by Con Lehane
At Grand Central, he took the train uptown to pick up Johnny at the Flanders School on the Upper East Side, the tony private school his grandmother paid for and insisted he go to. Johnny spent most weekday nights with Ambler, Wednesday night and every other weekend at his grandmother’s palatial apartment on Central Park West. By the time Ambler climbed the subway steps at 77th Street, the snow was falling heavily, not covering the sidewalk yet, but a thin layer of slush made it slick and slippery. From a block away through the swirling snow he saw Johnny sitting on the school’s stoop with a couple of friends. He kept darting his tongue out trying to catch snowflakes.
When Johnny caught sight of him, a slight smile tugged at his mouth, a flash of something in his eyes. He was too old to jump up and run to his granddad, though not old enough not to feel the urge, on the cusp of that city-kid, much-too-early, preteen sophistication.
“Hi ya, pal,” Ambler said, holding back his urge to grab the kid and hug him. So much had changed since the boy came into his life. After years of his being alone, Johnny came along, bringing this amazing joy. Yet restraint was in order when Johnny was with his friends; he might embarrass him. Actually, he could easily smother him, his attachment was so great, his fear of losing him so desperate. Those first days, after Johnny’s mother’s death, when the boy started school again, he’d had tears in his eyes each morning when he left him in front of the Catholic school in Hell’s Kitchen.
Johnny jumped up, pushed and shoved with his friends, until they began scraping snow off the low wall in front of the school, putting together clumps of a watery substance barely resembling snowballs that disintegrated in their hands before they could throw them. Watching the increasing intensity of the wind-driven snow, feeling the chill that came with the descending darkness, Ambler guessed there would be plenty of ammunition by morning.
“Where’s Adele?” Johnny asked as they began walking.
“Home, I guess. I don’t know.”
“She’s not coming over?”
“Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
Ambler hesitated. Where was he going with this? Johnny loved Adele. How could he not? She adored him and pampered him. Not so long ago she was ready to kidnap him and go into hiding rather than lose him. Johnny was too young to understand what went on between Ambler and Adele. He didn’t understand it himself. They weren’t married. They weren’t “dating” in any recognizable sense of the term, yet she helped raise his grandchild, more important to Johnny in many ways than he was.
Johnny interrupted his reverie. “Why isn’t she coming over? Can we go to her apartment?”
“We haven’t been invited.”
Johnny halted as Ambler headed for the subway entrance. The snow fell heavily, straight down now, large, fluttering flakes. “Can we walk instead of taking the train?”
Ambler looked at his shoes, at Johnny’s sneakers, at the snow beginning to stick to the sidewalk, at Johnny. He was a kid. It was snowing.
“Is it going to snow a lot?” Johnny asked as they walked.
“It might.”
“Will there be school tomorrow?”
“Probably.”
“That’s not fair.”
Ambler was about to tell him life was unfair, but the kid already knew that better than most, didn’t he?
“Can we walk to Adele’s apartment? It’s closer. We’ll tell her we’re stranded in the storm and need her to put us up until it blows over.” Johnny looked up at him, blinking rapidly to keep the snowflakes out of his eyes.
“You should have a hat.”
“You don’t have one.” Johnny made his sneakers into snowplows and plowed his way down Madison Avenue.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t invited Adele over. The day following the big storm after Christmas they’d gone sledding in Central Park. Everything the three of them did together was fun. Lately, she’d grown impatient with him; he got on her nerves. She spoke sharply sometimes, irritated about little things—basketball on TV, not clearing the table, Johnny’s bedtime. It was more than those things, he knew. She wanted Johnny. A twist of fate, a quirk in the law, made him Johnny’s guardian.
He could fix things. She could move in with them. They’d have to get a bigger apartment, not so easy anymore. He could marry her. She might well marry him, but he wouldn’t know if it was for him or for Johnny. Either way, how would marrying him be good for her? She was much younger than he was. Johnny would grow up, and she’d be stuck with an old boring man.
