Текст книги "Chill of Night"

Автор книги: John Lutz

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

34

“Cool enough for you?” he asked.

“For now,” Nell said. She took a sip of cold Budweiser from the can. Terry Adams, the air-conditioner repairman, had finally gotten back to her on her cell phone number, and told her he could work her into his schedule. The problem was it had to be this afternoon. Could Nell have the super let him in? He understood why she wouldn’t want somebody she’d never met left alone in her apartment to repair her air conditioner. Could she get a friend or relative to be there while he worked? Maybe the super would stay. Terry wouldn’t be insulted, he said; he didn’t want to be responsible if, after he left, something seemed to be broken or missing.

Nell didn’t have a friend or relative who’d sit in her sweltering apartment and watch this guy work. And her building’s super wasn’t even on the premises most of the time. She’d been considering reporting him to Missing Persons. She was driving when she got Terry’s call, on her way to interview another of the Palmetto case jurors. She really didn’t want to go. The juror would be like the last three, deficient in any fresh knowledge of the Justice Killer investigation, and already sufficiently frightened by what they did know. If JK’s goal was to scare hell out of the city, he was doing a good job.

“I’ll meet you there in half an hour and let you in,” she said to Terry.

“That’ll work. I’ll probably need only a couple of hours at most.”

So here sat Nell on her living room sofa, observing her window air conditioner being operated on instead of pursuing a serial killer.

Terry had the unit on a blue tarp he’d spread on the floor so as not to dirty the carpet. He wasn’t the repairman of TV sitcoms, overweight with low-slung work pants. He was slim and muscular, wearing a tight black T-shirt, jeans and moccasins. His hair was a curly brown and slightly mussed above a high forehead and symmetrical features. He had brown eyes with laugh crinkles at their corners, and was clean shaven, with a chiseled jaw and cleft chin. Quite the package. It figured he was an actor as well as an air conditioner repairman—or was it the other way around?

She’d given him a can of beer, too, and watched as he put down a crescent wrench for a moment and took a sip, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Nell found herself wishing she were wearing something other than her shapeless blue skirt and blazer and thick-soled black cop shoes. She knew she had nicely turned ankles, but not in these clod-hoppers.

She scooted to the corner of the sofa, so she could see over Terry’s shoulder, and crossed her legs. “How’s it look?”

He didn’t glance back at her. The hair at the nape of his neck was curling and wet with perspiration in a way she liked. She was sweating herself.

“Not bad,” he said, exchanging beer can for wrench. “This brass tube”—he tapped a curved, rusty tube with the wrench—“is leaking coolant, needs to be replaced. You got a couple of leaky connections, too.”

“I didn’t notice anything dripping.”

“The coolant evaporated before it ran over. But your filter needs changing. Condensation was building in your drip pan and running down the outside of the building.”

“Sounds serious.” Nell had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

He turned and smiled at her. The way his lips curled made him look kind of sardonic, like a fifties movie matinee idol who could rape his way through a movie and everybody liked it. “It isn’t. I’ll only be here about an hour.”

He’d set up a paint-splattered old box fan he no doubt used to cool himself on the job, but he’d angled it to blow not on him but on Nell. It hummed steadily, with a faint clinking sound, sending a slight breeze over her.

“Want me to turn that to a higher speed?” he asked, pointing at the fan with his wrench.

“It’s fine the way it is, thanks. Are you really an actor?”

“Don’t I seem like one?”

“You seem like a man who knows a lot about air conditioners.”

Again the smile. Right at her heart. “Got you fooled.” He bent back to his task, gave the wrench a turn, and removed the rusty curved piece of brass tubing. “I’ve been in some plays, done a few commercials. Way I met cops, I co-starred a couple of years ago in Safe and Loft.”

“I remember it. Didn’t see it, though. It was on Broadway.”

“Well, close to Broadway. It was a genuine hit, though. Ran for over a year. I played a cop, and I did my research by riding in radio cars with some of the cops in the Two-Oh Precinct. I learned about folks like you, and about breaking and entering, too. The professional burglars. I was a cop in the play, but I was also the stand-in for the actor who played the burglar. I take my research seriously, so I got to be pretty good with a lock pick. Got to know a lot of cops, and made contacts for my sideline, which is repairing household appliances.”

“That’s how I got your name. You must do a lot of work for cops.”

