Dark City Lights

by Lawrence Block

  “CAN WE GET A BOTTLE of the house red, Judy?”

  The restaurant was typically anonymous—lime green walls, glass-topped tables, a generic Italian menu—but he must have been a regular. Judy’s glance told me I should make a little more effort. Before I could think of something to say, he asked, “So where are you from?”

  “You made such a fuss about dinner to ask me that?”

  A grin. “Yeah, okay. I know you’re Irish.”

  “If you have a third cousin twice removed in Ennis, I don’t know her.”

  Still grinning. “No, no Irish relatives. I’m from Davenport. Iowa. That’s—”

  “I know where fecking Iowa is. How’d you get the limp?”

  “Football. American football. My ACL is shot.”

  He traded the grin for what I assumed he figured was a meaningful stare into the depths of my soul.

  “I guess I should tell you why I’ve called you here.”

  “You didn’t call me. You just appeared. Twice.” I should have been curious what he really wanted, but for the moment, I was enjoying our little tête-à-tête, which a shrink probably would have characterized as some kind of powerplay.

  “I work with a lot of nurses. I can tell when someone is meant to be a nurse. You shouldn’t have quit.”

  “Perhaps your perceptions aren’t as astute as you think. Mr. Richards’s family sure wouldn’t agree with you.” I emptied my wine glass in one go.

  He reached out as if to take my hand, but stopped short and showed me his palm.

  “Listen to me. I know not a day goes by that you don’t think about that night. About Mr. Richards. You didn’t do it deliberately, but I’ll never forget your expression when you realized what had happened. You looked at your hands. Just like you’re doing now.”

  He was right. I was staring at my hands.

  “Your life is stuck, and unless you want it to stay stuck forever, you need to do something about it. You need to go back to nursing.”

  “Look, not that it’s any of your business, but I’m fine. I have a great job. Wonderful friends. A cute flat. Apartment. I said my Hail Marys and moved on. Really. I guess I appreciate what you’re trying to do—you’ve sure made an effort—but it’s not necessary.”

  “That’s great, even if it is a pack of lies. I know it is. I saw how you interacted with patients. The depth of your compassion is unmistakable. You have to forgive yourself. You made a mistake that had a terrible outcome, but that shouldn’t stop you from fulfilling your potential.”

  I tried his stare-into-the-soul back at him. “I appreciate that you care. But I’m finished with nursing. Now, can we change the subject?”

  He obliged, sort of. He regaled me with tales from the hospital, about hilarious patients and inept colleagues. As he talked, I realized his eyes were a lovely dark green flecked with gold bits. The veal was better than I expected it to be, and I wondered if that had something to do with the company.

  “I’ll pay the check and then let’s go for a nightcap.”

  “No, I really do have to get home and feed the cat.”

  “Okay, I’ll just get a chicken breast to go and I’ll walk you home.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t worry about the chicken, but I will take you up on the walk home. I’ve been on edge with all the Central Park Jogger crap.”

  WE ENDED UP RUNNING MOST of the way back to my building through a fierce drizzle. I didn’t have a proper awning, so I pulled him into the foyer with me. As I checked the box for mail, I asked whether he’d like to come up for a coffee. I barely had the words out before he’d accepted and started toward the staircase.

  My flat was tidy, if tiny. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a visitor, and wasn’t sure what exactly the protocol was. The cat met us at the door, making it abundantly clear that she was not pleased that her dinner was late. She was all white with blue eyes and deaf as a doornail. As I set about emptying a can of mystery-meat pate into her bowl, he reached down and petted her cautiously.

  “She likes you.”

  “I’m glad. I would hate to be on her shit list. She’s obviously important to you.”

  I’d offered coffee, so I grabbed the bag of Bewley’s my da had sent, turned the gas on under the kettle that I always left full on the cooker, and pulled the top off the French press.

  “Cream and sugar?” I figured I sounded like a flight attendant.

  “Yes, please.” He was looking through the cassettes on the shelf attached to the wall.

  “You like traditional Irish music.”

