"Yeah, that's real funny, Kit. Meantime, what do I tell Stoney?"
"Tell him about the hotel homicide you're working on. Then take him through a list of your old enemies-who you sent away, who might have gotten out lately, the usual." :'But not about Mendoza?"
"Up to you. I'm not going to tell you to withhold information."
"I'm sure he knows I went to Cuba. Everyone else does. "
Kit turned to him. "If this is connected to Mendoza, what can Stoney do about it?"
Suddenly she froze. A large brown rat, breaking for cover, scampered across the street, then disappeared into a drain. Janek took Kit's arm to steady her. After a few seconds, he felt her relax.
"Maybe it was someone from the old days," Janek said.
"If Clury hadn't been killed by a car bomb, I'd say, yeah, maybe so."
Kit spoke as if nothing awkward had happened: There hadn't been any rat; she hadn't felt revulsion. "But the connection's too close. Anyway, think about it. Who stands to gain from a failed attempt to blow you away? Is the message ' away' or is it more complex?"
"Like what?"
Kit shrugged., one of the players muddying the waters a little bit."
Having circled the block, they arrived at the barricade on Columbus- Avenue and Eighty-seventh. The officer posted there gave Kit a formal salute. As they approached the wreckage and the aroma of soot and gasoline and burned rubber, Janek saw Stoney, squat and short, staring at them from the center of the street.
"Better go talk to him," Kit urged.
Stoney was methodical. He wouldn't be hurried. His questioning took three full days. He was terse and, despite Janek's best efforts, rarely cracked a smile. He insisted on going over every case Janek had ever handled. Names that hadn't passed through Janek's mind in years conjured up images of old crime scenes and cornered suspects confessing in claustrophobic interrogation rooms.
There was the boy who had killed the two nuns; the '" case in which a man had killed two women on opposite sides of town, decapitated them, then boldly switched their heads; a set of voodoo murders; a roommate homicide; the famous actor who pushed the famous actress out the window; the case called "Wallflower" in which a female shrink had sent out one of her patients to exact homicidal revenge for past offenses.
But even as Janek related these stories, he got the impression that Stoney didn't think they were relevant. He knows about Cuba, Janek kept thinking. He's waiting for me to bring it up. He wouldn't lie if Stoney confronted him, but he'd be damned if he himself would introduce the subject of Mendoza.
In the end, Stoney didn't ask about it. He just stared at Janek as if waiting for him to talk. Janek found himself admiring the short bomb squad investigator, and also feeling uncomfortable in his presence.
As it happened, Stoney turned out to be right about the Saab. The high amount of the deductible, which Janek had chosen casually to save himself a few bucks, far exceeded the Saab's value, which meant he'd have to buy himself a new car. What especially rankled was his knowledge that it would be new only to him, since once again, he knew, he would be buying a used car.
By the time he broke free of Stoney, Sue Burke had located the "bad girl" Stiegel had met two winters before in Roosevelt Hospital. Her name was Kirstin Reese.
Janek met Sue in front of Kirstin's building, a walk-up tenement on Ninth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen. There was a busy fish market on the ground floor; its smell filled the hallway. The stairs were covered with some sort of green industrial carpeting that was badly stained and had been worn through in patches to the wood.
As they made their way up to the fifth floor, Sue filled him in:
"I found her name in the hospital records. She gave an old address.
But with her Social Security number, I was able to track her through Welfare. I talked to her this morning for about half an hour. She's jumpy, Frank-fragile, too. It's like there's something wrong way deep inside. Reminds me of women I interviewed when I worked Sex Crimes.
The broken-sparrow syndrome, we used to call it."
"Still-she talks?"
"About some stuff, at least to me. But there's other stuff she won't talk about. The stuff we're interested in."
"Naturally," Janek said.
By the time they reached the fifth floor he was breathing hard. Also, the fish aroma wasn't fresh up there. It was as if the new smells downstairs were forcing the older ones upward, where they were heated to a condition of pungency by sunlight that poured in through the tent skylight above the stairwell.
"How much you think they get for a studio here?"
"Six-twenty a month, would you believe it?"
They looked at each other and shook their heads. Manhattan was crazy.
There were people in rent-controlled buildings paying that much for six rooms with river views.
Sue rang the buzzer, there was silence, then the sound of rapid footsteps moving in the opposite direction, another silence, steps approaching, then the snap of a security lock.
The door opened a crack and Janek saw a sliver of a woman peering out over a taunt link chain.
"It's Sue Burke. I brought the lieutenant," Sue said. Silence.
"What's the matter, Kirstin? You said I could bring him up."
"I changed my mind." The woman's voice was pitched with strain.
"Hey, come on," Sue coaxed. "You promised. Please."
For a moment Janek was sure the girl was going to shut them out. But then Kirstin unchained the door and stood aside. When Janek entered he saw a tall, young, blond woman with a slim figure and large ice-blue Nordic eyes. She wore jeans and a tanktop and there was a small blue tattoo of a crouching dragon on her right shoulder blade. She was attractive enough to be a model, he thought, except for the way she held herself and the zigzag scars on her cheeks. Her face had been slashed on both sides, and, he observed, not very carefully sewed up.
The studio was dark. The shades were pulled almost to the bottoms of the windows, allowing only narrow strips of light to break through. But the windows were wide open; Janek could hear the roar of the avenue, cars and trucks inching their way toward the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.
Sue sat beside Kirstin on a brown corduroy couch, the kind that opens up and turns into a bed. Janek took a beaten-up leatherette easy chair.
There was a small wooden table set between the couch and the chair, bearing rings and spots where spilled liquids had eaten through the varnish.
He sat quietly for the first few minutes while Sue drew Kirstin out.
There was something grim about the girl, bitter and withdrawn, that made him think he'd do better to hold back. He needed her help; she was the only lead Stiegel had developed in two years of tracking the bad-girls ring. If she refused to cooperate, the odds of his finding the redhead would fall, he knew, to nearly zero.
"Things going okay?" Sue asked.
"So-so," Kirstin replied.
"I told you, I can get you some help. Think about it."
"Sure," Kirstin said.
"Kirstin's still got some savings, but Welfare doesn't know that," Sue explained. "I know someone might give her a waitress job, maybe even help her find a better place." "It's okay here," Kirstin said, looking around. She was avoiding eye contact. Then she grinned, embarrassed.