Full Stop (4 page)

‘Mmm. Where are you? Can I call you back?'

‘New York, Toni's flat, but I'm about to go out.'

‘So am I. Where'll you be later on this evening?'

‘At the theatre.'

‘Gh. Sorry, Loretta, can it wait till tomorrow?'

He sounded harassed and she remembered how uncommunicative he had been when he called from London to say he was flying to Washington on a story. He had muttered something about Whitewater, the failed Little Rock loan company which was causing the Clintons such trouble, and Loretta had been surprised by his sudden interest in American politics. They hadn't talked for long and Loretta concluded that the assignment had been forced on him by the new regime at his newspaper, the
Sunday Herald.
It had recently been taken over by a French media tycoon, a chic blonde businesswoman in her late 40s who was unaffectionately known in London as
la belle dame sans merci.
Loretta had seen a newspaper picture of Mme Paroux stepping from a plane at the City of London airport in what the caption described as a Lagerfeld suit, en route for the
Herald
office in Docklands where she was said to be drawing up a hit list of employees to sack. Tracey seemed to be hanging on but Loretta was anxious on his behalf.

‘Of course,' she assured him, not wanting to add to his burdens. ‘You are still coming to New York?'

‘I'm looking forward to it,' he said, spoiling the effect by adding: ‘There's some showbiz story they want me to follow up — we're not allowed to go anywhere without a reason these days. Give me your number and I'll call you when I get to my hotel'

Loretta rang off and remained where she was on the floor, kneeling by the phone. After a moment's thought she tried another number, in San Francisco this time, and her expression darkened when she heard the click of an answering-machine.

‘Hi, this is Dolores del Negro. I can't take your call right now but –'

Loretta tutted and cut off the rest of the message. Dolores was her closest friend in San Francisco but it was the long vacation and she could be anywhere — in her office at Berkeley, working in the library, or just out shopping. Loretta got up in search of a telephone directory and, when she couldn't see one, finally pulled open the door of the cupboard she hadn't yet investigated. It turned out to be a cross between a walk-in cupboard and a box room, furnished with a small desk and Toni's clothes hanging from a rail. Loretta located a New York telephone directory in a desk drawer, took it over to the bed and looked up the word ‘Police'. The entry was brief, giving the emergency number and referring Loretta to another part of the directory.

It took her a while to find the right section, a separate set of blue pages listing official departments, and then she had to decide which precinct was most likely to cover the area Toni lived in. The 20th, based on West 82nd Street, was the nearest geographically but when Loretta tried it she was immediately put on hold. Eventually a woman came on the line, listened to the beginning of Loretta's story and abruptly transferred her to a harassed male detective who suggested she should ring the telephone company.

‘Say the guy calls back, and most likely he will, they can give you counselling –'

‘Counselling?
' repeated Loretta.

‘There's no charge,' he began, mistaking the cause of her astonishment.

‘I don't want
counselling,
I want you to trace his number. I'm reporting a
crime
— I assume it is against the law to make obscene phone calls?'

‘Sure, but we just don't have the manpower –'

‘The least you can do is take my name and number. Or don't you have the manpower for that either?'

With obvious reluctance he wrote down the details, mishearing her name the first time, and telling her again it was really a
matter for the phone company. Then: ‘Sorry, I have a call coming through on another line,' and the phone went dead.

‘Great, thanks, I feel
so
much better,' snapped Loretta, and reached for the directory again. Sure enough, there was a long section on how to deal with obscene, harassing or threatening calls, even though most of the advice was blindingly obvious — of course she would have hung up as quickly as possible, Loretta thought, if she'd realised earlier what was going on.

‘Don't talk about these calls to anyone outside your family,' the advice continued, ‘not even to a best friend. In the majority of cases the caller knows either the person who takes the call or some member of the family. If the caller hears about your anxiety and concern, either directly or indirectly, this is encouragement to continue.'

