Stealing from the Dead
Content
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this
novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
STEALING FROM THE DEAD
Copyright © 2012 by A. J. Zerries
All rights reserved.
Edited by James Frenkel
“December 1963 (Oh What A Night)”
Words and Music by Robert Gaudio and Judy Parker
© 1975 (Renewed 2003) JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC. and SEASONS MUSIC COMPANY
All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI APRIL MUSIC INC.
All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fift h Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zerries, A. J.
Stealing from the dead / A. J. Zerries.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978- 0-7653-2717-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-8828-5 (e-book)
1. Women detectives—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Holocaust
survivors—Fiction. 3. Claims Resolution Tribunal—Fiction. 4. Conspiracy—
Fiction. 5. Fraud investigation—Fiction. 6. Serial murder investigation—
Fiction. 7. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3626.E77S74 2012
813'.6—dc22
2012017238
First Edition: August 2012
Printed in the United States of America
0
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
CHAPTER ONE
Greta wasn’t the only one who heard the music.
The beat seeped into the Seventh Avenue express as it slowed for the
Ninety-sixth Street station, and even the bleariest early rush hour passengers were tilting their heads and squeezing their eyes shut, trying to
place it.
When the doors parted, it slithered in like a woman in a rumpled
party dress, mascara smeared, hair a mess: a tango, predatory and voluptuous, lust thinly disguised as music.
At least twenty people were gathered in a loose circle near the middle
of the platform, drawn by the boom box breathing out piano and bandoneón and bass. An eleven- or twelve-year-old girl in a school uniform,
cheeks flushed, tore herself away and ran for the departing uptown train.
Greta slipped into her place.
All eyes were on the two dancers in the center: a man in tight black
pants, his redheaded partner in a miniskirt and clingy glitter sweater.
Though meticulously choreographed, their routine’s every feint, advance,
and retreat still gave off the heat of a spontaneous erotic skirmish.
A swooning dip accompanied the song’s end, and the man bent his
partner so low that her long hair fanned out, flamelike, over the concrete
floor. Only then did Greta catch on. It wasn’t a couple at all, but a man
and . . . a tango dummy. She had a pretty Macy’s mannequin face and a
12
A. J. ZERRIES
stuffed body, like a Raggedy Ann doll—except Raggedy Ann never had
D-cup boobs. Her flared mini showed off a small waist, a literally wellpadded derrière, and willowy legs sheathed in black fishnet stockings.
The dancer had skillfully kept her crude, mittenlike hands out of sight,
clasped in his; clear plastic bands attached her black patent leather shoes
to his ankles, so she’d never fail to follow his lead.
Applause broke out—for the dancer, for his partner, even for the clever
deception. When the man and his life-size doll took their bow, he copped
a feel, she slapped his face, and he pulled back, surprised and wounded.
Dollar bills dropped into the basket that sat next to the boom box, another train pulled in, a new song began, and on they tangoed.
The rhythm made it impossible to walk away without moving to the
beat. Strangers were grinning at one another, half-dancing up the subway
stairs.
Greta, unsmiling, wondered about her life so far, and how much of it
resembled the dummy’s.
CHAPTER TWO
The Twenty-fourth Precinct shared a single building with the FDNY’s
Engine Seventy-six and Ladder Twenty-two. Directly across West 100th
Street were neighborhood outposts of the Public Library and the Department of Health. To the side were playgrounds and an AstroTurf soccer
field. Back in 1964, some whiz of an urban planner must have heard the
siren song of the prepackaged Community Hub of the Future:
Want to read a book or play some hoops? Get a blood test? Report a fire?
Snitch out your noisy/nosy neighbors? Just one stop can do it all—your
neighborhood’s municipal services center!
As Greta walked inside, a mix of coffee and aftershave wafted from the
door to the right, the precinct commander’s office. At least five men in
suits blocked her view of Quill, and vice versa. She hurried in the opposite direction, where a stairwell lined with urine-yellow tiles led to the
second-floor squad room. Detective Russell Kim, her young partner, stood
up and grabbed his jacket as soon as he saw her. No matter how early she
got to work, Kim always made it there first.
“Good morning. We just caught a DOA on One-hundred-and-fourth
Street,” he said. His perfect, English-as-a-second-language enunciation
always sounded dubbed, like an actor in a foreign film. Maybe you had to
be Korean to see the subtitles running across his chest. He waited for
Greta to grab what she needed from her desk and followed her out.
14
A. J. ZERRIES
A uniform car was parked outside the small apartment building on
104th Street. Ninety years past its prime, its classic limestone façade had
been reduced to disintegrating fluted columns and a crumbling portico.
