Burning Time (35 page)

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry, sir.” And moved away.

He turned back to April without skipping a beat. “No, lady, I don’t have two things mixed up. You trust somebody one way, you got to trust them another way. It’s not about anything else. You’re not together with me one minute and then going it alone the next.”

April was silent for a second, thinking it over. “You weren’t here,” she said finally.

“What are you talking about?”

“I went out alone because you weren’t here.”

“Well, I would have been here if you’d let me pick you up.” He poked a finger at the air. Ha, got her.

She narrowed her eyes, furious at him. “Look, don’t confuse things. You listened to the tape. That’s all there is
to think about. Finding her. If we find her, then we can talk about trust.”

He shrugged. Okay. “So what angle are you working? You know what that noise is in the background?”

“Of course I do. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“What is it?”

Oh, they were playing guessing games again. “An airplane,” she said irritably.

“So is it landing or taking off?” he demanded.

“How do I know?” April said.

“You should know,” he said grimly. “Well, where’s your map?”

April looked startled. Sergeant Joyce didn’t mention any map.

He looked at her with disappointment. “We need to pinpoint all the bridges and airports.”

“I was just on my way to do that,” she said quickly, frowning because she thought that was just a little bit premature. The woman could just as easily be in New Jersey or Connecticut. They had airports there. But no bridges near enough to be able to see the bridge and hear the planes directly overhead. Scratch New Jersey and Connecticut.

“Did you get an audio person to tell by the sound of the engines if the planes are taking off or landing?”

April nodded vigorously. Oh, yeah, she’d had many hours of free time to think of all these things. Why did she listen to him? He just made her feel bad.

“Does that make a difference, if she’s looking out at a bridge?” she asked, without sounding as annoyed as she felt.

She wanted to do things her own way, but he was looking at her accusingly again. She hated having him mad at her.

“Okay,” she said, relenting. “I’m sorry I didn’t leave a note. I didn’t think of it.” There, she said it.

“But you don’t leave me notes.” She modified the apology. Who leaves notes? Nobody. Anyway, if she started leaving him notes, everybody would see them and think they were involved.

“I would have today,” he said.

April had to look down again, away from his eyes. He meant today after last night. She hated herself for looking down to hide her true thoughts. It was so Chinese, and she couldn’t seem to help it. Must be genetic.

“Did you get a list of all her friends?” he went on, ever so helpful now that she was confused and sorry.

“Yeah, why?”

“Maybe when he wasn’t home, she called somebody else.”

She also hated it when he thought of things before she did. And he thought of a lot of things before she did. Yeah, the lady could have called somebody else. She could even have called the police. Somebody would have responded to the call.

“You want a cup of coffee?” she asked. “I was just going to get one.” Stupid woman. That was the biggest concession she could make. He said he did, and even went with her to get it.

As the sun rose, Claudia counted the minutes until the big cop she was pretty sure was Irish by the color of his hair would drive by. Once on this side of the street, once on the other side of the street. She knew how long he’d cruise around before parking outside the diner down the block next to the corner store.

It was one of the many things about the neighborhood Claudia Bartello knew that nobody else bothered about. If she had a name for herself it would be “watcher in the night,” because that’s what she did. She kept an eye out, knew who was coming home drunk at what hour, knew things about the kids in the houses around her that their parents would never know. Even before Arturo died, she’d never been a really good sleeper, but now she was hardly taking the time to go to bed at all. She took a few hours here and there when she felt like it, slept on the sofa or in her chair by the window.

In fact she was “watcher in the daytime,” too. She had to keep an old enemy in sight all the time. The unresolved
conflict between her and her husband about living on the approach to the Triboro Bridge kept Arturo alive for her.

She sat in her chair going over and over how she hadn’t wanted to live near that bridge, even though the house Arturo found was brand-new, in a nice neighborhood. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. A little place to grow roses and tomatoes in the back. Everything a person could want. Except for the bridge. You could always tell what day it was and what hour it was by the amount of traffic heading on and off the ramp to the bridge. Even with two panes of glass in every window Claudia could still feel the vibration.

