She had read his novel about Korea and the book based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning articles about the murder in Vietnam. There was a hard blunt honesty in his work that was admirable if sometimes alarming. His twice-weekly columns about crime in the city were harsh and cold, generally lacking the passion of his earlier works. At times, however, he took a stand head on against popular opinion, sometimes surprising the Department by his vehement defense or living up to their worst expectations by his attack. When a matter aroused Stein’s interest, he went straight for the center of truth, and when he found it he wrote it. It was what Miranda Torres admired about his work.
She was uncertain of Stein, the man across the table from her. All her protective signals were fine-tuned. He was a handsome and a charming man and she did not know what he wanted of her.
Not yet.
“You mad at me because you thought I was brass last night?”
She didn’t answer. A slight shrug of her shoulders was all he was going to get. It was inconsequential: a matter of no importance.
She was a real beauty. He had noticed that in all the commotion and horror of the night before. He’d made a quick mental note and now he spent a few moments confirming an impression. Her cinnamon skin was tight and flawless over high cheekbones and a strong, determined chin. She held her head tilted slightly in a provocative position. Or so he felt. There was just a touch of gloss on her lips; she had true black hair and brows; black eyes, really black, the color of midnight. Not a flicker as he examined her. Her eyes went blank: she was accustomed to being stared at. Some guys at the counter were taking quick glances: this kid a model, an actress, a whore? Long, tall, thin, fragile, but tough somehow. Something strong about her, streetwise—an attitude.
The waitress smiled widely as she offered Stein a second cup of coffee, a freebie, then flickered a quick, unpleasant glance at Miranda Torres. Who noticed but ignored it.
“Your captain—O’Connor—tell you I asked that you work with me for a while? On this case?”
“What is it you’d like me to do?”
I would like: oh, Miranda, I would like.
“For you to come along with me on certain interviews. And keep me up-to-date on all other aspects of the investigation. A sharing of information. All cleared with your boss. You give me what your people have, I give your people what I have. But no outside press people. An exclusive for as long as possible.”
“All right. As long as the captain cleared it.”
“Just like that? All right? Not curious about my interest in this case?”
“I presume you’re going to tell me. Do you really want to play question-answer? What’s the point?”
The softness of her voice was not the respect her mother had advised. It was the street quality, the low deep voice of someone who knows the score.
“Let me ask you something.” He placed his elbows on the table, leaned toward her, watched her closely. “What is
your
reaction to what happened last night? Not the murder of the girl. That was pretty routine. The people who watched and did absolutely nothing, how do you feel about them?”
“Are you starting with
my
statement, Mr. Stein? What’s the phrase—‘is this off the record’? Is that what one says?”
Is that what one says? For the first time, there was a slightly musical, slightly Spanish cadence to her speech. A different rhythm; a different knowledge.
“Miranda, everything you say to me, or I to you, will be off the record. So, what do you, personally, think about all those witnesses? How they let the girl bleed to death and didn’t do a goddamn thing.”
A stillness surrounded her for a moment before she broke her silence. Then, “Why do
you
seem so surprised? You’ve been around.”
“You saw where we were last night, right? In the heart of Middle America?”
“Mr. Stein,” Miranda Torres said, “I worked narcotics in Spanish Harlem for many years. Out on the street. Everyone up there witnesses everything. Everyone knows who’s buying, who’s selling, who’s wheeling and dealing, who’s cheating and who’s going to get hit. And who will do the hitting. When someone gets wasted, it’s never a mystery who did it. It’s all out in the open, even if it happened behind closed doors or in a dark alley. You follow? If we ever close out anything, make a collar, make a case, it’s because of a good stoolie, or a not-good stoolie who badly needs a favor. Everything is witnessed by everyone, but no one says anything about anything. No matter who gets hurt, the word is, ‘Hey, it wasn’t me, man, I don’t know nothin’.’ No one comes forward to help some guy bleeding or some girl convulsing from a bad shot, because no one ‘sees’ it. ‘It ain’t me, it ain’t happenin’, dig?’ An almost Hindu attitude, isn’t it?”
“Jesus,” Stein said. Her last words seemed to take the harshness, the implied agreement, out of what she had been saying. Her voice had had one quality as she told him the street version. She became someone else at the end, someone distanced, bemused, observing without fully understanding and without judging. “I wish I could do an article or two on you.”
