Come Out Tonight Page 6

Ryan put his hand out as if to say, “Wait. Let me breathe.”

  I wanted to tell him to go breathe somewhere else, but I didn’t. “Well?” I demanded finally.

  “I gave Ryan your address months ago,” Sherry said. “In case he couldn’t reach me at home.”

  Ryan straightened up. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Here?” I asked, but he was already pushing his way in.

  “Could you...go in the bedroom or something?” Ryan asked me. “I’d like some privacy.”

  “In my apartment?”

  “Yeah, could you?”

  Sherry was nodding, so I went down the hall to the bedroom, but I left the door open. If he was going to make me hide in my own apartment, I sure as hell was going to listen in.

  “Sherry,” I heard, then some mumbling. Then, “But it was your idea...” Then more mumbling. This wasn’t going to work. I opened the door all the way and pushed my head through.

  “But you can’t,” I heard Ryan say. “It’s professional suicide. You know what the Institute thinks of your going to the media.”

  “You heard about the politician who crashed his car into a barrier?”

  “No, but...”

  “They did their best to hush it up. He had taken Somnolux. No other drugs, he said.”

  “Oh, I know who you’re talking about. The guy who had just come out of a drug treatment center. You can’t blame that on Somnolux.”

  “Ryan, you know there’s more. Those dissociative disorders....It’s got to be studied at least.”

  “Look. You know I sympathize with your position...”

  “You? Hah. You’re with the Institute all the way. I wonder, Ryan, if they haven’t given you a cut of the profits, the way you always side with them....”

  “Um, no way. I never...”

  “They have! They bought you!”

  “Sherry, listen to me.” There was a long pause. Then he continued, lower. I had trouble hearing him, so I crept further out into the hall. “They haven’t bought me. I’m on your side. I’m just saying that if you go to the press, you may never work again. Do you understand me?”

  “Did they tell you to say that?”

  “No. And what’s more, it’s not just you. You’re going to ruin it for me, too.”

  “Ah, it’s you you’re worried about...”

  “...And I won’t let you do that...”

  There was long intake of breath, then a hoot of laughter from Sherry.

  “Is that a threat, Ryan? Is that a threat? Well, you can tell your...puppet master that I don’t care if they fire me. I’ll do what I have to do. Now get the hell out!”

  There was the scraping of chair bottoms and footsteps crossing the room. I backed up, grabbed the door and pulled it closed. By the time I heard the door slam, I was lying on the bed, feet crossed, studying the Op-Ed page of the Times. The bedroom door opened slowly, and Sherry came in, pale and trembling. She sank down on the bed, her back to me, shoulders hunched. I crept over to her side of the bed and put my arms around her. I didn’t bother to ask any questions; I had heard the whole thing already. And that was two days before the morning I found Sherry lying on the floor, half-dead.

  DONNA

  Jackman called again to ask if there were any new leads. I said not much, again. He became incensed, asking what I do all day. “What I do all day?” I shouted into the phone. “How about six current cases and a desk full of paperwork?” I almost asked him what he was doing all day – or all night was more to the point – since I had seen him buzzed into that brownstone on East 63rd, but I restrained myself from mentioning it. Never give out information if you can help it, is my detective’s motto. Anyway, I wondered whether Jackman was pulling the wool over my eyes, trying to put me on the defensive by calling and accusing me.

  Meanwhile, however, he was actually saying something interesting. “What did you say?” I broke in.

  “About what you do all day?” he said.

  “No, no. The thing after that.”

  “About Sherry telling me early in the week that her parents were coming for her birthday?”

  “Yeah, that. When was her birthday?”

  “Uh. The day before she was attacked. That is, if she was attacked in the early hours of the next day. Because if she was attacked before midnight, that would mean she was attacked on her birthday. I mean…”

  “April 30 was her birthday,” I said, to confirm the obvious.

  “Uh. Yeah.”

  “And her parents were planning on flying out to celebrate.…”

  “Yeah, to have dinner with her. That’s why I didn’t expect her to be coming over. She said it would be better if she saw them alone….” He interrupted his own jabbering for a second. “Is this important?”

