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“That little hands pitch in to take care of our family’s newest members, especially walks. Dogs need walks with people attached to the other end of the leash.”
“And pooper scoopers,” said Seamus.
“I’ll walk the hamster,” Eddie said.
“You are a hamster,” replied Ricky.
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“We promise, Daddy,” Shawna said. “Can we touch them now? Can we, please? Please?”
“I suppose,” I said as I finally placed the puppy and the hamster cage on the floor and wisely backed out of the way.
CHAPTER 27
I WAS COMMUTING UP to Harlem the next morning and had just turned south on Adam Clayton Powell when my phone rang.
“Hi, Detective. This is Doyle. Jimmy Doyle.”
“Hey, Jimmy. What’s up?” I said.
“I just had a phone conversation with Officer Chast’s stepmother down in Florida.”
“Officer Chast’s who?” I said.
“Exactly,” Doyle said. “That’s what I said. Anyway, I got in ten minutes ago, and there were a bunch of messages left here from her, and she’s really worried about Naomi. Apparently she and Naomi are close, they talk three, four nights a week. Been doing it for the last ten years, since Naomi moved up here and became a cop. Anyway, she was waiting for Naomi’s phone call all day yesterday because it was the stepmom’s birthday. But she didn’t call.”
“Have you tried calling Naomi?” I said.
“It just kicks into voice mail. Chast is pretty good about getting back to you day or night, so it’s pretty weird.”
“Where does she live?”
“Central Park West in the hundreds.”
“OK. I’m about two blocks from the office. I’ll pick you up on One Twenty-Fifth and we’ll head over and see what’s going on.”
Chast’s building was at 109th and Central Park West, a block south of the northwest corner of Central Park. It was about twelve stories, red brick trimmed in pale limestone, one of those anonymously beautiful prewar structures that you never get tired of seeing in and around New York.
But when we parked in front of it, I could see that despite its good bones, the building had gone to seed a little. There was some choice graffiti here and there along its base, some broken glass next to a broken pay phone kiosk on the corner. When we reached the door, instead of the doorman that the old building probably once had, there was a buzzer system. First we pressed for Chast in apartment 4H. There was no response after a minute, so we pressed for the super. No dice on that front, either.
I then did what every New Yorker does when confronted with a buzzer system and a locked lobby door of a building to which they need access. With both hands fluttering like Liberace playing a solo, I rang every button in the box.
“Who is it?” said a woman’s rough voice after thirty seconds.
Doyle rolled his eyes. The woman sounded almost exactly like the “Do your paperwork” lady, Roz, from Monsters, Inc.
“NYPD,” Doyle said. “Open the door, please.”
“Yeah, and I’m Hillary Clinton, you jerk,” replied “Roz,” then added, “You kids get outta here before I call the cops. And stop pissin’ in the elevator! What are ya? Dogs? Go piss in the park, you filthy animals.”
“I want to shoot this thing. Can I, please? Just once?” Doyle said, pounding on some more buttons.
Fortunately, before he could take out his service weapon, the door’s buzzer went off, and we went up the stairs to Chast’s apartment door. After knocking on it pretty hard for a few minutes, I started getting worried. If Chast was sick or hungover, she would have woken up. If she was in there, she was in trouble. I truly hoped she wasn’t.
CHAPTER 28
I SENT DOYLE DOWN to the basement to see if he could find the building’s super. He came back up five minutes later with the super’s wife, an attractive fiftyish redheaded woman in flannel pajamas, named Meg Hambrecht.
