by Susan Israel
“While you’re at it, don’t rule out that anyone who’s gone near me has been a target,” I say. “That makes Morgan a target too. And you.” So be careful.
“I haven’t had any success getting through to Morgan. One way or the other, he isn’t getting the message. As for me, it’s nothing I’m not used to. People are always gunning for cops.” He unzips his jacket to remind me that he’s armed and wearing body armor.
“What’s going on with that decoy you’ve got staying in my place?” Aside from the fact she’s wearing my clothes, using my moisturizer, sleeping in my bed, intercepting my mail.
“Nothing I can tell you yet. The minute Curtis shows up on her doorstep—and he will—we nail him.” Oh, and so it’s her doorstep now too. “Meanwhile, both of you get police protection until this thing blows. She’s part of the Task Force we’ve set up and the Eight-Four is watching this place and you until you cross over into Manhattan tomorrow, then we take over. I’ll get you over there myself if I can. I’ve got to get back to the First now,” he says. “Lock up after me.” He hovers by the door, so close that I can tell by his breath that he’s been chewing gum again. My mouth waters. “If you need anything,” he gestures toward my cell phone, “call.”
Anything? I impulsively reach for his hand and give it a light squeeze. He surprises me by returning the squeeze, not pulling away. “I will,” I promise, “if I need anything. I’ll call.”
There’s need in his eyes too all right, but duty comes first.
The first thing I do when he leaves is call Morgan. I have to give the phone a trial run. Gary cuts me short. “He’s not here.”
“Is he still in his studio?”
“Don’t know.”
“Or with somebody. Gareeee…”
“You still with the cop, Delilah?”
“Morgan’s off the hook as far as the cops are concerned. They don’t want to talk to him, Gary, I do.”
“Why are they still calling here then? You think maybe one of them wants a date?”
“They’re calling because he might be in danger. Gary, just tell me where he is. He’s got to be warned.”
“I still don’t know where he is, Delilah. Maybe your friend can investigate the matter more fully.”
“My friend has enough to investigate. Somebody who thinks he can’t have me any other way is killing everyone who comes near me, may be trying to kill me too… ”
“It must be hell to be straight and beautiful. Glad I’m neither. Glad I don’t know anyone else who is.Ciao, bella.”
My fingers tremble with rage as I punch in the number of the reception desk at West Eighth Street. It’s Gary who’s blowing me off, not Morgan, I remind myself. Unless I hear differently from him. “Who d’you want to talk to?” the night desk guard asks. I don’t recognize who it is by his voice. I don’t want to ask for Morgan by name. I’ll see him tomorrow, anyway, in the drawing studio while I’m posing. I’ll talk to him then. If he’s there.
I imagine Lady Detective, whoever that person is who’s raiding my refrigerator, reading my piled-up back issues of Vogue and Time Out New York, would alert the task force if Curtis left any notes for me, that they’d work on it on the other side of the river and leave me out of it unless they had no choice but to warn me of impending danger. And I must be safe because my cell phone isn’t ringing. I don’twant to be in the know right now. I want to feel I can trust Quick and the force to take the matter to task. I want a good night’s sleep.I might need it.
33
“I’m sorry, but Detective Quick’s not here right now. He’s out in the field.” The receptionist at the First Precinct sounds very much like the one at the Sixth, same monotone, same New Yawk accent so thick you could spread it on a bagel and choke on it. “Is this something someone else can help you with?” Same lines even.
I haven’t got time to wait for her to put someone else on the line. One thing I forgot to ask Quick for last night was his sister’s alarm clock and a map, and now I have less than an hour to get to West Eighth Street in time to pose for that drawing class. Lucky for me I didn’t sleep all that great anyway. I kept waking up and thinking of Ivan, picturing Ivan missing a few fingers, fingers that once penetrated me, grabbed me, left bruises on me, shuddering because he’s dead and because I don’t feel bad, even though it’s because of me that he’s dead. He could just as easily have killed me one day if I’d stayed with him.
