Winter and Night (23 page)

"What were she and the Russell kid up to?"

"Were they up to something?"

"Smith," he said, "what exactly are you trying to do?"

"Find Gary Russell."

"I don't think so. Scott says if he catches you near his family he'll kick your teeth in."

"That's his problem."

"What's your interest in Tory Wesley?"

"None at all, if people would stop saying Gary killed her."

"Someone did."

"Someone at the party. Looks like Gary wasn't even there."

"Sure he was."

"Randy tell you that?"

"Scott says he didn't hire you. He says for all he cares you can rot in hell. Who hired you?"

"Gary."

That stopped him dead. For a moment, nothing. Then he walked around the desk and stood, feet planted, weight balanced, facing me. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Gary asked me to help him. I'm trying."

"Help him do what?"

"I don't know."

"You stupid son of a bitch." Macpherson's face filled slowly with color. Oxblood, I thought, but it would have been a bad time to laugh, so I didn't. Macpherson drilled me with a piercing stare, probably very effective in the courtroom. "This wise-ass shit is a bad idea, Smith." His voice took on a deadly quiet tone. "You're a stupid son of a bitch, and talking to me this way is a bad idea. It may work with the kind of people you usually run into, but I'm losing patience. I want to know what the hell you're up to."

I shrugged. "So do I."

A very long silence filled Macpherson's office. Through the window behind where Macpherson stood I couldn't see the avenue; we were up too high for that. All I saw were the two ranks of buildings facing each other across it, tall, sharp-edged, and, to the eye, completely still. There was no sign, on their hard and solid exteriors, of the unceasing movement inside them.

Macpherson finally spoke, still in the quiet, cold voice. I could imagine Randy dreading that voice, when he was small.

"Sullivan told you to stay out of Warrenstown," Macpherson said. "I'm telling you to stay out of Warrenstown's business. I filed assault charges against you in Plaindale last night. If you go back to Hamlin's, you'll get picked up. If you go back to Warrenstown, you'll get picked up."

"I heard about that."

"Cops in New York, on Long Island, in two fucking states are looking for fucking Gary Russell. They'll consider any involvement on your part to be interference and—"

"—I'll get picked up. If the questions are over and you're moving on to telling me what trouble I'm in, I think we're done."

"The question," he said, "is whether you're smart enough to quit before your ass gets caught in a meat grinder."

"If that's it," I said, "the answer is no, I don't think I am." I turned, crossed his office to the silent door, let myself out.

Fourteen

Back on Park Avenue I stood on the corner, breathing in the cold air, watching the pedestrians weave freely around me, the traffic flow along its straitened path. The day had ended; the night was beginning. Lights in the Midtown buildings had been on all day, but now they were visible in the purple twilight. People hurried past me to the subways, the buses, to go home. I wondered if the cops had gotten to Queens; I wondered if Lydia had gotten to Warrenstown.

I stopped into a deli closing up for the day and bought a cup of coffee, headed downtown at a slow walk. No one was calling me and I had no reason to call anyone: I didn't know anything now I hadn't known before my visit to the wood-paneled offices of Macpherson Peters Ennis and Arkin. But I had some things to think about. A few questions, probably meaningless, probably just something to persuade myself I was doing something, hadn't been stopped after all today's work with no ground gained, a little lost.

Forty minutes later twilight was gone, night was complete, and I was almost home, when my phone rang. I took it out, answered it, and heard, "This is Stacie."

"Hey," I said. "How are you?"

"Terrible. Can you come here?"

Her voice was weak, her words unclear. "What's wrong?" I said. "Where are you?"

"Greenmeadow. It's the next town over from Warrenstown."

"What's going on?"

"I'm in the hospital."

Cars and people around me disappeared; there was nothing but the phone, and Stacie Phillips's voice. "What happened?"

"I'll tell you when you get here. Can you please come?"

She sounded like a little girl, and she sounded close to tears. "As fast as I can. But it'll be almost an hour."

"That's okay," she said, and though her voice was shaky she sounded like the Stacie Phillips I'd gotten used to hearing when she told me, "I think I'll be here."

