S Rozan - Trail of Blood

“I don’t know. When he called, he said something was fishy.”

“What was?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

Nodding as though he’d expect Joel not to tell me, he asked, “This jewelry-very valuable?”

“Not really, though it’s probably worth more than a Chinese civil servant could hope to see.”

“I thought everyone was getting rich over there, now that they took all our jobs. What’s ‘not really’?”

I stared at him. “Around twenty thousand, each piece.”

“Gee, sounds valuable to me. Must be nice to be you. What about Pilarsky? Why would someone shoot him over it? Did he have it?”

Mulgrew, I suddenly remembered, that was his name. Not that that made me feel any warmer toward him. “Detective Mulgrew? It’s missing. That’s why we were hired.”

“So maybe Pilarsky found it.”

“He told me something was fishy. That wouldn’t be fishy.”

“Fishy. Uh-huh.” He lifted his eyebrows again. “His wallet’s gone. And laptop and cell phone. And the place was turned over. You want to know, I make this for a robbery. How much cash did he keep in the office? A lot?”

“I don’t know. Just a robbery?”

“Some days, the bear gets you. We have three unsolved robberies in this neighborhood, last two months. Just like this. Daytime, high floor, vic alone. My theory? Messenger with a jones, just delivered whatever, now he’s in the building. Finds a one-man show, easy pickings.”

“Did anyone get killed in those others?”

“Maybe the vics didn’t put up a fuss. Would Pilarsky have? Instead of forking over?”

I gritted my teeth and nodded. “He could get-indignant.”

“Civilians.” Mulgrew shook his head.

“He was an ex-Port Authority cop.”

“Oh, really?” He spoke with the thick condescension the NYPD reserves for the lower cop orders. I wanted to slug him. “What about you? You ex-PA, too?”

“I’ve always been private.”

That got me an even more patronizing “I see.” Then: “Did Pilarsky go armed?”

“No. He shot someone on the job once and he didn’t like it.”

Mulgrew wrote that down, too, and flipped the notebook shut. So much for Joel. An ex-PA cop with a never-been-a-cop girl employee, unarmed because he was squeamish about shooting people, arguing with a stickup artist in his one-man office. What did he expect? Case closed.

“They have their own ambulances,” I said.

“What?”

“Orthodox Jews. There are special ways you have to handle the body.” Actually, I wasn’t sure Joel cared. He’d told me once about the ambulances, but I didn’t remember him saying to make certain he was carried away in one. But he had said I should get up here fast, and I hadn’t. In case the ambulance thing was important to him, I wanted to get it right.

Mulgrew hissed a sigh. “I think the Department can handle the protocol. Okay, go. Wait-what about you? You don’t carry, right?”

“I do sometimes, but not now.” I opened my jacket and showed him. Before he could ask, I opened my bag, too. He waved it closed as though I were trying to sell him something.

“So you do and Pilarsky didn’t?” Clearly for him that was backwards, just wrong.

“I shot someone once, too. I didn’t like it either. But I’d have liked it less if he shot me.”

Mulgrew smiled.

I still wanted to slug him.

Mary drove me back to Chinatown. Somewhere past Fourteenth Street I roused myself to ask, “Can I call Alice?”

“The client?”

“I assume that charming Mulgrew will follow up with her?”

“He thinks there’s probably no connection. He’s hoping for the messenger with the jones who can close this and the three open robberies at the same time. But he’ll go through the motions.”

“Then I’d like her to hear it from me. He doesn’t have the greatest bedside manner. Or any kind of manner. The bear gets you. Jerk.”

“I guess it’s okay.” Mary’s tone said that as a friend she agreed and as a cop she’d rather I didn’t call. I ignored the cop.

As it turned out, though, it didn’t matter. “No answer.” I pocketed my phone. “I left a message on the room phone and her cell, just to call me.”

Mary nodded. The cop was probably relieved. “You want to go home?”

“No, thanks, to my office.” I couldn’t face telling my mother about this, not yet.

Mary dropped me on the west end of Canal. “Should I come in?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You forget I’ve seen you when you’re fine. But okay. Call me if you need me?”

“You know I will.”

She went back to work and I went in the street door that bore a nameplate for Golden Adventure Travel, but not my name. My office was the second one inside. As long as my clients came out with brochures about cruises through the Guilin mountains, who was to say where they’d really been?

I waved at the travel ladies as though this were a normal day. “Welcome back!” Andi Gee called, looking perplexed when I didn’t stop to chat after a month away. I’d have to mend that fence later, but right now I needed to be alone.

Unlocking my door, I stepped into the dusty stillness of a room long unused. I opened the window and put the kettle on. After I splashed cold water all over my face, I stared into the mirror, but the eyes looking back were hard to take.

A random robbery? I dropped into my chair. Would that be better, or worse? Worse, I decided. The good news would be, it wasn’t something I should have seen coming. The bad news was, I still should have gotten up there right away. And if it didn’t have to do with our case, then I wouldn’t be able to have a hand in catching the son of a bitch.

When my desk phone rang, I almost jumped out of my chair.

“ Lydia Chin. Chin Ling Wan-ju,” I told it in English and Chinese.

“It’s Bill.”

Months, I marveled. For months I’ve been checking the readout to see who was calling; this is the first time I didn’t.

“I’m sorry about Joel,” he said.

“How do you-”

“Mary called me.”

“Mary did?” My best and oldest friend? Sandbagged me like that?

“Can I buy you a cup of tea?”

“I… I don’t think-”

“Please.”

Just that, just “please.” Anything else-any long explanation, any attempt at apology, especially any excuses-and I’d have hung up. But there was just that one “please,” and silence.

“Come to my office,” I said. “I have tea here.”

Some things surprise you, but some don’t. Bill showed up carrying a large black coffee. The offer of tea had been an olive branch, but that didn’t mean whatever peace terms he was proposing would include him drinking any.

“Long time,” I said, shutting the door behind him.

He sat in the chair across the desk. Were there really more lines on his face than last time I saw him?

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“About Joel? Or about the long time?”

“Both.”

“Who the hell asked you?”

A pause. “If I shouldn’t have come-”

“Oh, shut up.”

He did.

I sipped my tea. Jasmine, what my mother used to give us when we didn’t feel well. “It’s just, I don’t think it’s okay that you get to make that decision unilaterally.”

“What decision?”

“About who isn’t good for who and who could do better without who and who should stay away from who and who gets back in touch with who. And don’t tell me some of those ‘whos’ should be ‘whoms.’ ”

“They should, though.”

“I know!”

He drank his coffee. “Listen: I fucked up big. I needed time to think about that. If I-”

“When did I ever not give you time? Did I ever crowd you? Why couldn’t you have called and said, ‘I need time. I’m going to the cabin, I’m locking myself in my apartment, I’m shooting myself into space?’ Just to call and acknowledge I still existed. Why couldn’t you do that? Before you went off to meditate on what a fuckup you are?”