“Yeah. This time of year, mostly air conditioners.”

“Maybe you should join the NYPD,” Nell said.

“I thought about it.” He sounded serious. “But after getting a taste of the job, I realized how difficult it is. And dangerous. Theater critics are tough, but none of them has ever taken a shot at me.” He stopped work for a few seconds and gave her an appraising look that raised goose bumps on her arms. “I appreciate what you do.”

Could you ever, Nell found herself thinking. “Acting’s gotta be hard on the ego, though, right? I mean, the competition must be tremendous. There aren’t millions of kids all over the world dreaming of being cops the way they dream of being movie stars.”

“I work,” Terry said, “even if I have to repair appliances between what I consider my real occupation. Yeah, it’s a struggle, and you get kicked in the teeth regularly, but then, every now and then, you know it’s worth it. Probably not so unlike being a cop.”

“I don’t recall ever getting any applause for being a cop,” Nell said. “Not the way you must have.”

He laughed. “I got some at that. Hated to turn in the uniform when the show closed.”

He tightened some joints with the wrench, then let it clatter back into his toolbox and withdrew a small acetylene torch. “Gotta heat something up,” he said, “do some soldering. Then I’ll recharge the unit, change the filter, and be out of here. I’ll be able to make an audition, and you can return to chasing the bad guys.”

“No rush,” Nell said. “At the moment, no bad guys close enough to chase.”

He gave her a sideways glance as the torch popped and its nozzle emitted a narrow, hot flame. Another grin came her way. Then he adjusted the blue flame and began soldering. “Your name, Nell, is it short for Nelly?”

“It is, but nobody’s called me Nelly in years.” She waited for him to comment that it was a nice name, but he didn’t. The only sound was the humming and clinking of the old box fan, the hissing of the torch. The torch reminded her of the one the Tavern on the Green waiter had used to scorch the crème brûlée, which brought to mind a comparison between Jack Selig and Terry Adams. Nell wasn’t sure she was ready for a sixtyish lover. It might be too much like being in her sixties herself, rushing the season. Selig was certainly sophisticated and handsome—and rich. Terry was certainly sensual and handsome—and still relatively poor. Maybe Terry was Selig twenty years ago.

Nell was Nell now, and now wasn’t twenty years ago.

Terry had finished with the blow torch and was fitting a new filter into place. When he straightened up, he wiped his hands on the outer thighs of his Levi’s so they’d be dry, getting ready to hoist the air conditioner back into the window frame. He was going to get away.

Unless Nell’s refrigerator needed repair. It didn’t seem to be keeping the milk as cold as it used to.

She watched silently as he slid the heavy unit back into the window, muscles flexing in his corded arms. He began to anchor it to the frame with a screwdriver.

“Aren’t you going to try it first?” she asked.

“It’ll work,” he said. “I knew exactly what it needed.”

When he was finished, he switched the air conditioner on and turned it to high. It ran quietly and more powerfully than it ever had. Nell could see the brass pull chain on the nearby table lamp swaying in the artificial breeze.

Terry unplugged the old box fan and wound the cord. Then he replaced his tools in their box, and carefully refolded the tarp so nothing would get on the carpet. He stooped gracefully for his Budweiser can, which he’d placed on his clipboard, tilted back his head, and finished his beer.

“Mind if I wash my hands?” he asked.

“Bathroom’s down the hall, first door on your right.”

He placed the empty beer can on the smoothly running air conditioner, then made his way past her and down the hall. Nell knew he’d see her makeup, her toothbrush, intimate things. Maybe he’d sneak a look in the medicine cabinet and see the Midol. Maybe he’d look in the bottom vanity drawer and see her hair drier and her vibrator.

Can’t get much more intimate than that.

For some reason, she didn’t care.

“I bet you made a good cop,” she said, when he returned with freshly scrubbed, almost clean hands. “Got great reviews.”

“They said I was convincing.”

“I can imagine.”

“You should catch me when I perform sometime.”

“I’d like that.”

He crossed the room and picked up his clipboard and toolbox. Then he tucked the folded tarp beneath his arm. With his free hand, he picked up the box fan. Fully laden, he glanced at the empty beer can, then at her.

“I’ll get it later,” she said. “Want me to write you a check?”

“Not necessary. I’ll bill you.”

