Ghost Country (24 page)

Not moving from the window, she played the messages on her voice mail. The fourth was from Grandfather, who’d called a little before eight. His austere voice wondered where she was and what she was doing about dinner: you are usually more thoughtful than this, my dear; it hurts Hilda when you forget to call to let her know your plans.

She didn’t play the rest of the messages, but jerked herself from the window, picked her umbrella off the hook by the door, and left the office. As she stood in the street, waiting for a cab, she could picture her arrival home. She would walk in the door, nerves jangling,
respond to Grandfather’s raised brows with some tale about a difficult client, present her cheek for his dry lips, plant her own chaste kiss on Mephers, retire to her ivory-curtained suite and try to cry the tears that seldom came to her.

What would happen if she asked about Beatrix, about Mara, about who their fathers were? Grandfather would retreat into a thin-lipped huff: my dear Harriet, I was hoping your calm rationality would rub off on Mara—not that she would infect you with her idiocies.

The first drops of rain, thick and wobbly like bags of plasma, were hitting her when a cab responded to her outstretched arm. On an impulse, she told the driver to swing first through Underground Wacker, to the Hotel Pleiades garage, on their way to Graham Street.

F
LASHING BLUE STROBES
lit up Underground Wacker. A police car blocked the intersection with Stetson; a patrolman with the superior air officers assume at the scene of a crime was blowing his whistle and ordering cars to make U-turns back to Wacker.

“I have to get through here,” Harriet told the cabbie.

He flung up his arms. “Is not possible, missus. You seeing cop? You wanting I run over him?”

“I want you to stop and let me talk to him.”

The policeman whistled peremptorily at the cab. “Let’s move it, buddy, let’s move it.”

“See?” the driver said. “No stopping.”

Harriet rolled down her window. “Officer! I’m the lawyer for—”

“Save it, lady. Get this cab turned around.”

Harriet opened the door just as the cab driver whipped into a U-turn. “You ignorant cretin, stop at once! You could have killed me!”

He stood on his brakes. “Get out, bitch. You bitches all same. Go home, not go home. Stop here, no stop here. Now you starting
trouble on me with police. Get out. Keep money, I not wanting him!”

Harriet scribbled down his name and medallion number: a call to the commissioner’s office would be her first act in the morning. She warned the cabbie to expect an official censure. He roared down the street so fast he nearly collided with an oncoming squad car, whose driver wheeled around and brought the cab to a standstill. Harriet paid no attention, was unaware of the cabdriver dancing up and down in his fury, waving an arm in her direction, screaming imprecations. She walked past the police barricades, imperious, ignoring whistles and yells from the cops there, heading to the garage.

Water was pouring into the street. At first she thought it was the storm overhead, pounding out rain so hard it penetrated the upper roadbed. She tried to step around the freshets, for her Italian high heels wouldn’t survive a soaking, but water lay in a sheet across the sidewalk and poured into the gutter.

The center of the street was filled with city vehicles. A blue truck from Streets and Sanitation, flanked by five squad cars, was positioned near the Pleiades garage, next to the disputed wall. The mass of police and city workers made it impossible for Harriet to see what was actually happening.

A Fire Department ambulance waited next to the curb, its red lights mixing with police blues. Walkie-talkies crackled. A knot of uniformed men huddled by the back door of the ambulance, which was open. Craning her neck around the mob of men, Harriet saw a stretcher on the sidewalk, wheels lifting it above the flood.

Three women waited near the stretcher, their faces shining in the flashing lights, their expressions unreadable. From the layers of dresses and sweaters draping two of them, Harriet assumed they were homeless. The third stood slightly aloof, yet was clearly with them. She wore a black suit whose silhouette proclaimed something cut by a couturier. What was she doing with those two?

A crowd of spectators had gathered on the perimeter; commuters, hotel guests, theatergoers, huddling out of the storm on the
underground streets and drawn here by the strobes and the hope for vicarious gore. Some probably hoped to be on TV, for Minicams, sound techs, and reporters had cascaded into the street on the tide of water. Harriet scanned the crowd for her sister’s distinctive bush of hair, but it was hard to see anything now that she was inside the circle of lights.