Loretta frowned, wondering again about Michael. Was he a friend of Toni's, someone with a warped sense of humour who had decided, for reasons best known to himself, to play an unpleasant practical joke when an unknown woman answered her phone? According to what she had just read, it would be a mistake to tell Toni about the call but how else was she to rule out the possibility that he wasn't a complete stranger? Loretta read on, discovered the existence of an Annoyance Call Bureau and was about to dial its number when she read that the service was available only between nine am and four pm, Monday to Friday. Michael had called between six and six-thirty, she wasn't sure of the exact time, but Loretta was willing to bet that most nuisance calls were made even later, fuelled by alcohol or the loneliness of big city nights. What was the point of a helpline which wasn't staffed at the very time it was needed? She speed-read to the end of the section, vainly hoping to find an out-of-hours number, and discovered instead that the detective had been telling the absolute truth. ‘Trained counsellors,' the section ended oleaginously, ‘will always take an extra step to assist you further.'

So they really did offer counselling, she thought, irritably closing the directory. Not a word about tracing the call, which
was the most obvious way of solving the problem, yet surely New York had one of the most up-to-date telephone systems in the world? With computerised switchboards, finding out someone's number must be easy, more or less instantaneous. Loretta picked up the phone, wishing she knew more about technical matters; she had had to ring the operator in Oxford to find out which kind of switchboard she was on, tone or pulse, when she bought a cordless phone and then, after a whole day without incoming calls, discovered that the unit wasn't working because the cat had accidentally pulled the plug out of the wall.

‘Hello, I don't know if you can help me,' she said when the operator answered, annoyed with herself for immediately sounding apologetic. ‘The thing is, I've had an obscene –'

‘You want the Annoyance Call Bureau. Here, let me give you their number.'

‘I've already got it, thanks, they're closed till tomorrow. What I need to know is, how long does it take to trace a call? I mean, is it stored in the computer?'

‘Sorry, ma'am, the helpline –'

‘I
told
you, it's closed.' Suddenly Loretta lost her temper. ‘And what use is it, packing up at four or whatever, what if he rings back at midnight? What am I supposed to do, keep him talking till nine o'clock in the bloody morning? Don't you realise I'm here on my own?' She was panting, incoherent, and the operator said in an offended voice, ‘Keep it clean, ma'am, there's no call for –'

Loretta slammed the phone down and hugged her chest. She was more disturbed than she wanted to admit and all at once it seemed imperative that she get out of the flat; she hurried to Toni's desk and flicked on the answering-machine, seized the spare keys from the coffee table and dropped them into her clutch bag. Honey was fast asleep, slumped against the front door, and Loretta stirred the dog's flank none too gently with the toe of her shoe. ‘Come on,' she said loudly, ‘are you going to let me out?'

Honey opened her eyes, thumped her stumpy tail on the floor
and heaved herself ponderously out of the way. Loretta had her hand on the latch when she recalled Toni asking her to switch on the radio or TV for the dog whenever she left the flat. She groaned, left the front door ajar and went back into the room.

‘I'm, like, a Marxist,' a high-pitched male voice said unexpectedly when she pressed the radio's ‘on' button. He giggled nervously, as though waiting to be cut off, and launched into a rambling denunciation of American foreign policy in Chile in the early 1970s.

Loretta paused by the door. She was in a city where victims of crime were offered therapy — during office hours only — and radio stations gave airtime to youthful revolutionaries who were still fighting twenty-year-old battles. The voice on the radio gathered speed, throwing out names and accusations, Kissinger and Allende and ITT, and Loretta wondered if he was even born when the events he referred to happened in 1973.

‘Have a good evening,' she said satirically to the dog, and left the apartment without a backward glance.

‘Excuse me. May I take a look at your programme?'

