Little Girl Lost (Hard Case Crime) (21 page)

I held my palms up. “Don’t do this.”

“Shut the fuck up and give me your wallet.” He gestured with the knife. It was a short blade, only four inches or so, but you can do plenty of damage with a short blade. Simon Corrina had always used a knife like this.

I looked around, but there was no one in sight. The guy who’d made a buy just a minute ago had vanished, and I didn’t blame him.

I reached into my pocket for my wallet, held it out to him. I thought about flipping it open and showing him my license, but I wasn’t sure whether that would get me my wallet back or a knife in the guts.

He snatched it. “Come on, come on,” he said. “What else you got?”

He reached under my jacket to pat down my pockets. He found my cell phone in its holster on my hip, popped it out, and slipped it into his own pocket. He slapped my right pants pocket. “What’s that?”

“Just my keys,” I said. “You don’t want my keys, man. Come on.”

“Show me.”

I pulled out the keyholder, opened it for him. He gestured with the knife. “Okay.” I put it back. “Give me your watch.”

“I don’t wear a watch,” I said.

“Bullshit,” he said. “This can’t be all you’ve got.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It is.”

We both heard a buzzing sound then. It started quiet and got louder. He looked down toward his pocket, and so did I, but only for a second. Before he could look back, I stepped in, braced his knife hand with one forearm, put my other hand around his throat and ran him back against the wall of the building next to us. He swung at me with his free hand, but it was a weak punch and I blocked it with my elbow. I hammered his head against the wall until his grip on the knife loosened and it fell to the sidewalk, and then a few more times just because it felt good. I brought my knee up, aiming for his crotch, but got his stomach instead. He folded up all the same. I let go of him and he collapsed on the pavement. I kicked the knife out of his reach and then squatted next to him to go through his pockets. I found my wallet and phone in one and some loose bills and a baggie full of plastic vials in the other. The phone had stopped buzzing. I took it all, rolled him into the doorway of the butcher shop, and left him there.

I shoved the baggie deep into the garbage can on the corner. The butterfly knife was lying in the gutter, so I picked it up, folded it shut, and pocketed it. Now I was the one breaking the law, but what the hell. It probably wouldn’t be the last time tonight. I checked the readout of my phone, but all it said was “Missed Call — Unavailable.” Well, there was nothing I could do. If it was important, whoever it had been would call back.

I crossed to the next block and checked building numbers till I found 51. It was a grey stone building with a fire escape zigzagging down the front. The windows were all dark, and on the ground floor some were boarded up. I didn’t see any intercom buttons next to the front door, which said something about how old this building was — it must have been from the throw-the-key-down era. I looked up at the top-floor apartment. Was Jocelyn in there? If she were, I thought, the lights would be on — she wouldn’t be asleep at five o’clock, and she wouldn’t be sitting in the dark, either. Or would she? She might if she knew I was coming. But how could she know? Tracy wouldn’t have called her — would she?

Of course, all of this assumed she had come back here at all. Just because Susan thought that was what she would do in Jocelyn’s place, it didn’t mean Jocelyn had actually done it. The most likely case was that the apart- ment was dark because it was empty, and that it was empty because Jocelyn knew better than to come here.

There was only one way to find out. I jumped for the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder. On my second try, the ladder slipped its hook and clattered down. I pulled myself up and started climbing. At the first landing, I crouched between the two windows to catch my breath. I figured the noise would draw some attention, but the street was empty now and none of the windows around me flew open, no angry tenant stuck his head out to see what the racket was. I climbed up to the second landing, and then slowly, working hard not to make any noise, went on to the third. I felt very conspicuous. It wasn’t broad daylight, but anyone who happened to look this way would spot me. Who knew what neighbor might be calling the police right now to report what they were seeing? But I kept going.

The top floor was next, and I took each step gently on the way up. The window on my right looked into a bedroom, the one on my left into a kitchen, and I dodged away quickly after risking a glance through each. Both rooms were dark and looked empty. I tried raising the bedroom window, but it was locked. I opened the blade of the butterfly knife and slipped it between the upper and lower panes, forced the latch of the lock sideways, then shifted the blade to the bottom and used it to lever the window up enough to give me a fingerhold on the frame. I slid the window all the way up, climbed inside, and pulled it down behind me.

