Before I Say Good-Bye Page 24

  “Would you have called yourself Adam’s friend?”

  “No. Frankly, I would not. I knew him—period.”

  Nell nodded. “What did you think of him as an architect? The way you spoke the other day, one might have thought that the world had lost a genius.”

  Lang smiled. “I don’t think I went that far, did I? What I was trying to convey was that we could not use his design for the Vandermeer project. Quite frankly, it was just a courtesy to you to suggest that we would have used it if he had lived. Since he obviously did not tell you that he was off the job, I saw no point in delivering that rather negative news after his death.”

  “You also lied when you said you only wanted the property I now own for additional landscaping,” Nell said flatly.

  Without responding, Lang went over to the wall and pushed a button. A hidden screen rolled down and was illuminated. On the screen was a panoramic view of Manhattan. In it, buildings and projects, numbered and outlined in blue, dotted the landscape from north to south, and from east to west. A gold-lettered legend on the right listed the names and locations of the various properties.

  “The ones marked in blue are the Lang holdings in Manhattan, Nell. As I told the detectives, who all but accused me of setting the bomb that blew up Adam’s boat, I would like to acquire the Kaplan property because we now have a stunning design we’d like to go ahead with, but it is one that requires that extra bit of land.”

  Nell walked over to the illustration he indicated and studied it closely. Then she nodded.

  Peter Lang pushed the button that retracted the screen. “You’re absolutely right,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t truthful with you, and for that I apologize. I would like to couple the Kaplan property with the Vandermeer land because my grandfather settled almost on that exact spot when he was an eighteen-year-old immigrant, just off the boat from Ireland. I would like to erect a magnificent tower of a building that would be a kind of monument to what three generations of Langs—my grandfather, my father and myself—have accomplished. To achieve that, in that particular spot, I need the Kaplan land.”

  He looked directly at her. “However, if I don’t get it, I will move on. Another opportunity will present itself in that area, sooner or later.”

  “Why didn’t you buy the Kaplan property yourself?”

  “Because I had no use for it unless the landmark status was removed from the Vandermeer mansion, and when that happened, it was totally unexpected.”

  “Then why do you think Adam bought it?”

  “Either he had extraordinary foresight, or someone on the Board of Estimate spoke out of turn about the status of the mansion. And by the way, don’t think that isn’t being investigated.”

  “I noticed that the Lang Tower was already listed as part of your landscape.” She pointed to the wall where the screen had been. “You must have been pretty sure you’d be able to build it in that location.”

  “Pretty hopeful, Nell, not sure. In this business, you always assume you’re going to get what you go after. It doesn’t always turn out that way, of course, but real estate developers tend to be optimists.”

  She had one more question before she left. “Do you know someone named Harry Reynolds?” Nell watched Peter Lang carefully, observing his reaction.

  Lang looked puzzled, then his face brightened. “I knew a Henry Reynolds at Yale. He taught medieval history. But he died ten years ago. No one ever called him Harry. Why do you ask?”

  Nell shrugged. “It’s not important.”

  He walked with her to the elevator. “Nell, what you do with your property is up to you. I’m like a ballplayer who gets fired up when he goes to bat, but if he strikes out, he doesn’t waste too much time regretting it. If he wants to keep his batting average up, he starts thinking about his next time at the plate.”

  “That’s not the tune you sang the other day.”

  “Some things have changed since the other day. No piece of land is worth having the police questioning me as if I’m a murderer. Look, my offer to buy it is on the table. To show you I mean business, I’m taking my offer off the table as of Monday evening.”

  Peter Lang, you do not get the Boy Scout award for sincerity, Nell thought as the elevator plunged from the penthouse to the lobby. You’ve got an almost maniacal ego. As far as that property goes, I don’t believe for a single minute that you’d walk away from it. In fact, I believe you want it so much it hurts. But that isn’t important, and it isn’t even the real reason I came here. I needed an answer, and I believe I have it.

  In some deep part of her being, Nell was sure she now knew all she needed to know about Peter Lang. The sensation was akin to the certainty she felt the several times in her life she had heard her dead parents speak to her.

  She was the only passenger in the elevator. As it rushed down, she said aloud, “Peter Lang, you do not have blood on your hands.”

  seventy-three

  DAN MINOR BOTH ANTICIPATED and dreaded checking his answering machine at the end of the day. For some reason, the very act of aggressively searching for his mother was accompanied by the feeling that if her whereabouts were discovered, the news would not be good.

  When he arrived home on Thursday, the message he found waiting was from Mac: “Give me a call, Dan. It’s important.”

  From the somber tone of Cornelius MacDermott’s voice, Dan knew that the search for Quinny was over.

  He was a surgeon whose fingers held the most delicate instruments, whose slightest miscalculation could cost a life. But those fingers trembled as Dr. Dan Minor dialed Cornelius MacDermott’s office.

  It was quarter of five, just the time Dan had told Mac he usually got home from the hospital. When the phone rang, Mac did not wait for Liz to put the call through but picked it up himself.

  “I have your message, Mac.”