She shrugged and smiled. “But you can’t. It would be unethical.”
“Ah. Unethical. Would that bother you very much, Miranda? To be the victim of an unethical action?”
“I would move heaven and earth to preserve what I consider ethical, where I am personally concerned. It is what I live by. You seem so surprised by this thing of last night. That no one came forward to help this girl.”
“And you seem so unsurprised. These people are not East Harlem junkies or dealers or street people. Survival is not an issue when you dial 911 from an apartment in Forest Hills. The risk in Harlem is very real, and violence is accepted as a part of everyday life. Everyday death is a fact. Tell me, what was at risk last night on Barclay Street in the heart of civilized Forest Hills in the mysterious and grand borough of Queens?”
“Isn’t it possible, Mr. Stein, that each person, each witness, had something, as you say, at risk?”
“At the cost of a girl’s life? What’s the big deal about dialing 911, giving the information and hanging up? No one asked them to go out and tangle with the guy. Tell me.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Well,
I want to know.
There might be some surprises. Why do I have the feeling that it would take a lot to surprise you? I would think, Miranda, that you would have strong feelings about this. All these decent white middle-class citizens watching a girl of their own bleed to death.”
Quietly, firmly, with sad conviction, Miranda Torres said, “It’s all East Harlem, Mr. Stein.”
I
T WAS A LUDICROUS
situation. Miranda and Mike Stein and Mrs. Kirschner sat in the living room and stared at the grotesquely fat poodle. “Pudding” sat on a pink velvet pillow placed on his favorite chair.
“That’s his favorite chair,” Mrs. Kirschner told them for the third time. Her gray fluffy hairdo was a pretty close duplicate of her dog’s. Her eyes were dark and small and beady. So were Pudding’s. Her voice was an annoying whine. So was Pudding’s.
“He’s been through a real trauma, you have to believe me,” Mrs. Kirschner assured them. “It was my fault, you see. I never, never miss his ten-o’clock outing, but I’ve had the flu and last night I fell asleep. I heard him telling me it was time, but I just couldn’t get up.”
Mike Stein nodded.
Miranda silently stared first at the dog and then at Mrs. Kirschner.
“But I slept through. That’s why I took him for his ten-o’clock walk so late.” She leaned forward and stuck her face inches from the dog’s. There was a mean growling sound. It was hard to tell if it came from the dog or from Mrs. Kirschner.
“What time did you go out, Mrs. Kirschner?”
The woman turned and looked directly at Miranda. Whoever she spoke to received her fullest attention. Even the dog. Especially the dog.
“Well, I would say between maybe about eleven-fifteen and eleven-twenty?”
She checked it out with the dog for a moment, then nodded. “Before eleven-thirty, anyway. Somewhere in there. Wasn’t it?” She seemed to be asking the dog. He whined a little.
“And you walked him right past the young woman, who was slumped against the lamppost.”
“I never even
saw
the girl, believe me. If I had noticed her, I would have crossed the street. But I was so sleepy. The flu, it really knocks you out. Now, don’t you still be angry with Mommy,” she instructed the dog.
“Mrs. Kirschner, you’re the only person who went anywhere close to this young woman,” Mike explained. He leaned forward, put his hand out and waited for the dog’s reaction. He withdrew his hand swiftly when the growl was backed up with a wicked smile. The dog was small, but his teeth looked pretty big.
“Now, now, don’t shame Mommy,” Mrs. Kirschner said. “He’s still angry with me.”
Mike smiled and held the microphone toward the dog in an attempt to curry favor with his owner.
“Want to say a few words for posterity, Pudding? I guess not. He in a bad mood, Mrs. Kirschner?”
She warmed up to Mike. She told him exactly how it was: she, ashamed and apologetic to the dog, still sleepy and dazed by the flu, walked him toward the end of Barclay Street, his usual spot being around the bend in the tangle of weeds along the fenced-in railroad tracks.
“All of a sudden, Pudding just came to a stop, didn’t you, precious? Then I noticed the girl. She was sitting on the sidewalk with her head down, leaning against the street lamppost. I thought, What a shame. Right here on Barclay Street. I thought she was drunk, you see. She certainly
looked
drunk.”
