The Vaults (20 page)

Another memory: Nora at a gala banquet celebrating the fiftieth wedding anniversary of the famous conductor Eli Hodge. She was wearing an ivory cocktail dress and a tiara and was an absolute distraction to the men attending. She was also not talking to Frings, who knew no one else in attendance. It was a virtuoso piece of humiliation. Frings stood mute in her shadow as she flirted and gossiped and became the focus of the party’s considerable energy. Afterward, her lovemaking with him had been saturated with desperation, and he found, to his disgust, that he could not harbor any anger toward her.

He and Nora out with a friend of hers, a movie actress named Greta Van Riepen, and her paramour, a dour, fey little man named Marco, who Greta claimed was some type of Italian royalty. It was a strange feeling to find refuge in conversation with Greta, whom he barely knew, as Nora and Marco chatted with troubling intimacy. It went as well as could be expected given the strained situation, until Greta glimpsed Marco rubbing Nora’s forearm with the tips of his fingers and the evening ended with Greta’s tearful departure, trailed, reluctantly, by Marco.

As Frings had instructed, the office boy woke him at half past four. Frings gathered his notepad and several pencils and stashed them in the pocket of his trench coat. An envelope had appeared on his desk during his nap. He yelled for Ed, who arrived with an aggrieved expression that Frings ignored.

“Where’d this come from?”

“Some skirt dropped it off for you.”

“Did you catch her name?”

Ed shrugged. “No. She was easy on the eyes, though.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Frings said sarcastically, causing Ed to stalk off in a huff. Frings was anxious to leave the office, but this could be another communication from the bombers, so he slit the envelope open with an ivory-handled letter opener that Nora had bought for him.

“God damn it,” Frings said aloud when he saw the contents of the envelope—four high-quality prints of Bernal naked and in bed with a woman who Frings was fairly sure was not Mrs. Bernal. He slid the photos back into the envelope, hidden from the gaze of reporters that had turned
his way in response to the outburst. There was a note, too:
For your use. I’ll be in touch.

This was exactly what he did not need. Bernal was potentially a gold mine of information about Red Henry and his circle. Now it seemed someone else was sweating him, and Frings was experienced enough in these situations to see the danger. He took a breath to calm himself. Frings was adept at putting problems to the back of his mind until he had time to address them. He didn’t have time for this now. He needed to get over to Puskis’s apartment building. He had a juju in his pocket that he would smoke on the way. It would take the edge off his anxiety.

All Souls’ was on the edge of the Hollows, in a building that was once the main Catholic church before they built St. Mary’s in the Theater District. The imposing structure of brick and granite had a façade distinguished by two tall spires, and an arching stained-glass window looming over the main entrance. A small square in front of All Souls’ was concrete with a granite inlay in a geometric pattern that Poole had a notion was based on something in Italy (he had attended
some
classes while at State). Pigeons seemed to have taken over and the square was empty of people, save for four ASU officers smoking and chatting at the top of the stairs leading to All Souls’ entrance. Poole imagined it was a pretty easy assignment.

He stood across the square from All Souls’, out of sight with his back against an apartment building. His conversation with Dr. Vesterhue did not give him much hope of seeing Lena Prosnicki, and he had no stomach for dealing with the ASU again. He was here to confirm Vesterhue’s claims about the security around All Souls’. Vesterhue had not exagerrated.

While this was a dead end, he had given some thought to Casper Prosnicki during the walk here. Where would you find a boy whose father was murdered and whose mother was in an institution? An orphanage.

Orphanages in the City, Poole knew, were neither uniform nor regulated. He was familiar with them from a case he had worked three years prior when a woman named Dagmar Rehmer had hired him to find her daughter, Ursula. He hadn’t considered this point before, but Dagmar Rehmer was another woman who had told Poole not to contact her. While an unusual arrangement, it was not unique to Poole’s experience. He was, by design, available to people who wished to avoid any undue attention. This was partly due to his relationship with Carla. Communists and anarchists, people who knew that the police would provide them with more problems than they would solve, were often Poole’s clients. Word had got around, too, in the City’s vast underground that Poole would provide honest services
without asking sensitive questions of his clients. This was unusual, as other operatives available to these marginalized people would generally take advantage of their clients’ desperation or lack of alternatives. Poole, though, was scrupulous with the most marginal of his clients. His targets were often a different story.

Ursula Rehmer, according to her mother, had been sent to an orphanage when Mr. Rehmer was killed in a car accident and Dagmar had suffered a breakdown. The case had been relatively simple—visit orphanages until he found the one that housed Ursula Rehmer. He was too late, though. She had died several months prior to his visit—a fact the beleaguered chaplain had read in her folder.
Death by misadventure
had been the cryptic notation as to cause. The chaplain had stared helplessly back at Poole in response to a query for more specifics.

Ursula Rehmer’s orphanage had been St. Cecilia’s in the Hollows. Poole knew from that investigation that St. Cecilia’s was the sister orphanage of St. Mark’s, also in the Hollows. St. Mark’s seemed like a reasonable place to start.

St. Mark’s had once been a tenement building, condemned to be torn down. The City, then under the previous mayor’s regime, bought the building and converted it to an orphanage. The condemnation order was rescinded. Seeing the building, Poole was convinced it should have come down years ago. It was amazing that people actually lived here. The building no longer even stood straight, instead listing slightly, but noticeably, to the south. A number of windows were broken. Poole counted seven on the front of the building alone. There were five floors.

Poole opened the front door and stepped into a dim lobby. The odor inside—of sewage, rotting food, sweat, other things—caused him to pause. As his eyes adjusted, he found no one to speak to. He walked ahead. The parquet floor was filthy and uneven. Poole called out.

