by John Lutz
By the time she reached the intersection, the light had instructed the waiting throng to walk. She crossed the street at a run, bouncing off a heavyset woman who cursed at her. A female voice said, “Rude bitch!” Somebody laughed. Allie didn’t apologize or break stride, only ran faster.
She’d lost sight of the man, but she held her speed for the next block. Ahead she glimpsed a dark figure swinging around an iron railing and diving down the steps of what appeared to be the entrance to a basement apartment. Like a hunted animal going to ground.
Allie sucked in a harsh, rasping breath that seared her lungs and ran hard for the iron railing. A throbbing ache flared in her right side, threatening to buckle her body and make her slow to a bent-over walk. Keep running! Push!
She swung around the corner rail, as she’d seen her quarry do, cutting her hand on a sharp spur of wrought iron. She lunged down two of the concrete steps and then stopped, gasping for air.
A Hispanic boy about fourteen was standing hunched in the shadowy corner of the entranceway. He had his narrow back to her, but his head was twisted around so he could see her, the glow from the street catching his smooth features. Allie could hear the spattering of his urine on concrete; she breathed in the ammonia stench of it. He continued to gaze insolently over his shoulder, light from above causing the white of one eye to glitter. “What the fuck you want, lady?”
She didn’t answer.
He turned his body toward her and stood with his feet spread wide, zipping up his pants. Grinned.
Allie bolted and ran across the street, then walked back the way she’d come. She looked behind her several times to make sure the boy wasn’t following.
After a few blocks, her breathing evened out and the pain in her side faded away. But her thighs still ached and her knees felt weak. She walked slowly, trying to collect her thoughts.
At least she’d met people who’d seen Hedra pretending to be her. Hedra using her name and clothes and mannerisms. Not the sort of people who’d talk to the police, though, even if they might be believed. Even if the police could locate most of them.
But what did it all actually prove? The police would think it had been Allie herself who’d frequented Wild Red’s, dressed and made up for picking up men, then, in less extreme clothes and makeup tonight, she hadn’t been recognized. Certainly that’s what a prosecutor would maintain in court.
And it sounded plausible, she had to admit. More plausible than her story.
Again, Allie found herself wondering if Hedra really existed.
Chapter 32
THE next morning, in her room at the Willmont, Allie counted her money. She still had enough to meet her needs for a while, but even living as she was, Manhattan proved expensive. It was a city where money talked, growled, and laughed, and would step over you for dead. Even the air was expensive; a doctor would tell you that. Trading the computer for cash had been no problem; deal enough with computers and computer people, and you learn where hard and software might be bought and sold cheap and without questions. But stolen jewelry was another matter. She had no idea where to exchange it for cash.
From the brown envelope she’d stuck behind the bottom dresser drawer, she got out one of Mayfair’s gold chains, a thick, eighteen-inch one lettered 14 KARATE on the clasp. There was also an M engraved there; Allie assumed that was merchandise or manufacturing coding and not Mayfair’s monogram. And even if it was a monogram, so what? Plenty of people whose last names began with M. She hefted the tangled chain in her hand, closing her eyes as if that would heighten her sensitivity. It was surprisingly heavy and should be worth more than the others.
She returned the envelope to its hiding place behind the drawer. Then she slipped into her jacket, dropped the chain in a pocket, and left the hotel. Eyes in the lobby followed her, as if the chain were visible and everyone knew it wasn’t hers. She almost laughed. A murderer worried about being branded a thief.
Selling the gold chain was easier than she’d imagined. She’d walked down Forty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth, the diamond district. Here, during the day, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds in all kinds of settings were displayed like mere baubles.
Halfway down the block, Allie had gone into a small shopping arcade lined with tiny shops, chosen the smallest, and told the man behind the counter she wanted to sell her husband’s gold chain. He was a tiny man with a black beard and had a skullcap perched on the back of his head like a dark bald spot. He studied Allie for a few seconds, then examined the chain briefly with the jeweler’s loop that was dangling from a red string around his neck. He held the chain up to the light, then let it coil gently down into the small metal cradle of a scale.