I made the lot where I keep my car inside of five minutes. I sliced through the streets until I was back uptown, at the approach to the George Washington Bridge. By the time I reached the bridge, rush hour was almost over, but I hit the tail end of it and had to slow down. I didn't lose any time, not really, but I still had to work to keep myself from sitting on the horn, from cursing out the other drivers, from driving in a way that would either have gotten me where I wanted to go or gotten me killed. When I was finally off the bridge and moving I pulled out the phone and called Lydia. I got the voice mail, left a message, and heard from her about five minutes after that.

"Smith."

"It's me. What's wrong?"

"Stacie Phillips. She's in the hospital."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I'm on the way. Can you meet me there?" I told her where.

"Yes."

After that I just drove, concentrating on the road, the other cars, their lights and their maneuvers. The miles of commercial strip, ugly in the bright sun of yesterday morning, seemed even uglier now, lit by their own sodium and neon and fluorescent glows. I turned off the strip road again as the hills came closer, black bulks tonight, the fall colors hidden in the darkness. Then I made a left onto a road I hadn't been on yesterday morning, the road to Greenmeadow, where the hospital was.

I thought I might be too late for visiting hours, and was ready to swear I was a doctor, a priest, or Stacie Phillips's long-lost uncle, but when I shoved through the revolving door I found visiting hours lasted until nine o'clock and Lydia was already there with a pass to room 577, Stacie's room.

"She called me," I said as Lydia and I rode the elevator, which was large and, it seemed to me, slow. "She asked me to come. I don't know what happened."

The doors opened on the fifth floor, we turned down the hall, and though when we found Stacie's room I still didn't know what had happened, I saw the result.

She was in the bed near the door; the other bed in the room was empty. As we entered she turned to us, her face so purple, so raw and swollen I almost didn't recognize her. Her eyes were black-ringed; one was shut completely. Her lip was split, a bandage on her head probably covered stitches on her scalp, and her right ear was taped and padded. All those earrings, I remembered.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey. Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?"

"You know," she said, "my dad just left. You should go find him and talk about your old school days." Her voice was stronger than on the phone, and I felt my shoulders loosen.

"What happened?" I asked.

Stacie looked at Lydia, back at me.

"This is my partner," I said. "Lydia Chin."

"For real?" Stacie lifted her left hand to the hand Lydia extended. On her right a steel splint bound two fingers together.

"For real," Lydia said.

"You're a private eye, too?"

"Yes."

"Is it fun?"

"Right now I get the feeling it's better than being a reporter."

Stacie grinned weakly, the grin I felt I knew well, though I'd only seen it for the first time yesterday. A tooth was missing from it, but the grin was the same. "Being a reporter can suck," she said.

"Is that what this is about?" I asked. "Being a reporter?"

"I don't know," Stacie said.

"What happened?"

"I was mugged."

"Lots of people get mugged," I said. "Some of them aren't reporters."

From her one open eye Stacie shot me a look. "This was a guy in a goalie mask, like he was Jason or something."

"Jason?"

"Jason," Lydia filled me in. "From Friday the Thirteenth."

Stacie moved her one-eyed gaze to Lydia. "Maybe I should talk to you."

"No, go ahead and talk to Bill," Lydia said. "I'll do the simultaneous translation."

Lydia sat in the chair that, according to Stacie, Stacie's father had just vacated. I pulled one over for myself.

"Comfy?" Stacie asked when we were seated.

"Better than you, I bet," I said.

"They just gave me a shot of Demerol. It's really nice."

"You'll be asleep in a minute."

"So be quiet and listen to what happened, then."

I raised my eyebrows, said nothing.

Stacie went on, "So this guy jumped me in the school lot. The lot's almost deserted Camp Week anyway, there's almost never anyone around."

"Except geeks like you?"

"I thought you were going to be quiet." She turned to Lydia, told her, "And I'm not a geek. I'm an artsy type. He can't get it right."

"He has that problem sometimes," Lydia agreed. "What were you doing at school?"

"At the paper we can keep going through the break if we want. Researching stories or the graphics people can do layouts or whatever. It's extra credit."

"So lots of people would have known you were there?" I asked.

