The Good Stranger (A Kate Bradley Mystery)

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The Good Stranger (A Kate Bradley Mystery) Page 7

by Dete Meserve


  He didn’t answer. Instead, I could hear him in a rushed conversation with someone on his end.

  “Sorry, Kate. It’s chaos here.” His voice was low, serious. “But there’s something important I need to tell you. I don’t want you to be surprised by it.”

  “Okay, I’m ready.” His tone made me worry, though. Was he sick? In some kind of political trouble because of the shutdown?

  Then I heard another hurried discussion on his end, but this time several voices were talking.

  “Let me call you later.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  After my run the next morning, I slipped by the newsstand to pick up a copy of the New York Times. I read most of my newspapers online, but there was something romantic about reading the ink-and-paper version. It reminded me of mornings with my dad when I’d read the headlines aloud over eggs and pancakes, summarizing for him what was important in each story before heading off to elementary school.

  One of the first things I did when I arrived in Manhattan was to subscribe to the Times. But every time they delivered my copy, someone walked off with it. I suspected Artie, the neighbor who always seemed to be coming and going at odd hours. When I returned home at three thirty in the morning after working through the night on the power-outage story, he was leaving the building, hands in his pockets, head down. I’d greeted him, but he looked past me as though he hadn’t seen me. Even though I had been two feet away.

  I handed the newsstand guy three dollars, saw the headlines about the government shutdown, then flipped over the page. RIPPLE OF KINDNESS SWEEPING MANHATTAN. Below the headline was a photo of a woman whose face I recognized.

  The article read:

  Angie Patterson can’t stop crying. She just received a phone call from Lauren Shapiro, the general manager of the Wellington Hotel, telling her that someone has made a reservation for Ms. Patterson and her family for the next three weeks. And paid for it in full. “Our apartment burned the night of the power outage,” she said. “My family, we’ve been staying on a friend’s couch. Then some anonymous person pays for us to stay in a hotel for three weeks. All I can say is it feels like a miracle.”

  I studied her narrow face, sharp cheekbones. She was definitely one of the women I interviewed the night of the blackout. Another woman I’d interviewed had received keys to a new van. Was someone watching ANC and helping out some of the people I’d profiled? I wondered if Stephanie was right that our news bosses were behind this story in order to jack up the ratings.

  The newsstand guy held up an ice-cold bottle of water and a People magazine and smiled, clearly hoping I would buy something more. I shook my head, snapped a pic of the story, and texted it to Mark with the words: The Secret Good is Growing.

  In between calls about the shutdown, I reached out to the guys calling themselves the Kindness Busters. Turned out they weren’t trying to bust the people doing good. They were trying to use tech to figure out who they were. To capture them on camera. Yet despite putting motion-sensitive cameras all around Manhattan, they’d only succeeded in snapping photos of a rat carrying a slice of pizza, a few unexplained ghostly images, endless footage of cats ambling along, and a man trying to steal a bike from someone’s doorstep. In a city this big, with so many people looking for them, how had the anonymous people behind this not been spotted?

  As I hung up with them, my cell phone rang again. A man started talking before I could say hello, his voice barely above a whisper. “She’s here. A woman paying off, like, ten thousand dollars in payday loans.”

  “Where is ‘here’?”

  “Purple Payday Loans, on Broad Street. I saw online that this is the number to call about this kind of stuff.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “She’s got big white sunglasses. Look expensive. Her hair is covered by a red scarf. You know, like Jackie O. or some kind of old-time movie star.”

  “What else can you see?”

  “I’m in the back office now. But I remember she’s wearing, like, a plaid jacket. I’m guessing she’s maybe forty or so, but I can’t really tell because of the glasses and stuff.”

  “She give you a name?”

  “Nope. Paying in cash.”

  “Can you snap a picture?”

  “Too obvious. I mean, she’s the only one here. But I will if you want.”

  “Okay, don’t do that. But see if you can stall her. I’m heading there right now.”

