“Musta been around three-thirty in the mornin’.”
“Was anybody with her?”
Ortiz shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
“She was alone,” Ortiz repeated. “I woulda noticed if she been with somebody.”
Frank nodded. “So she came in the store. Then what?”
“She did some shopping,” Ortiz said. “I seen her scooting around the aisles, you know, gettin’ this and that. She was movin’ real fast, like she was in a big hurry.”
“You watched her the whole time?”
“Well, the store was empty, and it gets boring. So, when a fine thing like that comes in, it sort of gets you workin’ at it again, you know?”
“How long was she in the store?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes.”
“So she didn’t buy very much.”
“No,” Ortiz said, “just a few things.”
“And she looked like she was in a hurry?”
“Movin real fast, yeah.”
“What happened when she finished getting whatever she needed?” Rank asked.
“Well, Gloria run it through the register, like always. Then the woman paid, and Gloria done what she was supposed to do next.”
“Which was?”
“She bagged the stuff.”
“Where were you?”
“I was standin’ at the end of the counter,” Ortiz said. “Sort of watchin’ the whole thin’, Gloria doin’ the baggin’, and that woman. She was the one I was watchin’.”
“What was she doing?”
“She was puttin’ her change away.”
“But she didn’t take her groceries,” Frank said.
“No, she didn’t,” Ortiz said. “She looked at Gloria and she asked if the stuff could be delivered. Gloria said yeah, okay, that was good, and the woman gave her the address.”
“Then she left?”
“Tha’s right,” Ortiz said. “And I didn’t see her again ‘til I brought the stuff over.”
“How long did that take?”
“About ten minutes.”
Frank wrote it down, then looked back up at Ortiz. “When you got to the place on Tenth Avenue, what happened?”
“I went on in.”
“You went in?”
“Tha’s right, like I said.”
“You didn’t knock at the door?”
“Didn’t have to,” Ortiz said. “It was already open.”
“She’d left the front door open?” Frank asked doubtfully.
Ortiz shrugged. “Hey, man, I thought it was funny, too, but I said to myself, I said, ‘Hey, man, she probably knows you’re right behind her with the stuff, so tha’s how come she just left it open.’”
“So you just went in?”
“Tha’s right,” Ortiz said. “I sort of poked my head in there and I guess I said something. You know, called something, like, ‘Hey, delivery’s here,’ something like that. Then I walked on in.”
“What did you see?”
Ortiz shivered. “Man, it was weird,” he said. “Like from Nightmare on Elm Street, you know?”
“What was weird?”
“Just her, you know, standing there.” He shivered again. “She’d just done it, you know. The blood was still dripping from the razor. And she was just standing there, with her arm raised up over her head, like she was about to slice her again.”
Frank nodded and wrote it down. “Standing where?” he asked when he’d finished.
“Over that other woman, the dead one.”
“Tell me exactly how she was standing.”
“Over her, like I said,” Ortiz told him. “With this weird look on her face.”
“Her face?” Frank said immediately. “She was facing you?”
“Yeah, facin’ me.”
“And you were standing at the front of the room?”
“Behind some kinda curtain.”
“A beaded curtain, right?” Frank asked. “Red beads?”
“Yeah, red beads.”
“And she was facing you with her arm in the air?”
“And the razor in her hand, you know, and it was drippin’,” Ortiz said. He laughed dryly. “It’s funny what you notice. I noticed it was still drippin’.”
Frank wrote it down. “Where was the body?”
“It was on the floor,” Ortiz said. “And like I told you, she was standin’ over it.”
“Where were her feet?”
“Sort of spread apart,” Ortiz said, “one on each side of the other woman’s head.”
Frank’s pencil stopped. “Head?”
“Tha’s right.”
Frank tried to picture it. “So she was facing you with her arm in the air and the razor in her hand?”
“Yeah.”
“And her feet were on either side of the other woman’s head?”
“Tha’s the way it was,” Ortiz said flatly.
“Did she see you?”
“I think so.”
“What did she do?”
“Nothin’.”
“Did she come toward you?”
“No.”
“How about her arm,” Frank said. “Did she lower it?”
Ortiz shook his head.
“So she just stood in place, and let you look at her?”
“Yeah, for just a second,” Ortiz said. “Then I got the hell out of there.”
“And called the police,” Frank said.
“Tha’s right,” Ortiz told him. He took a sip of the beer. He looked pleased with himself. “So tha’s the story.”
“What’d you do with the groceries?” Frank asked.
“Huh?”
“The groceries,” Frank repeated. “They weren’t in the room.”
“In the room?”
“The woman’s place,” Frank said. “The cops checked out everything. They never found any groceries.”
Ortiz suddenly stiffened. “What are you talkin’ about, man? The cops didn’t find no groceries?”
Frank shook his head.
“But I dropped ’em, man,” Ortiz said insistently. “Like I told them cops, I dropped the bag, man. I dropped it right by that curtain.”
Frank gave him a withering stare. “Well, nobody found them, Pedro.”