  Duh, I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “Just curious. My brother’s birthday is also April 30th.”

  Our conversation wound down after that. Not that I would tell him this, but I don’t have a brother, and because of that important fact, his birthday was unlikely to be April 30. Police officers are supposed to tell the truth. In fact, that is one of the factors that theoretically separates us from the criminals we pursue. But it happens sometimes that a little white lie is necessary to distract the other party, who doesn’t really need to know the truth.

  So, I thought, after hanging up: if Sherry’s parents had come in for her birthday, and taken her to dinner that night, they might have been the last ones to speak to her before she was assaulted. However, what that had to do with the attack on their daughter, I didn’t know yet. Could there have been an argument, something that disturbed her enough to send her back to the loving arms of Henry? Could she have been followed in the dark? And why would the Pollacks keep mum about being in New York City? Anyway, all of this was total conjecture until I determined whether they were there at all for the night in question.

  I figured I could use some fresh air. I borrowed a Crown Victoria from the precinct’s fleet of four, headed through the Park to FDR Drive, over the RFKBridge and on to LaGuardiaAirport in Queens. I was driving the wrong way out of the city, just when most of the traffic was coming in, so the whole thing took about half an hour. I parked in short term parking as close as I could get to the Central Terminal. Air Tran was in Concourse B. I took the escalator up.

  It was easy. True, there weren’t a lot of agents. The latest rule is to check yourself in on one of those computerized check-in stations. I found one young black woman behind the console who was busying herself at not being busy, overseeing several customers who were doing all the work. I flashed my badge and got immediate service. Too bad for the old guy on the end who couldn’t work the machine. He was on his own.

  “What can I do for you, Officer?” the agent asked. The badge on her navy blue blazer identified her as J’ Quaelah.

  I explained that I needed to see the passenger list of their red eye flight from LA to LaGuardia on the evening of May 1.

  “Let me check with my supervisor about accessing the flight manifest,” she said, and disappeared. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed as I waited for her. After awhile, I went over to the old guy at the end, who was still struggling, and offered my services as surrogate airline agent: walking him through the Q&A, helping him to lift his bag onto the scale. Just as I had gotten him squared away, the agent reappeared.

  “I’m sorry for the wait,” J’Quaelah said, getting back behind her console. “My supervisor told me to give you any information at our disposal.” She pressed a few keys. “That would be from the flight leaving LAX May 1 at 11:05 p.m., going through Atlanta, arriving LGA 8:30 a.m.?” she asked.

  Yes, I nodded. “Anyone with the name Pollack?” I asked.

  “No,” J’Quaelah said.

  The answer was also no to any other red eye flights from other airlines on that date or for the other New York airports. So, if they hadn’t flown a private jet, they hadn’t come that night. I walked slowly back to the parking garage. I’d get Ricardo started looking t
hrough small plane registries coming into New York area airports that night, but I doubted he would find anything. And I had a hunch that when I’d called Phillip Pollack’s cell, the traffic noises I’d heard in the background were New York City.

  * * *

  I got back to my apartment around five to find Julian kicking back on the sofa in front of my TV. “I let myself in,” he told me, unnecessarily. Behind him I could see three matched Louis Vuitton bags parked in the hallway that led to the bedroom.

  “You never gave me back my key, as you said you would,” I said, unobtrusively kicking my beat-up canvas tote beneath the sofa table.

  “You never changed the lock, as you said you would,” he answered, smiling.

  “Touché,” I said. Repartee was one of the things we still enjoyed with one another.

  Julian’s dark hair was longer than I remembered, and he hadn’t bothered to shave today. But under the ripped jeans and waffle-weave T, I could see he was lanky but muscular. He looked good: too good for me, who was pushing forty and never had much inclination to do much with what I had, anyway. I wondered whether he was frequenting the gym. It wouldn’t be beyond Julian to be without an apartment but to still own a gym membership.

