by Lutz, John
She knew he wouldn’t understand. He’d been born to money, gone to excellent schools, then gone to work in the family business—yacht parts or something—and that was the extent of his experience and the limits of his horizons. He hadn’t come from where she came from. Hadn’t even visited. They were good together in bed, but not in the rest of the world. “If you don’t understand,” she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Now you’re pissed at me.”
“No, I’m just frustrating you and you’re misinterpreting it as my being pissed. That’s because you’re used to getting what you want.”
“My, my…coldhearted bitch.” He said it as a joke, but it had steel in it.
What did he expect? Of course she was angry. Fighting mad, in fact. He had left her no escape route from her embarrassment at being stood up, no way to save face, to maintain her facade. So she became combative. Even a sparrow would fight to the death when cornered. He didn’t think of her as a sparrow. She lowered her voice. “I thought you liked it that way, Web.”
“Myra, play above the belt. This kind of confrontation makes no sense. Why don’t you think things over, then call me back in about an hour and give me a definite answer?”
“I’ve got a better idea, Web. Why don’t you call me back—when you have a piece of property to sell?”
She hung up crisply but without banging the receiver.
She knew he’d call back. If not today, tomorrow. Or maybe he’d find somebody else for his hotel tryst tonight, start another surface relationship. Myra didn’t care.
Couldn’t care.
Standing up behind her desk, she smoothed the wrinkles in the slacks of her business suit, then walked from her office to the sales cubicles where her agents were seated at their desks when they weren’t showing property. The large, blue-carpeted area was brightly lighted by overhead fluorescent fixtures. A door in the far wall led to a reception area with genuine Chippendale chairs and a Sheraton pie crust table. Tasteful oil reproductions were mounted on the cream-colored walls. The reception room was lighted softly with glass-shaded lamps and a Tiffany ceiling fixture. Adjoining that expensively decorated room was a conference room similarly furnished in an eclectic mixture of modern reproductions and valuable antiques.
In the more Spartan sales floor area, half a dozen of the steel wood-tone desks were occupied this afternoon. A few of Myra’s people glanced up and nodded respectfully to her as she strode past. At the end cubicle she stopped and addressed the woman seated inside studying listings on a computer screen. Darlene, whose duty it was to keep the Myra Raven Group Web site up to date. More and more listings were attracting buyers over the Internet.
“Is the new Central Park South listing on-site yet?” she asked Darlene.
The neatly dressed elderly woman at the computer waved her into the cubicle. “I was just polishing it, editing the virtual tour.”
Myra stepped a few feet into the cubicle and watched as Darlene worked the mouse, and a video camera swept through the spacious luxury apartment. “Did we get the summer park view, as I asked?” Myra knew how desirable a park view was in the concrete world of Manhattan, which was why her office and her own apartment had one.
“Did we ever!” Darlene said. “I patched it in from a property we listed last July.” She maneuvered the mouse so a view out the apartment’s wide living room window filled the screen; then she zoomed in on what appeared to be a lush rectangle of green below.
“Marvelous!” Myra said.
Harold, one of her best salespeople, was behind her off to the side. “Myra, can I talk to you about the McCallister closing?”
Myra nodded and left Darlene to her task.
Eleanor, last month’s sales champion, was approaching Myra, head down, steps choppy, jaw set and determined. Myra knew what she wanted. She could read her people’s minds. “I’ll get with you on the closing after I talk to Eleanor about one of her listings,” Myra said to Harold.
As Harold backed away a few steps, Myra said to a young woman passing by, “Amy, get me the file on 458K West Fifty-seventh.”
“Myra,” the intrepid Eleanor was saying, “I have some serious issues on that West Fifty-seventh property.”
“Amy’s getting the file,” Myra said. To Harold: “I’m sorry, Harold, but I know what Eleanor wants and it’ll only take a minute. When you see her leave my office, come on in and we’ll get together on your closing.”
“Fine, Myra.”
