Liberty Falling-pigeon 7 (33 page)

Not healthy,
Anna thought as she zipped the bag closed and slung it over her shoulder,
but convenient.

Summer had taken off the kid gloves. As Anna waited for the subway train, her work with blow-dryer and mascara wand was undone. Temperature and humidity were hanging in the low nineties. When the Number 1 train came, the cars were air-conditioned and she offered up a brief prayer of gratitude to the Transit Authority. In packed commuter traffic, sweating humanity pressing on every side, heat would have been intolerable.

Hemmed in by an oversized handbag, an ample butt, three elbows and a fleshy shoulder, Anna thought of the stifling crawl through the wormhole deep in the entrails of Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico. She'd been scared, claustrophobic, yes, but the feeling was different. To entertain herself, she ferreted out why. By Christopher Street, it came to her. Rocks would never panic and stampede. Crushes of people were like herds of cows; a few flashes of lightning, a roll of thunder, and a woman could get trampled.

After Ninety-sixth Street, the crowd began to thin. At 125th, she got to sit down. People getting on and off above Eighty-sixth were a tonier crowd than when she'd lived in New York in the 1980s. Urban renewal had reclaimed many of the neighborhoods. Idly, she wondered where the poor people had been shunted to this time. Out of sight, out of mind.

Afternoon had dimmed to evening by the time she detrained at 168th Street, but the temperature, if anything, had increased. New York had to be one of the world's largest passive solar heaters. Asphalt, brick, granite, concrete, every inch of every surface giving back the heat of the day during the hours of darkness.

Names on the shops and restaurants that had sprung up around the twelve-block-square area of the Columbia-Presbyterian medical complex told her the neighborhood demographics were spicy: Nicaraguan, Colombian, Puerto Rican. She promised herself an adventure in dining after the hospital visit. For the nonce, the banana would be sacrificed to stay her hunger pangs.

Entering the complex, Anna saw a prominent sign:

NO: BALLPLAYING SITTING STANDING EATING PLAYING

Since it didn't say NO LITTERING, she was tempted to drop the banana peel, but it went against her personal code of ethics and she had to leave the joke unmade.

Molly looked better. "Good" and "bad" had become relative terms and Anna was stuck with the spineless "better" or "worse." The respirator was still in place, though Frederick told her Molly had been off it for a couple hours that afternoon. Dr. Madison had put her back on. Weak as she was, he didn't want to tire her.

Because of the tube in her throat, she'd been sedated, and though she knew Anna was there--responding with a wink or a nod--Anna could see she was in no mood for a prolonged exchange.

Frederick was subdued. The emerald ring was not in evidence on Molly's left hand. Content to let the day's evils be sufficient unto themselves, Anna settled on the cool linoleum, from where she could see Molly's face, watch the mechanical rise and fall of her chest. "Don't let me stop you," she said to Frederick.

When she arrived he'd been reading aloud. He turned the book over from where it lay across his knees, put on his half-glasses and, with a long forefinger, found where he'd left off.

Frederick had a nice voice and it was a lifetime since Anna had read
Tom Sawyer.
It was an inspired choice: beautiful, reassuring. Details were long forgotten, but she and Molly knew everything came out all right in the end.

Frederick would remain till the nurses threw him out. After declining his kind, if unappetizing, offer to join him in a tray of hospital cuisine, at seven-thirty Anna bade Molly goodbye with promises to water plants and kiss the kitten.

En route to the subway she stopped at a Jamaican restaurant with the unlikely name of Wet Willy's and had a meal of rice and black beans washed down with two Red Stripe lagers. Peasant food: always the most fortifying, starch and carbohydrates to draw on for endurance.

Bolstered by food and free of tiny island eyes, she walked to offset the soporific effect of the Red Stripes. Ritziness had extended north: shops were upscale, old apartment houses gone condo. Out of curiosity she stopped at a realtor's window and checked the going rates: $1.2 million, $1.7 million, $1.3 million.

Suitably impressed, she wandered on, enjoying the festive feel of neighborhoods stirring into their night personas. Before she reached her favorite part, the Gothic towers of Columbia University with its tended gardens, she pooped out and ducked into the subway. Napping on a sofa wasn't enough anymore.

