Then he slammed the passenger door shut, walked around to the other side, and got in. If we were going to run, now would have been the time to do it, but it was clear to me from the dazed expression on Janet’s face that she wasn’t capable of putting one foot in front of the other, let alone running, and I think Paul knew that too.
“Why don’t you let us go?” I said to Paul. “You don’t need us now.”
“I’ll tell you when I don’t need you.”
I held up my hands. “At least loosen the cuffs a little. They’re cutting off my circulation.”
Paul cocked his head to one side and widened his eyes.
“And the magic word is?”
“You should only eat shit and die?”
Paul slapped me across the face. It wasn’t that hard, but it was hard enough. My eyes began to water.
“And don’t even think about kicking me,” he warned. “Because I’ll beat the living crap out of you.”
“Would that make you feel good?”
“You have some mouth on you, you know that?” Paul said as he turned on the car.
“Comes from being a native New Yorker.”
“Another reason they should take this place and sink it in the ocean.”
Janet coughed. We were sitting so close, her shoulder was rubbing up against mine. I could smell the mix of vomit, old perfume, and fear coming off her. Her turquoise boots, the emblem of her new life, were stained with yellowish drips.
“Are you going to kill us?” she whispered.
Paul laughed. “Why the hell should I do that? You two aren’t worth the trouble.”
“Nice to know we’re important,” I said to him. I lifted both hands and pulled on the neckband of my turtleneck. “Could you at least open the windows a crack?” The lack of air circulation was getting to me.
Paul glared at me, but he did as I’d asked. I guess the smell was getting to him too.
I took a deep breath as the cold air poured in. Then I stretched my legs out to get the kink out of my calf. I watched but didn’t say anything as Paul took a left instead of a right at the corner. Unlike Manhattan, the Bronx is an easy place to get lost in, and I could tell that the deeper we got into the borough, the more nervous Paul was becoming, a fact that gave me a certain amount of pleasure. If I got really lucky, someone would come along and shoot him.
Soon we were in the middle of Fordham Road. The street had been a shopping center when my aunt and uncle had lived up here. It still was. Only now the complexions of the people doing the shopping were different. The Jews and Italians had given way to Dominicans and African-Americans.
“Did you know that the Bronx is the only borough of New York City that’s attached to the mainland?” I said. I forget where I’d read that.
Always inform when possible, that’s my motto.
“So now you’re a friggin’ tour guide,” Paul said as he tried to read a street sign. A good quarter of them were gone.
“At least I’m not a kidnapper.”
“I’ll pull over and make those bracelets tighter if you don’t shut up,” he warned, his eyes still on the road. “Fuckin’ city,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t live here on a bet. What the hell is University Heights Bridge? I don’t remember that being there when I came up.”
“You could always ask someone,” I said. “Or maybe you’d like me to drive.”
“I told you to shut the fuck up,” Paul snarled. “The next time I hit you, it’ll be a lot harder.”
Obviously city driving wasn’t bringing out the best in him.
“Charming as always,” I said as I clenched and unclenched my hands trying to keep the circulation in them going.
Janet didn’t say anything at all. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes facing front. She could have been in church. Every once in a while she’d lightly touch the places Paul had hit her, as if reminding herself of what had happened. Her lower lip was bleeding, and the bruises on her face had turned red and puffy. By tomorrow they’d be purple, green, and yellow. Not Janet’s colors. Not anyone’s for that matter. Unless you were an M&M.
As I watched Paul blunder around the streets, I wondered how in God’s name I could have gone to bed with this man. What had I seen in him? How had I been so wrong about him? There must have been signs. Manuel had seen them. So had Calli. They’d tried to warn me. And of course I hadn’t listened. People had tried to warn me about Murphy too. I hadn’t listened to them either. Out of Murphy, George, and Paul, I was down two to one. Not a good score.
The traffic had gotten heavier and the skies had grown darker. Except for an occasional muttered, “Fuck,” Paul was quiet as he tried to find his way down to Manhattan. We drove around for twenty minutes or so before he finally managed to get us on the Henry Hudson Parkway.
“Congratulations,” I told him. “I always love taking the scenic route.”
“Shut up,” Paul growled.
And here was another thing. How had I managed to go with someone with such a limited vocabulary? In all ways.
“You never could take a compliment,” I told him while I watched the stream of cars, haloed in their own headlights, crossing the George Washington Bridge.
When I was younger I’d loved crossing the bridge on the top level and seeing the lights of the Palisades spread out before me as we drove to New Jersey to visit my cousins.
Farther on, even though it was dark and cold, scattered handfuls of kids were throwing footballs to each other around Riverside Drive. Around 90th Street I felt a pang as I spied a man walking a blond cocker spaniel. I hoped Zsa Zsa was doing all right with Bethany and Manuel.
“If we get off here, we can stop at the Museum of Natural History,” I said to Paul as we came up on the 79th Street Boat Basin. “Don’t you want to see the dinosaurs? I bet Janet would.”
“The only thing I want to see is the back of this place,” Paul commented as he changed lanes again.
