“Then it was you in the elevator. It was you who attacked me at the phone booth.”
“Just trying to discourage you from chasing trouble.” He brushed against her and took the knob of the doorbolt between his thumb and forefinger.
“Luddie!” she screamed. “Watch out!”
“Lady, you watch too many cop shows.” Arnie Bone slid the bolt back. He opened the door. He made a disgusted sound, like spitting into his own throat, then turned and fixed her with his flat steel-colored stare. “Too many cop shows are bad for the imagination.”
She thought he smiled, but it might have been nothing more than a shadow on his face.
“What the hell am I going to do with you?”
He was making a strange sort of eye contact. It felt like a sexual come-on, or at least a sexual game.
“Any suggestions?” He let the door swing itself halfway shut.
Behind him the pewter vase from the hallway table flashed through the air and crashed into his skull. There was a pop like wood snapping. Arnie Bone’s knees both folded at the same time. He collapsed gracefully into a kneeling position, and then the rest of him fell facedown onto the floor.
Luddie stepped into the apartment. He gazed regretfully at a dent in the vase, then set it down on the floor. He took Arnie Bone by both arms and dragged him into the living room. “Friend of yours?”
“He was one of my guards,” Leigh said. “I asked Waldo to fire him. He’s been following me.”
“Then Waldo didn’t fire him. These guys don’t work for free.” Luddie went into the kitchen and came back testing the strength of an extension cord. He straddled Arnie and felt in the jacket and pulled out a wallet. He flipped to the ID. “Kensington Security. Licensed to carry a gun. Well, where there’s smoke …”
He frisked Arnie and pulled a revolver from the belt and laid it on the rug. He rolled Arnie onto his stomach and tied his hands behind his back, then hog-tied his hands to his ankles.
“Where’s Tamany?” he said.
“She said she had to go to an audition.”
Luddie looked at her curiously. “What are you doing here?”
“Your phone was out of order. I needed to talk to you, so I came over.”
Luddie dusted his hands off and got to his feet. “Sorry I wasn’t home.”
“Luddie, how well do you know Tamany?”
“I don’t like to talk about my sponsees.”
“She’s a sponsee?”
“What’s so startling about that?”
Leigh tried to choose her words diplomatically. “I realize you like to be everybody’s Good Samaritan, but did you know the police are looking for her?”
“Really? She told me she’d cleaned up her act.”
“Luddie—what is her act? Do you know exactly what she does?”
“She’s an actress. And she baby-sits Happy and she runs errands for me. Any other questions?” Luddie looked around the living room. “Did she leave any mail for me?”
THE STAIRWELL WAS DIM with the grayness of perpetual evening. Just as Cardozo reached the landing a door opened, and the head of a young black woman popped out.
“Was that you?” she asked.
“It was me.”
“Were you ringing for me?”
“If you’re Tamany Dillworth.” And he could see that she was. He held out his shield case. “Vince Cardozo again. Can we talk?”
She held her head back, staring at him from wide-open eyes. “Of course. How are you? Look, I’m running late for an audition. Could we possibly postpone this?”
“I’ll only take a minute of your time.”
He followed her into the studio apartment.
The room was furnished modestly: a plain gray three-seater sofa that hid a bed but didn’t quite hide a trailing corner of pink-striped bed sheet, two matching plain gray chairs, a table stacked with theatrical publications and health-watch newsletters.
“Did I break a law?” She sat on the edge of one of the chairs.
Cardozo took the other chair. “Last Thursday, a little after two-thirty in the afternoon, our surveillance officer saw you take two cartons into Four-fifty-seven West Forty-ninth Street.”
He could feel her lining up the alternatives in her mind. Deny it, admit it—she was weighing the respective costs and benefits.
“That was an errand for my AA sponsor.”
“And who’s your AA sponsor?”
For a moment she didn’t answer. Her finger tapped against one of the Lucite pyramids dangling from her necklace. “His name is Luddie Ostergate.”
“What was in those cartons?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. One was heavy and rattled, one was heavy and didn’t rattle.”
“Which apartment did you take them to?”
She twisted a strand of hair in her fingers. “Look, couldn’t this please wait? I’m missing an audition.”
“I’m sorry, it can’t wait.”
“Rick Martinez’s apartment.”
“You’ve been taking mail to that apartment too. Why? What does Rick Martinez have to do with Luddie Ostergate?”
“Luddie rents a mailbox on West Forty-ninth. He pays me ten dollars a week to take care of it. Blue Cross goes to Luddie’s place. Junk mail and letters for Rick Martinez go to the apartment on West Forty-ninth. That’s all I know.”
“Did you personally know Rick Martinez?”
“Which one? Everyone who ever lived in that apartment was called Rick Martinez.”
“The most recent Rick.”
“I met him two or three times when I was dropping off mail.”
“Only when you were dropping off mail?”
“I ran into him once in a department store.”
“Which store?”
“Marsh and Bonner’s.”
“You ran into him or you were sent to run into him?”
“Luddie sent me.”
“Why?”
“He told me to go there and shop.”
“Shop for what?”
“It didn’t matter. He wanted me to set off the burglar alarm.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Luddie saved my life and I don’t ask why when he tells me to do things.”
