He was indulging in his worst nocturnal habit, a thick bologna sandwich on white bread, with lettuce, tomato, and double mayo. He had spread waxed paper on his lap. This was a necessary precaution when eating one of these deli monsters. The juice from the tomato had thinned the extra mayo into a liquid that began dripping as soon as he pressed the sandwich thin enough to wedge the corner of it into his mouth.
At three minutes before midnight an unforeseen problem began to develop, and it was twofold: The waxed paper started sliding off Detective Ferrara’s lap, and the tomato slice began to slip sideways, off the bologna. Detective Ferrara’s hands could feel the sandwich beginning to destabilize, like a drunk tight-wire walker a half second before the plunge.
Thirty seconds later a man stepped out of the service entrance of Twenty-three Beekman. He was short, he was whistling, and where he wasn’t bald he was dark-haired. Detective Ferrara recognized the afternoon doorman.
The doorman’s shift was over, and he had changed from uniform to street clothes—a Hawaiian shirt and dark slacks. He stood a moment on the sidewalk. He looked up at the full moon hanging over Beekman Place. He jingled the change in his pockets and sauntered west on Fifty-first.
Meanwhile the edge of the tomato slice was peeking out from between the bread, and Detective Ferrara could feel it getting ready to make the jump. A glance downward told him that the waxed paper was seriously overleveraged, with no more than an inch to go before it fluttered down to the gas pedal.
A bicyclist rode east on Fifty-second, passing Detective Ferrara’s car. The cyclist turned onto Beekman Place, cycled past Twenty-nine, and stopped at Twenty-three. Detective Ferrara recognized the Korean delivery boy from the deli where he’d bought his sandwich.
Without quite stepping off his cycle, the boy touched one foot down to the pavement and handed the doorman a large paper bag. The doorman counted out a handful of singles. The boy waved and turned his bike around and came back past Detective Ferrara.
By now Detective Ferrara had a dilemma. It required two hands to hold a bologna with double mayo, though in an emergency, such as the one developing, one hand could do the job for a second or so. The choice was this: Would it be better to use the free hand and the one second to catch the waxed paper or the tomato?
If he caught the waxed paper, he would save his trousers but guarantee himself a sandwich fallen apart in his lap.
If he tried to catch the tomato, he might lose everything and wind up with mayo on his trousers. On the other hand, he might hit the jackpot, come out with trousers clean and sandwich intact.
What it came down to was, was he a gambler or not?
He never got to answer the question.
A white flare exploded on his left side, practically blinding him. A woman’s voice screamed: “Leave us alone!”
Detective Ferrara’s head jerked around toward the screams, and the white-out in his field of vision traveled with him. All he could see was the silhouette of a human being, a black lump like a monster animated cartoon, jumping and waving what looked like a rock.
“What did he ever do to you?” the voice screamed.
The rock flashed again, and Detective Ferrara realized she had a camera, and she was photographing the stakeout.
“Leave us alone! Damn you!”
Something thumped, and a vibration traveled through the car. She was kicking the door. Another flash went off, and now neither of Detective Ferrara’s eyes could see. “Lady, just calm it, will you?”
“We’ve never hurt you!” the voice screamed.
Gradually he began seeing her. She wore steel-rimmed glasses, like the meanest grade-school teacher you ever saw, and she had white hair that was thrashing behind her like a two-foot tail on a berserk pony. Every line in her face, and there were many, had bunched into a single snarl. She had eyes of distilled red hatred. “We’ve never hurt anyone! Can’t you just let us live our lives?”
There was a cracking sound. She’d broken his window.
“Lady, shut the fuck up.” As Detective Ferrara opened the car door and put a foot out on the pavement, the waxed paper, and with it his entire sandwich, slid to the street.
FROM THE BEDSIDE TABLE Cardozo’s beeper was issuing a direct, unapologetic summons. He opened one eye. His fist swung down.
The beeping didn’t stop. He realized he’d missed. He turned on the bedside light. This time his fist connected with the target.
