Hope to Die (23 page)

Hide in plain sight, he tells himself, and wills himself to sit forward, to turn and take a good look at the two of them.

And shrinks back in spite of himself, because he's seen the older man before. He didn't recognize him until this minute, perhaps because he didn't take a good look at him earlier, but now he does, and he recognizes him.

What about the black youth? Has he seen him before?

Well, honestly, how can you tell? It is not that all young black males look alike, he knows better than that. It's that one sees them that way, one simply registers Young Black Man mentally and lets it go at that. Deliberately, he inventories this one's facial features, determined to know him when he sees him again.

Assuming that he will in fact see him again...

They're on their way west. It's the same as yesterday, when she went out for groceries. He's parked facing the wrong way, he has to turn around to watch them. As they near the corner it comes to him with perfect certainty that they play an important role in all of this, that it's a mistake to let them walk out of the picture so easily.

He doesn't hesitate. He gets out of his car, locks it, and starts off after them.

And now, he thinks, they'll turn the corner and get in their car, leaving him on foot. Or they'll hail a taxi. Well, if there's one cab there'll be two. With luck his taxi can follow their taxi.

But they don't get in a car, or hail a cab. They turn down Columbus Avenue, and the young one whips out a cellular phone and makes a call, talks, then hands the phone to the older man, who's done talking by the time they cross Seventy-second Street. The young one puts the phone away and they walk west another block, disappearing into the subway entrance at the corner of Broadway and Seventy-second.

It's remarkably easy to follow them. The station's poorly designed, and there are separate turnstiles for the uptown and downtown platforms, but he's lucky, he's close enough to see them go through the uptown turnstiles, and he follows in their wake and picks a spot a dozen yards from where they're standing. He positions himself so that he can watch them out of the corner of his eye, but they will only see him in profile, with his body largely screened by others.

Not that they're looking around, not that they suspect a thing. He could probably stand right next to them without arousing suspicion.

He considers it, thinking it might be interesting to know what they are saying.

If it were just the one man, the older man, and if there were fewer people on the platform- well, that sort of thing happens all the time, doesn't it? You stand close, waiting, timing the approach of the oncoming train, then give a sudden lurch, a shove, and, if you are clever about it, you can even make it appear to anyone watching as though you are trying to save the person, trying to grab hold of the fellow you've just sent hurtling into the train's path.

Ridiculous even to think about it. But he has to acknowledge that his hands are tingling, as if anticipating their role.

Interesting, what you learned about yourself...

An express train comes. They board it and so does he, entering the same car by a different door. They stand, their hands a foot apart on the overhead rail. He sits, watching them without being watched in return.

One stop to Ninety-sixth Street. The doors open. They get out, talking, paying no attention, and he follows. Again he plants himself ten or a dozen yards away, and follows them onto the Broadway local when it arrives.

On the street I said, "I hope I was right."

" 'Bout her not needin' a will?"

"Uh-huh. She's sitting on what, nine or ten million dollars? This may be hard to believe, but there are cases on record where people have killed for less than that."

"Some for as little as twenty thousand."

"Just what I was thinking."

"She didn't know about it, though. Lia."

"That's according to Kristin. No way of telling what Aunt Susan might have let slip, along with the combination for the keypad."

"Coulda known about it," he allowed. "Coulda thought it'd be more. Can't quite see her as the Third Man, though."

"Does she have a boyfriend?"

"Never mentioned one. Don't mean she don't have one." We were walking as we talked, and as we neared the corner he said, "Here's what don't make sense. If she's involved, what she wants is what happens- the cops wrap it up an' close the case. Otherwise why stage it that way?"

"So why does she say anything to you? Why let on she's suspicious of Kristin?"

He nodded. "That's what don't make sense."

"Twenty thousand's not really all that much," I said. "Not as a payoff for an operation like this. Maybe she was expecting more."

"Like how much?"

"I don't know, pick a number. A hundred thousand? She sees how the Hollanders live and they look to her like they've got more money than God, and Aunt Susan says she's made a provision for her to see her through college, and who knows what kind of dollar-sign sugarplums start dancing in her head? Then she finds out it's twenty thousand dollars and that seems like nothing. On the other hand, if Kristin's implicated, she can't profit from her parents' death. And the whole pie gets chopped up among the surviving relatives."

"So what's she get?"

"How many relatives did she name before, eight or ten? Say there are more she didn't mention, say a total of twenty, and say they all get equal shares. What is that, half a million dollars?"

"More'n twenty thousand."

"A lot more," I said, and pictured the ash-blond waif, the see-through skin, the big soulful eyes. "But I can't believe she was involved. Not knowingly."

"What you lookin' for?"

"A pay phone," I said. "Do you see one anywhere?"

"Got a free one," he said, and took his cell phone from his pocket. I said I didn't suppose he remembered Lia Parkman's number, and he rolled his eyes. "Don't need to remember it," he said. "Got her on my speed dial." He punched some numbers, flicked a lever, and held the contraption to his ear. After a moment he said, "Lia? T J. Hold on a second."

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "You really oughta get one of these," he said, and handed me the phone.

We rode up on the subway, meeting her at the Salonika, the same place as last time. She was waiting for us in a booth, an iced tea half finished in front of her. I said I'd have the same, and T J ordered a Coke. The waitress didn't seem to mind that no one was having any food. It was an off-hour, and if we weren't there the booth would be empty.

Lia had been surprised to hear from me. I'd done such a good job of setting her mind to rest that she'd never have guessed I was following up on the inquiry she'd set in motion. Her first reaction was one of alarm. She didn't want to make trouble for Kristin, that was the last thing she wanted, and now that the initial shock had worn off she couldn't imagine what had ever led her to have such a crazy idea in the first place. She'd seen Kristin since then, and Kristin was completely rocked by the death of her parents, and...

