Dear Old Dead Page 9

  Michael went up to the two women at the very back of the crowd—Sarah Cavanieri and Judy Hedge, both nurses—and nudged them aside. They both blushed bright red when they recognized him. Judy Hedge tapped the woman in front of her. The woman was not somebody Michael knew, but she was somebody who knew him. She blushed too and moved aside just as quickly as the other two had. This was what it meant to have charisma, Michael decided. You could part crowds the way God parted the Red Sea.

  Up at the front, the principals were much too interested in Rosalie van Straadt’s fit to take any notice of Michael. Michael stopped one layer of people short of the front to take it all in. There was Eamon Donleavy in his damned orange T-shirt, furious. There was Sister Augustine, proving once again that being a nun had less to do with what you wore than with what you were. Bright red sweatsuit notwithstanding, Augie was radiating all the authority of the Reverend Mothers of Michael’s dim childhood memory. He’d always thanked God and the devil that he hadn’t been born Catholic whenever he ran into one of those Reverend Mothers. The tall, heavy man in the suit and sweater Michael thought must be Gregor Demarkian. He had seen pictures of Gregor Demarkian in newspapers and magazines, but those didn’t count. Michael could never recognize people from magazine photographs. He had once stood next to Christie Brinkley for fifteen minutes in the Pasta and Cheese on East Sixty-first Street and not known who she was. Gregor Demarkian did not look formidable, but Michael wasn’t fooled by that. Stephen Hawking did not look formidable. Niels Bohr had been a small round man whom strangers often mistook for a shoe salesman. Michael wondered for a moment if this Demarkian man wasn’t hot—why the sweater?—and turned his attention to Rosalie.

  Rosalie was quicker than the rest of them. In Michael’s experience, Rosalie always was. She had made a royal mess of the office—at least, Michael assumed it was she who had made it—and she was now intent on making that mess ever more magnificent. All Michael’s lab beakers were shards of glass on the floor. Fortunately, he only used the lab beakers to grow oregano in when he had the time, and he hadn’t had the time for months now. She had overturned his looseleaf desk calendar and scattered the pages on top of the glass shards. She had dumped the ancient brown liquid in his coffeemaker onto his carpet. She had a tray of surgical equipment in her hands and was about to send it crashing to the floor. Unlike everybody else in the room, however, she was paying attention.

  Michael caught the moment when Rosalie recognized him. Her gaze was roving back and forth across the crowd, checking out her audience. Sister Augustine was talking to her, but Rosalie was paying no attention. Rosalie’s eyes kept darting back in the direction of Gregor Demarkian, as if he were the one member of the crowd she had to convince. Michael wondered what it was Rosalie was intent on convincing them all of, this time. Then Rosalie’s head swung in his direction, and stopped. She was holding the tray of surgical equipment above her head. She froze it there. Then her beautiful eyes widened and she began to smile.

  “Well,” she said. “If it isn’t the son of a bitch.”

  That was when she did what Michael had been expecting her to do, ever since she got that tray into her hands. She raised it just a notch higher in the air. Then she whirled around and brought the tray down on the edge of his desk, so hard it clanged like a monster gong. Surgical instruments jumped into the air and flew everywhere. A scalpel stuck point-first into the side of his desk and stayed embedded there. Rosalie whirled around, crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her chin.

  “You son of a bitch,” she said again. “I’ve had the police in my apartment all week and it would never have had to have happened if you’d had the simple honesty to do what you ought to do and confess.”

  2

  FOR ROSALIE VAN STRAADT, the day had started to get rotten as soon as she opened her eyes. Either her alarm clock was on the blink or she had forgotten to set it. Whatever the reason, she hadn’t made it out of bed until after ten o’clock. That was a disaster. She’d had an important appointment at the bank at nine. She didn’t like the idea of making her bankers upset with her. She’d had to reschedule the appointment, and that had been embarrassing. She’d apologized to Harry Stratford himself, but even over the phone she had picked up the dry coldness of disapproval in Harry’s voice. She could hardly blame him. Her head ached and she wanted to smoke. She had quit smoking nearly six years ago.