The garbage at the curbside, painstakingly stacked and separated for recycling, made the building look shabbier than its own trash.
3C was one of the few doorbells in the vestibule with a name: P. Kantor.
The apartment door had a peephole and three locks. A rookie recently
assigned to the precinct admitted Greta and Russell into a short, narrow
foyer. The kitchen was to the right, the bedroom to the left, and directly
ahead, through an open archway, was the living room. It was so small that
every piece of furniture seemed to be touching. Two narrow windows
looked out on the rear wall of what appeared to be an identical building
on 103rd Street, the space in between hardly wider than an air shaft. The
thin, nearly spring sunlight didn’t stand a chance of breaking through
the room’s fuzzy predawn grayness.
One step forward brought the single chair and small table tucked just
to the right of the arch into view. A teapot and a dessert plate with an arrangement of Pepperidge Farm cookies—Chessmen and Milanos—sat
in the center of the table. A cup and saucer, distanced as far as possible
from the chair, didn’t make sense until Greta looked down.
On the floor, a white-haired woman lay parallel to the right wall. Apparently, she’d collapsed onto her side, tipping over her chair as she fell.
One hand clutched the front of her housedress at mid-chest. Her eyes
were open, registering a terrible surprise. Greta guessed the woman was
in her eighties. While she wriggled her fingers into her plastic gloves, she
briefly pondered the mystery of where elderly ladies could still find printed
cotton housedresses in 2005.
“Who called her in, Betlinger?” Greta asked, thankful that her eyes
could still make out the rookie’s nametag at ten paces without glasses.
“She was supposed to meet a friend at a restaurant last night. Never
showed up or answered her phone.” Besides being strangely garbled,
Betlinger’s speech was annoyingly slow. “So the friend came here this
morning and made the super open up. He was the one who called.”
STEALING FROM THE DEAD
15
By the time he finished parsing his way through all that, he’d given up
his attempt to conceal the braces glinting in his mouth. Wondering what
grade he was in and how he made it past the school metal detectors with
his gun, Greta asked, “And the friend? Where is she now?”
“Downstairs in the super’s apartment, with Officer Alvarez.” After a
long swallow, he added, “Another old lady. Crying like crazy. We had to
get her out of here before we had two of them down on the floor.” Halfway into a grin, he remembered his braces and clamped his lips together.
Russell hurriedly asked, “Have you spoken to any of the other tenants
yet?” It had taken Kim only a few weeks as her partner to become adept
at rapid interceptions between Greta and people who didn’t bother to
think before speaking.
Betlinger didn’t have a chance to reply. Roulier, the Patrol Sergeant,
had let himself in. “What’s up?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. His
eyes darted around the room. “How come the ambulance isn’t here yet,
Betlinger?”
“We just got here ourselves,” said Kim. “Haven’t had a chance to look
around yet.” Greta stepped to the middle of the archway, clearing Roulier’s
view of the corpse.
After a two-second glance, he responded, “Hell, I could have called this
one in. Saved you the trip.”
First the kid, then the sergeant. Callous remarks, casually tossed off
about an old woman who’d died all alone in a sunless apartment so
cramped it didn’t need a corpse to resemble a coffi n. The sergeant, unapologetically crass, must’ve walked through scenes like this so many
times that they’d thoroughly desensitized him, like some cop-Novocain
that permanently numbs the brain’s Compassion Zone. As for the rookie,
probably jittery from his first time around a dead body. Credible excuses, if any were needed at all, yet the two of them had Greta’s indignation simmering. She quickly turned away, her nose nearly hitting the
glass doors of the china cabinet that jutted from the corner opposite
the table.
16
A. J. ZERRIES
So far, she’d avoided whatever was supposed to jump out of the dark and
grab a woman when she turns forty. Well, it had just pounced, but instead
of scaring her, it was really pissing her off.
Here in 3C, she was attending a sneak preview of her own Final
Curtain. Like a high-speed fast-forward, the female Caucasian under the
table had momentarily morphed into a future Greta Strasser, DOA—Dead,
Old, and Alone.
P. Kantor was Greta’s very own Mirror, Mirror, on the floor.
Only after several deep breaths did the contents of the china cabinet actually register. Except for a few cut crystal wine glasses, it was filled by a
set of dishes. The empty center spot on the middle shelf was just about
the size of the teapot. The pattern was a wide border of pink cabbage roses
with a gold rim, matching the cup and saucer and cookie plate on the
table. Porcelain or bone china—Greta had never known the difference—it
definitely fit the pretty, old-fashioned Sunday Best category.