  Scott knew the fastest route to Purple Payday Loans. His master plan involved hopping in a cab for six blocks, then jumping out and running for two very long blocks, then cutting through a narrow alleyway and leaping over a trio of bottomless dirty puddles and maneuvering past mounds of black trash bags, then running between cabs on a traffic-clogged street.

  “You’re sure this is the way?” I asked just as a cab driving too fast through a puddle barely missed us with his splash.

  We turned the corner, and there it was. Purple Payday Loans.

  I had texted Scott about the lead at 520 Eighth Avenue, and he’d texted back: Meet in lobby. I know a fast way.

  He wasn’t kidding.

  “How’d you know it’d be here?” I said, out of breath.

  “For Eighth Avenue, you divide the address number by twenty, then add nine, and you’ll know the cross street. In this case, Thirty-Fifth Street.”

  “What kind of math is that?” I asked as we opened the door to a narrow storefront with a purple awning.

  He smiled. “The city has an algorithm. I’ll explain the math later.”

  Purple Payday Loans was empty except for a guy behind the counter. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, with wavy brown hair that fell below his shoulders. “Kate Bradley?”

  I nodded. “Is she still here?”

  He frowned. “You just missed her. I think she got wind that something was up. I tried to stall, but she took off.”

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. She got into a cab.”

  “How did she do it?” Scott asked. “Was she paying off specific loans?”

  “No. She came in saying she wanted to pay off loans with cash. I told her we couldn’t give up confidential information like people’s names, and she said she’d pay off loans for anyone whose last name began with M.”

  “Why M?”

  He shrugged. “Feels like it was random. But she paid off eight thousand bucks in loans before she bailed.”

  “And you didn’t get her name?”

  “I tried. She ignored me. But she was in such a hurry to get out of here that she left something behind.” He pushed a cardboard Starbucks cup toward us.

  “A coffee cup,” Scott said flatly.

  The guy lifted the cardboard sleeve. “Underneath is her name. Marie.”

  Scott and I exchanged glances. “That may not be her name. Everyone has a fake Starbucks name,” I said.

  “It’s all we got.”

  “What about that camera up there?” I asked, pointing up to a clunky camera on the ceiling that was pointed at any customer who stood at the counter.

  “That thing’s ancient. Takes crap video.”

  “Could we see?”

  He looked around. “I’m not supposed to let anyone—”

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble. But we’d only need to see a few seconds, if you can do it.”

  He ran his hand through his hair, then looked at Scott, then at me, deciding. “I guess it’s okay.”

  A few minutes later, he cued up the grainy black-and-white video—on a machine that whirred and hummed like it was gasping its last breath—to the point where the woman was walking through the door.

  He was right. Her large sunglasses and fashionable head scarf made her totally unidentifiable.

  My minute-long report showed the security footage and laid out the idea that a person behind the gifts sweeping through Manhattan was a woman named Marie.

  Mark scowled as he watched the finished report. “I’ll slate it to
air,” he said with an edge in his voice. “But this is the last time you run out and do a story I don’t assign you. Are we clear?”

  I nodded, but inside I was still clinging to the stubborn belief—or was it simply a hope?—that my job was to find stories, not wait for approval to follow my instincts.

  Luckily, the response on social media was strong enough—ANC’s ninety-three million followers on Twitter retweeted the story nearly five hundred times and posted two hundred mostly positive comments—that it ended up airing multiple times throughout the night and into the morning.

  When I arrived at my desk the next morning, Stephanie was heading out, with a cameraman in tow. She shot me a mock frown. “I spend days working on the huge crime wave in three major cities and don’t get half the love you’re getting on this story,” she said. “And look, you even got fan mail. Mail room dropped it off.”

  I lifted the envelope from my desk. My name handwritten in black ink. No return address and not stamped, which meant someone had dropped it off instead of mailing it. I hadn’t been on the air enough to have viewer fans yet, and I knew so few people in the city that I had no idea what to expect inside.

