by Ian Smith
Sterling lifted her supple body, then pulled back the covers and spread her across the small bed. He paused for a minute to admire her honey-colored skin and the way the curves had formed in all the right places on her slim frame. She smiled as if she knew what he was thinking. Then, unable to resist the temptation any longer, he enjoyed her for the next hour as if he were intent on making up for all of the time they had spent apart.
When they both were dressed again, Sterling walked her to two chairs near the window and took a seat. “A lot has happened and I know you have tons of questions. But I don't know if I have all the answers.”
Veronica ran her hand over his slick head. “How about start by telling me why you've shaved your hair off.”
Sterling gave one pass over his dome and enjoyed the prickly feeling of the short stubble that scraped the palm of his hand. “They think I killed Wilson, Ronnie. Right now they're spreading all across the city looking for me.”
Veronica covered her mouth with her hand. She was trembling. “So this is part of a disguise?”
“It's the best I could come up with on short notice,” Sterling said, reaching out to comfort her. “But I'm still open to suggestions.”
“I don't understand. Why would they think you'd kill your own brother, and then go up there and be part of the investigation? It just doesn't make any sense.”
“It's a long story. The bottom line is someone is trying to set me up for this. Three people are dead right now and whoever killed them must feel like I'm getting too close. What better way to get me off the trail than make it look like I did it? And it's working. Agents from the New York office are fanning out across the city right now searching for me. For us. It's going to get real dicey if I don't come up with some answers soon.”
Veronica's head slumped forward. She closed her eyes hard, but that didn't stop the tears from forming in them. “So everyone's looking for you right now? The murderer and the FBI?”
Sterling nodded. “At least until I can put everything together and nail the real killers. I know there's more than just one person behind all of this. I'm making progress, but I need to be out and moving if I'm going to solve these cases. If they pick me up, who knows how everything will play out?”
“Why can't you just sit down and tell them everything you know? It's not like you're a stranger. And you have an alibi. I was with you. Can't you just tell them that?”
Sterling smiled at her innocence and stroked her hair. Looking into her eyes, even as they filled with tears, reminded him how much he had missed falling asleep and waking up with her curled beside him. At that moment he felt the urge to tell her how badly he wanted to love her forever. But there'd be enough time to get into all of that once they had put this behind them. He leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks, then passionately on the lips.
“It's complicated, Ronnie,” he said. “When people in my profession smell blood, their only instinct is to hunt until they can actually taste it. Even if it's the blood of their own.”
As she held her arms around his neck, he moved the shade and peeked out the window. He didn't like what he saw.
“What is it?” she asked.
He quickly pulled her to the floor and took another glance out the window. Two men in identical dark suits were walking down Tenth Street toward the hotel. He recognized the big one right away—Skip Dumars. Both men already had their weapons drawn. They would be fast on the trigger the minute they spotted him.
“Where's the gun and the money?” he asked.
“In the closet. Why? What's wrong?”
“They tracked me here. I don't know how in the hell they did it. I was sure no one followed me. Did you use your cell phone?”
“No, you told me not to. I just made one call from the room phone.”
“Ronnie, I told you—”
“I tried calling your cell, but you didn't answer. I was going crazy not hearing from you. What was I supposed to do?”
Sterling ran to the closet and grabbed the Glock 36, preferring this to the Beretta Tomcat he typically carried because it had a longer barrel and was more accurate at greater distances. He motioned for Veronica to go near the door as he took a position at the window. They were still half a block away and Skip Dumars was leading the charge. He had to stall them.
“Go throw your clothes into a bag,” he said. When Veronica had moved across the room, he lifted the window several inches and fired two shots across the street at a rusted car whose windshield had been papered with orange parking tickets. The car was far enough away from the advancing men that they were in no danger of getting hit, but the loud implosion of the windshield scared them enough for them to hit the ground and roll over behind a row of parked cars. He closed the window and grabbed Veronica. They ran the hallway, then down the two flights of steps. Sterling opened the door to the main floor of the hotel and put a finger up to his mouth for her to be quiet. He walked about five feet, then turned down another short hallway. At the end of the hall, he opened a narrow steel door that had been painted to look like it was part of the wall. He pulled a rope handle and a second door split in half, the top part lifting and the bottom half sliding down.
“What is this?” Veronica asked.
“A dumbwaiter. Get in.” Sterling pushed her forward, but she resisted. “Dammit, Ronnie, get in. We don't have time to debate.” Sterling gave her a big shove into the darkness, then followed her, closing the door and pushing a red button on the side of the elevator shaft. The elevator was slow to start, groaning and screeching as the pulleys and gears clicked into place. He remembered this dumbwaiter from a night when the police raided the hotel. He noticed one of the regulars fleeing from her room, but instead of running for the exit like everyone else, she slipped down the back hall. He gambled and followed her even as she climbed into the dumbwaiter. She showed him the tunnel that led out the back of the building, explaining that in the late thirties the hotel had belonged to a wealthy artist whose staff had used the elevator to serve the weekly parties he held in the mansion. Most of the DeWitt employees didn't even know the dumbwaiter existed, but those like herself who often needed to leave in a hurry and undetected had come to rely on the hidden contraption and the tunnel leading to the back alley.