“Tha’s why them cops kept coming back to me, then,” he said, almost to himself.
“They fingered you at first,” Frank told him, “because of the groceries, because they were missing.”
“But the woman confessed,” Ortiz said. “So I’m off the hook, right?”
“Except that the groceries are still missing,” Frank said darkly.
Ortiz took a quick nervous gulp of the beer. “I dropped them by that fuckin’ curtain. Tha’s all I know, man.”
“Well somebody got rid of them,” Frank said.
“Not me, man,” Ortiz said edgily. “I didn’t do nothin’ to them groceries.”
“Do you remember what they were?”
“They was groceries, tha’s all.”
“Well, you were standing right there when Gloria bagged them,” Frank said.
“I seen what they was,” Ortiz told him. “They was the usual thing.” He went through the list. “Some tuna, some bread and mustard and stuff like that. Some peanut butter and crackers. She had some fruit, too, apples and shit. She started to buy a quart of milk, but she decided not to, and just left it in her basket. And she had a magazine or something, and one of them little car games, and a …”
“Car games?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that?”
“They sell them on a rack by the checkout counter,” Ortiz said. “It’s in a little plastic packet and it’s full of little games and puzzles for kids to play with when they’re on a trip. I seen her grab it.”
Frank remembered them now, remembered buying the same sort of thing for his own daughter when she was nine or ten, remembered how she would sit silently in the backseat of the car as they all drove toward
his hometown, the sound of her fingers as she played, the calm shirr of her breathing.
“And the woman took one of those games?” he asked intently.
“Yeah, she did.”
“And it was put in the grocery bag like everything else?” Frank asked excitedly. “With all the other stuff she bought that night?”
Ortiz nodded. “Yeah, I seen Gloria put it in there. It was stickin’ out of the bag when I got to Tenth Avenue.” He smiled at the irony of it. “Just a little game, you know, like for a child.”
Suddenly Frank saw the little room with its small chair and tiny square of foam rubber, then the hook-and-eye lock, which had been screwed too loosely into the doorjamb to hold an adult inside, but which would have worked just fine if the prisoner was a child.
The Women’s Center was only a few blocks from Smith’s Bar, and Frank walked to it within a matter of minutes. It was nearly one in the morning, and the mood of the avenue had darkened considerably during the last few hours. The bridge and tunnel crowd had abandoned Manhattan for the wide green safety of the suburbs, and the edginess of the people they’d left behind had slowly begun to take over the street’s still-bustling atmosphere. A few crack zombies slumped against the iron metal gratings of the closed storefronts, and here and there, a prostitute from one of the slum hotels threw a whispered remark at a quickly passing stranger: Hey, babe, wanna date?
During all of his short walk to the center, Frank tried to think of exactly what he was going to say to the Puri Dai once he saw her again. It was easy for him to imagine her dark eyes watching him steadily as he went through what he’d learned from Ortiz, but her reaction was beyond him, and something in its unpredictability seemed to draw him instinctively toward her, as if she were the lure he could not avoid.
“Why do you want to see her?” the woman at the desk asked as Frank returned his identification to his pocket.
“She made a confession,” Frank answered. “I’m checking on the details.”
“Is she expecting you?”
“No.”
“I’ll need to let her know,” the woman said. She was wearing a sturdy, corduroy jacket and pleated trousers. Her hair was long and fell in brown strands to her shoulders. Her voice was very crisp and self-assured, not a woman who might fall easily before a disingenuous tale.
“She won’t see me, if you do let her know,” Frank told her bluntly.
The woman looked at him suspiciously. “Well, that’s her choice, isn’t it?”
“I’m trying to help her,” Frank said.
“And she doesn’t want you to?”
“That’s about it.”
The woman glanced back down at the name. “Magdalena Immaculata Coitez,” she said. She looked at Frank. “What is she anyway?”
Frank gave the only answer that struck him as entirely accurate. “A woman,” he said.
The woman laughed. “Well, I know that,” she said. “All we have here is women.”
“The thing is,” Frank said, “she may have confessed to something she didn’t do.”
“She’s up for murder, right?”
Frank nodded.
“Yeah, I read her sheet,” the woman said. She smiled. “I read all the sheets. I’m in law school. Fordham Law.” She put out her hand. “Ruth O’Keefe.”
Frank shook her hand lightly, then smiled as amiably as he knew how, a technique which Farouk used very well, but which always gave him a faint, insistent ache. “Can you help me out?” he asked.
Ruth studied him a little longer. “I’m not really sure.”
“Well, there’s no law against me just dropping by her room, is there?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you’re on the visitor’s list,” she said.
“Could you check?”
“Sure, no problem,” Ruth said. She pulled out a small stack of papers and flipped through them until she came to the one that referred to the Puri Dai. “Well, you’re in luck, Mr. Clemons.”
Frank gave her another smile. “Frank.”
“Anyway, you’re on the list.”
Frank was surprised. “I am?”
“Yeah,” the woman said. She turned the folder towards him. “You and somebody named Deegan.”