  The day got worse when she got her copy of the New York Sentinel from the hall outside her apartment door and saw the headline. It was the same headline the paper had had since four days after Grandfather had died, and it was maddening.

  POLICE STUMPED: Still No Break in van Straadt Murder.

  Well, that was true enough. All the news had been no news for most of the last two weeks. So what? The other tabloids had moved on to fresher stories. The New York Times restricted itself to publishing tempered speculations on the future of Van Straadt Publications in the business section. Why did the Sentinel have to go on and on like this, killing its own circulation?

  That was when Rosalie had decided to get away from it all, and picked up the phone to call her old friend Sharon Leigh. Halfway through dialing the number, she stopped. The last time Rosalie had talked to Sharon Leigh, just a few days ago, the conversation hadn’t gone too well. Sharon had seemed… distant, somehow. Standoffish. Sharon had been willing enough to talk. At points during that call, Rosalie had even suspected that Sharon was keeping her on the phone as long as possible. What Sharon hadn’t been willing to do was meet. Rosalie had suggested lunch at the Hard Rock Café. Sharon had given an excuse that had sounded lame even at the time. Thinking back on it, it sounded lamer. Rosalie had hung up and stared at the push-button dial. Over the headline on the Sentinel was one of those red banners.

  COUNTDOWN TO FATHER’S DAY,

  it said.

  WIN A HUNDRED GRAND AND REALLY CELEBRATE.

  Father’s Day, for God’s sake. Father’s Day. Rosalie had despised her own father with every cell in her body. Grandfather had despised him, too. Fortunately, he had smashed himself up at the age of forty-two. Rosalie had been ten at the time. Rosalie’s mother had been distraught. Rosalie’s mother had always been distraught. She had been a complete bimbo. Maybe she still was. Rosalie had minimal family feeling, and what she had had to do with money.

  On the square marking next Thursday on the wall calendar in Rosalie’s kitchen were two exclamation marks and the words the lawyers in purple felt-tip pen. Other than that, there was nothing on the wall calendar at all. Of course, Rosalie had work to do. She had investments she managed and charities she supported. She put a lot of time into the Smith College Alumnae Association. Still, if something didn’t happen soon, what would she do? This could go on forever. She was as sure as she could be that Michael Pride had murdered her grandfather. She was just as sure that nobody would arrest him for it unless they had to, because nobody at all wanted to see Michael Pride arrested. That was how he’d gotten out from under that raid he’d been caught in the day or so before grandfather died. Rosalie had thought she’d had it all set up, and it had done nothing for her at all. And now—

  Now she sat down on the edge of Michael Pride’s desk and looked around the office. It was just as much of a mess as she had hoped she was making it. The witnesses were numerous and shocked. Rosalie didn’t care that Eamon Donleavy was furious or that Sister Augustine was exasperated. She did care that Michael Pride seemed to be amused, but she shoved that to the back of her brain. What Michael Pride felt or thought or did mattered not at all in this case. Rosalie had her eye on Gregor Demarkian, and in that direction she thought she had made a hit. She knew who Gregor Demarkian was because she had read about him in People magazine. She knew what he was doing here because there had been rumors about his coming for a week. It was impossible to keep anything secret in the center from anyone who really wanted to find out. Eamon Donleavy had been talking about Demarkian with the Cardinal for Rosalie didn’t know how long. It hadn’t occurre
d to Rosalie that Demarkian might actually be here when she showed up. She thought it was a very good thing for her that he was.

  He was supposed to be an independent investigator. He would have to take her seriously.

  Rosalie was wearing a little black dress today, instead of her customary slacks and turtleneck. It was too hot for slacks and turtleneck. In this dress she couldn’t tuck her legs up under her without showing off her underwear. That was a scenario with possibilities—Michael wouldn’t care, but Eamon Donleavy would spit—but Rosalie was afraid it would also make Gregor Demarkian think she was a jerk.

