartment there, I know that much.”

  “But you don’t know if she went there?”

  “Not for sure, no,” Frank admitted. “But I do know that a limousine picked her up and took her to Trump Tower.”

  “A limousine?”

  Frank nodded. “I got the license number. I’m having it traced.”

  “You think it belongs to Devine?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Phillips stared at Frank mournfully. “It is an affair, that’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “It’s possible. But why would she be pawning her jewelry over something like that? Why would she be making drops in Central Park?”

  “You make her sound like a criminal,” Phillips said, a little angrily.

  “I’m just asking questions.”

  Phillips shook his head. “No, somehow I just don’t think that’s it. Look, I know what a love affair is like. I’m not as entirely innocent as I seem. I’ve seen people in love, and it doesn’t make you look the way Virginia looks. You make her behavior sound … I don’t know … furtive, and that’s not how she appears to me.”

  “How does she appear to you?”

  It took Phillips a moment to find the right words, but when he did, they were good enough. “Like her blood has turned to ice,” he said.

  Frank looked at Phillips pointedly. “How much did you know about your wife before you met her?”

  “Not much.”

  “This consulting work,” Frank said, “are you sure she never gave you any details?”

  “Not many. She always acted as if I wouldn’t want to hear about it, as if it were boring.”

  “So you didn’t press her on it.”

  “I didn’t see any reason to,” Phillips said.

  “And she just dropped her business entirely after she got married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she ever mention working for two people, partners, something like that?”

  “No, why do you ask?”

  “Well it’s the only connection I have between Devine and Dr. Powers. A business connection. They’ve had some mutual investments, you might say, and I thought that maybe your wife might have worked for them before you met her.”

  “She never mentioned working for anybody.”

  “Never mentioned any of her clients?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever see any business stationery, business cards, any paperwork on her job?”

  “No,” Phillips said, almost curtly. “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m just wondering about what your wife did before she met you.”

  “But I’ve just told you.”

  “And you’ve also told me you don’t know much about it. If you look at her appointment book, you see nothing but charities, but she goes other places, Mr. Phillips. Places she doesn’t bother to record in her book, and I was thinking that they might have something to do with her past, with her old job, that maybe she still has a few clients from before.”

  Phillips shook his head slowly, his eyes growing more intense as he stared at Frank. “These investments that Powers and Devine have, what are they in?”

  “Everything from oil to jewels to Broadway shows,” Frank told him.

  “That’s quite a varied portfolio.”

  “I guess they put money in anything that seems like a good investment.”

  Phillips almost laughed. “Broadway shows? A good investment? I’ve never had anybody advise me to put my money in a show unless I needed to generate a big loss for tax purposes.”

  Frank said nothing.

  Phillips looked at Frank pointedly. “Is there anything illegal going on with these two?”

  “I haven’t found anything illegal yet.”

  “Are you suspicious?”

  “I’m always suspicious.”

  Phillips’s eyes darkened. “My will, the changes I made, Virginia started acting strangely right after that.”

  Frank nodded. “Yes, she did.”

  “Do you think there’s a connection?”

  Frank shrugged. “Not necessarily,” he said. But I wouldn’t bet my life on it, he thought.

  Frank sat at his desk for a long time after Phillips left. For a while, he went back over the sketchy details of what he’d been able to gather so far. He tried to put it together with the information Farouk had brought him, but that was sketchy, too, and so he did what he always did at such times. He went back to his own notebooks, staring at names, addresses, times of arrival and departure, until all of the small elements of the case swirled chaotically in his mind.

  He stood up, stretched and glanced at the small wall clock which hung like a bleak trophy from his wall. Farouk had given it to him not long after Riviera’s death. It was faded white, with a single blue eye staring out of its center, the red hands circling it like bulging veins. For an instant, it seemed to glare at him angrily. Then, as he watched it a bit longer, the single eye appeared to soften and grow faintly sad, as if in response to some increasingly melancholy tale.

  He sat down again and lit a cigarette, his eyes scanning the room as they always did, taking in its impossible disarray. Outside his window, the cement stairs remained empty for the time being. He knew that the old woman would take her place soon, but at least it was spring now, and as the weeks passed, she would sleep snugly in the warming air.

  He leaned back, drew in a deep breath, and tried to look forward to that warmth. For a moment, it seemed to him that that was everything, just a certain deep, deep warmth, and he thought of the times he’d had it and the times he hadn’t, and how different those times were. If Virginia Phillips was growing cold, then her husband was not only doomed to lose her, but to remember that she’d once been with him, full and rich and warm.

  You are like the rest. Even when you give, you take.

  The Puri Dai’s voice suddenly went through him as wrenchingly as a scream. He sat up, the cigarette still dangling precariously from his mouth. He could see her as clearly as if she stood at his door, tall and dark and furious, her fingers curled into fists, her eyes like small glowing coals.

  You are like the rest.

  What had she meant by that?

  You are like the rest.

  It was a terrible accusation. But of what crime? What had he done to her that she could despise him so?

  He pulled himself to his feet, walked to the window and stared out into the thick spring night. The air seemed cool, and after a moment he walked out into it and looked up. Far above the cruelly pointed spires of the tallest man-made things, he could see a few badly tarnished stars as they shone through the thick corruption of the upper air, and as he watched them, they seemed to accuse him too, demand certain things that they had never asked of any other man.

  It was nearly midnight when he found Sam McBride lounging against an unmarked car a few yards from the entrance to Manhattan Norm. He wore a baggy dark-green suit that seemed a size too large for him and an old straw hat with a wide plaid band. He was munching a sandwich casually as Frank approached.

  “You’re Sam McBride, right?” Frank asked.

  McBride nodded. “Who’re you?”

  Frank realized instantly that the Puri Dai had been right, that McBride did have the same accent he did, only a little deeper, less misshapened by his years in the North.

  “My name’s Clemons,” Frank told hi
m. He took out his identification.

  McBride gave it a quick glance, then took another bite from his sandwich. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was talking to Leo Tannenbaum about a case you have in the precinct,” Frank said. “And he told me you were the first man on the scene.”

  “What case was that?”

  “The murder of a woman on Tenth Avenue.”

  “There’s been more than one of them,” McBride said flatly.

  “This one happened early Monday morning,” Frank said. “At a fortune-telling operation.”

  It registered in McBride’s mind, and Frank saw his eyes light up slightly. “Them Gypsies, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yeah, I took the dime on that one,” McBride said. “It was right near the middle of my tour.”

  “You work the graveyard shift, then?”

  “Midnight to eight,” McBride said. “Always have.”

  “I’m trying to piece some things together on this case,” Frank said.

  McBride looked at him quizzically. “How come? Who you working for?”

  “The woman.”

  McBride looked at him doubtfully. “That’s bullshit.”

  “She doesn’t want me to work for her,” Frank admitted. “But I’m doing it anyway.”

  “How come?”

  Frank shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe because I think she’s innocent.”

  McBride finished off what was left of the sandwich, then crumpled the paper it had been wrapped in and tossed it into the street garbage can a few feet away. “She gave me a full statement when she finally decided to talk,” he said. “You know what I mean, a full confession?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “But you figure she didn’t do it?”

  “I think it’s possible that she didn’t.”

  “Well, all I can tell you is that she claims she did it,” McBride said.

  “Did she tell you why?”

  “Family trouble.”

  “Is that all?”

  “It’s been known to be enough.”

  “But what about the murder itself?”

  “She says it was her that did it.”

  “I mean the details.”

  “She don’t remember the details.”

  “I read her statement,” Frank said. “Does it have pretty much everything in it?”