  In any case, he wasn’t dressing up for me. It just wasn’t that way with us anymore. We knew each other too well for artifice. We’d been through all the wars that men and women wage. I remembered how he could go for days without showering; he’d seen me when I got out of bed in the morning, my hair flattened to my head and a pillow crease on my cheek. I knew how smart he was, but how without compunctions when it came to getting ahead. He’d seen what a stickler I could be at work, but what a pushover at home. With all we had learned about each other, we knew full well to keep out of each other’s hair. But it never seemed to stop us from getting entangled in it over and over again.

  I sat down on the wing chair across from him and kicked off my shoes. “So, why do you not have a job?” I asked.

  “Still get right to the point, don’t you, Donna?” Julian grinned.

  “It’s my job,” I said. “And you’re trying to put me off the track. Just answer the question.”

  “You’re not at the precinct, Donna. Don’t interrogate me.”

  “You’re staying at my place. All I’m trying to do, Julian, is to get a sense of why you’re here.”

  He sighed. “You think I want to be out of work? Wall Street’s just recovering from the biggest dip since the great depression. Anyway, I’ve got a few interviews lined up. Goldman Sachs at the end of the week. They’re hiring again, and I still have connections there.”

  “Okay, good. And then you can go out and look for a place. Because, Julian, you’ve got a…month here, tops. I mean it.”

  He stood up and crossed the distance to where I was sitting. Planting his big hands around the deltoids of my upper arms, he lifted me up to a standing position. I’m not a small person at 5’10”, but at 6’3” Julian looks down at me. It always used to thrill me to feel small in comparison. “Don’t be a bully,” he said, leaning down to kiss me.

  I felt Julian’s lips rough against on mine, his arms enfolding me, embracing me, his lower body crushed hard against mine. “Don’t do this,” I told myself. “Do. Not. Do. This.” But obviously, my body had other ideas. Without any resistance, it simply melted into his: the tough, hard-boiled exterior of the Detective Second Grade who had battled her way up to, if not through, the glass ceiling of the NYPD, softening, then liquefying, dripping down Julian’s body like honey, evaporating from the heat of our fire into steam.

  “God, I missed you,” he breathed, hot and heavy in my ear.

  No, No came out “Yesssohyesss.”

  We were on the floor, thrashing around, ripping off our clothing, when the phone rang. For a nanosecond the detective part of me revived itself – Answer it! It could be an emergency! - but then it was gone again, submerged somewhere in my reptilian brain. The phone went to voice message and who the hell cared.

  * * *

  Later, when Julian was in the shower, and I was berating myself - “Again! Donna, you fool, you did it again!” – I walked naked over to the blinking light of the answering machine.

  There was, of course, that one message: “Uh, hello. This is Ryan the upstairs neighbor at 119 West 96th Street. I got a message that Detective Sirken would like to talk to me about what happened to Jessica Finklemeyer. I’m at home now, so if you get back anytime this evening, you can call me at 212-724-5066. Uh, thanks.”

  I padded back into the bedroom to grab a bathrobe, then back again into the living room. I dialed the number, and waited while it rang three times. I was about to get off when someone picked up. “Ryan speaking,” he said.

  “This is Detective Sirken of the NYPD. I was hoping to have a chat with you about Jessica Finklemeyer. But perhaps it’s too late tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Ryan said.

  Down the hall the shower turned off. The hair dryer turned on. I had no idea how I would face Julian when he got out. Boy, did I ever want to get out of the house. “Well, tonight if it’s not too much trouble.”

  A pause, then, “Well, all right. I’m sort of a night owl anyway. Where do you want to meet? Or do we do this on the phone?”

  We could have done it on the phone, but I was all for getting out, the faster the better. Preferably before Julian got out of the bathroom. “I could come over right now, actually. To your place. If it’s all right with you.”

  “I guess the policeman’s work is never done, isn’t it?” he chuckled. “Well, my address is 119 W. 96th – though I guess you know it already.”

  “I do. Between Amsterdam and Columbus. I’ll be there within the hour.”

