Flesh and Blood (35 page)

“What can I do for you?” someone asked suddenly.

Frank turned back toward the corridor and saw a muscular man in jeans and a light blue sweatshirt.

“We're just closing down,” the man said.

“Closing down?”

“The settlement house,” the man explained. “It's being closed down.” He gave Frank a quick glance, then allowed his eyes to settle on Farouk. “Are you the new owner?”

“No,” Farouk told him.

“I thought, with all the Arabs in the neighborhood …”

“We don't have anything to do with this settlement house,” Frank said. He took out his identification.

The man gave it a perfunctory glance, then looked up. “What do you want?”

“You know a man named Kincaid?” Frank asked. “Benjamin Kincaid?”

“Yeah, he's the old guy who offed himself, right?”

“Yes,” Frank said.

“Yeah, I knew him a little,” the man said. “But I've already told the police everything I knew about him.” He shrugged. “Which wasn't much. The guy was creepy. He didn't say much, except to the
campesinos.
”

Frank took out his notebook. “What did you tell the police?” he asked immediately.

“That he did some sort of teaching around here. He'd come in and hang out with the people from the neighborhood, teach them stuff.”

“Like what?” Frank asked.

“I don't know,” the man said. “There's a school set up downstairs. It's got desks and stuff. It's for some of the neighborhood kids.”

“Just kids?” Farouk asked as he stepped to Frank's side. “What about the people who just went by? Did he teach them?”

“No, he didn't,” the man said. “That's not allowed. Those people are more or less boarding here. School's not for them.”

“You mean they live here?” Frank asked. “Those people?”

“That's right,” the man said. “Until they get shipped out.”

“Shipped out?”

“Back to where they came from.”

“They're illegals?” Frank asked.

The man laughed. “No, of course not. We don't deal with illegals. We don't want the trouble. These people are on six-month visas. They need a place to stay for just that long. Then they head back to wherever they came from.” He nodded toward the rear doors. “That bunch is heading back now.”

Farouk smiled thinly. “Heading back. How are they heading back?”

The man's eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

Farouk said nothing, and after a moment, the man turned his attention back to Frank. “You looking for anything in particular about this Kincaid guy?”

“We're just looking into what he did here at the settlement,” Frank said.

“Well, nothing illegal, I can tell you that,” the man said earnestly. He shifted slightly on his feet. “I mean, Brandon Street Settlement's been around since the turn of the century.”

“But in the past, it was not a boarding house,” Farouk told him.

“No,” the man said, “but that just means it's changed with the times.”

“How has it changed?” Farouk asked insistently.

“Well, in some ways it's still like it was in the old days,” the man said. “At least, as far as the teaching goes.”

“But in other ways it's like a hotel?” Frank asked.

“Yeah. Except there's no charge,” the man said. He laughed slightly. “I mean, these people, the ones you just saw, they couldn't afford a hotel.”

Frank wrote it down.

“You want to look around?” the man asked brightly. “Go ahead. It's not the Waldorf. But then, for these people, it's free.” He smiled politely. “So go ahead, check it out. Just don't steal anything.” He nodded quickly, turned on his heels and headed off down the corridor.

A moment later, two vans, both of them filled with the people who'd marched down the corridor, rumbled out of the driveway, turned right, and barreled down Brandon Street.

Frank's eyes slid over to Farouk. “What do you think?”

Farouk shook his head. “I don't know.”

Frank looked at the single flight of stairs that led up to the second floor. “Wouldn't hurt to look around, would it?”

“I don't think it would hurt, no.”

Together they moved up the stairs to the second floor. Like the rest of the building, it appeared entirely deserted. Small rooms lined both sides of the hallway, each with its own bed, desk and water basin. A small plaster image of the Virgin Mary sat on the window sill of each room, along with two votive candles and a plain white doily.

“It looks just fine,” Frank said.

Farouk nodded quickly. “We should look downstairs as well.”

