“Me, I’m still in my own apartment,” Mr. Hogarty bragged, “but a lot of my friends are over here.”
“Here” was a clean-lined series of interlocking squares. The residential rooms reminded Sigrid of a solid block set down inside a square greenhouse. Each room opened onto the wide window-lined corridor, a common area hung with flowering baskets and green plants and made homey with clusters of sofas and easy chairs all along its length. It was a pleasant area and one that invited residents and their guests to sit and converse and look out at the small courtyard garden. The clear glass windows were curved to catch every ray of winter sun, and several of the people basking in the bright sunlight exchanged greetings with Sigrid’s guide when they passed.
As they found two unoccupied easy chairs and sat down to wait for the priest to emerge from Mrs. Zajdowicz’s room, Sigrid asked Mr. Hogarty if he knew the woman personally.
“Barb? Oh sure. See, she used to be in me and the wife’s canasta club, but then she had that first little stroke a couple of years ago and got religion and-” He broke off and gave a humorous shrug. “I mean, we’re all religious here. Me and the wife, that’s why we picked Haven Rock. Because it’s run by the Catholics, see? But when Barb had her stroke, even though it wasn’t a big one-well, you probably know how that can turn things on in your head that weren’t there before?”
Sigrid murmured noncommittally.
“Well, that’s what happened with Barb, see? So she quit playing cards and started going to confession every week and to mass every time it was offered. The wife said to me it was like being on retreat with the nuns, the way she talked; but the wife and her’d been friends ever since the beginning-we moved into our place the same week Barb did, see, in the next apartment-and they stayed friends. The wife passed away last spring and Barb kept having more of these little strokes, see, so they moved her over here. I try to get over a couple of times a week even though she don’t know me half the time.”
He shook his head. “Bad when the mind goes. The wife, she was sharp as a tack right up to the day she passed away. Beat me in cribbage that very morning, but Barb- Well, you’ll see. Although she’s usually pretty good after Father Francis has been here. You a friend of the family or something?”
“I didn’t think she had any family,” Sigrid parried.
“Well, she didn’t, far as I ever heard. Me and the wife, we both come from big families but we only had the two boys. Dick, he’s the oldest, he lives right here on Staten Island. Got grandchildren of his own, even. But not Barb. She just had a sister and brother and none of ’em ever had kids. None that lived anyhow.”
Sigrid’s mental antennae quivered. “She had children that died?”
“Not her. She told the wife her and her husband couldn’t have babies. But seems like the sister had a couple of miscarriages or the baby died getting born or some female trouble like that. She never talked about it till after her first stroke. Least that’s when the wife first mentioned it to me, see, ’cause Barb’d get on these crying jags about those poor innocent babies and how the sister oughtn’t to have done it.” He lowered his voice. “See, the sister wasn’t married.”
The door of Barbara Zajdowicz’s room opened and a middle-aged priest came out.
“How’s she doing today, Father?” asked Mr. Hogarty as he and Sigrid walked toward him.
“Much as usual, Harry,” said the priest. He smiled and nodded at others across the corridor, but did not break his progress to the next room.
As Sigrid started to follow Mr. Hogarty into his friend’s room, she saw an unwanted sight. At the far end of the corridor, a tall red-headed man in sheepskin jacket and cowboy boots with a camera case slung over his shoulder paused to compare a room number on the nearest door with something scribbled on his notepad. He saw her at almost the same instant and his homely face took on the look of an excited terrier spotting its prey.
“Yo! Lieutenant Harald,” he cried and loped around a passing wheelchair. William “Rusty” Guillory of the Post.
“Two minds with but a single thought.” His free hand fumbled with the zipper on his camera case. “Didja talk to her yet? Does she know anything about the babies? What’ve you got for me?”
“What’re you doing here, Guillory?” she stalled.
“Same as you.” He took two quick pictures of her before she could protest. “Got her name off the deed and ran it by a snitch in Social Security.”
Mr. Hogarty’s curious face appeared in the doorway behind her and the reporter craned for a view of the interior. “Who’re you?” Guillory asked.
“Hold it, Guillory,” Sigrid said firmly. “You’ll have to wait out here. I was just going in to interview Mrs. Zajdowicz now.”
“Talk fast, huh, Lieutenant? If she’s got anything good, I can still make the second edition.”
Without promising, Sigrid stepped inside the room and closed the door on Rusty Guillory.
“Here she is now, Barb.” Mr. Hogarty’s gossipy nature was clearly piqued by the appearance of yet a second visitor for his old acquaintance.
Sigrid stretched out her hand to the woman in the wheelchair. “Mrs. Zajdowicz? I’m Lieutenant Harald of the New York City Police Department.”
“Police?” breathed Mr. Hogarty.
Barbara Jurczyk Zajdowicz bore the ravages of her age and her illness. Her short straight hair was completely white, her blue eyes were faded, and the years had cut deep grooves in her gray face, but time could not efface the basic structure of her rangy frame and there was a residual impression of strength in her prominent jaw and broad brow. She wore a maroon skirt and cardigan, a white blouse that was pinned at the collar with a lovely cameo, and sturdy black lace-up oxfords. The footrests of her chair were folded up so that her feet touched the floor as she walked herself forward to give Sigrid her left hand.
Her hand was considerably larger than Sigrid’s and bare of rings, except for a wide gold band that hung loosely on her fourth finger, trapped forever by the enlarged knuckle. Her right hand held a rosary and lay curled in her lap in what Sigrid recognized as stroke-induced weakness; and when she spoke, her words were so slurred that it was difficult to understand.
“She says did Angelika send you?” interpreted Mr. Hogarty, who’d had more practice. “That’s her sister.”
“I know,” said Sigrid. “No, Mrs. Zajdowicz. I came because a trunk was found in the attic of your old house a few days ago. Can you remember? Do you know anything about it?”
The old woman looked at Sigrid for a long moment, then made a gesture with her left hand. “Go ’way, Harry,” she said thickly.
“But, Barb-” he protested, his face dropping.
Again came that dismissive shooing wave of her hand. “Out.”
Sigrid detained him for a moment as he neared the door. “There’s a reporter out there, Mr. Hogarty. He’ll probably ask you questions, try to make you to speculate about certain things which he may later twist for his own purposes. I’d caution you to choose your words carefully.”
Mr. Hogarty brightened immediately and bounded through the door with such eagerness that Sigrid realized she should have saved her breath.
She sat down beside Mrs. Zajdowicz.
“Angelika?” asked the woman.
“Your sister’s dead, Mrs. Zajdowicz. Like the babies.”