F Train (12 page)

Sitting across from the widow, Flo saw an emotionally and mentally complex woman, wary eyes and roller-coaster moods, someone Frank Murphy and Marty Keane might well find exasperating, someone exposed and bruised and exhausted, who at the slightest perceived threat might withdraw into herself as purposefully as a frightened snail.

Was Arlene Reilly always this touchy?
How aware was John James Reilly of his wife's frailties, and was he sensitive enough to treat her with delicate consideration? This could explain his discretion about work, his deceptions, his
disappearances.
Or was he more like Frank and Marty, and simply found his wife a handful and he'd given up explaining anything to her? Did he seek out another woman who was more understanding, less volatile, a more dependable listener?

And if so, what did he tell Marie Priester that he wouldn't dare tell his wife?

Flo and Arlene Reilly left the café, and as they neared the house, the widow was crying again.

And snow was blowing in from off the ocean.

2:50
P.M.

When he stepped from the car onto Atlantic Avenue, a stinging wind hit Frank Murphy full in the face, constricting his breath as cruelly as a strangler's hands on a victim's throat.

Head down, he struggled forward into the gale and walked past the Heights Antiques shop. He reached an abandoned church on the corner and glanced up at the
FOR SALE
sign on a broken, blackened steel door, the church steps covered in pigeon droppings. And in Day-Glo orange, spray-painted across the faux Gothic façade…
Jesus left me
.

Turning his back to the wind, Frank retraced his steps a few yards to the far side of the church ruin and up to the shop door of Heights Antiques.

A bell tinkled as he entered but no one appeared.

He called out, “You open for business?”

The shop stayed as silent as dust. Heights Antiques seemed less like a shop and more like a series of gloomy storerooms, each resembling a cavern stuffed to the roof with perilous clutter.

Incredulous, Frank picked his way gingerly around mound after musty mound of Japanese trunks and samurai swords, cracked porcelain chamber pots, pillars of Delft blue china, stuffed bears, an entire aviary of deceased parrots under a great glass bell, mounted swordfish, stags' heads, British brass, French crystal, German and Danish and English silver, Venetian carnival masks, stamps, coins, old paper money collections, trays of medals from forgotten wars, framed stock certificates of long-defunct companies…

…until finally he reached what he thought was the last Ali Baba hideaway, the largest cave housing a great jumble of dark polished furniture. Around the walls, ostentatiously padlocked showcases sparkled and dazzled, stuffed with constellations of glittery old jewelry.
Who the hell buys this stuff
…?
Frank lingered to examine an exhibit of gold and silver pocket watches, and a voice, female but of hog-calling quality, pierced the dusty silence. “See those cigarette cases?”

Frank glanced around for the source, saw no one, but felt compelled to peer over at the next display, the cigarette cases.

The voice was authoritative. An out-of-town accent. “Paul Flato you're looking at there,” she said. “The best. Only ever did museum-quality cigarette cases. And in the next case you got your original Verdura cuff links. Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Kate Hepburn, all the great old movie stars, the crème de la crème of your strata, they once pre-owned every bit of that top-class merchandise. You got your turquoise there, you got lapis lazuli, you got rubies and sapphires and emeralds, you name it, it's there. And at half what you'll pay over across the bridge. Max.”

The individual behind the voice so redolent, to Frank's ears and nose, of black-eyed peas, fried squirrel, and continuous gin fizzes swept into view around a gargantuan wardrobe, a car-sized mahogany commodity on top of which a pair of carved eagles perched perpetually poised for takeoff.

And here the person paused, a busty hip-heaving vision.

To Frank's eyes, she was the in-the-flesh dream of every convict's more ambitious ambitions.
Ella Mae Bontemps
—he knew her name, that much he'd discovered in advance. Her appearance was another story, this he wasn't prepared for. An implausible dream in white cashmere sweater and trousers miraculously untouched by dust, a high-heeled ivory tower of swan-simple curves rising to a cranberry-colored crown, a single fresh white rose tucked behind her ear, a glossy mouth twitching into rapid slippery shapes, sometimes a smile, sometimes not, her Ritalin-bright eyes assessing him as assiduously as she might appraise a questionable Biedermeier breakfront.

Although she wasn't young, Frank had to wonder how Ella Mae Bontemps possessed her weird youthfulness, as though youth were a chemical solution in which she was permanently immersed. This impression enveloped her in a sinister aspect.

