“Sí?”
“I want to see the inside of an apartment belonging to one of your former tenants,” Mike said.
“No hablo inglés—”
“You habla English just fine, Felix. I already spoke to the old lady—the one who let me and my partner into the building.”
My eyes widened at Mike’s brazen lie. There’d been no old lady. We hadn’t talked to a single soul on our way in. No one had let us in, either. We’d just waited until a teenager exited the building and then we’d rushed the door before it locked again.
Felix Pinto frowned. “Vieja perra should keep her mouth shut,” he muttered.
“Don’t blame the old woman. I just showed her this”—Mike held up his gold shield—“and she let loose. She told me all about you, Felix.”
Now the super looked nervous. “What do you want, man?”
Mike folded his arms. “I want to see Brigitte Rouille’s apartment.”
Felix leaned his forearm on the doorjamb—a naked woman in a tropical jungle was tattooed down the length of it. “Some other cops came by yesterday,” he said.
“How long did they stay in the woman’s apartment?”
“They didn’t show me no search warrant—”
“That’s not what I asked you, Felix. I asked you how long the police searched Ms. Rouille’s apartment.”
The man shrugged. “Not long. A few minutes. That’s all. They didn’t do much searching. They just wanted to make sure she was gone, I think.”
“And is Ms. Rouille gone?”
“Long gone, man,” Felix replied. “Like five weeks ago. Skipped out on the rent, too, but that ain’t my problem. New tenant’s movin’ in Monday.”
“Any idea where Ms. Rouille went?”
“Probably moved in with her boyfriend. Why pay two rents when you can pay none?” He snickered.
“Who’s the boyfriend?”
“Don’t know, man. I don’t ask junkies their names. They all act kind of twitchy, you know?”
“Do you know where this junkie lives?”
Felix shook his head. “Sorry, no forwarding address. Guess she didn’t want the management company coming after her. Deadbeat bitch.”
“I’ll need the key.” Mike held out his hand. “Unless you’d rather come with us? Then we can talk over some of those things the old lady told me.”
“No, man. I don’t need to come with you.”
The super searched through a ring of keys attached to a chain on his belt. He finally detached one of them and handed it to Quinn.
“Four F,” Felix said. “And don’t bother waiting for the elevator, ’cause it don’t work. Just slide the key under my door when you’re done.”
Then the super ducked out of sight, and the door slammed in our faces.
“I don’t recall you speaking to an old woman,” I teased as we hit the stairs.
“Every apartment building in New York City has an old lady who talks too much,” Mike informed me, casually tossing the key and catching it. “Sometimes it’s useful to talk to the lady herself, and sometimes it’s just an easy way to get around that ‘no hablo inglés’ crap.”
“This is a side of you I haven’t seen before.”
Mike arched an eyebrow. “A cop on the street, you mean?”
“No, a big fat liar. The baloney you fed that super was prime cut.”
“It’s not baloney, sweetheart. It’s procedure. Sometimes you have to bend the truth to get what you want out of an interrogation.” His blue eyes speared me. “You never bent the truth a few times to get what you wanted?”
I shrugged. “Guilty. But I only lie for a good cause.”
“What do you think I just did?” He held up the key and smiled. “We’re in.”
We’d reached the fourth floor. Mike held the heavy fire door open for me, and we exited the stairwell. Apartment Four F was right across the hall. He stepped in front of me and slipped the key into the lock.
We walked through a small entryway and entered the empty living room. It was a nice apartment, very spacious, especially for Manhattan, with polished wood floors and new light fixtures. But it was stuffy, the air stale and close. Two small windows faced the walls of the next building on the block. I stepped across the room, opened one of the windows. A cool, refreshing November wind stirred the stagnant air.
“There was a chair here,” I said, pointing to a ghostly square of fast-dispersing dust bunnies on the bare wood floor. “She didn’t leave in the dead of night. Looks to me like Brigitte took her furniture with her.”
“Maybe,” said Mike, opening a small closet. Inside, empty hangers dangled from a wooden rod. Several buttons lay on the floor.
“I’m going to check the kitchen,” I said.
The kitchen was clean but small, a long and narrow space with a single sink, a miniature stove, a tiny window, and a Kenmore refrigerator that seemed too large for the limited space. I opened it. There was nothing inside.
I checked the drawers next. In one I found a few discarded utensils—an ancient and corroded potato peeler, a plastic spatula, chopsticks from a local Chinese take-out place.
Another drawer was stuffed with handwritten papers. Shopping lists, mostly, and a few recipes. There were some pieces of junk mail and an old wrinkled note, written in a flowing, delicate hand:
“In here!” Mike called.
I stuffed the papers that I’d found into my oversized purse for perusal later and followed the sound of Mike’s voice.
He was in the bath, perhaps the coziest room in the place, with coral pink tiles and a large tub. Brigitte had left behind her matching shower curtain. The scent of feminine soap clung to the water-resistant material.
Mike had opened the mirrored medicine chest. Inside I spied a few waterlogged bandages, an empty container of face cream, and a couple of brown prescription bottles.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“These bottles were all prescribed to Brigitte Rouille,” he said, pushing the stuff around with his finger. “Pretty innocent stuff: an antihistamine, antibiotics.”
Mike displayed a bottle he’d kept in his hand. “This prescription isn’t Brigitte’s, and it’s not so innocent, either.” he said. “It’s a ’script for methadone, from a clinic on 181st Street.”
“Methadone? Isn’t that what they give addicts to wean them off heroin?”
Mike nodded. “This prescription belonged to someone named T. De Longe.”
“Toby De Longe, perhaps?” I showed Mike the note I’d found in the kitchen.
“Good, Clare. There’s an address on this bottle, too,” he said, pocketing the note with the bottle.
It took only a minute to search the bedroom and its closet. They turned up empty.
“Let’s go,” Mike said, tapping his pocket. “I think we found what we came for.”
As we locked up, another apartment door opened. A little chocolate-brown terrier trotted out of the apartment, followed by a fortysomething man clutching its leash. He wore a nylon Windbreaker and Yankees cap placed at such a strategically conceived angle that I was sure it covered a bald spot. He smiled when he saw us.
“Are you the new tenants?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “She’s coming later.”
The man zipped up his Windbreaker. Tail wagging, the dog circled the man’s khaki-covered legs, tangling them with the tether.
“Easy, Elmo, settle down.”
“When did the movers come?” Mike asked while the man untangled himself.
“Movers? What movers?”
“The men who moved Ms. Rouille’s furniture.”
The man rolled his eyes. “That woman’s furniture has been rolling out of here for months, not to mention the china, silverware, and electronics. A television. A stereo. Blender and a big cake mixer—”
“Where did her things go?” I asked.