Festival of Deaths(18)

Prescott turned the engine off and looked up and down the street again, up and down, up and down. He took his keys out of the ignition and opened the driver’s side door. Not a single shadow moved. He made a set of New York City brass knuckles anyway: the sharp point of a key sticking up between each finger of his right hand, the bunched knot of ring and leather tab pressed against his palm. All the drivers he knew carried their keys like this, ready to scratch and tear at the face of anyone who got too close. He didn’t know if anybody had ever actually tried the trick and made it work.

He pushed the lock button on the door and then slammed the door shut. Then he checked the numbers on the buildings across the street for 586. It was hard to read anything amidst the clutter of signs. It was harder because the signs were all in Spanish. There were no Korean grocery stores here. Bodega. Lecheria. Santeria. Prescott didn’t know if he was getting that last one right, but he knew what it was. It was a store that sold voodoo magic.

Number 586 was right next to the storefront marked Santeria. Prescott made a gesture at it that was actually the Italian ritual for warding off the evil eye—although he didn’t know that; it was just a gesture he had picked up in the old neighborhood—and walked up to 586’s front door. It opened without complaint, but beyond it there was a vestibule, and at the other end of the vestibule was another door. That one, Prescott was sure, would be locked. He tried it anyway. He found out he was right.

On one side of the vestibule, the wall had been fitted with steel-case mailboxes and small round buzzers. The buzzers took the place of the fancy call-boards that graced the more expensive buildings downtown. The call-boards had two-way intercoms. These buzzers were connected to nothing but more buzzers upstairs. If you had an apartment in this building and somebody buzzed you, you either had to come all the way downstairs to find out if it was somebody you were willing to let in, or just buzz back and release the lock on the inner door. Prescott knew that somewhere in this building there would be a sign warning residents not to release that door without checking who was calling first. He also knew that residents would pay no attention to it. In a building like this, many tenants would be old women. Their legs would ache and their backs would creak. It would be much too painful for them to keep coming downstairs.

Prescott found the buzzer with Maria’s name on it and pressed that one. From what he had heard in the office, he knew she lived alone. He pressed the buzzer again and waited again, not feeling much hope. If Maria had been home, she would have answered her phone. He pressed the buzzer for the third time. On the floors about him, he could hear rustles and moans. At this hour of the morning, the people who worked in the small factories in Long Island City would be getting up to go to work.

Maria didn’t answer the buzzer this time, either. That settled it. Prescott looked at the bank of mailboxes again. Always pick a last name with a single initial, he thought. The spelled-out names were almost always names of men. The last thing he wanted at this hour of the morning was to wake a knife-wielding Hispanic crazy out of bed in a bad mood. Always pick a last name with a single initial, because those almost always belonged to women. Maria’s mailbox said, “Gonzalez, M.” Prescott found “Esposito, C.” and pressed that one, long and hard.

Somewhere upstairs, a door opened and a man began to shout. Prescott crossed his fingers and pushed the button for “Esposito, C.” again. This time he tried shorter bursts, on the assumption that if Esposito, C. was a woman who lived alone and had been asleep, he had already woken her up. He now had only to convince her she had heard what she thought she heard. The man upstairs began to swear again. Then the buzzer on the inner door sounded, and the lock disengaged.

Prescott let himself into the stair hall and looked up the wall. “Señora?” he called. “Señorita?”

A spate of furious female Spanish rained down on his head. Prescott started up the stairs.

“Señora,” he said as he climbed. “I am looking for Maria Gonzalez. I have come from Dr. Goldman, who is her employer. Maria is supposed to be at work, but she is not there, and nobody can find her. I wish to make sure she is not lying in her apartment hurt.”

Prescott said all these things slowly and clearly and as loud as he could. He had no idea if Esposito, C. could understand him and supposed she could not. He was slightly heartened by the fact that all the sound above him had stopped. At least someone was trying to listen.

“Señora?” he said again, as he reached the landing where the woman stood in front of her open door, a short round woman beginning to get old, careworn and suspicious. “Señora,” he said again. “Por favor.”