“I could drop you at your grandmother’s. That’s closer. You could watch the woods fill up with snow.”
“The park, you mean? Nah.” He brightened. “If we don’t have school tomorrow, I don’t have to do my homework. We could go out for Chinese and see a movie.” He watched his sneakers snowplowing the sidewalk.
Ambler laughed. “Who said you won’t have school?”
“Look at the snow.” Johnny waved his arms about. “It’s a blizzard.”
“If you do your homework as soon as we get home, we’ll go out for Chinese and you can stay up and watch the Knick game.”
“Okay.” Johnny twirled in a small circle and hopped onto a low wall alongside a church they were walking past, causing Ambler who’d gotten a few steps ahead to stop and turn around. When he did, he noticed a man a half block behind them, hunched into a trench coat, turn to look into a store window. The movement caught his attention.
Surely, the hundreds, if not thousands, of detective novels running around in his head helped create intrigue where none existed, yet the time he’d spent in the van with Paul Higgins, dodging city traffic, trying to shake a real or imaginary shadow, had made him wary.
He put his arm around Johnny’s shoulders and tried to move him a bit faster, though there was little sense in that. It was a symbolic action to protect the boy, who’d already had far too much violence in his life. He needed to be more mindful of the effect things he did might have on the boy. He wasn’t only responsible for himself anymore.
“Would you like to stop and say hello to McNulty?”
“Uncle McNulty? I sure would. Visit him at the bar?”
“I think it would be Uncle Brian, if that’s what you want to call him.”
“I like Uncle McNulty.”
The early evening tipplers were already gathered at the Library Tavern, a clean, well-lighted place glowing through the gathering darkness and thickening snow. McNulty was busy, the bar two or three deep, two waitresses running. Ambler sat Johnny in a booth and went to the bar.
“I’ll have a guy take a look,” McNulty said when Ambler told him about the man he saw. “Usually, it’s when the wife puts a tail on the husband I’m charged with ferreting out the gumshoe.” He turned toward the service bar and hollered. “Stella! Watch the bar a minute.” A young, pretty, dark-haired woman pranced up beside McNulty like he’d asked her to dance. Her name tag read quite plainly Anne.
“You’re a riot, McNulty,” she said. “What a cute little boy.” She smiled at Ambler.
“I’ll take care of the boy; you take care of the bar.” He turned to Ambler. “You and Johnny sit at that booth near the waitress station until I tell you, while my guy takes a look outside.” He eyed Ambler. “He could take care of the follower, too, if there is one.”
“No. Not that.”
McNulty went behind the bar. In a minute or so, he joined them at the table, bearing a beer for Ambler and a massive concoction of crushed fruit, and juices, surrounding a clump of ice cream, for Johnny.
“He hasn’t eaten dinner.” Ambler watched with dismay as Johnny’s eyes widened.
“A before-dinner cocktail, what’s wrong with that?” McNulty set down the drinks.
A half hour later, the walk home from the Library Tavern was uneventful, though the snow had intensified; it lay thick on the slippery sidewalks and blew sideways at their backs. McNulty’s emissary hadn’t seen anyone lurking in a doorway. If someone was following them in the snow, he’d be
standing around in wet shoes for most of the night.
* * *
Something buzzed loudly in the middle of Adele’s dream. She was late for a presentation in the library. Not only was she late, she’d forgotten about it and wasn’t prepared. When she arrived, the conference room was half-filled with young people, like a college classroom, everyone talking and the buzzer ringing incessantly. She hoped it was a fire alarm. She tried to get everyone’s attention, so they could all leave and she wouldn’t need to do the presentation. No one listened. The buzzer kept buzzing; then darkness and the familiar feel of the bedsheets against her, and still the buzzing. It was the door, the downstairs door. Her first thought was panic. Something was wrong—Johnny!—followed by a sly thought. It might be Raymond. The way he looked at her earlier today, a kind of longing. She wrapped a robe around her, padded to the door, and pushed the intercom button.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Leila, Adele. You have to let me in. Sorry. But please buzz this door open. I’m in trouble.”