The room was empty, all right — but at some point recently it hadn’t been. On the queen-sized bed a crumpled comforter was pushed to one side. And on a table next to the bed there was a quarter-f glass of water.

I kept the knife ready as I slid the closet door open, but there was no one waiting inside to jump out at me. No one was in the living room either, or the bathroom when I quickly looked inside. The apartment was empty. I was tempted to turn on a light, but that would have been crazy — I didn’t know when Jocelyn would be back, and if she saw the light from the street, she’d know someone was there. I went back into the bedroom and gave it a more thorough once-over. The room’s one dresser was nearly empty and so was the closet — lots of empty wire hangers and drawers with only a shirt or two in them. It looked like Jocelyn was planning a quick departure.

I was about to close the closet when I noticed something on the floor in the back behind the sliding door. I pulled it out to get a better look at it. It was a wheeled luggage cart, lying on its back, unzipped and open, crammed full of clothing. It was too dark to see anything on the hard rubber wheels, but I had a feeling I knew what the police would find if they scraped them. Wayne Lenz’s blood.

I pawed through the clothing, but that was all the luggage contained, all the way to the bottom: T-shirts, underwear, two pairs of shoes, some costumes of the sort I’d seen on the video and in Miranda’s apartment. There was a small cosmetics bag, but it contained nothing but cosmetics. There was no sign of the money.

Not that Jocelyn would be likely to leave five hundred thousand dollars in cash lying around in the closet of a tenement apartment. I tried to guess how much space that much money would take up. About as much as two reams of typing paper, maybe three, even if you packed it tightly. I went through the luggage again, felt around the bottom of the closet, glanced under the bed.

It was disappointing, but only slightly. The money was why Murco was after her, and if it didn’t turn up he would be very unhappy, but otherwise it meant nothing to me. What I was after was Jocelyn. I wanted to hear her admit what she had done, and then—

And then what? I felt my hand tighten around the knife. And then I’d call the police, damn it. And then I’d have her arrested, have them test the luggage, have them clear my name and put her in jail where she belonged. There was a part of me that ached for a rawer sort of justice, the sort Murco and his son would deal out — part of me felt Miranda deserved that sort of retribution. But I was not Murco. Justice didn’t have to come at the point of a knife.

I pushed the luggage back into place and drew the closet door in front of it. I went back into the living room, searched through the small pile of mail I found on a table. A clothing catalogue, a credit card bill, a belated Christmas card, all addressed to “Jessie Masters.” I left them where they were.

There was an answering machine on the table, showing one message on its digital readout. I pressed the Play button and heard a woman’s voice. It took me a second to realize whose it was.

“Hey, beautiful,” Miranda said. “It was really good seeing you again. I know it was strange for you. For me, too. But I’d like to do it again, okay? Maybe we could watch the fireworks tomorrow. We should be able to see them from where I’m working. Maybe we can get some dinner first, before I have to go on. Give me a call, okay? Or I’ll call you, if you don’t.” Pause. “I love you, you know.” The machine clicked. A mechanical voice said, “Received Friday, December 30, at seven thirty-four p.m.”

She sounded so eager, so happy. Why? Why had Miranda been so trusting, so willing to take Jocelyn’s overtures at face value, so quick to forgive? I pictured Jocelyn getting this message and laughing, unable to believe her good luck.
We should be able to see them from where I’m working.
She hadn’t even had to come up with some excuse to lure Miranda to a secluded spot. New Year’s Eve meant fireworks on the Hudson, and sure, maybe you could see them from the roof at the Sin Factory — it was a short building, but it was far enough west that at least you’d see some of the show over the tops of other buildings. And how hard would it have been for Jocelyn to get behind Miranda while they were both watching the show, press the gun to the back of her head, and pull the trigger? For God’s sake, the fireworks would even have masked the sound of the shots. Jocelyn couldn’t have set it up better herself.