  “Congratulations. You can read tape covers.” I realized I sounded like a real bitch. “Sorry. Yes. My da is a musician.”

  “I like the Chieftains.”

  “Everybody likes the Chieftains.”

  “Do you get back to Ireland much?”

  “No, not really. My sister was over for a visit a few months ago, and I ring my parents every weekend.”

  “Do you have a big family?”

  “Enough about me.” I put the mugs on the upside-down wooden crate that served as a coffee table in front of my miniature loveseat. He squeezed down next to me and took my hand.

  “I—”

  “I know.” I kissed him. Or let him kiss me. Either way, the coffee went cold while we relocated ourselves to my twin bed. The sex was entirely passable—not workmanlike and nothing to set off fireworks. It was . . . comfortable. Nice.

  Afterwards, he snored while I dug my book out of my bag and relocated back to the loveseat. The cat joined me; as much as she could be cranky, she was good company. When we were alone, I would read to her sometimes even though she couldn’t hear a word.

  I finished the last few pages of Lullaby and noted that the snoring had been replaced by the steady breathing of deep sleep. I stopped at the fridge en route back to the loveseat.

  The cat kneaded my lap while I observed my prehistoric hands scratching behind her ears. After a few minutes, she decided I was softened up enough and sat down, purring and still digging her nails into the side of my leg in the rhythm that’s built into feline DNA.

  I kept petting her as I thought about what he’d said, about my being meant to be a nurse. I was still considering this, wondering what about me had made him so certain, as I picked up the chilly syringe I’d already filled and had retrieved from the fridge. The cat didn’t feel a thing when her breathing slowed then stopped as the tranquilizer flooded her little body.

  I hadn’t been absolutely sure what would happen because etorphine is normally only used to subdue big wild animals. I had made some assumptions about the dosage, and had no idea whether it would cause seizures or other dramatic reactions. I had expected someone to question the order coming from a small Manhattan pet store that dealt in nothing larger than a French Bulldog, but it had simply arrived in the post.

  The cat’s death had been painless and peaceful, just like Mr. Richards’s had been.

  It had been easier in the hospital because I’d known exactly what he would be prescribed and when and precisely how much extra to administer to make sure he died before anyone realized what had happened. And I had the perfect cover story, of course—The Great Mistake—but I wasn’t thinking about that as I depressed the plunger. I was overwhelmed by the simple satisfaction of finally doing what I was meant to.

  My reverie was interrupted by a cough from the bed. I laid the cat’s corporeal form aside gently and picked up the second syringe.

  He jerked his arm and opened his eyes just as the needle pricked his vein. I suppose my expression was curious, because patients tend to reflect what they see in their caregivers, and his countenance held a thousand queries, but confidence made my grip strong and my ancient hands held. As his heart slowed and he pulled a few last labored breaths, he must have realized what I said to him right after he died:

  “I told you I wasn’t cut out to be a nurse.”

  THE SAFEST FORM OF CONVEYANCE

  BY JIM FUSILLIr />
  HIS MIND ON THE OFFICE, Fleming ran toward the elevator; it arrived promptly, and he was descending before he realized what he had done. Now he was trapped and would be until it arrived in the lobby twenty-seven floors below. His only hope was that no one would stop it and step in with him. If not, he would be freed in about forty seconds. Otherwise, the journey to open space and fresh air would take forever. Panic would set in, and he might collapse or he might explode; he would lose control. It had happened before and would happen again.

  Once freed, if Fleming could find a taxi he could race from the Upper East Side to the World Financial Center: across Central Park, pathways cleaving its great lawns; and along the Hudson River, high clouds, ferries crossing east, west, and free. He said he would be in by noon; now it was 11:30 a.m. Given he’d worked from home up until the moment the cable man arrived late, perhaps no one noticed he was absent. He’d sent emails, made several phone calls, printed and studied the revised Excel spreadsheet; they’d moved ahead without him, but by inches only. He could still contribute.

  The elevator passed the twenty-sixth floor. Already, Fleming was sweating under his suit jacket.