Cardozo found Tamany Dillworth’s I-was-just-following-orders explanation a little hard to swallow. He couldn’t believe she saw no connection between that alarm and Oona Aldrich’s murder.
“You just spent over an hour in Luddie’s apartment. What were you doing there?”
“I was minding his kid for him till he got back.”
“Our surveillance officer says he didn’t get back.”
“A friend showed up and I left the boy with her.”
That had to be the dowdy woman with the kerchief. “Who was the friend?”
“Leigh Baker.”
Cardozo jumped up. “You left Leigh Baker in that apartment?”
SEVENTY-THREE
LEIGH CROSSED TO THE TABLE where she had left the two letters. For the first time she looked at the address. Her heart gave a sickening, lopsided lurch in her chest.
She turned and watched Luddie take off his jacket and drape it over the back of a chair. “Could I ask you something, Luddie? Why are you getting mail for Rick Martinez?”
The question hung a moment in the air, unanswered. Luddie seemed dissatisfied with the hang of his jacket. He rearranged it on the chair. The sound of Happy’s toy piano floated in from the bedroom.
Luddie smiled. “There are more Rick Martinezes in this city than the one that’s been so famous lately. The Rick Martinez you’ve got in your hand is me. It’s the name I used in my old soldier-of-fortune days.”
She gave him a long glance. The top letter had been postmarked two days ago. “Why do you use the name now?”
“My old employer still provides my health insurance.”
“I thought you’d severed all ties to them. At meetings you always call them your ex-employers—the bad guys from the bad old day
s.”
He sighed. “Not quite.”
The first two notes of “The Happy Farmer” repeated themselves, over and over, bell-like on the toy piano.
“Why does Tamany deliver your mail?”
Luddie shrugged. “It’s sent to my old address. She lives in the neighborhood.”
Leigh stood staring at Luddie. For the first time in her four years of start-and-stop sobriety, she didn’t believe her sponsor.
She looked at the second envelope. “And Al Nino Martinez? Who’s he?”
“It means to the Martinez child. Happy’s covered on my policy.”
“Why in Spanish?”
“My wife didn’t speak English. The hospital didn’t speak Spanish. They misunderstood her the night that Happy was born.”
She handed Luddie the letters. “What was your wife’s name?”
“Isolda.”
“She died the night Happy was born,” Leigh said.
Luddie nodded.
The sound of the toy piano came to her like a delayed echo, setting up a resonance in her memory. “And that’s the sound on my answering machine—Happy’s toy piano. You phoned me and left a message and Happy was playing his toy piano in the background and that’s how that sound got on my phone tape. You phoned Martinez and left a message and Happy was playing his toy piano and that’s how the sound got on Martinez’s phone tape. And Martinez used his phone tape in the boom box and that’s why the same sound showed up on my answering machine tape and the boom-box tape.”
The moment seemed to stretch out in space. A wave of silence and distance rushed in.
“You lied to me, Luddie. You told me resentment was poison. You told me to give up my resentments, the way you had. But you’ve never given yours up.”
She waited for him to deny it, to say the words that would make her life right again. But he didn’t speak. His face had a stunned look, as if she had thrown him completely off balance.
“You still work for the bad old company.” Understanding imploded on her. “You never stopped. The thrift shops are a front. Martinez was your agent. He was carrying out your revenge, not his. You sent him to kill six innocent people.”
Something metallic glinted in Luddie’s eyes, in the line of their narrowing. “They weren’t innocent.”
“Weren’t they? Who appointed you God—the CIA?”
“If they hadn’t been partying in that Emergency Room, Happy would have a mother today. I’d have a wife. Those selfish idiots took my family from me.”
“If all you got sober for was to kill people, you should have stayed drunk! You’re a clean and sober asshole!”
Luddie crouched down to pick up the revolver from the rug. His eyes never left her. “Leigh—just this once, shut your movie-star mouth.”
“Fuck you, Ostergate!”
He aimed the gun at her.
“I believed in you!” she shouted. “I was honest with you! You never believed in me, you never once were straight with me!”
Luddie drew in a deep breath. He clicked the safety off. His mouth shaped a half smile, and it left a sting as it flicked across her. “Because beneath that desperate veneer of occasional sobriety you’re the same as all your friends. So selfish you can’t even see the destruction you cause.”
“Don’t count on it.” She dove at him, hands flailing.
The barrel of the gun come down like a karate chop across her shoulder. She took a staggering step backward. The wall caught her and propped her up.
The barrel came down again and just as the shot ripped out, something pushed Luddie from behind and threw him off balance. Suddenly he was down on all fours, and Happy was running toward Leigh. She grabbed the child up into her arms. She lunged for the front door, twisted locks and slid bolts and couldn’t open it, twisted again, still couldn’t open it.
Behind her she heard Luddie trying to pull himself to his feet and pulling a bookcase down instead.
She twisted the lock the other way, and this time the door flew open.
The blood was thudding so hard through her veins that the image of the hallway trembled before her eyes. Pulling Happy with her, she ran to the elevator. She pressed the button. Ancient chains and counterweights clanked into motion. Too slow, she realized.
