“Did you see her talking to anyone out here?”
“Nah. She was like invisible, yo. Like all of us.”
“What was in Staten Island for her? Do you know?”
“Nope. She just talked about getting there.”
“Wilomena, how long had she been out here? Do you remember when you first saw her?”
“Twenty questions,” she murmured. “Two, three weeks maybe. Like since the Mermaid Parade.”
“So she’s not someone you’ve been seeing out here very long, then.”
“Is two, three weeks very long?” She put exaggerated stress on “two” and “three.” Definitely not delusional, Zochi thought.
“I get the point. So the name was Lois, huh?”
“That’s her name, yo. Don’t wear it out.” Wilomena’s eyes seemed fixed on the dark water and the blinking red-and-green navigation lights in the harbor. Zochi waited a beat before trying one more time.
“What was her last name, Wilomena?”
“No one needs a last name out here,” Wilomena said. She shifted her eyes, surprisingly alert and cold, back to Zochi. “No one rates a last name out here.”
CHAPTER 6
1:25 a.m.
On Sedrick’s recommendation, Zochi had a PSA 1 cop call the after-hours line for the management of the building and claimed a desk in the office to take a closer look at the contents of the planner. The property manager, a small man with a tuft of gray hair shooting up from his head, sat in his bathrobe in a swivel chair in the corner. He looked thoroughly annoyed. Beside him, a bored-looking PSA 1 cop stood with his arms crossed next to the doorway. Next to him was Len Dougherty, the other Six-Oh squad detective Zochi had called in to assist.
“Whaddya seein’， Zoch?” Len asked, Zochi’s name swallowed in a yawn. Len was tall with a wide face and strong Neanderthal brows that shaded dark, steely eyes.
“DeSantos,” she said without looking up. Her gloves still on, she had gingerly drawn a few of the items from the planner and laid them on the scarred metal desk.
“DeSantos is her last name? Was there ID in there?”
“I’m not sure if it’s her last name or not,” Zochi said. “But it’s the name of the person we’ll probably need to notify. I think we’re looking for her son. Joseph T. DeSantos. He’s a lawyer, or was one. Nobody I’ve heard of, though.”
“What else? Why do you think Lois was his mother?”
“A couple o’ notes,” she said. “Folded up. They’re on paper that’s a lot newer than anything else in here. I’ll go through it all tomorrow, but it looks like she started these notes to him and never finished. One starts, ‘To my baby Joey,’ and then there’s a bunch of stuff I can’t make out. One is folded, and on the outside it says, ‘To Joe from Mom.’ It’s blank, though.”
“There was a guy with that last name in the Bronx,” Len said. “He was an ADA when I was in anti-crime up there. I never met him, but I heard his name.”
“That would make sense,” Zochi said. “I found this.” She handed Len a stained, crumpled business card. On it was a small, neat logo with a blindfolded Lady Justice holding a sword in one hand and scales in the other. Below that was the name of a law firm, ABRAMS & DESANTOS, CRIMINAL LAW. There was a 718 phone number, a website, and an address in Queens.
Len did a quick search of the website on his phone.
“It’s not coming up,” he said. “Just a message asking if it’s a domain name you want to claim. The firm must have broken up, but I know people who probably still know of it. I’ll find him.”
“How about tomorrow?” the property manager asked in a thick Russian accent. He grimaced at Zochi and Len like he was being held prisoner.
“We’ll be out of here in a few,” Zochi said, raising an eyebrow. “Relax.”
“Any photos?”
“Nothing yet, but there’re a few things kind of clumped up and an old plastic card or two.”
Len squinted. “They must have been estranged, right?”
“Yeah, I guess, if she was out here homeless, dead on a beach.”
“The witness—Wilomena—did she mention any shelters or whatnot that Lois might have gone to?”
“Yeah, a few,” she said. “The mission over on Nineteenth and a shelter not far from there. Let me bag this up, and we’ll map it out.”
“Tomorrow, maybe,” the property manager grumbled.