Frank, watching her at least as attentively as she watched him, couldn't suppress—even worse, couldn't conceal—an unmistakable sensual interest. He felt a tingling. True, Ella Mae's face was flawed, somewhere between cute and coarse, but cosmetics helped, and her figure in close-fitting cashmere was vastly more than adequate. She behaved as though her body was utterly sensational, the most unfair competition for the sexiest Hollywood celebrity. The movements of her buttocks, the sway of honeydew- melony breasts, her dancelike hand gestures: all were hyperseductive for Frank, distracting him from the job at hand.

But the vision's real power, Frank observed, lay in her attitude: she behaved, she moved, she regarded him as though she believed as a matter of faith that she was utterly irresistible, and no matter what opportunities were yet to come to her along life's rocky path, her style implied an erotic history already replete with extensive footnotes. And all he had to do was check it out.

“Anything lavender in a piece of jewelry, Jack, and all the dykes snap it right up, no matter what the hell it is. Cigarette cases, cuff links, rings, necklaces. The boys got way more taste in my experience. Paul Flato in lapis is real big right now, blue as a peacock's eye. Even if nobody intelligent smokes anymore. I asked one fruity-pie, what do you do, baby, with old cigarette cases if you don't smoke? Never guess what he told me.” The redhead paused for breath. Frank stayed breathlessly silent. “Condoms.” She laughed, hands slapping hams. “And now even the pope goes around blessing condoms these days. Bet you he's got a Flato case that'll knock your gawkers out.”

In the presence of this pineywoods princess of
jumble—slippery
lips, overglaring redheadedness, age anyone's guess—Frank found himself at a sudden and
uncharacteristic
loss for words.

“Jack, you know what?” The redhead released a snort of air through her nostrils, her intent clearly dismissive. “I think you're in the wrong store here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Baby, you got about as much interest in antiques as I got in Bibles. Cop, right?”

Ella Mae Bontemps, Heights Antiques
proprietress—too
modest a title for so unearthly a figure, in Frank's gob-smacked opinion. He saw a czarina, a crowned empress, the bricktop begum of these many Ali Baba caves. She granted him a tight, knowing smile. “I pay all my sales taxes, sweetheart, if that's what you're nosing around for.”

Frank produced his detective's shield. “Homicide.”

“Oh, shit.” The redhead's face sagged like an Arkansas field hand's shack. “Why me, honey?”

“I just want to talk to you about the late Sidney R. Davidov.”

The drugged, overmedicated eyes dimmed, the glossy lips drooped. “How come me?”

“Was Sidney R. Davidov a friend of yours? A business associate?”

“Wait a minute, am I a target here, Officer? You aiming after me now in some kind of in-ves-ti-ga-tion?” The voice lost its authority, grew faint with emotions in which confusion featured and gut-churning fear predominated. “Maybe I think I need a lawyer for this, and I mean right away, real soon.”

“No, not you, Ms. Bontemps, you're not under any investigation, at least not now. And that is your name, isn't it?”

“Ella Mae Bontemps, you got that part right. And I got nothing to do with what happened there on that F train, if that's what you're out after, Officer. I never ride subways. I'm strictly a car service gal, I don't know squat about subways. But if you want to hear my side of the story, I think it's godawful what happened to all those poor people. And to Sid, too. I even feel sorry for him.”

“Even?”

“Even. I'm not that heartless, not
even
where Sid's concerned. I hope to God you're not thinking now I'm some kind of cold-blooded killer—you don't really think that about me, do you, Officer, just because…” Ms. Bontemps sniffled “…just because he jilted me? Well, listen up here, honey, I been dumped more times than the mayor of this city lies, but you never seen me going after those shitbirds with a knife or a gun or a straight-edge razor, did you now? No, not me, not ever, honey, no way. And not with no poison gas neither. I got my pride. Nobody will ever say Ella Mae Bontemps couldn't take her lumps and then rise up out of the ashes, that's my MO. Forget and forgive has always been my motto. You take a good look at this girl, sweetie, this girl you're eyeballing here is one hundred percent ashes free. C'mon now, honestly, do I really look like the crying kind? Not on your nelly, Officer. So if you'll pardon me just a teensy-weensy minute here, baby, I gotta wet my lips. All this dust and jaw-jacking only dries me out.”