In a thick Yiddish accent he said, “I can give you five hundred dollars, no more.”
Allie didn’t want to seem eager. “Can’t you make it seven hundred?”
The man shrugged. “So I’ll make it five-fifty. And I mean no more. Really. Final. Finis. Check the price of gold, figure my profit margin, you’ll see that’s more than fair.”
“Cash?”
The man played the chain like liquid through his fingers, thinking about that. Though he was small, he had long, elegant fingers. “Sure, cash,” he said. He handed the chain back to Allie, said, “Wait here,” and disappeared beyond a thick hanging curtain that soaked up light like velvet.
He came back a few minutes later with eleven fifty-dollar bills. No receipt was offered or requested. There was no paperwork. This was a simple transaction between buyer and seller, what had made the world work for centuries.
“If you’re in possession of any other such items, bring them in,” he said, smiling. He’d chosen his words carefully, hadn’t said “If you own” or “If you have.” “If you’re in possession of,” was what he’d told her. As if it didn’t matter whether she was the legal owner. She wondered if anyone in the world was actually honest.
Allie smiled back, nodded, and left the shop.
Sunday morning she heard about a theft in the Willmont; an old man’s cash from his Social Security check had been stolen when he was out of his room. She wondered if she should keep the rest of Mayfair’s jewelry where it was hidden behind the drawer.
She decided the smart thing would be to sell all of it as soon as possible where she’d sold the gold chain, then keep the money with her.
She was there a few minutes after the shop opened Monday morning. The same man, wearing his yarmulke skullcap, was behind the counter, methodically setting out velvet-lined display cases glittering with diamonds.
Allie smiled at him. “Remember me?”
He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes. “Ah, sure, the gold chain. l trust you spent the money well.”
“I did, but I could use more to spend just as well. I brought some other jewelry. Will you look at it? Make an offer?”
“Of course. That’s my business. Just let me finish setting out these displays.”
While Allie waited, he made several more trips to the room behind the curtain and emerged with diamond jewelry on display trays.
He held up a long forefinger, as if to say “One more” and spent several minutes behind the curtain.
Allie thought he might have forgotten her, but finally he emerged with another black velvet case and placed it in the display window. He stepped back and brushed his hands together briskly, as if slapping dust from them after hard physical work. Maybe he’d been doing heavy construction behind the curtain.
“Now,” he said, smiling, “let’s have a look at what you’ve brought me.”
Allie scooped the jewelry from her windbreaker pocket and laid it on the glass-topped counter. All of it. More gold chains, the rings, gold-link bracelet, wrist-watch. All tangled together from being jostled in her pocket as she walked.
“Ah,” the jewelry merchant said. He studied the rings and set them aside, then he sorted through the twists and kinks of the remaining intertwined jewelry. “Interesting. The watch runs?”
&nb
sp; “My husband says it keeps perfect time.”
“Of course. Or you wouldn’t be selling it.” He slowly and carefully lifted and examined each piece, then set it gently in the scale’s basket, made notations on a folded sheet of white paper. The last piece, the gold bracelet, he lifted and then placed back on the counter. He said, “I’m sorry, miss.”
Allie was confused. “Sorry? You don’t want to buy?” Then she saw the man’s sad dark gaze focus over her right shoulder.
“I’m sorry, too,” a deep and gentle voice said.
She whirled and was looking at Sergeant Kennedy. A somber but alert uniformed patrolman stood next to him. Two more blue uniforms were just outside the shop’s door. Two more serious, apprehensive faces, peering in through the glass at her like ritual masks. And they really were part of a ritual—the one that had been in her nightmares since the night Sam was killed.