She was having her usual argument with Arturo about it, as she sat in front of her window half the night, waiting for that big Irish cop who stopped at the diner every day. He went in to get something to eat and then sat in his car for twenty minutes afterward pretending he was doing some kind of paperwork. But she knew he was not really doing anything. Now he could do something.

He was there at eight-thirty. What Claudia Bartello wanted to do was call out to him, have him come to her so she could point out to him the problem. How close it was to her and how offensive.

But there was no way the cop could hear her. And maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to attract attention and let everyone see a cop coming to her house. She didn’t think she had any choice in the matter. She had to struggle down those steps that always made her feel like her heart was going to give out on the way back, like Arturo’s did. And then after she got down the steps, she’d have to hobble down the block to the diner. She didn’t like it, but she did it.

When she got there, the way the big cop looked down
at her from a great height made her feel like an old, old woman.

“I’m Mrs. Bartello.” She peered up at the name tag on his chest but couldn’t make out the letters.

“Good morning, Mrs. Bartello,” he replied pleasantly.

“It’s not a such a good morning,” she snapped. “I didn’t sleep at all.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” They were standing outside, by his car. He looked down at her with a big friendly smile, like she was his great grandmother with a hip complaint. Well, she had a complaint all right, but it wasn’t about joints.

“There’s a woman in my garage apartment, walking around naked for all the world to see,” she told him angrily. “I don’t like that kind of thing.”

“Hmm. What’s she doing there?” he asked.

“That’s a good question. He said he wouldn’t have no women or parties.” Claudia was indignant.

“Who’s that?”

“My tenant.”

“You have a tenant, and he has a girl in there. Is that the problem?” he said, smiling just a little bit.

“My name is Mrs. Arturo Bartello,” Claudia said. “That’s my house, right there. Fourteen twenty-five Hoyt Avenue. I don’t want no women there.”

“Have you talked about this with your tenant?” the cop asked.

“No, I have not. How can I with her still there?”

“How do you know that?”

“I watched the door. He was out. He came back. She didn’t leave. That young man was out half the night with the woman in there. She’s got some kind of thing on her forehead. I don’t like it at all.”

The cop frowned. “What kind of thing?”

“I don’t know. Like blood or something. Maybe he beat her, too.”

“And you could see all that?” he said, like maybe she was making something like that up.

“Course I could see it. She was standing right in front of me, no clothes, waving at me like some kind of crazy woman. Probably taking drugs. I won’t have that. I have my rights.” She paused for a breath. “You’re a cop. Take care of it for me.”

“What would you like me to do? Do you have any reason to believe he’s doing drugs? Or is it the woman in the house that’s bothering you?”

She hesitated. It was both and everything that was bothering her. His head was tilted like he was really waiting for her answer. But then he didn’t wait for one.

“Maybe you should just wait for the woman to go, and then have a talk with your tenant. Tell him how you feel.”

Claudia was getting tired standing there getting nowhere.

He tried another tack. “If you think he’s doing something illegal, like drugs, you can make a complaint. You want to do that?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Police Officer O’Brien,” he said. “Let me know if you have any trouble.”

She turned around and started hobbling back. Fat lot of good that did. She saw that he made a note and then sat in his car for a while just like he always did, digesting his breakfast without a worry in the world.

There was not a clock anywhere. That scared Emma as much as some of the other things. She had lived with so many clocks for so long, not having a single one to look at now made her feel her time was running out. When she was awake she was thinking all the time.
Gimme a clock and a machine gun. Please God give me a knife, just a little one
. Half the time she was too terrified almost to breathe, and then she got angry. The air was stale and stuffy. The guy had all the windows closed. Every breath she dared to take was foul. The brown curtains were tied back, but the roller shades were down. She couldn’t see out, couldn’t see the light.

