Glass Houses

by Stella Cameron

  “Deli.”

  She assumed that was supposed to be so self-explanatory that further questions wouldn’t be necessary. People, mostly men, came and went from the deli.

  “Why does Vanni keep on standing there?” she asked. “Isn’t he going to go inside your place?”

  Aiden was wondering the same thing, but he couldn’t make a move until Vanni gave him the nod. “He’s looking around. That’s all.”

  “He’s not looking at anything but the shop window.”

  She was right, but he didn’t want to discuss the point. “Be patient. He’ll signal when he’s ready.”

  Not a dozen feet from Vanni, eating voraciously from deli sacks, two men faced each other. They managed to talk and gesture without pausing between the food they stuffed into their mouths.

  A yellow cab stood at the curb, and the driver had swung the passenger door open. His light was off, and Aiden decided the two guys were his fares.

  So what? Couple of saps just off an all-nighter and in the hungry phase.

  Vanni still wasn’t moving.

  “So you live in that building?” Olivia asked. The waiting frightened her. “Above the jewelers?”

  “Yes. Ryan Hill’s place is on the top floor, but I already told you that.”

  “I like it here,” Olivia said, not entirely truthfully, but it was only nice to compliment someone on the place where they lived.

  “So do I.” Aiden liked it a lot. Here he’d finally found a place where peace was his for the taking—and all the shadows could be shut outside his door. “I hope I get to spend some time here again before too long.”

  “Yes.” Before she had time to heap on more guilt, Olivia studied two men, men with nasty tempers, who were eating and shouting at each other on the pavement. “I say,” she said softly. “Oh, I say. Oh, Aiden. I think I know one of those people.”

  “What people?” He jerked around in his seat. Her face registered shock, and he didn’t like it one bit. “Quickly. What people?”

  “I must be wrong. It’s because I’m tired. I don’t see too well at a distance.”

  Aiden undid his seatbelt, searching in all directions as he did so. “You ought to wear glasses if you can’t see.”

  “I do.” She delved into her huge bag, pulling out small pouches, a change purse, envelopes of documents.

  “Forget it,” Aiden told her when he couldn’t bear the wait any longer. “Tell me what you think you see.”

  “Here they are.” Triumphantly she held a case aloft. She removed dark-framed glasses and put them on. Her eyes were vastly magnified. “Oh, dear, he mustn’t see me.”

  Olivia slipped from the back seat of the car to the floor and crouched there, twisting her head sideways toward Aiden. “What is it?” he said.

  She took off the glasses. “They only work for distance,” she explained. “Do you see a taxi at the curb with its door open?”

  “Yes.”

  “And two men arguing and eating?”

  “Yes.” He must find the patience not to hurry her.

  “The shorter one. Not the plump person in tweeds and suede shoes. The little, thin one. Very straight back. Sandy-colored person. If you saw him really close, he’s got one of those bumpy, purple noses. Probably from some sort of excess.” She didn’t like to give real labels to people, like drunkard. Mummy and Daddy did that. “He’s the one in the streaky-bacon suit— that means the type that has the thin white stripes in the dark fabric. See him?”

  “I certainly do.” He’d have to be blind not to after that description. “You know him?”

  “He’s the one, the one who fed the rats.”

  Rats? Aiden took a second to make any connection at all. When he did, he turned all the way around toward Olivia. “You mean the man you believe intended to push you under a train? The one you gave the wrong negatives to? The one you thought you’d successfully lost in London? Either Fish or Moody of the fat checks you’ve got in your possession?”

  “That’s him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I know it seems fantastic, but I am absolutely certain.”

  “Okay.” One choice he didn’t have was to arrest the guy. At this point he had nothing on him but Olivia’s accusations. “That’s the man who probably tried to kill you. Shi—shoot. Vanni’s listening to ’em. The fact they’re here, outside Ryan’s place—and mine, of course, but it would be Ryan they’re trying to reach—well, that proves there’s a connection between them and my upstairs neighbor.”

  Olivia’s rat-lover fed the residue of his meal to a rangy mutt prowling the spilled contents of garbage cans at the curb and got back into the cab. His fatter friend followed, after throwing his paper sack on the sidewalk.

