Evan Hunter: Candyland

"Ah, good," she says when she sees Emma.

The accent is Polish or Hungarian, Yugoslavian perhaps, Middle European certainly. Her face is broad and lined. Out of breath after her climb, she places her hands on ample hips and says, "Forgive, please. You want cleaning?"

"Sorry?" Emma says.

"I super," the woman says. "What to do with dry cleaning?"

Emma still doesn't understand.

"Miss Cathy dry cleaning. You want take? I bring?"

"Oh. Yes. Sure. Bring it up."

The woman nods and turns away, unhappily surveying the steps down. She is heading below again when the patrolman returns.

"I'm sorry, Detective," he says. "I had to check."

"That's okay," Emma says.

He inserts the key in the Medeco, twists it, snaps the lock open, removes it from the hasp.

"You be all right in there alone?" he asks.

"I'll be all right," Emma assures him, and goes into the apartment.

She does not know quite why she came back here, or exactly what she's looking for. The apartment is still. The fog lurks outside the single window in the room, swirls in eddies in the brick shaftway that offers no light on this gloomy morning. She snaps on an overhead bulb covered with a Japanese lantern. There is scarce improvement.

Mind the vic, she thinks. Find the vic.

Find the vic in the clutter of clothing still here on the open sofa-bed, exactly where it was last night when they came here for the first time. Find the vic in the little-girl socks and blouses and panties and shoes and, yes, even the string Forever bracelet. Emma owned a Forever bracelet when she was twelve, wore it day and night, never took it off till it rotted on her wrist.

Or find the vic in the sexy undergarments Cathy Frese might have wished to wear to her place of business, the way Emma sometimes wishes to wear to work something other than the strictly practical outfits the job demands, garter belt and seamed black stockings under a long black skirt, perhaps — surprise, Captain! Wear what the other girls at the XS wore, Cindy in her blatant threads looking like a hooker auditioning for the role of hooker, Julia Roberts pretending she fucks for money, Richard Gere pretending she's a street walker and not a movie star, must be difficult to tell the difference, huh?

Never mind the little white baby doll nightie draped on the body of a twenty-six-year-old woman trying to look thirteen, the shaved pubic area, the tiny breasts and wide innocent eyes, pick me, sir, won't you please pick me? Too bad about the gold tooth in the corner of her mouth. The gold tooth gave away the game. The gold tooth flashed I-Am-a-Whore to the night. The gold tooth signaled wisdom and worldliness, I have been here, I have done this, I am not a naif in Candyland.

Find the vic, Emma thinks, and tries to remember what it was like to wear a Forever bracelet.

What it had meant to her, if anything.

She cannot for the life of her recall that twelve-year-old girl.

"Missis?"

She turns toward the door.

The super is standing there, holding in her right hand a bluish-green garment on a wire hanger covered with plastic wrap.

"Where to put?" she asks.

"I'll take it," Emma says.

"Comes back yesterday," the super says, and shrugs and hands it to Emma.

Emma moves around the sofa-bed…

Carries the garment to the closet…

Hangs it on the rod…

Glances idly through the plastic…

Sees a flash of…

Gold?

Gold embroidery, is it?

Gold and red embroidery?

And leans in closer to the hanging garment.

"Oh dear God," she says.

When he answers the door to his loft, Morgan is wearing the same jeans and yellow cotton sweater he wore to breakfast not three hours ago. He seems mildly surprised to find Manzetti and Emma on his doorstep, but he grins amiably and says, "Hey, I was just about to come meet you."

Emma is carrying a blue, drawstring canvas bag with the words NYPD and EVIDENCE stenciled on it in white. There is a CHAIN OF CUSTODY tag hanging on the bag, with spaces for signatures acknowledging transfer from one person or entity to another, but so far the only one who's signed for possession is Emma herself. Morgan most certainly recognizes this type of bag, and the tag attached to it, but he makes no comment, asks instead if anyone would like coffee.

"Not me," Manzetti says.

"Thanks, no," Emma says.

She is glancing around the place. The loft is in one of those unrenovated buildings that still exist down here in SoHo, a huge space that is sparsely furnished and spotlessly clean. It is already a quarter past nine but the morning fog still hasn't cleared. It presses now against the kitchen windows, where a small round breakfast table and three chairs rest in an angled nook. Morgan catches Emma's eye, beams at her, says, "Nice, huh? My daughter's coming tomorrow, I spruced it up." Framed photographs of a young girl at various ages line the walls of the entire space, including some recent ones that show a plain-looking girl of twelve or thirteen, with long stringy blond hair and pale vacant eyes. "That's Fiona," he says proudly. "Beautiful, huh?" and beams again at Emma.

Emma yanks open the top of the canvas bag, reaches into it, and takes from it a pleated plaid skirt and a blue blazer.

Sewn to the breast pocket of the blazer is a patch embroidered in red and gold.

The patch reads ST MARY'S ON THE MOUNT.

"It's your daughter's," she says. "Her name tag is in it."

Morgan says nothing.

"Cathy Frese sent it out for dry-cleaning. It came back yesterday."

"Uh-huh," he says.

"Let's talk, okay, Jimmy?" Manzetti says.

"Sure," he says. "Sit down. You're positive no coffee?"

They sit at the round table. The fog adds a sense of unreality to the meeting, of secrecy, almost of conspiracy. Morgan is one of their own. This is why they aren't dragging him out of here in handcuffs. This is why, against all odds, they are giving him the benefit of the doubt. Emma almost hopes she's mistaken. But she knows she isn't.

"Why didn't you tell us you knew her?" she asks.

"I did."

"No, you told us…"

"I told you we answered a squeal two, three weeks…"

"June thirtieth," she says. "I called Vice half an hour ago, got the exact date."

"You told Lou about this, huh?"

"No, I talked to someone else up there. And I didn't mention your name, I just…"

"You shouldn't have done that. You have a tendency to be a lone wolf, Emma."

"Jimmy," Manzetti says, "how well did you know this girl?"

"I only saw her that one time. If you're trying to…"

"We've got your daughter's uniform in her apartment."

"I must've left it there. I probably went to talk to her on a follow-up, forgot Fiona's uniform there. That's probably what happened."

"So it wasn't just the one time."

"The one time and a follow-up, probably. This was an assault, you know, the disturbance at the XS. So I probably was doing a follow-up. In fact, I was wondering where that uniform disappeared to."

"You always carry your daughter's uniform with you on police business?" Emma asks.

"I was probably taking it to the tailor's or something."

"Jimmy, you're an experienced cop," Manzetti says. "If you were listening to this, would you buy it?"

"I know it sounds funny. But sometimes truth is…"

"We have you getting into a cab on Broadway and West Third…" Emma says.

"Come on, that was…"

"… three, four blocks from where you live."

"That was Thorpe."

"We've got the cab dropping you off in front of the XS…"

"Thorpe."

"We'll bring the cabbie in, you know," Manzetti says. "He saw you up close, Jimmy. We'll bring back the other witnesses, too, give them a better look this time. We'll get our positive, Jimmy. You know we will."