Same Difference, page 13
I knew Eliza hadn’t been aware of Damien’s death because she had proven to be a bad liar and she’d been shocked when I’d told her about it. So I was sure she hadn’t been present when Damien was killed. But if she’d been there earlier, her DNA could be found on the premises, and that would be bad.
‘No,’ Eliza said, then her eyes opened wider and she bit her lip. ‘Well, maybe.’
Oh, boy.
‘Maybe?’ I said. Eliza shot me a glance that indicated I could take the rest of lunch off.
‘I mean, I wasn’t on the stakeout with him or anything,’ she went on. ‘But I did go there when he was deciding where he was going to wait. I didn’t do anything.’
‘That’s true,’ Ken said. He was taking back over because he was getting better results. I saw the wisdom in it but it annoyed me. Who’d climbed down a building with that girl on their back, after all? ‘But your presence there could be detected and it could lead the cops the wrong way.’
Eliza looked sad, which made a good deal of sense. ‘It’s all crazy,’ she said. That didn’t tell me anything but how she was feeling, which was valuable but not helpful at the moment.
Our lunch orders came, and I suppose we started to eat. I had more questions than I could deal with at one time. Why were the cops focusing on Eliza? Were they focusing on Eliza, or were they looking for Rainbow Zelensky? After all, they’d come to Rainbow’s apartment. What did Damien’s murder have to do with either of them, and why didn’t Julio want you to call him Julio? Who was monitoring my cell phone? Did the NYPD have that capacity so quickly? Wouldn’t they have had to get a search warrant or an order by a judge? Why didn’t this turkey club have any mayo on it?
‘Tell us about Rainbow,’ I said to Eliza.
‘What about Rainbow?’ Because the question had come from me and not from Ken, Eliza sounded suspicious.
‘Just what she’s like, how you know her, how did she know Damien, stuff like that,’ Ken said. I decided to keep an eye out for the server to get some mayonnaise and let my brother handle the questioning. Was I being petty? Yeah, probably. But I’d already had a rough day and it was just lunchtime.
I remember now that Eliza was eating an Impossible burger with a side salad. She was determined to be healthy and not harm the Earth. And the cops thought she had strangled Damien Van Dorn.
‘Rainbow doesn’t have anything to do with any of this,’ Eliza said. Oddly, she looked amused when she said it.
After a bit I managed to attract our server’s attention and mayo was allegedly on its way. I turned my attention back to Eliza (after checking the diner’s windows for any sign of encroaching cops) but let my brother continue the interview.
‘Did you introduce Rainbow to Damien?’ he asked.
Eliza looked more amused. ‘I don’t think Rainbow ever met Damien.’
That was news. ‘So Rainbow wasn’t tied to whatever Damien was up to?’ Ken asked before I could.
Eliza shook her head, looking at him like she’d lost confidence in his intelligence, which I could understand. ‘No, that was Laura. She was the one who was all into Damien.’
Laura Rapinoe. ‘Were they a couple?’ I asked.
OK, so I probably shouldn’t have spoken, but just try to sit there and be silent when you’re on the run from the police. I dare you. ‘I don’t know,’ Eliza said emphatically. ‘They didn’t tell me about their sex life.’
‘Laura told me you were “obsessed” with Damien,’ I told her.
Eliza’s eyes became fiery. ‘That’s a lie.’
‘So it’s possible Damien and Laura were involved.’ I just wanted to lock that down, all the while wondering if Laura had lied about it to shield herself.
‘I don’t know, I said!’ Eliza glared at me and, frankly, it was a little intimidating, given that she was about a foot shorter than I am.
‘How about you?’ Ken asked. He’s so subtle. ‘Are you involved with Rainbow, or someone else?’
‘I am not involved with Rainbow,’ Eliza answered. She chuckled at the very idea. ‘I’m single right now. Why?’
‘We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet,’ Ken said. ‘The more information we have, the better off we are.’ Eliza nodded, accepting what he said. Go figure.