I moved my hands up and down. The tips of my fingers were starting to go numb. “Me, I’m kinda glad to be back.”
“You would be.” Then he kept his left hand on the wheel and pointed at Janet with his right one. “Why’d you do it?”
She gave no indication of having heard him.
“Answer me when I talk to you,” he barked.
“I thought you weren’t interested.”
“Well, I am now.”
“You want to know why I took the money?” Janet’s words came out slowly, each one enunciated.
“No. I want to know why you bought a boat.”
She kept staring straight ahead.
“I’m waiting,” Paul said.
Janet took a deep breath and let it out.
“Don’t get me angry,” he warned.
She dabbed the blood off her lip. Finally she spoke. “I took the money because it wasn’t fair.”
“What wasn’t fair?”
“I made Walter a nice home. I gave him a daughter. I cooked his meals and washed his dirty underwear. I listened to his complaining. I deserve something for that.”
Paul snorted. “You sound like my friggin’ ex-wives. Always whining. Did you ever think that maybe Walter wanted something else?” Paul asked, swerving to avoid a car that was cutting us off.
“He never said he was unhappy.” Janet’s lower lip was trembling. She clasped and unclasped her hands. “He should have told me.”
Paul threw a quick glance in her direction. “Maybe he did. Maybe you weren’t listening.”
“He didn’t.” Janet’s voice rose. “He threw me away for that . . . that . . . thing. Like an old sweater.”
“Old sweater? Give me a fuckin’ break. You can do better than that.”
But now that Janet was started, she wanted to keep going. “He told me I bored him. I bored him? What about him boring me? Do you know how old that . . . that person is? She isn’t even eighteen. She’s younger than his daughter. It’s disgusting.”
“So it would have been okay if he
’d picked someone older?”
Janet’s nostrils flared. “I deserve a little happiness too.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Paul said. “Which is why I’m doing what I am. Glad to see we agree on something.”
Janet bristled. “We have nothing in common.”
“I think we do,” Paul said. “After all, we’re both willing to do anything to get what we want.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Is it?”
I could feel Janet’s body growing rigid as she went back to looking straight ahead of her.
We got off the West Side Highway and turned left onto 42nd Street. The street was jammed. Cars were double-parked on either side, narrowing the available lanes. Everyone was sitting on their horns. Just in case people didn’t realize they weren’t moving. I checked my watch. We’d been in the car for a little over forty-five minutes, and the way we were going it would probably take us another half an hour—at least—to reach our destination.
Paul was cursing again. “I hate this fuckin’ shit,” he said as he honked at the taxi in front of us.
“That’s going to do a lot of good,” I told him.
He hit the horn again. Just to show that he didn’t have to listen to me.
“Why the hell did you have to pick the Port Authority?” Paul said to Janet.
I could feel her leg shaking through her coat, but her face was expressionless.
“It was convenient,” she told him.
“How was it convenient? You didn’t come here by bus. You drove.”
“I took a taxi down here.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
But there was a catch in Janet’s voice. She should have nodded instead.
I could see awareness dawning in Paul’s eyes.
“You’re lying to me, aren’t you?” he said.
“Why would I do that?” she said.
“You stupid fuckin’ bitch,” he said, his eyes still on the street.
“I didn’t,” she protested.
“Don’t bother denying it.” Paul’s face was taut with rage. “All this time you’ve been jerking me around. Making me ride around like some sort of friggin’ loser. God, you’re going to regret this.”
Janet watched a bicyclist in a bright orange down jacket weave in and out of the traffic.
“No, you are,” she finally said.
“We’ll see about that.”
“Yes, we will.” She touched her lip and laughed. The effect was disconcerting.
“Did you know?” Paul said to me.
I turned toward him.
“How would I know? You’re the hotshot detective here.”
“You think this is funny, don’t you? Let me tell you, you’re not going to think it’s funny when I get through with you,” Paul warned.
“Don’t take out your stupidity on me,” I protested.
And that was the point at which Janet opened the door and stepped out. I’m almost positive I heard her say, “Go to hell.” But I can’t be sure.
Chapter Thirty
It’s odd what your mind holds on to in moments like this.
I remember feeling a rush of cold air and turning and seeing the empty space where Janet had been sitting.
I remember seeing the door on her side swinging shut and thinking, It’s not latched, at the same time I was thinking, That’s funny. Where the hell has she gone?
I never saw her actually step out into the street.
I must have screamed Janet’s name because Paul glanced over. He looked almost comical with his mouth hanging wide open. Then he swore and slammed on the brakes.
“I don’t fuckin’ believe her,” he cried as I pitched into the dashboard.
We came to a dead stop.
Even though we hadn’t been going very fast, probably under ten miles an hour, we’d still been moving. I don’t know what Janet expected to happen. Maybe she’d been watching too many movies, but in real life when you step out of a moving vehicle you fall.
I watched her stumble and go down on her hands and knees.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, lady?” a bicyclist screamed at her, missing her by probably not more than a quarter of an inch.
