"I don't know anything about Queens," he said. "You're not going out there, are you?" He made it sound as though I'd need a passport, and supplies of food and water. "Because I'm sure 'Tavio will be back on the job in a day or two."
"What makes you so sure?"
"It's a good job," he said. "He'll lose it if he's not back soon. And he must know that."
"How's his absenteeism record?"
"Excellent. And I'm sure his sickness is legitimate enough. Probably one of those viruses that runs its course in three days. There's a lot of that going around."
I called Octavio Calderуn's number from a pay phone right there in the Galaxy lobby. It rang for a long time, nine or ten rings, before a woman answered it in Spanish. I asked for Octavio Calderуn.
"No estб aquн;," she told me.
I tried to form questions in Spanish. Es enfermo? Is he sick? I couldn't tell if I was making myself understood. Her replies were delivered in a Spanish that was very different in inflection from the Puerto Rican idiom I was used to hearing around New York, and when she tried to accommodate me in English her accent was heavy and her vocabulary inadequate. No estб aquн;, she kept saying, and it was the one thing she said that I understood with no difficulty. No estб aquн;. He is not here.
I went back to my hotel. I had a pocket atlas for the five boroughs in my room and I looked up Barnett Avenue in the Queens index, turned to the appropriate page and hunted until I found it. It was in Woodside. I studied the map and wondered what a Hispanic rooming house was doing in an Irish neighborhood.
Barnett Avenue extended only ten or twelve blocks, running east from Forty-third Street and ending at Woodside Avenue. I had my choice of trains. I could take either the E or F on the Independent line or the IRT Flushing Line.
Assuming I wanted to go there at all.
I called again from my room. Once again the phone rang for a long time. This time a man answered it. I said, "Octavio Calderуn, por favor."
"Momento," he said. Then there was a thumping sound, as if he let the receiver hang from its cord and it was knocking against the wall. Then there was no sound at all except that of a radio in the background tuned to a Latin broadcast. I was thinking about hanging up by the time he came back on the line.
"No estб aquн;," he said, and rang off before I could say anything in any language.
I looked in the pocket atlas again and tried to think of a way to avoid a trip to Woodside. It was rush hour already. If I went now I'd have to stand up all the way out there. And what was I going to accomplish? I'd have a long ride jammed into a subway car like a sardine in a can so that someone could tell me No estб aquн; face to face. What was the point? Either he was taking a drug-assisted vacation or he was really sick, and either way I didn't stand much chance of getting anything out of him. If I actually managed to run him down, I'd be rewarded with No lo se instead of No estб aquн;. I don't know, he's not here, I don't know, he's not here-
Shit.
Joe Durkin had done a follow-up interrogation of Calderуn on Saturday night, around the time that I was passing the word to every snitch and hanger-on I could find. That same night I took a gun away from a mugger and Sunny Hendryx washed down a load of pills with vodka and orange juice.
The very next day, Calderуn called in sick. And the day after that a man in a lumber jacket followed me in and out of an AA meeting and warned me off Kim Dakkinen's trail.
The phone rang. It was Chance. There'd been a message that he'd called, but evidently he'd decided not to wait for me to get back to him.
"Just checking," he said. "You getting anywhere?"
"I must be. Last night I got a warning."
"What kind of a warning?"
"A guy told me not to go looking for trouble."
"You sure it was about Kim?"
"I'm sure."
"You know the guy?"
"No."
"What are you fixing to do?"
I laughed. "I'm going to go looking for trouble," I said. "In Woodside."
"Woodside?"
"That's in Queens."
"I know where Woodside is, man. What's happening in Woodside?"
I decided I didn't want to get into it. "Probably nothing," I said, "and I wish I could save myself the trip, but I can't. Kim had a boyfriend."
"In Woodside?"
"No, Woodside's something else. But it's definite she had a boyfriend. He bought her a mink jacket."
He sighed. "I told you about that. Dyed rabbit."
"I know about the dyed rabbit. It's in her closet."
"So?"
"She also had a short jacket, ranch mink. She was wearing it the first time I met her. She was also wearing it when she went to the Galaxy Downtowner and got killed. It's in a lockbox at One Police Plaza."
"What's it doin' there?"
"It's evidence."
"Of what?"
"Nobody knows. I got to it and I traced it and I talked to the man who sold it to her. She's the buyer of record, her name's on the sales slip, but there was a man with her and he counted out the money and paid for it."
"How much?"
"Twenty-five hundred."
He thought it over. "Maybe she held out," he said. "Be easy to do, couple hundred a week, you know they hold out from time to time. I wouldn'ta missed it."
"The man paid out the money, Chance."
"Maybe she gave it to him to pay with. Like a woman'll slip a man money for a restaurant check, so it don't look bad."
"How come you don't want it to be that she had a boyfriend?"
"Shit," he said. "I don't care about that. I want it to be whatever way it was. I just can't believe it, that's all."
I let it go.
"Could be a trick instead of a boyfriend. Sometimes a john wants to pretend like he's a special friend, he don't have to pay, so he wants to give presents instead of cash. Maybe he was just a john and she was like hustling him for the fur."
"Maybe."
"You think he was a boyfriend?"
"That's what I think, yes."
"And he killed her?"
"I don't know who killed her."
"And whoever killed her wants you to drop the whole thing."
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe the killing had nothing to do with the boyfriend. Maybe it was a psycho, the way the cops want to figure it, and maybe the boyfriend just doesn't want to get roped into any investigation."
"He wasn't in it and he wants to stay out of it. That what you mean?"
"Something like that."
"I don't know, man. Maybe you should let it go."
"Drop the investigation?"
"Maybe you should. A warning, shit, you don't want to get killed over it."
"No," I said. "I don't."
"What are you gonna do, then?"
"Right now I'm going to catch a train to Queens."
"To Woodside."
"Right."
"I could bring the car around. Drive you out there."
"I don't mind the subway."
"Be faster in the car. I could wear my little chauffeur's cap. You could sit in the back."
"Some other time."
"Suit yourself," he said. "Call me after, huh?"
"Sure."
I wound up taking the Flushing line to a stop at Roosevelt Avenue and Fifty-second Street. The train came up out of the ground after it left Manhattan. I almost missed my stop because it was hard to tell where I was. The station signs on the elevated platforms were so disfigured with graffiti that their messages were indecipherable.
A flight of steel steps led me back down to street level. I checked my pocket atlas, got my bearings, and set out for Barnett Avenue. I hadn't walked far before I managed to figure out what a Hispanic rooming house was doing in Woodside. The neighborhood wasn't Irish anymore. There were still a few places with names like the Emerald Tavern and the Shamrock scattered in the shadow of the El, but most of the signs were Spanish and most of the markets were bodegas now. Posters in the window of the Tara Travel Agency offered charter flights to Bogotб and Caracas.