  Rosalie crossed her legs at the ankle instead. She said, “Well, now. Are all of you people willing to listen to what I have to say for once?”

  For a moment Rosalie thought Eamon Donleavy was going to lunge at her. She even flinched. He moved only to flex the muscles on his arms. “No,” he said. “Nobody is willing to listen to what you have to say.”

  Farther away, Gregor Demarkian coughed. “Excuse me,” he said. “My name is—”

  “Gregor Demarkian. I know. I’m glad you’re here. I’m Rosalie van Straadt.”

  “I understood that, yes,” Demarkian said.

  “It was my grandfather that was murdered,” Rosalie said. “And of course they’re all trying to cover it up. That’s why I’m here.”

  “That’s not why you’re here,” Michael said.

  Rosalie ignored him. It was true, of course, but everything she had to say was true, too. That was the point.

  Michael came fully out of the crowd and crossed to Gregor Demarkian. He held out his hand.

  “How do you do, Mr. Demarkian. I’m Michael Pride. Welcome to the Sojourner Truth Health Center.”

  “Thank you,” Gregor Demarkian said.

  Sister Augustine hissed. “Rosalie, get down off that desk. What will Mr. Demarkian think of us?”

  Rosalie had no intention of getting down off the desk. She wasn’t very tall. She would be swallowed up by the crowd. She started to swing her legs in the air instead.

  “They are covering it all up,” she said, in as reasonable a tone as possible. “They’ve been covering it up since it happened, just as they cover up everything else Michael does. Did you know that the strychnine my grandfather swallowed came from the medical cabinet in this very office?”

  “Yes,” Demarkian said.

  “Did you know that the cabinet was locked? And that only Michael and Sister Augustine had keys?”

  “I knew that, too. Yes.”

  “Well, they’ve been much more forthcoming than I thought they’d be. But I bet there’s something you don’t know. I bet you don’t know that Michael was arrested two days before my grandfather died. Arrested on a morals charge.”

  “It wasn’t a morals charge, Rosalie,” Michael said. He sounded so damn patient. “It was a vice charge. There’s a difference.”

  “What difference?”

  “On a vice charge, you weren’t corrupting the morals of a minor. Don’t tell me you pulled this entire stunt just to make sure Mr. Demarkian knew I’d been picked up using a glory hole in Times Square.”

  Rosalie looked away. He was so damned casual about it. How could he be so damned casual about it? It wasn’t like telling people you were gay. Lots of people were gay. This was more like confessing to a disease.

  “You wanted him dead,” Rosalie said, carefully, still looking away. “You know perfectly well you wanted him dead.”

  Michael shook his head. “No I didn’t, Rosalie. Why would I have wanted him dead?”

  “If he hadn’t died, he would have put all that stuff about you in the Sentinel.”

  “So what? It had already been in every newspaper in town. It had already been on the local television news. What difference would a story or two in the Sentinel have made?”

  “He would have forced you out of here, out of the center. He would have made you quit.”

  “He couldn’t have. He didn’t own this place. I own this place. I’ve got better than fifty-three percent of the stock in the parent corporation. Nobody can force me out of here.”

  “He would have withdrawn his money if you didn’t leave. The center would have had to close.”

  “The center survived before your grandfather started giving us money. It will survive now that he’s no longer around to give it.”

  “It will have to, won’t it?” Rosalie said. “I’m not putting a penny into this place.”

  “I didn’t think you would. But Rosalie, dearest, you’ve just scuttled your own case. I couldn’t have murdered your grandfather to stop him from cutting off his funding, because by murdering him I would have cut off his funding.”

  “Oh, don’t be so damned logical,” Rosalie snapped. “You’re always so damned logical. How can you do this to me?”

  “How can I do this to you?”

