They ate and talked about his new novel, which was set during the French Revolution. Jeffrey had only just returned from Paris days earlier. He was a stickler for authenticity in his writing and insisted on traveling for research. With Nora having her own busy work schedule, they were apart more than they were together. In fact, they had been married on a Saturday, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and had flown home on Sunday. No mess, no fuss, no records in the States, either. It was a very modern marriage.
“You know, Nora, I was thinking,” he said, digging his fork into the last of his penne. “We should really take a trip together.”
“Maybe you can give me that honeymoon you’ve been promising.”
He put a hand to his heart and smiled. “Darling, every day I spend with you is a honeymoon.”
Nora smiled back. “Nice try, Mr. Famous Writer, but I’m not letting you off with a cute line.”
“Okay. Where do you want to go?”
“How about the south of France?” she offered. “We could shack up at the Hôtel du Cap.”
“Or Italy?” he said, holding up his glass of wine. “Tuscany?”
“Hey, I know—why don’t we do both?”
Jeffrey threw his head back and roared laughter. “There you go again,” he said, his index finger waving in the air. “Always wanting it all. And why not?”
They finished up dinner, talking more possible destinations for the honeymoon. Madrid, Bali, Vienna, Lanai. The only thing settled as they split a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia was to get a travel agent involved.
By eleven they were snuggling in bed. Husband and wife. So very much in love.
Chapter 6
THE NEXT DAY at a few minutes past noon, on the corner of Forty-second and Park in front of Grand Central Station, a woman screamed. A second woman turned her head to look and she screamed, too. The man beside her muttered, “Holy shit.” Then they all ran for cover.
Something very bad was happening. A train wreck, so to speak, just outside one of the most famous train stations in the world.
The chain reaction of fear and confusion quickly cleared everyone from the sidewalk. Everyone, except for three people.
One was a fat man with dense sideburns, thinning hair, and a dark mustache. He was dressed in an ill-fitting brown suit with wide lapels. Wider still was his shiny blue tie. On the ground by his feet was a medium-size suitcase.
Next to the fat man was a young woman, perhaps mid-twenties, attractive. She had red hair that hung straight down to her shoulders, lots of freckles on her face. She wore a short plaid skirt and a white tank top. A beat-up knapsack hung over one shoulder.
The fat man and the young woman couldn’t have looked any more different. However, at that moment they were very much connected.
By a gun.
“If you come any closer, I’ll kill her!” barked the fat man with a thick, Middle Eastern accent. He jammed the cold steel of the barrel hard against her temple. “I swear, I’ll shoot her dead. I’ll do it in a second. No problem for me.”
The threat was directed at the third person remaining on the sidewalk—a guy standing maybe ten feet away, wearing baggy gray khakis and a black T-shirt. He looked like a typical enough tourist. From the Pacific Northwest, perhaps. Oregon? The state of Washington? A runner maybe. Somebody in decent shape anyway.
And then he pulled a gun.
The Tourist took a step closer, his gun pointed at the forehead of the fat man with the mustache. Dead center, actually. The Tourist didn’t seem to care that the young woman was in his line of fire.
“No problem for me, either,” he said.
“I said stop!” said the fat man. “Don’t come any closer. Stay where you are.”
The Tourist ignored him. He took another step.
“I swear, I’ll fucking kill her!”
“No, you won’t,” said the Tourist calmly. “Because if you shoot her, I’ll shoot you.” He took another step forward but then stopped. “Think it through, friend. I know you can’t afford to lose what’s in that suitcase. But is it worth your life?”
The fat man squinted and suddenly looked to be in great pain. He appeared to be thinking about what the Tourist had said. Or maybe not. Then a maniacal smile filled his face. He cocked his gun.
“Pleeeeease,” begged the young woman, trembling. “Pleeeeease.” Tears poured from her eyes. She could barely stand.
“Shut up!” the fat man yelled in her ear. “Shut the hell up! I can’t hear myself think!”
