Drumsticks (19 page)

“Why don't we keep them in the box for now?” I suggested. “We'll put them on my coffee table later.”

I waited while he stowed the cartons in the back of his worn station wagon and locked up.

The Old Town was aptly named. Unlike Pete's Tavern, only a block east, it did not claim to be the oldest bar in Manhattan. But it had been serving up hamburgers and spirits to generations of New Yorkers since the turn of the century.

The usual mix of college students, neighborhood people, tourists, and solid old drunks packed the curlicued dark wood bar at the front. There was a second, much plainer bar further back, and a scattering of tables. A small underlit room at the rear had tables for smokers. And there was a kind of annex upstairs, a quite large dining room actually. But I had seen it only a couple of times when I'd walked up there to use the toilet.

We arrived a few minutes before six, just ahead of the thirsty after-office-hours crowd. We were able to capture one of the coveted booths near the front. These had narrow seats and high backs. How lovely. We'd be nice and private.

“Don't sit there,” I said playfully when Howard began to slide onto the seat opposite mine. “Come over here—next to me.”

He ordered a Guinness Stout (which I'd always thought of as drinking a cigar) along with a shot of some upscale single malt. I stayed with my usual JD, limiting myself to one and then switching to mineral water. A while later we ordered food. The burgers were tasty indeed and mine came with a ton of good, garlicky potato salad. Howard was getting a nice buzz on, I could tell, which didn't dull his flirtatious patter one bit. Oh no. He fed me french fries and spoke to me with his lips very close to my little ear. Old Howard wasn't as pretty as Dan Hinton. But up close he was sexier. I began to return his fugitive touches here and there—neck, shoulder, hand, knee. We were having a good time. No doubt we'd have had a real good time in bed, too, if things had been different.

Which made it all the more regrettable that I would soon have to switch gears on him.

“By the way, did I ever thank you?” I said.

“For the books? You can thank me later. At your place.”

“No, not the books. For giving me that information about Ida Williams. You know, that first day I met you.”

“Oh. That's okay.”

“It was very helpful—the thing about Alice Rose and the apartment uptown.”

He nodded. “Good. Let's get another round.”

“Sure,” I agreed.

“Guinness and a Jack,” he called to the waitress who was flying by the table at that moment. “You've had enough of that water, haven't you, Nan?”

“Okay, one more Jack,” I said, and then picked up where I'd left off. “There's just one thing I can't thank you for, Howard.”

He didn't have the nerve to ask what that thing was. Clearly, he didn't want to know.

I told him, anyway: “You neglected to tell me about the rest of your business with Ida—or Alice—or whatever her name was. And you didn't mention one word about Miller.”

“Miller?” he repeated, suddenly belligerent.

“Did you order a Miller?” That was the waitress, as she set down our drinks.

“No, this is cool,” Howard said, dismissing her. He turned back to me then. “Who's Miller?”

“That's my line, Howie. I was hoping you could tell me exactly who he is. And what he and Ida Williams were all about.”

He began shaking his head. “Look, I did you a favor, okay. You asked me about Ida and I told you. I dropped a sewing machine off at her place and it was a different name on the bell. That's all I know.”

He whipped his head around, away from me, and was startled to see the press of people with their backs to us. Dozens of them. In the time we had been sitting there, the bar had filled to capacity and folks were standing three abreast at the bar.

“What are you getting so upset about, Howard? Looking for the waitress? Don't ask for the check yet, baby. We're not ready to leave.”

“Maybe you not ready, but I am.”

“Oh, come on. Don't move away from me like that, Howie. Stay close.”

“Forget you.”

“No, honest, I mean it,” I said. “Stay close. Look down here—on your thigh. Or did you think that was my hand?”

He went rigid, staring down at the gun. The filthy words began to leak from his mouth, though I didn't know how, because I could swear his lips never moved. “You lying—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “It does seem excessive, doesn't it? But look at it this way: you're paying for the sins of all men—all the men I been meeting lately, anyway. And to tell you the truth, Howard, I'm tired of being lied to by you assholes. Damn tired. So let's have the Ida Williams story now—okay?”