  His wife was in Washington, DC. Amtrak out of Penn Station at 6 a.m.; the National Gallery of Art was mounting a Klimt exhibition and her employer, the Frick Collection, was lending two paintings. She was doing well: associate curator at twenty-five. Four years her senior, Fleming worked hard to keep up.

  When they started dating, it had been difficult, nearly impossible, to conceal his anxiety. At Penn, he was chided for his neatness, his desire for organization, his promptness; a dormmate called him “Clock.” He admitted he lacked the gift of spontaneity. Everything had to be just so and as it had been before and must always be. It reduced his sense of “what if.” He sought to control the world as best he could. Sandy thought it was a sign of maturity. Everyone she’d ever gone out with, she told him, had been a boy. He behaved like a man. He was purposeful, she’d said.

  Twenty-fifth floor. “I’m supposed to marry a man like you,” she told him, as they lay in an upstairs room at her parents’ summer home on a New Hampshire lake, his prescription Xanax serving as a stabilizer. “I trust you’ll do well,” her father said as he secured a position for him at one of the Big Four professional services firms in New York.

  Sandy was used to him by now, and forgiving. He’d finally convinced her that it was never her fault.

  Twenty-fourth floor. The elevator descended slowly; his mind raced. He thought ahead: Usually, he rode the M20 bus south; on a good day, the trip from Lincoln Center to Liberty Street took an hour, and he could jump out at any stop if he felt enclosed or restricted. But today he didn’t have an hour to spend. If a taxi couldn’t be found—that was possible; it happens; it’s happened to him—he would have to take the subway. He’d be caught below ground in a tube jammed tight with strangers. At times, the subway was faster than a taxi. He knew that.

  He had no choice; none. He’d have to risk a panic attack. He needed to be in the office. He had to make his mark.

  Twenty-three. He looked at his wristwatch.

  He shuffled in place. To ward off the mounting fear, he zipped open his shoulder bag, which contained his laptop and table. He had the printouts inside. He could study the numbers. They might engage him. A copy of Fortune was in there, too. Last year, his father-in-law had been on the cover; a lengthy profile discussed his—

  The elevator jolted to a halt on the twenty-second floor.

  ON HER THIRD DAY IN the United States, Maritza Daválos took herself for a late-night walk along Riverside Park. Lights on the buildings across the Hudson glittered like diamonds on the black water; she felt a sense of peace: her aunt promised work, and soon her three young children would join her in New York. As she walked under a sheet of stars, she looked to the concrete beneath her feet and saw a five-dollar bill. She bent to retrieve it, and two men grabbed her, dragged her behind a row of bushes, tore her clothes, and took turns raping her. Surgeons wired her jaw and repaired an orbital bone. Her uncle told her she was a fool to walk alone.

  Two decades ago, but it explained the knife Davalos had hidden beneath the pile of laundry she carried. Though her son Pedro, who went by the name Petey, was now with the US Army at Camp Taji in Iraq, and her twins were graduate students at Marymount College, she never felt safe in America. She shuffled with her head bowed, her dark eyes drifting to avoid contact, and she screamed in bed at night. Only her family knew why she was this way. They knew she had been broken.

  Now Maritza Daválos entered the elevator, hands firm on the plastic handles of an unwieldy laundry basket. The washers and dryers were in the basement. She attended to five apartments in the white-brick building, providing maid services. She was trusted. She received a daily flat rate of thirty dollars per family; one hundred and fifty dollars a day for five hours’ work. Now and then, a tenant would ask her to babysit overnight. She agreed, but didn’t sleep. She sat in the darkness, the boning knife that had belonged to her uncle in her hand. It had a six-inch blade.

  Fleming stared at the timid woman, who turned her back to him as the elevator doors sealed shut. He had been thinking about dashing out and trotting down to street level twenty-one stories below. But now it was too late.

  He glanced at the plump woman’s sneakers: something to take his mind off his mounting anxiety. He tilted his head to count the eyelets.

