“Hmmm.” There was disappointment in that murmur.
By all rights, I should have told her to scram. But for some reason, call it fate or boredom or an inborn pernicious streak, I kept talking. “I think McCloskey—that’s the site manager—only just started hiring night guards. I think he used to spend the night here sleeping in his shack so he could double dip. That’s what some of the morning shift guys told me anyway.”
“Better,” she declared.
She stood slowly, using the cane in her left hand for leverage. She was tall and solidly built, wearing a tailored houndstooth suit that looked expensive and an ankle-length coat like the kind Blackheart Bart wore when he did his sharpshooter act.
“Is that his shack?” she asked, looking over at the small wooden structure a quarter turn around the pit.
I nodded.
“Show me, please.”
By that point, it was clear to both of us there would be no clobbering, so I figured why not. Maybe it was because the alternative would have been ringing up the police, and I have a cultivated dislike of anyone with a badge.
I headed over to the shack in the corner of the yard. She followed a little behind, using the cane as she went. She wasn’t limping so much as wobbling a little. I wasn’t sure what was up with her, but the cane obviously wasn’t for show.
McCloskey had called the shack his office, but I’d seen chicken coops built sturdier. We were never supposed to go inside, and besides, the door was locked. The mysterious woman took something from an inner pocket of her coat—a thin, bent piece of wire—and went to work on the padlock. After a minute of fumbling, I piped up, “You need to go at it from the bottom.”
“How do you mean?”
I took the wire out of her hand and had the job done in ten seconds flat. I’d picked harder locks blindfolded. Literally.
“You should get yourself some real picks if you’re going to do this kind of thing regular,” I told her.
In all the years after, I only ever saw her smile about three dozen times. She graced me with one then.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.
The inside of the shack matched the outside. Dirty and jerry-built. There was a desk fashioned out of a couple discarded boards and some sawhorses. Papers were scattered haphazardly across it. On it were also a lantern and an army-issue field phone that someone had rigged so McCloskey could make calls without leaving to find a pay phone. The rest of the space was taken up by a narrow cot and a pile of dirty rags that on second glance were clothes.
My companion lit the lantern. The addition of light didn’t do the cramped room any favors. I’ve seen monkey cages less filthy.
“Describe Mr. McCloskey,” she said, fixing me with eyes the gray-blue of a winter sky.
“I don’t know. Forty or so. Average, I guess.”
She gave me a look I have come to refer to as her disappointed schoolmarm. “Average doesn’t exist. Not when it comes to human beings. And don’t guess unless circumstances force you to.”
I was starting to regret not using the lead pipe.
“Okay,” I said with a bit of a sneer. “About a foot taller than me, so figure six feet, give or take. About two hundred pounds—a lot of it fat, but there’s some muscle under there. Like a roustabout who’s taken to the bottle. From the patches on his trousers, I’d say he has two sets of clothes, neither of them more than three bucks combined. He’s cheap but wants people to think he has flash.”
“What made you determine that?” she asked.
“From how much he’s paying me. Also, he wouldn’t spend two bits for a shave but dropped at least five for a gaff watch.”
“A gaff?”
“A fake, a phony.”
“How do you know it’s fake?”
“No way is this guy buying gold.”
There was something in her eyes then. The same look Mysterio got right before he sawed his lovely assistant in half.
“Do you have his phone number in case of emergencies?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure. But he said not to use it unless something’s really gone sideways.”
“Something has indeed gone sideways, Miss…”
“No Miss. Just Parker,” I told her. “Willowjean Parker. Everyone calls me Will.”
“Please call Mr. McCloskey, Will. Tell him there’s an intruder and she won’t leave. Tell him she’s asking about a gold watch.”
It was an easy call to make, since it was the truth. After I hung up, the woman—who still hadn’t introduced herself, and don’t think I wasn’t a little annoyed at that lapse in basic manners—asked me how he’d sounded.
I told her he’d sounded normal at first—sleep drugged and annoyed. But when I mentioned the watch, a thread of something like panic had come into his voice. He said he’d be right over and not to let this woman go anywhere in the meantime.
She gave a small, satisfied nod, then sat down on the cot, back straight, gloved hands holding her cane across her lap. She closed her eyes, calm as my great-aunt Ida praying in church. She reminded me of pictures of Okie wives I’d seen in issues of Life, a weatherworn face waiting patiently for the coming storm.
I thought about asking her what this was all about. Or at least her name. She had mine, after all. But I decided I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. So I stood there and waited with her.
After ten minutes of silence she suddenly opened her eyes and said, “I think it would be best, Will, if you were to leave out the Eighth Avenue exit. There is a station house about twelve blocks south.”
“You want me to get the cops?”
“Ask them to call Lieutenant Nathan Lazenby. Tell them there’s been a murder and that Lillian Pentecost says to come at once. Unless they wish to read about it in the Times.”
I opened my mouth, but she flashed me a look that said it was no use arguing, so I dashed out and toward Eighth Avenue but stopped before I reached the gate.
Like I said, there’s no love lost between me and authority figures, especially those who carry guns and billy clubs and aren’t afraid to do some judicious clobbering of their own. Besides, what did this woman think would happen? I drop her name and a whole squad of dicks come running?
Lillian Pentecost. Who the hell did she think she was, anyway?
Instead, I quietly retraced my steps around the pit. Before I’d gotten back to the shack the shriek of old brakes on Forty-second Street announced McCloskey’s arrival.