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“Maybe they were on the street. He drops something, she picks it up. The action and her looks flick his switch. He can’t help following her. She walks to the realtor’s office. He manages to find out her name. From there it’s a simple deception to lure her to the property. He was probably laughing while he waited.”
“Folger’s got dicks and uniforms working for five blocks around, plus checking out Ms Anderson’s and her office on 26th, and her neighborhood in Brooklyn. They’re bracing people in the neighborhood, showing Ridgecliff’s pic.”
I thought for a moment. “Folger can pull the team from Brooklyn, Shelly. Ridgecliff’s in Manhattan.”
Waltz stared. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Uh, it’s more a hunch than anything.”
“I doubt Folger’s gonna pull a team on your hunch.” Waltz shook the can and glared like it was a personal irritant. I smelled chocolate and noticed a dark smudge over Waltz’s upper lip, like he’d borrowed Little Richard’s mustache.
“Are you drinking chocolate syrup?” I asked, happy to change the subject.
He held up the can. I saw the words Slim-EEZ Chocolate Fudge.
“It’s a diet drink,” he said, patting his gut. “The endless damn fight.”
“Chocolate fudge is diet?”
He sighed. “It’s one of those meal-in-a-can things. I remember when drinking your lunch meant three scotches. That was a lot more entertaining.”
“How’s the stuff taste?” I asked.
“Like pureed compost.”
He lobbed the can into the wastebasket. The intercom on Waltz’s phone buzzed, the desk sergeant. “Got a walk-in at the desk, Shelly. Guy wants to see the Southerner, Ryder.”
Waltz shot me puzzlement. Maybe two dozen people knew I was here, all officials of some stripe.
“A walk-in for Ryder? Who is it, Moose?”
“Ray Charles died, right? We’re sure about that?” The desk man chuckled and hung up. We hustled down the hall to the entrance. An older black guy sat on one of the benches, lanky as a pole vaulter, with ebony skin, tight pewter hair, wraparound shades. I put him in his mid-seventies, but he could have been a decade older. He wore a bright yellow blazer over a cream polo shirt. His pants were as white as the cane across his knees.
The desk sergeant saw us, grinned. “This is Mr Zebulon Parks. He wants to tell Ryder something.”
“Mr Ryder?” the blind man called out. “Mr Carson Ryder?”
“Right here, sir.”
The dark glasses turned to me. “You got a place we can sit? By ourselves?”
“You can talk here, Mr Parks. It’s fine.”
“I’m s’posed to tell you what I got in private.”
“There’s a room we can use.” I moved to him, held up my arm. “Would you care to hold on to my –”
“Just lead on,” he said. “Walk.”
I headed for a nearby conference room, Mr Parks’s cane tapping at my heels. Waltz shot me a conspiratorial eye and nodded down the hall. I winked assent and he tiptoed ahead and slipped into the room.
I entered with Parks behind me and closed the door. Waltz sat motionless in a far corner. Parks reached forward, finger-tapped the table, set his hat on it. His hand found a chair and angled it toward him, sitting straight as a rail. I watched his nostrils study the air.
“Now, Mr Parks, you said you had something to –”
“We alone?” Parks interrupted.
“That’s what you wanted,” I finessed.
He flicked his head at Waltz. “Then who that fat guy sitting down there?”
I leaned forward, looked into Parks’s obsidian-black lenses. I resisted the cliché of waving my hand before his eyes, but only barely.
“Can you see, Mr Parks?”
He nodded toward Waltz. “I heard his belly grumblin’.”
Waltz looked at his gut, then at me; neither of us had heard a thing. Waltz sighed. “My name is Sheldon Waltz, Mr Parks. I’m a detective. Sitting in was my idea, and I apologize. But in law enforcement another pair of ears is often helpful.”
“One pair works fine for me,” Parks said. “They heard your sneakin’ ass.”
“For which I again apologize. Could you please explain how you knew I am, uh, a bit heavier than preferable.”
“I smelled the air you walked through gettin’ here. Stinks of that fat people’s drink, Slim-Down or whatever. My sister drink a case of that stuff every week and the flo’ boards still squeal when she walk crost ‘em.”
Waltz grimaced. “You have very good senses, Mr Parks.”
“I hear birds light on branches, smell bacon cookin’ a mile away. I remember the ’zact taste of ever’ woman I been with.”
Waltz raised his eyebrows, started to ask a question, thought better of it. I leaned toward Parks. “You mentioned to the desk man that you had something to tell me?”
Parks canted his head toward the door. “That coffee out there smells real fresh. Like it’d be good with two sugars but just a touch of cream.”
“I’ll be right back,” Waltz said, returning seconds later with a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Parks sniffed from a foot away.
“Don’t drink no fake sugar.”
Waltz rolled his eyes, headed down the hall again. A minute later he set the coffee on the table. Parks sniffed the coffee and nodded approval.
“Well?” I asked.
“I was sittin’ in Washington Square an hour back when footsteps come at my bench. A fellow axed me how my sense of humor was. I said funny’s different to different folks. He said he was prankin’ a friend and he’d give me fifty dollars to help. I poked my cane his way and said to git on wit’ his sly bidness somewhere else.”
“What happened next?”
“He sat down next to me. I grabbed tight to my money pocket. But he said, ‘Do you hear inside the shadows, sir?’ I said, ‘What you talking about?’ He said, ‘Can you hear the music in the corner restaurant?’ The joint was a block down and the jazz-band music was under the sounds of cars, trucks, people yellin’ on the street, but sure, I could hear it. Next, he said, ‘What you hear best?’ I said it was the clar’net, but if I listened real hard I could separate out the bass notes on the piano.”
“Most people wouldn’t have heard anything but street sounds,” I said, my heart beginning to pound.
“Yep, the music was deep under things. Then the man told what he was hearing, and damn if he wasn’t hearing ever’thing I could. It come to me that maybe he was blind, too.”
Cold prickles danced across my spine. “He wasn’t blind, was he, Mr Parks?”
“Nope, though he was sure tuned up scary high for someone ain’t never had to live in the dark.”
“Did he frighten you?”
Mr Parks frowned, like doing a puzzle in his head. “He had a strange feeling pouring off him, like he had to do a job so important the need was pushing from his skin like heat. That’s as close as I can get with words. Did I feel like he wanted to hurt me? No. But something underneath his voice said I wouldn’t ever want him mad at me.”
“What did you do?”
“Once I could feel he didn’t mean no harm, I got interested in how high he was tuned. We started listening and smelling and talking about how much there was to hear and taste and smell, stuff most people never knew was going on, though it’s right there in their ears and noses and mouths. After we talked a bit I decided to come here to pass on his words. I thought maybe they were important in a way I couldn’t know.”
“What exactly did the man say, Mr Parks?” I asked.
The frown again. Trying to get it just right, Parks spoke slowly. “‘Tell Mr Ryder to consider George Bernard Shaw’s thoughts on sanity in the US.’”
I closed my eyes, suspicions confirmed: I heard Jeremy’s precise diction echoed in the old man’s words. Waltz was staring at me. His silent lips formed the question, Ridgecliff?
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