  “There’s no easy way to say this, Dan. You’ll make the final identification in the morning, but the picture you gave me matches the picture they took of a homeless woman who died last September. The vital statistics are right, and pinned to her bra she had the same picture you carry.”

  Dan swallowed over the choking lump that had formed in his throat.

  “What happened to her?”

  Cornelius MacDermott hesitated. He doesn’t have to know everything now, he thought. “The place where she was staying caught fire. She suffocated.”

  “Suffocated!” Dear God, Dan thought, anguished. Couldn’t she have been spared that?

  “Dan, I know how tough this is. Why don’t you meet me for dinner?”

  It was an effort to speak. “No, Mac,” he managed to say. “I think I kind of need to be by myself tonight.”

  “I understand. Then call me at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll meet you at the M.E.’s office. We’ll make the arrangements.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Buried. In potter’s field.”

  “They’re sure of the location where they put her body?”

  “Yes. We can arrange to have it exhumed.”

  “Thanks, Mac.”

  Dan replaced the receiver, took out his wallet, threw it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch. From the wallet, he took the photo he had carried around with him ever since he was six years old. He propped the picture up.

  Minutes, an hour, an hour and a half went by as he sat immobilized, straining for every memory of her, however vague, he could recall.

  Oh, Quinny, why did you have to die like that? he asked.

  And why, Mother, did you blame yourself for what happened to me? It wasn’t your fault. I was the stupid little kid who caused the accident.

  But it turned out all right, actually better than all right. I wanted you to at least know that, he thought.

  The doorbell rang. He ignored it. It rang again, this time persistently.

  Damn! Leave me alone, he thought. I don’t want to have a drink with the neighbors.

  Reluctantly, he got up, walked across the room and
opened the door. Nell MacDermott was standing there. “Mac told me,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Dan.”

  Wordlessly he stepped aside and let her in. He closed the door, put his arms around her and began to cry.

  Friday, June 23

  seventy-four

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, a messenger was sent to collect tape cassettes of the September 9th, late-evening newscasts from each of New York City’s six major television stations. Once gathered, they were to be delivered to the district attorney’s office.

  Detectives Sclafani and Brennan were waiting for the messenger, and when he arrived they took the tapes to the tech room on the ninth floor. Making their way through the maze of equipment and wires, they selected a VCR and television off to one side of the room. Brennan pulled up chairs, while Sclafani dropped the tape from the CBS station into the player.

  “Showtime,” he told his partner. “Get out the popcorn.”

  The lead story was about the fire that had engulfed the landmark Vandermeer mansion on Twenty-eighth Street and Seventh Avenue.

  Dana Adams was the CBS reporter on the scene, broadcasting live at the time. “The Vandermeer mansion, erected on one of the oldest original Dutch farms in the city, and a landmark building that had been standing empty for the past eight years, was engulfed in flames tonight. The fire, which was called in to the local fire station at 7:34, spread rapidly through the building, at one point engulfing the entire roof. On reports that homeless people had occasionally been seen in and around the premises, firefighters risked their lives to search the structure. Tragically, in an upstairs bathroom they discovered the body of a homeless woman who apparently had died of smoke inhalation. She is believed also to have started the fire that consumed the building. Authorities say they have made a tentative identification but will not release the victim’s name until it has been confirmed and the next of kin can be located and notified.”

  The news segment ended and a commercial began.

  “The Vandermeer mansion!” Sclafani exclaimed. “Lang owns that, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, and Cauliff owned the property next to it.”

  “Which means they both stood to make a buck on that fire.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, let’s watch the rest of the tapes just in case there is something else that might possibly have been tied to Jimmy Ryan’s big payoff.”

  Almost three hours later, they had found no other story on any of the stations that in any way could conceivably concern Jimmy Ryan. The destruction of the old mansion had been covered extensively on all the stations, of course.

  They turned the tapes over to technical support to be copied for backup security. “And run the six Vandermeer segments together,” Sclafani directed the technician.

  They went back to Sclafani’s office to review what they had learned. “What have we got?” Brennan asked.

  “Coincidence, which we both know is a dirty word, and the opinion of a ten-year-old girl that Daddy got upset while watching that broadcast. Maybe after a couple of beers, Daddy was just feeling down on his luck.”

  “Lisa Ryan said that his story at the time was that the ‘cancel the job’ phone call related to extra work he’d already taken care of.”

  “That’s easy enough to check out, I guess.” Brennan got up. “We’ve seen cases of homeless people accidentally setting fires in abandoned buildings,” he said thoughtfully, “and other people losing their lives because of it.”

  “Take it from the other angle,” Sclafani suggested. “When a homeless person is known to be squatting in a building that burns down, it’s easy to assume that’s who caused the fire.”

  “I think we both agree it’s time to take a good look at exactly what happened on September 9th in the Vandermeer mansion.” George Brennan took out his notebook. “I’ll start digging on that end. Let’s see. That’s Twenty-eighth Street, on the east side of Seventh Avenue. The 13th Precinct would have the file.

  “I’m going out with bag lady Winnie Johnson’s key again,” Sclafani said. “We need to find the bank where she had that safe deposit box.”

