“Don’t bullshit me, Nat.” He stopped with the door open. “Be careful. I’ll think of something.” He grimaced, shook his head, and left her alone.
What had he meant? she wondered: I’ve had some experience with being scared, really scared. … It was hard to imagine what might scare him. Then she smiled to herself: the fact was, he was a little bit scared of her.
At seven-thirty she met her friend, Lotte Marker, who was a senior editor specializing in mysteries and thrillers at a house with whom Natalie had done a good deal of business over the years. They had been friends since their first meeting and made a point of dining together three or four times a year, which always meant there was a good deal of personal catching up to do. When they settled into one of the corners in the back at Le Petit Robert in the West Village, Natalie was surprised at Lotte’s immediate reference to something other than books and business. The Garfein column. No warming up with shoptalk tonight.
“Well, everybody’s talking about it, my dear,” Lotte said, fixing Natalie with a quizzical gaze over the tops of her half-glasses. She was holding the menu to one side as if this Garfein thing couldn’t wait. “Let’s face it, it’s so bizarre!”
“Come on, things like that happen in New York all the time.”
“Debatable, in my view, but it’s not just that you saw the man with the gun. What makes it so precious, so priceless, is that it shows up in the Post! That, whatever else you may tell yourself, definitely does not happen every day. That sets it well apart from all the other daily scary numbers, don’t you agree?” She sipped a kir and smiled knowingly. “It’s rather like having several million people look through your purse … or your medicine cabinet. Suddenly everybody knows more about you than you know about them, you’re so exposed, so vulnerable—”
“Really, you’re making way too much of it—”
“Au contraire, I’m voicing a more or less unanimous opinion based on an informal survey—let me repeat, everyone’s talking about it. And of course you’re listed in the telephone directory, so he’s got your address—”
“Oh, stop, Lotte! I don’t want to think about it!” She was beginning to feel the onset of real irritation.
“Nonsense stop! You’d better think about it. If you saw him throw a gun, then he must have had that gun for a purpose … and he must be afraid you saw his face. Did you, by the way?”
“No, he was in shadow.”
“But he doesn’t know that, does he?”
“Lotte, for heaven’s sake, what are you trying to do to me?”
Lotte inspected the escargot, popped one into her mouth. “I’m not a mystery editor for nothing, my dear. I know how these stories work, trust me. The point is, there is an inherent danger here and I’m afraid you’re not going to take it seriously if somebody doesn’t come down on you like a ton of bricks. I’ve elected myself to do same. The question arises, how in the world did Garfein find out?”
She told Lotte it had to have been Tony.
Lotte sniffed. “Wonderful, just wonderful. Tony. An IQ the size of his penis!”
Natalie laughed. She was lured into recounting the details of the night of the gunman over the fish and the chilled white Bordeaux. She told Lotte how the man had stood laughing at her through the locked door.
“Mon Dieu.” She sighed. “Worse and worse. Richard Widmark in A Kiss Before Dying. That’s sadism, my child. Why, he could be following you to work, watching your house, following you to dinner tonight … he might even let you see him just to find out if you recognize him. He’s playing with you, Natalie.”
“You’re absolutely getting carried away. You’ve convinced yourself of all this—”
“With good reason, I might add. I know what it’s like to be scared, I’ve been scared. …”
“What do you mean?” Natalie’s attention was piqued: two people had just told her the same thing, that they knew what it meant to be scared.
It had happened the previous summer. Lotte had gotten a telephone call, one of the oldest come-ons in the world, but she’d fallen for it. A young man’s voice, all earnest sincerity, an intern at Bellevue, rather apologetic, giving his ID number, naming the staff research director in charge of the project, explaining that he was one of a team doing a survey of Manhattan residents. “No personal questions,” he’d said, “and you can just hang up if you don’t want to participate, I’d certainly understand. But I do wish you’d help me out.” He had laughed in a rueful, self-deprecating way, somehow endearing. Lotte had said sure, go ahead.