Like the rest of the apartment, Kantor’s bedroom was tidy. Kim wandered in after Greta, and they both examined the low navy pumps and
roll-on shoe polish lined up on a flattened brown supermarket bag. The
shoes had an even, light shine. Kim opened the narrow closet, exposing
clothes jammed in tight. A hook on the inside of the door held an outfit
arranged on two wire hangers: a striped silk blouse and a sky-blue wool
suit. “That would work with those shoes she polished,” said Greta.
“Goes back pretty far, doesn’t it?” Russell asked.
The suit was completely lined. The blouse’s stripes matched up perfectly at the seams. “Not necessarily pricey, but the details—definitely
vintage.” She’d spent enough time sorting through thrift shop racks for
undercover getups to add, “Late Fifties, maybe early Sixties.”
“My grandmother still has clothes like that.” A couple of weeks back,
Kim had confided to Greta that he was torn between his desire to live on
his own and his fi lial duty to remain with his parents until he was married. His grandmother was also part of the household. “Last fall, my mom
STEALING FROM THE DEAD
17
took her shopping for a new dress to wear to my cousin’s wedding. They
went to a lot of stores until they found one that fit and was the right color
and price. Then, all of a sudden, my grandmother refused to buy it—and
she wouldn’t let my mother buy it for her, either. She kind of freaked out.
Nearly ran out of the store.”
“How come?”
“The only explanation she gave was, ‘What if I only live long enough
to wear it once, to the wedding? What if I don’t even live long enough to
go?’ You know, like a new dress would be tempting fate.”
Greta could anticipate the grandmother’s buildup—transcending all
cultures—to her final jab, the Pity Punch: “And if I do live to go, who will
even notice? Nobody!”
“Has she gone shopping since?”
“Nope. Not for clothes, anyway.” He sighed, then looked around at the
bedroom’s unadorned walls, night table, and dresser. “This is just like the
living room, isn’t it? Not a single photograph. No mementoes, no souvenirs. Doesn’t tell you a thing about her.”
“It’s like Kantor moved in years ago, but never lived here at all,” Greta
agreed. “Except for those dishes.”
After checking out the bathroom, they passed back through the foyer.
Roulier was perched on the edge of one of the armchairs, writing up his
report, his wrist flying back and forth across the page like a shuttle. He
didn’t look up when Greta slipped back through the archway.
That teapot, and the time it would take to brew tea in it—in striking
contrast to the sergeant’s haste—had drawn her back to the table. A rose
bloomed on its lid, and bowed longitudinal lines swirled down the sides.
For the first time, Greta took note of the little blue Tetley Tea tag—no,
that was tags, one overlapping the other. She studied the cup and saucer,
also too delicate to run through a dishwasher. And the gold border made
nuking them in a microwave a risky prospect.
Russell was already in the two-burner stove, table-less kitchen. A shelf
on one wall served as the only work counter and also held the apartment’s single concession to the last quarter of the Twentieth Century: a
small microwave. Next to the sink, an upside-down white mug had long
since dried in a dish drainer. Reaching up, Russell opened a painted
18
A. J. ZERRIES
metal cabinet. In easy reach on the bottom shelf were plain white dishes
and three more mugs, the kind Kmart sold in a boxed ser vice for four.
“That doesn’t make sense, does it?” she asked, pointing at the washed
mug. Without giving Russell a chance to reply, she returned to the living
room.
Squatting down, Greta took a closer look at the body. Average weight,
maybe five-four, but big-boned, with wide hips. She guessed she’d been
strong for her size when she was a young woman.
Greta wanted to check for a wedding ring, but Kantor’s left hand and
wrist had been trapped underneath her torso when she fell, leaving only
part of her forearm and elbow in view. Because she was pressed so close
to the wall, she’d remained balanced on her upper arm and shoulder. At
the lowest visible part of the forearm, Greta noticed a dark mark. “Kim,”
she asked, “did you notice any prescription medicine anywhere?”
“No. Just a big bottle of aspirin in the bathroom.”
“That’s all I saw, too.” A prescription drug would list the name of P.
Kantor’s physician. Unless either the super or her friend could give them
contact numbers for family members or the dead woman’s doctor, the
ambulance team would transport the body to the Office of the Medical
Examiner, same as a suicide or murder victim.
Only a few feet away, the sergeant, now in the middle of a call, was demanding to know why he was being held up on 104th Street. All she knew
about Roulier was that he had a nineteen-year-old son who’d been caught
with drugs so many times the kid had run out of slaps on the wrist—a
judge had put him away for five years. She didn’t even want to think about
a cop’s kid in prison. It had to be eating Roulier up alive, had to be the reason he kept racing around, as if that could make his son’s sentence go by
faster. She felt sorry for him, but saw no reason to like him.
Dreading the feel of cold flesh through her gloves, Greta used the
housedress’s right shoulder to gently rock the body. She was blocking
Russell’s view, and doubted he’d noticed her shiver when the rest of the
mark came into view. She twisted to one side, so he could see the fivenumber tattoo.
“Concentration camp?”
Greta nodded.
STEALING FROM THE DEAD
19
That explained why Kantor had no photographs. Not one baby or a
single smiling high school graduate, no 1940’s soldier boy or lace-andlilies wedding photo, no hand-tinted portrait of mom and dad. When
they gave you that number, they’d already taken everything else.
“Betlinger,” she asked without looking up, “what’s her first name?”
They owed her that, the dignity of a full name. More than what was next
to the doorbell.
“Paulina.” He pronounced it Paw-lina.
No, it had to be Po-lina. Lovely, but old-fashioned, like her china.
Greta shifted her gaze, in search of a wedding ring. But that, of course,
would have been confiscated, too. Paulina Kantor’s left hand was slightly
cupped, the pad of the thumb against the top of the index finger. Just before Greta began to straighten, something white just above the thumbnail
caught her eye. “Hold on. There’s something . . .” She bent closer to examine a tiny scrap of paper with a ragged edge: crescent-shaped, it conformed
to the edge of a fingernail deeply ridged by age. “It’s a piece of paper, sort of
caught under her thumb. Did you see any paper like that around when you
came in, Betlinger?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Think. Maybe a newspaper?”
While Betlinger shook his head, Russell said, “That looks too white for
newsprint.”
“Probably. And it looks like the rest of it, whatever it was, was torn
away. So where the hell is it? The rest of the paper?” After a careful release
of Paulina Kantor’s shoulder, she searched the floor under the table and
checked the seat of the second chair. “Come on, guys, can we find a piece
of paper with a corner or an edge missing somewhere in this apartment?”
Suddenly, a large pair of black shoes confronted her. “What kind of
paper, Detective Strasser?” Roulier asked from above.
While Kim and the uniform scrambled to find any kind of match, she
filled in the sergeant as she backed out far enough to clear the table and
get to her feet. “Several things here don’t add up,” she concluded. “This
lady was supposed to meet her friend for dinner last night. We don’t know
exactly when, but since senior citizens tend to eat early, I’m assuming it
was sometime around six or seven.” Greta gestured toward the bedroom.
20
A. J. ZERRIES
“She picked out what she was going to wear, even polished her shoes.
Why have tea and cookies before you go out to eat?”
Roulier took no time to reply. “Ever been to a nursing home, Detective?
Most of the old people there can recite their address and phone number
from seventy years ago, then draw a complete blank if you ask them where
they are. So she picked out her clothes. Five minutes later, those plans for
supper—gone with the wind.”
Greta shot back, “Okay, Sergeant, let’s say she did forget, and was in
the mood for a cup of tea—oh, and this could just as well have happened
earlier in the day—why not just grab the clean mug that’s sitting in the
kitchen, nuke the water, dip in a teabag, one-two-three? But no, she went
to the trouble of taking out her best china—and the teapot, no less. Why
would she do that, just for herself?”
“Maybe she didn’t think she was alone,” he countered. “You know, one
minute, nobody’s home, the next minute, you’ve got company.”
In the meantime, Kim and Betlinger had returned from their search,
empty-handed. “But the paper,” Russell broke in, “how could it be ripped
away, unless . . . ?”
“Precisely,” Greta nodded. “That’s where I’m at.”
All the floating, scrambled inconsistencies coalesced. Like an oldfashioned telegraph with its pasted-down strips of words, they’d assembled
themselves in coherent order.
“Miss Kantor had a visitor,” she said decisively. “Someone she considered important enough to invite in, make a little fuss over. Good china,
cookies, brewed tea. Maybe she showed her guest a paper she had in her
possession, or maybe she was looking over something that person brought
along. At some point, that paper was ripped out of Miss Kantor’s hands.
Was the visitor responsible for her death? Possibly. My bet is that his or
her cup and saucer were carefully washed and returned to their place in
the china cupboard. So whenever the cops did show up, it would look
like the old lady was home alone and a little dotty—a quick slam-dunk.
But that’s only because the mystery guest didn’t know about the dinner
date. And certainly didn’t notice the snip of paper.”
“But doesn’t she look like she had a heart attack?” Betlinger asked.
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novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
STEALING FROM THE DEAD
Copyright © 2012 by A. J. Zerries
All rights reserved.
Edited by James Frenkel
“December 1963 (Oh What A Night)”
Words and Music by Robert Gaudio and Judy Parker
© 1975 (Renewed 2003) JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC. and SEASONS MUSIC COMPANY
All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI APRIL MUSIC INC.
All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fift h Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zerries, A. J.
Stealing from the dead / A. J. Zerries.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978- 0-7653-2717-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-8828-5 (e-book)
1. Women detectives—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Holocaust
survivors—Fiction. 3. Claims Resolution Tribunal—Fiction. 4. Conspiracy—
Fiction. 5. Fraud investigation—Fiction. 6. Serial murder investigation—
Fiction. 7. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3626.E77S74 2012
813'.6—dc22
2012017238
First Edition: August 2012
Printed in the United States of America
0
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
CHAPTER ONE
Greta wasn’t the only one who heard the music.
The beat seeped into the Seventh Avenue express as it slowed for the
Ninety-sixth Street station, and even the bleariest early rush hour passengers were tilting their heads and squeezing their eyes shut, trying to
place it.
When the doors parted, it slithered in like a woman in a rumpled
party dress, mascara smeared, hair a mess: a tango, predatory and voluptuous, lust thinly disguised as music.
At least twenty people were gathered in a loose circle near the middle
of the platform, drawn by the boom box breathing out piano and bandoneón and bass. An eleven- or twelve-year-old girl in a school uniform,
cheeks flushed, tore herself away and ran for the departing uptown train.
Greta slipped into her place.
All eyes were on the two dancers in the center: a man in tight black
pants, his redheaded partner in a miniskirt and clingy glitter sweater.
Though meticulously choreographed, their routine’s every feint, advance,
and retreat still gave off the heat of a spontaneous erotic skirmish.
A swooning dip accompanied the song’s end, and the man bent his
partner so low that her long hair fanned out, flamelike, over the concrete
floor. Only then did Greta catch on. It wasn’t a couple at all, but a man
and . . . a tango dummy. She had a pretty Macy’s mannequin face and a
12
A. J. ZERRIES
stuffed body, like a Raggedy Ann doll—except Raggedy Ann never had
D-cup boobs. Her flared mini showed off a small waist, a literally wellpadded derrière, and willowy legs sheathed in black fishnet stockings.
The dancer had skillfully kept her crude, mittenlike hands out of sight,
clasped in his; clear plastic bands attached her black patent leather shoes
to his ankles, so she’d never fail to follow his lead.
Applause broke out—for the dancer, for his partner, even for the clever
deception. When the man and his life-size doll took their bow, he copped
a feel, she slapped his face, and he pulled back, surprised and wounded.
Dollar bills dropped into the basket that sat next to the boom box, another train pulled in, a new song began, and on they tangoed.
The rhythm made it impossible to walk away without moving to the
beat. Strangers were grinning at one another, half-dancing up the subway
stairs.
Greta, unsmiling, wondered about her life so far, and how much of it
resembled the dummy’s.
CHAPTER TWO
The Twenty-fourth Precinct shared a single building with the FDNY’s
Engine Seventy-six and Ladder Twenty-two. Directly across West 100th
Street were neighborhood outposts of the Public Library and the Department of Health. To the side were playgrounds and an AstroTurf soccer
field. Back in 1964, some whiz of an urban planner must have heard the
siren song of the prepackaged Community Hub of the Future:
Want to read a book or play some hoops? Get a blood test? Report a fire?
Snitch out your noisy/nosy neighbors? Just one stop can do it all—your
neighborhood’s municipal services center!
As Greta walked inside, a mix of coffee and aftershave wafted from the
door to the right, the precinct commander’s office. At least five men in
suits blocked her view of Quill, and vice versa. She hurried in the opposite direction, where a stairwell lined with urine-yellow tiles led to the
second-floor squad room. Detective Russell Kim, her young partner, stood
up and grabbed his jacket as soon as he saw her. No matter how early she
got to work, Kim always made it there first.
“Good morning. We just caught a DOA on One-hundred-and-fourth
Street,” he said. His perfect, English-as-a-second-language enunciation
always sounded dubbed, like an actor in a foreign film. Maybe you had to
be Korean to see the subtitles running across his chest. He waited for
Greta to grab what she needed from her desk and followed her out.
14
A. J. ZERRIES
A uniform car was parked outside the small apartment building on
104th Street. Ninety years past its prime, its classic limestone façade had
been reduced to disintegrating fluted columns and a crumbling portico.
The garbage at the curbside, painstakingly stacked and separated for recycling, made the building look shabbier than its own trash.
3C was one of the few doorbells in the vestibule with a name: P. Kantor.
The apartment door had a peephole and three locks. A rookie recently
assigned to the precinct admitted Greta and Russell into a short, narrow
foyer. The kitchen was to the right, the bedroom to the left, and directly
ahead, through an open archway, was the living room. It was so small that
every piece of furniture seemed to be touching. Two narrow windows
looked out on the rear wall of what appeared to be an identical building
on 103rd Street, the space in between hardly wider than an air shaft. The
thin, nearly spring sunlight didn’t stand a chance of breaking through
the room’s fuzzy predawn grayness.
One step forward brought the single chair and small table tucked just
to the right of the arch into view. A teapot and a dessert plate with an arrangement of Pepperidge Farm cookies—Chessmen and Milanos—sat
in the center of the table. A cup and saucer, distanced as far as possible
from the chair, didn’t make sense until Greta looked down.
On the floor, a white-haired woman lay parallel to the right wall. Apparently, she’d collapsed onto her side, tipping over her chair as she fell.
One hand clutched the front of her housedress at mid-chest. Her eyes
were open, registering a terrible surprise. Greta guessed the woman was
in her eighties. While she wriggled her fingers into her plastic gloves, she
briefly pondered the mystery of where elderly ladies could still find printed
cotton housedresses in 2005.
“Who called her in, Betlinger?” Greta asked, thankful that her eyes
could still make out the rookie’s nametag at ten paces without glasses.
“She was supposed to meet a friend at a restaurant last night. Never
showed up or answered her phone.” Besides being strangely garbled,
Betlinger’s speech was annoyingly slow. “So the friend came here this
morning and made the super open up. He was the one who called.”
STEALING FROM THE DEAD
15
By the time he finished parsing his way through all that, he’d given up
his attempt to conceal the braces glinting in his mouth. Wondering what
grade he was in and how he made it past the school metal detectors with
his gun, Greta asked, “And the friend? Where is she now?”
“Downstairs in the super’s apartment, with Officer Alvarez.” After a
long swallow, he added, “Another old lady. Crying like crazy. We had to
get her out of here before we had two of them down on the floor.” Halfway into a grin, he remembered his braces and clamped his lips together.
Russell hurriedly asked, “Have you spoken to any of the other tenants
yet?” It had taken Kim only a few weeks as her partner to become adept
at rapid interceptions between Greta and people who didn’t bother to
think before speaking.
Betlinger didn’t have a chance to reply. Roulier, the Patrol Sergeant,
had let himself in. “What’s up?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. His
eyes darted around the room. “How come the ambulance isn’t here yet,
Betlinger?”
“We just got here ourselves,” said Kim. “Haven’t had a chance to look
around yet.” Greta stepped to the middle of the archway, clearing Roulier’s
view of the corpse.
After a two-second glance, he responded, “Hell, I could have called this
one in. Saved you the trip.”
First the kid, then the sergeant. Callous remarks, casually tossed off
about an old woman who’d died all alone in a sunless apartment so
cramped it didn’t need a corpse to resemble a coffi n. The sergeant, unapologetically crass, must’ve walked through scenes like this so many
times that they’d thoroughly desensitized him, like some cop-Novocain
that permanently numbs the brain’s Compassion Zone. As for the rookie,
probably jittery from his first time around a dead body. Credible excuses, if any were needed at all, yet the two of them had Greta’s indignation simmering. She quickly turned away, her nose nearly hitting the
glass doors of the china cabinet that jutted from the corner opposite
the table.
16
A. J. ZERRIES
So far, she’d avoided whatever was supposed to jump out of the dark and
grab a woman when she turns forty. Well, it had just pounced, but instead
of scaring her, it was really pissing her off.
Here in 3C, she was attending a sneak preview of her own Final
Curtain. Like a high-speed fast-forward, the female Caucasian under the
table had momentarily morphed into a future Greta Strasser, DOA—Dead,
Old, and Alone.
P. Kantor was Greta’s very own Mirror, Mirror, on the floor.
Only after several deep breaths did the contents of the china cabinet actually register. Except for a few cut crystal wine glasses, it was filled by a
set of dishes. The empty center spot on the middle shelf was just about
the size of the teapot. The pattern was a wide border of pink cabbage roses
with a gold rim, matching the cup and saucer and cookie plate on the
table. Porcelain or bone china—Greta had never known the difference—it
definitely fit the pretty, old-fashioned Sunday Best category.
Like the rest of the apartment, Kantor’s bedroom was tidy. Kim wandered in after Greta, and they both examined the low navy pumps and
roll-on shoe polish lined up on a flattened brown supermarket bag. The
shoes had an even, light shine. Kim opened the narrow closet, exposing
clothes jammed in tight. A hook on the inside of the door held an outfit
arranged on two wire hangers: a striped silk blouse and a sky-blue wool
suit. “That would work with those shoes she polished,” said Greta.
“Goes back pretty far, doesn’t it?” Russell asked.
The suit was completely lined. The blouse’s stripes matched up perfectly at the seams. “Not necessarily pricey, but the details—definitely
vintage.” She’d spent enough time sorting through thrift shop racks for
undercover getups to add, “Late Fifties, maybe early Sixties.”
“My grandmother still has clothes like that.” A couple of weeks back,
Kim had confided to Greta that he was torn between his desire to live on
his own and his fi lial duty to remain with his parents until he was married. His grandmother was also part of the household. “Last fall, my mom
STEALING FROM THE DEAD
17
took her shopping for a new dress to wear to my cousin’s wedding. They
went to a lot of stores until they found one that fit and was the right color
and price. Then, all of a sudden, my grandmother refused to buy it—and
she wouldn’t let my mother buy it for her, either. She kind of freaked out.
Nearly ran out of the store.”
“How come?”
“The only explanation she gave was, ‘What if I only live long enough
to wear it once, to the wedding? What if I don’t even live long enough to
go?’ You know, like a new dress would be tempting fate.”
Greta could anticipate the grandmother’s buildup—transcending all
cultures—to her final jab, the Pity Punch: “And if I do live to go, who will
even notice? Nobody!”
“Has she gone shopping since?”
“Nope. Not for clothes, anyway.” He sighed, then looked around at the
bedroom’s unadorned walls, night table, and dresser. “This is just like the
living room, isn’t it? Not a single photograph. No mementoes, no souvenirs. Doesn’t tell you a thing about her.”
“It’s like Kantor moved in years ago, but never lived here at all,” Greta
agreed. “Except for those dishes.”
After checking out the bathroom, they passed back through the foyer.
Roulier was perched on the edge of one of the armchairs, writing up his
report, his wrist flying back and forth across the page like a shuttle. He
didn’t look up when Greta slipped back through the archway.
That teapot, and the time it would take to brew tea in it—in striking
contrast to the sergeant’s haste—had drawn her back to the table. A rose
bloomed on its lid, and bowed longitudinal lines swirled down the sides.
For the first time, Greta took note of the little blue Tetley Tea tag—no,
that was tags, one overlapping the other. She studied the cup and saucer,
also too delicate to run through a dishwasher. And the gold border made
nuking them in a microwave a risky prospect.
Russell was already in the two-burner stove, table-less kitchen. A shelf
on one wall served as the only work counter and also held the apartment’s single concession to the last quarter of the Twentieth Century: a
small microwave. Next to the sink, an upside-down white mug had long
since dried in a dish drainer. Reaching up, Russell opened a painted
18
A. J. ZERRIES
metal cabinet. In easy reach on the bottom shelf were plain white dishes
and three more mugs, the kind Kmart sold in a boxed ser vice for four.
“That doesn’t make sense, does it?” she asked, pointing at the washed
mug. Without giving Russell a chance to reply, she returned to the living
room.
Squatting down, Greta took a closer look at the body. Average weight,
maybe five-four, but big-boned, with wide hips. She guessed she’d been
strong for her size when she was a young woman.
Greta wanted to check for a wedding ring, but Kantor’s left hand and
wrist had been trapped underneath her torso when she fell, leaving only
part of her forearm and elbow in view. Because she was pressed so close
to the wall, she’d remained balanced on her upper arm and shoulder. At
the lowest visible part of the forearm, Greta noticed a dark mark. “Kim,”
she asked, “did you notice any prescription medicine anywhere?”
“No. Just a big bottle of aspirin in the bathroom.”
“That’s all I saw, too.” A prescription drug would list the name of P.
Kantor’s physician. Unless either the super or her friend could give them
contact numbers for family members or the dead woman’s doctor, the
ambulance team would transport the body to the Office of the Medical
Examiner, same as a suicide or murder victim.
Only a few feet away, the sergeant, now in the middle of a call, was demanding to know why he was being held up on 104th Street. All she knew
about Roulier was that he had a nineteen-year-old son who’d been caught
with drugs so many times the kid had run out of slaps on the wrist—a
judge had put him away for five years. She didn’t even want to think about
a cop’s kid in prison. It had to be eating Roulier up alive, had to be the reason he kept racing around, as if that could make his son’s sentence go by
faster. She felt sorry for him, but saw no reason to like him.
Dreading the feel of cold flesh through her gloves, Greta used the
housedress’s right shoulder to gently rock the body. She was blocking
Russell’s view, and doubted he’d noticed her shiver when the rest of the
mark came into view. She twisted to one side, so he could see the fivenumber tattoo.
“Concentration camp?”
Greta nodded.
STEALING FROM THE DEAD
19
That explained why Kantor had no photographs. Not one baby or a
single smiling high school graduate, no 1940’s soldier boy or lace-andlilies wedding photo, no hand-tinted portrait of mom and dad. When
they gave you that number, they’d already taken everything else.
“Betlinger,” she asked without looking up, “what’s her first name?”
They owed her that, the dignity of a full name. More than what was next
to the doorbell.
“Paulina.” He pronounced it Paw-lina.
No, it had to be Po-lina. Lovely, but old-fashioned, like her china.
Greta shifted her gaze, in search of a wedding ring. But that, of course,
would have been confiscated, too. Paulina Kantor’s left hand was slightly
cupped, the pad of the thumb against the top of the index finger. Just before Greta began to straighten, something white just above the thumbnail
caught her eye. “Hold on. There’s something . . .” She bent closer to examine a tiny scrap of paper with a ragged edge: crescent-shaped, it conformed
to the edge of a fingernail deeply ridged by age. “It’s a piece of paper, sort of
caught under her thumb. Did you see any paper like that around when you
came in, Betlinger?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Think. Maybe a newspaper?”
While Betlinger shook his head, Russell said, “That looks too white for
newsprint.”
“Probably. And it looks like the rest of it, whatever it was, was torn
away. So where the hell is it? The rest of the paper?” After a careful release
of Paulina Kantor’s shoulder, she searched the floor under the table and
checked the seat of the second chair. “Come on, guys, can we find a piece
of paper with a corner or an edge missing somewhere in this apartment?”
Suddenly, a large pair of black shoes confronted her. “What kind of
paper, Detective Strasser?” Roulier asked from above.
While Kim and the uniform scrambled to find any kind of match, she
filled in the sergeant as she backed out far enough to clear the table and
get to her feet. “Several things here don’t add up,” she concluded. “This
lady was supposed to meet her friend for dinner last night. We don’t know
exactly when, but since senior citizens tend to eat early, I’m assuming it
was sometime around six or seven.” Greta gestured toward the bedroom.
20
A. J. ZERRIES
“She picked out what she was going to wear, even polished her shoes.
Why have tea and cookies before you go out to eat?”
Roulier took no time to reply. “Ever been to a nursing home, Detective?
Most of the old people there can recite their address and phone number
from seventy years ago, then draw a complete blank if you ask them where
they are. So she picked out her clothes. Five minutes later, those plans for
supper—gone with the wind.”
Greta shot back, “Okay, Sergeant, let’s say she did forget, and was in
the mood for a cup of tea—oh, and this could just as well have happened
earlier in the day—why not just grab the clean mug that’s sitting in the
kitchen, nuke the water, dip in a teabag, one-two-three? But no, she went
to the trouble of taking out her best china—and the teapot, no less. Why
would she do that, just for herself?”
“Maybe she didn’t think she was alone,” he countered. “You know, one
minute, nobody’s home, the next minute, you’ve got company.”
In the meantime, Kim and Betlinger had returned from their search,
empty-handed. “But the paper,” Russell broke in, “how could it be ripped
away, unless . . . ?”
“Precisely,” Greta nodded. “That’s where I’m at.”
All the floating, scrambled inconsistencies coalesced. Like an oldfashioned telegraph with its pasted-down strips of words, they’d assembled
themselves in coherent order.
“Miss Kantor had a visitor,” she said decisively. “Someone she considered important enough to invite in, make a little fuss over. Good china,
cookies, brewed tea. Maybe she showed her guest a paper she had in her
possession, or maybe she was looking over something that person brought
along. At some point, that paper was ripped out of Miss Kantor’s hands.
Was the visitor responsible for her death? Possibly. My bet is that his or
her cup and saucer were carefully washed and returned to their place in
the china cupboard. So whenever the cops did show up, it would look
like the old lady was home alone and a little dotty—a quick slam-dunk.
But that’s only because the mystery guest didn’t know about the dinner
date. And certainly didn’t notice the snip of paper.”
“But doesn’t she look like she had a heart attack?” Betlinger asked.
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