Adele buzzed her in.
A couple of minutes later, a disheveled, snow-dusted, wild-eyed Leila bolted out of the elevator. Adele barely got the door all the way open as she charged through it. Taking her cue from Leila, she slammed and locked it—using all three locks—though she didn’t see anyone in the elevator or the hallway.
“Is someone following you?”
Leila shook the snow off her hair and coat. “No.… No.… I had a bad experience, a fright.” She kept shaking off snow. “It’s snowing.” She arced her hands, a flamboyant gesture, at snow puddling on the floor around her. “Obviously.” She gave Adele an exasperated look. “Someone showed up in my life. He wasn’t supposed to know where I was.” She met Adele’s worried gaze. “My ex-husband.”
Adele went for a bottle of Irish whiskey McNulty the bartender had given her. You never know when you might have to pour someone a drink, he’d told her. Sure enough, Leila needed a drink to calm her nerves. She splashed some whiskey into a glass. “Drink this.” She handed the glass to Leila.
“I needed to get out of my apartment. He didn’t follow me. I made sure.” Leila sipped the whiskey.
“Call the police.”
Leila shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Of course you can.” The poor woman was shaking.
“You don’t understand. It wouldn’t do any good.” Leila’s tone was weary, world-weary.
“What’s to understand? You can’t—” The look on Leila’s face stopped her.
“Sit down.” Leila’s tone was gruff but trying for tender, as if she impatiently spoke to a child. “The police can’t help with the man I’m talking about. I was young and stupid. I got involved with a man, married him. I was too naïve to be afraid of him. He threatened to kill me. I got away … started a new life. He wasn’t supposed to find me. But he did.”
“How did he find you? Where? When?”
Leila stared into her glass. “It doesn’t matter. I talked with someone who can get to him, can stop him. It’ll be okay … if I make it through tonight.” She laughed uneasily. “I didn’t know anywhere else to go.” Her smile was apologetic, a foreign expression for her. “I’m not explaining. One day I will.” She reached for Adele’s hand, leaning forward on the couch, grasping Adele’s hand with both of hers, holding it against her knees. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a friend.” Leila looked at her glass. “I needed that. Could I have another? It would put me to sleep.” She patted the couch, a question in her eyes.
“Of course you can stay. There’s the bottle. Pour yourself what you want. I’ll get you a blanket and a pillow.”
* * *
“Finished,” Johnny proclaimed after about fifteen minutes on his homework, barely enough time to find the page he was on in history or the problems assigned for math. “Is it still snowing? Can we go out to eat? Walk in the snow?”
Ambler tried for a stern look but didn’t have the heart for it. The kid was squirming with excitement. He hesitated a moment thinking about the man in the trench coat, yet once he’d gotten back to his apartment he no longer worried about him. Who would follow him? Someone after Paul Higgins’s papers? They were in the library. What would following him tell anyone?
They went to the Szechuan restaurant on Second Avenue, though Ambler would have preferred one of the Curry Hill Indian places. The snow fell heavily as they walked to the restaurant and was driving and blowing sideways as they walked home. A hush fell over the city, the snow inches deep on the sidewalk and clogging the streets, though on Second Avenue, the cabs and trucks and cars were packed together so tightly, it didn’t seem possible for snowflakes to make their way to the ground.
“Can I call Adele?” Johnny asked when they were back inside.
Ambler nodded and turned on the Knick game. A few minutes later, Johnny handed him the phone.
“I can’t hear you,” Ambler said.
Adele’s frustration came through making her whisper a hoarse croak. “Leila’s here. I don’t want her to hear me. You’ll have to listen harder.”
Ambler smiled; only Adele or a child would come up with a request like that. She told him Leila’s ex-husband was stalking her, so she was hiding out at her apartment. That wasn’t good. He didn’t want to alarm Adele, but Leila put her in danger by going to her. “It’s a tough situation. It’s hers though, not yours. Tell her to get help. What did she tell you about him?”
