Night Secrets

  It was nearly three in the morning before Tannenbaum had finally finished with him. The Puri Dai had been swept away in a shiny EMS ambulance by men, and Farouk had taken the child with him. Only Frank had remained in the small room on the third floor, his eyes fixed on the blood of the Puri Dai, which still lay, its dark red deepening steadily to black, across the uncarpeted floor while Tannenbaum circled him incessantly, a trail of cigar smoke following his movements like a billowy gray tail.

  “So, you don’t know who the guy was for sure, right?” Tannenbaum asked wearily.

  “Just the name,” Frank said. “Joseph Fellows.”

  “And you figure he was a Gypsy?”

  “Yes.”

  Tannenbaum shook his head. “Well, my guess is, he’s long gone by now.”

  Frank said nothing.

  “These people, they off each other once in a while,” Tannenbaum added. “And you know how it is, Frank. They live outside our jurisdiction, you might say. They have rules of their own. The only time we’d ever pull out all the stops would be if one of them wasted some big guy, some rich guy or celebrity, something like that.”

  “He killed a woman,” Frank reminded him.

  “Sure he did,” Tannenbaum said. “And we’ll work the case, no doubt about it. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, Frank. You know what I mean, the trail will go cold fast. They won’t light a fire downtown on something like this. Not for a Gypsy.” He glanced at the blood of the Puri Dai. “Dead or alive.”

  Frank nodded tiredly, then rubbed his eyes.

  “You look beat, Frank,” Tannenbaum said. “Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

  “I still got work,” Frank told him. “It’s something I want to finish.”

  “Now? At this hour?”

  “Yes.”

  Tannenbaum looked at him knowingly. “You mean, to get the night case off your mind, right?”

  “It’s just a quick stop,” Frank said. “McBride, you know where he is?”

  Tannenbaum looked surprised. “McBride? You want to see McBride?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tannenbaum looked like he’d thought about asking another question, but then decided not to. “He’s off tonight.”

  “Does that mean he’s at home?”

  Tannenbaum shook his head. “No, he usually stays with his wife.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “Over at St. Clare’s,” Frank said. “She’s got a bed over there.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. “Thanks.” He turned and headed toward the door.

  Tannenbaum’s voice turned him around again. “You got to just go on, Frank,” he said. “You know what I mean? There’s just nothing else to do.”

  Frank nodded silently. “Yeah,” he said, but he was not so sure.

  Frank walked slowly down Ninth Avenue, then turned right toward the bleak, unlighted awning of St. Clare’s Hospital. The reception desk was almost directly in front of him as he stepped inside the building.

  “I know visiting hours are over,” Frank said to the woman behind the desk. “But there’s someone I need to see.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t see a patient at this hour, sir,” the woman told him politely.

  “It’s not a patient I’m looking for.”

  “A doctor?” the woman said, before he could tell her.

  “A patient’s husband,” Frank said. “He stays with her at night.”

  “Who’s the patient?”

  “Her last name would be McBride,” Frank said.

  The woman looked over at her computer monitor, tapped out a few letters on the keyboard, then turned back to Frank. “Mrs. McBride is in Room 306,” she said. She smiled. “I should have known who you were talking about. Mr. McBride stays here every Saturday night.”

  “Would he be there now?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “But it would be all right for me to check?”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  Frank nodded. “Three-oh-six, thanks.”

  “The stairs are through that door,” the woman said.

  Frank mounted the stairs slowly, his head still aching with the blow the Puri Dai had struck him, but he resisted the urge to touch the wound itself. Instead, he’d decided simply to wait for it slowly to grow numb.

  Room 306 was at the end of a wide corridor. Inside, the room was vacant, except for Mrs. McBride. She lay faceup in a single bed, her eyes closed softly, as if she were asleep. A long plastic tube led from her nostrils to a small, quietly purring oxygen tank. Other tubes ran from her arms to several overhanging bags of liquids. Near the base of the bed, yet another tube drew her urine into yet another bag, and as Frank stepped up to the bed, he saw mat it would soon need to be emptied and replaced.

  For a time, he simply watched her as she slept, listening silently to her gently gurgling breath. His eyes moved up to the crucifix which hung from the wall, then down to the small shelf beside the bed, and finally along the slender bed rail, which stretched the full length of the bed, from Mrs. McBride’s shoulders down to her feet.

  At the end of the railing, a medical data board hung from a single aluminum hook. Frank leaned over and glanced at the light-blue cover sheet, his eyes moving down it no farther than the large black letters which gave the patient’s name: MARY DRISCOLL MCBRIDE.

  He drew in a quick breath: DRISCOLL.

  He released the board and it swung back to its place, tapping lightly against the railing.

  DRISCOLL.

  He stood, turned immediately and saw McBride standing massively in the open doorway.

  McBride stared at him curiously, his eyes raking across his face like two small green fingers, “demons? What are you doing here?”

  “I needed to talk to you about something,” Frank told him, trying to keep the edginess from his voice.

  “That Gypsy case again?” McBride asked, although he already seemed to sense that it was something else.

