If I Should Die Before I Die (33 page)

I'd almost forgotten that Nora had changed offices, though I remembered her mentioning it. A time-sharing deal, she'd said. The new one was in the Nineties off Fifth, and the police had already broken into it and found no one.

I asked for a rundown on what they'd done. Martindale gave it to me succinctly and a lot more politely than the Martindale who'd tried to bite my head off in the Roosevelt. They had a list as long as the telephone book, he said, for people Nora knew, and a shorter one for Halloran. They'd been calling and, in some cases, sending people out to make contact. He showed me the lists in case I had any additions. I ran them down, noticing the checkmarks where they'd found the individuals in question. Margie was checked off; so was Sally Magister. In addition, they were checking the bars for Halloran and Stark and looking for the car. They'd gotten a description of the Alfa from Powell, who was still out in Shelter Island along with Bobby Derr and, within the last hour, the Suffolk County police.

Bud Fincher was clearly rattled. I guess the Counselor had hung him out to dry. In a way, I couldn't blame him. We'd known and used Bud for a long time, and once he himself had been a top-notch investigator. But he was less good at running an organization, which is what he now mostly did.

All Bud wanted to do was apologize. I didn't have time for that. I went over his rosters with him, all the places Nora had been in the days he'd had her under surveillance, all the people she'd seen or been seen with. Between Bud's operatives and the police, they'd located a good number of them but not all. But if the answer was in the ones they hadn't yet reached, then I failed to spot it.

The last person to have talked to her, as far as we knew, was Roger LeClerc. The last one before Roger was the Counselor himself. She'd called him around one to tell him she'd be unable to leave till late in the afternoon. They'd discussed it. She'd wanted him to go on to the Hamptons himself; he'd decided to wait for her. Then nothing, for around three hours. Then the call to Roger LeClerc.

I called Roger in.

I think I've described him before. He's a spare and, I guess, good-looking black man from the Ivory Coast in Africa, by way of Paris, France. An impeccable, if rather exotic, dresser. He speaks English with an indescribable accent and has a manner which can be either ingratiating or high-handed, depending on who he's dealing with. Except, that is, when he blows his cool.

“Roger,” I said, “I want you to calm down now. I want to hear exactly what Mrs. Camelot said when she called.”

The fact that he'd been the last one to talk to her had clearly affected him. He seemed to take it as his personal responsibility that the Counselor's Wife was missing and in danger.

“Madame she says: Let me talk to Philippe. I tell her you are away. Madame she says: When will he be back? I say: I don't know, I don't think he'll be back. I say: Is there any message? Madame she says: ‘Never mind, Ro-jay, I will find him elsewhere.' Then Madame she says I am to tell Monsieu' Camelo' she …”

“Wait a minute,” I said. Roger jumped as if I'd set off a firecracker under him.

I told him again to calm down, simply to repeat the last part.

“‘Never mind, Ro-jay,'” he quoted, “‘I will find him elsewhere.' Is there anything wrong with that, Philippe?”

“Nothing wrong. But what did you think that meant?”

“I don't know,” he said.

“It sounds like she knew where I was, doesn't it?”

“I don't know. She says: ‘I will find him elsewhere.'”

“Okay,” I said. “Now go on. Run through the rest of it.”

He did, the part about the message she'd left for the Counselor. Then she'd hung up on him, and he'd gone upstairs to deliver the message personally.

“Did she seem nervous?” I asked Roger.

He didn't think nervous. She'd sounded in a hurry, he thought, but Madame Camelo' usually sounded in a hurry.

I let him go then. Martindale by this time had vacated my desk and gone outside. I was alone with Bud Fincher.

I thought about it, then turned, punched out my home number on the phone and worked my beeper against the mouthpiece. It was a longshot all right, but that's what we were reduced to, and every once in a thousand days and nights longshots come home.

Like this one did.

There was only one message on my answering machine.

“Phil, where are you?” Her voice on the tape was hurried but calm enough. “I think I may have done something stupid. Please call me. Please don't tell Charles—I think I'd die—but I'm at my old office. I'll explain.”