“Turn it off,” Leigh Baker moaned.
He turned the light off. Four seconds later he was sitting up on the edge of the bed, talking to the precinct.
“I’ll patch you through,” the operator said.
John Ferrara came on the line. Bursts of static alternated with bursts of apology. “She was photographing the stakeouts with a flash camera—blinding us.”
Cardozo felt himself drop through slow layers of understanding. “Did her son get past?”
“She distracted me a good ten, fifteen seconds. I didn’t see him, but there’s a possibility.”
It seemed to Cardozo that the words hung like a bad smell in the air. “Okay,” he said. “Where’s Xenia Delancey now?”
“Back inside. She says she’s calling the police.”
“Keep watching. If she comes out again, be charming.” Cardozo set the receiver back in the cradle. His hands pushed him up from the bed, and the next thing he realized he was up on his feet, trying very hard to get his right foot into his right trouser leg in the dark.
The light went on again and Leigh Baker sat up from her pillow. “Vince? Why are you dressing?”
“I have to go to the precinct.”
“What’s happened?” She combed her hair with her hand away from her face, blinking in the soft cone of dimmed light.
How does any human being look that beautiful, Cardozo wondered, when she’s just opened her eyes? “According to the formula, this is Society Sam’s night.”
“He’s killed someone else?”
“Not yet, not that we know of. But Xenia Delancey spotted one of the cops on the stakeout. She went at him with a flashbulb. It may have been a diversion. Delancey could have slipped past him.”
“Poor Vince. Just when you thought you’d get a little rest.”
Cardozo tucked his shirt into his trousers. He hated putting on a shirt he’d worn the day before. “You know, we canceled your guard, till you’re due back from Paris.”
“And I never went. Is that a problem?”
“Do you mind if I make another call?” He dialed Sam Richards’s number. “Sam, I know it’s a rotten time to call, but I need you.”
“What’s happening?” Sam Richards’s voice said.
“Could you keep an eye on a friend of mine?”
“Now?” A little curl of disbelief to the tone.
“It’s an emergency.”
LEIGH LOST TRACK OF TIME. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there on the edge of the bed.
Downstairs the front doorbell chimed.
She crossed to the front of the house. She moved aside a curtain and peered down into the darkened street.
She didn’t see a police car.
The doorbell chimed again.
She took the elevator down. She spoke to the front door. “Vince, is that you?”
No one answered.
She drew the belt of her robe more tightly around her. She put her face to the window and looked out. There was no one on the front stoop, no one on the sidewalk. A lone cab passed in the street with its off-duty light on.
In a moment she heard a buzz in another part of the house.
The kitchen door, she realized.
She crossed the darkened dining room. She didn’t turn on the lights. Lights would have been visible from the street.
She pushed through the swinging door to the pantry. There was no window, and it was pitch-black here. She turned on the light.
The sudden brightness stung her eyes. She stood blinking.
The buzz came again�
�nearer and sharp this time, impatient, like a message in Morse code.
The door between the kitchen and the pantry was open. She approached the darkness beyond it. She stood a moment at the threshold. She listened and watched.
Copper pots made silhouettes overhead like giant dangling leaves. At the far end of the room streetlight fell in a pale yellow slant through panes of frosted glass.
Outside, something passed through the slant. Now it blacked out the glass panel in the door. Something scratched at the doorway.
She felt along the counter. Her hand found a drawer. She pulled it open and felt inside. Her fingers fumbled through eggbeaters and whisks.
She opened the next drawer and found a poultry knife. The drawer crashed to the floor. Cutlery clattered.
The scratching stopped. After a moment it began again.
There was a click, and the kitchen door opened.
Leigh stepped backward toward the pantry. Her slipper struck a knife and sent it spinning across the tiling. She ducked into the pantry and clicked off the light.
She heard three footsteps. They had a man’s weight. The street door made a firm, solid sound closing.
“Miss Baker?” The kitchen light went on. “Is anyone home?”