‘What?' Loretta was abstracted, staring into space, and it was only when she turned and saw her neighbour's outstretched hand that she realised what he was asking. As if he had read her mind he added, ‘I guess I left mine in the John', and she had no choice but to pass it to him, glancing at her watch as she did so. The interval had another twelve minutes to run before the second half of the play began and she hoped he wasn't about to engage her in conversation. The circle seats were narrow and close together, without much leg room, and she wished she had persuaded Toni to cancel the reservation at Stramiello's, her father's restaurant, instead of telling the maître d' to set a table for one. The theatre was in a street running off Broadway and there were probably dozens of little cafés and restaurants within walking distance, whereas to get to Stramiello's she'd need a cab. Her tiredness had returned and Loretta shifted uncomfortably in her seat, not looking forward to the second half.

The man next to her, who had bought Toni's ticket, seemed to be having similar problems — more so, in fact, since he was a couple of stones overweight. He had fidgeted and perspired throughout the first half of the play in spite of the air-conditioning and now he leaned towards Loretta with a puzzled look on his face.

‘Excuse me,' he said again, ‘but there's something here you might be able to help me with.' The programme was open at the cast list and he tapped it with his fingers. ‘Why I come to this play, my sister in Springfield told me be sure and not miss it next time I'm in New York. There's this actress, see, she's supposed to be in it but I don't see her name. What I'm thinking is, do I have the right play?'

‘What's her name?'

‘Judy.'

‘Judy what?'

‘Wait a minute — you talking about my sister?'

‘No,' Loretta said patiently, ‘I meant the actress.'

He looked sheepish. ‘I don't remember exactly. Madeline — Madeline something. I'd know it if I saw it.'

‘Sorry,' said Loretta, trying to keep her face straight, ‘I don't think I can help.'

He sat back in his seat, shaking his head and turning the pages of the programme. After a while he exclaimed: ‘She
left.
Look' – he waved it in Loretta's face — ‘she was in it but the cast changed. Judy will be
so
disappointed I missed her.'

Loretta smiled politely, so unmoved by the play that she didn't think it would make much difference if the Royal Shakespeare Company arrived
en masse
and took it over. It was meant to be a light comedy, with a trivial plot about three American sisters enjoying a reunion in a swanky flat in London, but the jokes went over Loretta's head and she couldn't understand why the rest of the audience had been rocking with laughter during the first half. She wondered glumly why Toni had picked it, and thought of all the other things she could have done with $40. A new pair of sunglasses, a couple of hardback books, a pair of ear-rings from the shop at the Metropolitan Museum ...

‘What happened to your friend?' her neighbour asked conversationally. He held the programme out to her but Loretta waved it away.

‘Keep it.'

‘I can? My daughter'll love that, she always wants to know what Dad's been up to in the big city. He get ill or something?'

‘Who?'

‘Your friend. The guy who's supposed to be in my seat.'

She was about to give him a discouraging look when she remembered that he'd insisted on handing over almost the full price of Toni's ticket, and he didn't seem to be enjoying the play any more than she was. ‘It's a woman, actually,' she said reluctantly. ‘Something came up at the last minute.'

‘You're British, right? You live in New York City?'

‘No.'

‘Me neither.'

She glanced covertly at him, taking in his bright yellow shirt, lurid bow tie and, as her gaze travelled down to his feet, high-top trainers. Thinning sandy hair made it difficult to guess his age but his face and scalp were shiny and pink, as though he had recently been scrubbed. He looked honest, open, and not very bright; Loretta felt a little sorry for him, guessing he was lonely and out of his depth, but she still didn't want to be drawn into conversation. She pulled her hair back from her face, cooling her neck, and crossed one leg over the other in a vain attempt to find a more comfortable way of sitting. The movement made the edges of her wrapround skirt fall open and she caught her neighbour looking appraisingly at her knees; embarrassed, she pulled the edges together and his eyes moved up to her face. He grinned.

‘OK, let me guess. You from London?'

‘No.' He waited and politeness forced her to add: ‘Oxford.'

His face lit up.
‘No.
You really from Oxford?' He placed the stress on the last syllable,
Oxford.