Robert Knightly - The cold room

‘I’ll make it simple, detective,’ the nun told me. ‘Her name is Tynia Cernek. She has a ten-month-old son and she’s worried about what Aslan might do to the child if she speaks to the police. She also claims that her chores are timed by her employer. If she’s late getting back to the house, she’ll be physically punished.’

Again, I wondered if Aslan included an abuse premium in the fee he charged for the maid’s services. You want to beat her? Fine. You want to stick her in a refrigerator? Great. In fact, you can even kill one from time to time, as long as you’re willing to pay the price. Dominick Capra had told me a story about a servant regularly beaten by her Saudi employers. I remembered it, then, but my attitude didn’t change. I was the bad cop here.

‘That’s not good enough,’ I told the nun. ‘That doesn’t get us anywhere. We can’t just let her go.’

When the maid’s eyes widened, I knew that she understood English well enough to grasp my intentions. The look in her eyes grew imploring and for a moment I thought she was going to drop to her knees.

‘Tell her,’ I instructed Sister Kassia, ‘that if she cooperates, the police will protect her, her child, and all the other workers. But she has to make a decision right now. She has to convince me that she won’t run back to Aslan. Otherwise, I’m going to take her to the Ninety-Second precinct in Brooklyn where I can question her at my leisure.’

Sister Kassia gave me a searching look, but I ignored it. There was no going back.

‘What exactly will it take, detective,’ she demanded, ‘to let her go? Please, be precise.’

‘I’m the only chance she has for a normal life, Sister. Me, and me alone. I’m her only hope.’

‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

By then, I was certain Tynia was following the conversation. ‘First, she has to swear that she won’t contact Aslan or anyone else. Then she has to name a time and place where we can talk to her without being disturbed.’

Tynia began to speak before Sister Kassia broke eye contact with me. ‘Tomorrow in early afternoon,’ she said, groping for the words, ‘family goes to lunch for museum benefits. I will be in this house alone.’

‘Does that about cover it?’ Sister Kassia asked.

‘Almost.’ This time I spoke directly to Tynia. ‘I want to know where you stay on Saturday and Sunday when you aren’t working.’

Tynia’s eyes first grew mistrustful, then resigned. She went into her purse to withdraw a little notebook. The address she rattled off, on 38th Street in Queens, included an apartment number. Though I wasn’t familiar enough with the borough to pin the location exactly, I thought it was somewhere in Astoria, near Steinway Street.

‘Now, tell me Mynka’s last name.’

The fear returned then, followed by an onrushing of tears. ‘Mynka, she is dead? Aslan has told us she is running away.’

‘Yeah, she’s dead. I want to know her last name and how to contact her relatives.’

‘Mynka Chechowski. This is her name. Together we are growing up in Poland, in Grodkow. We come here for better life.’

Did the irony escape Tynia Cernek? I was only certain that when I handed her my notebook and she wrote down a phone number, her hands were still shaking. ‘Mother’s name is Katerina. Of her daughter she is greatly fearing.’

I nodded, then let go of her arm. I was pleased, of course, to finally know Plain Jane’s full name. She would have her funeral, in her own country, surrounded by her family. I’d wanted this for her from the very beginning. But there was still that phone call to make, to Katerina who was ‘greatly fearing’ exactly what I was going to confirm.

‘One more question, Tynia. When you were still on Eagle Street, did Aslan live with you?’

‘No, there is not room for man.’

‘Do you know where he stayed?’

‘I am sorry. Aslan, he only speaks to make threatening. If from customer is complaint, he is very angry.’

I nodded to myself as an idea blossomed, then drove home my final point. ‘Listen, now, Tynia, to what I’m going to tell you. You must keep this meeting to yourself. Your child’s safety depends on it. Speak to nobody, not to your closest friend or your closest relative. Tomorrow, we’ll create a plan that accounts for everybody. By the end of the week, this nightmare will be over. I promise you.’

Tynia said nothing for a moment and I turned impatiently to Sister Kassia. ‘Please, Sister, repeat what I just said in Polish.’

When Sister Kassia finished, I stepped away. Tynia didn’t hesitate. She snatched up her parcels and sprinted toward Riverside Drive.

‘You could rescue those children right now,’ Sister Kassia said once Tynia disappeared around the corner. ‘You don’t have to wait.’

‘And what would I do next? Hand them over to the social workers? Deliver them into the foster care system?’ I turned to face the nun. ‘Given the illegal status of their mothers, their missing fathers, and the fact that their mothers knew they were in danger and failed to protect them, the odds are those children would remain wards of the state for the next ten years.’

An hour later, after a quick tour of Astoria, I put Sister Kassia in a gypsy cab, then returned to the Nissan, parked a hundred yards from the address supplied by Tynia Cernek. Nondescript, the building was six stories high, spanned several lots and contained somewhere between forty and fifty apartments. As I’d suspected, it was a block from Steinway Street, the neighborhood’s main commercial drag.

The northern and eastern reaches of Astoria have long been the center of New York’s Greek population. So much so that natives automatically link Astoria to the many Greek restaurants and groceries along Ditmars Boulevard. But there’s another Astoria to the south, near the Grand Central Parkway. This Astoria is a United Nations of ethnicities in which no group predominates. On this particular stretch of Steinway Street, for instance, a block from where I sat, the signs on the storefront businesses were all in Arabic.

Like the warehouse on Eagle Street, the building on 38th Street was an excellent place to hide. For most of the week, apartment 5E would be occupied by Zashka and the children. The workers would arrive on Saturday night. On Monday morning, back they’d go again. This arrangement would not appear terribly unusual to the mostly poor locals, many of whom were illegal themselves.

I sipped at a container of coffee, then got on my cell phone and called Drew Millard. I wanted to locate a detective named Ralph Scott, the arresting officer on Margaret’s second bust, the felony assault.

Millard didn’t seem all that happy to hear from me. Most likely, he wanted to tell me that I could take my connections and shove them. Instead, he went to his computer and ran the name. Detective Ralph Scott, he told me, now a lieutenant, commanded the squad room at Manhattan North. He was on duty.

I dropped the phone to my lap as the door to the apartment building opened and Zashka Ochirov emerged. She was a hundred yards away, at the opposite end of the block, but I slid down in the seat and stayed there until she disappeared around the corner. Then I called Manhattan North and asked for Lieutenant Scott. He answered his phone on the second ring.

‘Lieutenant Scott.’

‘Detective Harry Corbin here. I’m calling about a case you handled in 1995.’

‘Really? 1995? I can barely remember what I did last week. What’s it about?’

‘A felony assault. The suspect’s name was Margaret Portola.’

‘Holy shit. That bitch. I shoulda fuckin’ killed her when I had the chance.’

‘That bad?’

‘You wouldn’t fuckin’ believe it. When she finds out I’m gonna arrest her, she attacks me. Kickin’, punchin’, scratchin’ at my eyes. The bitch went all out.’ He paused, then said, ‘What’d ya say your name was?’