In a rush she realized it must have been the gold chain with Mayfair’s initial that had raised suspicion and drawn them here, probably photographs of her the police had circulated among shops like this. The police worked in ways that mystified civilians. And now they were actually arresting her, thinking she was Hedra. Or did they think Hedra was Allie? Did it really matter anymore? Hedra, Allie … The two personalities were finally and irrevocably linked. Merged. She was ready to accept that she was the weaker and less fortunate of the two components and would soon fade and no longer matter. Like a Siamese twin doomed from the moment of conception. The way Hedra had planned it.
Allie was under arrest for murder. This was how it felt.
But what was she felling? She couldn’t be sure. Was this actually happening? Was it?
She heard the shrill Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! of a siren in the distance, forging through congested traffic. It sounded like an exhilarated beast closing in for the kill. She was having difficulty breathing. Standing. Her legs began an uncontrollable trembling and she feared she might wet herself.
“Just relax now,” Kennedy told her soothingly, smiling. “I’m going to read you your rights, dear.”
Chapter 33
LAWRENCE gathered up the breakfast dishes while Hedra read the Times. She was absently chewing on a piece of toast with strawberry jam on it, smiling.
So the police had arrested Allie. Charged her with murder. The story was no longer front-page news in the Times, but Hedra had been following the case in the papers and on TV and was waiting and watching for this inevitable development. She was sure the coverage in the Post would be more detailed, and probably on the front page, complete with photographs and a rehash of the murder. After breakfast, she’d go out and buy several papers and learn all she could. She used a forefinger to wipe jam from a corner of her mouth and licked the finger.
There was a clanking roar behind her: Lawrence running the garbage disposal. The roar became a growl and then ceased abruptly.
Lawrence said, “Shit! Fucker’s stopped up again.”
Hedra swiveled in her chair and watched while he probed the disposal with a wood-handled ice pick. Stabbing at whatever was caught there as if he were chipping ice. Something in the disposal smelled like rotten eggs; she wished he’d get the thing unclogged as soon as possible. Phew! It was getting stronger.
Lawrence was a twentyish black man with the face of an aesthete and the body of a twelve-year-old boy. He was wearing only his white Jockey shorts, and he looked ridiculous standing there playing plumber.
He bent to reach beneath the sink, punched the red reset button, and the disposal rattled and roared again. He turned on the tap water to wash the mechanism free and beamed at Hedra as if he’d accomplished something important.
She said, “Well, aren’t you some pumpkin?”
He looked unsure about how to take her remark. Instead of answering, he busied himself again with the breakfast dishes, rinsing and scraping them before propping them in the dishwasher. Now and then the knife he was scraping with screeched against the surface of a plate, like a creature in pain.
After a few minutes he glanced over his shoulder and said, “You sure we got enough stash laid in?”
Focusing her attention again on the paper, Hedra said, “Don’t worry about it.”
“Gotta worry. Stuff’s gettin’ impossible to steal at the hospital. Locks, record sheets, sign in, sign out. You wouldn’t believe the shit they make everybody go through so nobody can walk out with a thing. I mean not even a fuckin’ tongue depressor leaves that place.”
“You don’t need it from there anymore,” Hedra reminded him. “Don’t need a bit of it from there.”
“Good fuckin’ thing,” Lawrence said, clinking knives and forks into the dishwasher’s flatware basket.
She’d lived with Lawrence Leacock in his tiny apartment in the days since Sam’s death, seldom going out. She hadn’t even been inside a church since the incident at St. Ambrose’s. She’d waited until after mass and attended confession, not out of guilt but as a plea for understanding. She should have known better. She could still hear the gasp of the priest on the other side of the confessional screen before she’d fled. She was sure he hadn’t gotten a good look at her. She’d been careful about that, even while entering the confessional, perhaps anticipating his reaction.
Lawrence, a kinky lab technician and coke addict she’d let pick her up in a bar up near Harlem, was only too glad to take care of her. After all, she took care of him, and almost every night. A girl had to do what a girl had to do.