The Tourist stood his ground, his flinty blue eyes locked on one thing: the man’s trigger finger.
He didn’t like what he saw.
Twitching!
The fat bastard was going to shoot the girl, wasn’t he? And that just wasn’t acceptable.
Chapter 7
“WHOA,” the Tourist announced with a raised palm. “Take it easy, my man.” He took a step backward, chuckled to himself. “Who am I kidding, right? I’m not that good of a shot. No way I could be sure to get you and not the girl.”
“That’s right,” said the fat man, hugging the young woman even tighter with his puffy right arm. “So, you tell me now, who’s in charge?”
“You are,” said the Tourist with a deferential nod. “Just tell me what you want me to do, my friend. Hell, if you want, I’ll lay my gun down on the sidewalk, okay?”
The man stared hard at the Tourist. His squint returned. “Okay, but slowly you do this,” he said.
“Of course. Easy-peasy-Japaneasy. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The Tourist began to lower his gun, and a gasp could be heard from behind a nearby telephone kiosk. Another gasp followed from behind a parked delivery van on Forty-second Street. The looky loos who’d run for cover but still had to watch the unfolding events were all thinking the same thing: Don’t do it, buddy. Don’t give up your gun. He’s going to kill you! And her, too!
The Tourist bent his knees and crouched down. He gingerly placed the gun on the sidewalk.
“See, nice and easy,” he said. “Now what do you want me to do?”
The fat man began to laugh, his fluffy, unkempt mustache bunching up beneath his nose. “What do I want you to do?” he said. The laughing grew even louder. He could hardly contain himself.
Suddenly he stopped laughing. His face went rigid. The man removed the gun from the side of the young woman’s head and aimed it straight in front of him. “What I want you to do is die.”
That’s when he made his move.
The Tourist.
In the blink of an eye, in one fast, efficient move, he reached up his pant leg and pulled a Beretta 9 mm from his shin holster. He whipped his arm forward and fired, the crack! echoing before anyone knew what had happened. Including the fat man.
The hole in his forehead was about the size of a dime, and for a moment he froze like a statue, an oversize Buddha. The onlookers screamed, the young woman with the knapsack fell to her knees, and with a horrific thud, the fat man collapsed to the dirty, littered sidewalk. His blood spurted like a water fountain.
As for the Tourist, he returned the Beretta to his shin holster and the other gun to his fanny pack. He stood up and walked over to the suitcase. He picked it up and carried it to a blue Ford Mustang that was double-parked on the street. The engine had been running the entire time.
“Have a nice day, ladies and gentlemen,” he said to the people who’d been watching him in stunned silence. “You’re a lucky girl.” He saluted the woman holding the knapsack tightly in front of her chest.
The Tourist then climbed behind the wheel of the Mustang and drove off.
With the suitcase.
Chapter 8
THE LIGHT TURNED GREEN and the New York City cabbie hit the gas pedal as if he were trying to squash a bug. What he really almost squashed was a bike messenger—that rare breed of daring and death wish for which red lights and stop signs are merely a crazy suggestion, an un-joke.
As the cabbie slammed on his brakes in
the middle of the intersection, the messenger swerved and kept right on going, his speeding bike missing the bumper of the cab by no more than an inch.
“Asshole!” screamed the messenger over his shoulder.
“Up yours!” the cabbie yelled, flipping him the bird. He glanced at Nora in the backseat and shook his head in disgust. Then he floored it again as if nothing had happened.
Nora shook her head and smiled.
It was good to be home.
The cabbie continued his mad dash south on Second Avenue toward lower Manhattan. After a few blocks of relative silence, he switched on the radio. It was 1010 News.
A man with a deep, mellifluent voice was just finishing up a report on the latest city-budget crisis when he announced that there was breaking news in midtown. He turned it over to a female reporter who was at the scene.
“Just about a half hour ago, a tense, if not somewhat bizarre, situation unfolded here at the corner of Forty-second and Park Avenue outside Grand Central Station.”
