Shadows Still Remain. Peter Jonge De

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       8

      They decide to leave the car where it’s parked and walk to Pena’s Orchard Street apartment, O’Hara glancing at her Casio so she can time the trip and see how long it might have taken McLain to get back and forth from Freemans. At 5:03, the sun’s gone and few lights have been turned on to replace it, and when they reach Chrystie, the steel skeleton of a condo in progress called the Atelier looms behind them. To the east, all is black, as if the night had taken the old neighborhood by surprise.

      They cross dark, skinny Rivington Park between a rubber-coated jungle gym and an overgrown garden, the damp air smelling of night and greasy egg rolls. Then two more dark blocks to Allen, past a Chinese nursing home and a boarded-up synagogue whose windows are shaped like the tablets Moses, the first cop, brought down from the mountain. The synagogue can’t be more than a hundred years old, but here, where a century is as good as a millennium, it’s an ancient ruin. On Orchard, lights have been strung overhead to announce the start of the Christmas shopping season. As O’Hara and Krekorian take it south, the Indian owners in the doorways whisper “very good price” and draw their attention to the racks of seventy-nine-dollar leather coats lined up on the curb. Even ten years ago this neighborhood was filled with bargains, its small narrow stores so stuffed with inexpensive merchandise it poured out onto the streets. These two blocks of Orchard between Rivington and Delancey are all that’s left, an anomaly in a neighborhood whose only purpose is to provide a backdrop of authenticity for fake dive bars, pricey restaurants and whitewashed boutiques.

      Seventy-eight Orchard is halfway between Broome and Grand, on the east side of the block. Less then eight minutes after leaving their car, they step into a vestibule papered with Chinese menus and hike the old tiled staircase, the marble so worn it looks like soft dough.

      The door to apartment 5B is unlocked and slightly ajar. When they knock and step inside, McLain looks up at them from a tiny couch. He has a paper cup in his hand, half a bottle of Jack between his hightops, and the room reeks of pot. The rich bouquet reminds O’Hara of the fireman, and although in weaker moments she still feels pangs for the treacherous stoner, she also misses the pot. For some unfair reason, the NYPD routinely tests for marijuana and the FDNY almost never does, so maybe she and the fireman were doomed from the beginning.

      “Throwing yourself a party?” asks Krekorian.

      “No,” says McLain. “Just getting wasted.”

      “How long you been at it?”

      “What day is it?”

      “Monday, Chief.”

      “A while.”

      “Is there a bed in this place?”

      “I’m sitting on it.”

      “Where do you sleep?”

      “I don’t.”

      “When you did?”

      McLain nods at the purple sleeping bag on the floor.

      “Your old girlfriend slept on the couch, and you slept beside her on the floor? That sounds like fun. And you did that for almost a month?”

      “It’s her place. She didn’t have to let me stay at all.”

      “She ever bring home guys?”

      “Twice.”

      “She make you watch?”

      “She called from the street. I took a walk.”

      “An eight-hour walk?”

      “Went down to Battery Park and watched the sun come up. I recommend it. It clears the head.”

      “Ever occur to you that your old girlfriend was trying to tell you something? Rub your nose in it so bad, you’d take the hint and leave on your own?”

      “It’s possible. But I don’t think so. She was looking forward to spending Thanksgiving together as much as me.”

      “So that was the fantasy? You roast a nice turkey, and she realizes what a mistake she’s been making.”

      “Basically.”

      On the way up the stairs, the two agreed that Krekorian would ask the questions and O’Hara would look around, but McLain’s responses are so guileless, Krekorian can’t get any traction, and the place is so small and sparsely furnished, there’s very little for O’Hara to look at. Against the wall behind McLain is a small table with two chairs, a dresser and a column of textbooks, but except for the iPod dock on the table and a small pile of wadded-up bills on the dresser, there’s not a single personal effect. It looks like Pena moved in over the weekend, not four months ago. More troubling to O’Hara, however, is the fact that there’s no trace of McLain’s Thanksgiving feast.

      “David,” asks O’Hara, “you ate the turkey yourself?”

      “Too depressing. I threw it out.”

      “How about the pots and pans?”

      “I washed them.”

      “David, СКАЧАТЬ