The two of them headed down the wide staircase which led back to the lobby, then moved on down the more narrow one which led to the basement.

A large room had been set up with desks and a blackboard.

“This is where Kincaid taught,” Farouk said as he stared at the fews words which had been written in yellow chalk across the board. Someone had tried to erase them, but they could still be seen faintly against the black background of the board. Two columns, one in Spanish, one in English, of three words each, both columns under the heading:
Palabras importantes.

“Important words,” Farouk said quietly. Then he read them. “
Verdad.
Truth.
Libertad.
Freedom
Justicia.
Justice.” For a moment, his eyes lingered on the board, following the words once again, staring at them intently, as if trying to discover some elusive richness in their meaning. Finally, he gave up, and turned from the board, his eyes shifting over to Frank. “What do you say of one who writes such things?” he asked.

Frank shook his head slowly. “I don't know.” He looked around silently. “It looks fine here. Clean. Very nice.”

Farouk did not seem convinced. “In the day, perhaps,” he said. Then he smiled knowingly. “But the true detective watches through the night.”

It was almost night when they got back to 49th Street, and by that time the army of flannel-shirted construction workers who lounged along the street had been replaced by knots of teenagers, homeward-bound pedestrians and a few well-dressed suburbanites who rushed nervously toward the distant, glittering lights of the theater district.

“Well, we didn't find much,” Frank said, as he opened the door of his office, then stepped aside and let Farouk pass into it.

Farouk nodded. “No, we didn't.”

Frank turned on the light, walked to his desk and pulled out the bottle of Irish. “Want one?”

“Yes,” Farouk said without hesitation. He lowered himself into the chair opposite Frank's desk. “It is an odd thing, memory,” he said. “I remember the settlement house as such a big place. Big rooms. Big windows. This is the way a child sees everything.”

Frank poured two drinks, and handed one of them to Farouk.

The two drank quickly, without a toast, then Frank poured each of them a second.

“We're at a dead end, Farouk,” he said as he lifted his glass to him.

Farouk nodded slowly. “Yes, we are.”

“Maybe it's all been solved,” Frank added. “The whole thing.”

“Perhaps,” Farouk said. “But there is the matter of the hand.”

“Maybe Kincaid was through collecting things,” Frank told him.

“But all his life, such a single-minded man,” Farouk said. He took a quick sip from the glass. “Does such a person change, do you think?”

“It's possible,” Frank said. He took out his notebook, turned it to the notes he'd written while talking to Kincaid, and began to scan them casually. In his mind, he could see the room where he'd written them, its windows covered with tattered native quilts. He could smell the dusty, pungent odor of foreign herbs and hear the crackle of drying stalks and leaves as he'd gotten to his feet and watched the strange, bent figure open the door, then close it, then light the single candle on the table by the door.

“I tried to get everything down,” Frank said.

Farouk's eyes lifted toward him from the rim of his glass. He did not speak.

Frank continued to look through his notes, his eyes moving methodically from one line to the next. “He said that Hannah was a serpent in the garden,” he said. “That she'd brought in a lot of money and made a place to find—”

“To find the jungle magic,” Farouk said. “Yes, I remember that.” He shook his head. “It would make the world beautiful, this drug, the one she'd found.”

“And then, later, she'd brought in a man to make it.”

Farouk nodded thoughtfully. “Pérez,” he said.

“And to bring the people in,” Frank concluded.

“A man to bring the people into the factory, or whatever it was,” Farouk concluded.

“Then we talked about Pérez, and Kincaid admitted killing him,” Frank went on, his eyes still fixed on his own tiny script.

“Then his death,” Farouk said. “Kincaid's.”

Frank nodded. “Yes.” He finished his drink and lit a cigarette.

Farouk did the same, and for a few minutes, the two of them sat in the smoky silence, each going back through all he remembered of the case.

“I think Hannah was into something,” Frank said finally. “I think this whole business with clothes was a front for something else.”