He must have known she was there. As he came around the corner he caught her knife hand in midmovement.
“You shouldn’t have gotten off the plane without telling me.” Arnie Bone lifted the poultry knife from her fist and laid it on the counter. “Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused?”
The front doorbell chimed. She spun around and ran.
A man’s arm was holding something up to the window. A shield winked gold. She threw the door open.
“Sam Richards, ma’am.” His dark face was expressionless behind his gunfighter mustache. “Lieutenant Cardozo asked me to keep an eye on you.”
She stood aside and gestured him to come in.
“Are you all right, ma’am?”
“No. I’m not.”
She looked behind her. Arnie Bone stood at the end of the hallway, watching her.
“This man broke into the house.”
“Officer, that’s not exactly correct.” Arnie Bone came forward.
“Could you please ask him to go?” Leigh said.
Arnie Bone handed his wallet to Sam Richards.
Sam Richards studied the color photograph on the driver’s license. He flipped a thick cellophane page and studied the color photo on the guard’s license. He handed the wallet back. He turned to Leigh. “This man is a licensed private guard.”
“I know that,” she said. “But I didn’t hire a private guard, and I don’t want this one.”
“Waldo Carnegie hired me,” Arnie Bone said. “This house is his—not hers.”
Sam Richards looked from the man to the woman and back again to the man. “Did Mr. Carnegie hire you to guard the house?”
“Mr. Carnegie hired me to guard Miss Baker.”
“I don’t wish to be guarded,” Leigh said. “Not by this man. He broke into the house. It’s the second time he’s almost frightened me to death.”
“I didn’t intend to frighten Miss Baker,” Arnie Bone said. “I apologize. Mr. Carnegie gave me the keys to the back door. I rang at the front door and no one answered. I let myself in.”
“Please ask him to go,” Leigh said.
“Mr. Bone, your services aren’t required.”
Arnie Bone’s eyes gave Leigh permission to drop dead. He walked to the front door.
“Just one thing,” Sam Richards said. “Could I see those keys?”
Arnie Bone took a key ring from his pocket. Two bright new keys jingled.
Sam Richards lifted the key ring from Arnie Bone’s hand and placed it in Leigh Baker’s hand. He opened the front door. “Thank you, Mr. Bone.”
Leigh watched Arnie Bone go. There was anger and stony nonacceptance in his face.
His fingers touched the brim of a nonexistent hat. “Good-bye for now, folks.”
FORTY-FIVE
Saturday, June 8
NAN SHANE LAID THE FINAL CARD faceup on the table. “Six of cups, reversed. You have opportunities ahead. New vistas.”
The waiter shook his head. “New vistas? Again? Send those cards back to the factory for a tune-up.”
Nan cupped a hand around a yawn. “I don’t think these jerks are ever going to show up.” She lifted her drink, a Tequila Sunrise in a stem glass, and drained the last diluted dregs. “Do me a favor, J.J.—see if you can get me a refill?”
The thin-hipped, redheaded waiter carried Nan’s glass across the softly lit interior of Tiffany lamps and red-checked tablecloths. There was practically nobody in the place.
The bartender—a young, overweight guy in shirtsleeves—wore a jowl-to-jowl frown as he polished the gleaming maple bar with slow swipes of a chamois. Nan could see him refuse to make her another drink. Hostility came off him in waves.
She gathered up her cards and shuffled them into a neat stack.
The waiter returned. “Sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Nan slipped the cards back into their box and dropped the box into her tote bag. She gave the waiter’s hand a pat. “But thanks for trying.”
In the corner of the bar a four-year-old with blond pigtails stood on tiptoe playing with the buttons on an old-fashioned rainbow-colored jukebox. Nan Shane snapped a finger. “Come on, Dodie. Hit the road to dreamland.”
The little girl turned. She had huge eyes and pouting lips.
“No,” Nan said. “Don’t even ask. You’ve played that song enough.”
Dodie didn’t move.
