The Hard Way (14 page)

The snow had started
up again as I made my way down Washington Street. I checked my watch, wondering how late Speedy Messengers was open, wondering if by any chance I might luck out and find Willy before he quit for the day. But first I needed to stop at home. For this talk, I didn't want coffee and croissants. I didn't want to put Willy at ease. Far from it. This time I wanted Dashiell to be with me.

Speedy Messengers was in Chelsea, not far from where Dustin Ens went to school. It wasn't quite four yet and I was hoping that if I was lucky, and if I was patient, I might catch Willy on his last run. I didn't know whether or not messengers went home after dropping off their last packages of the day. It could be they had to punch out before leaving. It could be they dropped off those canvas bags or signed receipts or had to pick up packages to drop off first thing in the morning. But all I could do was try and, the truth was, at that point I would have tried anything. I was dying to talk to Willy again.

The office was in an ugly high-rise on Eighth Avenue. Unfortunately, I couldn't wait at a coffee shop across the street, even if they were willing to let Dashiell slip in and stay under one of the tables, figuring the likelihood of a Department of Health inspection at this time of day and in this weather was on the slim side. But
rush-hour traffic was already in full swing and I never would have seen Willy leave the building from the other side of all that traffic. That put me right outside the building where he was employed, “outside” being the operative word because, despite the fact that there was a lobby, I thought it best to wait on the sidewalk in the snow. I didn't want Willy to think my dog and I needed protection, not even from the weather, because I intended to finally get my fifty dollars' worth from this conversation.

Twenty minutes after I got there, Willy came out of the revolving door, saw me, saw Dashiell, stopped dead in his tracks and then tried to revolve his way back into where he came from.

“Too late,” I said, my hand on his shoulder, gripping it the way Florida had gripped my neck.

Willy turned to face me. “I can explain,” he said, figuring whatever the fuck I was about to say, he could talk it away if I gave him the opportunity. I didn't.

“Listen to me, you lying sack of shit, I didn't give you fifty bucks to pull my chain. I didn't sit there wasting my time to hear you bullshit me, do you understand?”

“You got no call to…,” he started, falling back on Ebonics. What next, dancing up and down a flight of stairs? Maybe I could be Shirley Temple to his Bo Jangles.

“I didn't come here to listen to excuses. I want to hear about how you pushed the homeless man. Got it?”

Willy nodded, sober looking now, no more tap dancing, no more trying to wiggle out of my grip.

“And this time the coffee's on you,” I told him, indicating the place across the street.

Willy looked nervously at Dashiell. I wasn't sure if it was because he knew dogs weren't allowed in restaurants or if he was afraid to move, not knowing what Dashiell might do if he did. Either way, it would have been good thinking. I was worrying about the former issue myself.

We waited for a red light and crossed Eighth Avenue midblock.
I figured if we lived through jaywalking in Manhattan, cars whipping around the corner and heading straight for us, we could get through anything.

The coffee shop was nearly empty, two young men in a corner booth having an argument, their dander up but, for the moment, their voices down. One had his head shaved in neo-Nazi fashion. The other was bald, too, but in his case, it appeared to be from alopecia, or worse, chemo.

There was a young woman at another booth, a baby stroller parked right near her. She was feeding the baby greasy French fries.

We slipped into the booth closest to the door and Dashiell went right under the table and lay down. The woman behind the counter had her back turned and never saw him. I was hoping it would stay that way, at least until we were on our way out, and that Dashiell's presence might give Willy loose lips because, other than the tacit threat of the pit bull under the table, I had no rights with this man, no right to bully or interrogate him, despite the fact that I'd paid him fifty bucks for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Buyer beware. I understood the truth of that as well as the next guy.

“We're back on that platform,” I said, my dander up, my voice down. When in Rome. “The homeless man is asking for more than the swipe you already gave him, he wants some change for coffee, a five, maybe, for a bagel with a schmear. And then what?”

“Okay, okay, I get your point.”

“You get my point?”

