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extending his arm in front of my face.
I pushed him away. "Hear anything about Dulles Tripping?"
"All quiet. Mercer says everyone's being very cooperative. Mrs. Wykoff, your
buddy Hoyt, the school authorities. Everybody's optimistic. You know the
agency records show he ran away more than a dozen times in the last two
years?"
"It's a lot different to spend an overnight at a friend's house in a small
town than it is to try and find your way around New York City when you've only
lived here for a year, and you're just ten."
"Hey, there are no signs of a kidnapping, and no reports at any hospitals of
an injured child. So don't fill that twisted head of yours with evil
thoughts," Mike said. He was eating with one hand and steering the car uptown
on Amsterdam Avenue with the other.
He parked at a hydrant near McQueen Ransome's tenement building. A uniformed
cop had been sent by the precinct commander to meet Mike at the stoop and let
us into the apartment. Half a dozen curious adolescents followed us up the
steps and asked what we were doing at "Miss Queenie's" place. I closed the
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door behind us and then opened a window to let some air into the musty rooms,
which had been closed tight since her death.
The whole apartment was in disarray. I could see more here than the crime
scene photographs had captured. "Was this the way you found it, or is this a
result of all the cops being in here?" I asked. Sometimes the investigators
made more of a mess than the perps.
"This place was turned upside down by the killer. The landlord was going to
give us another week before he boxed everything up and threw it out. The lady
who did her banking thought there were a couple of nieces down in Georgia who
might come close out the account-there's nothing to speak of in it-and take
some of the furniture and the family photo albums."
The small parlor inside the front door had a sofa, two armchairs, a television
set, and an old-fashioned record player on a side table, with a stack of 33
RPMs next to it. Mike turned it on, placing a needle on the vinyl disk that
must have been the last music Queenie heard.
"Edward Kennedy Ellington. The Duke," said Mike. "Only fitting for Queenie."
The piece was called "Night Creatures." The distinctly American jazz sound
filled the room and lightened the pall that the old woman's death cast over
us.
The living room walls had a collection of photographs more sedate than that
over Queenie's bed. Most of them featured Queenie. Several looked to be posed
with family and friends.
"This must be her son," I said to Mike. She was dressed in a light-colored
suit, the slim skirt covering her calves, and a Mamie Eisenhower-style hat and
handbag complementing the outfit. She had her arm around the boy's shoulder,
and he looked even younger than Dulles Tripping. They were standing at the
base of the Washington Monument.
"You think this kid is African-American?" Mike asked, looking at the
fair-skinned child with the sandy blond hair.
"Well, Queenie Ransome was pretty light-skinned herself. Maybe his father was
Caucasian."
"Check this one out," Mike said. "She's in uniform."
It was another picture of Ransome on a stage, dressed in khakis designed to
look like an army uniform. She was tap-dancing, it appeared, and her hand was
about to salute someone with a touch of her cap. A USO flag hung from the
bunting behind her. I took the photo off the wall and turned it over.
"Same year as those nightclub photos you brought to the office yesterday,
1942. This one looks like she was entertaining the troops."
"Here's another James Van Derzee portrait," Mike said. "Pretty spectacular."
It was a studio shot of the stunning young woman, again signed by the
photographer, and probably taken after the Second World War, when she was
still in her twenties.
Set against the faux backdrop typical of the period, she was dressed in a
satin evening gown, her hair coiffed in a large bun atop her head, reclining
against a marble column.
The gallery stopped at the far wall, which had a small bookcase across its
end. Every book had been pulled off the shelf and strewn on the floor. I
stooped to pick up a few-popular novels of the fifties and sixties-flipped
through their pages but found nothing loose or stuck inside.
"What do you give me for a first-edition Hemingway?" Mike asked. " For Whom
the Bell Tolls."
"Nineteen forty. That fetches a sweet number today." He knew I collected rare
books. "I think the last one went at auction for about twenty-five thousand."
"Does his signature add value?"
"You're joking. Let me see." I took the book from his hand. The dust jacket
was pristine, but whoever dumped it on the floor had cracked its spine by
throwing it there. "'For Queenie-who is, herself, a moveable feast-Papa.' Take
this one with you and voucher it. Let's look over all the books before we're
done."
"Guess she didn't only kick up her heels for the boys in the 'hood. Don't you
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wish you'd had a chance to meet her?" said Mike, changing the record. "Just
sit in this room and listen to her stories? She must have been something."
I turned the corner into the bedroom, flipping on the light. "Any reason I
can't touch things in here?"
"Everything's been processed," Mike said, following me in. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]