“Oh, Christ!” Harrigan muttered. A city police car squealed to an angled stop outside the Fifty-eighth Street entrance to the Park Lane. Two uniformed policemen, one a sergeant, rushed inside. “Subtle your friend isn't,” he said to Tanner Burke. “We're going to stroll through this hotel as quickly as we can. Whatever you see in there, if you manage to look resolutely uninvolved, you'll blend in very nicely with the city's population.”
“What if he needs help?”
“He didn't need help with that character in the stairwell. Whatever trouble he might be in, he's probably got the enemy outnumbered. Anyway, what do you feel, lass? Do you feel like he needs help?”
“How would I know?”
“Just tell me what you feel.”
”I feel... I don't think he's there anymore.”
“Let's go and see, girl.”
She more than thought. She knew. She could not fully trust it yet, but she knew. In the same way she'd sometimes known when a phone would ring. Or what certain people were feeling and doing. But never like this. Back in the stairway where they found the handcuffed man, she felt Jared in parts of what they saw there but not in other parts. Harrigan seemed to feel that too. He'd begun looking around them, almost sniffing the air, before he took her arm and led her through a dark hallway to the Plaza's service entrance. Again on the sidewalk, he seemed to feel that something was not as it should be. But now, entering the lobby of the Park Lane, she knew they were safe. Tanner could almost hear Jared Baker saying so.
They saw the police at the far end of the lobby, a cluster of employees and onlookers gathered around them. A man, much smaller than the two policemen, was being questioned. He gestured crazily as two other men in hotel blazers pulled pieces of shiny brown tape from his bellman's uniform. Harrigan pretended a passing interest as Tanner, affecting an air of offended civility, guided him toward the exit with a dowager waggle of her fingers. Good girl, he thought.
“That man's saying he was tied up with tape,” she whispered as they reached the outer lobby.
“By the devil himself, I heard. The cops are trying to decide whether he's been on a toot.”
“You think Jared did that?’
“Unless you're betting the devil. Let's keep moving. Baker said he'd clear the street, but keep your eyes open.”
Harrigan stepped partway though the doors and held one open while he scanned the sidewalk in both directions. There was no sign of danger. He saw his car, both wipers tilted forward as if the windshield had been cleaned. Again he took Tanner's arm, fishing for his keys as they walked. Shielding her with his body, he opened the door on the sidewalk side, admitting her. She saw him hesitate, again seeming to sniff the air, before he snapped the wipers back in place and crossed to the driver's side. The engine started at once. Harrigan pulled partway from the curb and, satisfied that no other policemen were in sight, swung the wheel hard in an illegal U-turn. Seconds later, they had entered the park through the Sixth Avenue roadway.
“That was too easy.” Tanner let out a breath. “How come no one was watching this car?”
“Someone was. Baker took care of him.”
“How do you know that?” The Oldsmobile paused at a red light, allowing two young girls on horseback to cross the road.
“Baker left a signal. The windshield wipers. There's also a stiff on the floor behind you.”
Tanner snapped upright and spun in her seat. “Oh God.” She groaned. Beyond the shock, an expression close to disappointment crossed her face. Harrigan saw it.
“Baker didn't kill him,” he said. “Hang on for just another minute.” Harrigan was not at all sure of the truth of what he had said. It was a feeling. And another smell that shouldn't have been there.
A half-mile farther, at the edge of the Sheep Meadow, Harrigan slowed and found a cut in the curb leading to a maintenance shed. There, with only some distant dog walkers in view, he stopped the car and dragged the dead man from the back seat to a clump of evergreens. He was armed, like Hackett, with a dart gun. A government-issue revolver was slung under one arm. Harrigan took both in one hand as he examined the small-caliber entry wound at the man's temple. He was back at the wheel in less than a minute.
“Baker didn't do it,” he repeated, this time believing it. “The guy's been shot. I thought I smelled the cordite when I opened the door and then I saw him back there. It didn't seem like the time to mention it. Anyway, he's been bleeding maybe twenty minutes, and Baker couldn't have been five minutes ahead of us, especially if he took time to wrap up the little guy at the Park Lane.”
