Читать книгу The Silver Chariot Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

One thing about Cletus Berry. He hadn’t talked about his private life but he talked about New York. He wasn’t a native, he’d revealed that much, but he’d taken to the city like a native, and over drinks at SPUDS conferences he’d told stories about New York with obvious pride in his voice.

His favorite was the story of the Second Avenue Subway. The city had planned a whole new line to serve the East Side, got a referendum past the voters and floated a multi-billion-dollar bond issue to pay for it. They’d torn down the elevated rail line that served that part of the city, the famous Third Avenue El. They even broke ground for the new subway line, but when it came time to start serious work they looked at their bank account and discovered that billions of dollars had somehow disappeared.

“One thing about New York politicians,” Berry had roared with laughter, “they may be crooks, but at least they’re not petty crooks.”

Cletus Berry had lived in an old red-brick high-rise—or what must once have passed as a high-rise—in the East 70’s. The building might be a little past its prime; Lindsey didn’t expect to see high-flying yuppies screeching up to the front door in their Porsches or sleekly turned out movers and shakers climbing out of stretch limos. Instead, he got the impression of solid, upper-middle-class urbanites.

All right.

New York was not so daunting after all.

An awning over the sidewalk, a doorman in a modest dark blue uniform. A lobby with neutral colored walls, a couple of gilt-framed mirrors, a flagstone floor. As Lindsey entered the lobby a broad-shouldered middle-aged black man emerged from the elevator and crossed the lobby to the street door. Lindsey was startled; in that fleeting moment, the man bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead Cletus Berry.

Lindsey blinked and the man was gone.

Lindsey entered an elevator operated by another blue-uniformed minion, a woman this time. She asked politely for Lindsey’s floor, and whom was he planning to visit. He told her and she responded, “Oh, it was such a pity, Mr. Berry was such a nice man, it was such a tragedy.” And a pause—it was a slow elevator—and, “Are you a friend of the family?”

And Lindsey said, “Mr. Berry was my partner.”

And when Lindsey pushed the button beside the massive, maroon-painted door, a small dog started to yip inside the apartment. Lindsey did not hear the heavy elevator gate slide closed until the apartment door had opened and Lindsey identified himself to the black-swathed woman who answered the door and she invited him inside.

The woman’s gray hair was unkempt and her dress hung on her. This was no smart mourning outfit. This woman was no Auntie Mame. This was real grief. The woman offered her hand and Lindsey shook it, then dropped it.

The woman’s eyes were a dark green and her skin was olive. Her features were soft. She was a classic Mediterranean type.

He asked, “Are you Mrs. Berry?”

She shook her head. She said, “I am her sister.” She spoke with a heavier Italian accent than the woman who’d answered the phone earlier; that must have been Berry’s wife. “She just came home. She wanted them to give her his body. They won’t give her his body. She’s with the baby now. Come in the house and sit down, you want to talk to her.”

He followed her. He detected the odor of cooking in the house, and of coffee brewing, but he couldn’t tell how fresh it was.

The yapping had come from a tiny dog with a glossy, black-and-gold coat. The dog was circling Lindsey and the woman, darting forward as if it intended to nip at Lindsey’s trouser cuffs, then dancing back, its fore-end close to the hardwood floor, its hindquarters and stumpy tail elevated.

The woman said, “Ezio Pinza, shame, you don’t be a bad boy. You go keep Anna Maria company.”

The dog looked up a her. He gave one more yip. The woman gestured at him, as if she were brushing him away. “Go, you. She’s crying, you go.”

The dog ran down a narrow hallway and scratched on a wooden door. The door opened and the dog disappeared into another room.

“You come and sit down,” the woman said to Lindsey. She led the way into the living room. A blue-patterned sofa and two easy chairs were grouped around a low table.

Lindsey followed instructions.

The woman said, “I am Zaffira Fornari. I am going to be with my sister. You wait. She know you are coming here, so she sees you.”

She walked along the hallway the little dog had scampered down and rapped softly on the door. If there was a reply, Lindsey didn’t hear it. She opened the door and disappeared behind it. In a moment the door closed with a metallic click.

Lindsey looked around the room. A fireplace on one wall, two massive bookcases opposite. A large frame, obviously holding a picture or a mirror, but now there was no telling which because it was draped in heavy black cloth. A couple of windows overlooking the street.

The woman had introduced herself as Zaffira Fornari, the sister of Berry’s wife. No, of his widow. Lindsey knew that Berry’s wife was Ester Lazarini Berry; then her sister must be Zaffira Lazarini Fornari. Whoever Fornari was—obviously a husband.

The bookcases were jammed, and Lindsey’s curiosity was just getting the better of him, pushing him to get up and scan the titles, when the bedroom door opened.