“I said come here.”
Dodie began crying.
Nan Shane had to cross the bar and take Dodie by the hand and pull her to the door. The child whined and held on to chairs and table legs. Nan kicked the door open, and Dodie’s wail hit the night air like shattering glass.
“Shut up,” Nan said.
Dodie didn’t shut up.
There was really no decision to be made. Nan let Dodie have it across the face, outer edge of the backhand.
“And that,” Nan said, “is just a warning.”
Dodie was quiet now. Nan could hear the city again. Overhead, the bar’s sign gave a squeak in the steamy breeze. Nan loved that sign. The owner had promised she could have it if he ever closed the bar. It was varnished driftwood, with rustic carved letters, and the letters spelled ACHILLES FOOT.
“Lady,” a voice said.
Nan Shane blinked. Out of nowhere a man was coming toward her. She realized he’d been standing just beyond the circle of light that fell from the window, but standing so still that she’d mistaken him for a shadow.
“Lady, why did you hit that child?”
Why was it, Nan Shane asked herself, that everyone in New York City knew how to run a single mother’s life better than she did herself? “This is my child. Thank you for your concern, but this is mother-daughter business. Please keep out of it. Come on, Dodie. Homeward-bound.”
Dodie began crying again.
“Don’t you know children belong to God?”
He said it so quietly, with a look of such gentleness on his face, that at first Nan registered nothing but his tone. It was the tone for saying, What a lovely child.
“I beg your pardon?” Nan said.
“You mustn’t slap that child. God hates people who beat children.”
Her head felt like a TV set that was picking up video from one channel and audio from another. What she was hearing and what she was seeing didn’t go together. He was dressed in clean jogging clothes, like a stockbroker out for a late-night run, and he had a smile you’d say yes to in a minute if you met him in a bar. But what he was saying was crazy. God and hate and beating children—what kind of a conversation was that to start with a stranger at two A.M. on a New York sidewalk?
Nan Shane sensed a creepie vibe coming off this guy.
“Come on, Dodie. Beddie-bye.” She re
ached for her daughter’s hand.
But Dodie didn’t move. She just stood there and stared at the man. Ever since Nan had split from Dodie’s father, the girl had stared at men.
“Come on.” Nan gave Dodie’s hand a yank. “We’re going home. Now.”
Dodie began screaming. Nan gripped the child’s hand hard and didn’t let go and took off at a fast walk. She’d drunk a little more than she ought to have, and Dodie decided it would be cute to act like a deadweight, and between the booze and the brat Nan had a difficult time walking straight.
The child stumbled and fell. Wouldn’t you know it, the screams got even louder. Any minute now people would be sticking their heads out the windows to see who was getting murdered.
“Will you stop play-acting?” Nan gave the girl a good hard pull to stand her up straight. “You’re embarrassing me!”
“You’re abusing that little girl,” the man said.
Nan didn’t believe it. The man was walking right alongside them, grinning, happy with himself, sure as hell happy with something. You’d have thought she’d invited him to walk her home and stop up for a drink.
“Will you do me a favor and get lost?” she said.
He was not one to take a hint.
Nan glanced up and down the street. A taxi with its off-duty light on had passed them and was waiting at a red light two blocks north. Except for parked cars and that one taxi, Third Avenue was empty.
“You don’t deserve a child,” the man said.
“What I don’t deserve at two o’clock in the morning is you, you goddamn creep. So fuck off before I call a cop.”
“You don’t deserve anyone.”
“You want me to scream? Because my kid gets it from me. I taught her how.” Speaking of which, Nan brought the flat of her hand down sharp on Dodie’s skull. “Shut up, the both of you!”
“You’re a monster, and I’m not going to let you abuse that little girl anymore.”
Nan stopped and whirled to face him, so angry now that she could see her own spittle fly. “You want to adopt a kid, go to Family Services. This one’s mine—so butt out, asshole!”
That did it. There was a startle reflex in his eyes. He fell back a step.
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