  “Okay. Just ring my button. I’ll buzz you up.”

  I jumped back into my clothes, called to Julian through the bathroom door that I was going out, took the elevator down and grabbed the first cab going past. On our way through the park, I sat back in the seat and berated myself some more in my head. It was bad enough that I had allowed Julian to stay in my apartment. Bad when I’d said just a few days; worse when I willingly amended it to a month, and, finally, THIS. It wouldn’t work. It never had worked. The guy was a hunk, but an amoral hunk, a hunk who couldn’t be trusted, a hunk who never seemed to have a dollar in his pocket, but who managed to have Louis Vuitton bags and a gym membership. Why was I pathologically attracted to these hunky bad boys? Was it a cops and robbers thing? Did I crave risk all the time, even in my private life? Why couldn’t I go for someone dull and stable, someone a little overweight with an accounting degree or some guy four inches shorter than me with thick glasses and a hefty paycheck? How about a nice Clark Kent type without the Superman alter ego?

  The cabby stopped in front of 119. I asked for a receipt and got some strip of paper which was half ripped from where it emerged from the meter. I figured I’d submit it sometime next week, along with the half a dozen others I’d accumulated over the last month. I stepped out into the night air.

  The brownstone was all lit up on the bottom and at the top, with the second floor dark, like some giant all-beef patty sandwiched between two bright halves of a sesame seed bun. I climbed the stoop and opened the front door. The foyer was lit by a single bulb, not much – I remembered Arlene saying that that the landlord paid the utilities - but light enough to see the directory. Arlene Fisher: 1A; Jessica Finklemeyer: 2A, and Ryan O’Donnell: 3A. O’Donnell: that sounded vaguely familiar. Common enough name though in New York. Ryan O’Donnell. I filed it away in my memory as I pushed the button next to his name. By the time I got to the inner door, I heard a loud buzz, and the door opened to my touch.

  On the first floor, the door to Arlene’s apartment was closed, but I could tell she was in from the light leaking through the crack at the bottom. On the second landing, one naked bulb illuminated Jessica’s threshold, still festooned with yellow tape. As I turned to climb to the top floor, I could hear a door opening.

  “Alm
ost there,” Ryan called out from his doorway. I looked up to see a clean-cut twenty-something in a Harvard sweat shirt over gym shorts. “Sorry about the climb,” he said as I reached him, panting.

  The apartment was nice in a studied sort of way. The furniture was clearly new: a modular set encircling an expensive carpet in the center; a leather recliner set just so to complete the conversation group, with a flat-screen TV on the wall across from recliner.

  Ryan motioned to the modular set. “So how can I help you?” he asked as we sat down.

  “Well, you might start by telling me where you were the night of Jessica’s murder.”

  At the word murder, he gave what looked like an involuntary shiver. “I was out of town on business,” he said. “I just got back today. The whole thing was quite a shock.”

  I nodded. To him, maybe. Unfortunately, to me it was all too common. “Your business?” I asked, taking out a flip pad.

  “Bio-medical research,” he said.

  “Where were you and when?”

  “The West Coast for the past three days. Checking out the competition,” he said, with a slight smile.

  I wrote down the academic establishment, the dates and his contacts. His alibi would have to be checked out. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business is that you take no one at their word.

  “How well did you know Jessica?” I asked, still writing.

  “Hardly at all,” Ryan replied.

  “Do you have any idea who might have strangled her?”

  “She was strangled?” he said, shivering again. “No, not really.”

  I looked up. “What do you mean by ‘not really’? You do have an idea who strangled her or you don’t?”

  “Did I say ‘not really’?” he said with a wry smile. “I have no idea at all who might have killed her. I hardly knew her, as I said.”

  “I understand she had a boy friend.”

  “A boyfriend? I wouldn’t be surprised. I never saw him, but I’d hear someone thumping up the stairs at all hours, and a real racket below me, a lot of laughter, shouting. I stamped on the floor a few times to tell them to keep it down.”