"Trail of Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rozan S J)

6

“Here, drink this.”

Mary held a takeout cup with a dangling Lipton’s label. I sipped, hoping tea would clear my fog. I felt as though I were seeing through the wrong end of a telescope and hearing through a closed door. And standing in sludge.

“Sit down,” Mary ordered.

“The forensics people-”

“Then in the hall.” She led me to the corridor and pointed at the floor.

Why hadn’t I thought of that? I sank down and leaned against the wall, closing my eyes.

“They’ll be through with you soon.” Mary’s voice came from beside me. “Then you can go.”

“I missed the train.”

“What?”

“Joel told me to get up here, and I was so mad at him for ordering me around that I didn’t hurry. If I’d caught the train that was pulling out, I’d have been here in time.”

“To get killed, too?”

I opened my eyes. “To stop the killer!”

“Maybe not.”

“I was talking to Joel on the phone!”

“And maybe the killer was right outside, waiting for him to hang up.”

“Still-”

“No ‘still.’ It’s not your fault. The point is now to catch the person who did this.”

I stared at this best friend, this cop. When, I wondered, had Mary stopped understanding me?

A small, sharp-featured man stepped out of Joel’s office. His gold shield was clipped to his pocket, and I knew someone had told me his name, but I had no idea what it was. He stopped when he caught sight of the badge hanging around Mary’s neck. “Who’re you?”

“Mary Kee. Fifth Precinct.”

“What’re you doing here?”

Mary pointed. “She’s a friend of mine.”

The uptown cop frowned. “Your name’s familiar. Do I know you?”

“We spoke on the phone. Your Asian John Doe from the hotel.”

“Right! You’re supposed to be ID-ing him.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Here? Now, I need the witness.”

“I’d like to stay.”

“I’d like you not to.”

“She’s a friend of mine. She’s upset.”

“And you’re off your turf. I’ll be nice.” He showed me a bunch of teeth, which was probably a smile.

Mary looked to me. I shrugged. She said, “When you’re ready to go, I’ll take you home,” and walked away down the hall.

The detective watched her, then turned back to me, notebook in hand. “You worked for Pilarsky?”

A preface would have been nice, I thought. Your name, how sorry you are. “Not exactly.” My voice sounded dull. Well, maybe I’d bore him, and he’d go away. “We’re both freelance. He called me in on a case. Before that I hadn’t seen him in a while.”

The detective had stopped writing, as if to let me finish babbling. “So, on this case, you worked for him.”

“I guess.”

“What’s the case?”

“Stolen jewelry.” I gave him a summary, finding it hard to stay focused. I kept seeing Joel standing outside the Waldorf, bursting into off-key song.

“Any way that could be related to this?” On “this” he nodded toward the office. I could read the skepticism in his lifted brows.

“I don’t know. When he called, he said something was fishy.”

“What was?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

Nodding as though he’d expect Joel not to tell me, he asked, “This jewelry-very valuable?”

“Not really, though it’s probably worth more than a Chinese civil servant could hope to see.”

“I thought everyone was getting rich over there, now that they took all our jobs. What’s ‘not really’?”

I stared at him. “Around twenty thousand, each piece.”

“Gee, sounds valuable to me. Must be nice to be you. What about Pilarsky? Why would someone shoot him over it? Did he have it?”

Mulgrew, I suddenly remembered, that was his name. Not that that made me feel any warmer toward him. “Detective Mulgrew? It’s missing. That’s why we were hired.”

“So maybe Pilarsky found it.”

“He told me something was fishy. That wouldn’t be fishy.”

“Fishy. Uh-huh.” He lifted his eyebrows again. “His wallet’s gone. And laptop and cell phone. And the place was turned over. You want to know, I make this for a robbery. How much cash did he keep in the office? A lot?”

“I don’t know. Just a robbery?”

“Some days, the bear gets you. We have three unsolved robberies in this neighborhood, last two months. Just like this. Daytime, high floor, vic alone. My theory? Messenger with a jones, just delivered whatever, now he’s in the building. Finds a one-man show, easy pickings.”

“Did anyone get killed in those others?”

“Maybe the vics didn’t put up a fuss. Would Pilarsky have? Instead of forking over?”

I gritted my teeth and nodded. “He could get-indignant.”

“Civilians.” Mulgrew shook his head.

“He was an ex-Port Authority cop.”

“Oh, really?” He spoke with the thick condescension the NYPD reserves for the lower cop orders. I wanted to slug him. “What about you? You ex-PA, too?”

“I’ve always been private.”

That got me an even more patronizing “I see.” Then: “Did Pilarsky go armed?”

“No. He shot someone on the job once and he didn’t like it.”

Mulgrew wrote that down, too, and flipped the notebook shut. So much for Joel. An ex-PA cop with a never-been-a-cop girl employee, unarmed because he was squeamish about shooting people, arguing with a stickup artist in his one-man office. What did he expect? Case closed.

“They have their own ambulances,” I said.

“What?”

“Orthodox Jews. There are special ways you have to handle the body.” Actually, I wasn’t sure Joel cared. He’d told me once about the ambulances, but I didn’t remember him saying to make certain he was carried away in one. But he had said I should get up here fast, and I hadn’t. In case the ambulance thing was important to him, I wanted to get it right.

Mulgrew hissed a sigh. “I think the Department can handle the protocol. Okay, go. Wait-what about you? You don’t carry, right?”

“I do sometimes, but not now.” I opened my jacket and showed him. Before he could ask, I opened my bag, too. He waved it closed as though I were trying to sell him something.

“So you do and Pilarsky didn’t?” Clearly for him that was backwards, just wrong.

“I shot someone once, too. I didn’t like it either. But I’d have liked it less if he shot me.”

Mulgrew smiled.

I still wanted to slug him.