The Caller

TWO

There were six doors off the hallway in Lowry’s apartment: into two bedrooms and a bathroom on the left; into the kitchen, living room and office on the right. The kitchen was painted citrus lemon with green glossy cabinets and cream worktops – all tidy and undisturbed. The living room had a deep red sofa, wide-screen TV and a pile of children’s toys in one corner. In the other was a yoga mat and two pink dumbbells.

‘I’m not sure any good graphic designer would have been involved in this interior,’ said Joe.

‘Maybe he was a bad graphic designer,’ said Danny. ‘Why do you always make victims nicer or more talented than you actually have any proof they are?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘When they’re in a nice house, you do.’

‘Yeah, well they’re hardly ever in a nice house, so that’s bullshit,’ said Joe. ‘They’re decomposing on the bare springs of a bed in some skanky crack den or some place that hasn’t seen a bottle of bleach …’

They walked into Ethan Lowry’s office.

‘This is more like it,’ said Joe. ‘See what I mean? Clean lines.’

‘People love crime shows. People love interior shows. You mix the two, Joe, you got a job for life. Extreme Make-over: Home Invasion Edition. CSI: Brownstone.’

Joe smiled. It encouraged Danny. ‘Detective Joe Lucchesi: investigating your death and your taste. What were your last movements? And why did you choose those drapes with that carpet? Find out after the break. This season, green kitchens are all the rage. Speaking of rage, savage beatings are—’

‘All right, already,’ said Joe. ‘Let me think.’

Ethan Lowry’s office was tidy and minimalist. Across one white wall was a long gray desktop, mounted on steel legs. A twenty-inch flat-screen monitor sat at the center, running the screensaver – a slideshow of Lowry’s family photos. Joe hadn’t set his up on his laptop yet, because he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to be reminded of. He paused in front of this happy montage of a dead man’s life. From the photos and the food deliveries, it was clear that Ethan Lowry had worked hard to slim down. The new, lighter body he had fought for was sad and pointless, lying in a pool of blood by his front door. The camera, a professional digital SLR, was on a low table to the right, beside two tall stacks of clear plastic drawers. Joe pulled a few of them open: receipts, paperclips, rubber bands, stamps.

‘Look,’ he said to Danny, ‘he was a good designer.’ The bottom drawer was filled with design awards that were gathering dust. ‘And,’ said Joe, ‘he was obviously modest enough not to display them. Which would lead me to believe he might have been quite a nice guy.’

Danny rolled his eyes.

Underneath the desk, the cables that ran from the computer, the printer, the disk drive and the lamp were grouped together neatly with cable ties and ended in plugs with icons. On the floor beside a well-made single bed in the corner was a pair of navy track pants, with a white T-shirt and a pair of white jersey boxer shorts thrown on top. A bunch of letters addressed to Ethan Lowry in girlie script and tied with rubber bands lay beside them. A seventeen-inch PowerBook was on top of the bed, its tiny white light pulsing. Beside it was a remote control vibrator and a short, stiff leather whip. Joe lifted up the screen of the laptop, which quickly flashed up a series of images from soft-porn DVD covers; oiled, topless men in jeans bearing down on tiny, lost blondes. Huge-breasted lesbian liplocks, cheerleaders, repairmen, soldier girls, soldier boys, police officers.

‘We’re a few shy of the Village People,’ said Danny, moving up beside him.

‘Tame,’ said Joe.

‘He’s no Marv.’ Marvin was one of the first dead bodies they had to guard as rookies, a morbidly obese victim of his own eating habits. All he had in his apartment when they found him was a tower of Krispy Kreme boxes, a mountain of crispy Kleenex and the sickest collection of amateur porn that Joe or Danny had ever admitted to seeing.

They moved into the master bedroom. Another tidy space, with a queen-sized bed and a pale green satin throw folded over the bottom half.

‘I wish Gina would let me have a bed this easy to climb into,’ said Danny. ‘Instead of taking a hundred fucking pillows out of the way first. Does that make sense to you ever, why women do that?’

‘No.’

There were books and bottles of water on each nightstand, some headache pills and a bracelet on the wife’s side, a wallet and a watch on the husband’s side. There was a chair in the corner with a pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt on it. Up a step on the left-hand side of the room was a raised dressing area that appeared to be Mrs Lowry’s domain and the most disturbed by the attack. There was makeup, shoes, belts and bags everywhere. In a corner, two linen baskets were stuffed and spilling over with clothes, a suitcase lay half unpacked, the dressing table was covered with hair products and more makeup. A small stool was upturned on the floor. Joe studied the room for several minutes before deciding the perp hadn’t made it in here. It looked more like a case of opposites attract.

Joe took notes of where he needed photographs to be taken and checked with Kendra when he got back to the hallway. He drew a sketch of the apartment, marking in the smallest of details.

