The Fury - Jason Pinter [33]
I could find in the park, until by the end people started
to recognize me as having pestered half the lot and they
began to move away before I even approached them.
One couple I asked twice within half an hour.
Nobody had seen Gaines. Nobody had noticed him.
He was a ghost in his own neighborhood. Or at least to
these people.
When people asked what I was looking for, I
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mumbled something about him having gone missing. If
they knew I was looking into a murder, they'd clam up
faster than a vegetarian at a barbecue.
The sun began to set. So far my efforts had yielded
nothing. I took a seat on a park bench. Desperation had
come and gone, and I was left holding a crumpled photo
of a man I barely knew, who'd lived a life seemingly
nobody had known. Several days ago none of this
mattered. Work was good. My relationship seemed to
finally be on stable ground. And now here I was, bother
ing strangers, hoping they might have happened, by some
ludicrous hope, to have seen someone other than my
father shoot a man in the back of the head. Or at least knew
more about Stephen than I did which was next to nothing.
I was searching for a needle in the East River, with
no clue which way the current was flowing.
I was about to give up, to try to think of a new angle
to attack from, when a shadow fell over me. I looked
up to see a young woman, late twenties or so, standing
in front of me. She was reed thin, one arm dangling limp
by her side while the other crossed her chest, holding
the opposite shoulder. Her hair was red and black,
mascara haphazardly applied. Perhaps twenty pounds
ago she'd been attractive, but now she was a walking,
painted skeleton. She was wearing a long-sleeved
sweater, but the fabric was dangling off her limbs. It
allowed me to see the bruising underneath. The purplish
marks on her skin immediately caught my attention. My
pulse sped up. Her lip trembled. I didn't have to show
her the newspaper clipping. I knew what she was going
to say even before she opened her mouth.
"I knew Stephen."
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A cup of steaming tea was set in front of me. It smelled
like mint. She offered me milk, which I politely
declined. I watched her sit down, a cup of the same at
her lips. She'd poured both from the same kettle, so I
didn't have to worry about being poisoned. I began to
think about how much more paranoid I'd become over
the years.
"Thanks," I said.
"Don't mention it. I brew three pots a day."
I nodded, took a look around.
This woman, Rose Keller, had taken me up to her
apartment after I told her who I was and what I was
doing. She seemed apprehensive, but once convinced of
my authenticity she was more than happy to help.
She lived in a studio apartment at the top of a fourstory walk-up on Avenue B and Twelfth Street. The
floor was covered with gum wrappers, the walls deco
rated with posters of vintage album covers and artsy
photographs, usually of frighteningly skinny women
shaded in odd pastel light. The room smelled like patch
ouli and cinnamon. Our tea rested on what appeared to
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be an antique trunk, covered in customs stickers from
every corner of the earth. Portugal, Greenland, Syndey,
Prague, the Sudan. This woman didn't look like she
traveled much. Odds were she'd bought the pieces,
stickers already applied.
The bed was unmade, and I noticed a large box
sticking out from underneath. She saw me looking at it,
said, "Clothes. I keep meaning to donate them."
She was lying, but I wasn't here to judge.
"So how did you know Stephen?" I asked.
"We used to..." She looked away from me. Then she
pulled a lighter from her sock, took a bent cigarette
from a drawer. "You mind if I smoke?"
"Go right ahead."
She took out a glass ashtray and set it on the table.
It was crusted with old butts and ash. Flicking the
lighter, she lit the cig and took a long puff, holding it
aloft between two fingers.
"We used to get high together," she said.
"Used to?" I asked.
"I met him when I moved to the city eight years ago.
Wanted to be on Broadway,