The City When It Rains by Thomas H. Cook
“Would you mind talking to me, Mrs. Taylor, or is it Miss or …”
“Just Bernice,” she answered dryly. “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell you what I know.” She turned, opened the door and headed up the stairs. Corman followed behind her until they reached the third-floor landing.
“I was living in this same place back then,” she said as she fumbled for her keys. “I guess that’s how Sarah had the address.” She swung the door open and walked inside.
It was a tiny studio, but everything had been arranged in a neat, orderly fashion that made it look larger than it was. Two orange overstuffed chairs rested by the front window, ashtrays balanced on the right arms. A large hoop rug stretched between them, sending out swirls of steadily lightening yellows from its dark brown center, so that from where Corman stood it looked like a huge yellow eye, its dark pupil staring sightlessly toward the faded ceiling.
She moved directly to one of the orange chairs and motioned for Corman to take the other.
“So, you knew Sarah when she was a child,” Corman began, as he leaned back into it.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“When her mother got killed, her father needed somebody,” Bernice said. “That’s when I come by.”
“Her mother was killed?”
“That’s what Dr. Rosen said. Hit by a car. Right on the street.” She reached under her chair, drew out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one.
“What year was that?” Corman asked.
“That must have been in 1973, something like that.”
“And you worked for Dr. Rosen after that?”
“That’s right.”
“For how long?”
“Couple of months,” Bernice said. “Up until November.” She inhaled deeply, then let it out in a quick angry burst. “Then he let me go.”
Corman looked up from his notebook. “Why?”
Bernice smiled bitterly. “Guess I wasn’t good enough to watch over his precious little daughter.”
“In what way not good enough?”
Bernice shifted slightly in her seat, threw one long bony leg over the other and rocked it edgily. “He had a check done on me. That’s when he found out I had a record. If he’d asked me, I’d of told him about it. I’m not ashamed of what I did. But Rosen had his own way of doing things.”
“What way was that?”
“On the sly, you might say,” Bernice said. “He never came clean on anything. You always felt like you were talking to somebody he’d sort of made up, not the man himself.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he had a check done, and I came up with a record, so that was the end of that.”
“And this was only about two months after he hired you?” Corman asked.
“Yeah, about that. Two months, I’d say. Not much longer. She was five years old, I think. Went to this private school over on the East Side. Every morning the car came for her. The car was always coming for her. Dr. Rosen wouldn’t let her out on the street. Not even for a little walk. Wherever she went, the car took her.”
“Did you talk with her very often?”
“I would have talked to her,” Bernice said. “I didn’t have nothing against her. But she never seemed that interested. One time—this was just before I was let go—Candy, that’s my little girl, she got sent home from school, so they called me to come get her, and I had to leave, so I took Sarah with me, because I knew Rosen wouldn’t want her left alone in the house. So, anyway, I took her home with me, and when I picked Candy up, we all went to the park near the school, and they played together for a while.” Her face grew more concentrated as the memory returned to her. “Sarah was real quiet. She sat real close to me. She wouldn’t do much. Candy was about her age, but tougher, the way she’s always been, and Sarah didn’t want to play with her. I guess she was afraid. Anyway, it took forever for Candy to get her in the swings. But after she got in it, she swung a little. Not too high, sort of dragging her foot.” She dropped the cigarette into the ashtray, lit another. “That’s about the only time we really had together. The very next day, that’s when Rosen found out about me, and that’s when he let me go.”
“What did he find out exactly?” Corman asked.
“What I did to Harold.”
“Harold?”
“Candy’s daddy,” Bernice said. “I shot him one night. Everything was setting him off, and I got tired of it, so when he started in on me, I shot him. The bullet went right through his arm. Didn’t even touch a bone.” She shrugged. “I just got three years, and even that was a suspended sentence, but that didn’t matter to Rosen. With him, a record was a record.”
“And that’s why he fired you?”
“That’s what he told me,” Bernice said. “He said he’d hired this guy. Told me his name. Walter Maddox. He said this Maddox guy had checked up on me, and it came out I had a record, and he didn’t want anybody like that around.” She shrugged. “He was nice about it, I guess, gave me a whole month’s pay.”
Corman nodded and wrote Maddox’s name in his notebook.
“So really, as far as Sarah was concerned, I didn’t know much about her,” Bernice added. “Didn’t have time to learn much.”
“Did you get some sense of her?”
Bernice thought a moment. “Well, there was this one thing she did that made me wonder.”
“What?”
“She bit through her lip one night,” Bernice said. “Almost all the way through it. Her bottom lip.”
“Why?”
Bernice shook her head. “She did it in her bed. Maybe while she was sleeping, I don’t know. There was blood all over the pillow, I remember that. Dr. Rosen said it had to be thrown away. He didn’t want it washed.”
“Did Sarah ever talk about it, mention a bad dream, anything?”
Again, Bernice shook her head. “She was very quiet, but very jumpy, too. The slightest little movement and she’d flinch.”
“Flinch?”
“Yeah,” Bernice said firmly. “Like everything was about to jump her somehow, fly out at her, something like that.”
