The Analyst (33 page)

“I don’t get many calls from midtown medical types. They don’t usually travel in the same circles as the late and little-lamented Rafael Johnson. What’s your interest in this case, Doctor Starks?”

“This man Johnson was connected to a former patient of mine some twenty years ago. I’m trying to get in touch with her relatives and was hoping that Johnson might be able to steer me in the right direction.”

“That’s doubtful, doc, unless you’d been willing to pay. Rafi would do anything for anybody, as long as there was some cash involved.”

“You knew Johnson before he was killed?”

“Well, let’s just say that he was on the radar screens of a number of cops up here. He was a bad news kinda guy. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone around here who’d say one damn nice thing about him. Petty drugs. Muscle for hire. Break-ins, robberies, a sexual assault or two. Pretty much the whole sorry useless badass package. And he ended up pretty much as one might have expected, and, to be frank, doc, I’m not thinking there were too many tears shed at that man’s funeral.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“Doc, that’s the million-dollar question. But the answer is, we got a pretty good idea.”

Ricky’s mind leapt at this statement.

“You do?” he asked excitedly. “Have you arrested someone?”

“No. And not likely to, either. At least not too quick.”

As quickly as he’d filled with some hope, he plummeted back to earth. “Why is that?”

“Well, case like this, generally speaking there’s not a whole lot of forensic evidence. Maybe some blood work, if there’d been a fight, but none available, because it seemed old Rafi was trussed up pretty tight when he was beaten up, and whoever worked him over was wearing gloves. So, really, what we’re looking for is to squeeze one of his buddies, come up with a name, build a case that way, with one guy ratting out the next, right up the ladder to the killer.”

“Yes. I understand.”

“But no one wants to rat out the guy who we think did up Rafael Johnson.”

“Why not?”

“Ah, prison loyalty. Code from Sing Sing. We’re looking at a guy that Rafael had some trouble with, while they were sharing state-sanctioned accommodations. Seems they had a real problem in prison. Probably arguing over who owned what piece of the drug trade. Tried to do one another while up there. Homemade knives. Shivs, they call ’em. Very unpleasant way to go, or so I’m told. Seems like the two bad boys carried the bad blood out to the street with ’em. This is, maybe, one of the oldest stories in the world. We’ll get the guy who lit up old Rafi when we get something a little better on one of his jerk-off buddies. One of them will trip up sooner or later and then we’ll wheel and deal. Need to be able to squeeze a little tighter, you see.”

“So, you think the killer was someone Johnson knew in prison?”

“Absolutely. A guy named Rogers. You ever run into anyone that name? Bad dude. Easily as bad as Rafael Johnson, and maybe even a little worse, because he’s the guy still walking around and Johnson’s fertilizing a plot out on Staten Island.”

“How can you be so sure he’s the guy?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this…”

“No, I understand if you don’t want to give out details,” Ricky said.

“Well, it was a little unusual,” the policeman continued. “But I don’t suppose there’s no harm in your knowing, as long as you keep it to yourself. This guy Rogers left a calling card. Seems he wanted all of Johnson’s buddies to know who did him up so badassed, bloody, and beaten up. A little message for the boys back in the hole, I’m thinking. The old prison mentality. Anyway, after pounding on Johnson for a good while, turning his face into a mess, breaking both his legs and six of his fingers, not nice scouts, let me tell you, and right before he strung him up by the neck, this guy took the time to carve his initial right in the middle of Johnson’s chest. A big bloody goddamn
R
cut in the flesh. Right unpleasant that, but gets the message across no doubt.”

“The letter
R
?”

“You got it. Some calling card, huh?”

It was indeed, Ricky thought. And the person whom it was truly meant for just received it.

Ricky tried not to imagine Rafael Johnson’s final moments. He wondered whether the ex-con and petty thug had had any idea whatsoever who it was that was delivering his death to him. Every punch that Johnson had thrown at the unfortunate Claire Tyson twenty years earlier had been repaid, with interest. Ricky told himself not to dwell on what he’d learned, but one thing was obvious: The man who called himself Rumplestiltskin had designed his revenge with considerable thought and care. And that the umbrella of that revenge spread farther than Ricky had imagined.

