West 47th (21 page)

That hadn't entered Mitch's mind. It would be his next two Christmases and birthdays. “You're much too good to me,” he said.

“Just trying to keep even,” was her nice comeback.

Mitch rolled the Harley to parallel with the curb and leaned in on its kickstand.

Billy got two visored helmets from the Lexus, full-face, mean-looking black Arai Quantum-2 helmets. Identical his and hers. They'd been custom-fitted with two-way intercoms that allowed helmet-to-helmet conversation. Billy also distributed pairs of black cowhide gloves.

The helmet and gloves suited Maddie's black jeans and short black jean jacket with a genuine club insignia on the back. S
TAMFORD
S
TEALTHS
, speed-lined skull and all, stitched in acid green. Her box-toed construction worker's boots were also right. The jacket was far from new, had been bought by phone from a far downtown military surplus and second-hand clothing outlet. Maddie had called a half dozen such places. The store man had thought she was another New York nut when she wanted the jacket delivered to the Sherry. He'd hung up on her twice but right off on her third call she blurted that she'd pay double what he was asking and that made it worth the chance.

All in all Maddie looked every bit the biker.

Mitch, on the other hand, in his T-shirt, khakis and bare feet in sneaks came nowhere near the image. His bare neck, forearms and ankles were going to be graveyards for airborne insects.

“There's an owner's manual somewhere,” Maddie told him. “But you don't need instructions now, do you precious?” She was anxious to get on and get going.

“I really ought to go back up and put on some jeans and a different shirt,” Mitch said.

“You'll swelter,” Maddie mimicked.

Mitch went up to change.

Billy drove the Lexus and flatbed away.

Maddie removed two pistols from the waistband of her jeans. She put them in one of the Harley's saddlebags. Also four spare clips and a couple of boxes of cartridges.

She wasn't furtive about it. They were, after all, legally her husband's guns, and to hell with any passersby who were made apprehensive by the sight of them or, even more, by the sight of her, the bad-looking biker, with them.

On her own she found her way onto the Harley's rear seat, so when Mitch came down he had only to show her where to place her feet. He kneeled and positioned them for her.

He legged over and got settled in the saddle. Paused a minute to enjoy the initial feel of having the Harley under him.

He started it up and allowed it to idle.

Potato, potato, potato
.

The unmistakable Harley sound.

“C'mon man,” Maddie urged, “put the pedal to the metal.”

Mitch waited for a break in the Fifth Avenue traffic to cut across and get on Central Park South. He decided not to go up through the park because there'd be so much roller-blading and other kinds of rolling in there. He continued on to Columbus Circle, went up to the west side of the park to 72nd and then made all the lights to the Henry Hudson Parkway.

It was jammed with headed-out traffic, but, in this instance, Mitch wouldn't have to wait in it. He put the Harley in the narrow between lanes and, defying exhaust and the possibility of abrupt lane changers, ran the gauntlet doing fifty.

He heard Maddie's breath catching. Maybe she was sensing the risk. “How is it back there?” he asked.

“I've never been so carried away!” she exclaimed.

Actually, Maddie wasn't certain how she was faring. Part of her was exhilarated by the open speed and tenuousness, while nearly as much of her wished she'd stipulated a back support for the seat she was on. Her black heightened the sensation that any moment she might go flying off to oblivion. The Harley salesman had suggested a back support; however, he'd referred to it in the vernacular as a
sissy bar
and that had settled it for her.

It took about twenty miles of wind and Harley growl to chase most of her trepidation. Her normal existential attitude took over. “Swerve some,” she told Mitch.

“Huh?”

“Do some swerves. I like it when I'm made to lean.”

“There'll be lots of corners.”

“Don't deprive me.”

He waited until there was a clear stretch. He covered all two miles of it with back-and-forth full-width swerving.

Maddie's squeals of delight and fright were appropriately diphthonged.

He went back to going straight.

“Why?” she asked.

“There's a car just ahead.”

“Cop car?”

“No.”

“What kind of car?”