  “Isn’t that the way it always goes?” Olivia said. “You decide someone is absolutely awful—not a single redeeming quality—but that nasty little man likes animals. He’s always feeding them.”

  Aiden grunted. The cab didn’t move. Vanni waited a respectable time longer and walked slowly back in the direction of the Pontiac. He got in, took the keys from Aiden, and drove off.

  Once he’d put several blocks between Aiden’s home and the car, he said, “Did you see those two guys eating and—”

  “I saw them,” Aiden interrupted. “Olivia knows them.”

  “I don’t know them,” she protested. “The thin one wanted to kill me, and he came to Hampstead to try to get the photos from me. I’ve already explained all that.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Vanni said, sounding disappointed that he’d been scooped. “So you’re the woman they were talking about. They think you’re here in New York looking for Ryan. They know where he lives.”

  “Slow down,” Olivia yelled, and both men lurched around in their seats. “Look back there.” She’d been keeping watch over her shoulder.

  Vanni slowed down. “Geez, don’t do that to me. I’m not doing more than thirty. You just took ten years off my life.”

  “No,” she said, pointing through the back window. “I don’t care how fast you go. It’s Boswell. See him?”

  Vanni speeded up again. “Boss is at Mama’s. You’re seeing things.”

  “No!”

  “No,” Aiden echoed. “Pull over. He’s done it before, remember, gone home looking for me.”

  The car stopped, and Aiden jumped out. Olivia couldn’t take her eyes off the way he walked, then broke into a run. The man and the dog ran toward each other.

  “That’s all we need,” Vanni said. “Now we got to worry about the canine.”

  Olivia wasn’t interested in anything but Aiden.

  Boswell, drawing the eye of every passerby, loped with the kind of long, powerful strides that belied even a twinge of arthritis. He reached Aiden, but instead of leaping at him as Olivia expected, the dog instantly dropped and waited. Aiden stood over him, and Olivia had no doubt he was talking. Even at a distance, Boswell’s ears could be seen perking up and flattening.

  Aiden bent to rub the dog’s head and press their faces together, then set off back toward the car. When they arrived, Aiden opened the door beside Olivia and said, “You might want to ride up front with Vanni.”

  “May I ride with Boswell, instead?” she asked.

  Aiden didn’t answer her, but he let the dog climb in and returned to the front seat himself.

  With a huge sigh, Boswell flopped down and looked puzzled by Olivia’s position on the floor.

  “He’s too old to be running for miles like that,” Aiden said. “All the way from Brooklyn. Crazy old devil.”

  “Loving old devil,” she said. “I interrupted you, Vanni. Those men. What are they doing?”

  “Yeah,” Vanni said. “Okay. Their plan is to hang around Aiden’s building until they see you show up trying to find Ryan, or come out from his building. They seem sure you must already be in New York, but they think you’re lost. Evidently they’ve got some way of knowing Ryan wouldn’t be able to meet you.”

  “How would they kno
w that?” Olivia said.

  Aiden said, “Only one way. They’re in touch with him. But why wouldn’t they think you came looking for him at his place yesterday and gave up when you didn’t find him?”

  Surreptitiously, Vanni pressed a silencing finger into Aiden’s thigh.

  “That’s right,” Olivia said, and she felt better. “They don’t have any idea where I am. They’re just guessing. So I’m all right. Actually I never did have Sam’s—Ryan’s—address. All I knew was that he lived in Hell’s Kitchen.”

  Vanni gave Aiden a pained look.

  Olivia saw that look. “What is it?” She got up from the floor and resumed her seat. “I saw the way you looked at Aiden.” Boswell settled his head on her knee.

  “It’s nothing,” Vanni said. “Where to first, partner? Do we pick up whatever car you’re going to drive, or go to Mama’s for some things for Olivia?”

  “Car. Then Mama’s.” Aiden knew Vanni would soon find a way to tell him something he wasn’t going to like.

  “Stop trying to keep things from me,” Olivia said, her voice rising. “I’m a very calm, sensible person. Ask anyone who knows me. I won’t panic, no matter what you say.”

  “It’s nothing, really—”

  “Yes it is! Now tell me.”

