14

Ella knew three important things about Esther Behrman. First, she was eighty-six years old. Second, her short-term memory and her eyes worked just fine; she’d had no problem at all picking Toby Rosenthal out of a lineup and would make an excellent witness. And third, as Ella had concluded after visiting the crime scene, Esther was the best witness against Toby, since she’d been seated closest to the table where Dominic DiNunzio had been shot. Considering Esther’s age, the longer David Slade could delay the trial, the better the chances were that she might croak from natural causes. Unfortunately, however, Ella had no way to ensure that Mother Nature would cooperate.

No one stopped Ella when she walked into the assisted living facility where Esther lived. Off to the right of the entrance was a hotel-like reception desk. A sign said that visitors were required to check in, and a woman was at the desk, looking down at some paperwork as she talked on the phone. The lobby had a number of sofas and chairs where people could sit, coffee tables stacked with magazines like those in a dentist’s waiting room, potted plants next to the sofas. There were about a dozen people in the lobby: a couple of old ladies sitting and chatting, wearing coats, probably waiting for someone to pick them up; a few more old women in wheelchairs, sitting alone as if someone had parked them where they were and forgotten them; and two middle-aged couples hovering over an old woman. It was a busy place, and from what Ella had read online, there were at least three hundred residents.

Ella walked briskly past the reception desk, expecting the woman there might call out to her, but she didn’t—so Ella walked to the stairs and started up. She found Esther’s apartment on the fourth floor. The only other person in sight was an ancient crone who had her back to Ella and who was bent into the shape of a question mark from scoliosis or something. Ella examined the lock on Esther’s door. She had no intention of breaking in today; she just wanted to see what she’d be up against. She’d been hoping Esther would have a cheap lock, one she could open by slipping a knife blade between the latch and the doorframe—but no such luck. Esther had a good lock.

Ella went back down to the lobby and strolled around the facility. She saw a few people dressed like housekeepers or nurse’s aides, but again no one asked her who she was or what she was doing. If she’d had a relative living there, she would have complained about the lack of security. Near the dining room she found a poster board that took up an entire wall, and on the board were photos of the residents. Under each photo was the person’s name—Ella was surprised at how few men lived there—and a short phrase saying something about the person.

The Dallas data miners had provided Ella with a photo of Esther taken from a driver’s license that was long expired, and Ella was hoping the poster board would have a more recent photo. It did. Under Esther Behrman’s smiling picture—Ella had to admit the old girl looked as though she still had a lot of life left in her—the label said: Esther can play bridge with the best of them. And poker, too. Ella used her phone to take a photo of Esther’s photo.

As Ella was leaving, she noticed a security guard standing near the reception desk. He was an overweight black man in his fifties, wearing a white shirt with a gold patch resembling a badge. On his belt he had a radio, a flashlight, and a big ring of keys, but no weapon. He was your basic useless rent-a-cop, and Ella imagined his only job was to chase away any bums who might try to enter the facility. Since Ella didn’t look like a bum, she wasn’t worried about the security guard.

Ella had an idea for how to deal with Esther. It occurred to her when she looked at Esther’s credit card charges and saw that every three months, regular as clockwork, she paid a pharmacy bill. What Ella needed to do was break into Esther’s apartment when she wasn’t there and take a look at her medications—but she hadn’t figured out how she was going to do that.

Ella hated driving in New York, but she decided to rent a car in case she had to follow Esther. She left the car in the parking lot behind the facility in one of the spots marked for visitors. There were a lot of empty visitors’ spots, and she thought it pretty unlikely that her car would be towed. The first morning she waited outside the front entrance, hoping Esther might venture out. She didn’t. At lunchtime, Ella went inside, took a seat in the lobby, picked up a magazine, and pretended to read, as if she was waiting for one of the residents. No one said a word to her.

At noon Ella saw Esther and another old lady get out of the elevator. Esther was five foot six, a bit stout, but moved well for her age; she didn’t use a walker or a cane. The woman with her was short and slim, and chatting like a magpie as she and Esther walked to the dining room.

Ella left the lobby, walked up the stairs to Esther’s apartment, and checked to see if the door was locked. It was. Rats. Esther hadn’t been carrying a purse when she went to lunch, so she probably had her apartment key in a pocket. The next two days, Ella did the same thing, going out of her mind with boredom, hanging around the assisted living facility, hoping Esther would leave. She wore a different-colored wig each day, sometimes a hat, and sunglasses.

On the fourth day, a Tuesday, at ten a.m., a short bus that would hold about twenty people pulled up in front of the main entrance to Esther’s building and a gaggle of old women came shuffling out and boarded the bus. One of the women was Esther, and with her was the little lady that Esther had had lunch with the other day. It seemed as if she and Esther were best friends.

Today Esther was wearing a navy blue Yankees baseball cap, a white sweatshirt, blue jeans, and neon blue running shoes. Ella couldn’t help smiling when she saw Esther’s shoes. Her pal was also wearing a baseball cap—a pink one, probably a breast cancer cap—jeans, and tennis shoes so white they looked as if they’d never touched dirt. Esther’s friend had a fanny pack—and Ella thanked God that Esther wasn’t wearing one. Esther was carrying a large purse.