  “You’re rigging this whole thing,” Rosalie said, appalled to realize that she was very near tears. “You’re switching everything around. You’re doing it on purpose.”

  “I’m doing what on purpose, Rosalie?”

  But there was no answer to that. Of course there was no answer to that. Rosalie’s head hurt. The muscles in her back and shoulders ached. What had she meant to accomplish by coming down here? What had she done now that she wouldn’t be able to take back?

  She eased herself carefully off the desk. She stepped into paper and glass. Everybody around her was dead quiet and watching. Gregor Demarkian hadn’t moved. Rosalie felt as if she were transparent, like one of those jellyfish, an undifferentiated ooze of clear membrane you could see the whole of the ocean through.

  “I’m going now,” she said, making herself sound as stubborn as she could. As righteous. “I can see I won’t get anyplace around here. None of you people is going to listen to me.”

  “We’ve been listening to you,” Eamon Donleavy said.

  Rosalie advanced toward the door, steadily, not altering her pace. People moved away as she came, still silent, still watching. This was impossible. She stopped at the door and turned back to look at them all.

  “You won’t be able to go on with this forever, you know. You won’t be able to get away with it. My grandfather was murdered and he was a very rich man. We won’t let you hide his murderer and mess the rest of us up. We won’t let you.”

  What was she talking about? The hall behind her was clear. God only knew where all the people had gone. Michael was staring at her, impassive. He was always so damned impassive. Her head was about to explode. She should have eaten something this morning. She wanted to heave and she hated doing that with nothing in her stomach. She wanted to run.

  Actually, running was the easy part. The way was clear. The front door was right in her line of sight and temporarily clear of traffic.

  Rosalie took one more look at Michael Pride’s face, and then took off.

  3

  ROBBIE YAGGER WAS STANDING right next to the Sojourner Truth Health Center’s front door when Rosalie van Straadt came running out. As soon as she burst through the doors, he stood up a little straighter and stared, hard. She looked a little familiar, but not familiar enough. And she was nothing at all like that girl he had seen the night it all happened. Robbie had very distinct memories of the night it had all happened, the night of the gang war shoot-out and the newspaper stories about Dr. Pride and the murder of Charles van Straadt. He woke up in the night sometimes, imagining himself walking through the corridors around the emergency room, looking in at bleeding people and wondering what he thought he was doing there. That was when he had seen the girl, or woman, or whatever she was. It was so hard to know what to call female people anymore. It was so hard to know anything.

  Robbie Yagger was smoking a cigarette when Rosalie van Straadt came out. He had his sign leaning up against the handrail of the stoop and his hand cupped around the lit end of his butt. The wind was the same as always up here, meaning ferocious. His cigarette always seemed to burn down to the filter too fast. He took
a drag, blew out smoke, took another drag. He looked at the doors of the center and wondered what he should do.

  Robbie Yagger might not be very bright, but he was honest, painfully honest, and he always had been. In the two weeks since Charles van Straadt had been murdered, he had been feeling unrelievedly guilty. He had been in the center, that night, after all. He had been wandering in and out of the rooms on the first floor. He had—well, seen things, maybe. The problem was, he wasn’t sure what it was he had seen, or if it was important, or what would happen to him if he told the police or anybody else official about it. He’d said so many things about the center and the abortions that went on there and about Dr. Pride. The man who was killed was the center’s biggest benefactor. Maybe the police would think that Robbie had killed Charles van Straadt himself, to stop the van Straadt money from going to abortions. Maybe they would think Robbie was the kind of suspect they would really like to have, meaning somebody not very important, somebody expendable. Robbie Yagger always felt expendable.

  He finished his cigarette and picked up his sign again. It felt futile, carrying it back and forth when nobody came up here except the center’s clients and half of them couldn’t read English. More than half of them couldn’t read.

  I’m going to have to do something about this, Robbie told himself, shouldering his sign bravely, beginning to pace back and forth in front of the center’s front door in the wind.