Then she'd given me a number.

Then nothing.

Then the three beeps signifying that the machine had run out of messages.

I hung up. The number she'd given me didn't sound familiar, but I punched it out. Seven, eight rings, no answer. Still. I think I started to sweat, inside and out. I made some excuse to Fincher, like going to the bathroom, and got up from my desk and went out into the reception area where I remember seeing the Counselor in discussion with Martindale and somebody else. I ducked around them, and Roger LeClerc, and out the front door.

But once I was outside in the street, I ran like hell.

I ran the blocks to the building on Park like I was Jesse Owens and the Nazis were coming after me to take their gold medals back.

No, delete that. There's no point trying to make a joke out of it.

I was scared witless.

No, not that either.

I kept thinking: She must have left that message hours before, probably right after she'd talked to Roger. By now she could be anywhere. But if she was anywhere, why hadn't she turned up? Why had nobody heard from her?

And what the hell was she doing in her
old
office, the one she'd shared with …

Jesus Christ in spades.

I burst into the lobby past the startled doorman and down past the elevators to the corridor that crooked around to her office door. I rang the bell, and banged, and was about to rear back and give it a battering-ram charge when I gave the doorknob a try.

Surprise, surprise. It turned in my hand.

I walked into the reception room. The lights were on. A chair had been knocked over right near the front door.

Nora's old office to my right.

I could hear sounds, but I couldn't place them. Soft crooning sounds, not menacing.

I went in.

My first impulse was to back out, tiptoe away. I thought I'd interrupted a love scene. Then, when Nora looked up at me, I saw thin streaks of blood coming out of her scalp, down one side of her face to her neck.

She was sitting on the floor, legs crossed under her, cradling someone in her lap. She'd been bent over him, rocking back and forth a little, talking or making sounds while she cradled his head.

The office was an unholy mess.

The guy with his head in her lap was Bill Biegler, a short shrink with a reddish blond mustache and a ruddy bald top. Except the top wasn't so ruddy right then.

Her one-time office partner. And more than that, I now guessed.

“Did Halloran do this?” I said.

She nodded, not saying anything. She'd lowered her head again. She just went on rocking slightly and crooning that low soft sound.

“When?” I asked.

She shrugged by way of an answer, then said quietly: “I don't know.”

“Where did he go?”

Another shrug, and she went on rocking.

I examined her first. I'm no doctor, but the wound in her scalp seemed to have stopped bleeding, and the stains on her cheeks were as much from tears as blood. Her clothes were torn, but I saw no other signs of physical damage.

I eased Biegler off her lap, and she let me help her up. I led her to the patient's couch, and the only argument she gave me was when I tried to make her lie down.

“I'm all right, Phil,” she said in a close-to-normal voice. She arched her neck down, then up. “A little in shock, but I'm all right. I'm worried about Bill. He had him tied up, in the chair. I got him free, but then I think he passed out.”

I turned to Biegler. He was out all right. The color had drained from his normally ruddy cheeks, but when I took his wrist, I readily found his pulse beat.

“I think he needs mouth-to-mouth,” Nora said behind me. “Do you know how to do that?”

I did know. I kneeled over Biegler, working his arms backward and forward while I breathed air into his lungs. He came to pretty quickly. I helped him to a half-sitting position, then supported him while, turning away, he threw up on the carpet.

He wanted water.

“In the bathroom,” Nora said.

I went into the bathroom, filled a cup and brought it back to him. By that time he was sitting up, rubbing at his wrists.

“Just sip it,” Nora told him.

I helped him hold the cup. He sipped some water, then handed it back to me. I put in on Nora's desk. Then I reached for her telephone.

“What are you doing, Phil?” she said.

“I'm calling for help. You two need to see a doctor.”

“Not yet,” she said.

“Nora, for God's sake, we've got the whole city out looking for you. There's a killer on the loose. The Counselor's half-crazy with …”

“Not yet,” she repeated.