“The jungle magic,” Farouk said pointedly.

“Some sort of drug,” Frank said. “Maybe that was her connection to Constanza.”

“And when he was put in prison, she went into business for herself?” Farouk asked.

“Something like that.”

“It's possible,” Farouk said musingly.

Frank snuffed out his cigarette and began going back through his notebook, reading each page slowly, carefully, while Farouk watched him silently.

“But maybe it was in stages,” he said after a moment, as he looked up from the notebook.

Farouk leaned forward slightly, his large brown eyes squinting through the tumbling smoke. “Stages?”

“Three stages,” Frank said. He flipped back through the notebook. “Listen to this: First Hannah builds a place to find the drug. That's the beginning. Kincaid says that later she found a place to make it, and that after that, she hired a man to bring the people into it.”

Farouk stared at Frank expressionlessly.

“That's three stages,” Frank explained.

Farouk nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Frank thought an instant longer, then snapped up his notebook, flipped through the pages, and glanced back up at Farouk. “Kincaid said, ‘I didn't think it could begin again.'”

“What?”

“And he said that it was ‘such a year for death, for assassination,'” Frank added quickly. “That was the year it began again, a year of death, of assassinations.”

“Which would be?”

“Well, it could be 1968, couldn't it?” Frank said. He thought a moment. “That's also the same year Constanza went to prison.”

“1968,” Farouk repeated quietly.

“That would be the ‘year of death' Kincaid talked about.”

Farouk nodded. “Yes, it could be,” he said. “But suppose he was talking about South America. Which is where he was at the time.”

Frank said nothing.

“Of course, we could check on that,” Farouk added. He seemed to consider his next question carefully. “That man, Riviera,” he said finally, “you know him well?”

“No. Why?”

“Perhaps he might know if this ‘year of death' refers to South America,” Farouk replied.

“Riviera? Why would he know about it?”

“Because he knows Colombia.”

“How do you know that?” Frank said. “Riviera's not from Colombia. He's not even from South America.”

Farouk stared doubtfully at Frank.

“Riviera's from Spain,” Frank insisted. “He's a Spanish Jew. Remember? He made that clear right away.”

“Perhaps he is what he claims, a Sephardic Jew,” Farouk said, his eyes narrowing. “But he knows South America. This I can tell you with certainty.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because when he was at your office, he called Hannah's killer a
bicho
,” Farouk said. “In Spain, this can only mean
‘bug.
'” His eyes seemed to darken slowly. “But in Colombia, it is a word of great contempt. A vulgar word for the penis. In English, you would call it ‘prick.' This is what he called Kincaid.”

“But he could have picked that up in New York, couldn't he?”

“It is possible.”

Frank stared intently at Farouk. “But it could also be a lie.”

“A lie, yes,” Farouk said softly. His face grew very concentrated, and for a long time he did not speak. Then suddenly, his eyes brightened. “A lie,” he said. “Which is sometimes where the truth begins.”

30

“There were more lies than one,” Farouk said as he walked up to the park bench where Frank sat waiting for him. He smiled. “But the truth is in the hall of records.”

“What truth?”

“Well, for one thing, that Riviera is a man of property,” Farouk said. “In this country, that is a hard truth to conceal.”

“What kind of property?”

“The Brandon Street Settlement,” Farouk said. “The records show that he owns the building.” He smiled cunningly. “And since he does not rent it, but turns it over for a charitable use, he pays no taxes.”

“When did he buy it?”

“The year of death,” Farouk said. “The spring of 1968.”

Frank took out his notebook. “Go on.”

Farouk lowered himself onto the bench, then turned up the collar of his overcoat. “It's getting colder. There will be snow tonight, I think.”

“You said something about more lies than one,” Frank said.

Farouk blew into his hands, then rubbed them together rapidly. “He is from Spain, this much is true,” he said. “But other things are wrong with what he told you. For example, he has been to Colombia forty times since 1968.”