Hedra flicked a glance at Lawrence and then continued to read. The Times speculated that, given the nature of the crime, it was possible Allie might plead insanity. That irritated Hedra. She knew Sam’s killer wasn’t insane. Allie’d had to kill him, as well as that obnoxious snooping playwright. Sometimes Fate took control, grabbed people by the short hairs and dragged them, leaving no real choice of direction or destination.
“You want another cup of coffee, Allison?” Lawrence asked.
Hedra shook her head no, not looking at him. You could take only so much of a kitehead like Lawrence. She continued staring at the paper, now only pretending to read it. Thinking.
No, she wasn’t insane. Not anymore. If she’d ever been. They’d never really made up their minds about her anyway. Their own minds that circled like pale vultures so high above hers, so far above suspicion. One of the white-coated fools had even suggested she might be a multiple personality. As if everyone didn’t have more than one side. Hedra had overheard them talking about her overwhelming and formative need to escape reality, as if that, too, were unique. Tell me about it, she thought. Explain how I’m different from the millions of people who use drugs and alcohol regularly to escape from this shitty world for a while. Explain why I shouldn’t want to forget the past, after what my father did to create that kind of past. Night after night in my bed, putting his hands on me again and again. Dream after dream that was real. “She wants desperately to be someone else,” they’d whispered, trying to keep it a secret, but she’d heard it through the walls. “Poor child never really developed a center,” her mother, poor mother, had said, quoting another white coat. “Doesn’t have a sense of self-worth or identity. Wants to be someone else, anyone but who she is. My fault, my fault. Wants to be someone else.”
Not anymore, Hedra thought, spreading strawberry jam on her third piece of toast.
Now I know who I am.
Lawrence had picked up the long-bladed knife he’d used to slice bacon and was placing it in the dishwasher. Hedra thought about asking him to bring it to her, then she changed her mind. She couldn’t imagine why the thought had occurred to her.
Chapter 34
HEDRA had watched and waited, and when the time was right she met a Haller-Davis rental agent at the Cody Arms, a woman named Myra Klinger who was blocky as a soccer player and wore a pin-striped blue business suit complete with a yellow power tie and cuffed pants. Unexpectedly, Myra had a martyred nun’s face with brown, injured eyes.
As she unlocked the door to ap
artment 3H, she looked oddly at Hedra. Hedra had dyed her hair red and styled it in a graceful backsweep, and with her altered makeup and deliberately added weight she had no fear of being recognized by any of the tenants. And even if she were recognized, it would merely be as someone they’d seen before in the building; they wouldn’t connect her with Allie, whose own presence they’d only vaguely acknowledged. New York anonymity was a curse for some, for others a proper blessing.
Myra said, “Strange, you being named Jones. The woman who lived here last was named Jones.”
Hedra smiled. “Common name. That’s why my parents named me Eilla. Eilla Jones.”
Myra swept open the door and stepped aside so Hedra could enter. It was all one smooth and expectant motion, like someone introducing a celebrity to an audience.
The apartment looked shockingly bare, and the traffic noises from outside seemed louder and more echoing than Hedra remembered. The scatter rugs were of course gone; there wasn’t the slightest clutter in the place, and that changed its character entirely. But it could be furnished almost exactly the way it had been the day Hedra moved in. Standing and staring, Hedra could see it, all the furniture in place, the television playing and a book lying on the sofa, and there was a cup of hot chocolate resting on the fat sofa arm.
Home, she thought. I live here. I’m who I am, so there’s nowhere else I should be, nowhere else I could be.
The air stirred by the opening door had settled back down; the atmosphere in the apartment was hot and close, thick enough for Hedra to feel lying smooth and heavy as the softest velvet on her bare skin.
She knew she was expected to react to the apartment, to say something, so she said, “Spacious, but it could be cozy, too.” She walked down the hall, glanced into the bathroom as if looking at it for the first time. She nodded with approval. Nice touch, that. She peeked into the bedrooms and smiled.
“The place’ll be painted,” Myra assured her.