She opened her mouth to debate the point, then changed her mind and told me I was right. “If he’s really stalking me,” she said.
“What else would you call it?”
“He really did want to kill me. I don’t read minds, but you pick things up. That’s what I was picking up. He had this weapon in his 178
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hand, and there I was, and the thought went through his mind. But maybe it was just an opportunity, you know? He had a weapon and I was there, and he’s a nut who likes to kill women, and . . .”
“And?”
“And why was he there? Why my shop? It had to be because I was Monica’s friend, and he had to know that. From something she said, or from following her around.”
“Or from following you around, and that’s how he found his way to Monica.”
“You think?”
“I think either’s equally possible.”
“I guess. Matt, he wouldn’t come into my shop looking to buy a murder weapon. It’s this little chichi art and antiques shop, not Macho Toys for Butch Boys. The letter opener was probably the only thing in the shop you could use to kill somebody, unless you smothered them with a hooked rug or beat them to death with one of the marble book-ends. He came in because he wanted an up-close look at me.”
“That sounds right.”
“The hell with the icons. I’m Jewish, you couldn’t even bury them with me. I hate for her to make the trip for nothing, though.”
“Where is she, out in Brighton Beach?”
“No, I think she’s in the neighborhood somewhere, but even so she shouldn’t have to schlep icons there and back. I’ve got her number at the store.”
“I’ll go over there later and get it.”
“Will you? And I’ll call her and tell her what? That the shop is closed until further notice. You know what you could do while you’re at it—”
“I’ll put a sign in the window.”
“I’ll print it out. I print neater than you.”
“You’re a girl.”
“That must be it. Who are you calling?”
“Sussman,” I said. “I want to give him something he doesn’t know he needs, and save myself a trip while I’m at it.”
.
.
.
All the Flowers Are Dying
179
I was waiting at the shop when Sussman got there, a lab technician in tow. I let them in, and the techie gave us each a pair of gloves, then went around collecting fingerprints from all the likely surfaces, concentrating on the glass countertops. I opened the cash box and took out the three twenty-dollar bills it contained and gave them to Sussman. He bagged them and made a point of writing out a receipt for me. I didn’t care about the sixty bucks, which was just as well for all the good the receipt would do. If the past was anything to go by, those bills were destined to spend eternity in an NYPD evidence locker.
“Now where’s this sketch I’ve heard so much about?” Sussman asked, and I showed it to him. He said it didn’t look a whole lot different to him, and I said he’d see the difference when he looked at the two sketches side by side.
He said, “This one’s more artistic, I can see that much. It looks like it was drawn by a human being and not by a machine. That wouldn’t necessarily make it a better likeness.”
“Elaine says it is.”
“Well, she should know. She’s the only one who’s seen the original.
Who’d you say did it?”
I told him a little bit about Ray, and pointed to a framed drawing he’d done. It showed the profile of a middle-aged man sitting in a chair with a book. He was an uncle of Bitsy’s who was finishing out his days in a nursing home in Santurce. This was how she remembered him, but she’d told Ray to sell the drawing if anyone wanted to buy it. “We don’t need my whole damn family all over the walls,” she’d said. “You know how many cousins I got?”
“Guy’s very good,” Sussman said. “What would something like that go for, you happen to know?”
“I’d have to ask Elaine.”
“When this is over,” he said, “I might be interested. The more you look at it, the more you see. I could definitely find wall space for something like that. Plus the fact that he’s a former cop adds something to it for me. I don’t know why it should but it does. She have other work of his?”
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“In back, but—”
“No, don’t drag ’em out now, just for future reference. I really like that one.” He turned to the sketch Ray had done a couple of hours ago.
“This one too,” he said, “but not to hang on the wall. This one I’d like to hang by the balls. I’ll take this along, call in the other sketch, get this one out there. Even without seeing the original I can tell this one’s a better likeness. You know how? Because you get a sense of the guy.”
22
After they left I checked Elaine’s appointment book. I started to copy down the name and number of a Mrs. Federenko, then simplified things by calling the woman myself. I told her I was calling for Mrs.
Scudder, who wouldn’t be able to look at the icons tomorrow because the shop was closed until further notice.
That’s what it said, too, on the sheet of paper she’d given me, which I taped to the inside of the window. I left a new message on the shop’s answering machine: “Thank you for calling Elaine Scudder Art and Antiques. The shop is closed until further notice.” I pulled the gates shut and headed uptown. When I got to Fifty-seventh Street I called TJ and said I wanted to talk to him. He offered to come down, and I said to stay where he was, that I’d be right up. I crossed the street and went into the lobby of the old hotel. Vinnie was still working there, he’d had that job for thirty years that I knew about, and he just gave me a nod and didn’t even bother calling to let TJ
know I was coming. For all I know, he may have been under the impression that I still lived there. God knows I’d put in enough time in that little room.
“You didn’t have to come up,” TJ told me. A game of computer soli-taire filled the screen, and he saw what I was looking at and turned it off. “Wall Street’s been closed since four o’clock,” he said, “and I dumped everything before three. Had a wild ride.” 182
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“Oh?”
“When did I get up here this morning? Whenever it was, there’s this stock I been watching, an’ it made a move, you know, it broke through this particular price point, so I bought some. An’ it went up.”
“Isn’t that what it was supposed to do?”
“Yeah, well, they don’t always be doin’ what they supposed to do. So it’s movin’ up an’ movin’ up, an’ I pop in this trailing stop-loss order, so if it goes down I’ll be out of it, but each time it goes up a notch the stop-loss order goes up a notch with it, an’ you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, do you?”
“I get a general idea.”
“Well, it kept runnin’ up like that for, I don’t know, two hours? An’
then it came back down a bit, an’ when it hit my stop-loss order I didn’t have to do nothin’, I was out of it automatically. They already had my order an’ they sold me out. An’ then of course the stock turns around an’ heads back up, an’ I’m like, wha’d I do that for? An’ then I’m like, should I buy more?”
“You’re talking like a Valley Girl.”
“I am?” He frowned. “Don’t want to do that. What I did, I told myself to be cool, and it was a good thing, because it turned around and went all the way back down, an’ it finished the day two whole points below where I bought it at in the first place.”
“So you did all right.”
“I did real good. They want to print up a list of contented stock-holders, they can put my name on it.”
“What’s the company?”
“I dunno. Trading symbol’s NFI. I never did find out the name of it.”
“Do you know what they do?”
“No.”