Woman in the Window

by Thomas Gifford

  “No.” She touched the back of his hand. “You haven’t exactly been a shrinking violet. I’ve thought about the same things you have, I’ve wondered, but I’m frightened, okay, frightened of being alone for the rest of my life and frightened of making the wrong kind of commitment. I’ve got one huge mistake behind me and sometimes I think I’ll never find the guts to choose again. But what I can do is like you, and hope you can be tolerant of me. We know each other differently now than we did at lunch today. That’s exciting to me, whatever else may happen between us later.”

  “Well, let me tell you, I’m not going to keep pestering you, Nat. I can live without you and be happy. Maybe I’d rather live with you in my life. Maybe I’d be happier—”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” she said softly, smiling, tapping fingernails on his hand.

  He nodded and grinned, accepting the uncertainty.

  He hailed a cab on the corner and as she leaned up to peck him good night, he held her tight and kissed her. A real kiss. If the cab hadn’t already been standing there, she wasn’t altogether sure what might have happened.

  Natalie sat before a single leftover log she’d managed to get burning and tried to pay attention to an unpromising manuscript. The Saint-Saens Organ Symphony was playing on the tape deck the burglars had left behind. She had read for about an hour when her brain gave a last surge of rebellion, fuzzed the lines of type. She couldn’t shake free of the tragic story of Jay’s wife and son … the sudden nastiness of the quarrel with Tony … the realization that this was how, at thirty-seven, she had celebrated her birthday—with discord, tragedy, the attentions of a man about whom her feelings were too ambivalent to define, a cop with a weird background and the bearing of an Ivy League professor, the shadow of a gunman across her life, and those damned, ominous, sinister, anonymous yellow roses in the vase before her. …

  The memory of the scene with Tony bothered her.

  Why had she been so unsympathetic? What was it at work in her? What was she afraid of? She felt as if she was vulnerable to contamination. Other people’s weaknesses might become hers and then, somehow, inviolate, independent Natalie would be irrevocably lost. …

  What a lot of crap! She determinedly grabbed the telephone and called Lew Goldstein. While she waited out the rings her hand went to the silver diamond, caressed its warmth. There had to be an explanation for her behavior. Tony hadn’t done anything so awful. He hadn’t done anything awful at all. He had remembered her birthday. Lew’s answering machine came on at last and she hung up without waiting to leave a message. Just as well. Pointless to bother Lew. …

  She was too wide awake to go to bed. As if sensing her confusion and frustration, Sir came bounding down from the bedroom, throwing his tennis ball into the air and chasing it with utter abandon.

  “Poor old Sir,” she remarked to him, “you’re not afraid to go for a walk, are you? Good idea, Sir?” He threw himself ecstatically against the front door, rattling his leash, which hung from the doorknob. Natalie slipped into her old sheepskin jacket, hooked his chain through the loop on his collar, and set off It was safe: there were still strollers on the street and Sir would protect her. Fierce fellow that he was.

  Chapter Eleven

  GUILT ABOUT HER TREATMENT of Tony was still with her when Natalie woke up. It was underlined by the first sight of the birthday present hanging by the mirror. After she’d made her single cup of coffee she sat looking out the window into the slushy, half-icy backyard and dialed Tony’s number on Staten Island. He was an early riser, if he’d gone home last night; otherwise he might have stayed with Garfein. The Staten Island house belonged to his aunt who enjoyed having a man around the house; it was perfect—meaning rent-free—for Tony and kept him away from all the hanging out he used to do with his pals.

  She let it ring. Tony had been upset when he left the bar last night. She knew his habits: once back to the big old house he might very well have decided to stay up all night, working in the barn on his stained glass. He was pretty good at it, had even shared studio space years before with a guy in Soho. Since their split-up, he’d gone back to it, building elegant stained glass windows of his own design. He treated it as his therapy, told her it had been his way of closing himself off and hiding from the end of their marriage.

  There was no answer and she finally hung up.