Hovering near the crowd at the ambulance was Brian Cassidy, the garage manager. His thickly muscled arms looked too big, as though they had grown on him without his knowledge and he now was at a loss how to use them. Harriet walked over to him just as a policeman tried to tell her she had no business inside the barricade.

“Ms. Stonds!” Cassidy greeted her in relief. “She’s our lawyer, Officer. How did you find out what happened? I only just called Mr. Palmetto five minutes ago.”

She shook her head. “A coincidence. I stopped by to look for—to check on things. What’s going on?”

He swung one of his big arms in a meaningless gesture. “That damned bitch—sorry, but you know, that psycho homeless woman! She left us in peace for a few days, but then she showed again tonight. We cemented over the wall, like you said, and when she saw that she started howling like it was the end of the world. Then these other three—well, women—show up, and I see one of them is that damned twat who was bellowing her head off the other night, thinking she was some kind of singer.”

So was the woman in the couture suit Luisa Montcrief? Harriet hadn’t seen the diva in court when she bailed out her sister last week; she’d only listened to Harry Minsky’s lament. And sympathized, having a sister herself.

“So the psycho, not that they aren’t all crazy, she starts howling that the Mother of God will never forgive her, and the singer, she starts braying some wop music or other.”

In fact it had been Verdi’s “Madre, pietosa Vergine”—most merciful virgin mother—one of Luisa’s hallmark arias. She’d made her European debut as Leonora, at the opera house in Venice, how sad that such a beautiful place burned to the ground, although
when she read about it she laughed: imagine a building burning in the middle of Venice. All that water, so much that the city is sinking into the sea, and the opera house burns to the ground. She’d been at an admirer’s apartment when she saw the story in the
Herald-Star
, and the man—what had his name been?—winced as she laughed, her full-throated enchanting laugh, that’s how Tyrone Bennet from the London
Independent
described it. The admirer, a cretin after all, said, must you make such a god-awful racket at the breakfast table? He must have been hung over: one had to be charitable with a drunk, and, after all, he’d been good enough to put her up for a few weeks, even r he proved to be spiteful in the end. Thank goodness she had never had that kind of problem with drugs or liquor. Of course, it was rare for a Jew to be an alcoholic—she herself was proof of that, oily needing a drink now and then to steady her nerves, but never dependent on it the way so many sad souls were.

It was funny that a Jewish woman would spend so much of her life singing piteous pleas to the virgin mother of Jesus. If it wasn’t “Madre, pietosa Vergine,” it was “Ave” upon “Ave Maria” or Gounod’s “Angels pure and bright”; you’d think she’d spent her childhood in convent schoots. When she told Piero that, he put his finger on her lips: don’t go around announcing that you’re Jewish,
cara
, this is still an ugly world and your career isn’t established. You look like a Roman, and “Montcrief” is not a Jewish name, after all. Maybe I should buy you a rosary for luck, but it hadn’t been lucky, she’d been carrying it as she always did that night at the Met, and—and her head was aching abominably.

What was she doing here, anyway, with this crazy woman who thought the Virgin was bleeding through the wall at her? That brutal man at the
pension
this morning, throwing her out, you vomited all over the front halt, I’m not running a flophouse here, throwing her luggage down the stairs. She’d only just left her sickbed, a terrible flu, she couldn’t remember ever being so sick—she’d actually been in the hospital until yesterday, with no notion how she got there. No wonder her breath control wasn’t right: she
shouldn’t have been singing so soon after being ill, that’s probably why she threw up, but would that idiot listen to her? Probably on Harry’s payroll, paid to make her life a misery.

She’d had to leave her luggage at the Civic Opera House, even though she wasn’t engaged to sing there. What a struggle that had been, just to leave a suitcase, you’d think she was some street person, not a diva who had received eight curtain calls for her Aida in that same building, thank you very much. It wasn’t even as though anyone was using the place. It was July, no rehearsals, all she asked was an empty practice room.

Then Alessandro had appeared, kissed her hand, Madame, you need a practice room? What, you are thinking of a comeback? That would be glorious news indeed. And let her have a key to one of the rooms on the eighth floor, with a concert grand in perfect tune ready for her accompanist. The feel of the key where she’d tucked it against her breasts reassured her. She was still a diva, she could still get into the great opera houses of the world.