  I ripped open the envelope and found a single sheet of white paper with a scrawled message:

  KATE, STOP LOOKING FOR MARIE. I’M WATCHING YOU.

  I shuddered. Back in LA, I’d done a series of reports about escalating gang violence and received death threats. One came in an email: I know where you work, where you live. I will pay you a visit soon. It will be the worst day of your life. For two long weeks after that, the station had an off-duty police officer with me 24-7. I was spooked the entire time and lost my appetite and ten pounds. I’d kept a brave face through it all yet couldn’t muster the courage to go anywhere except my apartment and the newsroom.

  With trembling hands, I held the letter by its right corner to avoid smudging any fingerprints, in case there were any. I headed through the newsroom, where I found Mark at the assignment desk reviewing some footage of a tropical storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico.

  “Nutcase,” he said after scanning the letter. “Now that you’re at ANC, get used to it. We get them all the time.”

  “Should I give it to security?”

  He looked it over again and handed it back to me. “Don’t think so. Can’t imagine anyone actually threatening you for looking for the person behind all these good things happening.”

  “But he—or she—says, ‘I’m watching you.’ Feels creepy.”

  I could see I was testing his patience. “Of course they’re watching you. That’s what viewers do,” he said, then rushed off to talk to someone else.

  His reasoning didn’t do anything to quell my anxiety. I was on edge, my chest clamped tight, as I walked home from the subway that night. I had the feeling that I was being watched. A guy with a man bun glanced at me, making casual eye contact, and I felt a shiver run through my body. Then a woman carrying a black tote bag followed behind me in step for an entire block before turning onto another street. Spooked.

  Inside my apartment, I locked the door and slipped the chain into position. Pulled down the cheap vinyl blinds. I flung myself onto the couch but was immediately assaulted by the loud grinding sounds of metal upon metal, punctuated by crashing thuds as though someone were dropping a concrete ball on the floor. Who was doing construction on one of the apartments at this time of night? Upstairs, the neighbors were playing country music, but even the driving beat and earsplitting volume couldn’t drown out the grinding.

  At least the woman in the window across the way was there again, her very presence giving me a feeling of certainty when everything else felt decidedly off the hook. Tonight, she was working on a dress in lavender brocade, and in the soft light, its folds and flares and lace gathered around her like she was the subject in a baroque painting.

  I tried to take my mind off it all, ease the tightness in my chest, by straightening the apartment, then sorting through the mail. Most of it was junk mail addressed to Janet and her boyfriend, because despite my filing a change of address, the post office was erratic about forwarding my mail.

  Then I saw it, tucked between a flyer advertising one of those food-delivery services and another for a blonde real estate agent. It was a postcard of Times Square. Torn in the corner. On the back it read:

  KATE, STOP LOOKING FOR MARIE. I’M WATCHING.

  They knew where I lived.

  CHAPTER TEN

  My dad was worried. He was trying to sound calm, but I could feel his anxiety through the phone. He’d never been particularly good at hiding his feelings, and the telltale signs were there. The catch in his voice. The careful choice of words. “Have you talked to the police?”

  “I can, but what could they do? It’s not a threat to say you’re watching a reporter on TV.”

  “It is if you drop a postcard at her office and her home mailbox.”

  He was right, but he’d called me as I walked the final few blocks to the ANC studios, and I was surrounded by too many people on the packed sidewalk to be honest with him about my fears. “I’ll let my bosses know. Now, what’s your news, Dad? What were you going to tell me the other day?”

  He drew a deep breath. “I’ve been seeing someone. Her name is Julia. And I want you to meet her.”

  “Already?” I suddenly sounded like I was ten years old.

  “I’ve been seeing her for a while now.”

  My voice rose another notch. “And I’m just hearing about her?”

  He sighed. “I didn’t want to bother you about her if I didn’t think it was going to work out.”

