Richard Aleas - Little Girl Lost

“I know.”

“So the name stuck in my mind. John Blake. I may even have your card in here somewhere.” She lifted a handbag that was hanging from one arm of the chair.

“That’s okay. I’ll give you a new one.” I fished one out of my wallet. She looked at it, slipped it into the breast pocket of her lumberjack shirt.

“So, you want to tell me why you’re wasting my time on this beautiful Saturday afternoon?”

“I guess you know I’m a private detective. My firm’s been looking into Miranda’s death. I understand you knew her partner, too. Jocelyn Mastaduno.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, we’re trying to find her. Do you have any idea where Jocelyn is now?”

“Why?”

“We think she might know something about what happened.”

“Know something like what?”

“Like what happened.”

Tracy folded her arms over her chest. “You’d better start talking straight, or I’m walking out that door.”

“Miranda was killed by two gunshots fired at close range into the back of her head. The person who did it had to be someone who was able to get close to her, someone Miranda trusted.”

“You think Jocelyn killed her?”

“It’s one possibility. We’d like to rule it out.”

“No way,” she said. “I’m not saying I can’t imagine Jocelyn doing something crazy – the girl had her issues. But there’s no way she would kill Miranda. She was still in love with her.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she was. She couldn’t go two nights without mentioning her name. She kept her fucking picture up on the wall. Even after I moved in, she wouldn’t take it down.”

“You lived with her?”

“Not for long. I don’t mind the occasional three-way, but I’m not competing with some girl’s not even there. And Jocelyn was a little too crazy for me – too needy, too high strung. But none of that makes her a killer.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “But if she didn’t do it, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like she did. She might be in danger herself, frankly. I’d at least like to talk to her, get her side of the story.”

She closed her eyes, leaned her head back. “Don’t bullshit me. You think she did it.”

I didn’t say anything for a while and neither did she.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“When Miranda moved out, Jocelyn had the apartment all to herself, and she asked me to stay with her, so I moved in. You know how long it lasted? Two months. I couldn’t take it. Every word out of her mouth was Miranda this and Miranda that, and did I think she’d call, and what should she say if she did. It was like they were a married couple and I was just some one-night stand Jocelyn had hooked up with.”

“The way you describe it, I’m surprised it lasted two months.”

“Me, too,” she said. “But when you’re in the middle of it, you always think you’re going to be able to make it work. The problem is, someone like Jocelyn, there’s just no way. She needed to get Miranda out of her system, but she couldn’t.”

That sounded like a perfect recipe for murder to me, even if you didn’t take the circumstances of the burglary into account. But I didn’t say so. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Been close to a year now. I called her once after I moved out, but she never called back.”

“Do you think she’s still living in the same apartment?”

“I have no idea. Probably.”

“Where is it?”

“Down in Alphabet City, near the water,” she said.

“You remember the address?”

“Before I answer that,” she said carefully, “I want to know what you’re going to do with it.”

“I’m going to go talk to her. That’s all.” She stared at me and I held her eyes.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“For God’s sake, Tracy you want it straight? I’ll give it to you straight. It’s not just Miranda that’s dead. Four people are dead because of Jocelyn. I don’t know for sure whether she shot Miranda, but I do know she shot a man named Wayne Lenz yesterday.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was there.” I bent my head forward. “She gave me this. Hit me with a heavy statue so hard it shattered, then took my gun and used it to kill a man she’d been working with.”

She was silent.

“And that’s not the half of it. There’s a drug dealer involved, and even if I drop the case right now, he’s not going to, because she’s got a half million dollars of stolen money that he wants back. Do you understand, Tracy? She’s in way over her head. I know you want to protect her, but you can’t.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to help you find her,” she said.

“No, it doesn’t. And I’m sure you’ll be glad you didn’t help me if she decides to come after you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There are professional killers looking for her. The only thing keeping her alive is her anonymity. You know where she lives, you know what she looks like – why wouldn’t she come after you?”

She started to say something, then stopped herself. I waited her out. “She’s just a screwed-up girl,” she said. “She’s not a killer.”

“And I’m telling you she is. Are you willing to bet your life on it?”

I waited some more while she wrestled with her decision.

“Hell with it,” she said finally. “It’s the top floor apartment at 51 Avenue D. Facing the street.”

“Thank you,” I said. I got up and walked to the door.

“You won’t tell her I gave you the address, will you?”

“No, I won’t.”

“And what are you going to tell Andy?”

“I’ll tell him I think you’re perfect, then I’ll call him next week and tell him the financing fell through, the club’s not going to open after all. That way he won’t blame you.”

“Fine.” She sounded sullen, or maybe just disgusted with herself. Or with me.

“Listen, Tracy, I’m sorry about using a ruse to get you in here. I wish I did have a job to give you.”

“Oh, you gave me a job,” she said. “You just didn’t pay me my thirty pieces of silver for doing it.”

If you read the Village Voice, it sounds like Alphabet City has become hopelessly gentrified over the past ten years, all the quaint, stoop-sitting crackheads and heroin addicts replaced with Starbucks junkies out for a double latte. It’s only true up to a point. I still wouldn’t want to be caught east of Avenue C after dark.

But that’s where I was headed, and the sky wasn’t getting any lighter. In the summer you’d see guys with boomboxes hanging out till eight, nine at night, and though you knew some of them were up to no good, you also knew some of them were just enjoying what passed for fresh air in this part of town. You’d see some women on the streets, too, and not only hookers. You didn’t get the feeling that all the honest people were locked up indoors, leaving the streets to the predators. But it was not summer now, and in the winter the combination of the early darkness and the bone-chilling cold kept everyone off the streets who had someplace better to go.

I didn’t. I had one place to go and only one, and it was on Avenue D, as far east as you could walk before you hit the waterfront housing projects, the FDR Drive, and then the East River itself. The wind blew harder as you got closer to the water. There were few tall buildings here to block it, mostly just red brick tenements and little Spanish churches. When the wind came from the east, you could smell the river on it. It stank of diesel fuel.

I wasn’t the only one on the streets, but in some ways I’d have preferred it if I had been. I passed two young men walking together, and we all eyed each other as we passed. It was at times like this that I wished I looked older, bigger, harder. Tracy wasn’t so far off with her description, and this was not a neighborhood for slumming prep school kids.