by Barbara Paul
They were all listening for her answer, including Holland. “It’s not just Holland,” she said. “Getting Quinn out of there alive is worth the risk. Nailing Page is worth the risk. Wrapping this thing up ourselves—oh yes. That’s worth the risk.”
Sanchez laughed. “You wan’ to rub DiFalco’s nose in it.”
“I want to rub DiFalco’s nose in it,” Marian admitted.
“A noble motive,” Holland said ironically. “But I’ll take it.”
“So we just move in on them or what?” Romero asked. “What are we waiting around for?”
“Yeah,” Sanchez agreed. “There’s five of us and one of him. Let’s go get ’im.”
“Not … a good idea,” Holland said, his speech even more clipped than usual. “Once Page sees he’s trapped, he’ll put a bullet through Quinn’s head and there goes our evidence. You could conceivably arrest him for Quinn’s murder, but that would do nothing to clarify the circumstances leading to the East River Park murders, would it? And it most assuredly would not extricate me from the imbroglio Page has entangled me in. No, we need to get Page away from the safe house, long enough for us to go in and bring Quinn out unharmed.”
“A diversion,” Romero said.
They talked about that. Ivan went into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee; he’d been there enough times before to remember where things were kept. Marian tilted her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes, listening to the voices around her. Tired as she was, she was amused to hear Gloria Sanchez’s latin cadence gradually slipping away; she was sounding more and more like the black members of the Downtown Queens.
Romero was saying, “We’ve not only got to get him away from there, but we gotta make sure he stays away long enough for us to get Quinn out.”
“Thass easier said than done,” Sanchez growled in her newly husky voice. “Hey, Malecki—where’s that coffee?”
Holland’s eyes slid toward her. “What happened to Chiquita Banana?”
“It’s ready,” Ivan said, coming back in with the coffee pot. “You pour your own.”
“Page isn’t going to leave Quinn alone any more than he has to,” Marian said to Romero. She waited her turn and poured herself a cup of coffee. “How can we be sure he’d stay away even if we got him out?”
“It wouldn’t have to be long,” Romero answered. “The problem is finding a place he couldn’t leave immediately.”
“Like where, for instance?”
“How about jail?” Sanchez drawled.
The other four looked at her a moment—and then all started talking at the same time. Finally Ivan yelled for quiet and said, “We couldn’t hold ’im. Even if we set something up, some humbug drug bust, say—all he’d have to do is flash his I.D. An FBI agent? We couldn’t even take ’im in.”
Romero began to laugh. “Marian, remember Large Marge?”
Her face lit up. “I do indeed!”
“Large … Marge?” Holland asked.
“She’s a member of a girls’ street gang called the Downtown Queens,” Romero explained. “The last member, as it turns out. But Marge has a special talent. Remember what it is?”
Marian nodded. “Marge can relieve unsuspecting strangers of cumbersome burdens they carry about with them. Like billfolds. She could lift Page’s I.D.”
“Is she that good?” Ivan asked.
“She’s that good,” Romero assured him. “She has a great way of distracting the mark.”
“Aha,” Holland said. “And this pocket-picking girl gangster will help us if we just ask her nicely?”
“She won’t have much choice,” Romero replied. “The rest of her gang is in jail for killing a woman and chances are Large Marge knew they were going to do it. She could still be charged as an accessory before the fact. I tell her we’ll ask the DA’s office to lay off if she cooperates. She’ll go for it—hell, she’s only sixteen.”
“Ye gods,” Holland said. “We have to depend on the assistance of children?”
“Wait till you see her,” Marian said wryly. She turned to Romero. “Do you know where she is?”
He waved a hand dismissively. “I can find her.”
“Okay,” Ivan said, “but we still won’t be able to hold Page long. Once he makes his phone call, the FBI will confirm his identity. We’ll have to say gee, we’re sorry, we thought you were a street pusher—and then let him go. He’s gonna be in and out faster than you can read the Miranda warning.”
