Harlan Coben

by The Best American Mystery Stories 2011

  Once she was gone, there was nothing there but an empty house and a lot of hours between waking up and falling asleep. Gerald cleaned and straightened until there was nothing left to clean and straighten; then he tried to get his job as a building inspector back, but the contracting business had moved on, far on, from the last time he worked. The site was now run by a kid who had been an intern when Gerald retired. He had laughed and put his hand on Gerald’s shoulder when he brought up returning to work. Gerald watched the light drain from the kid’s eyes, watched the uncomfortable tension slide in, when he realized Gerald was serious. The kid forced the smile back onto his face. “We’d love to have you back, Gerald,” he said, “but it’s just not safe to have a seventy-four-year-old on a construction site.”

  Gerald had smiled and nodded, shook the kid’s hand. His hand seemed old and callused in the young man’s grip. It felt bulky in his pocket as he walked away from the site. Gerald’s hair was white by now, even though he parted it the same way he had when he was thirty. His skin was weathered and wrinkled. Everything around him was new. He didn’t fit.

  He took an office downtown, a small dusty room with a big window that was full of sun and blue sky in the mornings. He told people he was going to be a freelance writer. He didn’t write much—a humor piece for the local tabloid, a few halfhearted attempts at a memoir; mostly he looked out the window and breathed in the musty air. He just liked the rhythm it gave to his life, this waking up and getting ready and going to work and coming home, although every morning it got harder to get off that bench and onto the train. And then he found his pickpocket.

  She followed patterns that no one but Gerald knew. She entered from the south entrance, the one with the stairs, rather than the escalator. She skipped down the stairs and moved close to the tracks, leaned her back against a cement pillar. She faced straight down into the black hole of the tunnel, but her eyes darted around—light, searching. She stood at the pillar a few minutes. When the first train came rumbling up the tunnel and the crowds pressed right up to the edge of the track, she drifted in, melted right into the throng, and when the doors hissed open, she made her move. Gerald had seen her unzip purses and unhook wallets from chains while the crowd jostled and shoved. She snatched a silver fountain pen from a stockbroker’s breast pocket, plucked a small jewel out of an Indian woman’s scarf. Then, as the crowd disappeared behind the sliding doors and was shuttled away from her, she slipped her prizes deep in her jacket, slid out the north entrance, and was gone until tomorrow.

  She was interesting, a diversion for a while, until the day she pickpocketed the cop. The cop was young and nervous-looking, and he stalked around the station every other day and ran out the bums who begged for change. He stood over a bum on a Wednesday morning.

  “Got to move along, buddy,” he said.

  The bum looked up at him. “Come on, man,” he said.

  “No panhandling in here.”

  “Cut me a break.”

  “Don’t make this hard,” the cop said. He wore a heavy utility belt loaded down with radio and gun and baton and other cop stuff. Everything was held down by leather straps with snaps on them. He unsnapped the pepper spray. ‘“Just move along.”

  The train rumbled in and the doors opened and the crowd sardined its way into the waiting cars, and as Gerald watched, his pickpocket wove her way in between the people and up behind the cop, nicked the pepper spray right out of his belt, and scuttled on out the north entrance. The cop reached for his belt, fumbled thin air, looked down with confusion.

  “Watch out for those damn ghosts,” the bum said, laughing, grinning a dirty-toothed grin.

  Gerald fell in love with her that morning.

  Gerald stood at the edge of the crowd with his hand against a pillar. He ran his finger over the cold, gravelly cement. The subway station always smelled of metal and soap, of machines and people just out of the shower. A thin man in a suit stood beside Gerald, one of those phone earpiece things attached to him, making him look like a robot. He yelled at whoever was on the other end of the phone, like he was yelling into thin air. Two kids with lunchboxes sat side by side on a bench. One punched the other on the arm, and they both laughed.

  All around Gerald the crowd hummed, feet clicking and sticking on the cold ground.

  She came in through the south entrance, her sunglasses on, her jackets zipped up against the November cold. She leaned against her pillar. Gerald watched her out of the corner of his eye. He could feel her looking around, looking at him. He slid his hand further up the pillar, his jacket falling further open, his wallet inching out of the inside breast pocket. An inch and a half of leather showing now. She had to see it.

  The train snaked into the station. The doors opened. The crowd surged and shoved around him; he looked at her pillar, and she was gone. A woman with a bagel smushed into him, got cream cheese on his coat.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled without looking at him.

  The crowd pressed him into the car and the doors shut behind him. Warmth was everywhere, coming from the car’s heater, coming from the bodies pressed against each other. The odor of coffee on the air. Gerald felt his pocket. The wallet was gone.

  The train began to move and the station slid away outside the window. Gerald watched his pickpocket as she edged through the crowd toward the north entrance.

