The Woman Who Knew Too Much

by Thomas Gifford

  Chapter Twelve

  PETER GRECO STOPPED AT the Jefferson Market and went home with one of the big glossy blue shopping bags full of milk, grapefruit, broccoli, anchovies, tuna, shelled walnuts, parmesan cheese, chopped garlic in oil, red pepper flakes, hamburger, corn flakes, and orange juice. He was thinking about Celia Blandings, wondering if she’d bought his explanation of events. He’d made it up on the spur of the moment, and as he’d listened to himself it sounded fairly plausible, almost ingenious. It seemed to take her off guard. At least she hadn’t burst a blood vessel arguing.

  He stood in the kitchen unpacking groceries, putting away what he wasn’t going to use for dinner. He had his preparations down to a system. He filled a large pot with water and put it on to boil. He took a saucepan, ran an inch of water into the bottom of it, then put it on to boil. He cut the tops from the broccoli with a handy knife he’d gotten in France years ago and put them in the folding steamer. When the water in the saucepan was boiling, he placed the steamer in it. He took the enameled red colander from the cupboard and put it in the sink, got a small flat saucepan down and put it over a very low flame. He poured some olive oil, extra virgin, into the pan and forked some garlic bits into it. He sprinkled it lavishly with red pepper and a bit of oregano. Carefully he peeled back the top of the tin of rolled anchovies and capers and dumped them with their oil into the olive oil mixture. He opened the can of solid light tuna and broke it into chunks on a plate. He opened the packet of walnuts and the fresh parmesan. The water was boiling, so he slid half a pound of #10 spaghetti into the bubbles and steam. He pulled the cork from a half bottle of Chianti, sniffed it, poured some into a mug because he couldn’t see any glasses, and took a sip.

  He waited for the spaghetti to cook and kept sipping at the wine and wondering about Mrs. Bassinetti. He wondered if she really was having an affair with Cunningham, who looked like a pleasant enough guy but not quite in her weight class when it came to the sexual championships. Still, you never knew about things like that. He had a difficult time seeing Charlie as a killer, while Mrs. Bassinetti looked as if she were cut out for the job. So who the hell was Z?

  He drained the spaghetti in the colander, shook it over the sink, dropped it back into the empty pot. He poured the olive oil mixture over it, tossed it with two forks, then ground black Tellicherry pepper over it. Then he put the steamed, brilliantly green broccoli in, the tuna, and sprinkled walnuts over it all. He tossed it thoroughly again, doused it liberally with parmesan, left it in the pot, and began eating. He took another satisfying drink of wine, turned on the kitchen’s small black-and-white television, and listened while Dan Rather told him what horrors President Reagan had in store for the lame, the halt, the blind, and the elderly, without regard to race or religion. They were all equal-opportunity sufferers, as far as the administration was concerned.

  He ate his way through the suffering farmers, the suffering parents of kids who could no longer get college loans, the suffering elderly who were scared half to death that the nation’s oldest President, for whom they’d voted in vast numbers, was about to take the axe to their Social Security benefits. When the suffering for the night was done and Dan Rather had wished the nation a good night, Greco fixed a piece of plastic wrap over the pot and put it into the refrigerator. He dropped the Chianti bottle into the trash, rinsed the mug in hot water and put it into the wooden drying rack. He went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, put his Yankee jacket back on, and walked two blocks to the garage where he occasionally ransomed his car, a four-year-old Chrysler Le Baron he’d bought from his former wife’s ex-brother-in-law, who’d married her step-sister in Passaic. He’d wound up liking him better than he’d liked Phyllis, and the car was a dandy.

  Tuning in the Yankee-White Sox twi-nighter, he drove uptown to Sutton Place. He pulled over, cut the engine and turned off the lights, but left the game on to keep himself awake. There was a dim light on above the Bassinetti doorway. The lights were out inside, or the draperies had the density of blackout curtains. She was either in the back of the house or out; it didn’t make any difference. He was prepared to wait quite a while. He had no idea what to expect. Maybe Charlie would show up. Maybe somebody else would show up. Maybe Z would appear in a clap of thunder and a puff of smoke.