He anticipated her, told her it was a Porsche.

“Which model?”

“Looks to be a nine-eleven.”

“Blow it away.”

“We're already doing eighty.” Actually sixty-five.

“What the fuck, crank it!”

Mitch added just enough throttle to snap Maddie's head and roar past the four-year-old, laboring Toyota Tercel.

And so it went as they proceeded up the Saw Mill and got on the Taconic, headed for upstate. Maddie did about ten miles of humming and then got to singing a Mary-Chapin Carpenter and Mitch was relieved when instead of a third chorus she asked how much further.

“About fifty miles, a little less. You okay?”

“Yeah, but you know what this thing is?”

“What thing?”

“This hog of yours. It's a seven-hundred-pound vibrator.”

“It's having its way with you?”

“I may get off before I get off,” she laughed. “It's almost as relentless as you are.”

“Oh?”

“At times,” she added, tempering the compliment.

“Everything you say is true.”

“But you're a big fibber.”

Don't admit, don't deny, he told himself.

“I've caught you in more fibs than there are beans in a jar,” she said. “It's part of your charm. Did I mention that when Straw phoned the other day he said he had a surprise for us?”

“Big or little surprise?”

“He tried to make it sound little but my hunch is it's big-time.”

Maddie leaned forward, pressed against Mitch's back, put her arms around and invaded his jeans. It was a tight squeeze for her hands but he helped by sucking in his abdomen.

Chapter 15

Claverack, Austerlitz, Kinderhook.

And there, at noon, the private drive of Uncle Straw's place was beneath the Harley's wheels.

An unpaved drive.

Numerous times there'd been inclinations to have it black-topped and once, two Strawbridges back, that so-called improvement had come as close as a bid from a local paving company. The morning the workmen arrived with their graders, rollers and macadam cookers, it was decided paving would be too costly a change, too costly to the eyes.

The alternative was a gravel of a compatible shade.

A mile-long drive, it serpentined through an apple orchard. Sixty of the orchards' eighty-five trees were still encountering seasons. Many of the sixty were old survivors with major amputations. They'd seen the trunks of neighbors topple over from interior rot. They resolutely continued to bear.

In return for their loyalty they were tended, pruned severely for their own good each spring and sprayed at the first sign of blight or rust or leaf hopper.

Further in on the drive the apples gave way to pines. A prevenient comfort zone, thick above, refreshing below. Carpeted with needle drop.

After the pines came openness, lawn, a gently sloped expanse of it. Cared for but by no means manicured or formal. Lawn like a wide green skirt arranged around the sit of the house.

The Strawbridge house.

It had never been otherwise known. Unlike so many of the residences up there along the Hudson, manor houses and such, it hadn't once belonged to the Stuyvesants or the Rensselaers or any other of those early New Amsterdam families with a Van between their names.

Nor was there any Dutch in its architectural personality.

It was a Georgian revival, almost a replica of a house Nelson Strawbridge, Maddie's great-grandfather, had admired in 1910, while spending a weekend in Surrey. Nelson was so taken by that Surrey house that he filed it in his ready memory and, fourteen years later, when he decided to build on what he called his patch of four hundred acres up in Kinderhook, he sent his architect to England to sketch the lines of it.

The architect did him one better. Made acquaintance with the owner, who happened to be in a financial squeeze and therefore considered it a blessing that he was able to realize ten thousand for anything so dispensable as a set of the original plans.

The Strawbridge rendition was a large house by ordinary standards but much less than what was considered a mansion by those who owned mansions.

Sixteen rooms.

The majority of which were situated in the three-story main section. The exterior was of clean, aged brick with a sharply pitched, blue-slate roof. Crisp white trim at every opportunity. Nine over nine sash windows eared by black shutters. A house of elegant proportions and details while escaping pretension.

There it was now, coming into Mitch's view and Maddie's mind. The pines had notified her. Being family, they ignored the front entrance and went around the side to the apron of the four-car garage.

It was good to have the helmets off.