Ella Mae Bontemps opened the nearest elephantine wardrobe and under the carved eagles' eyes extracted a bottle of Southern Comfort peach liqueur—one hundred proof—and a Delft-blue china teacup.

“I'd offer you some, Officer, but I know you're on working hours here. And there's nothing like temptation to tempt a man, now is there?” She filled the teacup, hands shaking. “Here's to your success.” She raised her cup to Frank Murphy. “And I really do mean that, Officer, I hope you catch whoever the hell did it. I'm sincerely praying for you. It's just about the most horrible crime I ever heard of.”

In awe, Frank watched this czarina of the caves sip her liqueur, her beringed pinkie curled teatime dainty. He couldn't keep his eyes off her.

And closing her eyes, she released a long satisfied sigh. “There, that's much better. Well, now I suppose we're all finished by this point, aren't we, Officer? I guess I've pretty much done everything I can do, helping you in your fine work.”

“Not quite, Ms. Bontemps. I do appreciate everything, so far. But—”

“But.” This great white empress sighed more deeply. “Always a great big fucking
but
around somewhere, ain't there? Now you just keep on going at it, Officer, you do whatever you have to do, and you take yourself a nice comfortable seat right here next to me. Since you insist.”

They settled in on a pair of Chippendale straight-backs and Ella Mae Bontemps—to Frank's eyes, like some dazzling great water bird roosting at the edge of a dock—went on tippling from the Delft blue china teacup, pacing herself, never gulping, savoring each ingestion, running the liquor over her tongue and swishing it around as if Southern Comfort were Listerine, whenever she paused in her radio-running commentary and collected her thoughts, letting the reality of him, homicide detective Sergeant Frank Murphy—and the specter of Sidney R. Davidov's corpse sprawled among the other victims of the F train massacre—sink into her medicated, booze-basted brain, the peach spirits embellishing a great many mordant memories. After a few more thoughtful sips, she put her cup down, and as her nightmare-jittery eyes calmed, her focus wavered in on him.

Frank bided his time, returning her gaze, playing out a game of sit-and-wait, as he never yet met a motormouth who didn't abhor silence.

Then: “Officer, sir, you want to tell me just why you're picking on me here to do your dirty work?”

“Because you knew Sidney R. Davidov.”

“Yeah, you bet, I knew him all right. Son of a bitch.”

“Davidov?”

“Right, the swine Sidney R. All of those rotten bums, every single one of them Russians never had a real mother, born out of a bitch's behind, each goddamn man jack of them. Now you surely didn't hear me say that. It's just the hootch talking here, Officer, not me. Lookit, God's honest truth is I can't afford to lose my job. I love this work. I don't deny I got a real fine setup here. And I don't want them doing to me what they went and did…” The great white bird stopped to drain peachy dregs from her teacup before lapsing into unexpected silence.

“Did what, Ms. Bontemps? Who did what…to whom?”

Ella Mae Bontemps shook her head slowly. “I didn't say nothing. Just the bottle spirits talking again.”

“Tell me something, Ms. Bontemps.” Frank kept his gaze frozen on her pearly presence. “Where exactly were you on the night it happened? Those subway killings.”

“Well, honey, I sure as hell wasn't there then. I wasn't down in no subway. I can guarantee you that much right now. I got my alibi ironclad. And that's what you call it, isn't it, Officer? An alibi?”

“Depends. So where were you?”

“Well, I swear, you know, but a lady does have to travel, exactly like my Auntie Bobbi Jean always used to say every single time she came stumbling home from yet another one of her all-time benders. And so since you're asking me, Officer, well, now then let's see here, just in the last few months I've been to Boston, Montreal, Charleston, Owls Head on Penobscot Bay, Nantucket, Santa Barbara, London in England, Geneva in Switzerland, and even teeny-weeny little Liechtenstein, where they got more banks than people. And all of it on business. I got receipts. You see, Officer, here's the God's honest truth, I just gotta buy buy buy, if I'm gonna sell sell sell. Especially all this old jewelry here. This stuff's all coming back in fashion again, you know, moving out of here as fast as the Lord's own lightning. There's tons of people around this city nowadays they got way more money than they know what to do with. Bad times or no bad times. Isn't that wonderful?”