Myra strode to her office, aware of Eleanor hurrying to keep pace behind her. She felt grand. The Myra Raven Group was humming.
She’d forgotten all about Web Thomas.
An hour later, still at her desk, she picked up the phone and made sure she had an outside line before pecking out the number of Prestige Available Escort.
“I need a male escort for this evening, dinner and drinks afterward,” she said to the woman who answered the phone.
“Yes, ma’am. Have you used our service—”
“I’m in your computer,” Myra said, telling the woman her PIN. “And see if Billy Watkins is available.”
Rica figured the hell with it. She’d been sitting behind the steering wheel of a parked unmarked across the street from Helen Sampson’s West Side apartment for the last two hours. There was no need to start the car’s engine; she’d had it idling so the heater could be on. Which made the windows fog up. Which made it harder to see if the lights stayed on in Helen Sampson’s apartment windows, or if Helen herself left the building. At least the rain had stopped before changing to sleet or snow. Rica was hungry, thirsty, and had to go to the bathroom.
Screw this!
She put the car in drive and pulled out of her parking slot, ignoring the blast of a horn behind her. A taxi pulled up next to her at the next stoplight and out of the corner of her vision she saw the driver working his gums and giving her hell for pulling out in front of him. She guessed he had a right, but she thought, keep it up, asshole, and I’ll put the cherry light on the roof and give you a bad time.
This whole waste of yet another evening, she thought, was because O’Reilly was an idiot. Helen Sampson was as innocent as O’Reilly himself of Hugh Danner’s murder. The woman was grief-stricken and despondent. You could feel it when you were close to her, hear it in her voice, see it in her facial expressions and body language when she didn’t know she was being observed. O’Reilly seemed not to mind diverting people on the off chance that Helen Sampson might provide some kind of lead, meet with a known arsonist or something, or maybe start a fire when she didn’t think anyone was looking. Department politics! That was the one thing about the NYPD that had surprised Rica when she finally figured out how things worked. Too much was done for purely political reasons. Made Rica want to puke. Say what you want about Stack; he was a hardhead and would never make captain, but it was because he was honest and he respected the Job. Everyone knew and said freely that he was one hell of a cop.
Rica and Stack and some uniforms from the Two-oh had been keeping a loose tail on Helen Sampson, which meant she wasn’t being watched every minute, but was being observed intermittently in the hope she’d bust some kind of move that would mean something. Rica had tailed her most of the evening, watched her leave her bookshop, ride a bus, get some takeout at a deli, buy some magazines—some kind of fashion shit—then go home to her apartment and not come out. It was damn near bedtime now, at least for Rica. She was going home.
The cab driver blasted his horn at her so she’d look over at him, then made a violent twisting motion in the air with his middle finger. The guy wouldn’t let it alone, so it was gonna be his problem.
When the light went green and traffic pulled away, Rica let the taxi zoom out ahead of her. Then she got on its rear bumper, rolled down the window, and placed the flasher on the unmarked’s roof. She motioned with her left hand for the cabbie to pull to the curb.
She was going to ask him about that business with the finger.
Rica had given the cabbie a rou
gh time, playing the game he’d started, liking the surprise on his face when he’d found out she was a cop. The fear when she threatened to have the bastard’s job. The whole thing should have been a pleasure, a relief. So why was she crying here in her bed?
Her former husband, Rudy. The smart-ass cabbie. Stack…. Men!
She knew why she was crying. It was because Stack still loved his wife Laura. That was how it went: cops’ wives got fed up with the life first and walked out. The cops, the wives, blamed the Job, and usually they were right. Eventually, both parties learned there was no going back.
The eventually was the problem.
There were more tears, over an hour’s worth, before she fell asleep.
The next morning was cold but bright, with air so brittle it seemed if you sneezed you might shatter it. Rica and Stack drove the unmarked to the deli where Helen Sampson had bought last night’s takeout. Before driving on to park outside Helen’s apartment, Stack got them each a coffee and a danish and carried them out to the car.
