Nightbird Page 9

“You never get tired of that old joke, do you?”

  A platoon of fully grown trees surrounded the backyard. The Ryans had bought the trees from a mail-order nursery catalog over three decades ago. Twenty-eight trees, the price so cheap that he couldn’t help himself. He’d expected a huge truck to make the delivery, two or three strapping workers, maybe a forklift to handle twenty-eight trees. So when the UPS man handed Anthony Ryan the package of twigs wrapped in a cardboard sleeve no bigger than a baseball bat, the look on his face sent Leigh Ryan into a fit of laughter the kids had talked about for years.

  “How’s Danny’s shoulder?” she said.

  “He’s got his arm in a sling. The doctor gave him only one exercise to do: walking his fingers up the wall. Some heavy-duty aspirin, that’s it.”

  “Youth is grand,” Leigh said. “I couldn’t believe he went downtown to meet you just a few hours after he left the hospital.”

  “Surprised me, too.”

  “It must have been very important to him.”

  Barefoot, in a short pink summer nightgown, she padded back and forth, folding socks and underwear, stacking them neatly in dresser drawers. Streaks of silver glittered in her hair, which had gone completely gray in her early forties. He loved her hair this color; it seemed to glow around her face. It was a good thing he loved it, because no amount of persuasion could ever convince her to color it.

  “Did you see Katie’s postcard?” she said.

  “I did. I never thought our daughter and granddaughter would both get to Ireland before us.”

  “Nothing stopping us from going,” she said. “You have enough vacation time to travel around the world a dozen times. You just have to take some of it.”

  “Maybe this fall.”

  “The sun is shining now.”

  Finished folding clothes, Leigh pulled back the bedcovers. She grabbed the hem of her nightgown and yanked it over her head. After all the years of their marriage he was still surprised at the size and fullness of her breasts. She dressed to disguise her breasts, not because of shyness, he thought, but because she loved the look on his face. Her magic trick. Voilà!

  “You owe me a back scratch,” she said, kicking her panties across the room.

  He slid into bed and pulled her against him, face-to-face, both on their sides. She buried her face in her usual spot against his shoulder, her face tucked under his chin as she nibbled at his neck, murmuring about its softness. He wrapped both arms around her and slowly, in circles, he grazed her back gently with the tips of his fingernails. Her breath was warm and steady against his chest.

  “Danny came to see you about Gillian Stone, didn’t he,” she said.

  “He feels guilty. Thinks he should have helped her somehow.”

  “Now he’s going to try to make up for it by helping you.”

  “He wants to do something, Leigh. I can understand that.”

  “But he’s too close to this situation, Anthony. You wouldn’t allow a cop to investigate the death of someone he cared for.”

  “He’s not investigating anything. He just wants to write a story about her. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  Ryan knew that Leigh meant that he was too close as well. She was getting to him. Circling around. She would have made a great interrogator.

  “Why don’t you let someone else work this case?” she said, directing his hands to a specific spot below her left shoulder. A spot she called her left wing. She sighed when he found it, as if he’d pulled a thorn from her back.

  “Everyone in the office has as much work as we do. Or even more.”

  “Gregory can handle it alone. We’ll fly to Ireland and surprise Katie and Margaret.”

  “The case won’t last that long. Not more than a couple of days. We’ll talk about it then.”

  Leigh had a natural intuition that Ryan couldn’t fathom. She was a mixture of qualities dominated by strength of character and an unbending stubbornness. She was sweet and funny and was uninhibited sexually long before it was chic. But no one he’d ever met in his life held on to their beliefs as ferociously as she did. Ferocious was the right word. Angry, she could be fearsome.

  “I hope you’re not staying with this case for Danny’s sake,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Leigh.”

  “Maybe he needs to be dealing with someone who’s not close to him. Someone more objective. If you weren’t there, Joe Gregory would just tell him to butt out.”

  “Gregory might do that anyway.”