  The sounds of the horses in the stables floated across the dark green expanse of lawn as the Director sat on the spacious back porch watching the sun sink behind the Jersey countryside. His wife’s horses were one of the best things about her. He hadn’t been much of a rider even before his accident, but he had then, as well as now, enjoyed visiting them in their stalls, chatting with them, soothing them, making friends, feeling their great rubbery mouths taking sugar from his palm. He wasn’t altogether sure what the beasts represented for him, but in soothing them he inevitably soothed himself, no matter what pressures he’d been feeling. Now the stable boy and trainer had departed for the night, and he drew comfort from the sounds of their settling down to sleep.

  Finally he guided his wheelchair up the ramp and into the kitchen. From the refrigerator he took eggs, an apple, and a wedge of Gruyere. He melted butter in the omelette pan while he whisked the eggs and a few dashes of nutmeg in a copper bowl. While the eggs set up in the butter, he slivered the cheese and the apple, then laid them in on the eggs, waited, slid the eggs around, and gently flopped them over. He had something moist and perfect for his dinner. He drank a half bottle of a jaunty little Riesling. While he had his dinner, he watched Dan Rather and let his mind turn the corner and contemplate for a moment what might be going on tomorrow at this same time. He smiled to himself, patted a bit of melted cheese from the corner of his mouth. It was all a game, of course, and he enjoyed the game. The higher the stakes, the better he liked it. The odd thing was, he doubted if he’d ever have pushed things quite this far if he’d still been a whole man, walking around on his own two legs. There was surely a lesson embedded in what had once seemed the tragedy of his life. The tragedy had liberated him from the rat race, had left him free to think. He felt as if he’d been possessed by the spirit of mischief.

  At the appointed time he called the General.

  “Did you enjoy the manuscript, General?”

  “Enjoy is not precisely the word I’d have used, my friend. I certainly found it interesting. I wonder who wrote it?”

  “I too. But other data has reached me, and I feel obliged to tell you. Those who intend to kill me have made a blunder—”

  “No kidding. Whattaya know? A blunder—is that like a mistake?”

  “Your usual amusing self.” The Director chuckled. “Apparently their intentions have become a matter of public knowledge—”

  “No!”

  “Some person, a woman, seems to have learned of the plan. She’s an unknown quantity. What will she do? Perhaps she will rescue me. One never knows. I certainly don’t, but I do know this: I hate variables.”

  “Who is this woman?”

  “Her name is Celia Blandings.”

  “We wouldn’t want her to be hurt, would we?”

  “Perish the thought.”

  “Maybe we could reach her … Do you know how?”

  “I think I might.” The Director gave the General her address, knowing he was being recorded in Virginia.

  “How the hell do you come by all this information?”

  “Why, General, you surprise me. It’s my job to know things. Everything.” He couldn’t resist another chuckle.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SHE SAT ON THE COUCH staring at the telephone she’d just finished with. Then she called Hilary’s number again and there was no answer. All right, it was time to become Linda Thurston.

  Cunningham had suggested that they meet somewhere public, at which time she could return his property. He’d thrown out the name Area, the trendy environmental disco in TriBeCa.

  “Not a chance in the world,” Celia had said.

  “Why not? Who’s calling the shots here?”

  “
I am. And I was there once. People were fucking in the stalls in the ladies room. I’m not going back. They wouldn’t notice a dead body, they’d think it was part of the decor—”

  “Who’s talking about dead bodies?”

  “That, Mr. Cunningham, would seem to be your field of expertise.” It was a peculiar sensation, hearing Linda Thurston take over.

  “I don’t want to argue. I just want my things—”

  “What’s going on? Before we start hanging around together, just who are you trying to kill? Who is the Director?”

  “Oh, shit,” came across the line muffled. “Look, you don’t understand what’s going on here. Nobody’s going to get killed … it’s a long, very complicated story. Whattaya say you just give me the stuff back and forget the whole thing? I’m just a guy, believe me. I got more problems than I can count, and you’re making it a helluva lot worse—”

  “Does Mrs. Bassinetti know what you’re doing?”

