Kill Me (21 page)

FORTY-ONE

I waited until almost midnight so that Mary and her cousin would have time to grab coffee or dessert and get back to Brooklyn after the final curtain of the play they were attending.

Mary answered her mobile phone after half a ring.

“Yes,” she said. She knew who it was.

“That errand you’ve been doing for me? It turns out that I need some more of the same stuff that you picked up at that place on Park Avenue. You know the one? Can you do that?”

Mary didn’t need a road map. “Of course,” she said. “What I picked up already wasn’t … enough? Satisfactory? What?”

“No, no, it was great. But it turns out I didn’t use it well. It may have spoiled. My fault, entirely. I’m hoping that I’ll do better with another batch.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, first thing. The people at the store will probably have guessed that you’ll be stopping by.”

“Okay. Shouldn’t be a problem, as long as I know.”

I sighed. “How was the play?”

“We had a lovely time. It was even funnier than I expected, if that’s possible. Can’t thank you enough. I’ll take care of the errands tomorrow and be back in touch.”

We said good-bye and I closed the phone. I reopened it and speed-dialed Thea in Colorado.

“Hey,” I said. “Miss you.”

She was sleepy. We talked kids and dogs and my health for a while. She hadn’t heard from Adam. I told her I had at least another day of meetings. She took it in stride. I told her I loved her and asked her to kiss the girls for me. She told me to take care of myself.

It all seemed so normal.

FORTY-TWO

The next morning I ordered room service again — this time for real — and ate eggs and bacon and rye toast with the curtains wide open to the park, and with Matt and Katie telling me their version of the news. Dessert was that elusive silver bowl of fresh strawberries.

I thought I’d end up regretting my indulgence. My stomach hadn’t successfully processed that much food in weeks. I had to distract myself from imagining the vomit I’d produce with bacon and strawberries.

One news story caught my eye. A story from home. A man had been shot on Interstate 70 on the west side of the Denver metropolitan area the previous night shortly before eleven o’clock. Given evidence at the scene, the authorities were investigating the possibility that he was the victim of a sniper.
The Today Show
was using a local feed of a familiar Denver reporter standing high on a stepped mesa that rose above another bluff that was roped off with crime-scene tape. Far over the reporter’s shoulder I could see the wide ribbon of highway that led from the rising plains into the mountains.

It was one of the highways that led from my Denver home to my Ridgway home.

The victim was a forty-two-year-old father of three. He’d been driving a white Honda Odyssey in the slow lane heading westbound just beyond Ward Road.

I sometimes drove that route on my way from Ridgway to Denver’s suburbs, or back.

Huh.
I adjusted the time of the crime to account for the Eastern time zone and realized that the sniper had killed his victim about an hour after I’d sent the faux room-service waiter on his way without the promise he’d demanded.

On my way out of the hotel one of the front-desk clerks replenished my supply of pocket cash. I suspected I was going to need a good-sized wad.

I took a taxi back to the Upper West Side and had the cabbie drop me off a block before we got to Lizzie’s building. I bought a cup of coffee at a Starbucks, snuck a look to confirm that the newsstand was open for business, and found a deserted stoop with a good vantage of the canopied door to her building.

I parked my butt on the stoop, sipped coffee, and read the
Times,
one eye on the sidewalk.

It was eight-thirty. I wanted to be early in case she was early.

My caution hadn’t been necessary. Eight forty-five came and went. So did nine o’clock. No Lizzie.

Nine-fifteen, nine-thirty. Ditto.

My coffee was gone and I had to pee. I stood up to try to see if that would relieve the pressure on my bladder. If not, I was looking at a quick jaunt to Starbucks for a toilet break.

“Boss? She be gone.”

I looked behind me and saw the man from the newsstand, the one whom I’d originally thought was deaf. His presence surprised me, spooked me even. So did the fact that he was about five foot four.

He noticed my eyes take in his height. “I stand on a Coke crate when I’m working,” he said. “It’s an antique.”

An antique?
I nodded. “Good morning. What do you mean, she’s gone?”

His hands were in his pockets. His dark eyes danced. They were as convivial as could be.