“That I left out a little detail when I told you what happened.” Willy shrugged, tried a smile, gave it up pronto when I failed to return it. “He was all over me, see? I got this thing, about crowds, you know, about my personal space. And he was in my face. He was too close, right on top of me. So I gave him a little shove, just to make him stop looming over me. Like I tol' you, he was a big man, much bigger than average, even for white folks.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Look, do me a favor and cut the Steppin' Fetchit routine, if you don't mind. It's giving me acid reflux.”

“Okay. I gave him a little shove.” He shrugged now, indicating it was no big deal. “Just a tap on the shoulder, that's all.”

“Show me,” I said, standing.

But that was when the waitress arrived, the same woman who'd been behind the counter.

“You don't have to get up, hon. I'm a little shorthanded here, it's just me, but I'll get you what you need.” She held up her pad and, I swear, licked the tip of her pencil.

“One coffee,” I said, “black, one tea, and what the hell, let's go the whole hog, two muffins.”

“What kind would you like, hon? We have blueberry, corn, banana and chocolate chip.”

I looked at Willy, then back at Marge. At least that's what the tag on her pink uniform said.

“Two chocolate chip,” I told her. “After a hard day's work, everyone needs a little chocolate, am I right, Willy?”

Willy nodded, smiled, but if you looked at his eyes, which I did, he looked like a rat on one of those glue pads, easier than setting a trap but not so easy for the rat stuck to it because once he's there, then what?

Marge turned to leave and I motioned for Willy to get up.

“So, show me. I'm Florida. I'm the homeless man. Give me a shove.”

“Say what?”

“Florida. We've met. Nice guy. Didn't rat you out about the shove.”

Willy shook his head. “Nothing
to
rat out. Just a tap. I already told you that.”

I turned to face the window, which was plastered with signs.
“We have fresh bagels.” “Hot apple pie.” “Homemade turkey with all the trimmings.”
Willy was facing my left shoulder.

“Is this how it was?” I asked. “Was he facing forward, toward the express track, or…”

“Toward me, his mouth going a mile a minute.”

“I don't think so,” I said, both of us standing at the end of the booth, as if we were about to leave before our coffee came.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't think his mouth was going a mile a minute. I found him to be reticent.” And when that got no reaction, “A man of few words.”

“Maybe I didn't like the few words he was saying.”

“Maybe not. So, he was facing you?”

Willy nodded.

“That means you pushed him in the chest?”

“His shoulders.”

“You reached up?” He nodded. “Show me,” I said again.

Willy put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me. Even knowing it was coming, I stumbled back a step.

“Is that what happened? He moved back? He lost his footing and…”

“Just a step. He didn't fall or anything. But he finally shut his face.”

“And that's when you closed your eyes?”

Willy nodded.

“One little tap, just like I did now, I swear.”

“And when he moved back, Willy, he moved toward the lady with the Sherpa Bag that had the cat in it, not toward Mr. Redstone?”

“I didn't see no lady with a cat, but he moved back toward where we came from, toward the stairs, not into the guy who got killed. That was later. This was before the train was in the tunnel, before the sound of the train.”

Marge showed up with a cup in each hand, two plates with muffins balanced on one forearm. We sat and then waited while she set everything down. She left the check, too.

“No rush,” she said. “Whenever you're ready.”

Willy leaned over the table and whispered, “You can see why I didn't mention the tap, right?” He rubbed one hand across his nose.

“What would you have thought? That I pushed the other guy, too, am I right? You never would have—”

I held up my hand to stop him.

“You always wear those when you're working,” pointing to his leather gloves, the hands covered, the tips of his fingers exposed “even when you're not using the bike, even in the summer?”

Willy looked down, as if the gloves were so much a part of him, he'd forgotten they were on.

“What's that got to do with…?”

“Do you? Even in the summer? Even that day?”

He nodded.

“Okay, tell me again, step by step.”

Willy's mouth opened but nothing came out. Then he moved quickly to the other side of the bench he was sitting on. I figured Dashiell had rolled onto his side and was using Willy's shoe as a pillow.