“Who could have done it then? Maybe one of your people.”
Harrigan made a face. “I'm fresh out of people, as far as I know. Peck knows who I might call for help as well as I do, and he figures to have intercepts in place. For the time being, my people is just you, me, and Baker. Peck's been thinned out a little, but he still has a small army. There's also Tortora's crowd. According to old Charley, Tortora turns out to be in tight with Sonnenberg, but he doesn't figure to be helping you or me. Anyway, Tortora's people make smaller holes. So there has to be someone else. Jesus! They have more teams fielded in this thing than in the fucking Olympics. Excuse me.”
Harrigan made a sharp right turn onto the Eighty-sixth Street crossway. The dead man's weapons, which he'd left on the floormat, slid toward his heels. He picked them up. “The stiff had another dart gun. Peck wants Baker alive all right. He'll take Baker apart inch by inch until he finds out how he was made.” Harrigan slid the dart gun under his seat and held the revolver out to Tanner. “You want this, by the way?”
Tanner drew back and shook her head.
“You don't know from guns?”
”I don't like them,” she answered. “Not handguns.”
He reached to her lap and unclasped the suede purse she held there, dropping the .38 inside. “Think of it as a sledgehammer that makes noise. Keep it. You never know.” Tanner snapped the purse shut, if only to get the weapon out of her sight.
A sign near Fifth Avenue pointed to the FDR Drive. It was almost lost in the sun's glare off the American Wing of the Metropolitan.
“Sonnenberg,” he said. Harrigan bounced a fist off the steering wheel. “It had to be some of Sonnenberg's spooks back there. But this Tortora connection. I can't get it out of my mind. Back in that room with Charley I even started to get the feeling that Tortora....”
“That Tortora what?”
“Never mind. It's too dumb. It's just that I keep getting these feelings.”
“Like back when you found that man handcuffed at the stairs? You knew he hadn't done all that. You feel things. Like Jared and sometimes me. You were doing it again when we reached the sidewalk.” Tanner said this wanting to hear that perhaps Jared's talent, to say nothing of what she was discovering in herself, was not so weird after all. But Harrigan shook his head.
“That was pure cop,” he answered. “At the stairs it was too neat. I've seen Baker work. He leaves things where they fall. Someone cleaned up for him there. A woman, maybe. I thought I smelled skin lotion. Then out on the sidewalk it was just that the back door should have been covered and it wasn't. Someone cleared it. Someone's covering Baker's back.”
“And his front.”
“You got it. The clock says the shooter had to be someone else. So Baker has at least two friends we don't know about. But don't let it go to your head. If they do turn out to be Sonnenberg's spooks, they're no friends of yours and mine no matter what they do for Baker.”
Tanner leaned back in her seat and fell silent. They were on the drive now, the East River off to the right. Signs pointed to the Triborough Bridge and Connecticut beyond it. Connecticut. What a peaceful-sounding name after all this talk about killers and guns. Tina. Christina. Skiing and sailing. Clean things. That's where Jared belonged. He didn't belong with these people. Not even with Mr. Harrigan. Why couldn't they have just left him alone?
Then where would I be? she wondered. More of the same? On t
he waiting list to be one of Charlie's Angels? Or the latest female sickie on Dallas? I wonder if Jared watches those programs. I'd be on and he'd be watching and I'd never even know it. I'd get another fan letter from Christina and I'd answer it, never having a clue why her letters were so special to me. Oh wow, there's something you'll never hear me saying out loud. That a piece of me and a piece of Jared had known each other right along. Through Tina. That the feeling of something being missing was him.
That's not so crazy. They say that people who love each other feel as though they've always loved each other. They say long-lost twins feel that way too. Incomplete. Until they learn they were part of a set and then they understand why they felt that way. Jared? I think I just said that I love you and what are you going to say to that? Something sensible, right?
Like . . . Tanner, we hardly know one another.
Call me Liz.
Liz, it just wouldn't work.
It's already working.
Liz, we haven't even known each other twenty-four hours.
Bull!
Liz, I'm a hunted man.