“But you never knew why?”
“I always wondered, but I wasn’t there long enough to find out,” Bernice said, then shrugged. “That’s about all I know.” She glanced at her watch. “Got to change into my uniform,” she said. “I’m waitressing now.”
Corman fixed his eyes on Bernice Taylor. Backlit by the window, her face gave off an eerie sheen that reminded him vaguely of Sarah Rosen’s skin. He reached for his camera again. “Would you mind if I took a picture?” he asked.
Bernice grinned coyly. “Nobody’s asked for my picture in a long time,” she said, then stood up and posed grandly by the shutters, the cigarette still dangling from her hand.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
WALTER MADDOX was in the yellow pages under private investigators, his address listed as 345 West 57th Street. To Corman’s surprise, he agreed to see him immediately.
On the way uptown, the connecting door of the subway suddenly opened and a large man stepped into the crowded car. He was wearing a flannel jacket that was two sizes too big and baggy gray trousers, torn at the pockets. A tangle of Rastafarian curls hung about his ears, and when he spoke, Corman could make out two gold teeth.
“I smell bad, but I’m hungry,” the man shouted over the grinding roar of the subway car. Then he banged a tambourine against his leg and began to sing: “I shot the sheriff.”
The crowd shifted away from him. Scores of faces buried themselves in newspapers, magazines, a dance of fiddling fingers. Corman reached for his camera and began shifting right and left as he angled for a shot.
“I’m gonna be riding this line for the next month,” the man said loudly. “Break you guys in.” He thrust out a half-crumpled Styrofoam cup. “I smell bad, but I’m hungry,” he repeated. Then he stepped forward, elbowing his way through the crowd. When he got to Corman, he stopped and held his cup out. “God bless the givers,” he said.
The man edged the cup forward, his dark eyes staring intently into Corman’s face.
Again, Corman shook his head.
The man inched the cup forward until it nearly rested on Corman’s chin. “I smell bad, but I’m hungry,” he repeated emphatically.
Corman sat back slightly and started to put his camera away. He could feel the man staring at him, resented the little pinch of fear it caused and felt relieved when he finally moved away.
Maddox’s office was a good deal more luxurious than Corman had expected. There were no splintered wooden desks or rickety filing cabinets, no battered gray hats hanging from pegs beside the door or empty whiskey bottles collecting dust on the windowsills. Even Maddox himself looked as if the lean years were well behind him, his body draped in an expensive, double-breasted suit. He wouldn’t do for the kind of hang-dog gumshoe Julian no doubt would prefer, and Corman wondered if there might be a way to shoot him that would give him a somewhat less prosperous aspect, make him look more like the weary tracker of a million hopeless lives than the beaming petty bourgeois who sat behind his desk.
“Glad to meet you,” Maddox said exuberantly as he rose and shook Corman’s hand. “Photographer, that’s interesting. What sort of stuff do you shoot?”
“Anything that comes up,” Corman said. “Accidents, crime scenes, just about …”
“Crime scenes,” Maddox interrupted. “Interesting. Do you have many contacts at NYPD?”
“A couple,” Corman said. “Barnes down at the photo lab, Harvey Grossbart in …”
“My God, Harvey Grossbart,” Maddox said. “He was in uniform the first time I saw him. Any promotions lately?”
“No.”
“Hasn’t made it to Division Chief yet?”
Corman shook his head.
Maddox looked faintly disappointed. “Why not?”
“Bad luck,” Corman guessed. “Integrity.”
Maddox laughed and motioned for Corman to take a seat opposite his desk. “So, what can I do for you?”
“A book I’m working on,” Corman said. “A woman. Jumper. Went out the window in Hell’s Kitchen last Thursday.”
Maddox nodded thoughtfully, and as Corman watched his face grow steadily more solemn, he realized that his first impression had been slightly off. Maddox hadn’t lost his curiosity yet. The varied ways in which human beings drove themselves or others nuts still interested him enough to wipe the wide, self-satisfied smile from his face.
“Her name was Sarah Rosen,” Gorman said. “I think you did some work for her father.”
“Professor Rosen,” Maddox blurted immediately. “I did a lot of work for him.”
Corman reached for his notebook.
Maddox’s eyes swept down at the the notebook, then back up to Corman. “All of it confidential, of course.”
“It would be off the record,” Corman told him. “I’m just trying to find out a few facts.”
Maddox wasn’t yet willing to give him any. “Well, what facts do you already have?”
“I know you did a background check on a woman named Bernice Taylor.”
Maddox nodded. “That’s right. Clean except for this one rap.”
“Shooting someone.”
“Her husband, boyfriend. Anyway, a worthless little prick.”
The harshness of the language seemed odd coming from Maddox’s round, cherubic face, but Corman could see the stripped-down soul beneath the business suit.
“His name was Harold, wasn’t it?” Maddox asked. “Harold something?”
“That’s right.”
“She shot him in the arm,” Maddox added. “A through-and-through.” He shrugged dismissively. “She didn’t hurt him much.”
Corman nodded.
Maddox leaned back in his seat and spread his legs widely. “I did a lot of that kind of work for Dr. Rosen. He was about as close as I ever got to a steady customer.”