“We’ll need only that long,” Sanchez said. “Since the locks ain’t no problem, we just go in and get Quinn. It’s not like he’s armed or nothin’.”
“A point of curiosity,” Holland said. “What is this Large Marge going to do with Page’s I.D. once she’s lifted it? The minute he finds it’s missing, he’ll insist that she be searched.”
The others were silent a moment. Then Marian said, “She’ll have to pass it on.”
“To whom? Not to the arresting officers—who I presume will be Romero and Malecki. That’s too risky. We need someone else there, someone who can take the I.D. and quickly disappear … somewhere.”
“The ladies’ room,” Marian and Sanchez said together.
The three men exchanged glances and began to nod. “Yeah,” Ivan said, “a public place like a bar where your Large Marge can approach him. She lifts the I.D., passes it to another woman who heads for the ladies’ while me and Romero move in to make the bust. Now we need the woman.”
“Not me,” Sanchez said. “Page knows me and I don’t have no reason to meet him in no bar.”
“And not Marian,” Holland said firmly. “Page is bound to be suspicious of every little thing that happens now. If she calls him instead of waiting to hear from him, there’s no telling what he might do. It’s too chancy.”
Romero didn’t think it was important. “Okay, so we get somebody else. But it’ll work. And I get a piece of the bust.”
Holland had his doubts. “I’m not convinced of the wisdom of this course of action,” he said. “We bring in another outsider at the eleventh hour and expect her to play Page along—a very wary and distrustful Page, I might point out. He’s going to be looking for a set-up. Whoever this woman is, she’d have to be a good actor.”
Marian smiled. “I know a good actor,” she said.
23
On Sunday Kelly Ingram had only one regularly scheduled performance, a matinee. Shortly before curtain she’d placed a call from her dressing room at the Broadhurst, tapping out the FBI number listed in the phone book. When the call was forwarded and Trevor Page’s voice came over the line, Kelly launched into a second and wholly unofficial performance. She was worried about Marian Larch, she said. She’d been unable to reach her, and just now some guy named Curt Holland had showed up backstage looking for Marian and muttering what sounded like threats as well as saying a lot of other strange things and she was sure she’d heard Page’s name mentioned and she didn’t like being disturbed before a performance and she was afraid this Holland character might come back and what in the name of heaven was going on?
He’d bought it. When Page had pressed her for details of what Holland said, Kelly had replied she didn’t have time to go into all that because the matinee performance of The Apostrophe Thief was about to begin. They’d made a date to meet at a bar called FiFi’s after the performance.
The matinee had gone well. Her fellow actors had warned her that Sunday afternoon audiences were usually sluggish, but this one had been alert and responsive right from the opening line. With an effort Kelly shifted gears away from Abigail James’s play to the one co-scripted by Marian Larch. Five people, including Marian, had coached her on this new role she was to play: four New York cops and an ex-FBI man—unusual directors, to say the least. She felt inexplicably calm, on her way to meet a murderer.
Trevor Page had killed four people, Marian had told her, ruthlessly slaughtering three people against whom he had no grudge just to make sure he got the one man who was causing him troub
le. You will never be alone with him, Marian had promised. Kelly was still shocked to think a man with such a good, open face could be a killer. And he and Marian had seemed to hit it off so well together. But if Marian said Page was dangerous, then Page was dangerous.
FiFi’s was a new bar in the theater district, one that was trying hard to establish itself as a place where celebrities liked to drop in. So Kelly made as grand an entrance as she could, at the same time trying to generate a don’t-approach-me aura. The bar was busy, but the conversation faded to a whisper as the crowd realized who was standing there—and then quickly resumed on a lower key as the patrons all began asking one another if they knew that was Kelly Ingram who’d just come in.
Page was sitting at a small table; he rose quickly and came to meet her. But before he could say anything, Kelly asked, “Trevor, could we sit at the bar? Not quite so exposed.”
