I flipped a few pages in my notebook, went to the phone and looked through the Brooklyn book. The day-care center where Barbara Ettinger had worked didn't seem to be in business. I checked the Yellow Pages to see if there was anything listed under another name at the same address. There wasn't.
The address was on Clinton Street, and I'd been away from the neighborhood long enough so that I had to ask directions, but once I'd done so it was only a walk of a few blocks. The boundaries of Brooklyn neighborhoods aren't usually too well defined-the neighborhoods themselves are often largely the invention of realtors-but when I crossed Court Street I was leaving Boerum Hill for Cobble Hill, and the change wasn't difficult to see. Cobble Hill was a shade or two tonier. More trees, a higher percentage of brownstones, a greater proportion of white faces on the street.
I found the number I was seeking on Clinton between Pacific and Amity. There was no day-care center there. The ground floor storefront offered supplies for knitting and needlepoint. The proprietor, a plump Earth Mother with a gold incisor, didn't know anything about a day-care center. She'd moved in a year and a half ago after a health food restaurant had gone out of business. "I ate there once," she said, "and they deserved to go out of business. Believe me."
She gave me the landlord's name and number. I tried him from the corner and kept getting a busy signal so I walked over to Court Street and climbed a flight of stairs. There was just one person in the office, a young man with his sleeves rolled up and a large round ashtray full of cigarette butts on the desk in front of him. He chainsmoked while he talked on the phone. The windows were closed and the room was as thick with smoke as a nightclub at four in the morning.
When he got off the phone I caught him before it could ring again.
His own memory went back beyond the health food restaurant to a children's clothing store that had also failed in the same location. "Now we got needlepoint," he said. "If I were gonna guess I'd say she'll be out in another year. How much can you make selling yarn? What happens, somebody has a hobby, an interest, so they open up a business. Health food, needlepoint, whatever it is, but they don't know shit about business and they're down and out in a year or two. She breaks the lease, we'll rent it in a month for twice what she pays.
It's a renter's market in an upscale neighborhood." He reached for the phone. "Sorry I can't help you,"
he said.
"Check your records," I said.
He told me he had lots of important things to do, but halfway through the statement changed from an assertion to a whine. I sat in an old oak swivel chair and let him fumble around in his files. He opened and closed half a dozen drawers before he came up with a folder and slapped it down on his desk.
"Here we go," he said. "Happy Hours Child Care Center. Some name, huh?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Happy hour's in a bar when the drinks are half price. Hell of a thing to call a place for the kiddies, don't you think?" He shook his head.
"Then they wonder why they go out of business."
I didn't see anything the matter with the name.
"Leaseholder was a Mrs. Corwin. Janice Corwin. Took the place on a five-year lease, gave it up after four years. Quit the premises eight years ago in March." That would have been a year after Barbara Ettinger's death. "Jesus, you look at the rent and you can't believe it. You know what she was paying?"
I shook my head.
"Well, you saw the place. Name a figure." I looked at him. He stubbed out a cigarette and lit another.
"One and a quarter. Hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.
Goes for six now and it's going up the minute the needlework lady goes out, or when her lease is up. Whichever comes first."
"You have a forwarding address for Corwin?"
He shook his head. "I got a residential address. Want it?" He read off a number on Wyckoff Street. It was just a few doors from the Ettingers' building. I wrote down the address. He read off a phone number and I jotted that down, too.
His phone rang. He picked it up, said hello, listened for a few minutes, then talked in monosyllables.
"Listen, I got someone here," he said after a moment. "I'll get back to you in a minute, okay?"
He hung up and asked me if that was all. I couldn't think of anything else. He hefted the file. "Four years she had the place," he said.
"Most places drop dead in the first year. Make it through a year you got a chance. Get through two years and you got a good chance. You know what's the problem?"
"What?"
"Women," he said. "They're amateurs. They got no need to make a go of it. They open a business like they try on a dress. Take it off if they don't like the color. If that does it, I got calls to make."
I thanked him for his help.
"Listen," he said, "I always cooperate. It's my nature."
I tried the number he gave me and got a woman who spoke Spanish. She didn't know anything about anybody named Janice Corwin and didn't stay on the line long enough for me to ask her much of anything. I dropped another dime and dialed again on the chance that I'd misdialed the first time. When the same woman answered I broke the connection.
When they disconnect a phone it's close to a year before they reassign the number. Of course Mrs.
Corwin could have changed her number without moving from the Wyckoff Street address. People, especially women, do that frequently enough to shake off obscene callers.
Still, I figured she'd moved. I figured everyone had moved, out of Brooklyn, out of the five boroughs, out of the state. I started to walk back toward Wyckoff Street, covered half a block, turned, retraced my steps, started to turn again.
I made myself stop. I had an anxious sensation in my chest and stomach. I was blaming myself for wasting time and starting to wonder why I'd taken London's check in the first place. His daughter was nine years in the grave, and whoever killed her had probably long since started a brand-new life in Australia. All I was doing was spinning my goddamned wheels.
I stood there until the intensity of the feeling wound itself down, knowing that I didn't want to go back to Wyckoff Street. I'd go there later, when Donald Gilman got home from work, and I could check Corwin's address then. Until then I couldn't think of anything I felt like doing about the Ettinger murder. But there was something I could do about the anxiety.
ONE thing about Brooklyn-you never have to walk very far before you encounter a church. They're all over the place throughout the borough.
The one I found was at the corner of Court and Congress. The church itself was closed and the iron gate locked, but a sign directed me to St. Elizabeth Seton's Chapel right around the corner. A gateway led to a one-story chapel tucked in between the church and the rectory. I walked through an ivy-planted courtyard which a plaque proclaimed to be the burial site of Cornelius Heeney. I didn't bother reading who he was or why they'd planted him there. I walked between rows of white statues and into the little chapel. The only other person in it was a frail Irishwoman kneeling in a front pew. I took a seat toward the back.
It's hard to remember just when I started hanging out in churches.
It happened sometime after I left the force, sometime after I moved out of the house in Syosset and away from Anita and the boys and into a hotel on West Fifty-seventh. I guess I found them to be citadels of peace and quiet, two commodities hard to come by in New York.
I sat in this one for fifteen or twenty minutes. It was peaceful, and just sitting there I lost some of what I'd been feeling earlier.
Before I left I counted out a hundred fifty dollars, and on my way out I slipped the money into a slot marked "FOR THE POOR." I started tithing not long after I began spending odd moments in churches, and I don't know why I started or why I've never stopped. The question doesn't plague me much. There are no end of things I do without knowing the reason why.