When they reached the basement, Sterling grabbed Veronica's hand and pulled her through the darkness. Two quick lefts, then he kicked hard and daylight poured in. Police sirens rang off in the distance, and Sterling knew it would be only a matter of minutes before cops had encircled the entire block. He and Veronica were traveling east on Ninth Street, but a platoon of cruisers was heading in their direction. They turned south on Avenue C but were stopped by another cruiser barreling toward them, going up the narrow street in the wrong direction. Then Sterling saw the large blue van marked DREW'S UNIFORMS AND CLEANING. A short man with thick, hairy arms was coming out of the East Village Bed and Coffee Shop carrying a large box of dirty uniforms. “Jump in,” Sterling shouted, hoisting Veronica into the van first, then jumping in himself. He landed somewhere near her and was immediately assaulted by the smell of grease, stale food, and dried sweat as he buried himself under the mound of filthy uniforms. The driver's hollow whistle grew louder. The siren from the cruiser also seemed to grow louder. A new batch of soiled uniforms landed atop the heap, then the back door slammed shut. The truck's engine started, the scratchy radio blared, and they were moving.
Hidden underneath the uniforms, Sterling couldn't see out the side window, but he kept track of the truck's movements in his head. It stopped after about seventy feet, which meant it had pulled up to the corner of Eighth Street. The loud wail of sirens was coming from the west, which meant they were driving away from the hotel and the massive manhunt that was under way. Sterling held his breath, wondering if the truck would turn left toward the mayhem or right to their future escape. He cradled his gun just in case he needed to persuade the driver of the turn he needed to make.
The engine revved and the truck leaned to the
right. It rolled ahead without stopping for the next several minutes. The sirens had been replaced with honking cars, and Sterling slowly cleared a hole in the uniform heap so that he could see where they were. He saw the back of the driver and almost laughed when he noticed the two phone books the man used to lift himself in the seat. Sterling craned his neck to see out the front window. The truck was traveling north now on Avenue D. They passed a school on the corner of 12th Street, then stopped on 13th Street. Sterling watched as the driver hit the hazard lights, jumped out of the cabin, then opened the side door and grabbed a metal crate for his next pickup. Once the driver had cleared the truck, Sterling quickly tossed aside the uniforms and stood.
“Let's go,” he said, burrowing through the uniforms to find Veronica. “He stopped to make another pickup.”
Sterling couldn't stop himself from smiling when Veronica's face emerged. She wore the expression of someone who had opened a refrigerator full of spoiled milk and rotten meat.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I smell like shit.”
“But shit never looked this pretty.”
“Not bad, Romeo. You really know how to lift a girl's spirits.”
Sterling checked the door first to make sure the driver wasn't near the truck, then jumped out and caught Veronica as she followed. Two men sharing a smoke at the corner pointed toward them and laughed. Sterling ignored them, grabbed Veronica's bag with one hand and her with the other, then broke out into a jog heading north to 14th Street. Veronica pointed toward the corner where a police van sat double parked outside a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop. Sterling waited for the traffic to stop, then moved her into the dense pack of bodies crossing the street. They followed the swarm west along 14th Street until they reached the subway station on First Avenue. They raced down the steps and in seconds disappeared on the crowded L train screeching its way through the dark New York underground.
41
Sterling walked out onto 138th Street and looked left, then right before taking deep gulps of the cool night air. His stomach was full, his body washed, and his clothes replaced with a pair of old jeans and a roomy black sweat jacket. He turned back and looked up at the old scrubbed edifice of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. If there was anyone he could trust to take good care of Veronica, it would be Reverend Briggs, the savvy and popular senior pastor of the famed Harlem church. Sterling considered Reverend Briggs a savior and it had little to do with his starched white pastor's collar. Along with Dr. Lieteau, Reverend Coleman Briggs had pulled him from the steel claws of depression and depravity. The determined minister never gave up on Sterling, visiting him daily in the hospital after the beating at the Hotel DeWitt, then bringing him into his own home once he was well enough to leave the hospital. Mrs. Briggs, a strong and colorful disciple with a spiritual fervor that rivaled her husband's, nursed Sterling back to physical health, promising him that she wouldn't let him out until he was steady enough on his own two feet not just to walk but to run. Even after that experience, Sterling never became a deeply religious man, but he still found himself making a small sign of the cross in front of the towering granite statue of Christ. He thanked the sacred walls of Abyssinian for once again providing the safety and comfort he desperately needed.
At the corner of Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, known outside of Harlem as Seventh Avenue, Sterling stopped one of the black gypsy cabs and bargained a fare all the way down to Penn Station. He sat behind the driver, hoping to discourage conversation, but it wasn't until he had delivered several one-word answers that the spirited young Haitian man got the message. He turned on one of the hip-hop stations and sang along as Sterling mapped out a plan.