  Lisa had laid out her pink message slips and Natalie sifted through them before getting her first office cup of coffee. Nothing overwhelming. Dr. Goldstein had already called and would call back. … A thought flickered across the edge of her mind: had he sent the flowers? She wasn’t sure why the question kept nagging at her: maybe just because it was a loose end. The thought of speaking with Lew again filled her with something like relief. He was so reasonable, always had been.

  Jay stopped by her office in mid-morning and stood in the doorway massaging his jaw with his hand, acting like he wasn’t quite sure what to say. She smiled brightly, hoping to God their evening together hadn’t for some—for her—unimaginable reason plunged him into one of his moods.

  “Look, Natalie,” he began, then saw her smile and grinned. “I appreciate your willingness to listen to my little trip down memory lane last night. I don’t normally go on like that—”

  “You were terrific last night,” she said, feeling like Mary Richards talking to Lou Grant on a rerun.

  “I was?”

  “Well, pretty terrific. You were very nice. And you listened to me, too. I’m glad you were there.”

  “Just remember. I could be there whenever you wanted me. Get it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good. Say, your friend MacPherson just arrived in reception. You know, he dresses awfully well for a cop.” He went away and she buzzed Lisa, told her to send MacPherson on in.

  He was wearing a gray herringbone jacket and black slacks, a blue button-down shirt and a rep tie, all very preppie. He gave her that remote, level-eyed look and sat down with the wall of books behind him. Looking around him at the stacks of papers and manuscripts and folders that had long ago begun their steady encroachment onto the floor, he didn’t quite seem to approve. She asked him what she could do for him, determined not to be caught in her friendly-puppy persona.

  “It’s more a question of what I can do for you, Ms. Rader,” he observed. “Once again I’m afraid you haven’t been confiding in me. That disappoints me. However, others are more concerned about your welfare, apparently, than you are.”

  “Would you translate all that, please? And why don’t you just leap right in and call me Natalie?” She’d forgotten his first name: was it Danny? But she hadn’t forgotten Jay’s story about his father and Laura Hunt and Waldo Lydecker.

  “I called your husband after speaking with you the other day and confirmed that he had told Mr. Garfein about your experience with your laughing gunman. We proceeded to chat, Tony and I, and he seems to understand the possible seriousness of your situation. He then called me this morning, said he d seen you last night and that you’d mentioned a burglary at your home. And your fears that someone might be following you. I wonder if you’d like to tell me about any of these recent … incidents?” He took out his notebook again and went through the slow ritual of uncapping and poising his fountain pen.

  “Yes, it’s true, I did mention some things to Tony.” She was irritated by his continuing interference in her life: she didn’t like him, anyone, talking about her life without her knowledge. Actually, she barely remembered saying any of it to Tony: she must have done so in the interstices between shreds of argument as they had worked their way through the champagne and old battles. She told MacPherson about her paranoid fears of being followed; she recounted the story of the burglary; then figured the hell with it and told him the story of Sir running away on the FDR walkway and the man grinning in the shadows and the appearance of Lew Goldstein.

  “And who is he?”

  “A very dear, longtime friend. A psychiatrist. He was out for a walk. I was lucky.”


  “Lucky,” MacPherson mused. “How well do you know this Dr. Goldstein?”

  “That’s a rather puerile question. I said he’s an old friend. Nothing lurid, nothing earthy between us, which is what I assume you—”

  “Exactly what I meant.”

  She sighed. “I’m trying not to lose my temper with you,” she said, “and right now I’m not succeeding. I resent your prying into my private life. I merely saw something weird happen out my window—I’m not the criminal, I don’t need to be investigated—”

  “Excuse me,” he said calmly, “but I’m not prying. Your husband called me, not I him. In any case, my concern is not only with keeping you out of harm’s way but with the men you know.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, I’m just looking. For the odd incongruity, a stray anomaly which might tell me something, give me some answers—”

  “To what questions?” she interrupted.

