Murder in Hell's Kitchen Read online

  She lit the newspaper at the bottom of the fireplace and watched it catch, watched the small flame grow, move upward, ignite the kindling. Her face was warm. Sex was what fires were all about, and sex was what she was thinking about. She hadn’t slept with a man since the last time she saw Hack, and that was more than a month ago. She sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, her knees up and her arms around them. Hack would like the fireplace; it had been her first thought when she saw it.

  She sat that way for a while. Then, becoming too warm, she scrambled to her feet and went to the kitchen, where she had left the mail. An envelope from her future company was waiting to be opened. She tore it open and scanned the sheet inside. They were looking forward to her arrival; was there any chance she could start earlier than they had agreed upon? There were several workshops she would need to attend in the weeks after she started. Please give us a call, let us know, looking forward . . .

  Why did that job suddenly seem so far away? She read the letter again and dropped it on the table, all the bad old habits she had sworn off returning in this lovely, clean apartment. She got a beer from the refrigerator and went back to the living room and the blazing fire. She curled up on the sofa and drank and watched for a long time. She wanted to call Hack, get it all out in the open, whether something funny was going on in his office. She knew his beeper number as well as she knew her father’s number. Eventually she took the phone over to the sofa and called her dad. He was glad to hear from her, feeling pretty good, eating Madeleine’s leftovers.

  She felt better when she hung up.

  29

  “NO SHIT,” MACHOVEC said. “They sure he said ‘Chinese’?”

  “That’s what the girlfriend thinks she heard.”

  “So we gotta pull a Chinaman out of a hat and then work backward.”

  “Or something,” Jane said. “I’ve got an idea. You guys keep working. I have to make a call.”

  In the middle of the night it had come to her. It was very simple, too simple really, but it was worth a phone call. Mr. Stabile’s secretary answered and put her through right away.

  “Detective Bauer.” He sounded happy to hear her voice. “Have you spoken to Derek?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Derek’s a good person, Detective. He just doesn’t know how to cope when life throws him a curve ball.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. He gave us some useful information. I’d like to follow up on it with you.”

  “By all means.”

  “The apartment on the fourth floor, Four B, I think that is, the one on the right . . . who lives there now?”

  “That would be . . . just a minute; let me get this exactly right . . . that’s Ms. Olivia Dean. Very good tenant, very quiet, pays her rent on time.” He was starting to sound like Derek: his world was filled with only the most wonderful people.

  “When did she move in?”

  “Everyone in the building moved in after the renovation.”

  “Was she the first tenant in that apartment?”

  “Yes. She’s been with us for several years.”

  “How old a woman is she?”

  “Well, now . . .” His voice told her the question bordered on impertinence. “I suppose in her forties. Give or take.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Uh, brown hair, slim.”

  “Where does she work?”

  “At the time she moved in . . . just a moment . . . she worked downtown for some place called Hazelwood Industries.” He dictated an address on Walker Street, a street that had its short run from Canal and Centre to Broadway at Church. She could walk there in a few minutes. “But I couldn’t swear she still works there. I don’t insist that tenants keep me posted on where they work, as long as they pay their rent on time. She always does.”

  He gave her the phone number he had on file for her office and Jane called it. A woman answered and said she had never heard of Hazelwood Industries or Olivia Dean. They had had their phone number for a few years and they were not on Walker Street.

  “Gordon,” Jane said as she hung up, “feel like a little stroll over to Walker Street?”

  “Sure.” He was up from behind his desk before she had a chance to explain.

  On the way down in the elevator, she presented her very weak theory that the woman who had squatted in 4B might have decided to stay on after Soderberg was dead. She wasn’t a suspect; it would never occur to Derek that she had pushed Soderberg to his death, and maybe she just liked the building, the more so after the renovation.

  “Anything’s possible,” Defino said flatly. “I wonder if Derek’s holding back on us.”

  They went north to Walker and turned left. Crossing Lafayette, Jane noted the opening of yet another Irish pub at the corner of Cortlandt Alley, a tiny street from old New York. The building they wanted was just off Broadway, a textile company on the ground floor. Soon young people with a lot of money would claim the businesses and apartments upstairs for residential lofts. In the meantime, there was no Hazelwood listed in the dingy foyer. But there was a bicycle chained to a metal rack near the mailboxes. They walked into the groundfloor shop, treading on a floor that must have been laid a hundred years ago.

  “Help ya?” the rotund man in glasses behind the counter called.

  “We’re looking for Hazelwood Industries,” Jane said. “They’re supposed to be at this address.”

  “Never heard of ’em.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Thirty-seven going on thirty-eight years. I’m Eddie.”

  “And no Hazelwood anywhere in the building?”

  “No, ma’am.” He had just taken a look at their shields and he was being polite. “But there was a place here a coupla years ago, one of those P.O. box places. The address is Suite one-two-three, but that’s really a box number, know what I mean?”

  “So Hazelwood could have gotten its mail here and had its offices somewhere else.”

  “If they had any offices to speak of.”

  “You remember when the box number place was here?” Defino asked.