He started toward the door, then turned as if he’d forgotten something. But he didn’t look anywhere other than at Nell. She hadn’t risen from the sofa.

“Anything else you need?” he asked.

“Need? Maybe the refrigerator. You do refrigerators?”

“I do whatever needs doing.”

“Mine’s been heating up lately.”

“Your refrigerator?”

“No”

He carefully placed the fan, his toolbox, tarp, and clipboard on the floor and moved toward her.

“Everything in the damned place is overheated,” she said. “I guess I need a Mr. Fixit.”

He sat down next to her on the sofa.

“We’ll fix that.”

35

Beam parked his Lincoln in a patch of shade across the street from Things Past. The space was available because it was a loading zone, complete with signs that threatened potential parkers with everything from arrest to castration. Nola knew the car and sooner or later would see it out the shop’s window. He didn’t care if she knew he was there. Maybe she’d think he was harassing her, and she’d come outside and walk over and complain. He wouldn’t mind; he wanted very much to have any kind of communication with her.

Christ! I am harassing her. Just like one of those stalkers women phone the police about.

There was always the possibility Nola would call the police, and they’d send a car to investigate her complaint. That would be, among other things, embarrassing.

And there was always the possibility that she’d simply ignore him.

Beam’s injured leg was starting to ache and stiffen up from sitting in one position for so long. It didn’t do that often; maybe it was trying to tell him something.

He propped the NYPD placard on the dashboard where it was visible, then he opened the door and used it to brace himself as he climbed out of the Lincoln. After waiting for a string of cars to pass, he crossed the street to the antique shop. He’d been parked there for twenty minutes and hadn’t seen anyone come or go. Does she ever sell anything?

By the time he’d crossed the street, he was no longer limping. The warm sun felt good on his back and leg. At the shop’s door, with its OPEN sign dangling crookedly in its window, he hesitated.

Then he remembered what Cassie had told him: “…she needs to forgive you.”

He wasn’t sure precisely why his sister had come to that conclusion, but she was right enough often enough to give him confidence now. He opened the door and went inside. The muted little bell above his head sounded the customer alarm.

He seemed to be the only one in the shop.

Finally, alerted by the bell, Nola came in through an open door behind the counter. Her hair was pulled back, emphasizing her wide cheekbones and large dark eyes. The simple blue dress she had on wasn’t meant to be sexy, but on her it was. Something about the way her body moved beneath the loosely draped material, what was and wasn’t apparent. She was a woman with a subtle rhythm all her own. The thing about women that attracted and seduced was individual and rhythmic, Beam thought. Maybe it was a subtle synthesis of rhythms. He didn’t understand it, but he sensed it was true.

Nola didn’t look surprised to see him. “You get overheated sitting out there in your car?”

“It isn’t much cooler in here,” Beam said, aware not only of the warmth, but of the musty scent of the surrounding objects, the past.

“I’ll complain to the landlord.” She didn’t seem angry that he’d turned up again. She didn’t seem pleased. “What do you want, Beam?”

“I think we need to talk.”

“You need to talk.”

“We both do,” Beam said. “To each other.”

She rested her hand on an old black rotary phone on the counter. “I should pick up the phone, call the precinct, tell them I’m being threatened and I’m afraid.”

“You’re not being threatened and you’re not afraid.”

“But I could pick up the phone and call.”

“Go ahead.”

He waited, but she didn’t move. Didn’t look away from him. Nothing in the world was darker than the very center of her eyes. “I know you’ve asked people in the neighborhood about me, Beam. You wanted to know if I was married, if I was involved with anyone.”

“I did that, yes.”

Her hand didn’t move off the phone. “What is this we need to talk about?” she asked.

There was a good question. But the answer came to him immediately. “Harry.”

“He was my husband.”

“He was my friend.”

“Did he trust you? His friend? The cop who owned him and was bending his arm?”

“Yes. And he trusted you. He was right to trust us both. I don’t deny I wanted you. But I never moved on it. Never touched you. I was married. And you were Harry’s wife.”

“I’m still Harry’s wife.”

“Not any longer.”

“Your wife is dead now.”

The simple statement, coming from her, didn’t carry the weight and pain it might have. He was appalled, and then relieved, that he could hear it and not be pierced by grief and loneliness.

“You’re right, she’s dead,” he said. “And so is Harry.”

