She did look friendly, however. And easy enough to get talking.
She grabbed one of the silver hangers off the rack and held out her hand for my coat.
“I’m not checking it,” I said. “You must be Nora Halliday?”
“I am.”
“Nice to meet you. Scott McGrath.” I removed my business card from my wallet, handing it to her. “I was hoping we might chat, at your convenience.”
“Chat about what?” She squinted at the card.
“Ashley Cordova. I understand you were the last person to see her alive.”
She glanced back at me. “You’re police?”
“No. I’m an investigative reporter.”
“What are you investigating?”
“I’ve done cover-ups, international drug cartels. I’ve been getting some background on Ashley. I’m interested in your perspective. Did she say anything at all to you?”
Biting her bottom lip, she set my business card down on the stall door and carefully shook multicolored jelly beans into her hand from a bag that contained about four kilos of them. She shoved the pile into her mouth, chewing with her lips clamped closed.
“Everything you tell me can be off the record,” I added.
She covered her mouth with her hand.
“Have you been drinking?” she asked.
“No.”
She seemed to take issue with this, swallowing with a gulp. “Are you dining with us this evening, sir?”
“No.”
“Are you meeting someone at the bar?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I stared at her. She was definitely not from New York. This one screamed Recent grad of Ohio State with a degree in the dramatic arts. Something told me she’d probably played a Pink Lady in some abysmal production of Grease and when someone asked her who she was, she said I’m an actor in the same breathy voice I’d seen people in AA announce I’m an alcoholic. Girls like her moved here by the truckload, hoping to be discovered and to meet Mr. Big but too often ended up in bars in Murray Hill wearing black dresses from Banana Republic, Band-Aids over the blisters on their heels. They’d get their I’ll Take Manhattan taken off them soon enough. To live in this city for any extended period of time required masochism, moral flexibility, skin like an alligator’s, and mad jack-in-the-box resilience — none of which these faux-confident twenty-very-littles could even begin to wrap their heads around. Within five years she’d be running home to her parents, a boyfriend named Wayne, and a job at her old high school, teaching movement.
“If you continue to loiter I’m going to call my manager. Carl will be happy to address any complaints or requests.”
I took a deep breath. “Miss Halliday,” I said, taking a small step toward her so I could see her pink lipstick had skidded off her upper lip. “A young woman was found dead. You were the last person to see her alive. The Cordova family knows this. A lot of people know this. The NYPD isn’t keeping your name anonymous. People are wondering what you did and what you said to her, which caused her to end up dead hours later. I’m not jumping to conclusions. I just want to hear your side.”
She stared back at me, then plucked the phone off the wall behind her, dialing a three-digit number.
“It’s Nora. Could you come down? There’s a man here, and he’s …” She blatantly stared at me. “Mid-fifties.”
It wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for. I exited the lobby swiftly. Outside under the awning I looked back. Little Miss Streep had put her glasses back on and was leaning over the door of the stall, observing me.
A man in a blue suit hastily appeared from upstairs—Carl to the rescue, I assumed — so I turned and headed back to Park Avenue.
That hadn’t gone well. I was rusty.
I checked my watch. It was after eight o’clock, cold, the night sky streaked with clouds that whitened and dissolved like breaths against glass.
I might be a little off my game, but I wasn’t going home.
Not yet.
9
Fifteen minutes later, I was in a taxi, cruising through Chinatown, past the shabby walk-ups and restaurants, dirty signs advertising BACK FOOT RUB and THE PEOPLE’S PHARMACY, awnings jumbled with English and Chinese. Men in dark jackets hurried past storefronts lit up in lethal colors — cough-syrup crimson, absinthe green, jaundiced yellow, all of it bleeding together in the crooked streets. The neighborhood felt thriving yet empty, as if the area had just been quarantined.
We passed a brick church — TRANSFIGURATION CHURCH, read the sign.
“Right here,” I told the driver.
I paid him and climbed out, gazing up at the building. It was a seven-story derelict mess with peeling white paint, construction scaffolding, every window boarded up. It was the warehouse where Ashley Cordova had been found dead. Flowers and handmade cards were piled around the front entrance.
There were bouquets of roses and carnations, lilies and candles, pictures of the Virgin Mary. Rest in peace, Ashley. God bless you. YOUR MUSIC WILL LIVE ON FOREVER. Now you’re in a better place. It was always surprising to me how ferociously the public mourned a beautiful stranger — especially one from a famous family. Into that empty form they could unload the grief and regret of their own lives, be rid of it, feel lucky and light for a few days, comforted by the thought, At least that wasn’t me.
I gently moved aside some of the flowers to reach the steel door. It was secured with two padlocks, CAUTION and DANGER signs. The POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape remained intact.
Behind me, a maroon sedan with a loud muffler cruised past, the dark silhouette of the driver hunched low. I stepped back, staying hidden in the shadows of the scaffolding as it coasted to the end of Mott, made a left, and the street went silent again.
Yet I had the unmistakable feeling that someone else was present — or had just been here.
I zipped up my jacket, and after surveying the sidewalk — deserted, except for an Asian kid darting into a store called Chinatown Fair — I turned and walked to the end of Mott where it intersected Worth. I rounded the sharp right, passing a red awning reading COSMETIC DENTISTRY, a dented chain-link fence spanning an empty dark lot. When I reached the next building, a mangy walk-up, and the one after that, 197 Worth, I knew I’d gone too far.
I backtracked, noticing that by the dentist’s office there was a hole cut in the wire fence. I made my way over, crouching down. A tiny black rag had been tied there — clearly to mark some kind of entrance. I could make out a narrow dirt path that twisted deep into the lot, leading toward an abandoned building.
That had to be it. The Hanging Gardens, Falcone had called it—a known squatters’ residence and crack den, according to the incident summary in Ashley’s file. Police had concluded Ashley entered 9 Mott from here, a building at 203 Worth, then climbed up a flight of stairs all the way to the roof, entering the adjacent Mott Street building from a skylight. Though the police’s canvass of the area turned up no witnesses and none of her personal belongings, this meant nothing. Detectives were notoriously lazy when they concluded early in a case that the death had been a suicide — often overlooking crucial details that told an entirely different story.