“My wife’s family came out of Seneca. She’ll be so happy to talk to you.”
“Maybe we’re kin, your wife and me. Maybe we’re related.”
They talked about the history of the former African American community for several minutes. Verge had no idea what had become of other residents, but the tales had come down through his family, and he relished speaking of them to someone who didn’t think he was making it all up.
“How well do you know the Ramble?” Mike asked.
“Better than almost anybody. I can show you places you’ve never seen,” Verge said, turning his head to me. “You’re so quiet, young lady. Can I take you for a walk?”
I knew I didn’t look like a teenager, but I thought of his criminal background and got goose bumps from the idea of letting a sexual predator like Verge Humphrey walk me through the wilderness.
“Sometime I would like that,” I said.
Mercer had established a relationship with Verge that got the older man talking. Mike was interested in getting information without any more stroking.
“When did you move back up from Florida?” Mike asked.
“Who said anything about the Sunshine State?”
“I heard you lived there for a while,” Mike said.
“For too long,” Verge said. “Got myself in trouble there, but you probably know that already.”
“What’d you do?”
“I’d like the young lady to step out, if you don’t mind. It’s nasty, what they say about me.”
I started to walk back to the far end of the room. Verge’s voice carried throughout the space, though I busied myself with e-mails on my BlackBerry to look as though I had no interest.
Mercer eased Verge into a conversation about his criminal conduct. He admitted exposing himself to young women, starting back in his teens. He had several juvenile arrests in New York, but nothing that showed on his adult record.
“I stayed out of trouble for a good long time after that.”
“Did you go to school in Queens?”
“I dropped out of high school,” Verge said. “Got a job nearby here, in the same parking garage where my daddy worked. Worked there for nearly fifteen years. Right over on Amsterdam Avenue.”
Right under his father’s nose every day, just a couple of blocks west of the Park.
“What happened after that?”
“When he died, I started having problems again.”
Verge took Mercer through the typical progression of a sex offender. Exposing himself to potential victims before he worked up the wherewithal to attack, climbing fire escapes to look in windows for women undressed or undressing, and then actually grabbing victims from the street to sexually abuse them.
Although their voices were subdued, I could hear the conversation, and all the excuses that Verge offered for his behavior.
After a couple of close calls with police in Queens, his mother shipped him off to Florida in 1980, to live with his oldest sister. His behavior escalated there until he was finally caught and convicted, and incarcerated for nine years. When he was released, that sister sent him back home to live with the youngest sibling and her family. It was she who threw him out of the house because she had grandchildren and didn’t want Verge to be around them.
“How’s that medicine working for you?” Mike asked.
“Which one is that?”
“The one that’s supposed to make you behave.”
Verge rubbed his hands together. “I’m a good man, Mr. Detective. Mind my own business and don’t ever have bad thoughts anymore.”
“Even I have a few of ’em,” Mike said.
Verge glanced over at Mike. “What do you do when you get them?”
“What do you do?”
“I’m telling you I don’t get them. If I did, I’d hate myself.” Verge sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that fact.
“So how can you hang around all those kids-those teenagers in the Park?” Mike waved the photograph of Angel in front of him. “Isn’t it a great temptation to have them around you?”
Verge looked away from the picture, down at the floor, and shook his head.
“I don’t mean to hurt anybody,” he said. “I was on my own a lot as a kid, and even when I got older. Folks threw me out and wasn’t nobody that would take me in. I know what it’s like to be abused.”
Don’t start with the abuse excuse. I really didn’t want to hear Verge say he was prompted to commit his crimes because of his own victimization.
“Do you remember spending time with this girl?” Mike asked.
“Yeah. She was in a group. She was with a bunch of other kids.”
“Did you know the name of any of them?”
“No, Mr. Detective. I’m so bad at names, like I said.”
Mike had one foot up on a chair, his arm on his knee, so he could get face-to-face with Verge Humphrey. “No offense, Verge, but you’re three times the age of these kids. Why would you be spending time with them?”
“I never growed up right is what my sister says. I’ve always been around younger people.”
“And these people in particular, what was your interest in them?”
“No interest at all. They were tomboys, weren’t they?”
“What do you mean by tomboys?” Mike asked.
I thought of the foursome in the Ravine rescued by Verge, as Jo had described them. She and her partner were gay, the male runaway was transgendered, and the dead girl was an incest victim who may have concealed her sexual identity in the uniform of a homeless kid. Maybe Verge tried to keep a lid on his attraction to pubescent girls by surrounding himself with strays who wouldn’t tempt him.
I put my BlackBerry in my pocket and walked toward the three men.
“You know what I mean. They were all kind of off, weren’t they?”
“Gay?” Mike asked.
“You’re making me uncomfortable with this talk.”
“I want to show you some photographs,” I said, approaching Verge.
I pulled up the pictures, one at a time, of the two statues from the Dalton collection. He looked at them with a blank stare and said he had no idea what they were.
Then I showed him the shot of the small ebony figure that had been found with the two others near the Lake.
“My angel!” he exclaimed, nearly tipping over his little chair. “Where’d you find her? Where’d you find my angel?”
“She was in the Park, Verge,” I said. “The police found her last week.”
“I was missing her for a while.”
“How long?”
He was having a hard time containing his childlike enthusiasm. “I’m no better at dates than at names, lady. I don’t keep a calendar.”
“Do your best, Verge.”
“Three weeks, maybe four.”
“Did you give your angel to anyone, Verge?”
He shook his head vigorously from side to side.
“Think about it really hard,” I said, grabbing the photograph of the dead girl and putting it in front of his face. “To her?”
He pushed my arm away and refused to look at the picture again.
“That would have been nice of you, Verge. Maybe you did it to protect her?”
He was too cautious to buy my suggestion. He looked at me like I had asked a trick question, and he knew enough not to volunteer an answer.
“I never gave it to anyone. It comes from my church.”
“Your church?”
“Where my family worshipped, in Seneca Village.”
“They’ve had it all that time?” I asked. “More than one hundred years?”
“No,” he said. “No, no. I took her out of the church myself. Me and another guy.”
Mercer raised his eyebrows as he looked over Verge’s head at me.
“When was that?” I asked. “And who was the other man?”
“Two, maybe three years ago. Some people were all digging up the village. I used to go there most nights. Lots of folk did.”
“What for, Verge?”
“They were digging holes in the ground. I was just curious. Then I saw them bringing stuff out sometimes. Broken dishes and things like that. Animal bones and tin cups. One night I went down into one of the ditches they dug. Saw all these tombstones and things.”