I can’t stay in the apartment another minute or I’m going to be late for this class. I stash my cell phone in my nylon pocketbook and lock the door behind me. The hallway still smells of cabbage. When I get to the front door, I don’t see any blue-and-whites around and I remember Quick’s admonition to me: Keep calling every step of the way. I need protection. I need directions. I fish the phone out of my bag and punch in the abbreviated code connecting me to the local precinct. Great thing about this phone, I can make tracks while I’m using it, save time. “I’m at the intersection of Henry and Clark Street,” I report. “Henry and Pineapple. Henry and Orange…
“Whoa, I can’t keep up with you, where you going?”
“West Eighth Street. Which subway do I…”
“You just passed a subway stop at Clark Street. You want to go where?”
“West Eighth Street. I think I’m supposed to have a police escort. I haven’t seen anyone…”
“Go to the High Street station. Got that? You want the High Street station, near Cadman Plaza. Keep walking the direction you’re going, go right.”
I expect to see a blue-and-white when I get there, but I don’t. They must be in an unmarked car. I look over my shoulder before descending the stairs to the platforms below, wrestle my MetroCard out of my change purse. I miss my fanny pack. Why’d I have to wear a damn dress.
“Service on the A and C mumble mumble between mumble mumble Street and Lefferts Boulevard mumble mumble mumble smoky conditions,” a raspy voice squawks over the loudspeaker. “Damn trains ain’t runnin’,” a homeless man leaning against the pay phone swears. He looks like he could be anywhere from thirty-five to seventy years old, could have been waiting here to take the train for half a lifetime. “Ain’t seen no trains for two hours now.” His voice suddenly blares into song, makes me jump. “You can’t take the A Train. You can’t take the A Train,” he wails off-key. I leap out of the way as he staggers up and down the platform, picking up speed, waving his arms up and down like he’s desperately trying to take off through the tunnel on his own steam. “You CAN’T take the A Train,” he screeches in my ear.
I don’t even want to take the A Train any more. I turn around and go back through the exit and up the stairs, looking over my shoulder for the promised police protection. I don’t see anything that even remotely resembles an unmarked car. I’m getting to be an expert at detecting those; I’ve been in enough of them in the last week. I whip out the phone again, call the Eight-Four again. The same voice answers. I hang up on him. I call back the First, hope Quick is back by now. This time a male voice answers, but it’s not his. “Royko.”
I remember him, the toe-tapper who waited for Quick outside of Morgan’s loft a couple of days ago and the way he looked at those paintings of me. I have the sudden urge to cross my arms over my chest. “Quick’s not here,” he grumbles. I don’t identify myself. I reach in my bag and fish out the other numbers Quick gave me, his cell number, his home number. I take a deep breath and call the home number. Give your location. “I’ve left the High Street subway station,” I report after a long beeeep. “The train isn’t running, so I’m going to have to walk across the bridge, I guess, and then take a train from City Hall up to Astor Place. I don’t know if anyone’s watching me. I haven’t seen anyone.” I look from left to right at the line-up of cars parked around me as I walk by; there’s nobody in them. “Are you watching me?”
Is Curtis watching me?
No, I remind myself, he’s watching someone who he thinks is me. Maybe he’s been caught already, handcuffed, put in t
he back of a radio car. Maybe that’s where Quick is now, making imprints of Curtis’ inky fingers. As I start up the walkway spanning the Brooklyn Bridge, I check my voice mail messages. Maybe someone will actually tell me, “you can go home again.”
I look behind me. The Brooklyn landscape shrinks in contrast to the gilded Manhattan skyline framed by myriad cables. Blip-blip-blip. A guy in flashy red shorts and Rollerblades to match whizzes by to my left and turns back to give me a preemptory smile. I wonder if he’s an undercover cop assigned to watch me. How better to not be obvious than to appear too obvious. My cell phone rings before I have a chance to speculate where he’d keep his gun.
“Surprise, Delilah. Did you think I’d forgotten you? No chance of that. That slut that’s parading around your apartment half-naked pretending to be you isn’t even a close second. I’ve seen you go all the way, remember. I see you now.” Curtis pauses. “Isn’t that blue jean dress you’re wearing a little too short, Delilah? You can see up it from the back, you know. It doesn’t cover much. Not that you ever cared about covering anything anyway. You’re a piece of meat that people just drool over. Like prime rib.” I look over my shoulder frantically. No uniforms of any kind around, not even bogus uniforms. “You can’t see me. Don’t strain your neck. You’ve got to pose soon, don’t you? After which you’ll be posing strictly for me. My art exhibit is ready. I sent you an invitation. I’m looking forward to showing it to you,” his voice becomes a menacing whisper, “real soon.”
