—
ALL WAS QUIET on the floor above Jonah’s head. On the other side of the laundry-room door, the only sound was a low, rhythmic whistle of a wheeze. The pit bull was asleep. Finally.
Dog and master were so in sync, Cigarette Man must have gone to sleep, too.
Slowly, gently, Jonah turned the knob to open the door.
Resistance.
He knew the bolt had not gone into its slot, but it must be overlapping the door frame. By how much? Jonah pushed harder and heard the bolt move, grating against the wood. He stopped. He held his breath the better to listen, but the dog’s breathing was unchanged. The boy exhaled. He reached out to try the door again, but it had swung open of its own accord.
His sneakers dangled by the tied laces strung around his neck, and the mop handle was in his right hand. In barefoot silence, he crossed the threshold, turned to a position of ten o’clock and softly padded the sixteen paces across the cool cement floor. Before reaching out to touch the banister, he knew he was at the foot of the stairs leading up to the kitchen door. The fourth step would creak and so would the ninth. He must step over them or the dog would be on him, shredding his skin in a bloody horror fest.
Go for it, said Aunt Angie. Life is so worth it. Life is everything. I wish I could’ve stayed a little longer.
20
His favorite bar was dismally unsuccessful and delightfully uncrowded, assuring him of attention at the crook of a finger. He liked that so much.
Dwayne Brox sipped brandy as he read the final passage of a novel by Franz Kafka, a rare German departure from his love of Russian classics. When his regular cocktail waitress returned, he planned to impress her with his critique of the author as a comedian of sadism. She would flatter him and smile, as if his affect did not repulse her, thus earning herself a generous tip. And this was his idea of a date. Like most attractive women of his acquaintance, she would never go out with him—never go home with him. But that was a call girl’s job, not hers.
He closed his book and turned to the window on the street. Out there at the curb, a familiar asshole was exiting a taxi. Dwayne had detested him since they were boys. Oh, really. For this occasion, the fool wore a tie with the colors of their alma mater, Fayton Prep. The former classmate approached the street door, all nerves and tics, jerking his head this way and that, as if he suspected that someone, anyone, might care to follow him around town. Upon entering the bar, he walked toward Dwayne’s table, extending a hand in the spirit of schoolboy camaraderie. So needy. Always begging for a sign of acceptance.
Not in this lifetime.
“Hello, Tuck.”
And goodbye?
Samuel Tucker’s outstretched hand fell to his side as he took one step back, and then he ceased to move at all.
Mildly curious, Dwayne waited for the man to blink.
Oh, my! There was Detective Mallory standing outside close to the window and looking in—at Tuck. She pointed no gun at him, nor was there anything disagreeable about her, but she evidently had a Medusa knack for turning fools to stone.
Good job.
Tuck came alive again—nearly alive. Oh, dear, so pale. He spun on one heel and raced for the door. At a slower pace, Dwayne followed him out of the bar to linger on the sidewalk. He watched Tuck run down the street, calling out to a slow-moving cab, and chasing that car down as dogs were wont to do.
The pretty cop now stood beside Dwayne, and her eyes were on the car chase when she asked, “Friend of yours?”
“I don’t have any friends.”
Detective Mallory stepped off the curb and rounded a small silver convertible to slide in behind the steering wheel. A Volkswagen? Well, that make of car would not work with her wardrobe or her psyche. No, not at all. Now, that was interesting.
—
JONAH COUNTED HIS WAY UPWARD, his bare feet passing over the two cellar steps that creaked. He stopped to concentrate on the wheezy whistling of the sleeping dog below. He had no faith in the light mop handle as a weapon against a pit bull.
Next step, last step.
He reached out for the knob, but the kitchen door was wide open. Was this more of Cigarette Man’s carelessness? Or did he always leave it that way so he could hear the dog bark? Jonah entered the kitchen. Five steps to the table. He skirted it and turned left to face the living room. His feet remembered the way, and, ten steps in, he rounded an armchair, continuing on to the far wall to graze it with fingertips and find the way out.
