“Dead people can’t testify,” he said thoughtfully.
She half turned to face him. “Testify to what? A crime? The only violence I’ve seen was a young woman slap a man on the bus, and that was no crime, believe me. I saw what he did. This has been a very dull week, Lieutenant. Duller than usual. Until today.”
Her apartment was on the second floor of a converted three-story brownstone; one of a long row that seemed to stretch to the suburbs. He wasn’t surprised. The tree-lined street and stately homes retained only an aura of once-gracious living, but she’d prefer that to the slick anonymity of a high-rise or condo.
Double doors with etched glass at the head of wide marble steps opened into a foyer, the hallway that once led to the rear now closed off by a door to create a first-floor apartment.
He jerked a thumb at the door, eyebrows raised.
“Mrs. Longwood,” she said. “She owns the building. Eighty years old and moves faster than I do.”
He followed her up the stairs and continued to the next flight when she stopped at a door, key in hand. He looked up the long flight.
“I know the man upstairs only to say hello. Quiet. Out most of the time. Mrs. Longwood says he owns a small business a few blocks away.”
Roth climbed the stairs and found another flight behind a door. Bare pine, not carpeted oak. The metal door at the head led to the roof, one of many stretching away on all sides like a flat black desert broken only by chimneys and occasional TV antennas belonging to those still holding out against cable company promises of wonderful new vistas of entertainment.
The door could be opened from the roof only with a key.
Back on the second floor, he found the door of her apartment open for him. He looked down into the street through the wide windows at the front, then at the postage-stamp backyards and high fences through the narrow ones in the kitchen in the rear. No means of access.
“Nice place,” he said.
She said, “Thank you,” thinking he was referring to the furnishings she’d selected so carefully. He really saw none of them but referred instead to the feeling of harmony and comfort.
“Now that you’ve had a chance to think a bit more, is there anything else you noticed about the man that you haven’t mentioned?”
“No — ah, I—” She raised one hand to stroke her throat, holding the elbow with the other, as though debating the wisdom of saying anything at all. “He, well—” The words came with a rush. “He had a young neck.”
He smiled. He knew what she meant. Women had long ago discovered that cosmetics can camouflage an ageing face, but little could be done with a neck once the skin sagged and the creases and wrinkles appeared.
He asked to use her phone.
The operator at the local FBI office said, “We don’t have a Merlin. Perhaps you mean Marlowe.”
He grunted assent. Marlowe had a nice telephone hello.
“I’m telling you this rather than Coupon—”
“Cowper,” she said.
“—because he’s a cement head. What we have here is an anomaly. An old man with a young neck.”
She spoke very slowly. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that all parts of a human body age at the same rate. Those two things on your chest won’t always stick out like that, you know—”
She sounded as though something she’d swallowed had gone down the wrong way.
“—and when you see an old man with a young neck it means—”
“Face makeup.” She choked the words out.
“You’ve got it. Now, I’m sure your computer can’t pull out anomalies, but you can scan through a few open cases where a silencer was used and see what turns up. Call me at the office.”
He hung up and dialed Maguire. “Is Dolly around?”
“You mean Dorothy. Yeah, she’s here.”
“Tell her I want her to spend the night with Mrs. — ” He fumbled for the name. “You know who. I’m at her apartment. I’ll wait until she gets here.”
He thrust his hands into his saggy hip pockets and regarded Helga thoughtfully. “A policewoman is coming over.” He lifted a hand as she started to protest. “I know, you don’t need anyone. I think you do. I don’t know why he tried to kill you in the first place, but I do know he’ll try again because he has no idea of what you might have noticed about him. Like having a young neck. Understand?”
She nodded, no doubt in her mind that if she objected, the policewoman would camp outside her door.
“Dolly won’t bother you or get in your way. Now, you’ve had a bad day so far and people have been pushing and pulling at you and you need rest, so go into the bedroom and try to relax.”
She’d wanted to tell him to stop ordering her around. She’d wanted to tell him she’d decide if she needed protection. Instead, she’d marched into her bedroom, closed the door, leaned back against it, and looked around at the familiar intimacy of the room.
This is your life, Helga Vivaldi.
Who would want her dead? Not Uncle Dennis, that dear old man. Confined to a wheelchair and not knowing if he’d see another spring, he still said, “I promised your father to look after you, Helga.”
The closest they’d ever come to an argument was when she insisted on finding a job on her own, rather than taking the one he’d offered in his corporation. “Just like your father,” he’d said. “Stubborn.”
And Aunt Stephanie? Without her support, she couldn’t have made it through the shambles of her life after Allan had left. Cousin Roger? He probably never thought of her from one Christmas card to the next. Mrs. Longwood because she was a day late with the rent? She giggled at the thought. And broke into tears.
She sat on her bed, her face buried in a soaked handkerchief. Not knowing why she wept. Perhaps because of the feeling of failure Allan had left her with. Perhaps because she had nothing to look forward to but more empty years behind the teller’s window. Perhaps because she had no children or perhaps because Uncle Dennis would never see another spring.
If she’d led a soap-opera life, it might make sense, but about the only one who might want her dead was herself.
Why had she bothered to duck?
She heard the door open, voices, and then the door close.
Roth was gone. In her mind, she saw him shuffling down the hall. She felt more lonely than ever.
“Make it short and fast,” said Roth.
“Her maiden name was Stuttgart,” said Polanski. “Her father was a professor at Penn and her uncle is Dennis Stuttgart. Made a fortune in real estate. No brothers or sisters. A cousin Roger who is following in his father’s footsteps in Hawaii. She was divorced from an Allan Vivaldi three years ago. Late marriage and a short one. Evidently he married her for her name. Thought the uncle would see that his nephew-in-law was taken care of, and maybe pass on some of his money when he died. He conned Helga but he didn’t con Uncle Dennis. When he found out he was on his own, he took off with a cocktail waitress who earned big tips—”
“How’d you learn all of this so fast?”
Polanski grinned. “She was divorced, right? Who knows more than a divorce lawyer? He told me what he knew and gave me the name of the family attorney, who filled in a little more. Wouldn’t tell me if she was in the will, but hinted that if she was, it wouldn’t be enough to get the wife and son upset, so her uncle’s money doesn’t look like the reason someone wants her dead.”
Maguire handed him a sheet of paper. “This is what the world’s sexiest bank manager came up with.”
The face was full — old and lined, eyes narrow.
Maguire handed him another. “Since she said she had a better look at him in profile—”
The nose was slightly hooked, the jaw heavy, the brow low. Profiles aren’t that easy to change.