  She moved her hand between his legs. Stroking him gently, almost as an afterthought, knowing exactly how to touch, rub, withdraw, touch again. A touch so practiced and delicate, so knowing. The exact right pressure, the exact right time. She had complete mastery of his mind, his muscle, blood, and bone. And he reveled in it.

  “Maybe I’ll give him a call,” she said. “See if he wants to have dinner with me tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow night he’s flying to Arizona for Gillian’s funeral. You’ll see him on the boat ride on Sunday.”

  “But then I won’t be able to ask him personal questions.”

  “I’m sure he can’t wait for that.”

  Ryan rolled over and got to his knees. It was the way he reached her lower legs; she wanted to be touched all over. First one foot and he massaged it, kneading the rough skin of her heel, the tender instep, running his fingers between her toes. Then scratching again, back down her ankles, her calves. She reached up and took him in her hand. Her eyes focused intently on the fruits of her labor.

  “I started cleaning Rip’s bedroom today,” she said. “I took down all those Cal Ripken posters. I’m going to change it to a girl’s room. Katie can have her own room when she’s here.”

  He nudged her over onto her back. He continued scratching, reaching down her thighs, while his tongue and lips alternated on the brown skin of her nipples.

  “Is that okay with you?”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  He entered her slowly, holding himself above her while he kissed her, pulling his head up, letting her reach for him with her lips. She put her arms around his neck and tried to pull him down, but he resisted, wanting his own pace. Wanting to feel each sensation of her body as he touched it.

  “Go look at the room, Anthony.”

  “I will,” he said, then she rolled him over. Easily. Her strength and agility in bed were still amazing. She kissed him, pushing her tongue into his mouth, grinding her pelvic bone against his. Then she pushed herself up to arm’s length, and he knew she wanted her arms scratched, and her head, then her back, her shoulders, her legs, everything kissed, rubbed, fondled, massaged.

  “You scratch,” she said. “I’ll shut up and fuck.”

  15

  By the time Anthony Ryan arrived at the Broadway Arms on Friday morning, the corners had been squared with blue police barriers. The barriers, arranged in the same tried-and-true configuration the NYPD had used for thousands of demonstrations and parades, allowed the officers to control the flow of foot traffic. In this case they were protecting the entire corner, as Emergency Services cops yanked a huge canvas mat from a truck.

  The cops closed the bus stop while they inflated the mat. Downtown traffic choked into two narrow lanes. Ryan waited under the Broadway Arms canopy while doorman Irish Eddie from Waterford whistled down a limo. With a courtly bow he whisked a woman in a scarlet turban and dark glasses into the backseat of a Lincoln Towncar.

  Irish Eddie told Ryan that he rarely saw Trey Winters in the building. Then he scanned the list of uninterviewed tenants that the Mid-Town North squad had shrunk to seven. Irish Eddie was pleased to inform Ryan that five of those missing tenants were now available; the other two were still out of town. Only one of the newly available resided on Gillian’s floor. Apartment 18L. Directly across the hall from Gillian’s 18K. Ryan started there.

  The listed occupant was Stella Grasso, a professional tutor, on the road with Annie. She came home often when her show was in an eastern city
. Ryan knocked. From inside he heard the sounds of an afternoon TV talk show, the audience hooting, berating a guest. Heavy footsteps coming to the door. The thin metallic click of the peephole. He held his shield for viewing.

  “What’s going on downstairs?” she said, opening the door. “All those cops?”

  “We’re going to simulate Gillian Stone’s accident,” he said. “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Come in, come in,” she said, backing up. “It’s like Carnegie Hall out here, the way voices carry.”

  Stella Grasso had brown shoulder-length hair, curled up in a flip popular in the fifties. He followed her into the living room as she spelled out her name.

  “Grasso is my married name. A cop, the bastard. Tommy the cop. Tommy Blue Eyes. Know him? Tall redheaded guy. He had the post on Eighth Avenue. He’s famous. Famous, I find out later, for banging anything wearing a skirt.”

  Ryan was convinced that everyone in the world knew at least one of the thirty-eight thousand New York City cops. And for some reason they assumed they all knew each other. Ryan said he didn’t know him.