They'll never find us.
Liz, there's something terrible about me.
No, there isn't, Jared. I started to think so, but I know better now. There are parts of you like parts of me that aren't always so terrific. But your unterrific parts come in a whole lot handier than most people's. And the part that's mostly there is very tender and loving. Anyway, the worst of you is a lot less terrible than men like this Duncan Peck, who kills to get something he wants, or Mr. Harrigan here, who can kill, I don't care why, without feeling sick about it, or like Sonnenberg, who thinks people's lives are his toys. You know what I think, Dr. Sonnenberg? Want to hear a wild guess? I think you play with other people's lives because there isn't any you. I think if someone peeled off your skin there wouldn't be a thing underneath. But Jared's real. And Tina's real. And I'm getting realer all the time. And we're getting the hell away from you, Dr. Sonnenberg.
The last part was almost out loud. Harrigan thought he heard Sonnenberg's name.
“What about Sonnenberg?”
“Just a feeling about him.”
“What feeling?”
“Never mind. It's too dumb.”
14
Under the striped awning that covered the patio of Jane Carey's Spruce Street house in Greenwich, Tina Baker slipped off the earphones of a Sony Walkman and let them fall across her shoulders. Just ten minutes, she thought.
Just a ten-minute break until the throbbing stops and she'd do one more repetition of her exercises. She had to keep pushing. No matter how much it hurt, she had to keep telling herself that the pain was only the stretching of unused muscles and of nerve endings growing slowly together in her leg. It was progress. Every day was progress as long as she worked at it. The color had long since returned to her foot and ankle, and the numbness of her toes had changed to a tingling that made a spark now and then like an electric shock. But even that was fading. And the scars weren't so ugly anymore, especially if she kept them tanned. It hardly even hurt as long as she didn't do too much. But she had to push. Soon, maybe even today, her father would be coming. And when he did, she was going to walk good.
Tina had told Mrs. Carey that. That he was coming. She told her the day before yesterday and again this morning. Mrs. Carey was nice and said she hoped so, but she really didn't believe it. Tina even told her this morning about the dreams she'd had. First, her father was telling her to look for a friend of hers who was on television. She was too late. At least she wasn't sure she saw the friend her father meant. Then later, when the sky was almost light, there was another dream, of her father standing in a glass box way up in the sky, looking down at her from far away. The same friend was in that dream too, even if Tina couldn't see her. The friend was sleeping in another part of the box. Back away from the window part. Tina still wasn't sure who the friend was. One name crossed her mind, but that name was a little bit much to believe. Anyway, the person she thought it might be wasn't even a friend. Not like a school friend. Just someone she thought about a lot and liked. But Tina did know for sure that the friend had something to do with her dad and with skiing. And that the friend wanted to ski with her. Skiing is probably why that other name popped into her mind. But she wasn't going to ski with anybody unless she got off her duff and got herself back into shape.
With that thought setting the pace of her day, Tina had pushed herself out of bed even earlier than usual. She chose a Stratton Mountain T-shirt from her drawer, put on some sneakers and a pair of cut-offs, went out to the patio, and began doing the aerobics she'd taped from a morning television program. They were better and lots more fun than Dr. Bruggerman's therapy program, but she did it too. She'd do a second set of his resistance exercises after breakfast, which, come to think about it, should have been ready by now. It must be twenty minutes since she'd smelled the bacon frying. Someone probably called. Her dad? No. She always knew when he did.
Well, one more set, Tina decided Then she'd finish up breakfast herself and start on a list of chores she'd made up. Mrs. Carey would argue as usual, but Mrs. Carey had done everything for her long enough. Including driving her to school and back every day for a full year. Besides, housework was good for you. A good workout if you put a stretch in everything you did. Tina put her earphones back in place and switched on the Walkman. Arms up, kick, stretch, feet together, shimmy down, shimmy up, spin, kick. The last kick almost reached the face of the funny little man who was watching her and smiling warmly, his lips moving, though she couldn't hear him.
“Good morning,” she said breathlessly, once more slipping off her headset. Tina assumed vaguely that this was why breakfast was late.