It seemed to me that attraction is attraction and if Rainbow were interested in her, Eliza would have known it by now. But it was that rare moment when I was disciplined enough to keep from blurting out what I was thinking. It took enormous effort on my part.
‘We have to focus on the present situation,’ I said. ‘Right now the police are after you and, if they know about me, they’re after me too. We have to assume they are because they knew we were going to Igavda’s apartment by monitoring my phone.’ I looked at Ken. ‘How could they do that so fast?’
He shrugged. ‘Think your pal Mankiewicz turned you in?’
No. That couldn’t be. Mank hadn’t dropped a dime on much more explosive information about me, even to the point that Ken didn’t know he was aware of it. Besides, that just wasn’t the kind of guy Mank was. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’ But I felt sick saying it. The mayo came and I didn’t even want it anymore.
‘Who’s Mankiewicz?’ Eliza asked.
I shook my head. ‘He’s not our problem,’ I told her. ‘Right now we have to make decisions. I’m guessing that you don’t want to do what I think you should do, which is go back to your dad’s place and then answer any questions the police have when they find you there.’
Eliza looked like I’d suggested she go out on a date with my old pal Count Dracula. ‘God no,’ she said. ‘The cops are no better to trans people than the maniacs who track us down and kill us just for existing. And my dad …’ Nothing followed that. I guessed there was still considerable unfinished business between Brian and his daughter.
‘Is it OK if I at least get word to your dad that you’re OK?’ Ken asked her. ‘He’s really worried about you.’
Eliza gave that some thought. ‘If that’s all you tell him, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I don’t want him doing anything crazy.’
‘Like hiring detectives to find you?’ I said, but nobody laughed. ‘You’ll have to be extremely discreet,’ I told Ken.
‘No kidding.’ This just wasn’t a good table for me.
I decided I’d talk to Ken and let Eliza listen. This was a business conference, one area in which I was definitely in charge. ‘We’re going to have to find a place to stay,’ I told him. ‘Our apartment and Aunt Margie’s are definitely out of the question. Now so is Igavda’s place. I don’t want to put anyone else I know in legal trouble. You have any ideas?’
‘A real-estate agent friend,’ he said. I waited, but nothing followed.
‘You have a friend who is real estate?’ I asked.
Eliza, in time-honored young-woman tradition, rolled her eyes in anguish.
Ken, now in his role as the grown-up, decided just to press on. ‘I have a friend who is in real estate,’ he said. ‘She was telling me about a building that’s not quite ready to go on the market yet, you know, still doing construction on the upper floors, that kind of thing. She said some of the apartments are finished and they’re almost ready to be shown, but not yet. Maybe you can stay in one of those for a couple of days.’
To be fair, he was playing that grown-up role pretty well.
But the setup sounded just a little fishy to me. ‘Your friend is just going to let us live rent-free in a brand-new apartment because you ask?’ I said.
‘Well, I won’t know until I do ask. But I can’t pull my phone out with you two here, and I can’t get in touch with you when I hear back. We have to figure out how we’re going to communicate until this whole thing blows over.’ Ken was just picking at a steak sandwich, a sign that he was indeed thinking deeply. Or that it wasn’t a good steak sandwich.
‘You’ve gotta go old school.’ Eliza, of all people, was tearing through her plant-based burger and pointing at Ken with her fork. ‘We need to stay off the grid. We have to act like it’s 1994 and none of this stuff has been invented yet.’
For someone who had practically gone into a coma when I’d told her she had to turn her phone off, this was an amazing turnaround. ‘So we just prearrange to meet every day, or maybe twice a day, in a designated spot?’ I asked. That’s what it had come to; I was looking for operating advice from the girl I’d been sent to find.
‘That’s one way.’ She sounded less than impressed, which wasn’t at all surprising. ‘But there’s the idea of a drop-off point, and I think that might work better. It’s not tied to a particular time of day.’