Oh.

I pulled the roll of cash from my front pants pocket and peeled off three one-hundred-dollar bills. After fanning them open for his appraisal, I asked, “Is what you know worth this?”

“My personal opinion is that no woman is worth that. Least I never met her. But it ain’t my money, and it ain’t my dick.”

“This isn’t about my dick.”

He shrugged. “First rule: It’s always about your dick. Second rule: If you don’t think it’s about your dick, go back and study the first rule.”

I handed him the money. He slid it casually into his shirt pocket as though he had three big bills in extra cash on him every morning of his life.

I liked the guy.

“She packed up a bunch of shit, couple rolling suitcases’ worth, and was gone before midnight. Little later on two guys popped over and loaded even more of her stuff into an unmarked panel truck. A half-dozen cardboard boxes, a’ least.” He handed me a piece of paper. “This is the license number from the truck. Jersey. It’s pro’ly bogus.” He poked at the scrap. “And ‘at’s ‘at other number. On the side, by the cab. Bogus too.”

“The guys?”

“Young and buff. Don’t-fuck-with-’em types. One was carryin’. Big piece of blue steel.”

“You were here all night?”

He made a “you crazy?” face. “Need my sleep. Gotta get eight. I’m a mess if I don’t get eight. Night doorman was ‘round, though. I gave him some of what you gave me last night, axed him to keep an eye out.”

“What you give him?”

He smiled. “Twenty.”

“I’m overpaying you, aren’t I?”

“You can afford it, boss. Say we jus’ call it reparation. Your people and my people? What came down? Ya know?”

I was tempted to hear his version of history, the one about my people and his people and what came down, but it wasn’t the time.

“I’d like to see her place,” I said. “Inside.” I’m not sure why I said it or what I hoped to find if I made it into Lizzie’s flat, but the moment I said it, I knew that I really meant it.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Give me half an hour to set that up. Come back by the stand.”

“Thanks.” I turned to leave.

“No need to thank me. It’ll cost you,” he said.

“Everything does, one way or another.”

“I don’t take checks. You need it, there’s an ATM in the Korean deli.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Careful of the old lady. She be a witch.”

I walked back to Starbucks and waited in line to use the toilet. Mary called when I was in the middle of everything. I answered one-handed. The signal on my cell was fractured and inconsistent, accurately reflecting my circumstances.

“Yeah?”

“Turns out that the store on Park Avenue is closed. Just like that. Totally shut down. Furniture is still there, but the desks are cleared, everything is gone. Laptops, phones. Weirdest thing.”

I was surprised but I wasn’t surprised. Know that feeling? “See what you can find out about other locations where they might do business. See if their neighbors in the building noticed anything.”

“Will do.” She hesitated and then she asked me, “Are we in some kind of trouble?”

I liked the “we” part. Mary saw herself as part of the team, even if she wasn’t sure of the nature of the game. I tried to sound blasé. “We have a bit of a puzzle to solve, Mary.”

“It’s important, though? It’s about more than money?”

“Yeah.”

“More than a girl?”

I reminded myself that Mary might have seen Lizzie hold my hands at Papaya King. She might have seen how close I came to kissing her.

“It’s not about a girl, Mary. Not that way.”

Mary wouldn’t be pleased to play a part in encouraging any infidelities on my part. She liked Thea.

“Okay.”

The “okay” was acceptance on her part, not belief. She was waiting to be convinced.

“It’s about family, Mary. Family. And it’s complicated.”

For Mary, that was better than me swearing on a Bible.

“Gotcha,” she said.

I waited until ten o’clock came before I stepped down the street to my rendezvous with newsstand man. The guy in front of me in line was buying a flesh mag — something about rockets and boobs; don’t ask, I don’t know — the
Financial Times,
and a Snickers.

“See, I tell ya, it’s always about the guy’s dick,” the man on the Coke crate said in greeting when I edged up to the counter. He was reflecting on the previous customer. “You got my job, you get to know things. You do.”

I smiled. “Maybe he’s embarrassed that he’s a broker or an investment banker and he’s only buying the porn to hide his pink sheet.”