I poked him gently with the muzzle. For emphasis.

I thought for a minute there I'd have to peel him off the ceiling.

“
Be careful with that motherfu
—”

“Not to worry, I took lessons. You go on and drink your beer while we talk.”

He picked up the glass and took a good pull.

“First of all, Howard, you told me when we met that Ida worked the Union Square market every other day. I need to know what she did with herself when she wasn't downtown.”

“How should I know that?”

“Come on, Howard,” I said, poking him with the gun. “What was it you said to me? Think about it—hard.”

“She sold uptown. At a street market a lot like ours. It's on First Avenue.”

“Fine. Did Ida have a buyer for her dolls up there—a rich black woman, very refined, who lives up around the hospitals?”

“I don't—”

I dug the muzzle deeper into his lap.

“Okay, just give me a chance to answer, okay!”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“Maybe she was a customer and maybe not, but I saw Ida with a woman like that—a few times. And I don't know where she lives, but East Side makes sense.”

“Good. Was there a man with them? About Ida's age, maybe even older?”

“Yeah. I saw him once or twice.”

“What were they all doing?”

Here he became less than forthcoming. He looked searchingly at the crowd of patrons, all of whom had their backs to us. Maybe he was desperately calculating the odds of making it safely through the tangle of people and out the front door before I could catch up with him. He didn't have a chance in hell and he knew it.

“Noisy in here, isn't it?” I noted. “I guess you didn't hear my last question. I asked what they were doing.”

“All right, listen, you crazy—Just listen. I'm going to say ‘I don't know' to begin my next sentence with. To
begin
with, understand? And then just let me finish what the fuck I'm trying to say before you jam that fucking thing into my balls again. Okay?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay. I don't know what they were doing together. All I did was deliver something to them. And then I would leave. What happened in there after I was gone, I don't know. I didn't ask and they didn't tell me.”

“What happened in where? What was it you delivered?”

“A van.”

“What van?”

“It belonged to them, I guess. A big one. Ida paid me to drive it from this lot where it was parked to wherever she said. Then, an hour or so later, I'd show up and drive it back to the lot.”

“What was in this van?”

“I don't—Nothing.”

“What did they need it for?”

“I told you, I didn't ask questions like that. I picked it up from the lot at the piers off West Street. At the West Side Highway. I drove it to whatever spot I was told and then I split.”

I shook my head. Not just because I didn't believe it was the whole story. More because it represented yet another complication.

I groaned then, and must have inadvertently shoved the gun further in, because he yelped “Hey!” loudly enough to cause a few people to turn and look our way.

The harried waitress assumed Howard was rudely summoning her. She walked briskly over to the table and threw down our check, turned on her heel and left.

“Let's go,” I said decisively, throwing a few tens on the table.

He looked at me, incredulous. “Go? Where the fuck do you think I'm gonna go with you, bitch?”

“The pier. West Street, I believe you said. We're going to get into your car and then you're going to take me to that van.”

We looked like a couple in love. Entwined. Two people who could barely wait to get home and do it. Certainly I must've looked eager—a girl who couldn't keep her hands off her man.

We walked out of the restaurant, turned left, then right on Park, and cut through the now empty farmers market, straight to his station wagon.

“Two older people,” I mused. “Up to all kinds of mischief. They need somebody young and strong who never asks questions. You must've run all kinds of errands for Ida and this guy Miller.”

Howard kept his eyes on the road for most of the short trip to the parking lot off the Morton Street Pier. The balance of the time he was looking down at the gun pressed into his ribs.

He muttered something.

“What was that, Howard?”

“I said I never had any dealings with Miller. I only caught a glimpse of him. Ida never even told me his name. I just did a few things for her. And nothing illegal. You just try to prove that I did.”