”A very lovely morning.” The man nodded. “It's very graceful the way you do that. What do you call that kind of dancin' ?” He stood in the awning's shadow at the opening of the low brick wall that surrounded most of the patio. He had one of those funny New York accents that she'd only heard on television.
“It... They call it aerobic dancing. It's basically disco,” she answered. Tina added an uncertain “Hi!”
The man frowned. “Disco,” he repeated. “It don't look like disco. Disco is how nice girls get into trouble. They go places where they dance with fags and weirdos, and sooner or later some bum gets them to try white powder, and after that it's better that their mothers never gave them life. What you did doesn't look like that. Maybe it's the grass and the flowers and the vegetables out here that makes it look clean. Your geraniums should be repotted, by the way.”
Uh-oh, Tina thought. She glanced toward the patio door, hoping to see Mrs. Carey smiling and saying that this was only some old friend and that he wasn't as strange as he sounded. Jane Carey did not appear. Tina took a half-step backward.
“Urn, I'm Christina Baker.” She almost held out her hand but thought better of it.
The man smiled again. “I'm Stanley.” He announced his name as if she was supposed to recognize it. Tina shook her head uncomprehendingly.
“Stanley,” he repeated with more emphasis. “Stanley Levy. Your father's friend. It was me that helped out when that judge was being such a jerk about his kid what ran over your foot. But that's in the past. It's all in the past. Now I'm fixing it so you can go to your father.”
Tina brightened for the briefest moment, but she knew this was wrong. Her father would never have sent someone she didn't know to get her. Tina took another step backward,“You don't know my father,” she said quietly. “Anyway, you're not his friend.” However she knew that, Tina knew it. She backed closer to the patio door.
“Untrue,” Stanley said, a small hurt look crossing his face. ”I been his friend a lot of the time. I been yours too. My mother will tell you the same thing when you meet her.”
“Your mother?” Tina asked doubtfully.
“Her place is where we're gonna wait until your father comes to this other place, and then we'll meet him there.”
”I
better talk to Mrs. Carey.”
“No time.” Stanley shook his head. “I've already been waiting around here since just after it got light to make sure there weren't no cops or bad people who would try to stop you or follow us and catch your father. Also, I already thanked the lady for taking care of you, but she don't need to do that no more.”
Tina was becoming frightened. She was getting a terrible feeling. “Mrs. Carey,” she called, stepping to the patio door and reaching for the latch. Tina felt the man moving toward her. “Mrs. Carey!” She shouted this time, lunging out of his reach. Her foot protested the sudden movement with a stab of pain so sharp she barely felt the other, smaller pain in the back of her neck. An arm wrapped around her chest and she kicked backward, twisting. Now the pain in her neck was huge, like a hornet bite. She groped at its source with her fingertips, but the man seized her wrist.
“Wait!” Stanley's voice was concerned. “You busted off a needle. Stay quiet a second and I'll pull it out.”
In the time it took him to say those words, Tina could feel her body melting. “Daddy?” She called his name but couldn't hear the sound it made. Her knees, one at a time, shivered and went soft. Now, floating in front of her, she could see the syringe in the man's free hand. The other was around her waist. He was holding her awkwardly, trying to support her weight with one arm while the other looked for a place to put the broken instrument. He almost dropped her as his hand shifted to avoid accidentally touching her breasts. “Daddy?” she slurred, angrily this time. “Help me, someone.” These words made no sound except a groan. The man was lifting her, holding her, easing her down to the ground. Funny, he seemed so far away. She knew she was touching him, but he didn't seem that close. She could even feel her own hand sliding up his chest and finding the stubble of whiskers at the underside of his chin. But it was as if the hand did not belong to her. Too far away. She couldn't fight him anymore. Too tired. Too far away. But there was another hand. Not hers either. Helping her. Helping her fight him. The hand held the earphones from her Walkman and it was wrapping the wire over his head and under the whiskers that she'd felt and pulling it tight. She didn't have to fight. Someone else was fighting. Someone else was making him stop. She didn't even feel mad at him anymore. Just tired. So tired.
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