  He held on to the metal rail above his head and smiled as the train plowed into the darkness. Graffiti raced by on the tunnel walls. He closed his eyes and pictured his girl, climbing up the stairs and into the cold hard air of the city, scooting along the sidewalk, head down, hands in her pockets while the wind whips her hair around. She turns down an alley and tucks herself into a corner behind a dumpster. She unzips her coat, pulls the wallet out, and opens it, rifles through it, stares. No money, no credit cards, no ID. Just a piece of paper. She holds it in her little pink fingers. One side says BUSTED. She flips it over. So audacious. Find me tomorrow. She huffs, pouts, crumples the paper, sticks it back in her pocket. She fumes. A tiny ball of fire.

  Gerald smiled and felt his feet rocking with the train.

  She was there the next morning. She leaned against her pillar, her arms crossed, her top teeth biting into her bottom lip. She stared at Gerald. He sat on the bench and stared back while people cut back and forth between them. The subway came and went. She let the crowd and all their wallets and purses and jewelry walk right by in front of her. Then the station was nearly empty: the cashiers were changing shifts, the cop was heading out the north entrance, and the pickpocket padded across the concrete, the soft pat of her shoes echoing around the station. She stopped in front of him and crossed her arms again.

  “What was that all about?” she said.

  Gerald smiled at her. He put his palms on the bench and leaned back, crossed one leg over the other. “Surprised?” he said.

  “Are you going to turn me in?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  He looked at her feet. She wore black ballet slippers. “I see you every morning,” he said. “Just wanted some company, I suppose.”

  “Are you trying to hit on me?”

  “No.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I’m not trying to hit on you.”

  “Okay.” She looked around the room. A janitor was wandering around with one of those grabber-claw things, picking up coffee cups and fruit-bar wrappers. She sat down beside Gerald and pulled the crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket. She looked at it, flipped it over, turned it between her fingers. “What does audacious mean?”

  “You’ve never heard it before?”

  “No.”

  He took the paper from her. “It means daring, bold.”

  “So audacious.”

  “Yup.” He handed the paper back to her. She folded it up and slipped it neatly into a pocket. She looked at her feet. Pushed her hair back behind her ears.

  “I’m Gerald. What’s your n
ame?”

  She licked her lips. “You think I’m audacious?”

  “I do.”

  “So just call me Audacious.”

  “You don’t have a name?”

  “Not that I’m going to tell you.”

  “Well, Audacious is a little long for a name.”

  “So shorten it then, whatever. I’m not telling you my real name.” She stood up.

  “Shorten it? Like Audi?”

  She stood in front of him, zipped her jackets up, first the denim one, then the Windbreaker. “Like the car?”

  “As in short for Audacious.”

  “Fine then. Audi.” She turned around, headed for the north entrance.

  “See you tomorrow?” Gerald said. His voice bounced off the walls of the station.

  She tucked her hands into her jacket and walked out of sight.

  He brought her coffee the next morning. Audi stood across the station and stared at him until the train left, then came and sat down beside him. Didn’t say a word.

  “I thought you’d like it sweet. I put lots of sugar in it. Lots of cream,” Gerald said.

  She took it from him. “Thanks,” she said. She took a sip, licked her lips. “You know, this is two days in a row I’ve missed a score because of you.”

  “Whoops.”

  “You’re going to have to help me out if you keep this up,” she said. She smiled at him. The gums above her top teeth showed pink and tender. Her dark eyes sparkled. Gerald felt himself filling up inside.

  “I brought you coffee,” he said. “What else do you want?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  For two weeks she was there every morning. Gerald missed his train to talk to her. He showed up late to the office every day. Not that there was anyone who would notice.

  Audi told him about herself. She was twenty-two years old, had been fending for herself for the last six years. She ended up on the street when her boyfriend left her. He owned a house, begged her to move in. She did, and a month later he’d had enough of her.

  “Get your shit and move out—that’s all he said to me,” Audi said, turning her coffee cup around in her palms. “I knew my parents wouldn’t let me back in; they were all pissed off that I left in the first place. So I went downtown to stay with one of my girlfriends. She said there wasn’t room, and that was that. I started sleeping in here.” She waved her arm, gestured to the cavernous space.

  “In the station?” Gerald said.

  “Over behind those vending machines. It’s warm back there, the machines make it warm, and there’s space. And the cops don’t look back there.”

  “Not the most comfortable place in the world, though.”

  “No.” She drank her coffee and looked at the vending machines. “But I hung around here enough that I figured people out. And started stealing their stuff. It’s easy. And I got enough to pay a sixth of the rent at this place.” She told him about the apartment, a place downtown where she stayed with a half-dozen other people her age, the population of the apartment constantly in flux as people disappeared and new ones showed up. She slept on the kitchen floor. Rent was cheap.

  “And you’re happy there?” Gerald said.

  “No.”

  She leaned forward, her paper cup dangling from her fingertips. She scrunched her face and looked at the ground. Her jackets bunched up around her shoulders, her back. Gerald held his hand behind her, an inch from her back, thought about it, watched her, and finally rested his palm flat and gentle against her jacket.

  “You know, I’ve got extra space, if you ever need somewhere to stay,” he said.

  “I’m not going to have sex with you.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “You’re old enough to be my granddad.”

  “Probably so.”

  He left his hand on her back while another train came and went. Audi was gone the next day. He sat on the bench with a cup of coffee in each hand and watched four crowds get into four trains. Then he went home.