“I don't think that'll be necessary. Just answer a few more questions and this date'll be over soon. Have you got any idea at all why somebody would want to kill Ida?”

“No, goddammit! I knew you were going to try to put me in that. I don't care what kind of gun you have, you hear? You tell the police I had anything to do with that and I'll kill you.”

“Take it easy, take it easy. Nobody's trying to put you in that. Did it look like Ida or Miller was forcing this woman into the van? Or forcing her to do anything, for that matter.”

“Kind of like kidnaping, you mean. Kind of like what you're doing to me. No. Half the time she looked spaced out—high or something. But I never saw them hurt her. Like I said, I didn't—”

“Yeah, I know. You never asked questions.”

It was cold at the pier. No people about. Not even the odd transvestite hustler doing curbside business. The air sweeping in off the Hudson had a hint of snow in it. It was dark as hell, too. The darkness seemed so much deeper over here. Not like it was—ordinary, pedestrian-friendly—on the well-trafficked streets near safe old Union Square with its dry stone fountains and Gandhi statue.

The burgundy-colored van that Howard led me to was big, as he had said, and quite innocuous looking. Something a hip couple with a catering business would buy secondhand; or it might be the fallback vehicle in a suburban family's garage, the one mom takes to drive the neighborhood girls to ballet class.

In any case, the thing was locked.

“How do we get in?” I asked, peering over Howard's shoulder.

He snorted. “You're asking
me
that?”

“Stand aside,” I said impatiently, making the first big mistake of the evening.

I removed the gun from his spine and aimed at the lock.

“Hey!” he warned. “What are you trying to do—raise the dead? You want the cops here or something?”

He was right. “Then you come up with a plan. A resourceful guy like you knows how to break into stuff, doesn't he?”

“Look, I don't break into shit. I told you a hundred times, I don't do illegal.”

“Okay, okay, let me think,” I said in irritation. “Boy, Howard, if I find out you have the key to this thing …”

“Oh,” he said.

“What? What does that mean—‘oh'?”

He made a sudden move and I reacted accordingly.

“Put that down!” he shouted. “I'm getting the key … I forgot I had it.”

Speechless, I just shook my head.

The door popped right open.

Let me think
, I had said a minute ago. Well, here was one thing I hadn't thought out. The nanosecond it took me to step away from the door presented Howard with an opportunity he couldn't refuse.

He swung hard to his right. My gun went flying and so did I. When I could sit up again without seeing stars, I heard his car door slam. Within seconds he was no more than two vanishing red taillights.

Well, the hell with him. Our evening together would've ended soon anyway. Only now I was stranded here on this forsaken spot of concrete. True, it was only a couple of blocks to Hudson Street, where normal street life—including cabs and buses—would be going on. But I wasn't looking forward to traipsing around the piers by myself in the dense night. At least I had a weapon, though. That counted for something.

I scrambled around and found the gun, then picked myself up. My jaw and back teeth ached something fearsome, but I was in one piece.

I placed my hand on the door of the van, but then withdrew it as if I'd just felt a high-voltage jolt. All at once I knew that my fear wasn't about being alone in the dark.

It had occurred to me that when I slid that door all the way open I was going to smell death. And then I was going to see it. I was afraid that Felice Sanders was inside that van.

Wrong. Thank the baby Jesus, I was wrong. The back of the van was carpeted—not a speck of gore in sight—and it had four spanking clean vinyl seats. That was about it. Not much of a payoff for so much trouble.

What on earth did Ida and Lenore Benson do in here? Swap recipes with Miller? Or had this vehicle hosted some kind of senior citizen orgies? Equally unlikely explanations. But of course the real question—still unanswered—was, What were Ida and Mrs. Benson doing together, period?

I began to poke around under the seats. Beneath one was a small carton, unsealed. Under another seat was a zippered canvas valise. Finally, from beneath a third seat I came up with a small flashlight and a headset that might have been part of an old Walkman.