The first questions had concerned the extent of her insurance coverage, whether it was group or personal, the costs, if she’d had any claims in the past three years, what she knew or believed she knew about rising hospital costs, and her perceptions of the rise or fall in quality of care. The innocence of the questions had lulled her and she had hardly noticed the slight changes, the way they were edging into her own life. Her views on abortion—had she ever been pregnant, did she regularly test her breasts for telltale lumps, had she ever suffered from vaginal infections of any kind, and were they common among her friends? … She had finally objected and the voice had apologized, told her he knew these were touchy areas but after all it was absolutely anonymous from her point of view, and he only had a couple more questions. She relented, “like a goddamn hick,” she said, and the next question was one too many. Orgasms. Was she more likely to have an orgasm when she had intercourse or when she used her finger to excite herself? She had gasped, called him a perverted creep, and he had laughed eerily, a different voice, and said, “That’s all the questions, Miss Marker. Little Miss Marker. I know all I need to know and now I’m going to get you and fuck you and then I’ll kill you. …” She had been momentarily hypnotized, frozen with horror; had stared at the receiver, then slammed it down, and sat there while it rang again and again until she had unplugged it. …
“He called several more times over the next weeks, always when I was out, as if he was watching me and knew when I was gone, so he could leave messages on my answering machine, that laugh and descriptions of what he was going to do to me … and then the calls stopped.” She sipped her coffee, for the moment refusing to meet Natalie’s eyes. “The thing is, I haven’t been able to date a man since—I know, I know, it’s stupid, but I can’t help it. I just can’t help it. …” Finally she swallowed hard and smiled edgily. “The point is, Natalie, I’m begging you to take this seriously. Please.”
In the cab going home Natalie wondered what Jay had been referring to when he’d said that he knew what it meant to be afraid. Men, she reflected, seemed so much less vulnerable, but you never knew. She sighed to herself and was glad to hear Sir yapping and scratching behind the door.
The fact was, she was afraid, and she hated admitting it to herself. Lotte hadn’t told her the story just to hear herself talk. Take it seriously, she’d said. All right … but Natalie wasn’t sure what that meant. Not exactly, anyway.
Chapter Six
SHE WOKE UP HEARING Lotte’s story replaying in her mind, had coffee with it, put up with it yammering at her in the cab, and got to the office in something less than a great mood.
Jay was already there, turned out in one of his stunning glen plaid suits with an almost subliminal touch of maroon deep in the weave, dashing from office to office, taking his stance at one window after another with a gigantic pair of binoculars. He would crane upward, trying to get the clearest, most angled view he could, muttering under his breath. He turned to Natalie, took one look, and said, “So what’s eating you?”
“Bad case of urban angst.”
“Oh, that. Old news, Nat, old news.” He grinned boyishly. “The peregrine falcons,” he said, “I saw one, he was swooping down from the vicinity of the top of the AT & T building—then I lost him, dammit. … We’re just too low here for any kind of decent bird-watching.” He put the binoculars back up to his eyes and fine-tuned the adjustment. He’d been a bird-watcher since his Boy Scout days, had shown
her his guides—some dating back forty years—which he kept in his office: she was sure it was his most innocent vice. Charming, really, in such a sophisticated, urban creature.
“Well, stay at your post,” she said, turning to leave.
“Damn right,” he murmured, “damn right,” already absorbed in the idea of the soaring falcons.
An hour later on her way to the Xerox room she glimpsed him again, at another window, peering up through the eyepiece.
By eleven o’clock her ear was hurting from the telephone receiver digging into her small pearl earring and she needed coffee. She went and got it herself, brought it back to her desk, and the intercom began its dim, insistent buzzing. Lisa’s voice was low and amused: “I’ve got the fuzz out here for you.”
“The what?”
“Fuzz. A cop. Sergeant MacPherson, NYPD. Nice blue suit, brown shoes …”
“What does he want?”
“To see you.”
“Okay. Have him come in.” She’d thought of little but Lotte’s fears and warnings through the night and morning. Now, the police. The police?