  “Is someone following Natalie Rader? Is the man with the gun worried about your presence? Might he try to do something about it? Is your burglary related to the rest of this? You see, you find yourself in an entirely unprotected position. He knows who you are, where you are—he can ascertain who your friends and associates are merely by observing you. You, on the other hand, are living in a paranoid’s fantasy world. You know nothing about him besides the fact that he saw you. Consequently, we need to read the situation as closely as we possibly can.” He looked up from his notebook. “Do you follow me?”

  “You’re scaring me all over again.”

  “Your husband is concerned that—”

  “My former husband—”

  “He has added to your troubles. He feels badly about shooting off his mouth to Garfein. It seems to me that his concern is reasonable and well placed. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Look, I don’t want to let this get to me any more than I absolutely have to.” She was holding her voice steady but her hands were balled into fists in her lap. “Anyone in my position might be nervous. But if someone wants me shut up, there’s already been plenty of time to do something about it. No one has. What I’d like to know is why you keep pushing at this. It seems to me that it just isn’t amounting to much …”

  She watched him shut his notebook and put his pen away. He stood up and put his hands in his trouser pockets, went to the bookshelves and took down a volume. “Good book,” he said, waving it at her. “Did you represent it?” It was a prominent war correspondent’s memoirs, Back to Normandy.

  “Yes, I did. What has that got to do with anything?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. It just caught my eye and I liked the book.” He slid it back into the shelf, kept looking along the spines. “Why do I keep pushing at this?” he said softly. “I suppose because we got a report back on the gun. It’s worrisome, actually. We’ll handle it, of course, but—” He turned back toward her. “It is worrisome,”

  She felt her breathing mechanism tighten. Her stomach knotted. “What do you mean?” Her voice came out so soft she barely heard it.

  “The gun you saw thrown and which we subsequently retrieved from the construction site was used earlier that rainy afternoon to commit a homicide. About three o’clock, as best we can tell, somebody pulled that particular trigger in a cooperative on Central Park West. Couple blocks up past the Dakota. Very nice view over the park. And a woman named Alicia Quirk got most of her face blown off.”

  Natalie heard herself gasp.

  MacPherson went on in his flat, professorial tone. “Ms. Quirk was not a good citizen. She put up money to produce particularly vile porno films, performed in them for kicks. But she was mainly a drug dealer, specializing in coke. Her clientele was made up of actors, musicians, singers, and the idle rich they seem to attract, most of them Upper West Side types. A smattering of Chelsea and Soho, you know the drill, I suppose. Alicia was bored, rich, about your age, even looked rather like you, very pretty actually, kinky as hell and pretty well known … but no threat to the mob, no reason for the big boys to snuff her. She was in the scene for fun, for sex, for the rush of controlling people’s lives. But apparently there was one chap she couldn’t control. Goodbye, Alicia.”

  Natalie swallowed, trying to moisten her mouth so she could speak. “So what would be the next step?” Her mind was racing, trying to fit herself into the puzzle. She’d never thought about murder in any but abstract terms. Now … last night Jay telling her about his wife and son; today Alicia Quirk. Murder was real.

  “Well,” MacPherson said, standing at the window, looking down at the scene where it had all begun to go crazy for Natalie, “we’ve done some checking on Ms. Quirks movements. She spent a lot of time at a club called Lulu’s on Forty-sixth, an aftertheater joint, popular place with actors and whatnot. Burgers, spaghetti, beer, not a bad joint. She saw a lot of this singer down there, Susannah Something. Maybe they were lovers, maybe not.” He shrugged. “She did a lot of business, dealt out of the ladies’ room, for all I know—I imagine it’s too much to hope that you’ve ever been there?”

  “The ladies’ room at Lulu’s?”

  “Just plain Lulu’s would suffice.”

  “No, I’ve never been there.”

  “Well, in any case, since our man didn’t plan on having you see him dispose of the gun, it must be irrelevant—your ever having been there, I mean.”

  “It’s too far out of my way.” Natalie was biting her thumbnail. “Why is Lulu’s so important?”

  “It was Alicia Quirk’s métier, that’s all. We figure the guy who killed her, the guy you saw, probably knew her there. After all, the joint was her office.”