For the third time, Ricky dialed the number for the
New York Times
advertising department, to ask his final question. He was still standing at the pay telephone in the lobby of the courthouse building, holding a finger in one ear to try to drown out the noise of people leaving the offices. The clerk at the newspaper seemed annoyed that Ricky had just managed to beat the six p.m. deadline for the ad. The clerk’s voice was curt, direct. “All right, doctor. What do you want the ad to say?”

Ricky thought, then said:

The clerk read the lines back to him, without making a single comment, as if he were immune to curiosity. He took down the billing information rapidly and just as quickly disconnected the line. Ricky could not imagine what the clerk had waiting for him at his home that was so compelling that Ricky’s question did not even elicit the smallest comment, but he was thankful for that.

He walked out to the street and started to lift his hand to flag down a cab, then thought, oddly, that he would rather ride the subway. The streets were crowded with the evening rush hour traffic, and a steady stream of people were descending into the bowels of Manhattan to ride the trains home. He joined them, finding an odd sanctuary in the press of people. The subway was jammed, and he was unable to find a seat, so he rode north hanging from a metal rail, pummeled and jostled by the rhythm of the train and the mass of humanity. It was almost luxurious to be gripped by so much anonymity.

He tried not to think that in the morning, he would have only forty-eight remaining hours. He decided that even though he’d asked the question in the paper, he would assume that he already knew the answer, which would give him two days to come up with the names of Claire Tyson’s orphaned children. He did not know whether he could manage this, but at least it was something he could focus on, a concrete bit of information that he could either acquire or not, a hard and cold fact that existed somewhere in the world of documents and courts. This was not a world he was comfortable in, as he’d amply demonstrated that afternoon. But at least it was a recognizable world, and this gave him some hope. He wracked his memory, knowing that his late wife had been friendly with a number of judges, and thinking that perhaps one of them might sign an order for him to penetrate the adoption records. He smiled, thinking that he might be able to pull that off, and that would be a maneuver that Rumplestiltskin hadn’t anticipated.

The train rocked and shook, then decelerated, causing him to tighten his grip on the metal bar. It was hard to steady himself, and he pushed up against a young man with a backpack and long hair, who ignored the sudden physical contact.

The subway stop was two blocks from Ricky’s home, and he rose up through the station, grateful to be out in the open again. He paused, breathing in the heat from the sidewalk, then set off rapidly down the street. He was not precisely confident, but filled with a sense of purpose. He decided that he would find his late wife’s old address book in the basement storage area and start that evening calling judges she had once known. One was bound to be willing to help. It was not much of a plan, he thought, but at least it was something. As he walked rapidly forward, he was unsure whether he had reached this point in the exercise in revenge because that was what Rumplestiltskin wanted, or because he’d been clever. And, in a strange way, he felt suddenly buoyed by the idea that Rumplestiltskin had taken such a terrible revenge upon Rafael Johnson, the man who’d beaten his mother. Ricky thought that there had to be a significant distinction between the modest neglect that he’d authored, which was truly born of bureaucratic deficiencies, and the physical abuse that Johnson had delivered. He allowed himself the optimistic thought that perhaps all that had happened to him, to his career, his bank accounts, his patients, all the disruption and disarray that had been created in his life might just end there, with a name and an apology of sorts, and then he could go about the task of reconstituting his life.

He did not allow himself to dwell even for a second on the true nature of revenge, because this was not something he was in the slightest familiar with. Nor did he focus on the threat to one of his relatives that still lurked in the background.

Filled instead with if not precisely positive thoughts, at least some semblance of normalcy, and the belief that he might just have a chance to play the game successfully, Ricky turned the corner to his block, only to stop abruptly in his tracks.