"Oh, a detective question. I guess so. We can work after two-thirty, any days we want. I'm the editor, so I come in every day. I guess people know that."

I said to Lydia, "She's the editor, you know."

"I can't believe," Stacie said, "that I'm in the hospital and you're picking on me."

"I got shot once working with him," Lydia said. "I was in the hospital for four days and he visited every day and picked on me."

Stacie's one open eye opened wider. "You got shot, for real?"

"He's a dangerous guy to know. I'll show you my scar later if you want."

"Cool."

"Can we get back to why you're here?" I asked.

"I'm here because this guy jumped me. He kept hitting me and kicking me." Stacie's voice started strong, but suddenly wobbled, at the end. I reached out, squeezed her hand. Surprisingly, she didn't let go. She said, "Don't you want to know why you're here?"

No wise guy retorts: I just nodded.

"He kept asking me, 'What do you have?' I didn't know what he meant. Then he switched to, 'What did Tory Wesley have?' "

"That's it?" I asked. " 'What did Tory Wesley have?' "

"I kept saying, 'I don't know, I don't know.' Then he cursed me out, and then he told me I'd better not tell anyone what he said, and I'd better drop it or he'd be back." She looked at me. "What did he mean? What do I have? What did Tory have?"

"I don't know," I said. "That was all he said?"

She nodded. "Over and over."

Lydia got up, took the plastic cup from Stacie's bedside, filled it with water for her. Stacie released my hand so she could hold the cup.

"Could you identify him?" I asked. "Anything about him?"

She gave Lydia back the cup. "I don't think so." She seemed to sink into the pillows a little. "He kind of growled, like a really hard whisper, not talked, so I don't think I'd know his voice if I heard it again. He wasn't real big, but he wasn't real skinny or anything else you'd notice. Just sort of average."

"Just your average mugger."

"In a Jason mask," Lydia added.

"Did you tell the police? Sullivan?"

"I told them about the mask and stuff but not what he said. It wasn't Detective Sullivan. I would've told him, I think." She sounded not quite sure of that. "But it was Bobby Sánchez. He's not a detective, just a cop."

"Why didn't Sullivan come? Is he off duty?"

"No, he's someplace else."

Oh, right, I thought. In New York, with the NYPD, picking up a gun dealer in Queens.

"Besides," Stacie said, "from what it looked like, it was just, like, a mugging. They didn't think they needed a detective, I guess."

"But you think they're wrong."

"Of course I think they're wrong." She turned her battered face to me. "What does he want me to drop? What do I have? What did Tory have?"

"I don't know," I said. "But I'll find out. And if anyone ever comes near you again, I'll kill them."

She gave me the grin, weaker and more weary this time, but real. "Could you put that a different way? So I can keep, like, dating?"

"I can't believe," I said, "that you're in the hospital and you're picking on me."

I left first, waited in the hallway while Lydia showed Stacie her bullet scar. Lydia and I rode the elevator down and walked out in silence, stood in the hospital parking lot by my car.

"I can see why you like her so much," Lydia said. "She's great."

"I meant it," I said. "I'll kill him."

Lydia gave me a long look under the sodium lights. "It would be better," she said, "to figure out who he was and what he wanted."

"Shit," I said, and then, when I'd gotten a cigarette going, smoked half of it in silence, said, "I know that."

"When you called," Lydia said, after a moment, "I was talking to a girl I wanted you to talk to anyway."

"Someone in Warrenstown?"

"Yes. One of a crowd I found hanging out in the park. I guess you'd call them freaks. Dyed hair, pierced noses, those things. None of them had anything to say, but I gave them my card and about half an hour later this girl called me. Do you want to talk to her?"

"You think it'll help?"

"I don't know what will help," she said. "But I know this is what we do."

Lydia made a call from her cell phone. We got into our separate cars and navigated down the hill from Greenmeadow Hospital into the town.

We were meeting Lydia's contact on the playground at Greenmeadow Elementary School. I'd offered coffee, or dinner, but the girl told Lydia she wanted to make it somewhere less public. I would have been reluctant in any case to go back to Warrenstown until I had to; but it was she, not I, who had suggested meeting outside of Warrenstown.