Rani was welcoming. Molly's apartment wrapped around her like family and Anna was hit by a wave of homesickness so acute she had to sit down. She ached for the mountains, solitude, the smell of pine. She felt both feverish and chilled by the walls of steel and flesh that surrounded her. Even Rani appeared diseased, not a real cat but a man-made puffball with a squashed face and an excruciatingly tiny nose.

Sitting immobile, she made herself breathe deeply. Then she made herself apologize to the cat. That done, she felt better but knew her days in New York were numbered. During the homesick attack a thought, fleeting, all too human, had scared her. She'd thought:
I wish Molly would get well or die.
It didn't reflect how she felt about her sister, she knew that. It reflected the stress of holding seven million people at arm's length. Still, she was ashamed.

"Do something," she ordered herself. Dropping her pack on the sofa, she picked up the telephone. St. Vincent's Hospital, where Corinne had been taken, was steadfast in patient confidentiality. No matter how Anna warped and wove the truth, she could get no information. Not sure what to do with herself next, she sat on the edge of the sofa and tried to lure Rani into her clutches by dangling the stringy part of a cat toy. The kitten was having nothing to do with her. Two circuits of the apartment provided no relief from restlessness. Then she remembered one Caroline remained to be called. Caroline Colter at Craters of the Moon in Idaho.

Caroline was on four till midnight, her roommate said, and obligingly gave out the phone number of the ranger station.

With less than perfect honesty, Anna introduced herself as a fellow friend of the late James Hatchett. Caroline sounded easy and open. They spent several moments eulogizing the dead. The conversation moved into the funny stories and how-did-you-know-him realm. Having no wish to prevaricate more than absolutely necessary, Anna changed the subject.

She told Caroline she suspected Hatch had not suicided but been murdered. As hoped, Caroline was intrigued. Law enforcement rangers, customarily restricted to a diet of dogs off leash and camping out of bounds, were hungry for the big dramas city cops had wisely learned to detest.

"I've got no way to prove it," Anna said.
"A
few pieces of the puzzle are missing. Like motive, means, opportunity and anything resembling a suspect to pin them on." Caroline laughed obligingly and Anna was glad to be talking to a woman. Women were comfortable in the world of speculation, hard facts not so necessary for their thinking patterns. Perhaps they didn't feel that to entertain an idea was to publicly commit to it with the attendant danger of being proved wrong and, so, a fool.

Wanting to help, Caroline went over her relationship with Hatch. They'd met at the Presidio in San Francisco. She was a seasonal then. A friendship had sprung up between them and they'd kept in contact over the years.

"The last time we talked was last winter. We'd nailed a couple jokers poaching deer up here--get this: Andrew Jackson Thomas and Richard Head. Dick Head. Can you believe it? These guys are clichés of themselves. There was some scuttlebutt that the Park Police were going to be sent out here and Hatch thought he might be one of them."

"Park Police?" That struck Anna as odd. They usually went only to high-profile parks, but she couldn't see how she could say that without belittling Craters of the Moon.

"Turned out Dick Head and his pal were bigwigs with the local militia. There were threats against the rangers. The usual reasons were spouted: Aryan purity, government conspiracy. I think these boys' ancestors were so concerned with keeping bloodlines pure they never married out of the family."

Anna laughed.

"Nothing came of it," Caroline concluded. "So Hatch and I kind of lost touch again."

Anna tried the names Agnes Abigail and Pearl Tucker, but they didn't ring any bells with Caroline. She assured Anna she'd call if she remembered anything more, and Anna hung up feeling more restless than before. She wished Frederick would come home. Arguing with him would be a distraction. Television crossed her mind. Molly owned one--she was hooked on Leno and Letterman--but Anna didn't see it and wasn't motivated to search bedroom and study cabinets to see where it had been tastefully secreted away.

Upending her daypack, she spilled the contents on the coffee table. Rani, quicker than her round physique might suggest, hopped up, batted a Chap Stick onto the carpet and played it like a hockey puck till she was out of sight. The game continued, marked by clicking sounds, as she worried the plastic tube over the hardwood in the hall. Anna let it go. Scraps of paper were sprinkled through fruit, underpants, her 35mm tourist camera with automatic everything and Agnes Tucker's wretched hat. Never would she have allowed a pack to become such a disorganized mess in the backcountry.