  The city turned dark, gray, and frigid as the month wore on. The streets were slick and the tall buildings looked like they were cut from wet cardboard and stuck against the sky.

  Each morning Gerald sat at the station, scanning the platform for her, searching the overcoat-wearing, briefcase-toting crowd. He noticed women with their purses hanging loose and open from their shoulders. Men shouting into cell phones while their briefcases sat unwatched beside them. A treasure trove of targets. But no Audi.

  Gerald watched through the window of his office as the winter came in fast and cold. The snow blew in sideways and piled in dirty drifts along the edges of the rooftops. The pigeons at first huddled together in the rafters and eventually disappeared altogether. Gerald tried to fill the hours in the day. He balanced his checkbook. He did crossword puzzles. He wrote, toying around with different stories, far-fetched tales with beautiful female pickpockets as the leading characters. Mostly he just looked out the window. He wondered if Audi’s apartment had a heater. He wondered if she’d really had an apartment to begin with.

  He went by the market near his house every day on his way home. He liked putting his hands on the fresh vegetables, weighing the ripe fruit. He walked slowly, taking his time, planning his meals as he wandered the aisles. This took time. Bringing it all home and cooking something also ate up the evening. By the time everything was eaten and cleaned up, it was almost time to go to bed, and another day was over.

  A week before Christmas, he was sauteing onions when he heard the knock. He left the onions sizzling in the skillet and went to the door. Audi was there, the wind blowing cold and wintry around her, her hands deep in her pockets, her ballet shoes wet with dirty snow.

  She looked at the ground, made patterns in the sludge with her toe. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” Gerald said. He stepped aside and she came in.

  He put on a pot of coffee; then he made a huge omelet with eight eggs, green peppers, onions, chopped-up smoked sausage. Audi sat at the kitchen table with her hands folded in front of her and didn’t speak. She watched him cook. He cut the omelet in half with the spatula and put half on a plate and set it in front of her. He sat down with the rest of it and began to eat it right out of the skillet. Audi stared at her plate.

  “You don’t like eggs?” Gerald said.

  “They’re fine,” she said. “It just looks pretty. I don’t want to mess it up.”

  “It’s just an omelet.”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had an omelet.”

  She ate, and she told him the story, how she’d come home to her apartment and found the door boarded up, how she didn’t even know who the landlord was, how she had no idea what happened. She found one of her roommates on a bench at the park. He told her the rest.

  “Drugs or something,” Audi said. “The guy said that the cops came and busted them, and after that the landlord kicked everybody out. Boarded the place up. Said she’d had enough of renting to worthless kids.”

  “Shame,” Gerald said. “Not really your fault.”

  “Hmm.”

  She finished her plate, and he took it from her and put it in the sink. He poured her a cup of coffee and sat back down at the table. She held it tight between her hands.

  “How did you find my house?” Gerald said.

  “Followed you one day, a few weeks ago.” She pushed her hair back. Looked from the cup to Gerald and back again. “You said I could come if I needed to.”

  “I know I did. And you’re welcome to. I just wondered how.”

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  “You’re not.”

  She drank the coffee. “The food was good,” she said.

  They sat at the table in silence and drank their coffee. The snow started to come down again, edging against the windowsill like silent white feathers. Frost coated the glass. The heater kicked on with a groan, and the warm air blew through the kitchen. Audi squished her shoes against the tile.
>
  “You want some dry clothes?” Gerald said.

  She nodded. Gerald left her at the table and went upstairs. He had a walk-in closet in his bedroom; the right side was full of his stuff, on the left still hung all of Dolores’s clothes. He hadn’t known what to do with them. Her shoes were lined up neatly against the wall, except for a pair of heavy brown boots—the last shoes she’d worn—thrown haphazardly in the corner, exactly where she’d left them. He took a selection of shirts and pants and carried them back downstairs.

  Audi was sitting on the couch in the living room when he got back. Gerald laid the clothes out on the coffee table in front of her.

  “So retro!” she said, fingering the frilled sleeves of a scarlet blouse. “Where’d you get all this stuff?”

  “It was my wife’s,” Gerald said.

  Audi nodded and looked at the clothes.

  “She died a few years ago,” he went on.

  “Of what?”

  “Stroke.”

  Audi picked up a pair of brown slacks and stood up. She held the slacks in front of her and looked down, lifted her leg, twisted her toes. “Do you miss her?”

  He nodded. “Often.”

  “I’m going to put these on,” she said. She took the scarlet blouse and the brown slacks and went into the bathroom. She was in there a long time. Gerald turned on the TV. A rerun of The A-Team was on. Mr. T beat someone up. Gerald turned down the volume.

  “What was her name?” Audi said. She was standing in the doorway, looking slim and clean and young in his wife’s clothes.

  “Who?”

  “Your wife.”

  “Oh. Dolores. Her name was Dolores.”

  Audi looked at her reflection in the dark window. “Very pretty,” she said, flexing her arm, turning around and standing on her tiptoes. The snow fell quiet and heavy.