Sergeant Danny MacPherson looked about her own age, central casting’s idea of a certain kind of cop: a tweed jacket, brown slacks (belying Lisa’s idea of humorous observation), a pale, rectangular face, a level gaze, hair longish and combed back from his flat forehead, a wide mouth with a firm set to the jaw: no colorful little quirks like the guys on “Hill Street Blues”: he seemed to date from the early age of television, before ugly and real became beautiful. He walked in, showed her his badge or ID card—she didn’t really look—and introduced himself. He didn’t smile. She bet he was first in his class at the police academy or the John Jay school.
“Ms. Rader,” he said, with acute attention to the Ms. “I’m running down this gun thing that ran in the Post. And the Times and the Daily News. Did you happen to see the news last night, by the way?” He sat down, crossed his well-creased slacks.
“No,” she said. There had been a surprisingly sardonic cast to his voice and she didn’t much like it. An Irish brogue, a smelly black cigar, and hairy knuckles would all have been more comforting.
“Well, I did. Your little incident was turned into a cute closer on the gossip portion of the show—it was practically word-for-word from Garfein’s column: a photograph of you, the story of what a big-time agent you are, then the scene you’re supposed to have witnessed. All that same garbage about how it might make a wonderful plot for a movie.” He folded his arms. “I wasn’t amused, Ms. Rader. Can you imagine why?”
“Not really,” she said, “aside from the fact that it’s not a very amusing story. As well as an invasion of my privacy. Which could conceivably put me in even more danger from the man who threw the gun away.” She felt Tony’s and Jay’s and Lotte’s concerns tugging at her, infiltrating her subconscious, MacPherson was bringing it all back.
“I wasn’t amused because I don’t like being left out of funny things involving guns. Frankly, it made me feel like a horses ass—do I make myself clear? This part of Manhattan is mine, Ms. Rader.”
“How very grand. Does that include all the people, too?”
“When guns are involved, it most certainly does. Now before I hear your story, I have a simple question. I can’t help wondering why you didn’t report what you saw to us right away. Before you called the newspapers and made sure you got as much publicity as you could. I’m just curious, you understand.”
“You tell me, Mr. MacPherson, is this your idea of police brutality? A withering crossfire of sarcasm—”
“Good lord, no.” MacPherson’s face changed fractionally, whether around the eyes or the mouth she wasn’t quite sure: perhaps it was what passed for his smile. “This was more in the line of an insult. But then, I’m not very happy about you and your newspaper friends. And I’m still wondering why you didn’t give us a call.”
“You tell me this is your turf. My God, if everybody who saw something weird went running to the cops … well, we’d spend our entire lives at the precinct house, wouldn’t we?”
“But why run to the newspapers?”
“I didn’t run to the newspapers.”
“You don’t say. … Well, why don’t you just tell me the whole story.”
“Why don’t you try not to be so supercilious.”
“It’s a deal, Ms. Rader. Maybe it’s out of my system.” He took a notebook from his jacket pocket and a fountain pen, which he carefully uncapped. “And maybe not,” he said. “We’ll see.”
“You aren’t my idea of a cop,” she said.
“I can live with that,” he said softly. “Now why don’t we just get on with it.”
MacPherson let her tell the story without interruption. When she had finished describing how Teddy had seen her into the cab, she took a breath, looked at him questioningly, wondering if there was anything left to tell him about that night.
MacPherson flipped through his notes, face expressionless. “You know,” he said quietly, “it would make a thriller, wouldn’t it?”
“No, it wouldn’t, actually.”
He still hadn’t looked up from his notes. “That touch about the laughter on the other side of the door? Frankly, my blood ran cold.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant it or was mocking her. She didn’t much like being off balance. “But it’s only an incident, not a plot. The plot is what would come later … and there isn’t any later, if you see what I mean. Life tends to be made up of incidents. The plot only shows up much later, if indeed there is a plot.”
“Aha. Well, I’m sure you know far more about fiction than I do.” He finally looked up. “The point is, so far as I can see, there either was a gun. Or wasn’t. Rainy night, a fair distance, a gun is rather small … but somebody did do the laughing number outside your door.” He gave a barely perceptible shrug. “We really must find that gun—”
“And wouldn’t it be a good idea to see if one was used in the immediate hours before he threw it away?”