  “If you say so. I have no idea why I married him. His dick was the only thing he ever loved, honored, and obeyed.”

  Stella said she came to the city as a dancer and appeared in three shows that made it to Broadway. She pointed to the framed posters on the wall. Her career ended shortly after she’d assumed the role of wife. But Tommy Blue Eyes thought his part was a walk-on, and he’d walked off.

  “I got my kid,” she said. “That’s the one thing I can thank that bastard for. She’s teaching in the Women’s Studies program in NYU. She lives in Stuyvesant Town, so I see her all the time.”

  Abandoned by both her dancer’s body and her blue knight, Stella dusted off her teaching degree and wound up in junior high, the bloody trenches of public education. Every student jumping out of his or her skin, hormones in turbulence. She hated it, and her heart was still on Broadway. Then an old friend called and asked if she’d be interested in tutoring child actors in the road show of Oliver. She jumped. Connections bred connections, and that was how she got the apartment in the Broadway Arms.

  “How well did you know Gillian Stone?” Ryan said.

  “We moved in about the same time, but we weren’t any Mary and Rhoda. Sometimes she was friendly, other times…”

  “She was moody, I hear,” Ryan said.

  “Yeah, but she was a kid. She didn’t know enough not to start screwing around with that guy Winters. It’s enough to put anyone in a bitchy mood. Maybe Winters gave her the apartment, but sometimes you bargain with the devil and he wants your soul. I’m living proof of that.”

  “What do you mean, screwing around?”

  “Screwing around screwing. What else? The guy thinks he’s the Warren Beatty of Broadway. Throws women away like dirty tissues.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “Hell-ooo. I don’t think they were playing Parcheesi in there.”

  Stella said that Winters was a regular in the building. In the time Gillian lived in 18K, Winters visited at least once a week.

  “Were you home the night Gillian died?” Ryan said.

  “Yeah, getting ready to leave for Pittsburgh the next morning.”

  “Did you happen to notice when Trey Winters arrived?”

  “I was watching the news at eleven, hon. Listening for the weather. I try to check the weather on the nights I’m traveling, and if it’s shitty, I call a car to get me to the bus station. If not, I wait downstairs for a cab. The weather guy was just starting when I hear lover boy banging.”

  “About eleven-fifteen.”

  “Yeah. Banging. He never banged on the door before. This time he’s banging, holding this white dress over his shoulder.”

  “He usually didn’t bang?”

  “Always before a little tap, tap, tap. Very quiet. Very discreet. You could hardly hear. Usually, the only way I knew he was here was when I heard the stairway door squeak.”

  “He usually came up the stairway?”

  “Yeah, gotta give him credit, right? After eighteen flights sex would be the last thing on my mind. But I figured he took the elevator to another floor to fool people. Then he just walked up a few flights.”

  “But this night he doesn’t take the stairway, and he’s not tap-tapping?”

  “Right. So I heard the banging. You gotta look out for yourself in this city. I had the portable in my hand, got the nine and the one already dialed. But I see it’s just himself.”

  “So he’s banging on the door. Holding this white dress over his shoulder.”

  “Right. The whole floor should have been awake the way he was banging. But not long; she answered quick. I couldn’t get a good look at her face. She was behind the door, and those peepholes, they’re not worth shit. But it was her.”

  “Could you hear anything after the door closed?”

  “I wish I had a nickel for every time he called her a fucking bitch. Not that I was snooping, but he was loud.”

  “What was she saying to him?”

  “Never heard a peep. Ten, fifteen minutes later he storms out.”

  “You saw him storm out?”

  “I was peeking; so sue me.”

  “You never heard her yelling?”

  “Not once.”

  “Did you hear anything after he left?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  “After he left, I thought, Good riddance. Then I went to bed. I had to schlep to Pittsburgh in the morning.”

  “You heard nothing at all after he left?”

  “I went to bed, hon. That was enough excitement for one night for me. Six in the morning I left for Steeltown. I had theater brats to teach. I didn’t even know what happened until I saw the commotion outside the next morning.”