In front of his brownstone, there were three police cars, lights flashing, one large red city fire truck and two yellow public works vehicles. The spinning emergency lights blended with the dimming evening atmosphere.

Ricky stumbled backward, like a drunken man, or a man rebounding from a punch to the face. He could see several policemen standing about by his front steps, jawing with workers wearing hard hats and sweat-stained coveralls. A fireman or two were on the fringe of the conversation, but then, as he stepped ahead, peeled away from the group milling about, and swung themselves up into the fire truck. With a deep engine roar mingled with a siren’s harsh blare, the fire truck headed off down the street.

Ricky hurried forward, only subliminally aware that the men in front of him were lacking urgency. When he arrived in front of his home, he was almost out of breath. One of the policemen turned and faced him.

“Hey, slow down, fella,” the officer said.

“This is my home,” Ricky replied anxiously. “What happened?”

“You live here?” the cop asked, although he’d already been given the answer to this question.

“Yes,” Ricky repeated. “What’s going on?”

The cop didn’t reply directly. “Oh, man. You better go talk to the suit over there,” he said.

Ricky looked toward another group of men. He saw one of his neighbors, a man from two stories above him, a stockbroker who headed the building’s loosely confederated association, arguing and gesturing with a city Department of Public Works man, wearing a yellow hard hat. Two other men stood nearby. Ricky recognized one of them as the building supervisor, and another as the man in charge of building maintenance.

The DPW man was speaking loudly and as Ricky approached the group he overheard the man say, “I don’t give a shit what you say about inconveniencing people. I’m the guy who decides occupancy and I’m saying no fucking way!”

The stockbroker turned away in frustration, pivoting in Ricky’s direction. He gave a small wave and stepped toward Ricky, leaving the other men arguing.

“Doctor Starks,” he said, holding out his hand to shake. “I had hoped that you’d already left on vacation.”

“What is going on?” Ricky asked quickly.

“It’s a mess,” the broker continued. “One huge mess.”

“What is?”

“Didn’t the policemen tell you?”

“No. What’s going on?”

The broker sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, apparently there was some sort of massive plumbing failure on the third floor. Several pipes seemed to have burst wide open simultaneously because of some kind of pressure buildup. Went off like bombs. Gallons and gallons of water have flooded the first two floors and the people on the third and fourth have no utilities at all. Electric, gas, water, telephone-the works. All out.”

The broker must have seen the look of astonishment on Ricky’s face, because he continued in a solicitous manner. “I’m sorry. I know your place was one of the hardest hit. I haven’t seen it, but…”

“My apartment…”

“Yes. And now this idiot from DPW wants the entire building cleared until structural engineers and contractors can get in and check out the whole place…”

“But, my things…”

“One of the DPW guys will escort you in to get what you need. They’re saying the whole place is dangerously compromised. Have you got someone you can call? A place to stay? I was under the impression that you generally took August up on the Cape. I thought you’d be there…”

“But how?”

“They don’t know. Apparently the apartment where all the trouble started was right above yours. And the Wolfsons are up in the Adirondacks for the summer. Damn, I’ve got to call them. I hope they’ve got a listed phone number up there. Do you know a good general contractor? Someone who can handle ceilings, floors, and everything in between. And you’d better call your insurance agent, but I’m not guessing he’s going to be pleased to hear about this. You’ll need to get him over here right away in order to clear a settlement, but there’s already a couple of guys inside taking photos.”

“I still don’t understand…”

“The guy said, it was like the plumbing simply exploded. A blockage maybe. It will be weeks before we know. Might have been some kind of a gas buildup. Whatever, it was enough to create an explosion. Like a bomb went off.”

Ricky stepped back, staring up at his home of a quarter century. It was a little like being told of a death of someone old and familiar, important and close. He had the sensation that he needed to see firsthand, to examine, to touch in order to believe. Like once when he’d stroked the cheek of his wife and felt a porcelain cold on her skin and understood fully in that moment what had finally happened. He gestured at the building maintenance man. “Take me in,” he demanded. “Show me.”