Traffic whizzes below to the left and right of me and I look up at the gray arch over my head and behind me. I start to call 911. The phone slips out of my sweaty hands and crashes face down onto the bike lane of the wooden walkway. A black ten-speed sideswipes it. I run after it. “Watch it!” another biker yells out. I jump out of his way. Before I can retrieve my phone, it skittles under the metal barrier rimming the walkway and crashes to the roadway below.
The Manhattan skyline looms closer through the web of cables, but so far I don’t see a sign of any of the police protection I’ve been promised. I do see a yellow call box ahead and I run over to it. It surprises me that it’s not look-at-me red. What doesn’t surprise me is that it’s out of order when I need it the most. Where is Curtis watching me from? Is he behind me? I keep walking, looking over my shoulder at shadows, dreading the appearance of a very big one, and a squeal bursts out of me as I feel the impact of a head-on collision. Whoever it is is big, very big. I freeze. I can’t even spin around to confront my attacker face to face. I’m too paralyzed by panic to make a sound, to get past that first squeal of surprise and have it escalate to a bona fide scream.
“You mind? I’m trying to take a picture here,” my would-be perp intones in a high-pitched nasal female voice. I spin around. She’s easily as big as Curtis and giving me a look that could kill, waving a disposable camera in my face. “You could watch where you’re going, you know. You just made my arms move and this was the last shot on the roll.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hal, never mind, you can relax now, the film’s all used up, she made my arms move,” she shouts at the scowling man standing at the base of the gray stone arch, waiting for her to click the shutter. His expression doesn’t change, but his eyes tell me he’s relieved that I’ve inadvertently released him from the torture of holding the pose. I could tell him a lot about torture, but I haven’t the time. I keep walking by them and pick up my pace. Cars zip along the FDR Drive. The green exit sign to my right points to Park Row. I start to run, not entirely sure whether I’m running away from danger or right smack into it. I’m almost there. I turn around one last time. Fingers suddenly grab my forearm, propel me forward. A scream catches in my throat. “No!” is all I can sputter. When I dare to look, a gold shield is thrust practically up to my nose and Rubenstein is holding it, looking more dour than I’ve ever seen him. I know all too well his acerbic expression has nothing to do with yogurt or anything else he’s eaten. “It’s okay, Miss Price,” he grumbles, “we’re the good guys.”
I look around and don’t see anyone else I recognize. “Where’s Quick?”
“He’s been tied up all morning. Some kind of unexpected personal business, but he’s back now. He radioed me to meet you here, take you where you’re going.” He jerks his head in the direction of the dark blue junker blocking the exit ramp. “I’m afraid I got some bad news,” he says as I get in the car. He waves off a driver giving him the finger. “The operation over on Waverly was completely blown; our boy knows she isn’t you.”
“Duh!” I mumble as he struts around to the driver’s side.
“So it looks like we’re going to get him while he’s in the process of thinking he’s going to get at you. Did you see him while you were crossing the bridge?”
“He saw me. He said…”
“Annie told us what he said. We got people in cars all around here.”
“I didn’t see anyone.”
Rubenstein jerks the car into reverse. “We got West Eighth blocked in. We know who we want, shouldn’t be hard now.” Shouldn’t be, but what happens to me if it is? “Bastard’s killed five that we know of now. Time to shut that motherfucker down.” He glances in my direction. “Sorry.”
I’m not. I start to count off all the dead bodies that have been accounted for on the fingers of my left hand like I’m playing this little piggy went to market. Majesty Moore, Vittorio, Ivan. I squeeze them together. “Five? How’d you come up with five?”
He’s not about to tell me. “I’m going to drop you a couple of blocks from West Eighth. We got cars in place all over the place and someone’s going to tail you. When he moves, we move.” Rubenstein’s moving at top speed now, along the FDR, almost bypassing the Houston Street exit. The sound of screeching brakes as he cuts lanes makes me gnash my teeth. “Meanwhile, you just go about your business, do just like you always do. We got you covered.”