  “They left about three, four years ago. They were here for a few years.”

  “Thanks for your help.” He wrote down Eddie’s name and phone number and they left. Out on the street he said, “I’m liking it better.”

  “Me too. I think we should pay a call on Ms. Olivia Dean.”

  Up on Fifty-sixth Street, Olivia Dean was not at home. Jane said she would go back up tonight, but before they left they knocked on the door to the apartment Jerry Hutchins had once lived in.

  An older man, looking sleepy, opened the door.

  “I’m Detective Bauer; this is Detective Defino,” Jane said as they held their IDs up. The man leaned forward to look at them closely. “We wanted to ask you about your neighbor across the hall.”

  “Never see her.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Three years, four.”

  “Do you know what she looks like?”

  “She’s a woman, ’bout this big”—he held his hand about four feet from the floor—“that’s all I know. She do something?”

  “We just need to ask her some questions,” Defino said.

  “I never see her,” the man said, “maybe once a month, maybe less. I don’t remember the last time I saw her. Not for a while.”

  They thanked him and headed back to the office.

  “Fits with what Derek said,” Jane said as they walked to the subway. “Maybe she still swings up and down from the roof.”

  “Like a monkey,” Defino said. “So where does she go? Think she spends her days in a P.O. box on Walker Street?”

  “As long as she spends her nights in apartment Four B, we’ll find her.”

  After lunch Stabile called. “Detective Bauer,” he said, sounding somewhat tentative, “you remember I told you that Olivia Dean always paid her rent right on time?”

  “I remember.”

 
; “Well, this is very strange. I was looking through the receipts a little while ago and her check hasn’t come in yet. The first of the month was last week.”

  “Is her lease up?”

  “Not at all. It has months to run. I can’t imagine what’s happened. I tried to call her a little while ago but she’s not home. I always have her check by the second or third at the latest.”

  “I appreciate your calling. If the check comes in, would you give me a call?”

  “Absolutely. I wonder what’s happened.”

  “Maybe she had to go out of town on business and she forgot about the rent.”

  “But it’s unusual. Well, I won’t keep you.”

  Jane passed the word along to Defino.

  “Interesting. This is looking nice, very nice. Someone tipped her off that we’re looking into the Soderberg death, and she’s off and running.”

  “I wonder if we could get a warrant,” Jane said, almost to herself.

  “MacHovec, you check out this Olivia Dean?”

  “Did it while you were out this morning. Big fat zero. Of course, a couple of prints from her apartment might change all that.”

  “It’s pretty thin to get a warrant,” Jane said. “We’ve got nothing but vague guesses. I’ll run up there tonight and knock on her door. This’ll keep till morning.”

  She sat thinking about it. It had been such a far-out possibility, that the woman who squatted in the apartment had eventually moved in legally, that she was hesitant to go out on a limb. Still, they told McElroy about it and he took it very seriously. When they got back to their office, Mike Fromm called.

  “Got something you’re gonna love,” he said.

  “Hutchins?”

  “No. That’s still touch and go. I went out to the airport and did some low-tech investigating. I may have found Hutchins’s Chinaman.”

  “Mike, that’s fantastic.”

  “I got the rental car gals to dig deep in their memories and then in their records. Just something we old guys still know how to do. A man with an Asian face and a Chinese name rented a car the day you arrived in Omaha.”

  “How did he pay for it?”

  “With a credit card, if you can believe it.” He read off the details. “Gave a New York address and a New York driver’s license, for what it’s worth. And there’s more. He returned the car the day we found Hutchins.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Anyway, it looks like his name is Chong Wang.” He spelled it out. “And his address is on Walker Street. I thought New York was all numbers. Where did Walker come from?”

  “Walker Street in New York?” She suddenly had the attention of the men in her office.

  “That’s right.” He gave the number and said it could be something slightly different. The girl at the car rental had put the pink carbon copy of the rental contract through the copier and it wasn’t as clear as he had hoped. But one of the numbers he speculated on was the address of Hazelwood Industries.

  “Mike, I know the place. We were just there this morning. It’s a street in downtown New York, down below where the numbers run. I think we may really have something.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I’ll see if I can get a better copy of this and fax or mail it to you. And in the meantime, we’ll go over the car, although I don’t expect much. It’s been washed and rented out since he brought it back.”

  “It would be great to have a fingerprint.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  She hung up and closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Oh, sweet Jesus, we may be onto something.”

  McElroy said he would try for a warrant on the basis of the connection between Olivia Dean and Chong Wang. MacHovec called the Fifth Precinct station house and arranged to have a couple of sector cars meet Jane and Defino at the Walker Street address. Then they took off.

  Eddie was in the same place in the ground-floor store. “You’re the cops wanted to know about the P.O. box place.”

  “Right,” Jane said. “Now we want to know if a Chinese man lives or works somewhere in this building.”

  “Chinese?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought he was a Jap.”

  “His name is Wang,” Jane said.

  “I didn’t ever know his name, but I see him all the time, going up and down the stairs. Imagine that. He’s Chinese. Goes to show.”