Maddie thought that might be what it was like for a chick to come out of incubation. Stop thinking weirdly, she chided herself. Her thighs and pelvis were tingling.

Mitch stretched his back and shoulders and came close to complaining on behalf of his rump. Such a long ride first time out had been asking too much of it.

Where was Straw? Usually he heard them arrive and came out right away to greet them. Not today for some reason.

They entered through a side gate which gave to a herringbone-patterned brick wall along the rear of the house. The service and kitchen areas were located in the wing opposite, about a hundred feet away. They'd gone only a few steps when someone came out from the kitchen, causing a hitch in Mitch's stride.

“What is it, precious?” Maddie asked.

“I believe it might be Straw's surprise,” Mitch told her.

“What's she like?”

“How do you know it's a she?”

“Straw told me.”

“I thought it was to be a surprise.”

“I mean what he said with words didn't tell me, his voice had some gratified mischief in it. There's no mistaking gratified mischief. Describe her to me.”

Where to start, with what words? “She's tall,” Mitch said.

“How tall?”

“Quite tall?”

“Nose to nose with you?”

“Possibly.”

“Why am I having to drag this out of you? Is she attractive? How old would you say? Say, for Christ's sake.”

“I didn't get that much of a look at her.” Which was true. He'd only gotten the merest glimpse of the woman's face, and apparently, she hadn't noticed them at all. She'd come out intent on a destination in the opposite direction. Was now on her way.

The fingers of her right hand had two bottles of Heineken by their throats. The way she was swinging those beers spoke her frame of mind.

Mitch guessed she was about six-one, maybe two. Her slenderness made her appear even taller, and, give and take as physiques often do, her height made her look all the more slender.

Hers was indeed a remarkable and fortunate body.

At the moment she had it adorned by only three things, two of which were green mucking boots, Wellingtons. The other was the bottom of a thong bikini, the merest triangle of silvery material. The boots were too large for her. She had to scuff along, hardly raising her feet. Straw's boots, Mitch surmised. There was something candidly intimate about her being in Straw's boots, undressed as she was.

Wherever this woman was headed, no doubt there would be Straw. Mitch steered Maddie's elbow and followed along. It wasn't lost to him that again he was observing someone unaware.

He maintained an accommodating distance, not so far behind the woman that he couldn't make out the quality of her skin. Ivory pale, too pale to risk exposure on such a sunny day. Her hair was black as crow feathers, and as shiny. Styled close to her skull, somewhat like a bathing cap.

There was something unique about her bearing, Mitch noticed. For one thing her head was taking a level ride on her neck, as though it was attached by some motion-absorbing device. And her buttocks with that silver string out of sight between them, materializing above. Tight, ideally sufficient buttocks, they too seemed like passengers left and right not required to be affected by her walk.

With Mitch and Maddie in her wake, the woman went along a brick wall that served as backdrop for a crowd of craning double hollyhocks. Through the allée formed by eight paired seventy-year-old maples. Close by and past the thousand panes of greenhouse. Out to where Straw had his vegetable garden, and into it.

The woman stopped there. Where was Straw? Her eyes sought him. She called out. His name on the undulate of the mid-day, mid-summer air. It seemed a cue he'd been awaiting. Certain leafy stalks in a row of corn were like a curtain that Straw parted and stepped through.

The woman handed him one of the beers. Was paid for it with a peck of a kiss on her mouth.

As Straw swigged he spotted the approach of Mitch and Maddie. He stood his ground, allowed them to come to him, so he could feed on the full-length sight of them together.

He gave a hug to each, hugs with their names said fondly in them. Mitch's also contained two comradely pats on the back.

“I came out to cut some Bibb for lunch and got challenged by some weeds,” Straw said. He introduced the woman.

Walks Wentworth.

Assumed or not, Mitch thought, both the Wallis and the Wentworth suited her. Cindy, Amy, Chrissie or whatever would have been unfortunate. Straw called her Wally. He put his arm around her, drew her to his side possessively. “I sent Wally in for beers,” he said. He extended his. “Have a swig.”