“That’s her lawyer.”
Ruth turned the folder back around. “Anyway, you’re on the list.”
“So I can go on up?”
Ruth hesitated.
“I’m trying to save her life,” Frank said, “even though she doesn’t want me to.”
Ruth considered it a moment, then made her decision. “All right, I’ll let you go up unannounced,” she said. “But if she asks for you to leave, you’ll have to.”
“I understand.”
“She’s on the sixth floor. Room 603. You can take the elevator at the end of the hall.”
“Thanks,” Frank said.
“Actually, I’m glad you dropped by,” she said. “You can save me some steps.”
“How?”
Ruth handed Frank a small blue envelope. “This is for Maggie,” she said.
Frank took the envelope and glanced at it. It was addressed to Magdalena Coitez. There was no return address, no stamp or postage mark.
“Would you mind taking it to her?” Ruth asked.
Frank lifted the envelope toward her slightly. “Somebody must have delivered this,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
Ruth shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You didn’t see anybody?”
“I guess it came while I was away from my desk.”
“When was that?”
“About an hour ago,” Ruth said. “I had to go to the bathroom.” She looked at him curiously. “Why, you don’t want to take it to her?”
“No, I’ll take it to her,” Frank said quickly. “I was just wondering who it was from.”
Ruth looked at him knowingly. “Well, I guess you’ll just have to ask her, won’t you?”
The Puri Dai was not in Room 603 when Frank got to it, but another woman was, a girl with blond hair who whirled around instantly as he entered the room.
“Who are you?” she blurted.
“My name’s Clemons,” Frank told her. “Are you in this room, too?”
“Why?” the girl asked nervously. She raised one of her arms defensively. “Why do you want to know?” Her eyes were light green, and they were bulging fearfully. She was very thin. The skin over her face was drawn tightly over her skull, so that the structure of her bones could be seen behind it. She had a wide, flat forehead and high, rounded cheekbones that gave her a primitive, hunted look, which nothing in her manner did anything to offset.
Frank eased himself out the door so that he no longer blocked it. “There’s another woman in this room,” he said. “I was looking for her.”
The girl said nothing. She covered her stomach with one of her arms, its fingers grasping shakily at the waist of her dress. “She went down to the common room,” she said.
“Where’s that?”
“End of the hall,” the woman told him. “It’s got double doors.”
Frank offered a quick smile. “Okay, thanks,” he said. He nodded politely. “Sorry if I disturbed you.”
He eased himself out into the hallway, then walked to the common room.
The Puri Dai was sitting in one of its empty corners, her body very erect in a red plastic chair. She had combed her hair, and it fell over her shoulders in long black tresses. Her skin was very dark in the half-light of the deserted corner.
Frank took off his hat as he stepped over to her. “This is for you,” he said as he handed her the envelope.
The Puri Dai’s eyes had regained their light, as if something remained inexhaustibly alive within her. She took the note, but did not look at it. Instead, her eyes remained almost imploringly on Frank. “Will you do as I ask?” she said.
Frank shook his head again. “You didn’t
kill anybody,” Frank told her bluntly. “And one way or the other, I’m going to prove it.”
She didn’t deny it, but only turned away, her eyes now set on the street below.
“You went to a grocery store,” Frank said. “You did that only a few minutes before the murder.”
The Puri Dai kept her eyes turned toward the window.
“You bought a few things, and then had them delivered,” Frank added. “The guy who brought them over was named Pedro Ortiz.”
She drew in a long, deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out in a quick rush.
“He’s the one who talked to the cops,” Frank said. “The sole eyewitness, right?”
Silence.
Frank took out his notebook. “Do you know what he saw?”
The Puri Dai didn’t answer.
Frank opened the notebook. “I spoke to him only a few minutes ago. He went over everything very carefully.”
The Puri Dai rose to her feet, but continued to look toward the window.
“He said the door was open, but that he didn’t go in at first,” Frank said. “‘The door was open,’ he said.” He looked at her penetratingly. “Open,” he repeated.
Silence.
“On Tenth Avenue.”
Silence.
“At four o’clock in the morning.”
Her eyes drifted over to him, but still she didn’t speak.
Frank stared at her a moment, her stare searing him around the edges, until he pulled away, and let his eyes drop back to the notebook.
“He called to you. You heard him, didn’t you?”
The Puri Dai said nothing.
“He said, ‘Hey, delivery’s here.’”
One arm rose slightly, then drifted down to her side again.
“There was no answer,” Frank continued. “So after a while, he stepped inside.” His eyes followed his notes carefully, concentrating on the smallest details as he went on. “He called to you again after he stepped into the building. But you didn’t answer. He didn’t go very far in, but from just inside the door, he could see the curtain.” He looked up at her. “You know the one I mean, the one with the red beads.”
Her eyes shifted away from him, locked onto the dark window once again.
Frank looked at his notebook again. “He walked over to the curtain, and looked through it.” He stopped, hoping that she might say something. When she didn’t, he continued. “That’s when he saw you.”