“I think you have to tell me all about Ronald and his wife.”
“There’s nothing to tell. She’s a crazy bitch.”
“Look, Mrs. Steevers, your son is missing. He left his car in the garage, he hasn’t shown up for work, he hasn’t used any of his credit cards or his cell phone. I know these things. I am going to presume something bad happened to him. I don’t want you to lose your status of concerned parent and move into the less pleasant one of withholding information that could lead to the apprehension of a criminal. The same goes for your husband, too, if he takes the same attitude.”
Mrs. Steevers looks down into her cup.
“Please tell me about his wife.”
“She got Ronald fired from Farmingdale.”
“How did she do that?”
“They got into an argument, she started hitting him—like I said, she’s crazy. He had to defend himself. Then she went to the cops, said he beat her up.”
“The next time?”
Mrs. Steevers looks at me as if I know more than she thinks. I don’t. I am just guessing.
“They believed her, but she was just setting him up.”
“They stayed together, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I asked him many times. You know what he said?”
I knew the answer. Because I love her.
Chapter 8
At the station, there is a crisis. A young woman was discovered in her car on Twenty-Fourth Road, off Queens Boulevard, stabbed to death. All the detectives in homicide are assembled in a conference room waiting for Lieutenant Hagen to bring us up to speed and assign people to the case. The victim is Anita Cavastani, a thirty-two-year-old waitress at Trattoria Amalfi, which, according to Yelp, is a highly rated Italian restaurant in Manhattan. She died in the passenger seat of her own car, a 2006 Toyota, so she must have known her killer—family, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend. Why wasn’t she driving? Officer Schwartz handed out photos of the victim for us. We look at them, then pass them to the person to our right, until they all end up back in front of Schwartz, who stacks them into a neat pile. We could have been looking at his vacation pictures of his wife and kids at Disney World, posing with Mickey, his smile sewn into his face, instead of a young woman slumped against the passenger door, her head wedged in the corner between the seat and the window.
Ms. Cavastani must have retreated as far back as she could, but she was still within range of the knife. There are black splotches on a thin leather jacket indicating stab wounds to the body, a flap of flesh dangling open on her cheek that exposes a row of white molars. Her hands and wrists carry red lines as she tried to parry the darting knife. There is a track of the blade against her white throat that must have killed her. The front seat is stained red with her blood. I vow, as I do every time I see human butchery, never to eat animal flesh again.
Lieutenant Hagen appoints me lead detective and tells me to pick my own team. I will choose Linda Fuentes and Sean Higgins. Detective Higgins is a hardworking guy with a bizarre history. He went to Penn on a full scholarship, majored in mathematics, got a law degree at Columbia, and walked out of his bar exam. He informed his parents that he was only interested in a career of action and adventure. He went to Tokyo, spent a year perfecting his karate at a nasty dojo, returned to the US, and joined the marines. He served two tours in Afghanistan, and then applied to the Secret Service, who turned him down, as did the FBI, the CIA, and the DEA. Unfortunately, his parents had spent five years in the Weather Underground in the ’70s, running from some of the same organizations he wanted to join. In terms of security clearance, Higgins was so dead in the water he couldn’t get into the Coast Guard. The enlightened Long Island City Police Department gave him a job, and he made detective in a year. If he can ever escape his parents’ sins, he might end up chief.
I will also ask Bobby B to look for any background on the victim—Lieutenant Hagen won’t know about him, leaving me free to investigate the disappearance of Ronald Steevers and the serial confessor and possible serial murderer Mr. McDermott. And, if I choose, the disappearance of a weatherman’s cat.
But none of this is more important than hearing from Ernie Saldana in Maui about a man who bought a “baby saver.”
Chapter 9
I meet McDermott at Molly Blooms on Queens Boulevard. It’s a pleasant Irish bar whose customers, with a few exceptions, think Molly Bloom is the owner. There’s a Clancy Brothers cover band on Tuesday nights. Saul Rifkin, the real owner, lets a play-reading group use the basement Sunday nights. Since McDermott has already confessed to murder, I take that as a sign we have bonded. We can skip the small talk. We order drinks: bourbon for him, a Diet Coke for me. My lips do not have to be loosened.
“Mr. McDermott, we have another murder in the neighborhood.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“Only what you read in the papers.”
“I don’t think we read the same papers.”
He’s correct. This murder wouldn’t be in his Wall Street Journal. My Newsday would have it all over the front page.
“A young woman was stabbed to death in her own car.”
“Doesn’t sound like me.”
“What does?”
Is this sex talk? How would you murder a young woman, Mr. McDermott? What’s your style?
“Can you tell me something about her?”
“She’s Caucasian, twenty-three, five one, slim, attractive, teaches ESL at Roosevelt College.” There are some lies in there. I hope he will correct me.
“Possible.”
“Possible? Can you elaborate?”
“I will say that I have not been sleeping well.”
“Is that a consequence of possible?”
“Yes. At four in the morning, guilt is like a strong cup of coffee.”
“We’re all a little guilty,” I say. “Are you seeing a psychiatrist now?”
“He told me a story, my psychiatrist. Yes, I am seeing one.”
I have a soft spot in my heart for elliptical speakers, but I mustn’t fall for this one.
“The story?”
“It is perhaps apocryphal, but it may apply to my condition. This psychiatrist had a friend, a child therapist who had a patient, a ten-year-old boy. The boy had pushed his younger sister out their apartment window. She died. He has no memory of the event. Should he help him to remember or make sure he never does?”
It made me think of the story I would tell in response if this were a normal conversation about a man who is heartbroken over his wife leaving him. He misses her terribly, is miserable, depressed, inconsolable. He goes to a voodoo lady and asks if she can help him. Of course, I can, darling. Would you like me to make your wife fall in love with you again or would you like me to make you forget her?
I don’t tell him this story, as we are not in friendly conversation; we are not friends. He is what I will call a cooperative suspect. I’ve never heard of the term, but I like it.
I say, “We will bring you the crime; when it fits it will be yours.”
He smiles and lifts his drink to me.
“A deal.”
I don’t like where I am during this conversation. McDermott is an attractive man, aligned to artistic opportunities in New York that I find interesting. He is familiar with cultural nicknames—MOMA, BAM, the Met, Eataly. Manhattan shortcuts flow out of his conversation like playing cards flipped by a professional dealer. I see myself on his arm, in the third-row seat next to his, reading the playbill before the lights dim. There will be a Tuscan dinner afterward at Orso in the company of handsome men and smart women, some of whom might be the actors in the play we saw. That’s just him trying to show me an interesting, innocent, yes, I’ll have the tiramisu good time. It occurs to me I’d rather someone tried to rob Molly Bloom’s, armed, if possible, so I could shoot the dude and change the topic of conversation. I always want to change the topic of conversation. I also want out of this meeting.