Ella followed the bus to the Manhattan Mall on Broadway off Thirty-third Street. It appeared the residents were going on a shopping trip, where they’d most likely have lunch and maybe get their hair done, and Ella wondered if this was a weekly excursion. But now Ella had to scramble: She had to park the damn car, then get back in time to follow Esther, because the mall didn’t have its own parking lot.

A sign near the mall told her that there was a parking lot a block away. Ella’s tires squealed on the asphalt as she raced to the lot, then she sprinted back to the shopping mall. By the time she got back, all the old ladies had gotten off the bus and a young woman, most likely a member of the facility’s staff, was giving a lecture to the group, probably telling them what time they needed to get back to the bus. Ella wondered if they had GPS devices strapped to the old women so they could find them if they got lost. If they didn’t, they should have.

The group broke up and Esther and her friend took off, looking ready to shop until they dropped. Ella followed them, and when they entered a women’s clothing store, she took a seat outside the store and pulled out her cell phone and searched Google Maps. Thank God for smartphones and the Internet. She found what she needed only two blocks from the mall.

Moving quickly, Ella went into a sporting goods store across from the women’s clothing store that Esther had entered. She paid cash for a cheap New York Knicks blue nylon jacket with orange sleeves and an orange baseball cap with a Nike swoosh on the front. She asked the clerk for a large shopping bag to hold her purchases, but once outside the store, she put on the jacket and the cap, keeping the empty shopping bag. Ella had a plan—now all she needed was some luck.

Esther and her buddy came out of the women’s clothing store and continued down the mall, Ella following. Ella couldn’t help noticing that Esther moved at a pretty good clip. In fact, for an eighty-six-year-old, Esther was amazingly fast on her feet.

Ella noticed that Esther had her purse slung over her shoulder and kept one hand on it. She’d most likely heard stories about young thieves running by, snipping purse straps with a switchblade, and running like Jesse Owens. Ella needed to snatch that purse—and she had an idea for how she was going to do it—but an hour later Esther and her friend were still wandering around the mall. They didn’t buy a damn thing—but, man, did they have stamina.

Finally, Esther gave Ella the opportunity she’d been waiting for. Esther’s friend went into a store called Perfume Heaven, which made Ella smile. Who was the old gal wearing perfume for? Did she have a young seventy-year-old stud back at the assisted living place? Esther, however, didn’t go into Perfume Heaven with her. Instead, Esther headed toward the ladies’ room.

Ella allowed Esther enough time to take a seat in a stall, then walked into the restroom, praying it wouldn’t be crowded. It wasn’t. Only one other stall was being used; Ella could see a woman’s calf-high boots beneath the door. Esther’s bright blue running shoes were visible in the other occupied stall. Ella peeked under the door of the stall Esther was using, and there was Esther’s purse, on the floor, near her feet. Ella dropped to her knees, and quick as a striking cobra, she grabbed the purse. She heard Esther shriek as she ran toward the bathroom door.

Ella threw Esther’s purse into her shopping bag and walked quickly to the nearest large store, a JCPenney. As she walked toward one of the fitting rooms, she dropped her orange baseball cap on the floor near a rack full of puffy ski jackets. In the dressing room, she removed Esther’s purse from the shopping bag, opened it, and found what she wanted: Esther’s key ring.

There were only two keys on the ring, and one looked as if it might open a safe-deposit box at a bank. The other key was certainly for Esther’s apartment door. Ella put the keys and the cash she found in Esther’s purse—a grand total of forty-two bucks—in her jeans and dropped the purse back into the shopping bag, where she also deposited the black wig she was wearing and her new Knicks jacket. The reason Ella had bought the jacket and the orange baseball cap in the first place was so that if a witness spotted her when she stole Esther’s purse, the witness would most likely identify those two distinctive items—items Ella was no longer wearing.

Ella left JCPenney and walked rapidly to the nearest mall exit. The information she’d looked up on her smartphone was the location of hardware stores near the Manhattan Mall, and she’d found a place called Elm Electric & Hardware between West Thirty-first and Thirty-second, less than two blocks from the mall. She wouldn’t even have to use her car to get there.

Outside the mall, Ella jogged to the hardware store and had a copy of Esther’s door key made. It took only fifteen minutes. Now she had to return Esther’s purse to Esther, because the last thing she wanted was Esther changing her lock. Back at the mall, she stopped the first security guard she saw, and said, “I saw this purse on a bench. Someone must have forgotten it.”

By now Esther would have reported to mall security that someone had stolen her purse, and Ella figured that before long an announcement would be made over the public address system telling lucky Esther where she could reclaim her property. And when Esther saw that the only thing missing was her cash, but that her credit cards and keys were still there, she’d thank the Lord—and certainly wouldn’t change her lock.