  Frank shook his head. “No, not the Gypsy case.” For a terrible instant, he saw the Puri Dai’s dark eyes staring at him again, but not from the blood-soaked curve of his arms. Instead, she seemed to watch him from some impossibly distant place, dark and cloud-covered, as if it were still forming from the mists of its own design.

  McBride continued to watch him curiously. “Something come up?” he asked warily.

  “Let’s go outside, Sam,” Frank said.

  McBride didn’t move. “Outside? Why?”

  “Someplace where we can talk?” Frank said. He stepped forward and McBride backed into the hallway to let him pass.

  “You look like something’s on your mind, Frank,” McBride said coolly.

  Frank faced him squarely. “There is. And I have to talk to you about it right now.”

  McBride seemed to sense the gravity of the moment. His eyes drew a bead on Frank’s face. “All right,” he said. “They’ve got a chapel on this floor. It’s just down the hall. Nobody’s ever there this time of night.”

  Frank nodded, then followed McBride’s large, hulking frame as it moved slowly down the hallway. His shoulders were hunched and weary, as if he were dragging a heavy weight behind him.

  “This’ll do,” McBride said when he got to the chapel. “Private at least.”

  Frank followed him through the carved wooden door, then to the first wooden pew, where he stopped.

  “Right here’s okay,” McBride said. He sat down in the narrow back pew, then slid over and made a place for Frank.

  Frank eased himself into the pew, then stared evenly at McBride. “How long’s your wife been here?” he asked.

  “Several months now,” McBride said.

  “Must be expensive.”

  “It is.”

  “On a policeman’s salary, you’d …”

  “You didn’t come here to talk about my salary, Frank,” McBride said. “We’re two old southern boys, so let’s don’t bullshit each other.” He leaned back slightly and swung one of his arms over t
he back of the pew. “What’s on your mind?”

  Frank drew in a long slow breath. “I was noticing your wife’s middle name.”

  “What about it?”

  “Driscoll.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that her maiden name?”

  “That’s right.”

  Frank hesitated a moment longer, trying to find the best way to begin. Finally, he gave up, and went straight to the point.

  “I’ve been tailing this woman who lives over on the East Side.”

  McBride’s eyes stared expressionlessly at Frank. He said nothing.

  “Her name is Phillips,” Frank added. “She’s married to this rich guy over there.”

  McBride’s arm seemed to tighten slightly as the hand crawled up from the back of the pew.

  “He’s been a little worried about her lately,” Frank went on, “because she’s been acting sort of strange.”

  The hand was now lying flat against the top of the pew, the fingers stretched out to their full length.

  “So that’s why he hired me,” Frank said. “To check her out a little, see what’s the matter with her.”

  McBride nodded. “How long you been following her, Frank?” he asked coolly.

  “Several days,” Frank said.

  “Everywhere?”

  “From the time she leaves her place to the time she comes home to her husband.”

  McBride nodded but said nothing.

  “She goes by the name of Driscoll sometimes,” Frank said. “I was wondering if you might know why.”

  The fingers of the hand curled into a fist. “She’s my sister-in-law,” he said. “Any harm in me meeting my sister-in-law?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Then what else do you want to know?” McBride asked bluntly.

  Frank shrugged gently. “Well, you know how it is, Sam. Things lead to other things. People lead to other people.”

  McBride’s face darkened. “What are you talking about?”

  Frank took out the first photograph and handed it to him.

  McBride looked at it casually. “That’s Virginia in the park,” he said. Then he handed it back to Frank. “What am I supposed to say about it?”

  “Mrs. Phillips stands to inherit a lot of money, doesn’t she?” Frank asked.

  “She married a rich man, that’s usually how it works.”

  “And you have a lot of expenses,” Frank added.

  McBride said nothing.

  Frank turned the picture back toward him. “See that little black bag,” he said as he pointed to it. “She’s going to leave it on the bench.”

  McBride looked at the photograph silently.

  “And you’re going to pick it up,” Frank added as he took out the second photograph and placed it over the first one. “That’s you picking it up, Sam.”

  McBride nodded. “Yeah, it is.” His eyes crawled over to Frank. “Which means you didn’t follow Virginia back home.”

  “No.”

  “You followed me.”

  Frank nodded, then pulled out the third photograph. “There’s a little deli on West Forty-fifth Street,” he said. “It has a few little tables in the back.” He handed the picture to McBride. “That’s where you took the bag.”

  McBride didn’t bother to look at the picture. “Okay.”

  Frank returned all the pictures to his jacket pocket. “What are you doing with Henry Floyd, Sam?”

  McBride shrugged. “We go back a ways,” he said. “There was plenty of Floyds back home.”

  “You know who he is?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know he’s a Westie? One of the last of them?”

  McBride nodded.

  “You know they have it on the street that they can smoke anybody if the price is right?”

  McBride said nothing.

  Frank leaned forward and leveled his eyes at McBride. “How much are you paying Henry Floyd to kill Harold Phillips?”

