Murder in Hell's Kitchen by Lee Harris Page A

pantsuit with a white blouse. She looked as though she was expecting company. “I have to ask you to be careful where you step,” she said after they had introduced themselves and she had taken their coats. “We have tubes all over the place for Otis’s oxygen.” She led the way into the living room, where a clear plastic line on the floor ended at a chair near the front window. “He has emphysema, you know.”
    â€œCharlie Bracken said he wasn’t well,” Jane said.
    â€œOh, you’ve talked to Charlie.” She smiled at the name. “Otis, these folks have talked to Charlie Bracken.” She made the introductions.
    Otis Wright started to get up, but Defino told him to stay where he was. They all shook hands, and Mrs. Wright said she’d bring in the coffee.
    â€œI’m OK,” Otis Wright said. “Just need a little oxygen once in a while if I move around too quick.”
    â€œWe just want to talk,” Jane said, sitting on the sofa near his chair.
    â€œThis is about the Quill murder, right?”
    â€œThat’s it. We’re on the new squad they’ve set up to look into open homicides. Gordon and I got Quill.”
    Wright sat in his chair and looked down for a moment. He was a tall man who had apparently lost a lot of weight. His sweater looked big on him; his face was gaunt. His hair, like his wife’s, was beginning to gray. “There wasn’t much to grab onto in that case,” he said finally, looking up at them. “The body was lying in the front hall of that building over on Fifty-sixth Street. He’d been dead all night when one of the tenants came down and found him. Had a knife in his gut, if I recollect properly.”
    â€œHe did,” Defino said.
    â€œNothin’ was taken, right? Wallet was there, watch was there. If it was one of the tenants did it, we never found a motive and nobody heard anything. I interviewed everyone in the building myself. The two women, they were so scared I thought they’d move out that night. But they didn’t.” The talk had been too much for him. He reached for the plastic tube and fitted a small breathing piece into his nostrils, sat back for a moment and just breathed. Then he said, “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
    â€œThere were three men in the building, too,” Defino said. “You remember them?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œAny of them give you a bad feeling? Anything sneaky?”
    â€œYeah, maybe. But there was nothing there. The guy on the top floor, Hudson or something.”
    â€œHutchins.”
    â€œRight. Jerry Hutchins. He didn’t fit. Didn’t come from New York. Didn’t seem right for that place. Doesn’t make him a killer.”
    â€œWhat way wasn’t he right?”
    â€œHe was young,” Otis Wright said without hesitation. “The others were . . . well, sad older people.”
    â€œQuill wasn’t old.”
    â€œNo, you’re right, he wasn’t. He was in his early thirties. But he was sad too. Had a gorgeous wife that had left him. You get a look at her? Upscale, wow.”
    â€œYesterday.”
    Mrs. Wright came in with a tray and set it down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. It was close enough to Otis that he could lean over and reach his cup. The coffee was in a handsome silver-plated thermos to keep it hot. As she poured, Jane could see the steam rise.
    â€œI brought you some nice cakes, too,” Mrs. Wright said. “We have a new Caribbean bakery on Liberty Avenue. The old one closed a couple of years ago, but now things are getting better.”
    â€œThey look great,” Jane said.
    Mrs. Wright moved away and took a chair apart from them.
    Defino got back on track. “From what she told us, she used her husband as a stepping-stone to a better life, hung on to him till she found something better.”
    â€œI can believe it.”
    â€œBut she had