Rica watched how his breath fogged and trailed behind him as he stepped down off the curb to cross the street, a big man ambling along with the gait he probably used years ago on his beat, wearing a long, dark coat of indeterminate color that, like the walk, might date back to those days. It was a simple, square-shouldered coat. Not what you’d call a topcoat, or a romantic trench coat with a belt and all those pockets. A sensible warm overcoat, was Stack’s winter garment of choice. No zip-out lining for this boy. Old-fashioned kind of coat. Old-fashioned Stack. Fixed object in a shifting world.
When they pried the plastic lids off the cups, the steam made the unmarked’s windows fog up, just as they had last night. Cozy, Rica thought. Nice and private. Stack peeled back a little plastic triangle from his cup’s lid, then replaced the lid to keep the steam down so he could see better what was going on outside. Rica left the lid off her cup.
Stack, behind the steering wheel this morning, made no move to start the car.
“All Helen Sampson does is work, eat, and sleep,” he said.
“She doesn’t eat much,” Rica said. “That’s because she’s grieving and has no appetite.”
Stack grunted his agreement and sipped coffee through the little triangular hole in the plastic lid. He thought maybe it was time to tell O’Reilly that Helen Sampson checked out okay. That they were probably wasting time and effort that could be spent on other crimes instead of the Danner murder. Stack had a gut feeling this was one of those times in a case where the best thing to do was sit back and wait and see what—if anything—developed.
“We just gonna sit here?” Rica asked beside him. Something in her tone suggested she thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea. She seemed to have edged closer to Stack on the car’s bench seat. If she weren’t so pushy…
“There wouldn’t be any point in that,” Stack said tersely. Throw some cold water on her. Them.
She said, “The city’s got more than its share of unsolved homicides. Maybe it’s time to think this might be another one.” She knew he wouldn’t consider her a quitter. Nobody ever accused her of that. It was just that they were going in circles on this Danner thing. “My gut tells me we should move on,” she added.
He lowered his coffee cup from his lips and glanced over at her, obviously a bit surprised and pleased.
“Are our guts in sync?” she asked.
“In sync,” he said, starting the car with his free hand. “Let’s cut Helen Sampson loose and concentrate our efforts somewhere else while we wait for any new developments.”
“O’Reilly might not like it,” Rica said.
Stack put the car in drive and accelerated away from the curb, sloshing a little coffee from the triangle in his cup lid so it ran down his thumb. “Screw O’Reilly.”
“In sync,” Rica said.
TWELVE
Dr. Lucette remembered now.
At least some of it.
He’d thought Sharon was back from downstairs, from her pedicure at Shear Ecstasy. But when he’d turned to look up at the figure standing near his chair, it wasn’t Sharon. He wasn’t sure who…
He winced as he recalled the object descending toward him, a club or sap of some sort. The flash of light and pain behind his right ear, then a dark downward spiral.
Above him a bright object sent out waves of glitter, making his eyes, his entire head ache. He tried to call out, to ask what was going on, but he couldn’t speak. Something covered his mouth so tightly that he couldn’t so much as part his lips. He could only moan. When he tried to raise a hand to rip away whatever was keeping him from speaking, he found that he couldn’t move his arm. Nor his other arm or either leg. He strained every muscle against whatever was binding him. So immobile was he that he might as well have been sealed in amber.
He heard a strangled whimper. His own.
For God’s sake, don’t lose it! You’ve been in tougher spots. In Vietnam. Not so long ago. Take inventory. Figure this thing out!
He was lying on his back and must have been bound tightly for some time. His arms, folded beneath him, were numb from lack of circulation, his legs firmly pressed together at ankle and knee. The brilliant object above him—steadier and with less glitter now—was the kitchen light fixture. So whoever had struck him and knocked him unconscious in the living room had dragged him in here and tied him up.
But why?