‘To drop off what?’ Ken asked. I was glad he had, because if I’d said it the eye rolling would no doubt have returned in force. I was starting to realize that being a fugitive from justice was only making me whiny.
‘Notes,’ Eliza said. ‘Paper notes. We should probably have a code figured out, too, in case someone finds them. A million years ago people would have taken out personal ads in newspapers to communicate like this, but we can’t do that because we can’t go online.’
‘Maybe we can once in a while,’ I said. ‘We can use the internet at the public library as long as we get out fast enough that we won’t be traced while we’re still in the building.’
Eliza looked at me with something resembling respect. ‘Not bad,’ she said.
‘But the first order of business is this alleged apartment you’re going to find for us,’ I told Ken. ‘It’s supposed to rain tonight.’
We spent the next fifteen minutes working out drop-off points near the diner, near the apartment building Ken’s friend had told him about (and I was betting she was more than a friend, but Juliet didn’t know about her) and near, but not too near, the office of K&F Stein Investigations. Getting near our apartment just seemed too risky. We set up elaborate schedules to check the drop-off points, all written down on the paper napkins our server had supplied. I even ate a quarter of the turkey club.
TWENTY
I scanned the windows around the diner again, saw no one who might be watching us with suspicion, and we parted, Ken for parts unknown and Eliza and me for the nearest branch of the New York Public Library. I needed a restroom in a more public place (that would have more space and fewer people knocking on the door) to charge my batteries.
Even as Eliza and I walked with purpose toward Mulberry Street, I was feeling myself run down. Stress can use my energy as much as physical exertion and I’d had both today. I wasn’t in danger of passing out or anything, but I was feeling the urgency.
It’s not easy being a manufactured superbeing. Yeah, boo-hoo to you, too.
And I realized Ken and I had not discussed Malcolm X. Mitchell or our parents while we were seated with Eliza. It was going to be especially hard to track down that lead while I couldn’t communicate with anyone but my brother and Eliza.
This whole being-wanted-by-the-cops thing was not turning out to be fun. ‘I wasn’t kidding when I said your best plan might be to talk to the police,’ I told Eliza discreetly while we walked. ‘They can protect you and I’ll make sure that’s what they do. I have a few friends in the department.’
She just shook her head. I didn’t know what it was like to be a trans woman in New York and she didn’t know what it was like to have to plug yourself into the wall to stay awake. There was no point in trying to explain it either way because we could only understand on an intellectual, not a basic emotional, level.
‘OK,’ I said, and we walked on.
We reached the Mulberry Street Library only about ten minutes after we left the diner. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d think it was the ground floor of an apartment building or an office facility, or maybe a bookstore. Not every library in New York has statues of lions outside guarding the place.
Only the book drop and the sign over the door reading ‘New York Public Library’ gave it away. Inside, it was quite a lovely facility, but I was mostly interested in the restroom, which required a key that had to be borrowed at the desk. It took a few minutes but I did manage to get plugged in with the charger Ken had furnished.
The problem, of course, was that any electrical outlet in the library bathroom was going to be in no proximity to the stall, which meant that I had to stand to one side of the restroom, reach under my shirt (I never wear anything sleeveless because of the port) and plug myself in. And then … stand there. Usually a charge can take forty-five minutes to an hour. I obviously wouldn’t have that kind of time until Ken found us a safe haven, but I could take fifteen minutes or so to top myself off.
I couldn’t even turn on my phone to check emails.
It gave me time to think, which I had in fact been doing for some time now. Eliza had left her father’s apartment at least partially because he’d had trouble accepting her as herself, although her reasoning was a little cloudy so far. She’d gone to stay with Rainbow, whom I had still not met, and at some point in the past three days had been in the Bronx basement with Damien, but said she had not stayed long. Then, having a gun within reach, she did not seem at all shocked when the police showed up at Rainbow’s door. She said she didn’t use any of Damien’s product but clearly knew about his business. She was upset that Damien was dead, but not that upset.