Ester Lazarini Berry emerged; her sister Zaffira remained behind.

Ester might have been beautiful once. She might have been beautiful yesterday, until she learned of her husband’s death. Now her face was drawn, her eyes were red from weeping, and her shoulders were rounded. She looked as if she was drawing in upon herself, racing to immerse herself in her thoughts and her memories and away from the world in which the body of her husband had to be chopped off the icy concrete in a garbage-strewn alley.

The sisters bore a strong mutual resemblance. Lindsey stood up when Ester Lazarini Berry entered the room. Like Zaffira, she was dressed in black. She walked toward Lindsey, almost steady on her feet.

He stood up and started to say something but she took his hand in hers, not the way one person shakes hands with another, but the way a child takes the hand of an adult.

She said, “You were his friend.”

Lindsey said, “Yes.”

She said, “I do not understand. Why did they kill him? I went there today, I had to look at him. Who would do that? They killed that other man, too, I did not know him, maybe he did something, maybe he needed to die. But Cletus needed to live. I need him, Anna Maria needs him.”

She hadn’t let go of Lindsey’s hand, so he held her hand in both of his. She had graceful fingers and fine bones. She was trembling, gently, steadily.

“We need him,” she repeated. “He has a baby. Ten years old. You know what it mean to a little girl, ten years old, they kill her father? Why did they have to kill him?”

Lindsey shook his head. “I came because—”

She pulled her hand away and said, “Sit. You like a cup of coffee? I make the best coffee on the East Side. I just made a pot. Cream? Honey? Sugar?”

He stammered a reply.

“Sit.” She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down. He sat on the couch and watched her disappear into what must be the kitchen. He heard china and silver clattering. From the other room, the room from which Ester had emerged and into which Zaffira had disappeared, he heard soft sounds, sounds of voices and soft sobs.

He opened his pocket organizer and looked up half a dozen phone numbers that he already knew, including Detective Marcie Sokolov’s. He wished that Sokolov had taken the case more seriously. She hadn’t done much about it and Lindsey had the feeling that she wasn’t going to do much about it.

Another murder, another corpse, another number.

The bedroom door opened and Ezio Pinza pranced out on the end of a leash. He gave a small yelp when he saw Lindsey. The girl holding his leash—she must be the ten-year-old, Anna Maria—looked at Lindsey, then looked away. Zaffira Fornari was close behind her.

Anna Maria was wearing a bright red and green mackinaw. Ezio Pinza wore a blue doggie sweater. Zaffira had put on a dark, shapeless coat and tied a black woolen scarf over her graying hair. They went to the front door, Ezio tugging at Anna Maria. Zaffira reached over the girl’s shoulder to open the latch. Just before the door closed behind them, Zaffira Fornari looked back at Lindsey and said, “We go for a walk. Anna Maria’s dog got to go for his walk.”

Ester returned from the kitchen carrying a tray with a silver coffee service and cups. She poured a cup for Lindsey and pushed a silver creamer and a little silver cup of honey with a miniature ladle in it, toward him. She hadn’t bothered to ask if I took decaf, he thought. With an effort he refrained from smiling at the triviality.

But maybe, he thought, that’s how we keep from dwelling on painful things—we divert ourselves with trivialities. Maybe, he thought, that was why Zaffira and Anna Maria were walking Ezio around the block. And maybe that’s why Ester has busied herself making coffee and playing the gracious hostess to this man she’s never met before.

“You came to offer condolences, Mr. Lindsey.” Ester’s English was better than her sister’s; the accent barely discernible, the syntax perfect. “He told me about you, that he knew you from Denver. He told me about the case he helped you with, on Mosholu Parkway. He always thought the Bronx was an exotic land. Or another planet. He used to joke with me about going to Mars. That was the Bronx. He called New Jersey Alpha Centauri, another galaxy.”

She paused and asked if his coffee was all right.

He took a sip and said it was excellent.

She hadn’t poured a cup for herself, but now she did, adding neither cream not honey. Sweetener and whitener, the airline would have called them. The coffee had been scalding hot; even cooled with cream and honey, it pushed Lindsey to his limit. Ester took hers black. Pot to cup to lips. She squeezed her large eyes shut as she took a generous mouthful.

She swallowed.

“No more Mars. No more Alpha Centauri. I told him a thousand times, Alpha Centauri isn’t another galaxy. It’s our closest neighboring star. I studied astronomy as a girl, did you know that?”

Lindsey shook his head.

“I studied astronomy. Astronomy and history. I was going to be an astronomer or an historian, I hadn’t made up my mind. But there wasn’t much chance for me to do either of those in Italy. Maybe a schoolteacher, and teach history to schoolchildren. But then along came my handsome American and swept me off my feet. It was a scandal, my marrying Cletus, can you understand that?”