I assured her that Kristin wasn't a suspect. But, I said, there were some unanswered questions in the case, some possibility that the burglary had been arranged, that the killers had had inside help.

"The burglar alarm," she said.

"The burglar alarm code, the front door key, the Hollanders' schedule. I was just wondering if someone could have wormed any pertinent information out of you."

"Out of me?"

"Well, you or your boyfriend."

"Well, I don't have a boyfriend," she said, "so that's not it. And nobody even knew about my aunt and uncle or where they lived or anything. So I can't think how anybody could have gotten any information from me."

There was something she wasn't telling me. I could feel its presence there, parked on the edge of thought. I tried a few approaches, and then I said, "How about the key? Did anybody borrow it?"

"No, of course not."

"But you did have a key, didn't you?"

"Aunt Susan gave it to me."

"You didn't mention it before," I said. "You and your aunt came home one day, and she had her arms full of packages, so she gave you the key and had you open the door. Then she told you the keypad code so you could turn off the alarm."

I hadn't meant to scare her, but I did. She looked like a waif caught in the headlights.

Gently I said, "Isn't that what you said?"

"Yes. That's what happened, but the way you said it just now- "

"If you had your own key, why did your aunt hand you hers?"

"I didn't have a key then. Later on she gave me one. In case I needed to get in when nobody was home, she said. And she reminded me I already knew how to deactivate the alarm. Just be sure to set it again before I left, she said."

"And did you have much occasion to use your key?"

"I don't think I ever used it," she said. "Until you mentioned it just now, I more or less forgot I had it. And nobody else knew I had it, and I certainly never let anybody borrow it."

"Do you have it with you now?"

She fished in her purse, brought out a ring of keys, identified one as being the key to the Hollander house. "So even if somebody took it when I wasn't looking," she said, "which wouldn't make sense because nobody even knew I had it, but if somebody did, and he took it, well, he couldn't have, because here it is."

"That just means he gave it back."

"Don't you think I would remember? Especially after what happened, don't you think it would get my attention if someone gave back a key to the house where my aunt and uncle were murdered?"

T J pointed out that he could have returned the key the same way he took it, without her knowledge. "And it wouldn't have had to be after the break-in," I added. "He wouldn't have kept the key for long, wouldn't have wanted to chance your missing it. He'd just need it long enough to have a copy made. It's not a hard key to duplicate. Any neighborhood locksmith could do it in five minutes."

She was silent for a long moment, then announced she had to go to the bathroom. She took a step away from the table, then came back for her purse.

"She 'fraid we might look through it," T J said.

"And didn't want to let us know she was thinking that, but didn't want to leave the purse, either."

"Hidin' something."

"Feels that way to me, too."

When she came back to the table I fed her a few easy questions, ones it wouldn't disturb her to answer. They were designed to make our relationship feel a little less adversarial. Then I asked her if there was anything else she could think of, something she might feel reluctant to mention. I could feel her wrestling with the question, deciding whether or not to give it up.

"No," she said at length. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing."

Back on Broadway, T J said he didn't suppose I felt like walking all the way home again. I didn't, and we headed for the subway.

"Thought you'd keep at her," he said as we walked. "Thought you'd get her to open up."

"I thought about it."

"Just handed her a card. 'Call me if you think of anything, however far-fetched or unimportant it might seem.' "

"When you go fishing," I said, "and you get a bite, you have to know when to give line and when to reel in."

"I didn't know you liked to go fishing."

"I don't," I said. "It bores me to death."

"So you gave Lia some line."

"I gave her an easy way to change her mind," I said. "She knows something, or thinks she does, or is afraid she does. Now she'll go home and think about it, and she'll feel guilty, because she lied to me and I acted as though I believed her. And maybe she'll pick up the phone." I was silent for a moment, and then I added, "But it's all guesswork, you know. If she makes the call, then I guessed right."

Not exactly, as it turned out. She made the call, but that didn't mean I'd played it right.

Lia!

He is on the street in front of the coffee shop, squinting through the plate glass window, and they are in a booth with their backs to him. He wouldn't be able to pick out either of them, just seeing the backs of their heads from this distance, but the combination, black and white, makes it easy to spot them. And, across from them, a blond girl sits, and she is instantly recognizable.

And what business do these two have with Lia Parkman? How do they even know she exists?

Kristin Hollander, of course. They went to Kristin Hollander's house, she let them in, they stayed for the better part of an hour, and they left, made a phone call, and here they are, sitting across a table from Lia Parkman, Kristin's cousin.

What are they talking about?

What is she telling them?

She can't tell them too much. She doesn't really know anything. But she knows him, and she could conceivably put them on his track.

He doesn't want that. Whoever they are, whatever they're after, he doesn't want that.

His hand goes to his throat. He's not wearing a tie today, nor a jacket, just a blue shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up for comfort. He lifts out the rhodochrosite disc, feels its smoothness, tucks it away beneath his shirt.

His own fault. He knew she was a loose end, dangling invitingly, waiting for someone to grab hold and give a tug. But, because everything went so smoothly, he let himself believe it was all right to leave a loose end.

He mustn't stand here, staring in the window. They can't see him, but what's the point of drawing attention from anyone? He walks fifty yards south on Broadway, where there's a bus stop. No one thinks you're loitering when you do so at a bus stop.

And it provides a fine view of the coffee shop entrance.

His own fault, but it wasn't just simple carelessness. Because he'd found himself itching to tie off that loose end, and he'd been suspicious of his motives. His hand remembers the way the gun had bucked in it, remembers gripping the knife, cutting that throat with surgical precision. And his whole being remembers the way it felt.