  “A police officer knocked on your door at three-fifteen in the morning,” Ryan said, double-checking the sheets.

  “At three-fifteen, I was zonked,” she said. “I have a ritual. Whenever I have to travel the next day I take a Darvon, put on the white sound machine, the surf, I like the sound of the surf. Don’t ask me why, I hate the beach. But the machine I can take. It’s soothing. Then I put on my eye mask and sayonara.”

  Ryan handed her his card. “I’m going to be across the hall in eighteen-K,” he said. “If you think of anything else, please get in touch with me. Today, tomorrow, anytime.”

  “I can think of something right now,” she said.

  “Whatever you remember is important.”

  “Damn right it is. If you see that Tommy Blue Eyes, tell him that every day I say a prayer he gets fucking cancer. The bastard. And tell him to call his daughter.”

  16

  In Danny Eumont’s eyes Joe Gregory and his uncle were blind to the fact that their century was almost over. The evidence they ignored was more than numbers on a calendar. The old Hubert Street Police Academy where they started their careers was long gone, turned to rubble by a wrecking ball. Most of the boys with whom they’d entered that building were either in Florida or under the turf. Even their old war stories seemed to be told in grainy black and white, voice-over by Robert Mitchum, the score sad Sinatra songs. No Dolby, no 3-D, no slo-mo, no FX.

  Danny pictured them standing in fog, wearing trench coats and fedoras, newspapers blaring headlines of a foreign war. They were a walking period piece. That was why he’d first assumed that the theater district informant they’d asked him to interview, code name Mister WW, was some play on the initials of the late Broadway gossip columnist Walter Winchell. He was wrong. His name was Wacky Walzak.

  “Yul Brynner ate brown eggs only,” Wacky Walzak said. “The King and I, 1951. He’d scream if you tried to sneak in white eggs.”

  Joe Gregory had told Danny that Wacky would meet him after the lunch rush, in front of Vasili’s Shoe Repair Shop on West Fifty-first. Danny had been there for an hour when he spotted Wacky coming out of the
Gershwin Theater, looking exactly as they’d described him, snapping coins into his belt changer. He said he only had a few minutes, he’d forgotten an egg salad sandwich and some road-show Olivier had thrown a hissy fit.

  “When Brynner went on the road,” Wacky said, pointing vaguely west, “he always had them paint each dressing room the same color as the one in the St. James. I first met him in the Plymouth Theatre, 1946. The Lute Song, his big break. He played Mary Martin’s husband.”

  Wacky Walzak had run coffee and sandwiches around the theater district since he was a child. But he was clearly a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

  “I’m working on a story about Gillian Stone,” Danny said. “I suppose my uncle told you that.”

  “You’re supposed to buy lunch,” Wacky yelled. “Detective Joe Gregory said anywhere I want to go. Money is no object.”

  “If that’s what Gregory said, it’s fine with me.”

  “Too bad I don’t have time today. Such an attractive young man. Have you considered acting?”

  Wacky Walzak was a character Dick Tracy would have called “Mushface.” His flattened features were set in the fattest cheeks Danny had ever seen, his eyes barely visible. His hair, dyed a coppery red, contrasted with his pale complexion and thick purple lips. Short arms hung at belt level, pudgy hands dangling, as if ready to begin typing. His belly peeked out from under a black T-shirt that read, “Who died and left you boss?”

  “When did you first meet Gillian Stone?” Danny said.

  “When she was a swing girl in Cats.”

  “What’s a swing girl?”

  “A swing girl replaces any girl dancer in the chorus out for any reason, illness, death in the family, time of the month, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “What was your impression of her?” Danny said.

  “I don’t do impressions,” Wacky said, and did a laughing pirouette. He was unable to stand still for ten seconds. He’d talk and turn, re-turn and then pirouette, often finishing a sentence with his back to Danny.

  “Did you ever have a conversation with her?”

  “Tuna on toast, she said to me,” Wacky Walzak said. “Rye toast. No wheat, no white. Sprite, Mountain Dew, or Seven-Up. No diets, no Pepsi. The girl hated colas.”