After three hours, everyone was winding down and heading back to the twentieth precinct.

‘What do you think?’ said Danny as they got into the car.

‘Well, it’s not a burglary,’ said Joe.

‘Yeah, with the wallet just lying around—’

‘Two wallets,’ said Joe.

‘What?’

‘Yeah. In the hallway, the little table was knocked over. There’s a kind of bashed-up wallet there. And a new one.’

‘Both the vic’s?’ said Danny.

‘Both have his cards in it. And money.’

‘Yeah and then the expensive watch on the nightstand and shit …’ said Danny.

‘With the computer and the sex toys and the naked body, it could be something sexual.’

Danny nodded. ‘Do you think maybe he had something going on on the side? Blazkow said the wife was in Jersey with her ma for the night.’

Joe nodded. ‘I’d say yeah.’

He took out his cell phone. He had eight missed calls. Six were from Anna: one voicemail, four hang-ups and a final voicemail:

‘Asshole.’

With her accent, Joe liked when Anna said asshole. He didn’t like the volume, though, and the crash of the phone as she slammed it down. He looked at his watch. He hadn’t made Shaun’s meeting. And he hadn’t called.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Shit. I forgot to call Anna.’

‘You’re a dead man,’ said Danny, reversing out of the space. ‘Speaking of dead men, did you hear why Rufo lost all that weight?’

‘No.’

‘His brother died, forty-nine years old, heart attack. Bam. No warning.’

‘Yeah, I remember that.’

‘No, but there’s more. Apparently, at the funeral, Rufo had a few too many and one of the guys heard him tell some old aunt that he didn’t want to go down the same road as his brother because – wait for it – he’d never been in love. Specifically, he’d never found true love.’

‘Rufo?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m seeing him in a whole new way now.’

‘Yeah,’ said Danny, ‘in soft focus, running through a cornfield.’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘Three years ago.’

‘And we haven’t seen him with a woman yet.’

‘It’s sad. For all of us. He could have kept his fuller figure and we could have been spared the salad, quinoa, couscous talk.’

‘You go ahead in,’ said Joe when they got to the twentieth precinct. He walked past the entrance and called Anna. ‘Hey, honey, I’m sorry. I’m not gonna make—’

‘I know,’ said Anna. ‘Because I’ve already been to the school and now I’m back home.’

‘I caught a homicide. I’ve been tied up, honey. How did it go?’

‘Oh, well the principal was there and she started off by—’

Joe saw Cullen and Blazkow walk from their car into the building. ‘Honey? I’m sorry. I can’t get into the details right now. But did it go OK?’

‘That depends,’ she said stiffly.

‘I gotta go, look, I’m sorry. I’ll call you when I get back to the office, OK? It’ll probably be late. I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ she said, her voice tired.

Joe made his way up to the second-floor office. Everyone was standing around drinking coffee.

‘So what have we got?’ he said.

‘Closed homicide, no witnesses? A bag of shit,’ said Blazkow.

‘Any video?’ said Joe.

‘Not so far,’ said Martinez.

‘Not even from across the street?’ said Joe.

‘Nope.’

‘Not everyone was home in the building,’ said Blazkow. ‘So we’ll see what comes up, but neighbors on either side heard nothing and the doorman didn’t see shit.’

‘What about the wife?’

‘She’s at her ma’s with their kid,’ said Martinez. ‘She was a mess, tried to hold it together for the daughter, but … fuck. I got what I could from her, which was not a lot. She has no idea why this happened. They don’t socialize a lot, they hang out together most of the time.’

‘OK – Rencher, can you pull Lowry’s phone records?’ said Joe. ‘Cullen, could you run the plates of all the cars on the street? Tomorrow, we’ve got the autopsy. When we’ve got an idea of the time of death, we can work out about canvassing the building again.’ He turned to Blazkow. ‘You get anything from BCI or Triple I?’

Anyone who was arrested in New York got a NYSID number – New York State Identification. The Bureau of Criminal Investigations had the records. If Lowry had a criminal record, a phone call to the BCI would have details and a photo. A Triple I check would show if Lowry had an out-of-state record.

‘Nada,’ said Blazkow.

‘OK,’ said Joe.

‘Grab a desk,’ said Blazkow. ‘You want coffee?’

‘Thanks, yeah,’ said Joe. He took off his jacket and sat down. When he looked up, Denis Cullen was standing over him.

‘Uh – Joe? Can I put myself forward for going through the financial records, maybe the phone records?’

Joe laughed. ‘That’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been asked that.’

‘Yeah, well … I guess I’ve kind of got an eye for it.’

By 1 a.m., Joe was slumped in his chair, his fingers stiff from typing. He had crossed the coffee threshold. It was now sending him to sleep. He never realized he was ODing until it was too late.

‘I’m outta here,’ he said, standing up, suddenly.

‘You OK?’ said Danny.