Lindsey could. He knew what it was like to be part of an interracial couple. He knew what it was like to be dumped, even though Marvia had said she still loved him. “It’s the race thing, isn’t it?” he’d asked, and she’d admitted that, Yes, it was, and that had been that and now she was married to a man she could walk down the street with, without drawing stares.

“I think I can understand,” Lindsey said.

“Pardon me, Mr. Lindsey, if I doubt that. I don’t think you know who the Lazarinis are.”

He held his coffee cup, taking microscopic sips from its edge. The cup was translucently thin, white china with a broad deckled maroon stripe and a gold rim. He’d seen this pattern before, paid out insurance benefits to a San Francisco homeowner whose beloved Wedgewood had been turned to a pile of worthless fragments by the Loma Prieta earthquake.

“Cletus was my good friend,” Lindsey said. A little diplomatic exaggeration couldn’t hurt. “But he was a private man, wasn’t he?”

Ester Berry said, “He was a private man.” her smile was as rueful as it was faint.

“So, ah, we talked about our work, mainly. We were roommates, you know.”

“Yes.”

“And about nothing. Television. Football. Restaurants.”

“Women?”

Lindsey blushed. “Not really.”

“Do not be ashamed. We women talk about men. We do it all the times, all our lives. Little girls talk about their brothers and their fathers. Big girls talk about their boyfriends. Grown women talk about their husbands. Mothers talk about their sons.”

Lindsey didn’t have an answer.

“Widows,” Ester said. She drank more coffee, then put her cup down carefully on the shining saucer. It clattered just once. “Widows,” she said again. “Now I will learn what widows say about men.”

Outside the apartment windows—they were behind Ester, covered with transparent, floor-length draperies—Lindsey could see another apartment building across the street. It was identical to this one, and from the architecture he would date them to the late 1920s. From his place on the couch he couldn’t see the sky over New York, but the daylight was fading outside.

If walls could talk, he quoted to himself, and windows tell what they have seen.… Who the hell had said that?

Ester Lazarini Berry started to stand up, then sat down again, running her fingers along her cheekbones and then clasping them in her lap.

“My mother used to say that we were the first Jews in Rome. We were there before the Christians. We were there before Joshua ben Joseph was born. Do you know that, Mr. Lindsey? Do you believe me?”

Lindsey was startled. The woman was vehement. Or maybe just nervous. Who could blame her for being nervous? “I don’t really know. I didn’t know you were, ah, I didn’t know you were Jewish, Mrs. Berry. I didn’t even know there were Jewish people in, ah, Jewish people in Italy. I mean, it’s such a Catholic country.”

Ester Berry asked, “Are you Catholic, Mr. Lindsey?”

Lindsey shook his head, then said, “No, I’m—” He didn’t want to say that he was nothing. He’d been raised without religion, with a careful, politically correct omission of ethnicity. Sometimes he wished he could be a Cherokee or a Jehovah’s Witness or a member of the International Flat Earth Society. Anything that would give him a sense of who he was. “No,” he repeated, “I’m not Catholic.”

“You were never in a Jewish house of mourning? We don’t sit shiva, not the way we should. But we cover the mirrors, the pictures. And how can we stay home? The dog has to go out, does he understand the Law? And the baby, she has to take the dog, and her aunt has to protect the baby. Even in this neighborhood.”

She sighed, brought herself back on track. “They think that Italy is their country, the Christians. Even the ones who hate their church. But there were Hebrews in Rome in Caesar’s day. Did you know that? There were free Hebrew traders and there were Jewish slaves in Caesar’s own household. There were Hebrew prayers at Caesar’s funeral, did you know that? No, I didn’t think so. The Lazarinis trace their blood to those times. My first ancestor came to Rome from Athens with trade goods and gifts. Do you believe that?”

Lindsey didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut.

“He settled in Rome and studied silversmithing. That became his trade, he was tired of traveling and he wanted to settle down. He found a nice Jewish girl and married her and there have been Lazarinis in Rome for 2,000 years. More.”

Lindsey heard the sound of a key in the heavy front door of the apartment, and the sounds of Ester Lazarini Berry’s sister Zaffira and Ester’s daughter Anna Maria and the little dog Ezio Pinza arriving from their walk.

Lindsey swiveled on the couch to watch Zaffira and Anna Maria and the dog. They had a few snowflakes on them, and the woman brushed the girl, then the girl brushed the dog, before they came down the hall.

Behind himself, Lindsey could hear Ester’s voice. She must have had too much momentum to stop. She got out another few sentences.

“There were Jews in the Roman Senate, did you know that? Two thousand years ago. And there were Jewish soldiers, officers, generals, yes, in King Umberto’s army in the first World War. Commanders. Medal winners. They were Lazarinis.”