It was only seven in the evening and he would dedicate the remainder of the night to looking through Wilson's papers. He was counting on something in the e-mails or printed documents that would give him the snag he could pull to unravel a deeper connection between Wilson and Heidi Vorscht. It still bothered him that Wilson had confided in a graduate student yet explicitly told Mandryka they should keep their discoveries a secret until the case report had been finished and published. What was it about Heidi? What was she up to? Vivian Sinclair had said Heidi possessed unbelievable charm, but Sterling now wondered if it was charm or powerful abilities of manipulation.
Sterling had the taxi driver drop him off on Eighth Avenue, a couple of blocks south of Madison Square Garden. He checked the entrance for uniforms or agents, then joined the heavy flow of people walking down into the belly of Penn Station. This was a perfect time for him to slip in as the last of the evening rush hour commuters filled the station, waiting under the big board for the announcement of their gates. He looked into the faces of the exhausted men and women lugging briefcases and bags, some of them chomping on pretzels because it would be too late to eat dinner by the time they arrived home in the suburbs. Sterling made his way down the east corridor of the station, avoiding the National Guard booth before slipping into the locker hallway. He inserted the key into the locker, grabbed the box, then headed with all the others rushing to the subway lines. He pulled down his skullcap before passing through the subway turnstile and waited just seconds on the elevated platform before jumping onto the uptown 9 train.
Riding the cramped, dirty subway for the third time in one day made Sterling long for his Porsche. He wondered if they had already impounded it, claiming they were searching for clues but mostly trying to irritate him, knowing how careful he was with it. The thought of Skip Dumars gripping the steering wheel nauseated him. By now they had turned both of his apartments, the one down in Virginia and the one here in the city, upside down looking for evidence. Dumars probably had been thrilled searching through his personal belongings. Sterling prayed that they hadn't found his psychiatry bills.
The train made numerous local stops before Sterling exited at 116th Street/Columbia University. Just inside the school's gate, he found a campus phone and asked the operator for Bettie Hill, Department of Adolescent Psychology.
Bettie was one of Sterling's old flings, but unlike his others, their relationship had dissolved amicably and both had walked away feeling fulfilled. They had spent one hot, lustful summer together, but both knew that it would never amount to anything more than that. She was serious about her graduate studies and he was serious about not being serious. Without either of them having to utter the words, they both knew when it was over.
“Extension 2498,” the operator came back on. “Can I connect you?”
“Please.” Sterling waited as the phone rang. If Bettie wasn't teaching a class, she could almost always be found in her office. Ever the ambitious academic, she had earned her doctorate early and found her way onto the Columbia faculty, where sometimes she taught students twice her age.
“Hill,” a woman's voice curtly answered. It was obvious the phone had distracted her from something more important.
“Blinky, it's me.” That was the nickname Sterling had given her that summer. It had something to do with a pair of hot-pink shorts she liked to wear.
“Sterling Bledsoe?”
“In the flesh.”
“Where in the hell have you been?” She perked up now.
“I've been around,” Sterling said. “Same drill. Trying to catch the bad guys and still looking for a rich wife who'll support my golfing addiction when I retire.”
“I see you're still delusional. The more things change, the more they stay the same.” That had always been one of his lines.
“And how are you, Blinky? Let me guess. Right now you're hunched over a bunch of term papers marking them up in red.”
“About right. Semester's over in a month and I'm way behind. Vacation can't come fast enough. So to what do I owe the pleasure? I'm sure you're not calling to talk about my teaching woes.”
“I'll cut to the chase, Blinky. I need your help. And I need it right away.”
“Uh-oh. The last time I helped you I found myself on my back looking up at the stars in Central Park.�
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“You enjoyed it just as much as I did.”
“Never said I didn't. I just fell behind an entire summer's worth of research.”
Sterling thought about that first night. They had met in front of Butler Library. She was on her way to the movies, alone, and he was looking for Fayweather Hall. He asked her for directions and after a short exchange, neither made it to their planned destination. He remembered how her hair had been tucked under a Yankees cap, and she'd worn just enough lipstick to make him want to kiss her for days.
“No directions this time,” Sterling laughed. “I need to borrow your computer for a little while.”
The request surprised her. “My computer? For what?”
“I have some disks here with documents I need to print out. But I need to do it soon.”
“How soon?”
“Right now.”
“Doesn't the FBI provide you guys with basic computer equipment?”
It was a fair question. “It's not that simple,” Sterling said. “I don't need just your computer and printer. I also need your discretion.”
“Discretion? Sterling, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Not exactly. Just a temporary jam. Don't worry, everything will be worked out in a couple of days. So will you help an old friend?”
“I don't know, Sterling. I still have twenty papers sitting on my desk that need to be graded by tomorrow morning.”
“I promise I'll be quick.” There was a long pause. Sterling knew she was struggling not to say yes.
“Do you remember how to find my office?” she said, relenting.
“How could I ever forget?”
You didn't say you had all of that to print.” Bettie Hill stood with her hands on her hips looking down at the box of disks. “That could take all night.”
“I'll be done in a couple of hours,” Sterling said. He planted a long kiss on her cheek before pushing his way past her to the computer. A meditation candle burning on the corner of her desk made the room smell like jasmine. In typical fashion everything was in perfect order, including the pens on her desk, which had been arranged on the glass top with all the caps lined up in the same direction.