  “Unless it’s too late.”

  “Unless it’s too late,” Sclafani agreed. “If an eight-year-old kid from Wilmington is right, someone got off that boat before the explosion. My guess as of now is that the person he saw was Winifred Johnson. In which case, even without the key, she could have gotten into the box.”

  “Do you realize that right now we’re following up leads provided by a farsighted eight-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl who keeps a diary?” Brennan said with a sigh. “Mother told me there’d be days like this.”

  seventy-five

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, Nell phoned the Old Woods Manor nursing home and inquired about Winifred Johnson’s mother. She was switched to the nurse’s desk on the second floor.

  “She’s really quite depressed,” the nurse told her. “Winifred was a very dutiful daughter. She came up here for a visit every Saturday, and sometimes in the evenings during the week as well.”

  Winifred the faithful daughter. Winifred the swimmer. Winifred the bag lady. Winifred the lover of Harry Reynolds. Which one was she, Nell wondered, or was she all four of those people? And was she now in South America or on one of those islands in the Caribbean that wouldn’t send her back to the U.S. even if authorities located her there?

  “Is there anything I can do for Mrs. Johnson?” she asked.

  “I think the best thing you could do would be to pay her a visit,” the nurse said frankly. “She wants to talk about her daughter, and I’m afraid the other guests here avoid her. She is a bit of a complainer, you know.”

  “I had intended to come up to see her next week,” Nell said. She wants to talk about her daughter, she thought. Was it possible that Mrs. Johnson might be able to tell me something that could lead to Winifred’s whereabouts, assuming she is still alive?

  “But I’ll come today instead,” she promised. “I can be there around noon.”

  She put the receiver down and went to the window. It was a gray, rainy morning, and when she had awakened, she had lain in bed for a long time, her eyes closed, reviewing everything that had happened in the last two weeks.

  She had imagined Adam’s face, painting it in scrupulous detail. On that last morning there had been no trace of the smile that had captivated her on their first meeting. He had been edgy and nervous, so anxious to get away that he had walked off without his jacket or briefcase.

  The jacket with safe-deposit key number 332 in it.

  I should turn the key over to the detectives, Nell thought, as she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I know I should. But not until . . . She did not finish the thought.

  A possibility, both grotesque and bizarre, had been forming in her mind—a possibility that by keeping the key she might be able to confirm or refute.

  Having the second key won’t help them find the bank any faster anyhow, she reasoned, as she stepped under the steaming water.

  She had almost confided to Dan what she was planning and why it was necessary, but last night had not been the time for that. That was the time to let him talk out his own grief and pain. In halting, broken sentences, he had told her about the accident that drove his mother away, about the long months in the hospital when he had kept praying that the door to his room would open and he would see her standing there. Then he had talked about how the devotion of his grandparents had helped him to heal both physically and emotionally.

  Finally he said, “I know that once I’m able to move my mother to the family burial plot in Maryland, I’ll start to have a feeling of peace about her. I won’t wake up in the middle of the night wondering if she’s out on the streets somewhere, cold or hungry or sick.”

  I told him that I truly believe the people we love never really leave us, Nell thought as the pelting water coursed over her face. I told him about Mother and Daddy coming to say good-bye to me.

  He asked me if Adam had said good-bye in
the same way. I just shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about Adam last night.

  At ten o’clock she had gone into his kitchen and poked around, looking for the makings of dinner. “You’re obviously not one of those bachelors who’s a gourmet cook,” she had told him with a smile.

  She found eggs and cheese and a tomato, and was able to put together an omelet and toast and coffee. As they ate, he even had been able to joke a little. “Are you able to make yourself invisible, Nell? I’ve been trying to figure out how you got past my doorman. He’s worse than a prison guard. You practically have to give a blood sample to get in if you’re not a tenant.”

  “Somebody in the building is having a party. I joined a group of six or seven people, then when they got off on the fourth floor, I told the elevator operator I was visiting you. He let me off here and pointed to your apartment. I was afraid if I was announced, you either wouldn’t answer the intercom or would turn me down.”

  “Well, there your precognition was wrong. I would have said, ‘Come up, Nell. I need you.’ ” He gave her a steady look.

  It was almost midnight when Dan had gone downstairs with her and put her in a cab. “l won’t be able to meet Mac at Bellevue until about noon,” he had told her. “I’m scheduled for a couple of surgeries in the morning.”

  Fifteen minutes later, when Nell arrived home, there was a message from him on her answering machine: “Nell, I don’t think I thanked you for coming to be with me tonight. It made me feel the way I would have felt as a kid if the hospital door had opened and the beautiful lady I loved was there. I know I have a hell of a nerve talking like this, and won’t again for at least another six months, I promise. I do realize you’ve been widowed for only two weeks. It’s just that I’m so thankful that you’ve come into my life.”

  She had taken the tape out of the machine and put it in one of the dresser drawers.

  Nell thought of the tape again as she stepped out of the shower this morning, toweled herself vigorously, dried her hair and dressed in light-blue gabardine slacks and a blue-and-white, man-tailored shirt.