“One, I see this guy looks down on his luck. Two, I give him a swipe he can ride without paying out of his own pocket. Three, he follows me down the stairs and to the column where I find a place to stand. Four, he keeps at me to give him money, says he's dehydrated. You believe that shit? Dehydrated. I tell him, find a water fountain. Water'll hydrate you. That's its job. But he doesn't stop so, five, I give him a slight push, get him out of my face. You wanna guess the last time he brushed his teeth?”

“Why the shoulders? Why not the chest?”

“His shirt was soaked with sweat. I didn't want to touch it. It was hydrated, see?”

I nodded.

“He shuts up, I close my eyes so I don't have to look at his ugly puss no more. And the next thing I know, everyone's screaming.”

“Anything else?”

“What's the use of all this? You got me down for a liar. You—”

“Eat your muffin, Willy. It looks good.”

I picked up mine, broke off a piece and put it in my mouth, one of those nice little surprises that can make your day. It was sweet, but not too sweet, and fresh as tomorrow morning. And the chocolate chips weren't chips but chunks of bittersweet chocolate, the perfect foil for the sweetness of the cake.

Willy picked up his muffin and broke off a piece, too, putting it in his mouth. We sat there eating until there was nothing left but crumbs and those we picked up by licking our fingers and tapping them around the plate until there was nothing left but china.

Willy reached for his wallet. I shook my head.

“I'll get it,” I said.

“Then you believe me?”

“I do. I hope you're not making a fool of me again, Willy.”

He shook his head. “No way. It's the god's honest truth this time, every word.”

I nodded and got up to go. Willy stayed put.

“He did it again,” he said, looking down at the table. “Dog thinks my foot's his pillow. Don't he get no rest at home?”

“Hang on,” I told him. I took the check and the money to cover it plus a nice tip for Marge and walked it over to the counter. Then while Marge was ringing it up, I walked back and reached for Willy's hands, taking them in mine for a moment. Then I gave him a little salute and slipped out the door with Dashiell, freeing Willy's foot so that he could leave, too.

I didn't wait for him. It was dark outside, the headlights of the cars illuminating the snow, flake by flake, each one different, they say, though if you didn't look closely, they all looked pretty much the same.

I stopped
under a canopy and pulled out the notepad I always carry with me when I'm working. I didn't need to look, but I did anyway, just to make sure. “Florida” it said at the top of the page. And several lines under that “Just the hands on my back. Ice-cold hands.”

Not Willy's hands. Willy's hands were warm. Perhaps they were warm when I touched them because he'd been holding a cup of coffee, but they would have been warm that day, too, warm because it was so hot out, even hotter on the platform, warm because he was wearing leather gloves, even in all that heat, and warm because Willy was hot under the collar, irate, pissed. Willy's blood was running hot, hot enough to make him push a stranger twice his size, a man who might be crazy on top of everything else.

So what happened on that platform? Why did Redstone get pushed? And who had done the pushing?

I headed downtown, the glaring headlights of rush-hour traffic making me squint, but I wasn't really seeing what was in front of me, I was imagining that station, the crowded platform, Willy working himself into a frenzy when he saw that his good deed had come flying back in his face, Willy shoving Florida away from him.

He'd just been trying to get a little space. Just trying to ease the
feeling of being caught, of suffocating. Or so he'd said. And wasn't that the case with each and every one of them, reporting not what happened, but what they thought they saw?

In the gospel according to Willy, moments after he pushed Florida, someone else shoved him, too, so hard that he knocked Gardner Redstone onto the tracks and into the path of the oncoming express, every commuter's worst nightmare.

Am I buying this? I asked myself. “Coincidence?” I said aloud. Dashiell turned his head toward me, that question in his eyes, need me, need me, need me? “Not a coincidence,” I told him, people watching where they were walking, no one paying attention to one more nut talking to her dog.