“She said she made a mistake marrying him. He threatened to kill her.” She paused. “She said she could get someone, a third party, to stop him.”
“Not the police?”
“She wouldn’t let me call the police.”
“That’s not up to her. He might be a danger to you, too.”
“He doesn’t know she’s here.”
“Maybe,” said Ambler. “If he shows up, don’t open the door, and call the police, no matter what Leila says.”
“I know that.” She could put a pout into words. “I thought you might know something that would help.”
“There are battered women centers and crisis hotlines.”
“I’m not going to put her out in the snow. You’re no help.”
Chapter 7
The next morning dawned clear and cold, the sun bright, the city blanketed with snow. For the most part, the sidewalks had been cleared, so the walk to the subway to take moping Johnny to school wasn’t as bad as Ambler expected. Adele called early to tell him she’d survived the night, and that Leila left for an appointment with someone who might rein in her ex-husband.
“Can we have lunch?” Ambler asked.
Leila and I were planning to have lunch. I’ll ask her about you coming with us.”
“I meant you, not her.”
“No. It would be good. She might take advice from you. I’ll call her.”
A few minutes later, Adele called back to tell him Leila was going to do errands during lunch so wouldn’t be coming after all.
Adele arrived at O’Casey’s shortly after noon with Gobi Tabrizi in tow. Ambler, who’d hoped to have Adele to himself, wasn’t pleased to see him. But he liked the man’s manner, formal, reserved, but engaging. Dark hair, dark eyes, rugged face, dark coloring, a kind of easy grace and tolerance that comes from having seen things in life you’d rather not have seen. He and Adele seemed to have gotten to know one another; they were like pals, smiling, almost playful. And they looked good together, Tabrizi handsome, she pretty, about the same age. That recognition brought with it a sinking feeling. Ambler had a difficult time holding on to his smile.
Adele and Gobi sat next to one another, across from him, which made it difficult not to think of them as a couple. Tabrizi talked easily enough about his studies and his research at the library on the origins and evolution of Islamic law, Sharia. At the same time, he treaded lightly on anything political, emphasizing that his interest was scholarly. A Syrian, he said he’d been in the states for two years. He told them he was a Sunni Mus
lim but had little interest in going into detail on that, what he’d done before coming to the United States, or why he left Syria. Ambler wondered, but didn’t ask, if his bangers and mash lunch was offensive to the Muslim scholar.
The way Adele looked at Tabrizi as he spoke about himself, with a kind of possessiveness, reminded him of how she looked at Johnny and, actually, how she sometimes looked at him. Near the end of lunch, Tabrizi asked about Leila Stone.
Ambler started to say something, but decided to let Adele answer. She told him Leila kept to herself and was hard to get to know.
“I thought you two would hit it off,” Adele said after they’d divided up the check. “You’re a lot alike.” She looked from one to the other. Neither he nor Tabrizi said anything; probably Tabrizi had no more idea of how they were alike than he did.
On the walk back to the library, the sidewalks narrowed by snowbanks, Adele walked beside him, her body through her bulky coat brushing against him every few steps. He fought back an impulse to put his arm around her.
“I missed seeing Johnny last night.” Her regretful tone said more than the words.
“I’m sorry. I should have asked you to come over.” Their pace slowed. “You don’t have to wait to be asked, you know.”
“Yes I do. You’re very independent.” She picked up her pace and caught up with her new friend. Ambler trudged behind, the sidewalk too narrow for the three of them abreast.
* * *
He left Adele and Gobi Tabrizi in Astor Hall and took the staircase on the opposite side of the lobby from the one they took. Outside the crime fiction reading room, trying to dislodge from his mind’s eye the picture of Gobi and Adele walking together, he almost bumped into Leila before he noticed her. She seemed rattled. He wanted to say something but didn’t want to bring up her ex-husband unless she brought it up.