‘I’m tired. I’m going back to the office. You coming?’

‘Sure. You not going home?’

‘Not tonight. Not with the autopsy first thing.’

The dorm in Manhattan North was off the locker room and had four metal beds with thin mattresses and covers that nobody risked sleeping under. Working the ‘four and two chart’ meant four days on, two days off. The first two tours were 4 p.m. to 1 a.m., the last two were 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The turnaround tour ended at 1 a.m. and was followed by an 8 a.m. start. Most detectives stayed in the dorm on those nights or at least told their wives they did. Anna didn’t like being alone at night any more, so Joe had been coming home; because they lived in Bay Ridge, he didn’t have far to go. But the first few nights on a major case, she wouldn’t expect to see him. He called her anyway.

‘Sweetheart, it’s me again. I’m staying at the office tonight.’

‘I know,’ said Anna.

‘Well, it’s just I hadn’t said, so I thought—’

‘It’s fine. Don’t worry.’

‘Will you be OK? Is Shaun home?’

‘No. But he’ll be back.’

‘What happened at the school?’

‘Well, the principal was very nice. I think she likes Shaun, but understands he’s … changed. She said he’s been rude and uncooperative.’

‘That’s the French blood.’

Anna laughed. ‘Yes. His falling grades they’ve put down to the American.’

Joe laughed. ‘They said the same thing about his charm and his looks.’

‘And low self-esteem …’

‘What was the bottom line?’ said Joe.

‘Just that they will give him a chance to improve. They think he’s tired in class, staying out too late and—’

‘Did they give us a hard time?’

‘They didn’t have to say a word.’

‘Look, are you sure you’re going to be OK tonight? Would you like me to get Pam to come over and stay?’

Pam was his father Giulio’s second wife.

‘Pam?’ said Anna. She laughed. ‘Yeah, babysitting by a woman the same age as me … who is my mother-in-law.’

‘Step.’

‘Whatever.’

‘It wouldn’t be babysitting. You could ask her over for a glass of wine and a movie. I’m just trying to help.’

‘Just to remind you – it’s after one in the morning. And I’m OK. Sleep well whenever you get there.’

‘Thanks. I’ll see you—’

‘In a few days. I know.’

‘I love you.’

‘Me too.’

‘Honey?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I love laughing with you.’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘And Joe?’

‘Yeah?’

‘At least I know you sleep in the dorm.’

‘I wouldn’t want it any other way.’

Anna was right. He did sleep in the dorm. But Gina Markey thought the same thing about Danny.

THREE

Stanley Frayte had an hour to kill before he showed up for work. He drove down Holt Avenue in his white Ford Econoline van stamped with the chunky blue lettering of Frayte Electrical Services. He pulled into the parking lot at the south end of Astoria Park. At 8.30 a.m., it was quieter than it would have been an hour before when the dawn walkers, runners and swimmers were making their way back home to take a shower before work.

He got out of the van and let the cool breeze from the East River raise goosebumps on his bare arms. Where he stood – by the park, under the Triborough Bridge – was Astoria as it had always been to him. On the Shore Boulevard side, the luxury condos that looked over the tennis courts on one side and Manhattan on the other represented change. Like Brooklyn, Astoria had lured people out of the city and was going through the makeover to prove it. Stan liked it all. He was just happy to be anywhere he could feel the sun, look out over beautiful water, walk through the trees, sit on a bench. When it hit 8.50 a.m., he went back to his van.

He drove down 19th Street and pulled into the small parking lot of the apartment building he had been working on for the previous two weeks. He unloaded his equipment and walked up the flagstone path. He stopped halfway and bent down, laying his gear beside him and pulling a penknife from his utility belt. He flipped it open and sliced at a weed that was pushing up through a gap in the cement. June, the receptionist, waved to him from behind the front desk as he walked towards her. He pushed through the front door into the lobby. The smell was lemon disinfectant, rising from the shiny floor tiles. June’s desk was on the left-hand side, a crescent moon that curved towards the door. The walls were pale gold with a cream dado rail that traced around the corner to the elevator bank. Behind the desk, free-standing plastic barriers closed off the corridor to everyone except the construction workers who were renovating that section of the building all the way up to the fourth floor.

‘Hey, Flat Stanley,’ said June, smiling up from her desk. Flat Stanley was a character from a children’s book who in a tragic accident got flattened to 2-D. The Stanley standing in front of June was not flat; he was Stanley with a belly inflated to bursting point. Stan grunted, shifting the utility belt that only ever came to rest under his gut, no matter how high he tried to move it.

‘Anything I need to know?’ he said.

‘Just that Mary Burig on the second floor is going to plant that little strip of flower-bed you’ve been kind enough to lend her.’

‘Mary?’ His face lit up. ‘Today?’

June nodded. ‘Yup.’ She smiled. ‘I think someone has you wrapped around her little finger.’

