“What was the message?”
“You’ll have to ask him that question.”
“Did you deliver it?”
“Not as of yet.”
“You need me on this, LT. I’m sure that this woman really is in danger.”
“That might be true, but have you ever known me to take the easy road?” I stood up then. “I think it’s time I got back to my business, Lieutenant. If I come across something that’ll help you with these killings I promise I’ll give you a ring.”
He stayed in his chair another dozen seconds and then rose, slowly.
“Don’t take too long,” he said. “All Tyler has to do is raise his voice and you will be thrown down into a hole that even Alphonse Rinaldo can’t dig you out of.”
25
When the good lieutenant left I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk and fiddled with the controls until the four monitors there showed him passing down the aisleway, and then through Mardi’s office. I didn’t have to watch him. Kitteridge was a straight arrow. He wouldn’t perform an illegal search or plant any bugs on the premises. When he brought me down it would be on the strength of his police work, not the devious ways of people like me.
Iran jumped up when the cop entered. I liked that. The kid knew how to act. Mardi smiled sweetly and nodded at some blandishment Carson uttered.
When he was gone from the offices I closed the drawer.
The words “Alphonse Rinaldo” reverberated in the room as if Carson was saying them over and over. Rinaldo was the most powerful man I had ever met; the self-styled Special Assistant to the City of New York had helped many times when I found myself in the rarefied atmosphere of billionaires and high-end politicos. But the downtown ringmaster had cut me off for doing a private job too well. Losing Rinaldo’s support was like blowing up the George Washington Bridge.
Oh well.
I got to my feet, a boxer to the end, and walked the same route that Kitteridge had just taken.
“Iran,” I said and he stood up again. “There’s a row of eight desks and cubicles in here. Pick one and stay there until I come back or call.”
He stuck out his bottom lip and nodded.
“If Mardi needs anything, do what she asks,” I continued. “And, Mardi.”
“Yes, Mr. McGill?”
“If Iran wants to set himself up with a computer or something, you give him what you can.”
“Where you going, sir?” she asked.
“To make a mistake most likely.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m going to do a favor for a friend.”
Corinthia Highgate lived in the slums of the Upper East Side. It wasn’t a ghetto, just a block of poorly maintained brownstones with tiny one-bedroom apartments and few running elevators. To the north and south, east and west there were fancy blocks where rich people traveled in upscale limos while on this street the denizens wore tattered sneakers and pulled rickety wheeled carts.
“Hello?” she said through the crackling building intercom.
“Miss Highgate?”
“Yes?”
“This is Ambrose Thurman.”
“Who?”
“I called about William Williams.”
The lady took a moment for recollection.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh yes. You, you wanted his books.”
“I wanted to buy them from you,” I reminded her.
“Oh. How much were you willing to pay?”
“I’d have to see them first, ma’am.”
“Who are you again?”
“Bill’s nephew-in-law.”
“Yes... that’s right.”
The buzzer sounded and I strode up to the fourth floor, to 4C, where the buzzer board told me that C. Highgate lived.
“Hello?” she said to my knock.
“It’s Ambrose Thurman, ma’am.”
If an inanimate object could hesitate, that’s just what Miss Highgate’s door did. At first it didn’t move at all, then the knob wobbled, shook, turned. It came open maybe three inches and was stopped by a sudden jerk.
“Oh, damn,” she whispered and the door closed again.
There came some clinking and the slither of the chain against the slot and jamb. The knob did its dance. The door slowly swayed until finally a small white woman with blue-gray hair was revealed, peering through thick-lensed round-frame glasses that magnified her eyes.
She was wearing a dark dress with white designs on it. I couldn’t make out the nature of the print because of the loose-knit maroon shawl that covered it.
“Miss Highgate,” I said with as kind a smile as a man like me can muster.
“Yes.” The word had finality to it, as if I were the Grim Reaper and she understood she could no longer bar my entrance.
“Can I come in, ma’am?”
“I suppose.”
She was in her seventies and just a little unsure on her pins. We waited a moment for her to move to one side. I walked into the living room of her apartment. It was a good-sized space and mostly bare. No carpeting on the floor, or even curtains in the small window. In the center of the room there was a dark table, maybe oak, and two folding metal chairs. There were some papers stacked on the floor under the window and a pillow next to a doorway that led further into her domicile.
“Spring cleaning?” I asked.
“What?”
“Where’s all your stuff?”
“I hate clutter, Mr. Thurman,” she said. “I had my grandniece throw out or sell everything I don’t need.”
“No TV? No radio?”
“There’s a radio next to my bed, and TV is just a buncha junk.”
I grinned and she said, “Have a seat.”
She smiled down on me, giving the impression that we were old friends together again after many years of separation.
“Would you care for some port?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She doddered out of the doorway next to the pillow and I sat, peacefully plotting my way back into Cyril Tyler’s domain.
I didn’t like it that he had turned me over to the police; that was a dirty trick, in my book. I wanted to ask him about it, but first I needed to look into the children’s allegations about their mother — and I couldn’t do that until the sun went down.
I smiled at the beam of sunlight on the hardwood floor, thinking, the darkness is my friend.
Miss Highgate came back into the room with a liquor bottle in her left hand and two tiny green liqueur glasses in her right. She set these down on the graceless table and took the opposite chair.
“Will you pour?” she asked me. “My hands shake sometimes and this is the good stuff.”
Appreciating her choice of words, I pulled out the cork-lined stopper and poured out an ounce for each of us.
It was good stuff.
“Lee was your uncle, you say?” she asked at the onset of our second shots.
“My stepfather’s brother,” I said.
“I was going to say that you don’t look much like him.”
Her attempt at humor — I thought.
“Should we take a look at his books?” I suggested.
“Will you pour me another glass?”
I did so, happily.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Thurman?”
“Elevator inspector,” I said. “I’m the guy that signs those little forms that they keep under glass in every car.”
“How interesting.”
“Are you retired?”
“Yes. I worked at Blisscomb’s Cosmetics for forty-four years. I had the same desk the whole time. When I got there it was brand new. By the time I left they called it an antique. That was ten years ago.”
“How do you keep yourself occupied?” I asked, realizing that the biggest price I was going to pay for those books was time and conversation.