  As a consolation prize for MacPherson’s upsetting visit, she arranged to meet Lew at four-thirty at the Algonquin, his choice. When she got there he was waiting by the registration desk chatting with the desk clerk. He disengaged himself, gave her shoulders a quick squeeze, and led the way into the lobby cocktail lounge. The late-afternoon mob was still fifteen minutes away and they got one of the tables with a genteel, elderly couch where they sat side by side. He draped his trench coat and hers over a chair, ordered a pair of gin gimlets, and surveyed the room.

  “Thanks for humoring me,” he said at last. “The Algonquin’s old hat for you but I don’t often get this far downtown. I like to pretend I’m an author at last, drinking in my natural habitat. Is that Irwin Shaw over there?”

  “Afraid not,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Well, I’ll keep an eye peeled anyway. So, how are you feeling today? Any dizzy spells? Upset tummy?”

  “No, really, I’m just fine, Lew. No ill effects.”

  “Well, that’s fine.” He handed her a gimlet, clicked his glass against hers. “Confusion to our enemies,” he said, watching her over the rim as she took a long sip. “So, you’re supposed to be telling me all about what’s been piling up. Remember?”

  She nodded.

  “Come on, Nat, you look worn out, pale, not terribly perky … and you’ve got me just a little worried. You’re battling with some demons and maybe I can help.” He waited for an answer. “It is my job, sport.” He sat back, waiting again, letting his gaze wander across the lobby.

  She took a sip and set the glass down too hard, splashing her hand. “Oh, Lew. I hate to be making a big deal out of this stupid thing. I—”

  “Rest easy,” he said. “I’m the one who’s dragging it out of you.”

  “Remember how it was at Northwestern? I never was able to keep anything from you … and now I just feel that everything is closing in on me, ever since I looked out my window that night. And,” she felt a flush of anger, “I resent it. I resent the way it’s all affecting me. Everything that happens to me seems so strange—it’s all in my mind. I mean, I don’t even know it was the killer laughing at me on the other side of the door!” She bit her lip and ate some peanuts and caught her breath.

  “But it’s a pretty good bet, isn’t it? And what difference does it make who was laughing? Once Garfein put it all i
n the papers, the guy knew it was you.” He crossed his neatly pressed trouser legs, patted her arm. “You just called him a killer? But you don’t really know that, do you?”

  “No, no, he’s a killer!” Her voice had risen, and a man passing their table paused momentarily, registered what she had said, raised his thick eyebrows, and went on to a wingbacked chair adjacent to their settee. She heard him banging the bell on his table. She thought she’d recognized him, probably an actor in his turtleneck sweater and expensive hairpiece, leather jacket. It occurred to her that she should point him out to Lew, the celebrity watcher.

  “You know he’s a killer?” Lew said.

  She nodded, finished her drink, pointed at the empty glass. “I really could use another one,” she told him. Lew waved to a waiter. The tables were filling up. “Yes, this cop, MacPherson—he’s part of what’s bothering me, actually; he’s just too snotty for words, such a smartass—this MacPherson dropped in on me today with the good news. The gun was used in a murder earlier that day. He shot some awful woman. …” The words were rushing out, spilling. “A porno actress, Lew, a cocaine dealer, he blew her head off, oh shit. …” She felt tears welling up, hated herself, let her voice trail off.

  Lew touched her arm again, handed her the fresh gimlet.

  “What a world,” he murmured.

  “And then Jay told me this awful story about his wife and son being murdered—”

  “Danmeier? What the hell is this?”

  “Thirty years ago. Oh, it’s just awful, and for some reason it’s all just landing on me right now … Tony and Jay and that creep the other night in the shadows. … Oh, Lewis, I don’t want to talk about this anymore, okay?”

  The noise level was rising as the lobby filled. The man in the wingbacked chair lit a cigar and the smoke drifted toward her, strong, rich, overpowering. She choked back a cough. He banged his bell again. His weekly Variety fell on the floor and he reached down to pick it up. God, I’m making a scene, she thought, and this bastard is lapping it up.