Rubenstein, true to his word, drops me off on University Place across from the park. “Walk straight up and to the left on Eighth, keep going till you get there,” he instructs me. I wonder how much manpower is backing him up and how much it’s going to cost the city of New York to carry out the whole operation. Better that than to wonder where Curtis is. A guy in flashy red shorts and Rollerblades to match whizzes by to my right and I do a double-take as I recognize him from our earlier encounter on the Brooklyn Bridge. Maybe he is an undercover cop assigned to watch me. Maybe that cabby parked by the curb isn’t a cabby after all. Maybe the guy at the pay phone on the corner of Fifth Avenue is giving my position to someone on a cell phone half a block away. I start to relax as I turn into the familiar doorway framed by rococo stone columns.
Louise is nowhere to be seen. In her place is a guard in uniform. All I see is the uniform at first, and I feel a sudden wave of nausea grip me before I’ve had the chance to take a good look and realize that this guard doesn’t look anything like Curtis; he’s about fifty pounds lighter than Curtis. Probably a uniform posing as a different kind of uniform. I clutch my hand over my stomach and take deep breaths. “I’m late for an art class,” I explain as I head past him, so he’ll know who I am as if he doesn’t already. I glimpse Louise in the vestibule to my left making fresh coffee as I start for the stairs. She scowls and dumps the filtered grounds in the trash. I hurry up the stairs and into the second-floor drawing studio. “Well, look who’s finally here,” Morgan announces, “everybody’s favorite target of obsession.” I stop dead in my tracks, but not because of Morgan’s greeting. Standing there among the crowd of disgruntled artists impatiently honing their #4 charcoal pencils is Quick, a huge Morilla newsprint pad propped up on an easel in front of him. He greets me with a perfunctory nod.
Rubenstein definitely wasn’t kidding when he said we got you covered. Except that I’m going to be uncovered. Literally.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper at him. He holds a pencil aloft. The hand grip of his semi-automatic protrudes from under his windbreaker. “Aren’t ther
e any female cops who could be doing this?” I hiss under my breath as I start to unbutton my dress.
“None who can draw.” He seems genuinely surprised that I would object to him being here while I’m working. If it were a crime in a strip club he was investigating, no one would question his presence there. Bare flesh is bare flesh, right?
I gape in his direction, my mouth forming a perfect O as in oh, shit!
“That going to be your pose, Delilah?” one of the artists asks me.
This all reminds me of days, before all this began, when I was nude and feeling very naked standing before an uptown studio class, because people who had no business being there criss-crossed in and out with their tool kits, copping a peek at me until the security guard on duty shooed them out. Who was the security guard on duty uptown anyway? This is worse, of course, a lot worse, punishment from the gods for having fantasized about Quick that way in the first place. Except in my fantasies he was the one getting undressed and I was helping him. There’s nothing remotely egalitarian about this set-up and it sucks. I can’t even object. He’s not some electrician making like he’s checking for faulty wiring. He’s here to protect me. Either he stays or Curtis gets me.
My dress flutters to the floor.
I feel self-conscious about feeling self-conscious. It’s not supposed to be this way. Most artists see their models’ body parts as geometric shapes, measured for proportion from eraser tip to pencil point of their charcoal pencils—at least they’re supposed to, at least I do. I’m there to be drawn or painted or sculpted, not judged. While I’m modeling, I feel like I’m closed off from my audience by that fourth wall of theater lore.
But not today. I feel like Quick is looking me over through a huge picture window. He’s going through all the motions like everyone else in the room, squinting, sketching, erasing, and I have to give him credit for that. What’s more, he seems not at all self-conscious about me stealing looks at him. It seems to goad him into making heavier pencil strokes. My skin prickles at the soft swoosh sound of charcoal making contact with paper. Each geometric circle of breast, triangle of pubic area tingles as he captures it. I have no need for a space heater today. Fifteen minutes into the pose, I feel like I’ve spent an hour in a sauna. Twenty-five minutes and I’m in Dante’s Inferno. At the half-hour, a cell phone rings. Quick drops his pencil and whips out his Droid and walks into the hall. When he returns, he says, “Remember what I said about your phone.”