  “What? What are you saying?” He sounded like he’d just walked into a bear trap and had noticed he was missing most of his leg. “You haven’t told her!”

  “I went to see her—”

  “Oh, God, tell me you’re kidding, tell me you’re making that up—”

  “I’m not kidding—”

  “Oh shit, oh shit,” he whined, as if he wished he’d never gone into the woods after the bear. “You didn’t tell her some cockeyed story like me murdering someone—”

  “Well … no.”

  “Oh hell, it doesn’t make any difference. Look, you’ve gotta give it back, forget you ever saw it.”

  “All right, Bradley’s on University Place. Right near the D’Agostino’s—”

  “I know Bradley’s, for God’s sake, I wasn’t parachuted in yesterday. Okay, twenty minutes.”

  She took the murder letter and hid it in the best possible place. Safe. She put the book in a bag, put on a jacket, and left the brownstone. Linda Thurston wasn’t scared, she was curious. And she wanted to save someone’s life.

  Mason and a clone named Green pushed their way into the crowded room that was Bradley’s. The tables were full, they were standing three deep at the bar, and a trio was playing first-rate jazz toward the back. The saxophone player sounded a little like Stan Getz but the pianist wasn’t Jim McNeeley so, though he couldn’t see through the crowd and the haze, it probably wasn’t Getz.

  Mason sent Green into the crowd at the bar with orders to get a couple beers. He was looking for Celia Blandings, who’d entered the crowd only minutes before. It took a little looking, and then he saw Charlie Cunningham standing back in a corner, fading into the surroundings. He was nursing a beer of his own. Mason followed Cunningham’s line of sight and saw Celia. A tall bald guy was already putting some moves on her, getting her a drink. She was good-looking, all right, if you liked them tall and dark, with a sense of humor around their mouths. She was turning this way and that, trying to pick Cunningham out of the crowd, but wasn’t coming close. The General had given Mason a great deal of latitude in keeping Celia Blandings out of the Director’s problems. But the job, like a stain, kept spreading.

  Green came back with the beers and Mason said: “Drink up. I’ve got a job for you. Cunningham and Blandings are both here. It’s a perfect chance. Go check out Cunningham’s place, find anything that could tie him to the manuscript that’s bugging everybody. Thoroughness is your watchword, Greenie. We’ve got to find out who wrote the damn thing, that’s first priority. Now get going. The General will love you for it.”

  Green dutifully chugged his beer while Mason watched, disgust mingled with primitive envy of the stupid college trick. Then Green left, and Mason worked his way closer to the music, moving like a crab, keeping an eye on Celia Blandings. Damn, she looked intriguing. He wanted to get close enough to hear her voice. The trio was doing justice to “Airmail Special.” The piano had a drive to it, like Dorothy Donegan’s up in Boston one night: Blandings had put away her drink and Mason wedged himself in next to her. She’d drunk it fast because she was nervous. He read it in her face, her eyes. “Excuse me,” he said, brushing against her. “Hard to get a drink in the crush.” He smiled at her, she nodded. “You’re empty,” he said. “Can I fill that up for you?” She looked down at her glass.

  “Sure, one more. Gin gimlet with ice.”

  He got her the drink and pondered the sin of mixing business with pleasure. “Waiting for someone?” he said.

  “Why?” She sounded surprised.

  He shrugged. “Keep looking around.”

  “Yes, I am. Not having much luck.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Not in a million years,” she said.

  “I just come for the music,” he said. His sense of responsibility got the upper hand, and he worked his way back toward the other end of the bar.

  Charlie Cunningham was gone.

  Charlie Cunningham was very nervous.

  The conversation with this Blandings horror show couldn’t have been worse. How she’d wormed Mrs. Bassinetti out of the book and the letter, he couldn’t imagine, couldn’t be bothered to worry about. Somehow she had, and whatever she’d told her was bound to have made matters worse, a turn of events he hadn’t believed possible.

  Then he’d set out to follow Blandings to Bradley’s, just to get a feeling for the kind of woman she was. That had proved pointless, but he’d seen two other guys get out of a car and start following her as soon as she’d come down the steps of the brownstone. He’d ducked into a narrow trash alley running alongside her building and watched as they fell into step behind her. He had no idea who the hell they were, but he didn’t like it. There was something wrong with those guys. They didn’t look quite like other people.