  I stopped, slipped into the entrance to an electronics store. “Work out? As in . . . how?”

  “Assuming we can get this shutdown resolved, I’m coming to New York with her next week.”

  I realized I had become one of those annoying people shouting into their cell phones on the streets of Manhattan, so I lowered my voice. “Was she the woman you took to the British prime minister’s dinner at the White House?”

  “Yes. She was with me.”

  “Dad, she looks like she’s . . . I don’t know. Forty maybe? And you’re sixtysomething . . .”

  “I know how old I am. And yes, she’s forty-five. I’d really like you to go to the Metropolitan Opera with us when we’re there.”

  “The Met? You hate opera. A ball game, sure. Maybe even a Christmas concert given by the symphony. But—”

  “She’s been on their board for years. And this is what she loves. Art. Music. Opera.”

  Everything my dad didn’t like. He was a history buff who binge-watched historical documentaries, who lived for visits to museums—and read every informational plaque—and whose bookshelves were lined with biographies of practically every American historical figure from John Adams to the present. When the NPR station he listened to played anything resembling opera, he’d always switched it off.

  “I’ll put it on my calendar,” I said, but I knew I sounded like a sullen teen.

  “I think you’re going to like her.”

  “Of course I will. She’s forty-five. We were practically in high school at the same time.”

  He laughed. “Bring Eric. Julia got us all third-row-center seats.”

  I heard the joy in his voice and couldn’t bear to tell him that Eric and I were not together anymore.

  The Christmas carols had started at five in the morning. “Christmas Will Break Your Heart.” “Where Are You, Christmas?” “Blue Christmas.” Instead of the usual upbeat jingle bells, chimes, and happy horns, these were the most depressing songs of the holiday, a string of melancholy wails. If it had been December, I might have forgiven the neighbors for these loud laments, but Christmas was months away, and no one should ever play somber songs at those decibels before the sun had risen.

  Nothing had worked. I’d covered my ears with noise-canceling headphones, but even though they muffled the sound, they didn’t mask it entirely. A few nights before, when they’d pl
ayed Mongolian throat singing at high volumes, I’d used a broom to knock on my ceiling, and when that failed to get their attention, I’d actually left the apartment to get away from the din. I’d even read up online about radical solutions—blaring bagpipe music or police sirens in retaliation—but ultimately rejected all of them.

  When Prince’s “Another Lonely Christmas” came on, I’d had enough. Bleary eyed, I threw on some slippers and ran up the stairs. With my heart pounding and my anger at full bore, I mustered up my toughest face and stood at the door, my fist poised to knock.

  But along with the music, I heard something soft and muffled. Crying. Mournful. Grief stricken. I put my hand down. Then headed back down the stairs.

  On my run a little later, I couldn’t stop thinking about whoever lived in that apartment and what they were going through that they were playing sad Christmas songs and crying at five in the morning. But what could I do when I knew nothing about them? The name “Waters” was scrawled on the mailbox slot, but the sticker was so old it was probably the last name of a previous tenant. All I knew from the heavy tread of their footsteps above was that at least two people lived there. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

  I stopped to gaze at a bakery’s gorgeous window display. In the warm yellow light, the shelves in the window were lined with fresh blueberry tarts, chocolate baby Bundt cakes, cream-stuffed cannoli, delicate macarons, and sugar-dusted doughnuts. I always avoided stores like this because the calories per square inch could do serious damage to a reporter’s on-air career, but a cloud of vanilla and nutmeg smells lifted on the air, inviting me to explore inside.

  As I scanned the shelves, my thoughts drifted again to the upstairs neighbors. Wondering. Could I do anything more than feel sorry for them?

  So much of my own life felt beyond my control: My frustrating new boss, my father’s sudden girlfriend, my depressing apartment and irritating neighbors. My breakup with Eric. I wondered if doing something for them—even if it was small—might make me feel like I had the power to affect one thing in my life.

 

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