He frowned. ‘She likes flowers.’

Mary Burig checked her smartphone. It held everything she needed to remember: phone numbers, addresses, bank account details, appointments, shopping lists, birthdays, anniversaries, maps and guides. She spent fifteen minutes tidying her living room, starting by the front door and working clockwise through each corner. She moved into the kitchen and wiped down the surfaces. She was about to unload the dishwasher when the doorbell rang. She jogged back to the front door and opened it.

‘Hi, Magda,’ she said. ‘Come in. I’m working hard here. Tea?’

‘Coffee,’ said Magda, hugging her. ‘Thank you. I can make it.’

Magda Oleszak was in her early fifties, with a healthy glow from eating good food and walking everywhere. She came to New York from Poland with her two teenage children ten years earlier, learned perfect English, but never lost her accent.

‘The place looks great,’ said Magda, walking around as she took off her light vinyl jacket. Upside down and open beside Mary’s bed was Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

‘Are you reading Rebecca again?’ said Magda.

‘I know,’ said Mary. ‘It’s cheating because I know it inside out.’

‘It’s not cheating,’ said Magda, turning to her, holding her hands passionately. ‘Don’t ever let me hear you say that again, Mary. It’s beautiful what you and Rebecca have. You are friends for life. She’ll always be with you, won’t she? Or whatever that girl’s name is. Does she have a name? I don’t think she does, does she? I get confused myself, see? I get confused. You don’t. It’s wonderful, Mary. You hang on to that feeling. You remember what Rebecca brought you when you were lying on your bed as a young girl.’

Mary smiled.

‘Now, because we are talking about books,’ said Magda, ‘I have some good news for you. Stan Frayte, you know Stan, is going to do your make-over on the library.

Mary clapped. ‘Cool.’ Then she frowned. ‘So do you think it’ll wind up looking more like a library than a store window?’

‘Nothing is happening with the glass if that’s what you mean. We want to make sure no-one’s making trouble in there.’

‘No-one makes trouble in libraries.’

‘They do, going right to the dirty bits in all those romance novels. Hot throbbing whatever.’

‘Magda!’

Magda laughed.

‘I wish they’d do something about the other windows,’ said Mary. ‘They’re too high up. You can’t see out if you sit down. You’re just staring at a blank wall.’

‘You know what?’ said Magda. ‘I like to think that the reader uses it as a blank screen and they project onto it the world of whatever book they’re reading at that time.’

Mary thought about it. ‘I’ll go with that,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

‘Oh, you want to know how they got the money to do the library? Stan himself. He said he got a discount on some light fixtures for the hallway. I’m not so sure.’

‘That’s so kind,’ said Mary. She paused. ‘There’s something sad about Stan.’

Magda went into the kitchen. ‘You’re out of coffee, Mary.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ She hit Tasks on her phone menu and added coffee to her grocery list.

‘So,’ said Mary, ‘what’s going on?’

‘David’s coming this morning, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘There’s cake in there. I’m not hungry, but you can help yourself.’

Magda opened the bread bin and pulled out a cake wrapped in aluminum foil. It was covered in mould. She flipped the lid of the bin and threw it inside.

‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘but I’ve eaten.’ She came back into the living room and sat down on the sofa. ‘Will I stay until David comes?’

‘That would be great,’ said Mary. ‘Today is ironing day, so I’m going to start now, if you don’t mind.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Magda.

David Burig was thirty-four years old, looked younger, and spent most of his time dressed in a suit so his staff would take him seriously. He ran a successful catering business he bought after offloading an overvalued software firm nine years earlier.

‘Hello there,’ he said, hugging Mary and kissing her on the cheek.

‘David,’ she said. ‘Yaaay!’

‘If only everyone had that response when they saw me.’

‘Yaaay!’ said Magda.

He laughed. ‘Why thank you, both. I feel very special. So,’ he said to Mary. ‘I believe it’s time for bed.’

Mary frowned. She looked at the clock. ‘But it’s only 10 a.m.!’

He smiled. ‘Flower-beds.’

She shook her head. ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just because you say so, I’m still not sure that means it is.’

He held his hands up. ‘It actually wasn’t funny at all.’

‘It was dumb,’ said Magda.

‘Worth a try, though,’ said David. ‘Let me go change. And can I ask? What are you wearing?’

‘Do I look nuts?’ said Mary.

‘You look … creative.’

Mary smiled because David did. ‘I thought it was kind of cool.’ She was wearing a pair of orange baggy cotton pants that tapered at the ankle, a green vest and white sneakers.

David laughed and disappeared into the bedroom with his sports bag.

‘OK,’ said Magda. ‘Have you got what you need for gardening?’

Mary pointed to the tools lined up on the table: ‘Two trowels, mat to kneel on, watering can, fork thing … is that everything?’