I finished the sandwich, chased it with the last of the coffee, and deposited the trash in a nearby trash basket. Of course, I had no idea when Domestic Solutions’ workers were due at their jobs. According to Giselle and Dimitri, a van carrying five or six women left the warehouse around seven thirty on Monday mornings. When any of them might arrive at a given address was far from certain. Still, as time passed, and eight became nine, then ten, I began to get antsy. I told myself that if nobody showed, it would be the priest’s fault, not mine. And if Sister Kassia had a beef, she could take it to Father Stan, maybe hear his confession. Arresting Mynka’s killer was my first priority. If the fate of these women was taken out of my hands, so much the better. My conscience was clean.
I was still fortifying my argument when a Ford Explorer double-parked in front of the Portola townhouse shortly before eleven. I raised the binoculars to my eyes. They were self-focusing and took several seconds to compensate for the soft edges generated by the fog. By the time I had a clear image, a woman had already exited the vehicle. I caught a glimpse of her red hair, contained beneath a white hairnet, and of a blue skirt and a white blouse. Then she was gone and the door closed behind her.
I shifted quickly to the Ford’s driver and found her sitting with her head turned away from me. But I didn’t need to see her face to know that we’d met before. The fire-red hair was a dead giveaway. Welcome to the conspiracy. As the SUV pulled away, I wrote down the license plate number. Then I closed my eyes and said a little prayer. Not to the God who lay in the Jerusalem dust, nearly broken by his own cross, but to the God who rained fire and brimstone on those wicked kingdoms, Sodom and Gomorrah. I could put the red-headed woman in the warehouse when Barsakov was killed. She was the key to pinning the murder on Aslan.
At eleven thirty, I moved a hundred yards closer to the Portola home. By chance, the door to the Portola residence swung out twenty minutes later and three people emerged: a middle-aged woman, a man in his twenties and a teenaged boy.
I slid the backpack over my shoulders and headed for the nearest exit, fifty yards to the north. Again, I got lucky. The trio also headed north, until they reached 86th street where they turned east. By that time, I’d exited the park. Tails are easily maintained in Manhattan. There are always pedestrians about and people generally mind their own business. The Portolas, for example, never looked back, not once. They didn’t speak to each other, either, content to maintain a steady pace until they reached the doors of a well-known French restaurant, L’Heures, on the east side of Columbus Avenue. I watched them go inside, then headed for a Turkish restaurant called Ishtan on the other side of the street. Ishtan had an outdoor cafe with a perfect view of L’Heures.
I was just finishing my second cup of espresso when the Portolas emerged, followed closely by a man wearing a cummerbund, a starched white shirt and a thin black tie. Obviously a restaurant employee, he engaged the woman in conversation for several minutes, his manner clearly apologetic.
As I brought the binoculars to my eyes, taking advantage of the family’s preoccupation, I felt my heart turn to stone and my world shrink down to these three people. The women of Domestic Solutions, Bill Sarney, Hansen Linde, Drew Millard, even Adele — banished one and all to some anonymous patch of neurons in the recesses of my brain.
The woman was taller than either of her sons. Too blond to be natural, her hair curled in a tight line almost to her shoulders where it hung stiffly, every strand in place. Her cheekbones were very high, her nose short and straight, and while her mouth was naturally full, she’d thickened her lips with a heavy layer of pink lipstick. The make-up on her cheeks was just a bit too thick as well, though it failed to conceal a narrow line of acne-pitted skin beneath her cheekbones.
The older boy’s expression was more bemused than annoyed. He stood to one side with both hands in the pockets of his off-white linen trousers. Although his features were much softer, his resemblance to the woman was evident in his fleshy mouth and his heart-shaped face. Perhaps in an effort to blur that resemblance, he’d grown a skimpy beard and a mustache, neither of which was thick enough to conceal the pale flesh beneath. As I watched, his hand fluttered up to play with an earring, an enamel rainbow, which hung from his left ear.
The teenager had drawn the shortest straw from the gene pool. All three had weak chins, but his was concealed beneath a lower lip that he thrust forward as though in a permanent state of petulance. Meanwhile, his eyes were small and overhung by a heavy brow that only emphasized his receding jaw. The boy seemed uninterested in the ritual humiliation of the restaurant employee. He’d wandered a few yards away and was staring south at the oncoming traffic, his expression sullen, the tension in his cheeks, mouth and neck obvious at a glance. But I couldn’t find even a hint of cruelty in his look and it occurred to me that I was probably staring at the father of Mynka’s child. Not only was he closer to Mynka’s age than the man in his mid-twenties, he wasn’t gay.
‘Sir, will there be anything else?’
I yanked the binoculars away from my eyes and put them back in the case. The waitress was a twenty-something brunette with her midriff exposed from her waist to below her navel. She was holding an espresso pot in one hand and my check in the other, her professional smile exposing a set of the whitest teeth I’d ever seen.
‘Are you, like, a private eye?’ she asked.
I watched the Portolas cross Columbus Avenue, then disappear along 86th Street. I might have followed, but I had a better use for my time.
‘Private ass is more like it.’ I motioned her to leave the check as I retrieved my cell phone and dialed Bill Sarney’s office number.
Shaved and showered, I met Inspector Bill Sarney at five o’clock in a bar on Lispenard Street. Although the bar had a neon shamrock in the window, it appeared not to have a name. Maybe that was because it had no character. The men at the bar huddled protectively over their drinks, mostly drafts and shots. They didn’t turn their heads when I came in, as if somewhere on the downhill side, they’d renounced curiosity itself.
Sarney was standing at the end of the bar, leaning back against the wall, grinning. Message sent, message received. This was one joint his boyos from the Puzzle Palace were very unlikely to enter. I walked the length of the bar, my mood so elevated I found myself admiring Sarney’s unabashed theatricality. Playful was as much a part of his charisma as inscrutable. After a quick shake, I ordered a bottle of Bud. The bartender fetched it, popped the cap, then laid it on the bar without offering a glass.
‘So, what’s up, Harry?’
‘I didn’t report to the Nine-Two this afternoon,’ I told him, ‘and I don’t expect to report for at least a week. I want you to fix it.’
‘And what’s my motive?’
‘There was someone else in the warehouse when Barsakov was killed, another adult. Do you remember?’