“You checked on other people?”
Maddox nodded. “Quite a few. Tutors for his daughter. Math. Science. Anything. I checked on all of them. Once, when he was having his place remodeled, I even checked on the architect.” He laughed. “Rosen was the type of guy that liked to keep tabs on things, know exactly what he was dealing with.”
“Did you ever meet his daughter?”
“Just to say ‘hi’ on the way to Rosen’s office,” Maddox said. “Sarah, like you said. Black hair. Brown eyes. Not a beauty, but pleasant-looking, am I right?”
Corman nodded.
“I have an amazing mind, don’t I?” Maddox asked, half-jokingly. “It drives people crazy, the way I can remember details from years back.”
“Is this a common practice?” Corman asked. “Doing so many background checks?”
“Well, it’s not uncommon,” Maddox said. “But I’d have to say that Dr. Rosen was a little excessive.”
“In the number of people he had checked?”
“That, and in the depth he wanted. You couldn’t just come up with a quick fact-sheet, born here, worked there, blah, blah, blah. He wanted more than that. He wanted to know about what was going on inside of them, in their heads, what their personalities were like, that kind of thing.” He smiled broadly. “And that was okay with me. It took a lot of time, and I worked by the hour.” He shrugged. “Of course, I never really came up with all that much for him. The business with Bernice Taylor, her record, that was about it, and he didn’t even use that.”
Corman looked at Maddox intently. “Didn’t use it? What do you mean? He fired her.”
Maddox shook his head assuredly. “No, he didn’t.”
“She said he did.”
“Fired her?” Maddox asked wonderingly. “When?”
Corman flipped back through his notes. “November 1973.”
Maddox shrugged. “Well, he must have fired her for something else, then,” he said confidently. “Because I had that report on Rosen’s desk a long time before November.” He thought about it again, as if checking his facts, then shook his head determinedly. “No, believe me, if he had fired Bernice Taylor for having a criminal record, he would have fired her in August. That’s when I submitted the report.”
“Before she was hired,” Corman said.
“Of course,” Maddox replied. “That’s the way Rosen always worked. The background check was what cleared the way.”
Corman nodded.
“Have you spoken to anyone but Bernice?” Maddox asked off-handedly, as if trying to test Corman’s investigative skills gently, without accusing him of not having any.
“No,” Corman admitted. “Who do you suggest?”
“Well, are we talking about a quickie here?” Maddox asked. “Cut and paste?”
“I’d like to get some information as soon as possible,” Corman told him.
“Then if I were you, I’d start with her husband.”
“She was married?”
“As far as I know,” Maddox said. “Rosen asked me to do a background on him before they were engaged. I did, and after that I assumed they got married. Anyway, it. was the last business I got from the old man.”
“Do you remember the fiancé’s name?”
Maddox smiled confidently. “Of course. Oppenheim. Peter Oppenheim.”
“Does he live in New York?”
“As far as I know.”
“What did you find out about him?”
“Very much a steady type,” Maddox said. “All the right schools. Andover. Yale. Good family, lots of connections. A dream come true as far as Rosen was concerned. They were colleagues, you might say. Both of them at Columbia.”
“Oppenheim teaches there too?”
“He was when I did the background.”
“When was that?”
“Five years ago,” Maddox said. “And everything was fine as far as Rosen was concerned.”
“He seemed pleased? I mean, with Oppenheim?”
“Pleased?” Maddox said. ??
Corman regretted that he didn’t have a picture of that face. He glanced at his watch, and realized that he still had time to get one.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
ONCE IN POSITION, Corman took one picture, then another. After that he simply watched the entrance to the Tomlinson Chapel on East 68th Street. It had a small arched doorway with modest stained-glass windows and two marble columns on either side. Corman kept a close eye on it as he waited across the street, lingering under the awning of an apartment house while the rain swept up and down. He’d already been there for several minutes before the doorman approached him.
“Excuse me,” the doorman said. He straightened himself slightly, showing off the buttons of his uniform. “May I help you?”
Corman continued to watch the front of the chapel. A limousine had pulled up in front, and he could see a man in a black raincoat as he got out and headed into the building.
“Excuse me,” the doorman repeated. He tapped Corman’s shoulder. “I asked you a question.”
Corman looked at him. “What?”
“This is not a bus stop,” the doorman said. “Are you waiting for someone who lives in this building?”
“No,” Corman said. His eyes drifted back toward the chapel. The long black limo had already pulled away from the curb.
“Then I’d like for you to move on,” the doorman said firmly.
Corman glanced at him. “Move on?”
A thin smile slithered onto the doorman’s face. “It makes people nervous.”
Corman looked back toward the chapel, its door now tightly closed.
“I said, it makes people nervous,” the doorman repeated emphatically.
Corman looked at him. “What does?”
“People just sort of hanging around the building. People they don’t know.”
“I’m a photographer,” Corman told him.
The doorman chuckled. “Is that supposed to impress me?” He placed his hand on Corman’s shoulder and squeezed very slightly. “No trouble, please. Just move on.”