Free Nightbird by Edward Dee Page A

apartment, the
     lease is still in her name.”
    “Call me if you have any problems getting it changed to your name.”
    “Oh, I’m not staying. I’ll go back to Florida.”
    “Why not Arizona?”
    “Don’t think so,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “I’m too low-class for Mother. I embarrass her.”
    “That’s why you didn’t attend the funeral.”
    Faye nodded, then stretched her arms above her head, lazy and catlike. The room smelled like Gillian’s apartment in the Broadway
     Arms, delicate, powdery scents.
    “Tell me about the last time you saw your sister,” Ryan said.
    “Sunday, she came over. She brought me that bat.” Faye swung her legs off the bed and picked up the baseball bat near the
     TV. She handed it to Ryan. “It’s a Bobby Bonilla model. She met him at the All-Star Cafe, I think, and got him to sign it
     for me. She knew I was a Marlins fan.”
    “My son was a big Baltimore Orioles fan,” Ryan said. He gave the bat a short swing, all wrist, and wondered why he’d mentioned
     his son; he never did that. He asked Faye to finish telling about Sunday.
    “We went to lunch. Around the corner to Caramanica’s.”
    “What was Gillian’s mood?”
    “Laughing, joking around. That’s what sucks.”
    “What sucks?”
    “Like, all those years we missed. You know, like playing Barbies or dressing up, things like that. Talking about boyfriends,
     whatever. I’ll never get that back now. Know what I mean?”
    “Yes, I do,” Ryan said. “Did you see Gillian or speak to her after Saturday?”
    “Not till Tuesday night.”
    “The night she died?”
    Faye nodded, but Ryan already knew it. It was in Faye’s interview with Mid-Town North, plus Gillian’s phone records. Two phone
     calls, the last one twenty-eight minutes, terminated less than fifty minutes before Gillian’s fall.
    “I read your statement, but tell me again about the phone calls. Did she seem depressed or despondent?”
    “Try pissed off.”
    “About what?”
    “The drug thing with Trey Winters. She knew it was bullshit.”
    “So she didn’t have a drug problem. Not even prescription drugs, painkillers, tranquilizers?”
    “She drank a little. Gin and Mountain Dew. Tasted weird, like a high schooler’s drink.”
    “She wasn’t worried about the drug test?”
    “If she was, she didn’t say it to me.”
    Faye scratched at her legs unconsciously. She had long fingernails, black polish badly chipped.
    “So what did you two girls talk about?”
    “Everything. Everything in the world.”
    “And her mood was good.”
    “Except for being pissed.”
    “Did she talk much about Trey Winters?”
    “Shit, yeah.”
    “Did she tell you about her affair with Trey Winters?”
    “No, she never told me anything about that. First call she said he was coming over. The second one she told me that he just
     bullshitted about trying to help her and shit. She didn’t believe him.”
    “But I didn’t surprise you just now when I mentioned a relationship between them,” Ryan said. “Did I?”
    Faye gave an “I don’t know” shrug. The sound of metal rattling caused Ryan to look toward the window… the fire escape. Ryan
     had been uneasy in apartments with fire escapes since his rookie years in the Bronx. Another burdensome piece of cop knowledge
     was that so many rapists and thugs slithered in through the fire escape window. Like most street cops, even off duty, he always
     scanned upward toward the fire escapes, watching for climbing predator scum. Faye seemed not to notice the noise. Maybe a
     neighbor’s ritual: shaking a dust mop or watering a marijuana plant.
    “I know you loved your sister, Faye.”
    “I would have done anything for her.”
    “Sisters have a special bond,” he said. “My wife and her sister have an amazing connection. Spooky almost. Sometimes my wife
     says she has to call her sister, and that second the phone rings, and it’s her. It’s almost mystical. An understanding that
     goes beyond