"What about the hair?"
He whipped off his cap. His hair was a tight cap of curls that rose a scant half-inch from his scalp. "Got it cut," he said. "What you think?"
"It looks good."
"Looks better with the cap on," he said. "Least when I'm on the Deuce it does." From the red Kangaroo circling his waist he produced a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, put them on. "I was wearin' these," he said. "An' I was carryin' a clipboard. That's even better than the glasses. Man with a clipboard, you know he's there on legitimate business, an' everybody can't hardly wait to tell him the combination to the safe. You know who told me that?"
"Some legendary con artist, I'm sure."
"Yeah, well, he ain't that slick, 'cause he be payin' for my breakfast this morning."
"I told you about the clipboard?"
" 'Bout a year ago. We havin' coffee, you reminiscin', tellin' me stuff. You don't recall? Well, see, I pay attention when Matthew Scudder be talkin'. Even if you don't."
"What did you tell them on Audubon Avenue? Melissa Mikawa's planning a segment on murdered cabdrivers?"
He nodded. "I said she doin' a story on that particular case, an' how it was never solved, 'cause what do they know on Audubon Avenue about Shy Mims an' his upstate huntin' lodge? I said how anybody who was aroun' when it went down, anybody who heard or saw anything, might get to be on television. An' they be gettin' to meet Melissa Mikawa. Man, they loves that bitch up in Washington Heights! She Japanese, right?"
"If she isn't," I said, "it's a hell of an act she puts on."
"Well, they actin' like they think she's Rican. Axin' me all this shit, what's she like, has she got a boyfriend. Time I got done makin' up stories about her, I was starting to believe ' em myself. Anyway, I found this one girl, she was right there when Cloonan got killed."
"What did she see?"
"Saw the Yellow pull up an' park in the bus stop on the corner. Then a little while later she saw this dude get out an' close the door an' walk away."
" 'A little while later.' Five minutes? Ten minutes?"
"Man, this was four years ago. An' she still in high school, so how old was she when it went down? An' who remembers how long a cab stands around 'fore some fool gets out of it? She wouldna thought anything of it at all, except later on the police came and drugged a body out of the Yellow."
"She didn't hear a shot."
"Says she didn't."
"He must have used a suppressor. You say she got a look at him?"
"She got a look. Don't know how good a look it was."
"And she said he was white? Could he have been a white Hispanic?"
"I said was he Spanish, and she said he was white."
"Like, no, he wasn't Spanish, he was white?"
"Like that, yeah."
"And he got out of the cab, and-"
"Leaned in, like he was sayin' something to the driver. Like, wait for me. That's why nobody thought nothin' when the Yellow stayed right where it was."
"Was the meter on?"
"Wasn't on in the first place."
"He threw the flag before he pulled up to park? They do that sometimes but-"
"What she said," TJ said, "and you got to keep in mind this was four years ago-"
"And she was just a kid, I understand that part. What did she say?"
"Dude wasn't a fare."
"The passenger? The man she saw?"
"He was ridin' in front."
"You don't mean he was driving, because they found Cloonan behind the wheel."
"Didn't say drivin', said ridin'. In the passenger seat, 'cept they should be callin' it somethin' else, 'cause you a passenger in a cab, you ride in the back, Jack. But he was ridin' up front with the driver."
"How far away was she?"
"Two, three doors down the street. She showed me the candystore they was standin' in front of, her an' her friends. 'Splained to me how Melissa Mikawa could do a stand-up interviewin' her in front of the store. Man, she coulda been Melissa Mikawa's assistant, all the media trash she was talkin'."
"What did he look like?"
"White."
"Tall, short, fat, thin, young, old-"
"Just white. But don't forget-"
"It was four years ago and she was a kid, right. You think I'd get anywhere putting her together with Ray Galindez?"
"So Elaine'll have another picture to hang up in the shop? I can see her gettin' into it, but what comes out might be more imaginin' than rememberin'. She'd swear he had tits an' a tail if it'd get her on New York One."
"I probably ought to talk to her."
"Like you a cop? Or like you workin' for Miss Mikawa also?"
"I'll be an assistant news director," I said. "How's that?"
He considered, then nodded. "I'll go get my polo shirt and my khakis," he said. "An' my penny loafers. I meant to bring 'em anyway so's I can leave ' em at Elaine's." He eyed my clothing. "Maybe you could dress up a little yourself," he said, "so we don't start no rumors about New York One's on the skids."
I put on a blue blazer, and New York One's sartorial reputation stayed unsullied. We rode uptown on the A train and spent forty minutes finding Sombrita Pardo and another half hour getting her story between bites of sausage pizza at a pizza parlor adjacent to the candy store in front of which she'd been standing four years earlier. She was a little dumpling with glossy black hair, olive skin, Indio features, and surprising light brown eyes. Her name meant Little Shadow, she said, which was kind of silly and she used to hate it, but now she was beginning to like it because it was like different.
Her story didn't change. The man who got out of the metered cab was white, and that was as much of a physical description as she could provide. And he'd emerged from the front passenger seat, and she'd had the feeling that he was going to run an errand and return to the cab, but he walked around the corner and disappeared. And then she had to go home, and she forgot about it, and the next day she heard that there was all this commotion, police cars and everything, and it turned out the driver was dead. He'd been shot, or so they said, but couldn't he have just had a heart attack or something? And maybe the friend had gone for help, and-
And just forgot to come back?
Well, she said, maybe, you know, he OD'd, the driver, that is, and the friend decided he didn't want to get involved, so he, like, 911'd it in and went home. Except she knew they found bullets in him, or at least that's what she heard, but you heard lots of things, and how did you know what to believe?
How indeed?
Fifteen or twenty minutes in TJ excused himself to go to the john, at which point Little Shadow grew at once older and younger. She straightened up in her seat and said, "Be honest with me? I'm not gonna be on TV, am I?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Are you cops? You could be a cop, but no way Mr. T. J. Smith's a police officer. 'Course, I never thought he was Melissa Mikawa's assistant, either."
"You didn't?"
"He's too young and too street for that. You got to go to college to get a job like that, don't you? He never went to college."
As I said, older than her years. Then I asked her why, if she saw through his act, she'd been so cooperative. "Well, he's real cute," she said, and giggled, and looked about twelve years old.
"I'm an insurance investigator," I said. "Mr. Smith's a trainee. No need to let him know that you, uh, saw through his act."
"Oh, I wouldn't," she said, and sucked the last of her Coke through her straw. "Insurance? I hope I didn't get anybody in trouble."
"Certainly not."
"Or keep someone from getting their money."
"It's really just a matter of getting the paperwork straightened out," I said, "and maybe saving the company a few tax dollars."