What she saw was a lot of peculiar stuff laid out on a table the guy put by the bed. What scared her most was the black box that looked like a car battery. You could kill someone jump-starting a car. He must know about that, too. It happened to some boy just after she moved to California. It was in the papers. Emma shuddered. It happened miles away, in another county, couldn’t have been
him. Don’t let it have been him. It was hot in the room, but she couldn’t stop shivering.

She didn’t like looking at him. He wore a motorcycle jacket and tight black jeans. He kicked the furniture with his motorcycle boots, his face twitching with rage.

She had to close her eyes to get away from him. The guy was crazy, and furious at her for untying the ropes he thought were secure. If she had a chance of survival before she untied the ropes, she didn’t have one now. Her hands were tied tighter now. He moved her around angrily, twisting her arms, and pinching her breasts, trying to make her cry. He flicked his lighter on and off, teasing her with it like a kid torturing a frog. Only she wasn’t a frog. The switchblade terrified her, too. It seemed to be his second-favorite toy. He had a name for it. He called it Willy. Sometimes he put the lighter in his pocket in the tight black jeans and fondled it there. But the switchblade was always out. He stabbed at the air with it when he got frustrated.

What was the worst thing that could happen? Emma asked herself the question the way she had as a kid when they played war games. What was the worst pain a person could take? How many hours, how many days could pain last? What could they do to stop it? On navy bases all around the country they used to play the game. What if Daddy were caught and put in a tiger cage? What would he do? What would I do if it were me? What if I were a captured spy? What if our ship went down in the ocean, and there were a thousand sharks circling our lifeboat? Survival. How did survivors make it out? There were a hundred hundred hero stories from a hundred hundred battles, and every story absolutely true. Navy juniors knew them all, and in all their stories the hero always got away.
Now she was a captive who’d had a chance and didn’t get away.

Why didn’t she get away? In the movies the heroes got away. Only the walk-ons were strangled, got their throats cut. What was the battery for?

Emma wanted to keep her eyes closed and miss her death. Let him kill her in her sleep. She’d kill herself first, if she could. Heroes did that, too, when there was no other option. She wanted to scream and cry because no one had given her a cyanide capsule. She was the prisoner of a madman and she didn’t have the capsule. But she couldn’t cry. It turned him on.

“What’d you do that for?” he demanded when she woke up. “I’m taking care of you.”

He was wearing his leather jacket and smelled of beer. His blond hair was all messed up, his eyes red and puffy. They were like stones, harder than any eyes she’d ever seen.

She coughed so much he had to loosen the ropes and let her sit up.

“Don’t barf on me,” he snapped.

She tried to catch her breath.

“What’d you do that for?” He wouldn’t let it go, kept asking her until she answered.

“I—”

“Yeah? You what?”

She swallowed. Her throat hurt. “I saw the sink. I needed some water.”

“Well, you got some.” He laughed. “Want some more?”

He had poured water down her throat until her lungs filled up, and she thought she was going to drown. She concentrated on breathing. Her throat hurt. Her headache was worse. He had put her in a different place. On a bed. How to get out. How to get out.

“Want some orange juice? I got some for you. It’s morning. You want some eggs?” he said. “See, if you’re nice, I’m nice.” He tweaked a nipple. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

Her face didn’t change. “Eggs?” she muttered.

“Yeah, like from a chicken. I’m nice to you, see.”

Emma didn’t say anything.

“I said I was nice to you.”

“Then let me go. Let me go. I’ll pay you. How much do you want?”

He shook his head.

“I have some money.”

“I have money, too. You think I’m some kind of bum that I need your money?” he said furiously.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m a friend, remember. Friends don’t take money.”

What was the right line? She searched desperately for something that might get to him. But he was out of his mind. What could she say?

“Friends don’t tie each other up,” she said at last.