Which was probably what Phyllis, who needed a shave, was wondering about him.
“What time did Connie say she’d be here?” he asked.
“Soon as she does what she has to do,” Gregory said.
“What is it she has to do?” Michael asked.
“Find out who the corpse is.”
“And how does she plan to do that?”
“At the Gouverneur Hospital morgue,” Gregory said. “On Henry Street. ‘Cause the corpse was found in the Seventh Precinct, and that’s the only hospital in the Seventh, so she figured that’s where they could’ve took it. She knows a man there works with the stiffs.”
“So that’s where she is now,” Michael said.
“Lucky her,” Gregory said, and grinned.
“Excuse me,” Michael said, “but how do you fit into all this?”
“Oh, very comfortably,” Gregory said, and looked around the room. “I been comin’ here since it opened.”
“I meant, how did you happen to get the job of rescuing me?”
“Oh. Connie asked me to climb on up there.”
“Why you? Are you a burglar?”
“No, I’m a dancer.”
“I still don’t understand how Connie knew I was in trouble.”
“Well, from what she told me, she was waiting outside the Amalgamated when she saw this man carrying you out of the building. Unconscious. You, not the man. So she followed his car to this warehouse near the Fulton Market. The fish market. On Fulton Street. And that’s how come you’re sitting here with me now, doll.”
“Connie just ran into you, is that it? And asked you to …”
“No, she called me on the telephone.”
“And you ran on over with your satchel …”
“I borrowed the satchel from my brother-in-law.”
“Is he a dancer, too?”
“No, he’s a burglar. But he’s white, you wouldn’t ‘spect him to have no rhythm.”
“So Connie called you …”
“Right, and asked me to meet her at this warehouse, where she was waiting outside.”
“How’d she know what apartment I was in?”
“It isn’t an apartment building, it’s a warehouse. She watched the elevator needle. And I went up the fire escape to the fifth floor, where I found you, aren’t you glad?”
“You mean to tell me Connie just picked up the telephone, and you ran on down to meet her?”
“I owe her,” Gregory said, and left it at that.
“Well, I’m grateful to you.”
“How grateful?” Gregory said, and was putting his hand on Michael’s thigh when Phyllis walked over.
“Won’t you introduce me, Greg?” she said.
“Michael, this is Phyllis,” Gregory said, and squeezed Michael just above the knee.
“Care to dance, Michael?”
Michael figured he could do worse.
“Do you come here often?” Phyllis asked.
She was a very good dancer.
The jukebox was playing “It Happened in Monterey.” Frank Sinatra was singing.
“My first time,” Michael said.
“You have adorable buns,” Phyllis said.
“Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Michael said.
“Oh my, she’s modest as well,” Phyllis said.
Her beard was scratching against Michael’s cheek.
“Are you married?” Phyllis asked.
“Divorced,” he said.
“Oh, good,” Phyllis said.
“But very serious about someone,” Michael said quickly.
“Oh, drat,” Phyllis said.
“May I cut in, please?” someone asked. The someone was Connie.
“I said the Green Garden,” she said.
13
The three of them sat in a booth.
Connie was irritated because Gregory had taken Michael to the Green Garter instead of the Green Garden, which was a health food place on Orchard Street, and a hell of a lot closer to Gouverneur Hospital than Greenwich Avenue was.
“It all gets down to a matter of precincts,” she said. “The Sixth Precinct is not the Seventh Precinct. If I’d wanted the Green Garter in the Sixth Precinct, I wouldn’t have picked the Green Garden in the Seventh Precinct.”
“I’m contrite,” Gregory said.
He wasn’t being sarcastic, he really did sound enormously sorry for his error. Moreover, as Michael now reminded Connie, he was the one who’d charged to the rescue when— “Well, not exactly charged,” Gregory said modestly.
“But Michael’s right,” Connie said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“It’s the stink of the morgue,” Gregory said.
“Have you ever been inside a morgue?” he asked Michael.
“Never.”
“About two years ago,” Gregory said, “a friend of mine OD’D on heroin, and I had to go to the morgue to identify him. It truly does stink in there. It can give you a headache in there. It can also make you very anxious. All those dead people stacked up on drawers that slide out.”
“Don’t remind me,” Connie said.
Michael was thinking that at times the stench in Vietnam had been unbearable. He could not imagine any morgue in the world stinking more than a jungle clearing littered with three-day-old bodies.
“He didn’t even look like Crandall,” Connie said.
“You saw him?” Michael asked.
“Yes. A tall, thin man. Pockmarked face. Tattoo on his arm.”
“White?”
“Yes. But that’s the only resemblance.”
“How old was he?”
“My friend at the morgue guessed maybe forty, forty-five.”
“What’s his name?”
“Max Feinstein. I know him from when he was driving an ambulance for …”
“No, I mean the corpse.”
“Oh. Julian Rainey. They finally identified him from his fingerprints. He has a record that goes back forever.”
“Yes, he’s a dealer,” Gregory said, nodding.
“Was a dealer,” Connie corrected. “You mean you know him?”
“Oh, yes, he works this entire downtown area.”
“Used to work,” Connie corrected.
A drug plot, Michael thought. I knew it.
“A red heart, am I right?” Gregory said.
“The tattoo?”
“Yes,” Connie said.
“On his left arm.”
“The left arm, yes.”
“And in the heart it says Ju Ju, am I right?”
“I don’t know what it said in the heart.”
“Ju Ju. That’s his nickname.”
“Was his nickname,” Connie corrected.
Michael was looking at both of them.
“I think we have to go back to that warehouse,” he said.
“Without me,” Gregory said.
It was close to midnight when they got there. Christmas was almost gone.
Not a light showed in the entire building.
“That’s because nobody lives here,” Connie explained. “This is a real warehouse, it’s not like the buildings they’re renting for lofts all over town. People actually store things here.”
“What do you suppose Ju Ju was storing here?” Michael asked.
“Take a wild guess,” Connie said.
Michael looked up at the front of the building. It was seven stories high, with five evenly spaced windows on each floor. From the fifth floor down, huge white letters below the windows announced the building’s original intent, stating its past like a huge poster that faced the East River: