I assume that she is talking about her weekly meetings in the park with Ry Strauss. I hadn’t known for certain, of course. I just followed my intuition. “For one, you have a police record for twelve arrests, all for civil disobedience at various progressive rallies.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s ‘for one.’”
“And for two?”
“You told me that you started working at Malachy’s in 1978. Frankie Boy told me you were a part-timer as early as 1973.”
“Frankie Boy has a big mouth.” She takes a deep sip. “Is Ry really dead?”
“Yes.”
“I loved him, you know. I loved him for a very long time.”
I had figured this. Kathleen hadn’t “rescued” Lake Davies—or if she had, only inadvertently. Her real goal in facilitating Lake’s surrender was simpler: Remove the competition for Ry Strauss’s affection.
“Who killed him?” she asks.
“I was hoping that perhaps you could help me with that.”
“I don’t see how,” she says. “Do the police have any suspects?”
“Not a one.”
Kathleen takes a deep sip and turns back to the window. “Poor tormented soul. All of them really. The Jane Street Six. They never meant to hurt anyone that night.”
“So I keep hearing.”
“Idealistic kids. We all were. We wanted to change the world for the better.”
I want to get off this overly worn excuse-justification track and back on one more fertile to my investigation. “Did you know where Ry was living this whole time?”
“Yeah, of course. At the Beresford.” She turns to me. “Have you seen old pictures of him? I mean, when Ry was young? God, he was so beautiful. Such charisma. Sexy as all get-out.” I could see her smile in the window’s reflection. “I knew he was damaged—I could see that right away—but I’ve always been a sucker for the dangerous type.”
“Who else knew Ry lived at the Beresford?”
“No one.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Did you ever visit him?”
“At the Beresford? Never. He’d never allow a guest. I know that sounds odd. Well, Ry was odd. Became odder by the day. A hermit really. He’d never let anyone else in. He was too scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Who knew? He had an illness.” Then, thinking on it for a moment, she adds, “Or so I thought. But maybe, I don’t know now, maybe he was right to be scared.”
“How did Ry end up there?”
“In that tower, you mean?”
I nod.
“After Lake surrendered, Ry and I, we got together. He moved in with me. I had a place on Amsterdam near Seventy-Ninth. A walk-up above a Chinese restaurant. Then it became a mattress store. Then a shoe store. Then a nail salon. Now it’s Asian fusion, which sounds like a fancy name for a Chinese restaurant to me. Everything that goes around comes around, am I right?”
“As rain.”
“What does that mean anyway? Why would someone describe rain as being right?”
I sigh. “Anyway.”
“Anyway, I shared a floor with one of those massage parlors. Not what you’re thinking. They were legit. Cheap, no frills, but legit. At least I think they were legit. But who knows? All that happy-ending stuff. Who cares, I’m just babbling, sorry.”
I try to sound kind as I say, “It’s okay,” so as to encourage her to keep talking.
“We were happy, Ry and me. I mean, sort of. Like I said, I knew what I was getting in for. It wasn’t going to be forever, but I’m not big on forever. My relationships with men are like a wild buckaroo ride at a rodeo—it’s exciting and crazy and I know it’s going to be me who gets thrown off in the end and breaks a rib when I smack the ground.”
I like her.
Kathleen turns now and gives me a well-crafted, oft-used side smile that lands.
“That ride lasted longer than I would have thought.”
“How long?”
“As a couple? On and off for years. As a friend? Well, right up until today.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I bet the Staunch family found him.”
“Nero Staunch?”
“The family always wanted revenge, you know. One of the people who died that night was a niece or something. Ry always figured they got to the others.”
“The Staunches?”
“Yeah.”
“Ry thought that the Staunches killed the other Jane Street Six members?”
“Something like that, yeah. The Staunch girl who got killed? I think her brother runs the family business now.” She shrugs. “Ry got nuttier and more paranoid as time passed. He was erratic at best. Sometimes, for no reason, he’d start thinking the cops or Staunch was closing in on him. Maybe because he heard a funny noise or someone gave him a weird look. Maybe because Mercury was in retrograde. Who knew? So Ry would run off for a while. Sometimes he’d be gone for months. Then he’d just show up one day and want to live with me again. He’d do that—come back and stay with me—until he got the place in the Beresford.”
“When was that?”
“What year? Oh, let me think. Mid-nineties maybe.”
Hmm. That would be around when the paintings were stolen.
“You set up a weekly meet?” I ask.
“Yeah. Whatever was wrong with Ry, it was getting worse. You take all his issues, which are really an illness, you know, like cancer or heart diseases. Incurable maybe, I don’t know. But you take all that and you take his paranoia and then you add in the fact that he really did have people after him—the FBI, the Staunches, whatever. Then pile on the guilt from that horrible night and, kaboom, like with the Molotov cocktails. So by the time Ry moved into that tower, he couldn’t handle life anymore. He shut out the world.”
“Except you.”
“Except me.” The R-rated smile again. “But I’m pretty special.”
“I’m sure you are.”
Are we flirting?
I move on: “When you two met for your weekly rendezvous in the park, what did you do?”
“Talked mostly.”
“About?”
“Anything. He didn’t make much sense in recent years.”
“But you still met?”
“Sure.”
“And you talked?”
“I also gave him the occasional hand job.”
“Nice of you.”
“He wanted more.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Right? And I’d try. For old times’ sake. Like I said, he used to be so damn beautiful, like you, but, I don’t know, by 2000, maybe 2001, he lost his physical appeal. To me at least.” Kathleen arched an eyebrow. “Still, a hand job isn’t nothing.”
“Truer words,” I agree.
Kathleen stares me down a bit. I like that. I am, I confess, tempted. She may be on the older side, but she’s got that innate sexual allure you can’t teach—and I did lose out earlier tonight. Kathleen saunters now toward the crystal decanter and gestures whether it would be okay to pour herself another. I do the honors.