  “You ever talk to him?”

  “Nah. He’s always in a hurry. Rushes in, rushes out. That’s his bike out there.”

  Defino looked out the door. “The one chained to the rail?”

  “Yeah. He takes that sometimes. Sometimes he doesn’t. I haven’t seen him for a while.”

  “You know which apartment is his?”

  Eddie screwed up his face. “Funny you should ask. I think he lives where that P.O. box place was. How do you like that for coincidences?”

  “I like it,” Jane said. “Which one is it?”

  “Second floor on the right at the top of the stairs. But I don’t think he’s there.”

  “Thanks,” they said together.

  The sector cops were in place, covering the back door, the front, and the fire escape.

  “We gotta get this bike looked at,” Defino said. “It should have his prints all over it.”

  “Unless he wears leather gloves for driving. You ready to go up?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  They knocked on the unmarked door, standing back on either side. There was no answer and no sound inside. They knocked and called, but there was nothing.

  “Stay here,” Jane said. “Let me go up the fire escape and see if I can get a look inside.” She was down the stairs in a second.

  One of the uniforms went up with her, staying low when they reached the window. He slithered to the other side, and Jane leaned over and looked inside. The window was very dirty. A shade was pulled about halfway down and there were no curtains. No lights were on inside. She could make out some furniture, a phone, a table, a couple of chairs. It seemed to be an all-purpose room without a bed, but one could be out of sight around a corner.

  “Looks empty,” the uniform said.

  “ ’Fraid so. He might be sleeping. Let’s see if he hears anything.” She rapped on the glass with her high school ring. There was no response. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Defino met her downstairs. “Crime Scene’s coming for the bike. A couple of uniforms’ll stick around till they get here.”

  “Pray for prints,” Jane said.

  He looked at his watch. “Let’s see if McElroy can get us another warrant.”

  30

  NO ONE LIKES to ask a judge for a warrant when he’s at home sleeping or having dinner with friends or enjoying a ball game. McElroy had had time to get a request for a warrant to search Olivia Dean’s apartment to a friendly judge, but it was too late, he thought, to try for a second one late in the afternoon. They would get the paperwork together and try first thing in the morning. In the meantime, they arranged for the building on Walker Street to be watched overnight.

  A crime scene detective called the team just before five to say there were beautiful prints on the rubber grips and on the handlebars, and they would be sent over by morning.

  Captain Graves dropped in, having been briefed by McElroy. He was looking a lot more cheerful than the last time Jane met with him. He ordered Jane to stay away from Fifty-sixth Street tonight; they would take care of everything in the morning.

  Jane and Defino agreed to pick up the warrant for Olivia Dean’s apartment first thing in the morning and then go uptown to execute it. Charlie Bracken said he’d be glad to join them.

  Jane walked home feeling pretty chipper. An impossible set of people and circumstances were falling into place in a way that made her shake her head in wonder. She stopped at the store and bought food for dinner. She felt like cooking tonight, making something from scratch that wouldn’t taste of a can or freezer burn.

  While she cooked and ate, s
he thought about Hack, about who had leaked word of her trip to Omaha. Someone had. Even if they picked up Chong Wang, there wasn’t much chance he would give up names. After putting her dishes in the sink, she decided to call Hack. She picked up the phone and dialed his beeper number. Then she waited. Her phone number would be new to him but he would know that a call to his beeper must come from someone he knew. It might take a minute; it might take ten. If he was at home, in the field, called to a crime scene, it might take longer. She went into her office, took out her checkbook, and started going through her bills.

  The phone rang less than five minutes later. When she answered, there was a pause, then a tentative, “Jane?”

  “Hack, it’s me.”

  “It’s a new number.”

  “I moved. I need to see you.”

  “Tell me where to go.”

  She opened the door after buzzing him in downstairs. The coffee was on and a couple of dishes and spoons lay on the kitchen table along with the ice-cream scoop. Hack loved ice cream, and she had picked up a quart the other day.

  The elevator stopped and the door slid open. She felt a kind of adolescent frenzy, a fear in her gut that she was doing the wrong thing, that this would be a disaster, that— He stepped out into the hall and saw her, the smallest smile curling his lips. She went back into the apartment and waited for him. He came in and closed the door without turning away from her.

  “You look great.”

  “You too.”

  He was holding a small brown paper bag, which he handed to her. Taking it, she felt the cold through the paper. It was ice cream. She smiled. Her eyes began to tear, and she turned toward the kitchen.

  “Looks like you were expecting company,” Hack said behind her.

  She opened the freezer, allowing him to see the quart she had put away as she put his beside it.

  “Coffee smells good,” he said.

  “Hack, I asked you here on business, but I’ve never missed anyone so much in my life.”

  “I know.” He didn’t say anything else for a minute, just stood in the kitchen a couple of feet from her. He didn’t have Captain Graves’s Hollywood handsomeness. He was more rugged, less perfect. His hair was graying with no silver accents, just plain gray among the black. She thought he was a little thinner than last time. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to,” he said finally, “but I want to put my arms around you so bad I can’t stand it.”