One hand closed on the ball of a doorknob, and it turned easily, but the door would not open. So there would be a deadbolt to undo—just like home. His fingers lightly climbed the frame to find a small piece of rounded metal that would open the bolt at a twist. This done, he tried the knob again. No good. Uncle Harry had three locks, and now Jonah searched for another bolt. Higher up the frame, he touched a thick plate with a protruding chunk of metal—nothing to twist, no chain to slide. Fingertips sensitized to reading dots of braille traced the shape of a ragged crease in the metal.
An opening to fit a key? Yes, he would need a damn key to unlock this door from the inside.
Abandoning that escape route, fingers traveled along the wall in search of a window. His hand brushed over curtains to find the glass, the frame, and now two metal handles near the sill. Hard as he pulled, he could not raise the sash. His hands slipped up the glass to undo the catch at the top, and he found another key-creased bit of metal like the one on the door. This was not the way out. Breaking glass would wake the man—and the dog.
But right this minute, a ringing telephone could rouse them both and end all his chances.
Jonah leaned the mop handle against the door. He did not dare to use it as a cane, not where he was going. It might connect with something hard and noisy. He made his way around the room, searching the floor by touch of toes. Guided by memory of the dog’s toenails clicking on a hard surface, he knew the hallway would be on the other side of the television set and past the edge of the carpet. Hands outstretched, he found the opening. Arms wide now, his fingers grazed close walls on both sides of him. He found a door and opened it. Only a closet of shelves. A few steps farther down the hall, he heard light snoring. The bedroom? Was this door open? Panic was a fluttery thing in his chest, ice in his heart, his blood, and he was scared stupid.
Reason kicked in.
If Cigarette Man should wake, his eyes would tell him nothing at this time of night when the lights were out.
Back home, Jonah always left his wallet and keys on the nightstand by his bed, and he guessed that Cigarette Man would also keep such things close by. Bare feet found a slight rise of wood, and toes grazed it to recognize it as a threshold. The boy lightly dropped down to hands and knees on a hardwood floor. He moved forward in an awkward dogtrot, one arm extended, fingers reaching out to where a bed might be, and he found one thick leg of furniture.
Above his head, he heard the squeak of mattress springs. The snoring stopped. The man—so close—was turning in his bed. Waking? Jonah stopped breathing.
The snoring started up again. The boy drew a breath and crawled on to find a shoe. A bit of cloth. A rug. Moving slowly on this softer surface, he reached out to touch a thinner leg of furniture. The nightstand? Up on his feet now, feather-light fingers explored its surface, and felt the heat of a lightbulb.
The lamp was lit! If the man should wake—
Jonah fought down the urge to run, to crash through a window and run for his life. Hysteria was climbing up his throat, and—
Then his fingertips picked out the shape of keys on the nightstand.
—
THE CAB HAD NOT DROPPED him off at Gracie Mansion, as expected. Instead, the mayor’s aide had gone home, that place of retreat to lick wounds. The address was on a bleak side street at the fringe of money, where no one went walking long after dark. Samuel Tucker’s small apartment was one w
indow up from the ground. He could not afford the higher floors where the light lived.
It was trash night in this neighborhood, and all along the curbs, garbage bags writhed with the slitherings beneath their plastic skins as rodents ate their innards. Kathy Mallory hated rats. This old grudge was a holdover from a childhood of cutting them with broken bottles and banging them with bricks, enraged because the bolder ones were too stupid to be afraid of her, a little girl who could not bed down without her shoes because rats liked the taste of toes.
The car windows were rolled up, but she could still hear them, the mechanized peeps, high-pitched and alien.
She watched her dashboard computer and waited for the first signal blip of an active cell phone or the track of a landline call to the mayor. Her keystroke bug on Tucker’s laptop had yet to give up any messages sent out by that route. She turned her eyes to his unlit windows. Black. Not even the glow of a TV screen.
What was he doing in there—in the dark?
