I glanced over at Becca, who was rapt, staring up at the fliers with wide eyes. I could see the pulse in her neck throbbing with fear or excitement or both.
No one fell.
Everyone cheered.
Becca slipped her hand into mine and squeezed.
* * *
—
We had the cab drop us off ten blocks south of her house. We wanted the stroll. As we walked, I told her more about my unlikely education at Hart and Halloway.
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
“Some of it. I miss the people. I miss the travel. Or at least I miss some of the people and some of the travel.”
I didn’t miss living hand-to-mouth, struggling to make our nut at every town. Or the parade of red-faced church deacons who beat a Bible with one hand and squeezed my ass with the other.
I didn’t say any of that. It was too nice an evening.
“It sounds wonderful, the way you grew up,” Becca said as we crossed a vacant intersection.
“I must not have mentioned shoveling the tiger cages.”
“You had a whole circus family who loved you for who you are,” she said. “It’s worth shoveling a little shit.”
I was about to make a quip about tigers not doing anything in moderation, but I curbed myself. Her head wasn’t in a place for jokes.
“And look how your life ended up,” she continued. “Doing good. Helping people. A real detective.”
The laugh came out before I could stop it.
“What’s so funny?”
“You might be the one person aside from my boss who thinks of me as a real detective,” I said. “Pretty sure most people think of me as a sidekick at best. A wannabe at worst.”
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to me. “Is that how you feel about yourself?”
I shrugged, wishing I hadn’t said anything. “I don’t know. Sometimes.”
She arched a perfect swoop of eyebrow.
“Okay, maybe a lot of the time,” I admitted. “Standing next to Ms. Pentecost, it’s hard not to feel like I’m just playing a part. A little girl trying to learn her lines.”
She took both my hands in hers. I looked up and down the street. It was late, and there was no one in sight.
“I never thought you were anything but the real deal,” she said. Her mouth curved into a wicked little grin and she added, “And I definitely don’t think of you as a little girl.”
She started up the block again but kept one of my hands in hers. We walked like that the rest of the way.
As we approached her house, I kept an eye out. I was curious if the police still had them under surveillance. Sure enough, I caught the shadow of a man stepping deeper into an alley farther down the block. I guess there was overtime to go around in the NYPD. I gently shook Becca’s hand loose.
We stopped in front of her door. It was only ten and light still shone bright from the windows.
“You know,” she said, “I still have those records.”
“Kind of late to be playing jazz, don’t you think?”
She reached out and brushed a red curl away from my forehead.
“We don’t need to play jazz,” she whispered.
I felt her long fingers idly play with the bottom buttons of my blouse. Simple things like breathing and thinking suddenly became very difficult.
One button came undone.
Then a second.
A third.
A sudden gust of wind came roaring down the street, shaking snow off the stone eaves and pressing ice cubes against my bared stomach.
In a flash I could think again. While Ms. Pentecost might say things like “use your best judgment,” I didn’t think that leeway stretched as far as hopping into bed with the goddaughter of a paying client.
“Sorry,” I said, gently pushing her hands away and rebuttoning my blouse. “Maybe once this is all wrapped up.”
Her face fell. She immediately tried to jack it back up. “Tonight was the most fun I’ve had in ages.”
“Me too,” I said. I wasn’t lying.
Then, because I’m only human, I pushed her into the shadow of the doorway, out of sight of peepers and policemen, and kissed her.
When I came up for air and watched Becca disappear inside her house, I was flying higher than that family of daredevils.
I turned on my heel and started south again to where I could find a cab. I was nearing the end of the block when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. I was turning into it when the punch hit me square on the left side of my head.
I stumbled into the brick wall of a house. By the time the second punch came, I had my hands up. What would have been a cross to my nose hit my left wrist. Pain exploded down my arm. I got off a weak jab, then a solid cross that landed squarely on the man’s face, which was covered by a sheer stocking mask.
He grunted and I heard something crack. I didn’t know if it was his nose or my fingers.
He came in toward me. I reached into my jacket for my gun, remembering too late that my pistol had been confiscated. I tried to retreat but forgot there was a wall behind me. My head wasn’t working right. He let a shot fly into my kidneys.
I crumpled forward, then snapped back up, arm bent, elbow aiming for his chin. I missed by a mile. Another shot to the stomach and I went down.
What I tell my students in the basement is to run if you can, find a weapon if you can’t, and if worse comes to worst, protect your head.
I curled into a ball on the ground, arms wrapped around my head, as he kicked me—once, then twice. A third kick got through my arms and connected square with the side of my face. I tried to yell for help, but I couldn’t get air into my lungs. A wave of sickening blackness advanced from the edges.
I looked up to see the man looming over me, a hulking monster in the dark. Somewhere I heard footsteps running and somebody crying out for the police. The man pulled back his foot for another kick.
Then darkness swooped in and swallowed me whole.