  McBride didn’t answer.

  “You know something, Sam,” Frank said. “I’ve met Mr. Phillips, and he’s not a bad man. He actually loves your sister-in-law. He’s actually trying to save her.”

  “Save her?” McBride snapped with a sudden bitterness. “He don’t even know what she’s into.”

  “What?”

  “You think I’m running a hit on Phillips?”

  Frank nodded quickly. “That’s the way it adds up.”

  McBride shook his head. “You’re way off, Frank, way off, and if I was you, I’d just let it go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Cause he’s your client?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What if it was something else?” McBride said. “What if it had nothing to do with Phillips?”

  Frank leaned forward slightly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, justice, I guess,” McBride said. “The kind that really puts an end to things.”

  Frank said nothing. He merely waited.

  McBride drew his arm from the back of the pew and let it drift gently into his lap. “When Virginia first come to New York, she had them high hopes, you know, like in the movies. She wanted to be an actress.” His eyes rolled upward slightly. “This was maybe six, seven years ago.” He shook his head. “She was fresh off the farm. She didn’t know nothing about life. But she was a beautiful girl.” His mind seemed to return for a moment to an older time. “Like Mary was. Like my wife.” He straightened himself slightly and lifted his head. “Anyway, she got connected to this producer or something. Some guy that said he was a producer. But really—this was a few years later—she found out, he was a doctor of some kind.”

  “Gynecologist,” Frank said.

  “That’s right, a gynecologist,” McBride said. “And this guy, he was trying to produce some show, and that’s how she met him.”

  Frank nodded.

  “Well, this other guy was helping him out with the money,” McBride went on. “This guy was rich. A real high roller with lots of big-shot friends. He was bankrolling the doctor. But it didn’t do no good, according to Virginia, ’cause the show was a flop and everybody went broke on it.” He shook his head. “And Virginia didn’t have no money, and so the high roller, he come up to her and he said how pretty she was, and she was just a kid in them days, maybe eighteen, and she started working for him, you know, like going around with his friends, showing them the town, stuff like that.”

  “You mean, an escort service?”

  “A special one,” McBride said. “Real secret.”

  “Business Associates.”

  McBride nodded. “You know about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know about the guy?”

  “Preston Devine.”

  McBride looked surprised. “That’s right.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, after a while, Devine figured something out,” McBride said. “He had a lot of rich business types that liked these young actresses, you know, but this being New York, they were getting scared of them.”

  “Scared?”

  “You know, of getting something,” McBride explained. “And I don’t mean VD, you know? I mean the one that can kill you—AIDS.”

  Frank nodded.

  “According to Virginia, these guys were really worried about that,” McBride said. “It would be a terrible thing for them. I mean, they wanted girls. They wanted them real bad, but times had gotten sort of dangerous, and so they were in the market for something a little different than the usual sort of thing.”

  “You mean the usual sort of prostitute?”

  “That’s right,” McBride said. “They were getting sort of afraid of that, and that’s when Devine figured it all out. He could give them what they wanted, you know, risk-free.”

  “By testing them,” Frank said.

  McBride nodded. “And these guys, they were willing to pay a lot of money to get what they wanted, but to get it safe. So what Devine did was, he set up this s
pecial service, all the girls guaranteed, you know, to be, what you might say, to be clean.” He shrugged. “And Virginia, she was one of them.” His voice grew soft and sad. “Don’t ask me why. You can blame it on anything. She said she did it once, and after that she couldn’t get out, and maybe she just got worn down after a while. You know, by the life.”

  “Until she met Phillips,” Frank said.

  “She fell in love with him,” McBride said. “They just met at a party. She made up a name for him, Virginia Harris. She made up a job. She made up her whole past. But she couldn’t get rid of it.”

  “But she wanted out?”

  “For a long time, she’d wanted that,” McBride said. “But after she met Phillips, she got desperate about it. She went to Devine, she begged him.”

  Frank nodded. “But he wouldn’t let her go.”

  “At first he did,” McBride said. “’Course, she had to pay and it just about broke her. But, at first, he let her go.” His lips jerked down into a cruel scar. “But that only lasted awhile, because there was this one customer that didn’t want a change. Some fat cat that wanted Virginia back.”

  “Burroughs.”

  McBride nodded. “That sounds right,” he said. “Anyway, he put the pressure on Devine, and Devine comes back to Virginia. This was maybe six, seven weeks ago, and he told her she had to start up again. He tried to make it sound good, only one client, this Burroughs, but Virginia said no, she was out, and that was it.” He shook his head. “But Devine said that just wouldn’t do, that she had to come back, and when he kept on after her, threatening her, threatening to tell Phillips, that’s when she come to me.”

  “What did she want you to do?”

  “Put the arm on Devine.”

  “Did you?”

  “I did my best,” McBride said. “But he looked at me like I was some kind of bug or something, just a little thing he could squash with his foot. He said he had friends in high places, that they’d laugh in my face if I tried to pin something on him, and then, besides, he said, if it come out about him, it’d come out about Virginia too.”