“Was she making any noise, was she crying or talking or anything?”
Mrs. Kirschner blinked at Miranda, then spoke to her dog. “Was that lady saying anything to you, Puddy-boy? No, she wasn’t, was she. She just sat there and scared my little love, didn’t she?”
“How did she scare your dog, Mrs. Kirschner?”
“Why, just by being there, I suppose. But you know, dogs are very clever. Pudding knew more than he was telling. Didn’t you?”
Stein had the crazy notion that they were all three of them waiting for the dog to pick up the story.
“What happened was, I told Pudding to come away from that lady. Come away. After all, who knows what a drunken person might do?”
“She wasn’t drunk, Mrs. Kirschner.”
The woman spoke to the dog. “Well,
we
didn’t know that, did we? Or
I
didn’t know that. But Pudding has an extra sense about these things. He just edged a little closer to her, sniffed a few times and then he began to shake. I’ve never in my life seen such a terrible thing. He started to cry and shake—not tremble, mind you, but
shake.
I picked him up and, poor baby, he was so upset he wet all over me. I know
that
upset him, because Pudding is such a nice, clean boy, aren’t you?”
The dog never took its eyes off Mrs. Kirschner. Every time she stopped speaking, it began to whine, but every time she reached out it snapped its teeth at her.
“If I’d been awake at ten for his regular walk, this wouldn’t have happened, would it? I mean, she wasn’t sitting there at ten, was she?”
“What did you
think
was wrong with this young woman, after you realized she wasn’t drunk?” Mike Stein asked.
“I had this poor hysterical shaking sobbing little creature to worry about. As soon as I got him upstairs, I put him down on his pillow and checked him carefully. There was some blood on his front feet.” She shuddered. “So I washed him with cool water. And tried to quiet him with a brownie—one of his favorite treats. You can imagine how upset he was when I tell you he wouldn’t even touch it!”
“Did you wonder, Mrs. Kirschner,” Miranda asked, “what had happened to the girl? After you saw the blood on your dog’s front paws, did you wonder about the girl? Why she was bleeding?”
“I want to tell you something, miss. Pudding and I, we are all we have. Each other. I didn’t know who that girl was. Still don’t know. I had a very disturbed little doggy on my mind, and I did whatever I could to calm him down.”
“Was the girl dead or dying when you saw her?”
Mrs. Kirschner waved a hand at Miranda. “Ask Pudding. He went right up to her. He’d know more about it than I would.”
They sat again, three human beings staring at a fat gray poodle.
“There were other people all up and down the block,” Mrs. Kirschner said. “I saw people at the windows. Any one of them could have helped her. I am the only one in the world who could have helped Pudding. So you tell me, do you think what I did was wrong? To bring my dearest friend back up here, and try to calm him. Was that wrong?”
“Was that
right,
Mrs. Kirschner?” Mike asked.
“You just don’t understand, do you? We thought the girl was
drunk.
What should I have done? Now you say she was
dead.
So actually, what
could
I have done?”
And then she gave the line that Mike Stein had been waiting for.
“My responsibility was to my dog, not to some girl sitting on the sidewalk, drunk or dead, or whatever.”
A
NNA GRACE HAD WORKED
on the surgical floor of St. John’s Hospital. By ten o’clock, the quality of the nighttime noises echoed down the long hallways of the new wing, which was still settling in. Television sets had been turned down, music was contained within individual rooms, patients were dozing, nurses on duty were catching up with paperwork. The nurses’ station was quietly busy as charts were checked, medications prepared for delivery. An occasional cough, an occasional blare of noise as radio stations were changed, the rubbery padding of nurses’ shoes on waxed floor: typical hospital sounds. The tempo would remain until the next shift of nurses arrived: wide-awake, energetic, prepared for the next eight hours.
Dr. Philomena Ruggiero was a short, round woman with wiry dark hair cropped neatly to frame her face. She acknowledged Miranda’s presence with a quick nod, but did not interrupt herself as she dictated facts and information into her recorder. With a wave of her hand, firm, explicit, she indicated a chair, bear-with-me-for-a-moment, and then she put away the recorder, the papers on her desk were slid into a folder, the folder was slipped into an open drawer.