“Did anything turn up?”
Lang shook his head. “Listen, Corman, I don’t know why you got such a bug up your ass on this case, but take it from me, it’s a complete zero. I’m talking, closed tight. You ask me, that girl dropped out of the whole human race. Put up that sign, you know, DO NOT DISTURB.
“But why?”
Lang smiled. “My guess is, some fucking guy screwed her up.”
“But who?”
“Coulda been some drifter,” Lang told him. “Maybe some ass-hole she bumped into while she was squeezing tomatoes at the A & P.” He shrugged. “That’s the way it is with women. Some scumbag comes along, they can’t get over how great he is.”
Corman glanced at his notebook, its cover still closed, the pencil in his other hand motionless beside it. “So you’ve got absolutely nothing?” he asked.
“Z-E-R-0, Corman,” Lang said, his teeth already sinking again into the Danish.
Corman grabbed a hot dog outside the precinct house and strolled south, ending up across from the burn-out in which Sarah had lived the last days of her life. He sat down on the stoop, his eyes staring up at the fifth-floor landing. For a moment, she must have lingered at the edge, stared down into the blowing rain, tried to find the right sound, then settled on a final silence. He thought of how few facts he’d accumulated on what she’d done in the years before that moment, how little he had to give Julian. He knew the kind he needed, hard, brutal facts that sank deep then rose up to save the day, combined to make a story with a beginning, middle and an end. The end was directly in front of him, a slender line of vertical space from the window to the street. Everything else was considerably less defined, and he suspected that it always would be, not only in Sarah Rosen, but in everyone. A mystery of genes at the very start, and after that, only a slightly less consuming mystery. He thought of Lucy, saw her in a food store squeezing tomatoes while someone watched her from a few feet away, calculated the chances, made his move: Nice tomatoes, huh? Not to answer was to live in fear. To answer was to put your whole life at risk.
He was still considering it all when he heard voices down the street, and turned to see a group of children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. There were two girls and a boy, all of them about the same size, with nut-brown skin and gleaming black hair. A break in the rain had released them, and they were taking full advantage of it, leaping happily in the moving slants of sunlight that periodically swept the street like enormous prison searchlights.
They laughed brightly as they played together, and after a moment Corman found himself inching toward them as unobtrusively as he could. He was almost upon them when a large woman came out of the building, sat on the stoop and watched quietly as the children played. She wore a flowered dress, and her hair was held tightly beneath a dark red scarf.
Corman smiled quietly and nodded toward his camera. “Photographer,” he said.
The woman smiled back. “Nice now, the sun.”
“Yes.”
The woman nodded. “Very nice.”
He pointed toward the abandoned building a few yards away. “A woman was living there.”
The woman said nothing, and watched the children, a small smile playing fitfully on her lips.
“The woman,” Corman said, “the one in the building. Do you remember her?”
The woman nodded and continued to watch the children. “Skinny woman,” she said. “Didn’t look too good. Jumped out the window.” She turned to face him, twirled her finger at the side of her head. “Era loca.” She returned her eyes to the children. “How come you talk about her? You her brother, somesing like that?”
“No.”
“No blood?”
“No blood,” Corman said. He let his eyes drift over to the children. One of the girls was skipping rope while two of the other children twirled it furiously. “Would you mind if I took some pictures of the kids?” he asked.
The woman smiled brightly. “No, that’s good to take the pictures. They like that.”
Corman moved a few feet away, then turned and began walking forward slowly, focusing on the children, taking a shot every few steps. Through the lens, he could see them caught forever in their play, held together and kept safe by the protective walls of the frame. Inside the camera they could be animated, yet suspended, full of life, yet shielded from it, forever clothed, fed, sheltered, with everything they needed … but a life.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
CORMAN HAD BEEN WAITING for over an hour before he saw Dr. Samuel Rosen come out of his apartment on East 68th Street, then head west, toward the rainy borders of Central Park. He looked as if he’d aged somewhat since the funeral, his white Vandyke just a bit whiter, his face slightly more lined. He was dressed in a long black coat and dark fur cap, his shoes carefully protected by glistening black galoshes as he moved forward determinedly, the wind whipping relentlessly at his umbrella.
Corman waited until he was a safe distance away, then reached for his camera and took a few shots of Rosen’s tall, retreating figure. Then he returned the camera to his bag, walked into the vestibule of Rosen’s building and pressed the buzzer.
“Yes?” It was a woman’s voice, black, with a faintly Southern accent.
Corman leaned forward and spoke into the wall speaker. “My name is David Corman. I have an appointment with Dr. Rosen.”
“Dr. Rosen’s not here.”
“I know,” Corman told her. “I saw him on the street. He asked me to wait for him.”
“And you’re who, now?”
“David Corman. I’m an old student of his.”
“Well, okay,” the woman said reluctantly. “I guess so.”
The buzzer sounded. Corman stepped into the building and headed up the stairs to Rosen’s apartment.
The woman was standing in the door, eyeing him from a distance.
“Hi,” Corman said as brightly as he could. He slapped a few droplets of rain from his jacket. “Looks like it’s going to go on forever.”
The woman nodded. “Worst it’s been in a long time,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, step inside,” the woman said. “It’s dry in here.”
Corman walked into the foyer, then followed the woman into the living room. It was elegantly arranged, but with a dark modesty that resisted showiness of any kind. There was a baby grand piano with a marble bust of Socrates on it. Other busts were scattered around on slender wooden pedestals. Corman recognized some of them: Johnson, Wordsworth, Shakespeare. Others were more obscure figures, medieval thinkers, poets, gathered together as if in silent enclave, mutely watching the rain trail down the large French windows at the back of the room.
“I dust them every day,” the woman said. “Dr. Rosen likes them polished up.” She stepped over to a bust of Erasmus and began wiping its surface with a white cloth.
Corman hesitated a moment, then launched in, because he had no choice but to move quickly. “Well, I guess they’re his life,” he said, “especially since Sarah.”
The woman’s eyes swept over to him. “Terrible, what happened to that child,” she said darkly.
“Yes. Did you know her?’”
The woman shook her head. “Seen her a few times, that’s all.”
“What was she like?”
“She was shy. Always. You know, like lots of people are. Off in the corner, that sort of thing.”
“And she stayed that way?” Corman asked casually, trying to suggest no more than ordinary interest.
She thought about it for a moment. Her hand stopped dead in its rhythmic sweeps across the marble surface of the bust. “She wasn’t fit for nothing.”