Kellerman thought about it. “I guess it would be okay,” he said finally. “But just be sure you act like you happened by. I don’t want the relatives or whatever to think I set them up.”
“Okay,” Corman said. He looked back down at the body, saw Sarah Rosen’s instead, Julian’s idea floating in his mind like a small white raft in a stormy ocean vastness.
Once outside, Corman quickly got the number of Tomlinson’s Chapel and gave them a call.
The voice at the other end sounded as dead as his customers. “Tomlinson’s Chapel. How may I help you?”
“I was wondering about someone who’s going to be at your place tomorrow.”
“Be at our place?”
“A body. A woman. Sarah Judith Rosen’s the name.”
“Yes, what about her?”
“I was wondering if you could tell me who’s making the arrangements for her.”
The voice grew suspicious. “Are you a relative, sir?”
“No.”
“And what is your capacity, may I ask?”
“I’m a photographer.”
The voice chilled. “I’m afraid we’re not allowed to give out information to unauthorized individuals.”
“I just need the name of her parents,” Corman said.
“I’m sorry,” the man replied firmly. “But as I told you, we are not allowed to give out information to unauthorized individuals.”
Corman started to blurt another question, but the click of the man hanging up silenced him, as if a label had been stamped on his forehead, blocking him forever: an unauthorized person.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
CORMAN ARRIVED at Julian’s office a few minutes later and placed the few photographs he had of the jumper on his desk. “She might be the one you’re looking for,” he said.
Julian went through the photographs quickly, then glanced up at him. “What’s the whole story, David?”
“She jumped out a tenement window in Hell’s Kitchen a few days ago.”
Julian nodded. “With a doll?”
“She threw it out first,” Corman said. “She’d been feeding it Similac.”
Julian’s eyes drifted back down toward the pictures. “Terrible.”
“She graduated from Columbia,” Corman said.
Julian’s eyes shot up toward him. “Columbia?” he said unbelievingly.
“And she was Jewish,” Corman added.
Julian’s eyebrows drew together slightly. “From a prominent family?”
“I don’t know yet,” Corman said. “But I was thinking about that idea you mentioned,” he said. “Slow decline.”
Julian smiled, let his eyes fall back to the photographs and linger there. “What else do you know about her?”
“Just what I told you so far,” Corman said. “I wanted to be sure you were interested.”
Julian thought about it for a moment, squinting slightly as he continued to gaze at the pictures. “I’m interested,” he said finally. “I need a few more details, but the basic situation sounds promising.” He looked back up at Corman. “What’s your time frame?”
“For what?”
“Coming up with a proposal.”
Corman shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
Julian gave him a pointed look. “He who hesitates, and all that.”
Corman nodded. “I understand.”
“So I could expect something right away?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Julian said brightly, hesitated a moment, then added, “And you might think about hooking up with a writer on this story.”
“Writer?”
“For the text.”
“I wasn’t thinking about a text,” Corman said. “Just pictures.”
Julian looked doubtful. “Well, a writer might help with the research, too.” He smiled gently and began writing on his memo pad. “Here’s somebody who might be interested,” he said, then handed Corman the paper.
“Willie Scarelli,” Corman muttered, reading from the sheet.
“You know him?”
Corman nodded. “We’ve run into each other.”
“He did a piece on that bag lady who froze to death on the Williamsburg Bridge a few years ago,” Julian said. “He traced her whole life. Got a TV movie out of it. He might be of service in the current project.”
Corman looked up from the paper. “I’d rather work alone, Julian. You know, just pictures.” His voice sounded weak to him, his resolve already crumbling slightly.
“Well, that’s your decision in the end,” Julian said. “But if you change your mind, you can usually find Scarelli at the Inside Track. Sixty-third and Lexington. As it turns out, he loves the ponies.”
“All right,” Corman said. He pocketed the memo and started to pick up the pictures.
Julian’s hand shot toward them. “May I keep them?”
Corman hesitated, without knowing why.
“To help with an initial pitch,” Julian explained. He smiled. “One of those corridor conferences we have around here. The pictures could be useful.” He glanced back at them. “Very good work, David. Compelling.”
Corman drew his hand back from the photographs but felt the uneasy sensation he was letting go of something.
“And get more,” Julian added. “The tenement, the neighborhood. Everything you can. Facts. Pictures. The works, right way.” He smiled happily. “This could be big, buddy-mine, a new direction for you.”
The sky remained overcast, but there were breaks in the clouds from time to time, and as Corman stared up at the tenement’s fifth-floor landing, he could see patches of light as they swept back and forth across the dark window like faded searchlights. For a time, he simply stared at the window, as if the morning light might reveal something he hadn’t noticed before.
Finally he drew his eyes away and glanced to the left. A young man was standing on the top step of a cement stoop across the street. He wore a black jacket with a gray wool hood, and he kept his hands deep in his pockets as he shifted nervously from one foot to the other. A stream of people moved in and out of the building, nodding to him silently, then rushing up the stairs to get what they needed.
Crack houses operated twenty-four hours a day, just as the legendary opium dens of the old city that had looked down on the teeming crowds of Chinatown. Because of that, Corman was sure a lookout had been posted the Thursday night the woman had leaped out the window. From his place on the stoop, the lookout would have been able to see the blue bundle arc out of the fifth-floor landing, then the woman after it, her arms and legs clawing at the rain.
The man on the stoop eyed him suspiciously, but Corman knew not to flinch. Instead, he nodded solemnly as he walked up to the stoop and lit a cigarette.
The man said nothing. He had large brown eyes set very deep in their sockets and badly pocked skin, scars from what must have been a horrendous case of teenage acne. He moved like a tightrope walker, forever tilting left and right in quick little jerks.
“I’m not a cop,” Corman told him.
The man’s hands moved inside the pockets of his jacket. “What you want, man?” he asked sharply. His eyes darted up and down the street, catching Corman’s face briefly with each sweep.
“I’m just working an angle,” Corman said. “About the woman who jumped out the window a few nights ago. Were you around when that happened?”
The man’s eyes settled on him stonily, but he didn’t answer.
For a moment Corman thought of offering him money, but all he had was a five spot, and he figured the lookout was probably pulling down from six to twelve hundred a day. A five spot would make him laugh. “I just have a couple of questions,” he said.
The man considered it a moment, suddenly shrugged. “Go ahead. Just be quick.”
“Did you see anybody else around when the woman jumped?”