34

I got there first and perched on a stool at the dingy counter. A lone waitress who looked like she’d been working three nights straight reluctantly plodded by. I ordered a large coffee with cream and two sugars in case she fell asleep before getting back to me. She swabbed the grimy countertop in front of me with a piece of rag even dirtier than the Formica. She kept staring at the door, waiting for her relief to come in, sighing and yawning for the benefit of the guy behind the cash register. Husband, maybe. She slopped some of my coffee into the saucer when she plunked it in front of me. I ordered two glazed doughnuts, my favorites. They tasted like sweetened, gluey paper.

Mooney was eighteen minutes late. The waitress’s replacement still hadn’t shown up. She took a break from glaring at the wall clock, slammed down a coffee cup, and snarled at him while she took his order for Danish.

He downed a gulp and shuddered. “Don’t you start, too, Carlotta,” he warned before I got a word out. I have seen Mooney in many different guises, from spit-and-polish dress uniform to undercover sleaze, but I’ve seldom seen him look worse. His eyes had dark smudges beneath them, and there was stubble on his chin.

“I know you’re late for a good reason,” I said demurely, resting my chin in my hand and batting my eyelashes up at him.

“Don’t start. This Canfield thing is driving me crazy. I sent a uniform over to City Hall to check out marriage licenses, birth certificates, and all that crap, and it looks like your Lydia Canfield, wife of James Hunneman, the woman who owns part of the pillow factory, is my Harold Canfield’s only sister. Which makes Hunneman Canfield’s brother-in-law, and keeps the whole mess in the family. Earn a little money at Hunneman’s factory, spend it on rent at Canfield’s apartment. We brought Harold in, and damned if I didn’t think he’d spill everything, what with us knowing the connection between him and Hunneman, but the bastard’s just yanking our chains.”

I drank coffee. It had probably been in the pot longer than the surly waitress had been on duty. “He stalling for a deal?”

“If he killed those women, or he knows who the hell did, I don’t want him cutting any deal that’s gonna keep his ass out of a cell—”

“But if that’s the only way to find out—”

“Don’t start,” he said, chewing a lump of Danish. “Paolina home?”

“I’ve got Roz looking for her. Phoned Gloria, and she’s going to have the cabbies keep an eye out. At first I thought it was just a fight with her mother …”

Mooney tried unsuccessfully to smother a yawn. “It’s never just one damn thing.” He downed more coffee like it was needed medicine. “Carlotta, it’s always a pleasure to see you, but why am I eating Danish here instead of at my desk?”

“Listen, Mooney, I’ve been running through Ana’s story in my mind all night. She denies knowing who I am. That’s lie number one. You saw her reaction to me. And she hadn’t been told my name or anything. She knew me. So I started thinking: When did she see me, when could she see me? I told you I saw Manuela, my client, the woman I thought was Manuela, speed away in an old clunker. I asked Ana if she drove a car. Remember what she said?”

“Something about not having a license.”

“Right. She evaded the question.”

“Okay,” Mooney said. “So she could have been driving, could have seen you then. So what?”

“Let’s go on to lie number two. She said she went back to Westland Avenue, took the risk of being picked up by Immigration, because maybe she left something in the room. Now that’s a big lie.”

“You think she had a more pressing reason to go back.”

“Damn straight I do. The third thing that’s bothering me is the money. The woman with the filigree ring left five hundred-dollar bills on my desk. Ana identified the ring as belonging to one of the women who roomed with her at Westland. Where’s a woman like that going to get a hundred-dollar bill?”

Mooney chewed a bite of apricot Danish. It sounded stale.

“Who searched the Westland apartment, Mooney?”

“Competent detectives.”

“Did they take it apart, really look for something somebody might have hidden there, hidden carefully?”

“Like a cache of hundred-dollar bills?”

“Yeah. Like that.”

Mooney sighed. “So that’s what I’m doing here. You want to check out that apartment.”

“If Ana wanted to go back there so much that she risked La Migra picking her up, I want to know why.”

“Me too.” Mooney gulped the rest of his coffee and stood up, leaving more than half the Danish on his plate. I thought about snitching it, since the two gluey doughnuts hadn’t done much to take the edge off, but its appearance was less than tempting.

“On me,” I said, but Mooney was already halfway to the pay phone by the door. I shoved bills at the man behind the register, left a bigger tip than the waitress deserved.

“Dave’ll meet us with the key,” Mooney said when I caught up to him.