And where was she now? Collecting the money from wherever she’d hidden it, in preparation for leaving town? Or was she finding some horrible new way to do damage? The note she’d left at my mother’s building frightened me — who knew what she might do to carry out that threat?

With that in mind, I dialed Susan’s number on my cell phone. When she didn’t answer after four rings, I called my mother’s number.

“Hello? Who is this?” It wasn’t Susan’s voice, it was my mother’s, and she sounded unsteady, frightened.

I spoke as quietly as I could and kept an eye on the front door. “Mom, could you put Rachel on?”

“John! My God, are you okay? Are you safe?”

“Yes, I’m fine — what’s wrong?”

“Oh, my God, I was so worried about you, when Rachel said that woman was threatening to kill you—”

“She’s threatening all of us,” I said. “We all have to be careful. That’s why I asked Rachel to stay with you.”

“But she called!”

“Who called? What are you talking about?”

“She called,” my mother said again. “Just a little while ago. She told Rachel she was going to kill you—”

“Jocelyn called?”

“I didn’t talk to her, Rachel did. She said it was the same woman who left the note. John, she told Rachel she had a knife to your throat and was going to kill you.”

“Well, it wasn’t true. I’m fine. Can you just put Rachel on the phone, please?”

“She’s not here,” my mother said. “She went to find you. She tried to call you first, but there was no answer.”

My blood went cold. The call that had come in while I was being mugged. That had been Susan. And when I hadn’t answered—

“Mom, please think carefully, did Rachel say where she was going?”

“Yes, yes, I have it here. Hold on.” I heard papers rustling. I wanted to scream. “She wrote it down. She said she was going to Corlears Hook Park, to the bandstand. She said I should call the police if I didn’t hear from her in an hour. It hasn’t been an hour yet. Should I call them?”

“Yes,” I said.

The bandstand at Corlears Hook Park was built in the Depression and abandoned some time in the seventies. God only knows why it’s still standing. Before Stonewall, before AIDS, and before AOL chatrooms, it used to be a popular cruising spot for East Village men looking to hook up. Now it was nothing, a decrepit pile behind a chain link fence that offered some crude shelter to the homeless during a rainstorm and convenient shadows for drug dealers to hide in at noon. But the truth was you didn’t even see that many homeless or drug dealers any more — even they didn’t feel safe there.

I climbed down the fire escape as quickly as I could without breaking my neck, then ran all out down to Houston Street. I dropped the knife in the first garbage can I passed. I couldn’t afford to have the police find it on me when they arrived. I cut across Delancey, under the Williamsburg bridge, and over to Grand Street. These were long blocks, and I was badly out of breath by the time I rounded Cherry, but I kept going. My heart wasn’t beating any more, it was exploding, twice per second, against the inside of my ribs. My throat was raw from the freezing air I was taking in and my legs were burning like I’d just climbed ten flights of stairs. But I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t slow down. I hadn’t asked my mother how long ago Susan had left — all I knew was that it hadn’t been an hour yet. But a lot can go wrong in less than an hour. I pictured Jocelyn standing behind Miranda, aiming a gun at the back of her head, pulling back gently on the trigger. A lot can go wrong in less than a second.

The park was empty. Wire fences surrounded a pair of dirt baseball diamonds. Basketball hoops with no nets stood on either end of a concrete square. In the distance, the bandstand rose behind a screen of trees, their dead branches obscuring whatever might have been going on there. But when I passed them, there was nothing to see. The bandstand was as empty as the rest of the park. I found a hole in the fence that was supposed to block access to it, and raced up to the structure. There was a pair of bathrooms on one side, but they’d been locked tight for years. I went around to the back, where a few metal doors led to storage closets or God knows what, but they were locked, too, or anyway wedged shut. The whole thing was covered with ancient graffiti and surrounded by broken bottle glass, crushed beer cans, and the droppings of the countless birds and rats that found shelter there. There was nothing else — no sign of Susan, none of Jocelyn, nothing.

I took out my cell phone again. It was futile, but I speed-dialed Susan’s number. Maybe she’d answer, maybe she was safe after all, maybe Jocelyn hadn’t found her yet or Susan had managed to elude her. The phone started to ring.