“Of course,” he murmured and followed her there, himself the object of candid looks of curiosity and envy.
Kelly let her eyes slide over Ivan Malecki and the man named Romero down at the end of the bar. In the ladies’ room Gloria Sanchez was waiting to take Page’s I.D. off her hands once she had it. And outside in a car, watching, were Marian and that dark-eyed, brooding man who seemed to be at the center of all the trouble. All Kelly had to do was keep Page here until this Large Marge made her appearance, whoever she was. How will I recognize her? Kelly had asked. Romero had laughed and said she’d know her the minute she laid eyes on her.
After they’d been served their drinks, Page said, “Kelly, this is important. I want you to tell me everything Curt Holland said. Word-for-word, as well as you can remember.”
Kelly took a sip of her drink and looked deep into the eyes of the murderer. “Who is he? I never heard Marian mention any Curt Holland.”
“He’s on our wanted list.” Page added no details. “What did he say?”
Kelly made a show of thinking back, and then started on the story she was to tell, taking her time and stretching it out. She told him Holland had seemed distracted, demanding to know where “Sergeant Larch” was—very formal, he was—and accusing Marian and Page of plotting against him. He’d made a number of unspecified threats, Kelly said, of the I’ll-get-him-before-he-gets-me variety. She even imitated Holland’s manner of speech, clipping off her words and overarticulating.
Page was convinced. “Did he say he was coming back? Did he drop any hint of where he was going?”
“Well-l-l,” she drawled, “he didn’t exactly say he’d be back, but that was the impression I got. It’s a little hard to be sure, you know—he didn’t talk in complete sentences. He was always interrupting himself.”
Page frowned. “That doesn’t sound like Holland—he must be distracted indeed. Did he—whoa!” He broke off as a brown-skinned arm the size of a leg of lamb suddenly draped itself across his chest from behind.
Large Marge had arrived.
Kelly had to tilt her head back to look at her face. Romero had been right; there was no mistaking Large Marge. The owner of the arm extending so nonchalantly across Page’s chest was wearing a silver sequined top cut down to there and a Pepto-Bismol-pink skirt that was so mini it barely covered the essentials. And Marge had a lot of essentials. Well over six feet tall, big-boned, and not exactly skinny, instead of trying to conceal her size she flaunted it, much to Kelly’s surprised delight. This girl was only sixteen? Incredible. Every eye in the place was on the young black woman; Large Marge was a presence.
“Hiya, sugah,” she said to Page. “We know each other, don’t we?” Her other hand began to caress the back of his neck.
Page appeared both annoyed at the interruption and impressed. “No, ma’am. I’d remember you.”
“Well, mebbe I can help you remember.” Her hands were all over him.
“Uh, I think you have me confused with someone else.”
“Naw, I don’t.” Marge pressed a honeydew-sized breast against Page’s upper arm; her hands never stopped moving. “You feel familiar—y’know what I mean?”
He tried to put an end to it. “As you can see, I’m here with someone.”
Marge threw Kelly a cursory glance. “Oh, hi.” Then she oozed her way around Page’s back and wedged herself between the two of them. “That’s all right, sugah,” she said to Page. “I don’t mind sharin’.”
Kelly felt something plop into her lap. Quickly she covered the I.D. folder with both hands.
“Sooner or later,” said a new voice smugly. “Yep, I knew that sooner or later you’d lead us to your connection, Margie-Pargie.” Jaime Romero grinned ferally at Page. “We got you now, you sucker.”
Page’s jaw tightened in anger. “I’m not anyone’s connection. I never saw her before a minute ago.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“You crazy, man,” Large Marge said. “Nothin’ goin’ down here.”
Ivan Malecki’s long arm shot out and grabbed Page’s wrist. “Keep your hands where we can see them.”
“I was reaching for my identification!”
“Do it slowly,” Ivan instructed. “One hand only.”
All talk in the bar had stopped dead. A drug bust? In FiFi’s? The two bartenders exchanged anxious looks, not knowing what to do.