  Aiden looked straight ahead. Vanni was heading for the warehouse Aiden rented for restoring and storing cars.

  “Okay, but don’t flip out on me. They said they’re sure you must be with Aiden by now. You just didn’t get back to his place yet. They’ve had it staked out all night.”

  “Great,” Aiden said. “Just frigging great.”

  Olivia said, “Oh, dear.” She found some comfort in Boswell’s heavy presence.

  “Anyway, Laurel and Hardy think they’ve got everything worked out.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Olivia said. “They remind me of Laurel and Hardy, too.”

  “Yeah,” Aiden said. “The most obvious thing here is that friend Ryan’s got something going on the side with those two goons. Fats—Fats Lemon is Ryan Hill’s partner—he’s in on it. Has to be. So why can’t I get to the chief and make him see what a fool he’s going to look when all of this goes down?”

  “Exactly,” Olivia said.

  “I don’t know what to say anymore.” Vanni kept on driving, but much more slowly. “We could try getting someone to listen, but what if the groundwork is as good as it looks to me?” He brought a fist down on the steering wheel. “I’ll go in and talk to the chief again, I guess.”

  “No,” Olivia said. She wasn’t given to premonitions, but one had just smacked her so hard that she felt disoriented. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you’re not saying, Vanni.”

  “I’m going to do whatever you tell me to do,” Vanni said to Aiden. “You know how much you mean to me, man, and to my family. Those guys back there intend to track you two down. They were talking in what they think is some sort of code, but I didn’t need any road map. There’s a whole, goddamn network involved in this. The money has to be huge. And some of the players are definitely way out of any league we’ve ever played in.

  “Aiden, I don’t think Laurel and Hardy have anything to lose. Or Ryan and Fats. They’ve got to stop you or they’re finished. The one thing they probably haven’t anticipated is that you’ll try to flee across the country. They expect you to go by air—and they sure don’t sound worried about Kennedy or LaGuardia or Newark.”

  “Because they’re all staked out,” Aiden said quietly. “We’re being looked for at every airport for miles around. Every airport with flights to South America or other parts where they probably couldn’t get at us.”

  “Yeah.” Vanni had reached an area of narrow gray streets with windowless buildings lining the pavements. Children tore down the middle of the street, yelling and shoving at each other. “Makes you envy schoolteachers, huh? Hey, good thing nobody knows about your change of plan. Why don’t you wait at the warehouse while I go pick up what you need?”

  Aiden didn’t like the way the future was shaping up. He was still alone at thirty-six because that way he knew exactly who he was responsible for and, at the end of the day, who would have to share his bad times; no one. “I’m thinking we should just leave and pick up anything we need along the way.” It was the “we” that ruffled him.

  “Good call,” Vanni said lightly. “How much cash do you have on you?”

  “Enough to get by for a while.”

  Vanni nodded. “I’ll give you what I’ve got, too. Then I’ll wire more if necessary.”

  “Because we shouldn’t use credit cards, right?” Olivia said in a small, tight voice. “But we could change some of my pounds.”

  Vanni glanced at her in the mirror. “Better not in case someone tries to check you out. We’ll keep in touch. We’ll have to be careful, but it can be done. You’ll have your cell phone, Aiden. Leave it on. I’ll do all the calling. That way we don’t risk tipping our hand if you call at the wrong time.”

  “Would you just be honest with me, please?” Olivia said. “What else is there? What is it you’re not saying because of me?”

  Aiden caught Vanni’s eye and nodded.

  “Okay,” Vanni said, “I could be wrong. But back there it sounded as if there’s been a decision. They want you dead— and Aiden.”

  Twelve

  One of a pair of large, metal double doors swung inward without a sound. Daylight swept over the inside of the warehouse and its contents. From where Olivia viewed the scene, an indoor scrap yard was a perfect description. Cars shrouded by tarpaulins, cars in various stages of repair, pieces of cars, benches loaded with tools, hoists, piles of tires, piles of hubcaps, bins of hardware, swags of unidentifiable objects contained in mesh and festooned from grated catwalks on all sides of the cavernous space.