CHAPTER 27
I woke to white walls and starched sheets and the unmistakable smell of a hospital—that horrible mix of sterile and sick. Sunlight streamed through a narrow window. A nurse was adjusting something at the foot of my bed.
There was no pain, which surprised me. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling much of anything.
“Back with us, sweetheart?” the nurse asked, coming to the head of the bed and leaning over me. “She’ll be pleased.”
The nurse threw a nod over her shoulder. The “she” in question was asleep in a chair in the corner. I know she was asleep because the great lady detective’s head was propped back against the wall and she was not-so-softly snoring.
“She’s been on the doctors something fierce.”
“How long?” I asked. Or tried to. What came out was more a croak than a question, but she got the gist.
“You came in Friday night. It’s Sunday morning.”
A whole day unconscious? That wasn’t good. Then it started to come back to me—flashes of lucidity. A careening ambulance ride. Being propped up for X-rays. Groaning in pain as cold, gloved hands prodded my ribs.
As the nurse took my vitals, I took inventory. My left wrist was in a cast. Two fingers of my right hand were splinted. I felt stiff bandages around my rib cage and my head felt enormous—like an overstuffed pillow. I lifted a hand to my face, but the nurse stopped me.
“Don’t do that,” she said, gingerly forcing my hand back to the bed. “Everything will be tender for a while.”
“Numb,” I croaked.
The nurse nodded. “We gave you some pretty strong stuff so that you could rest,” she said. “It’ll wear off after a bit. You’ll feel plenty then.”
“Will?” Ms. P was looking at me from her chair, eyes wide and
bright.
“Present…and accounted for.”
“I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse said. “The doctor should be back in a bit to check on you. He’ll want to check on you, too, Ms. Pentecost.” She leveled a look at my boss before continuing her rounds.
I tried to say, “Why does he need to check on you?” but my tongue wasn’t up to the challenge. Ms. P stood and walked carefully to my bed. Her legs were unsteady and her hands were shaking. That was all the answer I needed.
She took a glass of water from my bedside table and maneuvered a straw into my mouth. I took a few long sips.
“Tall. Strong. Dark clothes. Work boots. Stocking over his face,” I said. “Waiting for us.”
Ms. Pentecost held up a hand but I kept going.
“I got a good one to his face. Think I did some damage. He should show it.”
“You don’t have to worry about that right now.”
“Get the description to…to the cops. Get them looking.”
“They are looking,” she assured me. “Ms. Collins gave the police the man’s description.”
Had Becca been attacked, too? I thought I’d seen her go inside her house, but the drugs were making everything dim and foggy. My confusion must have showed.
“Ms. Collins came back outside and saw the man standing over you,” Ms. Pentecost explained. “She called for help. That’s likely the reason the attack ended when it did.”
I remembered the footsteps and someone yelling for the police. So things could have been worse if not for Becca. I owed her another kiss. Once I could feel my lips again.
I noticed for the first time that my boss was wearing the same outfit I’d last seen her in.
“Have you been here the whole time?” I asked.
“I did not want to rely on the doctors or the police to keep me abreast by phone,” she said. “That chair in the corner is not as uncomfortable as it appears.”
I gave her a look. Or I tried to. I was having difficulty knowing what my face was doing. She apparently got the hint.
“I had an incident in the downstairs cafeteria,” she said, managing to look a little sheepish. “I was trying to balance a tray and my cane at the same time and I fell. It alarmed some of the doctors more than it should.”
I didn’t have the strength for a lecture. The nurse—I’d need to get her name—seemed capable enough. I figured she had it in her to get my employer to sit still for a checkup.
Ms. P was saying something about decent food and a good night’s sleep taking care of it, but her words were wobbly in my ear. With no warning, sleep dragged me back under.
* * *
—
When I woke, it was late afternoon. A different nurse told me that Ms. Pentecost had run home for a change of clothes and would be back later.
My head felt clearer, which I chalked up to the drugs starting to wear off. With that came the pain, and boy, was there plenty. Everything ached, from my curls to my toes, some of it with an intensity I’d never experienced before. It even hurt to breathe, which I was informed by the nurse was due to two cracked ribs.
“Great,” I groaned. “I’ve been meaning to give up breathing.”
I was awake half an hour before a doctor who looked about two weeks my senior came to check on me. He gave me the full tally.
“You’ve got a broken wrist, two dislocated fingers, two cracked ribs, a bad laceration on your face that we stitched up, and a ruptured eardrum,” he said with the prescribed amount of somberness.
The eardrum explained why I was missing every fourth word.
“You know, it’s a miracle you don’t have a skull fracture. You were lucky. You should be more careful,” he said.
He let me know I’d be in the hospital for a few days and that he’d get me on a regular dose of morphine. I told him I’d settle for some low-octane stuff. I wanted to keep my head clear.
