Latinos and orthodox Jews, Bloomguard had told him. And Poles. These are the usual types in these parts — although the Jews live mainly a bit further up, around Tenth and Eleventh Avenue.
They remained seated in the car for a while, and Reinhart tried to make it clear how delicate an occasion the first meeting was. Extremely damned delicate. Bloomguard took the hint.
‘I’ll stay in the car,’ he said. ‘You go in on your own — I find it so hard to hold my tongue.’
Reinhart nodded and got out. Glanced over the park, the open, sloping expanse of grass and the low, greyish white, wall-less buildings in the middle. Something that looked like a swimming baths. It wasn’t exactly a place for tourists to visit, Bloomguard had said. Hardly a place for honest folk at all. Not at night, at least. After nightfall Sunset Park changed its name to Gunshot Park. That’s what the locals called it.
But just now it looked perfectly peaceful. A jogger was struggling up a tarmacked path while a bunch of obviously out-of-work gentlemen in woolly hats were sitting on a bench, throwing a bottle in a plastic bag from one to the other. Two fat women were pushing a pram and making ostentatious gestures as they talked. One of the bare trees at the side of the street had masses of shoes hanging from every branch — a motif Reinhart recalled from a picture postcard he’d once received, he couldn’t remember from whom.
The air was cold. An icy wind was blowing from down by the Hudson River; it felt as if snow was on the way. The view was magnificent. To the north was Manhattan’s skyline against steel-grey clouds, a little to the west was the whole of the entrance to the harbour with the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island. This is where they came to, Reinhart thought. This is what became the New World.
He walked past three houses and four cars — big, slightly rusty gas guzzlers — and came to number 602. The digits indicated the location — the second house between Sixth and Seventh Avenue, he had read. He mounted the eight steps to the front door and rang the bell. A dog started barking.
Delicate, he thought again. Extremely damned delicate.
The door was opened by a boy in his early teens, with glasses and protruding teeth. He was holding a chocolate sandwich in his hand.
‘I’m looking for Mrs Ponczak,’ said Reinhart.
The boy shouted into the house, and after a while a solidly built woman came puffing and panting down the stairs and greeted him.
‘That’s me,’ she said. ‘I’m Elizabeth Ponczak. What do you want?’
Reinhart explained who he was and was invited into the kitchen. The living room was occupied by the boy and a television set. They sat down at a small, rickety laminated table, and Reinhart began to explain why he was there, as he had planned it. In English, he didn’t know why.
It took several minutes, and all the time the woman sat opposite him, stroking a yellowish-grey cat that had jumped up onto her knee. The barking dog evidently belonged next door: he could occasionally hear it howling or yelping at something or other.
‘I don’t understand what you saying,’ she said when he had finished. ‘Why he want to visit me? We have not had contact in fifteen years. I am sorry, but I can’t help you a sniff.’
Her English was even worse than his, he noted. Perhaps she spoke Polish to Mr Ponczak, if there still was anybody of that name around. He didn’t seem to be at home at the moment, in any case.
Okay, Reinhart thought. That’s that, then.
He hadn’t been speaking the truth. Had she?
He had no way of knowing. As he sat there spinning his tale he had paid special attention to her reactions, but seen no sign that she was hiding or suspecting anything.
If only she weren’t so phlegmatic, he thought in irritation. Fat, sloppy people like this one never had any problem when it came to hiding something. He’d often thought about that in the past. All they needed to do was to sit gaping out into space, just like they always did.
When he came out into the street he recognized that that was an unfair generalization. Unfair and inappropriate. But what the hell, he’d only had one trump card with him over the Atlantic. One miserable little trump card: he’d played it and it hadn’t won him anything at all.
He plodded back to Bloomguard and the car.
‘How did it go?’ asked Bloomguard.
‘Nix, I’m afraid,’ said Reinhart.
He flopped down onto the passenger seat. ‘Can we go somewhere for a coffee? With caffeine.’
‘Of course,’ said Bloomguard, starting the engine. ‘Plan B?’
‘Plan B,’ said Reinhart with a sigh. ‘Four days, as we said, then we drop it. I’ll take as much time as I can cope with. And it’s definite that you can place people at my disposal?’
‘Of course,’ said Bloomguard enthusiastically. ‘You don’t need to sit here sleuthing on your own. We have plenty of resources in this village of ours — there’s a different wind blowing compared with fifteen years ago. Zero tolerance. I was a bit sceptical at first, I admit; but the fact is, it works.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ said Reinhart. ‘But I don’t want to feel like a tourist. And we need to work round the clock, or there’s no point.’
Bloomguard nodded.
‘You’ll get a car for your own use,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the station and work out a timetable, and you can pick out the times you want to have. Then I’ll look after the rest. Okay, compadre?’
‘No problem,’ said Reinhart.
In fact he delayed his first shift until Sunday. Bloomguard made sure that there was a car with two plain-clothes police officers parked at the junction of 44th Street and Sixth Avenue out in Brooklyn from four o’clock on Saturday. Reinhart spent the afternoon and evening wandering around Lower Manhattan. Soho. Little Italy. Greenwich Village and Chinatown. He eventually ended up in Barnes amp; Noble. That was more or less inevitable. Sat reading. Drinking coffee and eating brownies, and listening to poetry readings. Bought five books. It was half past nine by the time he left and managed to catch the correct subway train to Columbus Circle. When he came up to street level he found it had started snowing.
I wonder what I’m doing here? he thought. There are over seven million people in this city. How can I imagine that I’ll ever find the right one? There must be better odds on my getting lost and disappearing than on discovering anything.
As he travelled up in the lift he reminded himself that it had in fact been The Chief Inspector who had convinced him he would be successful in his quest, but that wasn’t much of a consolation. Not for the moment, at least, in the loneliness of Saturday evening
When he phoned and woke Winnifred up for the second night in succession, she told him it was snowing in Maardam as well.
37
Moreno met Marianne Kodesca for lunch at the Rote Moor. According to Inspector Rooth the Rote Moor was very much a place for women between the ages of thirty-four-and-a-half and forty-six, who lived on carrots and bean shoots, read Athena and had kicked one or more men onto the rubbish dump. Moreno had never set foot inside there, and was quite sure that Rooth hadn’t either.
Fru Kodesca (she had remarried a year ago, to an architect) could only spare forty-five minutes. She had an important meeting. Had nothing to say about her ex-husband.
She had said as much already on the telephone.
They ate Sallad della Piranesi, drank mineral water with a dash of lime, and had a good view of the Market Square, which was covered in snow for the first time since Moreno could remember.