  Aiden threw a bank of switches, and yards of neon bulbs shot startling white light over the scene. Olivia looked upward, past the catwalks she’d already seen, to the grime-caked windows of cubicles lining an even higher balcony. Heavy ropes and rusted pulleys decorated every overhead space and swags of cobwebs made unlikely garlands.

  “Welcome,” Aiden said. He moved between the clutter like a man who knew every piece of what he surveyed.

  Olivia searched around her before she knew what she was looking for. “Where do you keep your Cadillac?”

  “In a garage near the apartment. My Mustang’s there, too. Will you excuse me while I make a phone call?”

  He was all business. Olivia nodded and said, “Of course.”

  “Close the door.”

  “Certainly.” She wouldn’t have thought rudeness was his style, but perhaps he was preoccupied. Just outside the door, for all the world as if he was trying to make himself invisible, sat Boswell. “You are going to be in trouble,” Olivia whispered. “You were supposed to go with Vanni. How did you get out of the car?”

  Solving that mystery didn’t take a brilliant mind. He’d got out of the car because Vanni had let him out—no doubt because Vanni thought the dog might offer extra protection—but Aiden had said there wouldn’t be room to take him.

  “The door,” Aiden said, louder than Olivia considered necessary.

  “You heard,” she told Boswell. The dog put his long snoot inside, then slithered in and disappeared behind a heap of scrap. Olivia closed the door. Boswell would make her feel better, and he was a lot more even-tempered than his master right now.

  “Bo?” she heard Aiden say. “Aiden. No. I’m in New York. I need a favor.”

  Olivia sat on a car seat artfully placed at an angle with a rusty engine block in front. Pop cans littered the top of the engine. She didn’t have to go anywhere. With Aiden, or alone. She could hide right here in New York and try waiting out all the fuss. As soon as he got off the phone, she’d tell Aiden that was exactly what she intended to do. There had been too much of doing what someone else wanted her to do in her life.

  “I know, I know,” Aiden said, his
voice rising. “Are you on a cordless? Yeah, well, I can’t hear over the racket in that seedy bar of yours. Walk out back. I don’t have time to hang around asking you to repeat yourself.”

  He had the nerve to call someone up asking for a favor, then be nasty and actually tell them he was in a hurry. Boswell slunk from his hiding place and climbed onto the seat with Olivia. He sat upright beside her, gazing into her face.

  “No, it’s not completely finished,” Aiden said into the phone. “Sure it’s taking longer than you expected. You think I don’t know that? I had a little setback with the paint job. Look I could just have taken off in it, and you wouldn’t have been any the wiser, but I’m an honest guy so I’m calling to ask… okay, okay. I’m calling to tell you I’m taking your car across the country because I’ve never been seen in it, or with it. Not a soul is likely to know it’s here. I haven’t had any reason to talk about it. I need anonymous wheels. I’m… Let me finish. I’m going to Chris. If someone does find out I’m in your car and they contact you, you don’t know what they’re talking about. They’ll probably expect me to be on my way to Key West. If they suggest that, you still don’t know what they’re talking about. Got that? They’ll get in touch with Chris for sure, but he’ll back me up. He’ll say he never heard from me. Doesn’t expect to see me. And as far as you’re concerned, the Rover isn’t in the main warehouse, and you don’t know where the other warehouse is.”

  Amazed, Olivia watched Aiden gesture, and pace, and spin absolute fibs, one after another.

  “There isn’t a second warehouse, Bo. That’s just so they stop looking for the car here in New York. I don’t want those jackhammer brains poking around my stuff. They could break something.”

  Olivia eyed the debris surrounding her and wondered how he’d know what was or wasn’t broken.

  “I don’t have time to explain it all now. You and Roy doing okay? Good. I’ll get down there to see you again soon. In the Rover! But I’ll call and tell you more about what’s going on. Huh?” Aiden stopped pacing and grew quite still. “Who made you an authority on covert maneuvers? No it wouldn’t work just as well for me to stay here and hide out. Out of the goodness of my heart, I set myself up. I’m making it easy for a bum cop to cover his tracks. My own people are looking for me. If they keep looking, they’ll find me in this city no matter where I hide. It’s tougher for a cop to hide than a criminal. I’ve got to buy time to figure things out, and that means I need distance from here, Bo. Yeah, thanks, I’m glad to have your approval.”