On Twelfth Street, outside St. Vincent’s, I began meandering west, toward Harbor View, taking my time so that the dogs could read the news of the neighborhood, post their own messages, be themselves before going back to work.
But as I got closer and closer to the way West Village, I found myself going even more slowly, like Dashiell when he wants to stay out and sees I’m heading home.
So I turned south, toward the cottage. I was feeling funny and wanted to be home, even if it was just for an hour. Maybe I was just hungry. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a real meal. So I crossed Hudson Street and stopped at Pepe Verde, getting some pasta and chicken to go, a mixed salad, too, and some of their wonderful bread to go with it.
After unlocking the gate and letting the dogs in first, I picked up the mail, several days’ worth, stopped in the garden, and sat on one of the benches, watching the dogs flirt and play. Then, without going inside, I opened the bag of food and started eating my salad with the little plastic fork, feeling how empty I was, and how tired.
What was the rush? Surely tomorrow would be a mess, the Pooles and the Kagans finding out about the new arrangements for Harbor View. No more Venus this and Venus that; she’d be pretty much running things as soon as she got out of the hospital. And the shock of it, that she and Harry had fallen in love and gotten married. That ought to take them some time to get used to.
I didn’t know about the Pooles. To hell with them. They had nothing to do with this after tomorrow. But Eli would work it out with Venus, for the sake of the kids. They’d be okay, in time.
Time was all any of them needed, time to adjust to the changes and go on. Time was what I needed, too, I thought, starting the pasta, giving each dog a piece of the chicken, saving a little for myself, feeling so tired I wasn’t sure I could make it upstairs to bed.
Why rush over there tonight? I thought, wondering if they knew about Samuel yet. He wouldn’t show up for his evening sing-along. So what? They’d wonder where he was and put the kids to bed. If I went over, I’d have to tell them the bad news—where he was, and why. A message like that, mightn’t they want to kill the messenger? And who was I kidding? I wasn’t merely the messenger. I was the one who’d dropped Samuel off at the precinct, who told them what he’d done and why. No, better to stay home, look at the mail, let Lady spend the night and take her back in the morning, let her settle in with the kids while the Kagans sat in the lawyer’s office listening to the news, two of them anyway.
I put the remains of dinner into the outside trashcan and secured the lid. Then I unlocked the door, called in the dogs, and filled two bowls with dry dog food, adding some cottage cheese and yogurt, cleaning and refilling the water bowl. I carried the mail upstairs and took it into my office, dropping it on my desk, opening the top drawer and picking up Venus’s necklace, letting the heart spin in the light from the desk lamp.
When the phone rang, both dogs barked. The sound seemed out of place in the quiet house.
“Alexander.”
“Rach. It’s Marty.”
“Hey. How’s it going? Any luck with that bicycle yet?”
“Not yet. That thing’s been out in the weather for two weeks. Whatever wasn’t washed off was rubbed off by other people’s hands. Doesn’t look too promising, but then again, we shouldn’t need it now, should we, now that you solved the case for us.”
“How’s that?”
“Cute, Rach, cute. Like it slipped your mind, the guy you dropped off here.”
“Oh. Him. How’s that going?”
“He confessed.”
“Hey, great. How’d you get it out of him?”
“The usual—hot lights, rubber hoses, beatings, and of course the stun gun. Agoudian’s good at what he does.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary?”
“Completely routine, but I tell you, this one’s an amateur, a real crybaby. Wet his damn pants before five minutes elapsed. Literally. Anyway, we couldn’t have gotten where we are without you, kid.”
“Well, it wasn’t really me. Dashiell got real interested in his pants, so I figured he had the dog, and the rest just fell into place. But it was Agoudian who got him to confess. He only owned up to taking the dog when I had him.”
“None of that denial here. He opened his mouth, he didn’t shut up until it was all on the table, good stuff, rich with detail.”
“That’s good. A relief.”
“You bet. Always nice when you can close a case. It makes the captain happy. So, you recovered the dog at his place?”
“I did.”
“Everything okay on that end?”
“Fine. She’s okay. I have her here, Marty. I’m bushed. I thought I’d keep her here tonight, take her back to Harbor View in the morning. That okay?”
“Yeah, Rach. We know where she was. And we know where she’ll be. Besides, he wrote it all down and signed it. We got him on video, too.”
“You need his keys?” I asked. “I have them here. I can drop them off in the morning. In case someone wants to go out to Brooklyn, get him a dry pair of pants.”
“There’s nothing in the budget for that, Rach. His old man can get him some clean pants. Or he can get them himself, come tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?”
“He confessed, all right. We were running out of fucking videotape. He was ready to take responsibility for World War II by the time we finally shut him up.”
I didn’t say anything. I had a strong feeling he wasn’t finished.
“He started out, it looked pretty good. He had a few of the details down pat, stuff he shouldn’t have known, about how the bicycle was obtained, for example.”
“I may have inadvertently—”
“But the more into it he got—” I could picture him shaking his head. “He was real wound up, Rach, talking a mile a minute, sweating so much his shirt was as wet as his pants. Agoudian, he can be pretty loud when he has to, he’s in his face, asking him how he could have hit the old man with the bike, someone he knew since he was a little kid, and you know what he says? He says, I hit him from behind. I did it so I wouldn’t have to see his face. Couldn’t have done it the other way, he tells Agoudian, like this makes him sensitive, this makes it okay he killed Dietrich, because he hit him in the back, not the front. What this makes him is not guilty, Rachel. What it makes him is nutty as a fruitcake.”
I took a deep breath.
“His father’s a shrink,” I said.
“Yeah, so it figures, right?”
“Seems to go that way.”
“Well, he shouldn’t be running around loose, in my opinion.”
“But he will be? You’re letting him loose?”
“One o’clock. Right after lunch. In case you want to meet him, give him back his keys in person. On the other hand, he might not be too happy to see you, considering. Even after cooling off overnight. Maybe you ought to leave them for him at Harbor View. He might be annoyed with you, bringing an innocent man to the precinct, accusing him of some horrific crimes, only one of which he’s guilty of.”
“Is that why you’re keeping him overnight, to ‘cool off?’”
He didn’t say anything right away.
Neither did I.
“The guys are pissed about what he did, about the nature of the crime, taking the dog away from those poor souls at Harbor View. The dog disappears, wouldn’t they figure any one of them might be next? Must have been a tough time there. So we figured a night of our best hospitality, a couple of our gourmet meals under his belt, he might think twice in the future.”
I looked up at the bulletin board, the list of people who’d be disappointed once they read the will, thinking, if not Samuel, then who?
“I’m sorry, Marty. I thought—”
“Hey, the dog’s okay, right?”
“Right.”
“Then something good came out of this, didn’t it?”
“Yeah. Thanks for saying that,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” he told me.
After I hung up, I’m not sure why, I went to the bathroom, got the tweezers, and, sitting at the desk, holding the necklace under the light, I closed the link on Venus’s chain, then slipped it around my neck, fastened the latch, and tucked it under my shirt, the heart that Harry had given Marilyn first and Venus second. I went into the bedroom and crawled under the covers, feeling the bed bounce twice as both dogs joined me a moment later.
But I couldn’t sleep. At first, I was thinking about Samuel Kagan, who, when he couldn’t get positive attention from his father, had tried for some negative attention, confessing to crimes he didn’t commit just so his old man would take some notice of him.
And then I stayed up even longer; whoever had killed Harry and tried to kill Venus was still running around loose. Time was running out, and I didn’t have a clue as to who that was.