The reporter described how a man took a young woman hostage at gunpoint, only to be shot dead by another man whom onlookers believed to be an undercover police officer.
“Except when the police finally did arrive, it became clear that the man was not affiliated in any way with the NYPD. In fact, at this time, no one seems to know who he is. After the shooting he fled from the scene—but not before first absconding with a large suitcase belonging to the dead man.”
As the reporter promised more on the story as it developed, the cabbie let out a long sigh and glanced in his rearview mirror. “Just what this city needs, huh?” he said. “Another vigilante on the loose.”
“I doubt that’s what it is,” Nora said.
“Why’s that?”
“The suitcase. Whatever happened—and why—obviously has to do with what’s inside it.”
The cabbie shrugged his shoulders, then nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. So what do you think it is?”
“I don’t know,” said Nora. “But you can bet it wasn’t dirty clothes.”
Chapter 9
THERE WAS A QUOTE from someone, somewhere, that Nora loved and also believed with all her heart: One’s real life is almost always the life one doesn’t lead.
Well, not this girl’s life.
At the corner of Mercer and Spring in SoHo, she paid the cabbie and wheeled her suitcase into the two-story, all-marble lobby of her apartment building. It was a deluxe converted warehouse. An oxymoron everywhere but in New York City.
Hers was the penthouse loft, half of the entire floor. In a word, huge; in another, stylish. George Smith furniture, polished Brazilian wood floors, a Poggenpohl-designed kitchen. Calm and quiet and elegant, this was her sanctuary. Her true “no place else on earth I’d rather be.”
Actually, Nora loved to give tours of the place to those few people who interested her.
At the front door was Nora’s sentry—a six-foot clay sculpture of a male nude by Javier Marin.
There were two intimate sitting areas—one in sumptuous white leather, its complement in black—all Nora’s design.
She adored everything in her place and had scoured antiques shops, flea markets, and art galleries from SoHo to the Pacific Northwest to London and Paris, and tiny villages in Italy, Belgium, Switzerland.
Her collectibles were everywhere.
Silver: several Hermès treasures; a dozen or more silver bowls, which she loved.
Art glass: French Gallé picture frames; opaline boxes in white, green, turquoise.
Paintings by a select handful of up-and-coming artists from New York, London, Paris, Berlin.
And, of course, her bedroom: so vivid—very heavy on the beta waves—dark wine-colored walls, gilded sconces and mirrors, a chiseled block of antique scrolled wood over the bed.
Go ahead, figure me out if you can.
Nora grabbed a bottle of Evian from the fridge and then made a few calls, one of them to Connor, which she called her Man Maintenance. A bit later she made a similar call to Jeffrey.
At a little past eight that evening, Nora walked into Babbo in the heart of Greenwich Village. Yes, it is definitely good to be home.
Never mind that it was a Monday, Babbo was packed. The mingling sounds of silverware, glasses, plates, and hip city people filled the split-level restaurant with a pulsating hum.
Nora spotted her best friend, Elaine, already seated with Allison, another dear friend. They were at a table along the wall of the more casual first floor. She bypassed the hostess and headed over. Cheek kisses all around. God, she adored these girls.
“Allison’s in love with our waiter,” announced Elaine as Nora settled in.
Allison rolled her big brown eyes. “All I said was that he is cute. His name is Ryan. Ryan Pedi. He even has a cute name.”
“Sounds like love to me,” said Nora, playing along.
“There you have it, corroborating testimony!” said Elaine, who was a corporate lawyer with Eggers, Beck & Schmiedel, one of the city’s preeminent firms. Above all else they specialized in billable hours.
Speak of the devil. The young waiter, tall and dark, appeared at the table to ask if Nora wanted anything to drink.
“Just water, please,” she said. “With bubbles.”
“No, tonight you’re drinking with us, Nora. That’s it. She’ll have a cosmopolitan.”