She picked herself up and studied her skinned knees. Then she turned her hands over and studied her palms. As if she had all the time in the world. I don’t know how she could have missed the bus lumbering toward her. She had to have seen it. Or heard it. Not that it would have made much difference if she had. It was too late. She couldn’t have gotten out of the way.
The words, “Watch out!” flew out of my mouth.
I think she heard me because she half turned in my direction. By now the bus was almost on top of her. The bus driver’s eyes widened as he realized what was about to happen.
His brakes screeched as he tried to stop. But he couldn’t. At least not in time.
There was a thwack as the bus hit Janet. She slid down and her body disappeared under the bus. Like in a cartoon. The bus kept going, dragging her along. It seemed to take forever before it stopped, although it probably wasn’t more than thirty seconds. When it did, the doors opened and the bus driver ran out, followed by a swarm of passengers.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Paul’s face was red. He slammed the wheel with the flat of his hand. “I can’t believe she did that. What the hell was she thinking?”
“That she didn’t want to get beaten up by you?”
He blinked. “If she had just done what I asked her to, none of this would have happened.”
“Is that the way you see this?”
Instead of answering, Paul pointed to where Janet had been sitting. “Give me her pocketbook. Maybe there’s something in there we can use.”
I held it up to him and he snatched it out of my hands and pawed through it, looking for his salvation. But it wasn’t there. Janet Wilcox had to have had the neatest pocketbook of any woman I’d ever seen. The only things in it were a lipstick, a compact, and a comb. Paul threw it down in disgust.
“I should have cuffed you two together,” he said. “I just never thought . . .” His voice trailed off. He shook his head. His skin had gone from red to sheet white. He rubbed the side of his nose with the joint of his right thumb.
“I didn’t think she’d be that friggin’ dumb. Stupid bitch.” Paul stared straight ahead as if he was contemplating his future and it didn’t look very good. “She’s killed all of us.”
“Let’s not exaggerate.”
“You’re right,” he replied although he didn’t sound convinced.
“Maybe she’s still alive.”
Santini shook his head. “No way. Not with what happened to her.”
I raised my hands. “How about uncuffing me so I can go see.”
He sighed. “What the hell. Why not? Everything’s gone to shit anyway.” And he reached over and unlocked the bracelets.
I rubbed my wrists. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah. Sure. This will be the perfect end to the perfect day.”
I got out of the car and threaded my way through the crowd that was gathering. Paul followed. It was chaos. People were honking their horns. Pedestrians were screaming at each other. People still in their cars were leaning their heads out of their windows demanding to know what had happened.
The bus driver was on his knees with his shoulders and head under the bus; so was another man. They both reemerged a moment later. The bus driver shook his head.
“I don’t believe this,” the driver was saying to the people around him. The back of his shirt had worked itself free and was hanging below his jacket. “I just don’t believe this. Seventeen years without so much as a dented fender. I have three years to go until retirement and now this. She just stepped out. One second I was thinking about getting coffee, and the next second she was there. She came out of nowhere. Nowhere.” He turned to one of the passengers. “You saw. You saw what happened, didn’t you?”
The passenger, a Sikh, nodded w
hile he nervously plucked at his eyebrows.
An Asian woman standing behind him had whipped out her cell and was talking to someone in Chinese.
A little farther away, a white twenty-something female in a fur jacket, gold chains, and black leather pants had her cell out as well. “I’m going to be late,” she was saying. “Don’t freak, Mom. The bus driver ran over someone. No. I’m not lying.”
“I’m going to see her face forever,” the driver wailed to the assembled crowd. “Why would she do something like that?” His hand went to his chest. His face got pale. “I feel sick.”
“You may be having a heart attack,” a middle-aged man said. “Come sit over here.” And he led the driver back to the bus.
“Jeez, now something’s wrong with the driver,” the twenty-year-old was saying. She started tapping her nails against her thigh. “No, Mother, I am not making this up. Of course I want to come to the family dinner.”
I knelt down where the bus driver had been and looked under the bus. Santini had been right. Janet Wilcox was no longer among the living. There was no doubt about that at all. Well, I suppose if you have to go, better to go this way than the way her husband had. In the background I could hear the sound of sirens. Someone must have called the police. They’d be here soon.
I got off my knees and melted back into the crowd. Paul materialized beside me.
“You were right,” I told him. “She’s dead.”
“No way she couldn’t be.” He bit his lip. “What the hell was she thinking?” Paul asked me again. “All she had to do was give me the money.”
He seemed sincerely bewildered. He thought he had everything factored in, and it turned out he hadn’t. Even though it was freezing out, Paul’s forehead was beaded with sweat. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“She always hated to part with a buck. You know she gave Walter an allowance? He’d give her his paycheck, and she’d give him fifty bucks a week for expense money. Fifty bucks.”
“My grandmother would have said she was frugal.”
Paul snorted. “I’ll tell you one thing. I’m sorry I ever met Walter. I’m sorry I let him talk me into getting involved in this mess.” And he started walking toward his car.
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