The street door opened, and Tucker walked out. He stood by the curb, lifting his face, as if to count stars—then bowing to cracks in the pavement. Now the man paced the sidewalk, never straying far from his apartment building. He paused to raise a hand and hail an oncoming cab. But then that hand was jammed into his pocket in a change of heart.
He went back inside.
To hide?
No report to the mayor?
No, of course not. Tucker could hardly admit to his runaway abortion of tonight’s mission. How would he explain police interest in him, a cop following him? Just the sight of her had frightened him even more than the bogus arrest, and he would never want Polk to find out about that station-house interview—the trip-up questions asked and the screwup lies he had told.
No more surveillance on Samuel Tucker was necessary. The mayor’s errand boy would not be reaching out to any other bilked investors. His fear worked better than handcuffs and leg irons.
So Mayor Polk was working off her same pool of suspects, and the shortlist had not been supplied by Zelda Oxly. If the mayor was using the aide to do reconnaissance on Dwayne Brox, this could only mean that Zelda was no longer a player.
And it was time to go home.
While reaching for the ignition key, Mallory felt the cell phone vibrate in her pocket, and now its earpiece connected her to the small voice of a schoolgirl.
“You said I could call you.”
“Anytime, Lucinda. Did you remember something?”
“I’m afraid to go back to sleep. I had this awful dream. . . . Jonah’s alive. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.” Mallory turned the ignition key.
“You wouldn’t lie?”
“No, never,” said the consummate liar. The engine idled. Garbage bags quivered as rats scrabbled in and out of chewed holes. And she listened to Lucinda’s long recital of a nightmare—until all the detective could hear was the breathing rhythm of a child who had fallen asleep with a phone on her pillow.
As the car glided into the street, Mallory had questions of her own. When would proof of death turn up at Gracie Mansion? Was that dead boy’s heart in transit tonight?
—
JONAH SAT ON THE GRASS just beyond the door and tied up the laces of his sneakers. This plot of land in front of the house was an unknown country of crickets. Now an owl. He waited for his compass point—and there it was—a distant car engine traveling down a seldom used road. Where was the driveway that would lead him to it? Earlier, when the man had taken him into the garage, they had passed through a kitchen door, but where—
Dead opposite the door for the basement.
He had his bearings now.
On their way to the driving lesson, there had been a spit of pebbles from a rough surface beneath the wheels before they reached paved road. So that dirt driveway was a ninety-degree turn to his right. He picked up the mop handle and rose to a stand on the soft cushion of sneakers on grass. The makeshift cane moved back and forth over the lawn. Side to side. Side to side. It picked out an obstacle that was soft, no vibrations, but some yield to it. A bush? Yes. He touched the leaves as he circled round it. Thunk. The mop handle tapped an object. A hard vibration, harder than wood. Before he touched it, he knew it would be stone like the sides of buildings on sidewalks, a different sound than the metal feet of city mailboxes and lampposts. Was this a wall?
No. His free hand reached out to touch a bearded face. Arms. Legs. A little stone man.
Jonah walked around it and ran out of grass loam. He knelt down to sample the harder ground of packed dirt. The driveway. The way out.
He walked as fast as he dared, the mop handle moving across the dirt, knocking pebbles. Side to side. Side to side. He knew the long driveway would curve twice before he tapped pavement. Up ahead, no more cars were heard. But when he found that road, another driver would come along.
He was going home.
—
THE ALARM CLOCK had not yet sounded, but Iggy Conroy awakened—terrified. Eyes kept closed, he feigned sleep. Bright lamplight was a red stain on his eyelids.
There was someone or some thing in his bed.
He had felt the movement on the other side of the mattress, Angie’s side. This was no dream, but he did not reach out for the gun on the nightstand. Paralyzed by fear, he could not lift a hand, and he would not open his eyes.