A lot of her story was just barely adding up, and I needed to get much clearer answers. Obviously the library wasn’t the place for such a conversation, particularly if Eliza had logged herself into one of the pubic computers, but hopefully Ken would find us a landing spot and we’d have some time to talk. Probably a lot of time.
OK. Only fourteen minutes of charging to go.
I wondered what communications I was missing. Was Mank trying to find me, and if so, was it personal or professional? Was Aunt Margie losing her mind with worry? (Ken would be able to give her heavily coded messages very soon.) Had Shelly found out anything more about Malcolm X. Mitchell? Was Malcolm still following me around? Was he behind the appearance of the cops at Rainbow Zelensky’s door?
I don’t mind having a lot of questions. It’s the lack of answers that gets on my nerves.
OK, so I gave up after twelve minutes out of nerves and boredom, if such a juxtaposition is possible, but I was sufficiently recharged to get through the rest of the day easily. A charge usually lasts at least three or four days, so a fraction of one can offer a normal level of energy for an analogous period. In short, I was OK for now. It wouldn’t last.
It didn’t take long to find Eliza because I’d already located the public computers and there was no chance she’d be anywhere else. Sure enough, she was reading her emails and thereby making herself visible to anyone plugged into the city’s computers, like for example the police. We were very much on borrowed time, but I’d expected that.
‘Three minutes,’ I said to Eliza as I sat down next to her. I wasn’t going to wait long enough to get access myself; Ken was going to be my eyes and ears for a little while. And no, that wasn’t my first choice, but it was my only one.
‘I just got started!’ she protested. ‘I’ve been out of circulation for a long time.’
‘It’s been two hours. And now you have two minutes. I’m not letting the cops or the bad guys or anybody else find us here. Do what you have to do.’ I pointed at the screen just in case she had thought I believed she needed to do something other than check her emails.
Eliza made a scratchy noise in the back of her throat to communicate her displeasure but she didn’t argue and in two minutes and fifteen seconds we were heading for the library door. When we approached the door I felt a surge of caution – just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you – and put up a hand to stop her from barging out into the warm New York day without a moment’s thought.
‘Stop. Look.’ Luckily the door was glass so I didn’t have to open it to look outside.
There were two men across the street trying desperately not to look like they were watching the library entrance. Neither of them was smoking a cigarette, a nod to modern times. They weren’t wearing trench coats, either, because it was a very warm day and this wasn’t 1943. But they were definitely watching. One of them was Detective Sergeant Louis Merchant. The other was someone I hadn’t seen before.
I turned immediately toward the interior of the library again, grabbing Eliza’s arm in mid-turn. She said, ‘Hey!’ but saw the look on my face and followed me. But she did yank her arm away and add, ‘Where are you going?’
In lieu of an answer I walked directly to the reference desk, where a woman in her mid-thirties with a nose ring and three tattoos on her left arm was stationed. At the moment she was reading a mystery novel by Catriona McPherson. She put a bookmark in the page when we approached. ‘How can I help?’ she said.
There are times in life that, no matter how self-aware you might be, you simply can’t avoid the cliché. ‘Is there a back way out of here?’ I asked.
The reference librarian didn’t so much as blink. ‘Is there a reason you can’t use the main entrance?’ she asked.
‘Yes. There are some people who pose a danger to my … younger sister here, and we need to avoid them at all costs. Is there another way out?’
‘I’m really her daughter,’ Eliza said. ‘She’s just being vain.’
Our new friend ignored this ridiculous banter. She looked each of us full in the face and was clearly making a judgment. ‘Follow me.’
She walked away from the station, nodding at another librarian at the main desk, who nodded back. Eliza and I trailed behind her, Eliza walking with some swagger and me marveling that this lame ploy had worked. She led us down an ornate staircase that was left over, I found out later, from when the library’s building had been a chocolate factory. We went down two flights and she brought us to a door painted blue, pulled a key out of her pocket, and opened it. She held the door open.