Then the thunder began. She tried to get into the shelter at the church, but that bitch in charge, that Patsy Warlocks, wouldn’t let her in: we have rules here, Luisa, I told you two weeks ago not to show up here again if you were drunk. My good woman, I just got out of my sickbed. Doesn’t your god, your Jesus that you turn to, to get your mind off the fact that no living man wants that cold stiff body of yours, doesn’t he tell you to take in sick people when they need shelter?

And all she got in return was a furious scream: Don’t try to come here again, I’m having your name permanently struck from the rolls.

So she returned to Underground Wacker, hoping to find the little shack where the black woman said she could sleep if she was desperate, and came instead upon the most dreary chaos: the crazy woman, the black woman, the white friend, all wailing around a crack in the wall. The only crack here is in your head, Luisa said, but they told her it had been cemented over.

The crazy woman was imploring the Virgin for help, so Luisa
thought she would give her some support, show her the right way to address the Virgin: in Italian, to the strains of Verdi. In the middle of her aria out came these goons, must be Callas’s claque, following her everywhere, getting her location from Harry and Karen so they could humiliate her.

My good ape, Luisa had interrupted her song to talk to the ringleader, his arms looked like an orangutan’s, I know exactly what you’re up to. Have the goodness to wait until I’m singing in a proper venue before you start your harassment: we’ll see then who sings the final note.

While he was arguing with her, the black woman pulled a knife from some recess in her layers of garments and poked at the cement. She cried out, look here, Maddy, you can still see the Virgin’s blood, it’s still coming through. The ape turned from Luisa to the black woman, yelling that he’d have the police on them if they touched the wall again, get out of here, you stupid bitches, when suddenly water started pouring over them, a cataract that almost knocked the crazy woman off her feet. At first Luisa thought it was the storm: she could hear the thunder pounding overhead, but then she saw water cascading from the wall. She had to laugh, the ape looked so ridiculous with his hair plastered to his head, trying to rub his eyes clear, and listen to him now, claiming that the black woman had started the flood, Luisa had to laugh again.

The raucous sound maae Harriet’s teeth tingle. She looked in irritation at Luisa, but the diva was as impervious to glares as she was to threats of violence.

Harriet’s stockings were soaked now inside her high heels, which made her more irritable. “Surely poking at the cement couldn’t cause this flood.”

“No?” Cassidy said. “Well, I’d like to know what else could have done it. The city says we must have broke the pipe hammering on the concrete, but no such thing. In fact, the boys from maintenance didn’t even take out the old stuff, which I told them they’d better do if they want the patch to hold. They just cemented over it. They sure didn’t pound on it. Nobody else so much as touched
it until these bitches—excuse me, these homeless women—arrived. And then the crazy one screams, ’the Mother of God has forgiven me. Next she goes and sticks her head into the waterfall and almost drowns.”

“Is that why the ambulance is there?”

“Yeah. Stupid bastard Nicolo called 911, even though I ordered him not to. Would have solved a lot of problems if he’d just let her go. About time he looked for another job. Guess he don’t remember who’s signing his paycheck.”

Harriet looked at him in astonishment. “You can’t make that kind of statement in public, Cassidy. I’m the hotel’s lawyer, so no one can force me to repeat it, but I’d hate to have to defend you on an employee dismissal charge because your carhop saved a woman’s life.”

She turned away from him and went over to the ambulance, where she had to raise her voice to a shout to be heard over the water, the walkie-talkies, and the bellows of the different work crews. “I’m the hotel’s lawyer: how is this woman doing?”

The driver, impressed by her air of authority, was starting to answer when a plantation of mikes sprouted under Harriet’s nose: she’d spoken loudly enough for the camera crews to hear her, also. Hot lights blinded her as the technicians converged, like a flock of pigeons all seeing a bag of popcorn at the same time.

What was her name? Why had the hotel cemented over the crack? Did she believe the possibility of a miraculous appearance by the Virgin? And didn’t Madeleine Carter have a right to worship the Virgin there? What had caused the geyser? Did she support the hotel’s decision not to pay for Madeleine Carter’s hospital care? What if Ms. Carter contracted pneumonia and died?