  Davalos felt his gaze. Then she heard him begin to shuffle. His shoes scraped on the elevator floor.

  She looked at the numbers overhead.

  Her friend Irene worked on the eighteenth floor. Maybe she would arrive and tell the man to stop. Stop moving, stop staring, stop frightening my friend. Stop.

  Nineteen.

  FLEMING HAD AN ORANGE IN his shoulder bag. He took it out. He raked his thumbnail across its skin. The activity consumed five seconds.

  Davalos took notice of the scent, but didn’t turn. She didn’t want to acknowledge the sandy-haired man in the blue suit. If he would stop pacing, she could imagine he wasn’t there.

  Fleming knew the precise measurements of the elevator: 27.1 square feet; 4.5 feet by 6 feet. Standard size. Larger than a coffin.

  Eighteen.

  He researched elevators when his father-in-law gave them the apartment as a wedding gift. When Rafael Andros made the announcement at a table for three for brunch at Caravaggio, Fleming said nothing, though his stomach knotted. Sandy hesitated, but her father insisted, not unpleasantly. The least I can do, he said then, please. I want you nearby. Am I being selfish?

  No, Daddy, of course not.

  Apartment 27F. Let’s go see it. Mr. Andros put his napkin on the table.

  Fleming begged off. A headache. Nausea. “Robert . . .” Sandy said, with sympathy. She took his hand. Mr. Andros stared. Fleming wanted to tell him that anxiety was the result of a chemical imbalance, not a lack of character.

  “Enjoy,” Robby Fleming said then. He had begun to shake.

  An elevator was the safest form of conveyance. On average, about twenty-five Americans were killed in elevator accidents per year. The majority were the result of falls down elevator shafts. Redundancies in safety design made it next-to-impossible for an elevator to plummet to the ground floor. The per-trip fatality rate was 0.00000015 percent.

  Fleming didn’t worry he would be killed. He worried that he would be trapped.

  Seventeen.

  He was already trapped.

  THE KNIFE HAD BELONGED TO Davalos’s uncle. Late one night, as the moon hovered above the fire escape, he approached. She was asleep on the sofa; a crocheted blanket provided warmth, though not enough. She was accustomed to the temperate climate of Cuenca in her native Ecuador. New York was a frigid city; the wind whipped off the river and pushed her sideways. New York did not believe in mercy.

  “Maritza,” her uncle whispered. Rather than touch her, he rapped the sofa arm with the side of his fist. “Wake up.”

  She came to.
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  In Spanish, he said, “Maritza, hide this. Don’t let her see it.”

  She knew he meant her aunt. She took the knife by the handle.

  “Now you know,” he continued, his breathing labored. “Nobody is going to bother you no more.”

  She didn’t understand, but said nothing as he retreated toward his bedroom.

  In the morning, she retrieved the knife from under the cushion. It was dotted with dried blood.

  El Diario reported that a man had been killed in Riverside Park, his throat slashed. She followed the story. The next day, the newspaper said the victim had served time in prison for sexual assault.

  The victim.

  Now the man behind her sighed. To himself, he said, “Let’s go, let’s go . . .”

  Sixteen.

  Clearing his throat, he said, “Excuse me.”

  She pretended she hadn’t heard.

  “Miss,” he said with more urgency than he intended.

  Davalos stiffened.

  The man approached.

  She fumbled for the knife.

  He reached around her.

  She slashed at him as he extended an index finger to tap the button for the fifteenth floor.

  Blood spurted onto the panel.

  “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” Fleming said in disbelief. The gash crossed the back of his hand to the base of his thumb, and it continued to bleed.

  Fifteen.

  Davalos held the knife as if she feared he would attack. Laundry littered the elevator floor.

  Fleming said, “I was trying to—”

  She jabbed at him. He retreated.

  “I wanted to get out. That’s all.”

  He looked at his hand. He needed to stop the bleeding.

  Fourteen.

  There was a tiny T-shirt in the laundry, baby sized. Sliding his bag off his shoulder, he knelt down to retrieve it.

  Davalos stared, the knife ready.