You can't plan to kill someone by shoving a homeless man, a man everyone would assume was crazy, a man who just might
be
crazy, into them, shoving him hard enough that the man you wanted to kill would go flying off the platform. No way. How could you know there'd be a homeless man there when you needed one and how could you be sure he'd be standing precisely where you needed him to stand?

Suppose that's not how it went. Suppose you saw the little black guy shove the homeless man. Suppose the homeless man happened to be standing behind the man you hated enough you wanted to kill him, and to do so in an especially hideous way. Suppose you saw that even though the guy who did the shoving was small and slim, and the guy who got shoved was huge and strong looking, the big guy was still knocked off balance. And then there it was, a lightbulb over your head, a 150-watt bulb, shining in all its glory. Because the big guy had been looking. He'd
seen
the little guy's hands coming up toward his shoulders. And still he got shoved back.

What if Florida wasn't looking? And what if the hands that shoved him were placed lower, closer to his center of gravity? Wouldn't that cause even greater instability? Wouldn't he go farther, faster, harder than he had the first time he was pushed? Wouldn't he stumble just far enough to also make the man in front of him
stumble, the man so close to the edge of the platform, the man you hated with all your being, the man, perhaps, you were stalking because that hatred was so consuming, you couldn't help yourself, so consuming it needed some outlet, some way to express itself?

Despite the muffin, I was hungry. I was cold, too. I couldn't imagine how cold I would have been if I'd been outside all day, all week, all winter, with no expectation of a warm cottage to go to, a fire in the fireplace, a long hot bath. I began to walk a little faster, but when I turned the corner onto Tenth Street, I had to slow down, let Dashiell read the latest news. It's always more important for a dog to read and post near home than in strange territory. Hey, I'm back. How you been?

I saw someone waiting in front of my gate, a man, his shoulders hunched, his collar pulled up against the wind. He was facing the other way, toward Hudson Street, snow covering his short hair, cut like a newly mown lawn, snow on his shoulders, like epaulets, stamping his feet, a plume of smoke rising now, disappearing into the snow.

“Michael?”

But when he turned around, I saw it wasn't Detective Brody waiting outside my gate the way he had a few months earlier. In fact, the man now facing me, the man looking at me with a curious expression on his face didn't look the least bit like Detective Brody and all the wishful thinking in the world wasn't going to change that.

He had a long thin face, this stranger, oversize glasses, thin lips. He was waiting for the bus, I guess, standing back against the building line in the hope it would protect him from the weather, finding it didn't but standing there anyway.

I took out my key. He excused himself and moved a few feet away, watching for the bus instead of watching me unlock the gate, close it behind me, lock it again. I unhooked Dashiell's leash and watched him run ahead into the garden. But I didn't follow him right away. Standing in the tunnel, I took out my cell phone and
called my client's cell, pretty sure she'd still be at work but wanting to be sure I'd reach her either way.

“Eleanor, it's Rachel,” I said.

“You found him?”

“We need to talk.”

“Go ahead.” And then to someone else, “I'll need a few minutes, Maryann.”

There was silence on the line, both of us waiting.

“There's a possibility that the homeless suspect was not the one who killed your father.”

“What are you talking about? There were witnesses.”

“Yes, there were. I've already talked to all of them, at least the ones whose names you gave me.”

“And? Did they change their minds about what they saw?”

“No, they added to what they told the detectives.”

I heard her light a cigarette. I imagined her chair rolling silently on the thick carpet. Maybe she angled it so that she could look out at the snow.

“And I met the homeless man.”

“You found him?”

“Not exactly. He found me. I was, I've been working with another homeless man, to gain more credibility and to find out where the homeless went when they didn't want to be found. He told Florida how to find me.”

“Florida? That's his name?”

“That's his street name. I don't know his real name. He may not know it either at this point.”

“You're saying he's crazy?”

“I'm saying that with what he told me and what I got from the witnesses, I think someone may have pushed him into your father.”

“By accident? Because it was so crowded?”

“I don't think it was an accident.”

I gave her time to think about it.