“ ’At’s good. Like ‘at one. Got you a discount, by the by. My man inside is Gaston and he’ll be needin’ another hunderd from you. That’s a bargain for what you be askin’. Other ‘partments on her floor are empty till lunchtime, at least. People on her side are in Bo-ca Rat-tone, the folks on the back side are all at work. Gaston says one of them owns a titty bar on Eighth that’s open for lunch. He won’t be home; likes to keep an eye on his girls. My man Gaston’s big on rules, so here’s the deal: You got five minutes inside her place, that’s it. Not a second more. If the lady’s phone rings, you lock up, walk out the door, and take the fire stairs. No bullshit. You wait there fi’ minutes before you go back to the lobby.”

“Alarm?”

“Nope.”

“Sure?”

“Yep. One more thing: You take nothin’ out. I mean nothin’. No panties even. Nothin’.”

I opened my mouth to protest the insinuation —
“This isn’t about my dick”
— but realized,
why bother
?

“Deal.” I peeled off another hundred and rested it on his tray. I wanted him grateful and had a feeling I would require his services again. “Thanks for all you help,” I said and turned to walk away.

“You want a magazine?” he said. “On the house.”

“What?”

When I looked back up he was holding the
Robb Report
up for me and he was smiling.

“Service door’ll be open in back. You go in that way. You come back out that way. See how you like it.”

At least he was still smiling.

Gaston was a skinny guy about my age, a man of indeterminate racial heritage with short nappy hair and buggy eyes. His dark skin had fat freckles and he had a red aura around his nose and ears as though he suffered from some chronic inflammation. Despite his distinctive features he had wise eyes above a jaw that seemed set in concrete. He wasn’t into banter or negotiation. He knew who I was the moment I walked into the lobby from the rear and he assumed that I knew the rules.

I shook his hand and said, “Hello.” The greeting started with one hundred dollars in my palm and ended with one hundred dollars in Gaston’s.

“Sixteen oh-two,” he said. He held out his hand to shake mine again. One quick pump and I had a pair of keys — one an old brass, one a modern security type — glued to my sweaty palm.

In my solo elevator ride up to sixteen, it crossed my mind that it was all a setup, that Lizzie had offered Gaston and the newsstand man a much bigger chunk of change than I was shelling out to deliver me right back into her hands.

I wondered what would happen were that true. In my head, I saw a very interesting scene with Lizzie and the comic from Nobu, and the black man with the white gloves, and maybe the young MBA type who faked being lost on the side of the road near my house in Ridgway before he’d taken my instructions regarding the client-derived parameters.

So be it.

There was no turning back. I’d already pointed the boards downhill. The slope below me was steep — calling it a double black diamond wouldn’t do it justice — and I was aiming at a tight grove of aspen. There was no time to think about when to turn; I had to rely on instinct to fly between the knobby white tree trunks.

To stay alive all I had to do was follow the advice of my old friend and keep both skis on the same side of every tree.

How hard was that?

I firmly believe that, like the path to any woman’s heart, every lock in every old door has its own set of tricks. It’s one of those rare universal truths about the world. To master quick entry you need to know when to push the key an extra millimeter and when to tug, when to be gentle and when to be forceful, whether to put your weight into it, how to hold the key, and what it all feels like just before it goes
click
.

For me, the experience of trying to break into Lizzie’s flat was like being with a woman for the first time; I didn’t yet know the intimate tricks, I didn’t have the touch. With a woman, I usually loved the process of discovery, everything involved in the liberation of the secrets. But that time, alone in that corridor, I didn’t. I felt like a clumsy dime-crook shoplifting candy bars in a corner store, waiting to be caught with my hand down my pants.

Standing there alone in the hallway of the sixteenth floor, I fumbled to finesse the locks on Lizzie’s door for way too many seconds before I was finally able to ease both sets of tumblers to release at once.

I forced myself to turn and relock the locks behind me.

Just in case.

Then, only then, did I turn and look into Lizzie’s flat.

I hadn’t allowed myself to have expectations about what I would find once I was inside the door of 1602. Not having expectations means I shouldn’t have been surprised.

But I was. Oh, I was.