“Yes, I’ll bet that would be a good idea, Ms. Rader.” The faint derision had edged back into his voice and she regretted having spoken. “Now, back to all the publicity. If you didn’t tell Mr. Garfein, who did?”
She told him about her conversation with Tony.
“Have you asked your former husband if he actually did mention it to his friend Garfein?”
“No. But it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
He looked skeptical.
“I haven’t spoken with him since. The whole thing made me angry. I didn’t want to have a fight with him.”
MacPherson seemed to think that wasn’t worth a reply. He stood up. “Show me the window. Show me where you were standing when you saw this man. Please.”
She got up, pointed, and he made a small, unhappy noise. “Do you wear glasses?” he asked.
“Contacts.”
“Could you possibly tear yourself away from being a hot superagent for a few moments?”
“It’s imaginable,” she said.
“Well, imagine it.” He put his notebook back in his pocket, capped the pen. “I want to find the gun.”
It was cold, crisp, and clear in the street. She followed MacPherson across to the construction site, to the contractor’s trailer, where they confronted a foreman in tan workclothes and a fur-lined parka jacket. He looked at MacPherson’s badge with considerable distrust, an attitude that changed only for the worse as he listened to MacPherson’s retelling of Natalie’s story.
“Nobody here found a gun,” he said. “Are you kidding? We’d all know about it—a job in Jersey City once, we found a stiff in a piling form, same difference. Gun—I’d know about it.” That seemed to end the discussion, from his point of view. He was pulling on the last inch of a cigarette. His face was red, chapped from the life he led.
MacPherson suggested that Natalie point out the exact spot the man had been in, the motion with which he’d thrown the gun, and then the three of them—ignored by the workmen—tram
ped around in the pit, far below street level. It was dirty and uneven and she was having a difficult time negotiating in her Italian shoes, which weren’t designed for treacherous footing. Everywhere she looked she confronted a sea of hardening cement, huge forms of wood and steel, machinery, swearing men in hardhats. The hardhat the foreman had given her made her feel like she was wearing a soup tureen, Quixote’s helmet of Mambrino. Her attention had wandered, trying to project where the gun might have landed, when she noticed that the relationship between MacPherson and the foreman was not improving.
MacPherson’s voice had gotten remarkably steely. “Just tear it up, soldier,” he said. He was pointing at a bed of moist-looking concrete that, she had to admit, looked as if it was in the right place to hide the gun.” Don’t argue with me, just tear it up or shovel it out. I’ve already got a warrant.”
“Fuck you, buddy, just fuck you and this nutty broad!” His voice fairly exploded and several of the workmen looked up, surprised, then grinned at the show.
MacPherson actually laughed. “You’re wonderful,” he said, smiling, moving close to the foreman, slapping him on the huge shoulder in a comradely gesture. Natalie stepped closer because MacPherson was lowering his voice, still smiling. “How would you like the building inspector’s men down here? You want that? Do you have any idea how sorry you and your bosses would be if I got Bracken and a couple of his guys down here? For a very close inspection of all your specs? I’m talking Fast Phil Bracken, get it? You’d be lucky to be a helper-third-class-journeyman-asshole by the time Fast Phil and your bosses got through with you, got done paying the fines. No, maybe they’d just dump you in a form and fill it with cement—now start digging, soldier.”
The foreman quietly surveyed the situation, weighing the pros and cons, then nodded genially and went off to commandeer some labor.
Natalie couldn’t help laughing. “Very impressive. Fast Phil must be a holy terror.”
MacPherson looked down at her. “I just made him up. What do I know about building inspectors? It’s sort of the idea—cops have to know how to scare people sometimes; don’t let anybody tell you differently.” His eyes followed the foreman. “Thank you for coming over, Ms. Rader. I always work better with an audience.” He took her arm and helped her back up to street level. “I’m going to hang around here, just in case this guy needs any further scaring. I’ll let you know what happens.” She watched him head back into the pit. Crossing the street, she looked up at the agency’s windows. In the corner window past the reflection Jay Danmeier stood with his binoculars. He wasn’t watching peregrine falcons. He was watching Natalie Rader. She shivered in the cold.
Woman in the Window Page 4