The older woman and the girl came into the living room. They had left their coats in the front hallway. Even Ezio Pinza had left his doggie sweater in the hallway and stood in his short, glossy, black and gold coat, hiding behind Anna Maria’s feet, peering around her at Lindsey. His eyes were black and shiny. He looked like an intelligent dog.

Anna Maria stood beside her mother’s chair. Ester put her arms around the girl and said, “Mr. Lindsey, this is my daughter. Anna Maria Berry. Cletus is her father.”

She hadn’t got used to referring to her husband in past tense. That wasn’t surprising, he’d only been dead since yesterday. And the police hadn’t released his body to the widow for burial. Sure, they’d need an autopsy, they’d need a coroner’s report. What was the cause of death? Oh, this little bullet hole in his forehead, yes, that’s a definite clue. And what did he have for dinner the night he was killed? Oh, how nice. And did he have traces of any drugs in his bloodstream?

“Anna, Mr. Lindsey was your father’s friend. He’s come to help us.”

Lindsey studied the girl’s face. Her skin was darker than her mother’s, but Ester’s Mediterranean olive and Cletus Berry’s African American black had blended well. Her hair was glossy black and thick. She wore it in pigtails. Not yet switching to teenage sophistication. She was slim, almost wispy. She wore a plaid shirt and new looking jeans and tennis shoes.

He felt a sudden pang, then realized its source. Anna Maria’s skin was hardly lighter than Jamie Wilkerson’s. Jamie Wilkerson, Marvia Plum’s son by her first husband. He had almost been Lindsey’s stepson. He was Anna Maria’s age, and if things had gone differently in California, Jamie and Marvia might have been in New York now, and Jamie and Anna Maria might have become friends.

Lindsey blinked himself out of his reverie and back to the moment.

Why had Cletus never mentioned his daughter? If she were mine, Lindsey thought, she’d be the apple of my eye. But the more he thought of Berry’s friendly manner, his amusing conversation, his little history lessons and anecdotes, the more he realized that he’d learned nothing about Berry’s personal life from their time together.

What do you say to a child whose father was just murdered?

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Anna Maria.” The girl had extended her hand halfway to Lindsey. Ezio Pinza had crept around her ankles and watched Lindsey suspiciously. Lindsey shook the girl’s hand. It was warm and pleasant to the touch. If she were mine, he thought, I’d protect her from the world that killed her father. I’d—he blinked and released her hand. He realized that she had been tugging it away. He felt embarrassed.

To her mother, the girl said, “Can I go to my room? I want to talk to Mosé.”

Ester shook her head. “He doesn’t know yet, Anna darling. I should call Abramo and Sara.”

Zaffira, standing behind Lindsey, said, “I’ll do it, sister. It’s too much, you don’t have to do that.”

“I already told him,” Anna Maria said.

“You what?” Ester sat bolt upright.

“Last night. I couldn’t sleep. I just sat in bed with Ezio and tried to read a book but I couldn’t so I logged on and talked to Mosé. I know he told his parents. They’ll probably phone you today.”

Ester nodded, “All right, Anna. Go ahead.” Then, before the child could leave, Ester stopped her. “You haven’t said a word to Mr. Lindsey, Anna.”

The girl looked angrily at Lindsey. “Mother says you’re going to help us. How are you going to help us? My father is dead!” She burst into tears, then turned her back on Lindsey. Her shoulders shook.

Lindsey held his hand out before Ester could apologize. “I will help you. I met Detective Sokolov.”

“So did I. She came here yesterday and talked to us. She isn’t doing anything and I don’t think you can do anything either.” She whirled, snatched up her dog and ran to her room.

Zaffira had followed Anna Maria Berry to her room. Before long she returned and took the second easy chair facing Lindsey, alongside her sister.

“What did you think?” Lindsey asked.

Ester was calmer than she had been.

“I think Detective Sokolov was trying to be kind to us. To Anna Maria and me. I think she thinks Cletus was some kind of scumbag, that was why he was with a scumbag when they were both shot. Excuse my language.”

Lindsey said, “And I think you’re right. Which means that the NYPD isn’t going to devote too much effort to trying to solve this crime. They’re busier frying other fish.”

“Protecting Randolph Amoroso and his gang of Fascists,” Zaffira put in. “He makes me ashamed I am Italian.”

Lindsey shook his head. He looked down and realized that he still had half a cup of coffee. He picked up and drank. It was cold but it was still the best coffee he’d had since leaving Denver.

He said, “I think Sokolov is doing her best, but I think she has the wrong idea. I don’t think Cletus Berry was that kind of man, and I don’t think he deserved to die like that kind of man. I’m here to find out what really happened.”

But he wasn’t sure he was right.