He waited, heard footsteps—many of them—coming down stairs that he could not see. He backed toward the door, unnerved by the apparent number of people reacting to his arrival. A door in front and to his left opened, and six young boys careened into the room, coming to a stop at the sight of Poole. Poole guessed that they ranged in age from eight to about thirteen.

They approached him cautiously, the youngest obviously in awe of Poole’s size. One of the boys, bare-chested and sinewy, took a step forward
from the group. Ill-fitting pants were cinched with a rope and he was barefoot. The others also wore clothes seemingly chosen at random.

“Who’re you?” the boy asked.

“My name’s Poole.”

While the boys stared at him, he took off his hat and lowered himself so that he was at the lead boy’s eye level.

“Who’s in charge here?”

The boy seemed confused by the question and looked back at Poole in silence.

“I need to speak to an adult,” Poole said, speaking slowly and carefully. “Where is an adult?”

Again the boys seemed to confer without speaking. The oldest said, “Come,” and turned back toward the stairs. Poole followed him, and the rest of the boys followed Poole. The stink of urine in the stairwell brought tears to Poole’s eyes. The boys seemed unaffected as they continued to ascend. In the semidarkness of the landings, Poole thought he could make out cracked doors and eyes examining him. At the landing of the fourth floor they hesitated.

The oldest turned back to the other boys. “Stay.” Then he grabbed Poole’s hand. Poole was surprised by the heat in the boy’s hand and wondered if it was fever. They walked into the fourth-floor hall, and the smell of decay told Poole all he needed to know.

The boy led him down the hall and stopped at a closed door. Poole opened it tentatively. The smell had been strong in the hallway, but it did not remotely prepare him for what was in the room. The stench had an almost physical presence. A decomposing corpse in a priest’s frock lay supine on a cot. Poole shut the door and breathed into his sleeve with his elbow bent, trying to filter the odor before he was sick. He was not an expert, but his guess was that the priest must have died in the past month. Did nobody know about this?

Poole walked back to the stairwell with the boy following. The group was still on the landing and greeted Poole with searching eyes. He tried to smile kindly.

“Does anyone know about this?” Poole asked the oldest.

He shook his head.

“Is there another adult?”

Again the shake of the head.

Poole was reeling from the smells, the condition of the boys, the body in
the room.
Focus on what you came here for
. Upstairs he heard light footsteps and imagined more boys looking over the railing at the scene below.

“Listen. I’m looking for a boy named Casper Prosnicki.”

“Casper?” The oldest boy brightened at the name.

“You know him? Where is he? Is he here?”

“Gone,” the boy said, then made a gesture with his hand like a bird flying away.

“Gone? Gone where?” Poole’s adrenaline spiked.

“He’s on the streets.”

“He’s gone to the streets? Where?” Poole grabbed the boy’s shoulders, harder than he intended. “Where is Casper?”

The boy was frightened and his companions backed away from Poole, eyes wide.

“Where?”

The boy shook his head, tears beginning to flow down his cheeks.

Smith sat by the phone at a bar two blocks down from the Puskis’s flat. He was on his third scotch and his hands had finally stopped trembling. Now he was waiting for the phone to ring. It would be nice for it to happen this time. When he had finally managed to get out of the Vaults, he had called Riordon at Headquarters and asked him where the hell the phone call was telling him that Puskis was returning. Riordon said that he had called and the phone had rung but no one had answered. That was a lot of horseshit, Smith knew, because he could not have missed the phone down there. Riordon hadn’t called, and there wasn’t much to be done about it except remember and pay it back when the opportunity presented itself. In this case, however, if Dawlish, that fastidious elevator man, didn’t call, Smith would take the frustration out on
his
hide.

Just thinking about it got him in a state again, so he threw back the scotch and ordered another.

Two men in cheap suits sat just down the bar, talking. One was saying he thought that people could be divided into two groups: one that thought that their mood should affect everyone around them; and the other that thought that they should keep their moods to their own goddamn selves. The talker placed himself in the second group and his boss in the first. His companion nodded and started in about his wife.

Smith thought about this. He didn’t feel as if he really had any moods. Or maybe it was that he had only one mood all the time—pissed off. Did he let it affect the people around him? Not if they kept their goddamn distance.

The mayor definitely had his fucking moods. He didn’t have to say anything, though. People recognized his moods and acted accordingly. Even Smith steered clear when he sensed Red Henry’s rage. It wasn’t that he feared the mayor. Smith didn’t fear anyone. But hard men understand the pecking order, and Henry was right at the top. Smith was right there after him, but Henry was still number one. Smith could live with that, and with
the fact that he could always put a bullet in the mayor’s head if he needed to. No one was safe from anyone. Not the mayor and not Smith. Exactly the way he liked it.

He had worked his way through his scotch when the phone rang. It was Dawlish, saving himself a beating. Puskis was on his way home.

Smith stood beneath the awning of the building across the street from Puskis’s. The flow of afternoon pedestrian traffic rendered Smith essentially invisible. Puskis was hard to miss, looking like a praying mantis with his long, skinny frame and his odd, stooped lope. Smith watched him as he made his slow progress along the sidewalk, approached his front door, and paused to fish keys out of his pocket. Puskis stopped suddenly and turned his head as though someone had called out to him. He stood looking to his left, and even from across the street the tension in his body was evident. Smith took an unconscious step forward for a better look.

A man was now talking to Puskis. A hat obscured the man’s face, but something about him was familiar. They talked some more and the man gestured and Puskis nodded. Puskis turned back and unlocked the door. The man held the door as Puskis entered, then followed him in. At the threshold, however, the man stopped and took a brief look back at the street.

Jesus Christ, Smith thought, it’s goddamn Frankie Frings.