“I think you’re going to regret that,” he said. “Probably around two in the morning when you’re trying to sleep. When you change your mind, ring a nurse.”
After he left, I thought about what he’d said. That I “should be more careful.” Like it was my fault I’d ended up there.
Then I started thinking that maybe it was my fault. Carrying on with Becca like I had. A public street on the Upper East Side isn’t exactly an after-hours club. Then I started to get angry at myself for thinking like that. And at the doctor. And at the guy who beat me up.
By the time Ms. Pentecost got back, dressed in her going-to-war grays, I was ready to pick a fight with the world.
“Any word from the police?” I asked.
“Nothing yet. The lieutenant told me they are pursuing leads.”
“Lazenby’s got a hand in it?”
“He’s taken over the investigation,” she said, settling down in the corner chair.
Lazenby must have thought my attack had something to do with the murders. But if it was all the same person, why didn’t he just shoot me? Why leave me alive when a bullet could have done the job quicker, easier, and a lot more permanently?
The idea sent a shiver through me. Even my goose bumps hurt.
“Can you lend me your cane?” I asked. “I want to make a trip to the bathroom and take a look at the damage.”
She hesitated. “Perhaps it would be best to wait for some of the swelling to go down.”
That told me more than any mirror ever could, but I needed to see for myself.
“I also need to visit the bathroom for another of its intended uses,” I lied. “I know this is a full-service hospital, but I don’t want to impose that far.”
I tried to smile, but that hurt, too.
Instead of her cane, Ms. P lent me her arm. My legs seemed to be working all right. Nothing in my lower half was broken and the drugs had worn off. I shut the bathroom door and looked in the mirror.
I’ll spare you the details. Needless to say, it was not pretty and wouldn’t be for quite some time. The swelling and bruises would fade, but the jagged cut across my cheek would leave a scar. It cut right through my thickest cloud of freckles.
I cried. Which hurt, but not as much as smiling.
When I opened the door, Ms. Pentecost was standing where I’d left her. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. It hurt my ribs, but I didn’t complain.
CHAPTER 28
I was in the hospital a total of three days and four very sleepless nights. The smug young doctor had been right. Morphine in the wee hours would have been nice, but I held out and managed a couple hours every night.
Four notable incidents occurred while I was stuck in my starched white prison. The first was that Becca visited me. She cried. I managed not to. Her presence made me strangely uncomfortable.
At first I thought it was how I looked. There she was, tear streaked but still ready for the cover of Vogue. While I resembled something you’d see at a creature feature matinee.
When I caught myself looking at the open door for the fifth time in a minute, I realized what was really wrong. Part of me was worried the masked man would come in to finish the job.
Lazenby had assigned an officer to patrol my floor, so my fear was irrational. Still, I couldn’t shake it.
I put a pin in the psychoanalysis and asked Becca as politely as possible not to visit me at the hospital again. I didn’t want her to see me like that. She said she understood, and maybe she really did.
The second notable incident was a visit from Lazenby himself, who arrived with a bag of paperback detective novels.
“I was here three weeks when I was shot. You can go out of your mind without a good book. Though I wouldn’t call any of these good,” he said.
I let the literary criticism slide and thanked him. Then we got down to the real reason for his visit—to get the events of Friday evening from
my own lips. I gave him the lot, including a couple of details that hadn’t registered when the hits were coming, and a few ideas on where he could start. He didn’t give me false hope, but he didn’t brush me off, either. To his credit, there was none of the blame and shame the doctor had snuck in.
I took the opportunity to ask how the police were faring with the Collins case.
“Even laid up, you don’t quit.”
“Like you said—lot of time here to keep a person’s brain going,” I said. “Any new leads?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said. “Stick to your Raymond Chandlers and let the police worry about the real criminals. We do manage to get one occasionally.”
With that as his exit line, the policeman left.
Something about our chat bugged me. I replayed the exchange and eventually realized what was off. He was calm. There was none of the usual teeth-grinding. He had something.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out what.
Later that afternoon, a nurse came in to change my dressing and said, “You work for Lillian Pentecost, don’t you? I just heard on the radio they arrested somebody in that Collins murder.”
She didn’t know who. All the radio had said was that “an arrest had been made in relation to.” There wasn’t a private phone in my room, so I slipped on a robe and made my way down to the basement cafeteria, where there was a pay phone.
It took ten minutes and three tries to get through to the office.
“What’s this about somebody getting pinched for the Collins case?” I demanded as soon as Ms. P got on the line.
“I just got off the phone with Randolph Collins,” she said. “Lazenby arrived at the Collins Steelworks offices around noon and arrested Harrison Wallace.”
“For murder?”
“Embezzlement,” Ms. P declared. “Apparently they have considerable evidence that Mr. Wallace has been siphoning money out of the company. Their theory is that Mrs. Collins discovered the crime and Wallace killed her so she wouldn’t talk.”
Fortune Favors the Dead Page 21