It might only be the dog, risking a kick to come up from the basement, looking for love. Iggy felt another movement on the mattress, the roll of a body beside him. Closer now. He waited for it to touch him. Inside his head, he was screaming, but he scrunched his eyes shut—because it might be the dog. God in heaven, please, it might be only that.
The air was warm. The man shivered. The alarm clock shrieked, and Iggy stiffened like a corpse.
The dog barked.
—
IT WAS NOT MUFFLED ANYMORE. The dog’s barking was outside the house, and coming closer, coming on fast. And the man’s feet pounded the dirt behind him.
Jonah dropped the mop handle, no time to stop and find it. He ran with hands outstretched. He ran with a prayer that his feet would find no rock or root to trip him. He plunged into an unmapped world. All sense of place was lost, yet he flung himself forward, legs churning. One hand touched foliage as it reached out to scratch him with long fingers of branch and twig. The dog was close. Closer. Jonah could hear the animal’s labored breathing between the barks.
Right behind him.
Almost here.
TEETH!
The dog’s jaws clamped down on Jonah’s leg, teeth sinking into flesh, biting down to bone, and the boy hit the ground, his head smashing into an object hard as stone. He felt the warmth of blood coming down his face. He could smell its coppery scent, and now the taste of it streaming into his mouth. Jonah’s fingers found more of his wet blood on the rough feet of a statue. Tiny feet. Another little stone man had been hiding in the brush, waiting there to get him.
The dog was on Jonah’s back.
Hot breath on his neck.
The last thing he heard was the man yelling, “Get off him!”
The whole world went quiet. One thing by another, every sense of it ebbed away. No more pain. No fear. He was weightless as a balloon, letting go of the earth itself and—
—
IGGY CONROY walked up the driveway, carrying the torn and bloodied boy in his arms. The dog lagged behind, keeping its distance, not wanting to be kicked again.
And then it barked.
Iggy turned on the pit bull. “What now, you crazy mutt?” He had no more patience for the stupid dog. It should have died years ago.
Its snout was raised. It barked at the moon.
“Shut up!”
The dog fell silent for a moment of shame told by the hang of its head. Now it sat down on the dirt and regarded Iggy with deep ap
ology.
“What the hell are you—”
Bells?
Iggy raised his eyes to the sky, the source of the jingling.
It stopped.
So now he was hearing things. All those pills, those uppers downed like candy.
No! That was not it. The dog had heard the jingle bells, too.
Any other night, he would have chased down that sound. Everything must have an explanation, and he would have turned the whole world inside out to find it.
He dropped to his knees, holding Jonah tighter. Iggy’s eyes were still fixed on the sky—only stars and a cockeyed moon. No flights of angels. No ghosts to ring bells for him. Yet he spoke to the sky, childhood’s old idea of Heaven’s address, that place where Angie might be hiding, still hiding from him. “It wasn’t never supposed to be this way.” His breath was stuttered, and he was slow to rise. The boy’s body weighed more now.
21
The two detectives sat in the dark of a parked car on Fifth Avenue. For this shadow detail in Money Country, they had selected a drug dealer’s Lexus from the impound lot, so as to blend in with other upscale models. Though the average New Yorker might have recognized it as a stake-out vehicle by the backseat accumulation of coffee cups and take-out cartons. “I don’t get it,” said Gonzales. “A serial killer who hires out the kills?”
Lonahan shrugged. “Rich people.”
His partner nodded. That actually would explain a lot. Gonzales pointed toward the doorman building. “There’s our boy. Check out that getup.” Their suspect had spiked his hair in stick-out strands, and he had changed his very nice suit for a ratty pair of jeans and a retro T-shirt of psychedelic colors. “Looks like he rolled an old hippy for those clothes.”
“That’s one butt-ugly T-shirt.” Lonahan started up the car. “So whadda ya say? He’s slumming tonight, or that’s his idea of a disguise?”
“No,” said Gonzales. “He’s gonna make the downtown club scene.” This theory worked well with the outfit and a waiting limousine. Customers who arrived in limos always made the cut with doorkeepers for the hottest nightspots in town.
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