A sole or heel made a scuffing sound, ever so softly, on the tile floor. Someone moving beyond the top of his head, beyond his vision. He tried with little success to turn his head, rolling his eyes, as he attempted to see whoever was there. But he couldn’t. They remained just outside his field of vision. And now there was a strong smell, familiar, almost like gasoline.
Gasoline!
The doctor screamed against the tape over his mouth and his entire body vibrated so that his heels hammered on the tiles. Cool liquid splashed on the floor near him, then on his shoulders and chest. Into his eyes so that they stung. An instant before he had to clench his eyes tightly shut, he saw a wavering dark form looming above him, holding an object, a container. More of the cool liquid splashed on his stomach, his pelvic area, his thighs, and down his legs. He felt the coolness in his crotch, then beneath his buttocks. For God’s sake!…
He smelled smoke!
Smelled fire!
At first the sensation in his legs and sweeping up his body was incredibly cold. He was reminded of the time years ago when as a child he’d fallen through the ice in the shallow lake behind the house. His mother—
Then came the heat. The pain! Even through his panic he knew enough to hold his breath as long as he could. Minutes! Hours! Sharon!
The air trapped in his lungs rushed from him in a hopeless sob.
He sucked in the pain! It entered him like a demon. The world was pain that would never end! He was choking! Either the floor was moving violently beneath him or he was writhing on it.
My God! Sharon! Help me! Mother!
Then he was floating through the pain. Into darkness as something in his chest exploded over and over again. He wondered if it would ever stop exploding.
Into darkness…
Dr. Lucette hadn’t been a heavy man, but once the fat in his thighs caught, he burned well. As in more than a few prewar New York buildings, the apartment wasn’t supplied with a universal sprinkler system, and he continued to burn. He wouldn’t need any further attention.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Sharon Lucette told Bonnie, her pedicurist, down in Shear Ecstasy off the lobby, “but cherry red looks more like vampire red to me. It’s my fault. I thought I wanted it but when I looked at it, Yech! Don’t hate me, okay?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bonnie said. She wouldn’t even think of hating anyone who tipped as well as Sharon. “It was only one foot and it’s no trouble to paint over it.” She adroitly dipped her small pointed brush into the new shade of enamel.
“Apple red,” Sharon said, smiling down at her left big toe. “
Much, much better!”
On the fortieth floor, the flames greedily consuming Dr. Lucette’s foot sent out an exploring tendril, found the rubber kick plate beneath the sink cabinet, then snaked up a dish towel draped over a steel ring inside a wooden door. A few minutes later a slender tongue of flame emerged from the top of the cabinet door and cautiously tasted the glue where counter met cabinet, found it to its liking, and followed the bead of adhesive beneath the countertop to the corner, flicked out, and sampled the wallpaper seam where the paper had separated and protruded because of long exposure to dishwasher heat. It traveled up the thin edge of wallpaper…found the roll of paper towels and devoured it.
Found the drapes.
THIRTEEN
The dark form that was settled in the shadows beneath the trees in Central Park had a clear view of the fifty-first-floor apartment window in the Pierpont Building. Made visible from the park by the contours of the New York skyline, the window was four blocks away, but brought much closer by powerful binoculars. Flimsy blinds or curtains appeared to be closed, and there was no lamp glowing on the other side of the high window, so patience was required.
It was good that there was a breeze coursing through the park, even if it was a cold one. The stench of the dead doctor still clung to clothes and to porous flesh itself. The breeze would carry the odor of death throughout the city. People would breathe it in and not know, or choose to know—
Ah! The figure beneath the shadows sat straighter, peering intently through the binoculars.
There was a light now in Myra Raven’s apartment window.
In a moment a shadow passed across the curtains; then only light remained. Hers was the only window glowing near that corner of the building.
The figure in the park lowered the binoculars, then jotted something down with a pen on a folded sheet of white paper.
Even without the binoculars, the window was now easily visible from the park. Against the black wall of the building it was like a fiery star burning against a night sky.