“Coming right up.” With a quick nod, he turned and walked off.
Nora put a hand to the side of her mouth and whispered, “He is cute….”
“I told you,” said Allison. “Too bad he’s barely old enough to drink.”
“I was thinking more like drive,” said Elaine. “Or is it we’re getting so much older that they’re looking younger?” She dropped her head. “Okay, now I’m depressed.”
“Emergency change of subject!” declared Nora. She turned to Allison. “So what’s the new black for this fall?”
“Believe it or not, it may actually be black.”
Allison was a fashion editor at W, or as she liked to call it, the only magazine that could actually break your toe if you ever dropped it. Their business model was simple, she explained: big ads featuring skinny models wearing designer clothes never went out of style.
“So what’s new with you, Nor?” asked Allison. “Seems like you’re always out of town. You’re a ghost, girl.”
“I know, it’s crazy. I just got back today. Second homes are all the rage.”
Allison let out a sigh. “I’ve got enough problems paying for my first—oh, that reminds me, did I tell you about the guy who moved in on my floor?”
“The sculptor who played all that weird New Age music?” asked Elaine.
“No, not him. He moved out months ago,” she said with a dismissive wave. “This new guy just bought the corner apartment.”
“What’s the verdict?” asked Elaine, ever the lawyer.
“Single, adorable, and an oncologist,” said Allison. She shrugged. “I suppose there are worse things in life than marrying a rich doctor.”
The words had barely left Allison’s mouth before she raised a desperate hand to cover it.
A quiet fell over the table.
“Guys, it’s okay,” said Nora.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” said Allison, embarrassed. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Really, you don’t have to apologize.”
“Emergency change of subject!” declared Elaine.
“Now you’re both being silly. Listen, just because Tom was a doctor doesn’t mean we can’t ever talk about doctors.” Nora put her hand on top of Allison’s. “Tell us more about your oncologist.”
Allison did and the three carried on, the idea being that they’d been friends long enough not to let a terribly awkward moment stand in their way.
The young waiter returned with Nora’s cosmopolitan and went over the specials. The three friends drank, they ate, they laughed, they gossiped wickedly. Nora looked completely at ease. Comfortable and re
laxed. So much so that neither Allison nor Elaine could tell where her thoughts really were for the rest of the evening: the death of her first husband, Dr. Tom Hollis.
Or rather, his murder.
Chapter 10
A TALL GLASS of water and some aspirin—a little preventive medicine in the wake of her after-dinner drinks with Elaine and Allison. Nora never got drunk, abhorring the idea of ever surrendering control. But thanks to the high spirits and good company of Elaine and Allison, she had gotten a nice buzz on.
Two glasses of water, two aspirin.
Then she changed into her favorite cotton pajamas and pulled out the bottom drawer of her oversize dresser. Buried beneath several cashmere sweaters from Polo was a photo album.
Nora closed the drawer and turned off all the lights, save for the lamp on her nightstand. She climbed into bed and opened the album to the first page.
“Where it all began,” she whispered to herself.
The pictures were arranged chronologically, a photographic time line of her relationship with the first love of her life, the man she called Dr. Tom. Their very first weekend away together in the Berkshires; a concert at Tanglewood; shots of them in their suite at the Gables Inn in Lenox.
On the next page was a medical conference he took her to in Phoenix. They had stayed at the Biltmore, one of her favorites, but only if they put you in the main building.
After that were some candids from the wedding in the Conservatory Tent at the New York Botanical Garden.
Those pages were followed by their honeymoon down in Nevis. Glorious, one of the best weeks of her life.
In between were memories along the way—parties, dinners, funny faces mugging for the camera. Nora touching her tongue to her nose. Tom curling his upper lip like Elvis. Or was that supposed to be Bill Clinton?
Then the pictures stopped.
Instead, there were clippings.
The last pages of the album were filled with nothing but newspaper items. The various stories and the obituary—tinted yellow now from the passage of time. Nora had kept them all.
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