The detective shook his head. “Nah, not me. She’s over in the back, talking to the last of those people who got some kinda look at the jumper today.”
Ricky looked across the rooms and spotted a woman just shy of middle age wearing a man’s pale blue button-down shirt and striped silk rep tie, although the tie was loosely hung around her neck, more like a noose than anything else, gray slacks which seemed to blend with the decor, and a contradictory pair of white running shoes with a Day-Glo orange stripe down the side. Her dirty-blond hair was pulled back sharply from her face in a ponytail, which made her seem a little older than the mid-thirties that Ricky might have guessed. There were wearied wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. The detective was speaking with a pair of black teenage boys, each wearing wildly exaggerated baggy blue jeans and baseball caps that were cocked at odd angles, as if glued askew on their heads. Had Ricky been slightly more aware of the ways of the world, he might have recognized this for the current style, but, as it was, he merely thought their appearance distinctly odd and a bit unsettling. Had he encountered the pair on the sidewalk, he would have undoubtedly been frightened.
The detective sitting in front of him suddenly asked, “You here on that jumper today at 92nd Street?”
Ricky nodded. The detective picked up his phone. He gestured to a half-dozen stiff-backed wooden chairs lined up against one wall of the office. Only one chair was currently occupied, by a bedraggled, dirt-strewn woman of indistinct age, whose wiry silver gray hair seemed to explode from her head in a multitude of directions, and who appeared to Ricky to be speaking to herself. The woman wore a threadbare overcoat that she kept hugging increasingly tighter to her body, and she rocked a little bit in the seat, as if keeping rhythm with the electricity bounding about within her. Homeless and schizophrenic, Ricky diagnosed immediately. He had not seen anyone with her condition professionally since his graduate school days, although he’d hurried past many similar people over the years, picking up his pace on the sidewalk like virtually every other New Yorker. In recent years, the number of homeless street people seemed to have diminished, but Ricky always assumed that they had simply been shunted to different locations by political maneuverings so that the enthusiastic tourists and the well-heeled and well-moneyed folk making their way through midtown would not have to encounter them as frequently.
“Just have a seat over there next to LuAnne,” the detective said. “I’ll let Riggins know she’s got another live one to talk with.”
Ricky stiffened when he heard the woman’s name. He took a deep breath and walked over toward the row of chairs.
“May I sit here?” he asked, pointing to a seat next to the woman. She looked up at him, slightly astonished.
“He wants to know if he can sit here. What am I? The queen of chairs? What should I say? Yes? No? He can sit where he likes…”
LuAnne had grimy, broken fingernails packed with dirt. Her hands were scarred and blistered and one sported a cut that seemed infected, the swollen skin turning a dark purplish color around a deep maroon scab. Ricky thought it must have been painful, but he said nothing. LuAnne rubbed her hands together like a cook spreading salt over a dish.
Ricky plopped down in the seat next to her. He shifted about, as if trying to make himself comfortable, then asked, “So, LuAnne, you were in the subway station when the man fell on the tracks?”
LuAnne looked up into the fluorescent lighting, staring at the bright and relentless glare. She gave a little shudder with her shoulders, and then replied, “So, he wants to know was I there when the man went in front of the train? I should tell him what I saw, all blood and people screaming, awful it was, then the police came.”
“Do you live in the subway station?”
“He wants to know do I live there, well, sometimes I should tell him, sometimes I live there.”
LuAnne finally looked away from the lights, blinking rapidly and seeming to move her head about as if recognizing ghosts throughout the room. After a moment, she finally turned toward Ricky. “I saw,” she said. “Were you there, too?”
“No,” he replied. “The man who died was someone I knew.”
“Oh, sad,” she shook her head. “So sad for you. I’ve known people who died. Sad for me, then.”
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s sad.” He forced a weak smile in LuAnne’s direction. She smiled back. “Tell me, LuAnne, what did you see?”
She coughed once or twice, as if trying to clear her throat. “He wants to know what I saw,” she said, facing Ricky but not necessarily addressing him. “He wants to know about the man who died and then the pretty woman.”
“What pretty woman was that?” Ricky asked, trying to keep himself calm.
“He doesn’t know about the very pretty woman.”
“No, I don’t. But now I’m interested,” he said, trying to prod her along carefully.
LuAnne’s eyes seemed to drift off into the distance, trying to focus on something beyond her vision, like a mirage, and she spoke in an offhand, friendly manner. “He wants to know that the pretty woman came up to me, right after the man went boom! And she speaks to me very softly, saying did you see that, LuAnne? Did you see that man jump in front of the train? Did you see how he stepped right over to the edge as the train was coming through, it was the express, see, and doesn’t stop, no, never stops, must get the local if you want to get on a train, and how he just jumps down! Awful, awful! She says to me, LuAnne, did you see him kill himself? No one pushed him, LuAnne, she says. No one at all. Be absolutely sure of that, LuAnne, no one pushed the man, boom! He just stepped out, the woman says. So sad. Must have wanted to die terrible bad all of a sudden, boom! And then there is a man right next to her, right next to the very pretty woman and he says, LuAnne, you must tell the police what you saw, tell them that you saw the man just step right past the other men and other ladies and jump, boom! Dead. And then the beautiful woman says to me, she says, you will tell the police, LuAnne, that is your duty as a citizen, to tell them you saw the man jump. And then she gives me ten dollars. Ten dollars all for me. But she makes me promise. LuAnne, she says, you promise to go to the police and tell them you saw the man jump good-bye? Yes, I says to her. I promise. And so I came to tell the police, just like she said and just like I promised. Did she give you ten dollars, too?”
“No,” Ricky said slowly, “she didn’t give me ten dollars.”
“Oh, too bad,” LuAnne replied, shaking her head. “Unlucky for you.”
“Yes. That is too bad,” Ricky agreed. “And unlucky, as well.”
He looked up and saw the detective crossing the room toward them.
She looked even more exhausted by the day’s events than Ricky had first guessed when he saw her across the room. Detective Riggins moved with a deliberateness that spoke of sore muscles, fatigue, and a spirit sapped at least in part by the day’s heat and certainly by spending the afternoon laboriously helping to gather up the remains of the unfortunate Mr. Zimmerman, followed by piecing together his last few moments before stepping off the subway platform. That she managed the most meager of smiles by way of introduction surprised him.
“Hello,” she said. “I gather you’re here on Mr. Zimmerman?” But before he could reply, Detective Riggins turned toward LuAnne and added, “LuAnne, I’m going to have an officer drive you over to the 102nd Street shelter for the night. Thank you for coming in. You were very helpful. Stay at the shelter, LuAnne, okay? In case I need to talk to you again.”
“She says stay at the shelter but she doesn’t know we hate the shelter. It’s filled with mean and crazy folks who’ll rob you and stab you if they know you have ten dollars from a pretty woman.”
“I’ll make sure that no one knows, and you’ll be safe. Please.”
LuAnne shook her head, but contradictorily said, “I’ll try, detective.”
Detective Riggins pointed toward the doorway, where a pair of uniformed officers were waiting. “Those guys will drop you off, okay?”