“Not an accident? You're saying…”

“Florida was panhandling the messenger, Willy Williams, who'd paid his fare. He had him pinned against a column and Willy gave him a shove, pushed him away.”

“And that's what knocked my father onto the tracks?”

“No. That happened before the train entered the tunnel.”

“I don't understand.”

“If the homeless man didn't push your father, if he got pushed into him, we have to consider other possibilities.”

“Such as?”

“That the push, so to speak, came from elsewhere, that it wasn't a random act perpetrated by a mentally ill stranger, that your father wasn't killed because he was in the wrong place at the worst possible time.”

“Then what?”

“That perhaps it happened because of some business transaction, that someone he harmed, perhaps inadvertently, had a grudge against him. And was following him.”

“Stalking him?”

“Possibly. Of course, this is just guesswork right now. But suppose there was such a person.”

“Someone following him?”

“Right. I don't know if that person intended to kill him all along or if when they saw Florida stumble, that's when they got the idea of pushing him into your father.”

“Suppose you're right. What next?”

“Who is Maryann?”

“Maryann? Oh, she's my assistant.”

“Perfect. Can you give her a paid vacation? Tell her it's a bonus for work well done. Don't tell her about me.”

“Don't tell her what?”

“That I'm going to take her place, temporarily.”

“Oh.”

“I'd like to get to know the people who worked for your fa
ther. I'd like to know what they might tell me that they wouldn't tell you. And I'd like to look through the records. Something that might seem to be business as usual to you, a promotion going to one person rather than another, say, that could be the way it is to one person and create a smoldering resentment in another.”

“If you think this is the way to go…”

“I do. I think it's necessary if we want to know who did this, and why it was done.”

“When would you like to start?”

“Wednesday,” I told her. “And one more thing, Eleanor.”

“Yes, anything.”

“It's also possible this happened because of some event in his personal life. You never mentioned your mother…”

“She died seven years ago.”

“And your parents were together at the time? There'd been no divorce?”

“No. They were together. I don't know how happy they were. They seemed to live their own lives. My father was a workaholic. You'd have to know that, Rachel. He could have retired years ago, at the time I began running GR. But he refused. He wouldn't even spend the winter in Palm Beach with my mother. He'd fly down every few weeks and be back a day or two later. They didn't divorce, but in a way Dad was married to GR.”

“And your mother?”

“Lunches, shopping, charity work, patience. She was an old-fashioned woman. If he was coming home for dinner, dinner would be on the table. If not, she never complained.”

“Were there girlfriends? Did he have affairs? I'm sorry to ask, but…”

“I don't see how there could have been. He was always working.”

“What about after your mother died? Was there anyone during those years?”

“There was someone until about six months before he was killed.”

“Do you know the circumstances…?”

“I don't. My father didn't share those kinds of things with me. But he was a very kind man, Rachel. If you're trying to find out if he had enemies…”

“Everyone has enemies, Eleanor. For instance, did he buy out anyone else's business? Did he put anyone out of business by having a better product, or better advertising? Did he fire anyone? And what was the story with, I'm sorry, you didn't mention her name.”

“Sylvia Greene.”

“Do you know where she lives?” Pulling out the pad and pen, jotting down the name.

“Battery Park City.”

“Thanks. Let's continue this on Wednesday, okay? I have some things to clean up tomorrow,” I told her, thinking I'd spend the day looking for Eddie, give it one last shot before starting to work at GR, “and then I'll see if there's anything I can find in your father's business life, and personal life, that might explain his death.”

“But there might not—”

“As I said, I can't promise you I'll succeed, Eleanor. I can only promise you I'll try my best.”

“Come at nine,” she said. “That's an hour and a half before the rest of the staff gets in, two hours before we open. I can familiarize you with the operation then. And, Rachel?”

“Yes?”

“Bring the dog.”

I didn't ask why. She didn't tell me. I was sure there was a reason for it, that Eleanor had something up her sleeve. I had the feeling she almost always did. I closed the phone and walked through the tunnel into the garden, finding Dashiell waiting at the door, his tail wagging.