Romero was searching through Marge’s handbag. Triumphantly he held up two small white packets. “Nothing going down here, huh? All right, you two—assume the position.”
“Excuse me,” Kelly said, and fled to the ladies’ room.
The last thing she heard as she pushed open the door was Trevor Page’s voice: “My I.D.! She stole my I.D.!”
Marian and Holland sat silently in her car across the street from FiFi’s, waiting for the little farce in the bar to play itself out. Holland was miles away and Marian was struggling to find some kind of equilibrium for herself; the depression she felt was not the usual downer she went through when a case was nearing its climax. It was worse.
She’d been breaking the rules right and left; she’d even involved two civilians in the trap they’d set for Page. That was not her normal M.O.; most of the time she was able to observe the letter of the law as well as its spirit. But how easily she’d slid into subterfuge—disobeying Captain DiFalco’s order to call the case closed, providing a hiding place for a man on the FBI’s wanted list. That alone was a pretty strong indication it was time to start looking for a different profession. Providing she came out of this with her hide intact. The plan was for Gloria Sanchez to call Captain DiFalco and the FBI once they had Quinn in custody, but that might be too little too late.
It occurred to her that only nine days ago she’d been sitting behind the wheel of a different car with a different partner, when she and Foley had been waiting for the last of the Downtown Queens to show up. Things were different this time. Marian glanced at the man sitting tensely next to her. If it was bad for her, how much worse must it be for Holland. How very alone he must feel—falsely incriminated, sought by a killer … and the only one he’d had to turn to was a policewoman he barely knew. But Holland had never whimpered, had never once said Why me? or complained of the unfairness of it. Right then Marian was aware of his physical presence in a way she’d never been before. Before, he’d been only a problem, a key piece of an overcomplicated puzzle she had to solve; she’d forgotten him as a person. And that was another mistake she never used to make.
“You’ve been quiet all day,” she said. “What’s bothering you?”
With an effort he came back from a great distance. “The locks. The way Malecki and Romero got into the Bleecker Street safe house using ordinary picks. Admittedly my experience of FBI safe houses is limited—I’ve seen only one, in Washington. But that one had a security system that would do a bank proud.” He swiveled his head slowly to look at her. “It’s too easy.”
She nodded slowly, having wondered about the same thing herself. “A trap? Ivan got in safely, but the place was empty then. When Page has to leave Quinn alone, he’s bound
to take extra precautions. What’s he likely to do?”
“Boobytrap the door, something, I don’t know.” Holland brooded over it. “But all my instincts are screaming ‘Watch out!’ That fire ladder down the outside wall … what do you say to going in that way?”
“I say it sounds like a good idea. That’ll let us into the empty apartment and we can get into the other one through the hole in the pantry wall.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” he decided. He looked at the dashboard clock and then across the street to the entrance to FiFi’s. “They ought to be coming out soon. I must say, Sergeant, I am impressed by your resources. Not only do three willing and able police detectives come running when you call, you are also able to pluck a Broadway star out of the air when we need one. When you said you knew a good actor, I had no idea you meant Kelly Ingram.”
Marian smiled to herself. Kelly had been flattered and excited when Marian asked for her help; she’d gone to Marian’s apartment that morning to be briefed on what they wanted her to do. Gloria Sanchez had shouted, “Well, awright!” when she saw who the actor was that Marian had called. Ivan already knew Kelly; he’d met her the same time Marian had, three years earlier. But Romero just stood there with his mouth open, unable to speak. “Kelly and I have been friends almost from the day we met,” Marian said. “It’s so great when you find someone on the same wavelength as yours.”
“Yes, it must be,” Holland replied quietly. Marian shot him a look. “There they are,” he announced in a different voice.
Across the street, Ivan and Romero were bringing out Page and Large Marge, both in handcuffs, both protesting vociferously. It was a toss-up as to which of the two was making the more noise; Marge wasn’t a bad actor herself.