Civilization is eroding my morals,
she thought as she picked out the paper fragments and smoothed them on the table. The gum wrappers she stuffed in her pocket for later disposal. The Hershey bar wrapper had notes on it, as did the pieces of lined paper she'd cadged from somewhere.

She'd made a note to call the Carolines. That was done and she crossed it off. "Spud" and the potato hat were still a mystery. "Biner" was written on another piece of paper. Anna drew a blank. What in the hell was "biner"?
Precocious senility,
she thought sourly. Then the memory surfaced. 'Biner: carabiner, the locking metal links climbers use as a staple of their equipment. A carabiner had been found hooked through the belt loop on Hatch's trousers. Anna had meant to talk with Charlie about it and had forgotten. In the execution of his caretaking duties, Charlie served not only as Keeper of the Flame, but as his lady's immune system. Rigged and roped, he climbed every bit of her impressive infrastructure, dusting, vacuuming, looking for damage or wear.

Anna called Patsy and asked for Charlie's home number. Through the eternal good cheer, Anna could tell she gave it grudgingly. Her "pest telepathy" was evidently spreading to other arenas.

"Charlie's real sensitive. God-fearing," Patsy said, and Anna heard the warning behind the words:
Don't badger the man.

In an attempt to make amends, Anna's thanks were too effusive, and she rang off feeling socially inept. But she had the number. It was past ten. Late for calling. She did it anyway and got a sleepy voice. "Did I wake you?" she asked, as does everybody who knows perfectly well they called at a rotten time.

"No, not at all, I only just got to sleep," Charlie answered with the expected lie.

Anna asked him if he used carabiners in his work.

He did.

Could he have lost one?

He could.

That was that. She'd wasted his time and ruined his sleep for naught. Surely behaving would take less energy than egregiousness. Too late. She tried to ring off but now that Charlie was awake, he wanted to talk. Relieved to be able to pay her social debt so quickly, Anna made encouraging noises while he rambled on about the lack of interest new maintenance people showed in learning the arduous and difficult service his lady required. Not being physically able to get up into the lady's innards and give her a good dusting so she'd be at her best for the party was bothering Charlie. He groused because the cleaning men weren't like they used to be. He'd found dirt and crud on the stairs mornings after they'd supposedly been swept. He worried aloud that when he died she'd not be properly cared for. Twenty minutes and he wound down, having talked himself and Anna almost back to sleep. She wished him goodnight. Anna had become fond of the little guy. Strength of purpose, purity of faith and greatness of heart were qualities one did not come across every day.

Crumpling up the note that listed the effects found on Hatch's person --three dead ends --gave her a modicum of satisfaction. Creating order out of chaos just to prove she could, she began replacing things in her pack. One scrap of paper had escaped her notice. Juice from her orange had slimed it to the back of
Saint's Rest,
a paperback she'd picked up at the airport. She peeled it off. No mystery, no answers: the stub for the photos she'd taken of Hatch's stuff. The lazy-opportunist part of her would have left them unclaimed, letting Kodak eat the cost of development, but there were pictures of Patsy and Charlie on the roll and more in a never-ending collection of cute pictures of her cat, Piedmont, doing absolutely nothing in various boxes and baskets.

Anna took Molly's bed in the master bedroom, where Frederick had been sleeping. Sisters had certain rights and privileges.

If Frederick minded, she didn't find out. He returned after she was asleep and departed before she woke. Only a fresh pot of coffee and a note, "Already fed the cat," evidenced he had been there at all. Hospital visiting hours didn't seem to apply to Frederick Stanton. Anna had been too distracted to notice before, but wearing his bathrobe, drinking his coffee and petting his cat, she remembered the man's devious ways. Never illegal or unethical except by the strictest application. But he did tend to get what he wanted. It was one of his charms. She was curious as to what he'd told the nurses--no, not
told,
lies were too plebeian for Stanton--what he had allowed the hospital staff to believe about him that gave him perks not granted other, lesser citizens.