She pushed opened the door to the stairway. The clattering echo of her own footsteps pursued her. There was no light. There wasn’t time to find the switch. Her heart was pounding at her ribs, and a battle was going on in her lungs. She had to help
Happy down the steps one at a time. They reached the first half landing.
Above them the door slammed open.
“Bring him back,” Luddie shouted. “You’re not taking my son.”
THE ELEVATOR STOPPED. Cardozo stepped out onto the eleventh floor. He crossed to the door of Luddie Ostergate’s apartment.
He placed his ear against the wood, and that tiny pressure was enough to set the door in motion. It swung inward.
In front of him was a dark, narrow hallway opening into a wider, brighter room. The floor inside was littered with books, and halfway down the dimness he could see the humped shape of a bookcase lying on its side.
He stood listening, sniffing the silence. The faint, muffled vibration of a refrigerator came to him through the air.
He drew his gun.
He flattened himself against the wall and moved slowly forward. As he reached the end of the hallway he took a slow, deep breath, readying himself. He raised the gun in both hands.
He sprang forward, up and out and around the corner in one single, wall-hugging movement. His eye scanned the living room.
A man hog-tied with an extension cord lay unconscious on the floor.
IN THE DARK Leigh bent down toward the child, gripping him near, holding tight to his shoulders, feeling his terror and his heart beating against her.
On the landing twelve steps above, Luddie stood in a half crouch, his silhouette backlit by smoke-colored light washing in from the hallway. He held himself motionless. He had turned his head and angled it upward toward the next landing. She could feel him sniffing the darkness above him, reaching out for her with all his senses. The walls seemed to slant.
Now his head came slowly around and angled downward, toward her and the boy. As his head moved, the gun swept out a slow arc in front of him.
The door swung shut behind him, and darkness erased his shape.
Leigh’s eyes began playing tricks on her. The darkness seemed to sparkle with points of light. She had a drowning sense of standing on the edge of something about to happen, knowing she had to make her move now.
Her fingers went to the hummingbird brooch that she had pinned to her blouse. They found the catch, fumbled with it, snapped it open.
A little ping vibrated through the darkness.
She unpinned the brooch. She fixed her eyes on an imaginary point on the stairway above Luddie. She let her hand drop back. She pulled in a deep breath and swung the hand up. At the top of the swing she opened it. The hummingbird flew up into the vibrating blackness.
Time dilated. From the far side of a long silence the hummingbird clattered brightly on one of the steps near Luddie.
She sensed him shift position in the darkness. She heard him exhale, and the exhalation was directed away from her, toward the hummingbird. There was a metallic ricochet as the brooch bounced down a step, then another bright, clattering drop to the step below, then another and another.
And then absolute stillness, absolute blackness.
She heard the rustling movement of cloth against cloth.
Luddie yanked the door open. Light exploded, dousing her and the child in a bright silver spill.
For one instant Luddie’s eyes were searching the empty stairwell above him. The next instant he whirled and saw Leigh and the boy.
He took three steps down the stairway. He gestured with the gun. “Let the boy go.”
Leigh lifted her hand from Happy’s shoulder.
“Happy,” Luddie sa
id. “Come here.”
The child did not move.
“Come here!” Luddie barked.
A figure stepped onto the landing behind him. “Luddie. Drop the gun.” The voice was Vince Cardozo’s.
Luddie’s gun hand came down slowly and hung at his side.
“Drop it,” Cardozo repeated.
Luddie’s arms whipped up into firing position, and in one seamless movement, he turned toward Cardozo and dropped into a crouch.
As his knee struck the step he howled in sudden pain. He lurched up and backward. The gun fired. It was a wild, uncontrolled shot. There was a white flash and the bullet pinged into the wall.
Luddie was half standing now, both hands waving, trying to grab some balance from the empty air. He took a stumbling step backward. He was kicking crazily, as though an animal had sunk teeth into his left leg and wouldn’t let go.
He fired again. The recoil slammed him against the steel banister. His weight was centered high. The banister held him like a fulcrum. Momentum levered him over and flipped him out into the well.
He seemed to fall in slow motion, as though he were an image on a prerecorded tape dropping down the stairwell toward some final moment that had already, ineradicably happened.
When the police found Luddie’s body ten stories below, the pin of Leigh’s hummingbird brooch was stuck two inches deep into the flesh of his leg.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Monday, July 1
“DELANCEY DOESN’T WANT TO REOPEN the case,” Cardozo said.
Leigh lifted her gaze. “Neither does my agent.”
“Does that mean you’re working on another movie?”
A smile crept into her voice. “There’s nothing like a headline or two to stir up studio interest.”
They were sitting at the corner table at Archibald’s. Needle-hipped waiters barely managed to slide between crowded, jammed-together tables.
“Why did you pick this place for lunch?” Cardozo said. “I thought you were boycotting the salads here.”
“I’m not angry at Jim Delancey anymore. He’s the one who should be angry at me. So … here’s his chance.”
Cardozo caught something in her voice, in her eyes, that had not been there a month ago. “Sounds like you’ve decided to take some risks.”
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