I stared at her from the desk. She sat on the patient's couch, supporting herself on her palms. One shoulder wing of her blouse flapped loose where it had been ripped from her body, and her hair looked frizzed and wild, but her gaze held mine.

“Here's what happened, Phil,” she said, her voice slow but steady. “I'd made an appointment with Vincent Halloran. He was late. When he got here, he tried to attack me. Bill was working in his office. He heard me call for help. He came in, tried to stop it. Halloran slammed him against the wall, knocked him out.

“That's when I got this,” Nora said, touching her head near the wound. “He knocked me down, my head hit against the edge of the desk. I think I was out for a minute myself, or dazed. By the time I came to, he had Bill trussed to that chair there.”

I followed her pointing hand to a straight chair which lay on its side.

“He used my own tie, my own fucking belt,” Biegler said. “He gagged me with that thing over there,” pointing to a place on the carpet where I saw the white silk scarf. Then Biegler went back to massaging his ankles. “He tied me so fucking tight I still can't feel a thing.”

“Then it was my turn,” Nora said, her eyes still on mine.

“I'm amazed you're still alive,” Biegler said.

“I am too. He told me he was going to kill me. He was doing it for Carter, he said. In Memoriam.”

She stopped talking then. I watched the planes of her face break up, and she started to laugh. A weird laugh, like she'd been holding herself together barely and now it was time to let go.

“What happened?” I said.

“I think I scared him, Phil,” she said, catching her breath. “It's unbelievable but I actually think I scared him. Actually I …”

Whatever she was going to say, though, she couldn't. She shook her head, more shudder than shake, and then I saw the shudder run down into her shoulders.

She hugged her torso with her arms, rocking a little on the couch. I watched her slowly regain control. Then she said, flat out:

“I told him he was going to have to rape me first, Phil. That's what I said. I said: ‘Okay, go ahead and kill me, Vincent, but you're going to have to fuck me first.' Those were the words. I said: ‘If you're going to kill me, fine, Vincent, but I want your come in me when you …'

“God,” she said, interrupting herself. Her eyes went big. “I don't even know where I got it, where it came from. It's not instinctual, and I'm sure it's not what they recommend in rape prevention. But that's what I said, that's what was
in
me to say. I even … I even …”

I started toward her and Biegler, still on the floor, did too. The shuddering was back, and I thought she was about to break down.

“You don't have to talk about it, Nora,” Biegler said.

But she waved us both off, hands gesturing.

“It's okay,” she said. “I'm all right. Just a little shook, that's all.”

She looked away from me, though, the one time in telling it.

“I don't think he believed me,” she said. “Maybe he didn't know what to believe. But it stopped him, at least for a minute. Then I walked over to him—he was where you are, Phil—and I … I put my arms around his neck. I just put my arms around his neck and … I swayed. I said: ‘Lucky Vincent. You're going to get to make love to me first, and then you can murder me.'”

She looked up at me somberly.

“It freaked him out, Phil,” she said. “My touching him, I think, more than anything. Totally. I didn't know what was happening. One minute I literally expected he was going to kill me, the next he'd flung me down. I ended up on the floor. He ran out. He fled.”

She paused, still staring at me like that wasn't all of it.

“When did this happen?” I asked them.

“It was sometime after eight,” Biegler said. “I remember looking at my watch before.”

“I honestly don't know,” Nora said. “I lost all sense of time. Maybe it was after eight. I remember untying Bill, but I have no idea how long we were sitting here after that.”

Nobody said anything for a minute. Nora was eyeing me oddly.

“There's something else I'd like you to know, Phil,” she said finally, her voice small. “It's that I'm pregnant. I should have told you before now.”

“It's okay,” I answered. “I just heard that. Congratulations.”

Maybe it wasn't so okay, I thought, maybe not at all okay. But that, I guessed, wasn't my lookout.

“I only hope to God I'm not going to have a miscarriage.”

I didn't know how to answer that one. It was Biegler who ventured that she wouldn't. How he knew I've no idea.