  He was tired at the end of an indescribably bad day that kept getting worse. He’d run ahead on the other side of the street and gotten to Bradley’s first, found the darkest corner, coerced a beer out of the hassled barman, and waited a few moments until Blandings arrived. He assumed she had no way of identifying him, but the other guys made him worry.

  They arrived looking serious, and he tried to hide behind his beer. After one of them left, he’d watched the other one close in on Blandings. His head was swimming, and then he’d had a wonderful idea. He slipped out of the smoke and din and headed back toward the Blandings place.

  He checked to see her apartment number on the buzzer box, then found the narrow, dank trash alley, and giving what he supposed was a uniquely suspicious look around, he ducked into the darkness. And banged into a shadow-hidden trash can. He stifled a yelp of pain, closed his eyes and felt gingerly for the blood seeping from his injured shin. Par for the course.

  He felt his way along the side of the brownstone, which stretched about the length of six football fields. Finally he came to a chain-link fence continuing along beside the brownstone’s garden. A dog was barking somewhere in one of the apartment buildings looming above the garden. Rear Window, for chrissake. The lighted windows looking down at him were clearly unblinking, watchful eyes. Still, a man had to do what a man had to do.

  The fence gave a little when he began climbing and seemed to make a deafening amount of noise. However, upward and onward. He hung on the top of the fence, calculating the distance to the fire escape ladder. He would jump. He could make it.

  No, as it turned out, he couldn’t.

  Aarrrrghhhhh!!!

  It was just like a comic book.

  Celia waited nearly an hour at Bradley’s before deciding that Cunningham wasn’t coming. It didn’t make any sense to her. Meeting had been his idea. Why would he stand her up? The man who’d fetched her the second drink seemed to have disappeared, and the first man had gotten to talking about those Mets with a redhead, and the trio had finished the set, and she felt like a fool.

  Then it hit her—he’d suckered her out so he could search her apartment! He’d known she’d never bring the letter to the bar…

  She was halfway home before it occurred to her tha
t getting hold of the letter and the book wasn’t the point. Once she’d read the letter and figured it out, even in part, he had to convince her that she’d misunderstood the implications. They had to talk.

  Unless, of course, it was simpler, surer, and far better to kill her. If he really had murder on his mind, he had to make sure she wouldn’t go to the police. Talking would help him only if he weren’t going to kill anyone … and if he didn’t have murder on his mind, why would he care what she thought?

  There had to be a murder for Celia to be of any importance to him at all…

  And if there was a murder, Cunningham couldn’t risk taking her word that she wouldn’t tell.

  Which meant he really had no choice at all. He’d have to kill her. And once he had the book and the letter, who could tie him to Celia Blandings?

  Well, quite a few people, actually. The Carling woman at Pegasus, Penzler, the people at the Strand, Mrs. Bassinetti—

  So why was she so sure he wasn’t thinking about them?

  Because he didn’t know about them.

  He must be thinking, kill Celia and I’m safe again.

  But where was he?

  Thinking like Linda Thurston again, she looked at the door lock to see if anyone had jimmied her building’s front door. Of course no one had. She went into the hallway and climbed the long single flight to her own door on the landing. The bulb had burned out several days before and she hadn’t gotten around to replacing it, but there was enough light from below to find the lock. She swung the door open and waited. “Hello? Hello!” Ed made one of his macaw noises. She sighed with relief and went in.

  It was almost one o’clock. She was exhausted. There were no messages on the answering machine. She slipped out of her clothes, left them on the floor where they fell, and climbed naked into bed. Ed was quiet, snoozing in the safety of his cage. The apartment was quiet.

  On the tiny deck beyond the French doors at the end of her living room, Charlie Cunningham had finally gotten his nose to stop bleeding. He was quite sure his wrist was sprained. After all, he had fallen about ten feet, head first into somebody’s goddamn garden furniture. A foot to the left and he’d have killed himself on the barbecue. Lucky he wasn’t dead. Some luck …