“Hey, Ollie,” says Landsman, “is your husband around? We just need to check a couple things.”
“He’s lying down.”
“We just need a minute or two.”
The woman shrugs and leads the way to the rear bedroom on the first floor. Stretched out on his back beneath a gray sheet, the old man who found the little girl’s body in his back yard watches the parade of detectives with mild curiosity.
“He got sick this week,” says the woman, retreating to the corner of the room.
“Sorry to hear that. What’re you sick with?”
“Cold or somethin’,” the old man says in a low mumble. “Y’know the hawk’s been out.”
“Yeah it has, um, hey, listen,” says Landsman, shifting gears suddenly. “You remember that day you found the body and we were talking? You remember when I asked you if anyone parked in the alley and you told me about Andrew next door?”
The old man nods.
“I remember you even walked over to the kitchen window, like you were gonna show me his car, but it wasn’t there that morning, remember?”
“Yeah, I thought he had it there.”
“What we need to know is if Andrew had his car parked out there earlier in the week, like on Tuesday or Wednesday?”
“It’s a while back now,” the old man says.
“Yeah it is, but can you think on it…”
The old man drops his head back against a pillow and stares at the cracked ceiling. The room waits.
“Think he did, yeah.”
“You think so, huh?”
“He park it back there a lot, you know,” says the old man.
“Yeah, that’s what I remember you telling me,” says Landsman. “Listen, what do you know about Andrew?”
“Don’t know nuthin’, really.”
“I mean what kind of a guy is he?”
The old man looks nervously at his wife. “I really don’t know…”
Landsman looks at Ollie and catches something on her face. She has something to say she doesn’t want her husband to hear.
“Well, listen, thanks a lot for helping,” says Landsman, moving toward the bedroom door. “You take care of yourself now, okay?”
The old man nods and watches his wife follow the detectives out of the room. She closes the door and follows Landsman to the other end of the hall.
“Hey, Ollie,” Landsman says to her, “remember what you were saying about Andrew?”
“I don’t…”
“About how he’s like a gigolo living off…”
“Well,” says Ollie, a little embarrassed, “I know she bought that car for him and now he uses it to go out on the town. He’s gone every night.”
“Yeah? Do you know if he likes young girls?”
“Yeah, he likes young girls,” she says, disapproving.
“I mean, real young.”
“Well, that I can’t really say…”
“Okay, that’s all right,” Landsman says. “Where’s the car now? Do you know?”
“He say the repo man came an’ took it.”
Pellegrini and Edgerton look at each other. It’s almost too perfect.
“It was repossessed?” asks Landsman. “He told you that?”
“She told my husband that.”
“Your neighbor did? Andrew’s wife?”
“Yeah,” she says, wrapping her robe tight in the chill of the front hall. “She say Johnny’s Cars came an’ got it.”
“Johnny’s? Up on Harford Road?”
“I guess.”
The detectives thank the woman, then head straight to Johnny’s in Northeast Baltimore, where they walk the entire lot looking for the car that Andrew’s wife said had been repossessed. No Lincoln. Landsman is now completely convinced.
“This motherfucker dumps the body, gets rid of his car, and when people ask him, he says it got repo’d. Fuck it, we need to talk to this motherfucker tonight.”
It is after 11:00 P.M. when they return to Newington Avenue and talk their way into 716. Andrew is a short, balding man with a face that is all hard angles. He is still awake, drinking warm beer and watching the local news in the basement. Three plainclothes detectives walking down the stairs do not seem to surprise him.
“Hey, Andrew, I’m Sergeant Landsman, this is Detective Edgerton and Detective Pellegrini. We’re working on the little girl’s murder. How you doin’ tonight?”
“Awright.”
“Listen, we want to ask you a couple questions about your car.”
“My car?” asks Andrew, curious.
“Yeah. The Lincoln.”
“They took that away,” he says, as if that should end any discussion.
“Who did?”
“The car dealer.”
“Johnny’s?”
“Yeah.’ Cause my wife, she didn’t make the payment on it,” he adds, a little put out.
Landsman steers the conversation toward the parking pad in the back alley. Andrew readily acknowledges his habit of keeping the car in the rear yard to prevent theft or vandalism, then further agrees that the car had been in the rear yard on the Tuesday night of the girl’s disappearance.
“I remember it ’cause I went out to the car for something and felt like someone was out there watching me.”
Landsman, startled, looks hard at the man.
“How’s that again?”
“I went out to the car that night to get something and I felt real nervous, like someone was out there watching me,” he repeats.
Landsman gives Pellegrini one of those did-I-hear-what-I-just-thought-I-heard stares. Three minutes into the conversation and the guy is already putting himself out in the alley on the night the child is abducted. Hell, he probably had reason to be nervous about being watched out there in the alley on Tuesday. Who the fuck wouldn’t be nervous carrying a little girl’s body from their back door to a car trunk?
“Why were you nervous?”
Andrew shrugs. “I just got a strange feeling, you know…”
Edgerton begins walking the length of the basement room, looking for red-brown stains or a child’s gold earring. The basement is a poor version of a bachelor’s lair, with a sofa and television in the center of the room and, against the long wall, five or six liquor bottles on top of an old dresser being used as a bar. Behind the sofa is a plastic laundry tub containing two to three inches of urine. What the hell is it about Newington Avenue that makes people piss into buckets?
“This is kind of your place down here, huh?” asks Edgerton.
“Yeah, this is where I hang.”
“Your wife don’t come down here much?”
“No, she leaves me be.”
Landsman brings Andrew back to the night in the alley: “What did you go out to the car for?”
“I can’t remember. Something in the glove compartment.”
“You didn’t go in the trunk?”
“The trunk? No, the glove compartment… I had the car doors open and I just felt like I was being watched. I was, you know, a little scared about it and said, well, damn, I’ll get whatever I need to get tomorrow morning. So I went back inside.”
Landsman looks at Pellegrini, then back at Andrew. “Did you know the little girl?”
“Me?” The question startles him. “The girl that got killed? I haven’t been here that long, you know. I don’t know most people around here.”
“What do you think they should do to the guy that killed her?” asks Landsman, smiling strangely.
“Hey,” says Andrew, “do what you have to do. Make sure it’s the right guy and then you don’t even need a trial. I have a daughter, and if it were her, I’d take care of it myself… I have friends who would help me take care of it.”
Edgerton takes Pellegrini out of earshot to ask if the detectives and detail officers doing the consent searches on Newington Avenue have checked the basements. Pellegrini doesn’t know. That was the trouble with a sprawling red ball; between five detectives and a dozen detail officers, progress is dependent on too many people.
“Andrew,” says Landsman, “we’re gonna need to talk to you downtown.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. We’ll bring you back up when we’re done.”