“You want to screw me. You want me to forgive you.”

“Yes.”

“One doesn’t necessarily follow the other.”

“I know. But we both need the same thing.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

“To be free of the past without losing it.”

She continued to stare at him. He couldn’t decipher what was in her eyes.

“I’m being honest with you,” he said.

“You sure as hell are. You think I’m stuck here in some kind of cobwebby, self-imposed purgatory on earth because of what happened to Harry.”

“Yeah, I think that.

“And you think I can somehow ease the loss you feel for your wife.”

She’s right!

The knowledge, its clarity, so bluntly stated, struck Beam like a bullet.

“And you have the formula that will help us both,” she said.

“It isn’t a formula.”

“Then what is it?”

“A plea.”

“You don’t sound so sure of yourself now.”

“I’m not.”

“What I said, do I have it right, Beam?”

“As far as it goes.”

“It goes farther?”

“You know it does.”

“I know I want you to leave.”

“Question is, do you want me to come back?”

Her gaze locked with his own. “I want you to leave.”

Finally she removed her hand from the phone.

He could feel her watching as he let himself out, the bell above the door tinkling a message in a code he didn’t know.

He did know she hadn’t told him not to return, and she’d hesitated a beat before telling him again that she wanted him to leave.

A beat. An infinitesimal fraction of time.

A change in the rhythm.

Adelaide understood that publicity was the oxygen of her business. Not that she wasn’t sincere, but why not make her plight known? Why not speak for the other poor people in the same predicament as hers, being pushed around by the system? This was her opportunity, and in a way her responsibility.

Responsibility. That’s the word Barry used when finally he’d warmed to her idea, and even sort of adopted it as his own. “We average citizens can’t let ourselves be pushed around by the system,” he’d said. “Somebody has to speak up, even if it means falling on his or her sword.”

“Like a real sword?” Adelaide had asked.

“Like a book contract,” Barry told her. “And talk shows and acting jobs.”

So here she was on the steps of City Hall, with maybe a hundred people gathered beyond the dozens of TV cameras and smaller camcorders directed toward her. One of the TV people had given her a tiny mike to clip to her lapel, with a wire running down inside her blouse to a small black power pack they’d attached to her belt at the small of her back.

Adelaide looked young and beautiful in her tight jeans and her yellow blouse, tailored to emphasize her breasts and tiny waist. Her blond hair was piled high and with seeming recklessness on her head, with a few loose strands left to dangle strategically over her right cheek and left eye. Her tiny figure made even more diminutive by the solemn stone of City Hall, Adelaide looked soft and vulnerable. Adelaide looked cute.

In her right hand, she held a sheet of crumpled white paper. She raised it high and told the assembled what they already knew: it was a jury summons.

“It’s unfair!” she said in her high stage voice that would have carried even without a microphone. “I’d be eager to serve on a jury if the city could guarantee my safety. And your safety. They cannot. It’s asking citizens to perform much more than their civic duty when they’re asked to risk their lives.” She waved the summons in her tight little fist. “This isn’t a draft notice! We’re not at war. I don’t feel I should have to pay a price because the city can’t perform it’s first duty to us, its citizens, and that is to protect us!”

The crowd beyond the media had grown to almost two hundred now, and they began to cheer. Some of the cameras swiveled away from Adelaide and toward the mass of onlookers.

“I’m not a criminal,” Adelaide continued. “And I shouldn’t be asked to pay for someone else’s crime. But that’s exactly what might happen, because the police aren’t doing their job. They haven’t done it well enough so far, anyway. Maybe it is a tough job. And I’m sure they’re doing the best they can. But it isn’t my fault—it isn’t our fault—that it isn’t good enough!”

Another loud cheer. Some in the crowd began waving the ADELAIDE’S RIGHT signs that looked homemade, but that Barry had had printed up yesterday by a friend of his who had a graphics art business in the Village. ADELAIDE’S ARMY and FREE ADELAIDE signs were already printed and being held in reserve.

“I have no choice but to announce publicly that until the Justice Killer is apprehended and the city is no longer in the control of a madman—”

“You mean the mayor?” a man shouted from the crowd.

“I mean the Justice Killer.” Adelaide began waving both arms now, palms out in an appeal for a moment’s silence so she could be heard. “Until the city’s safe again, I will not obey this jury summons. I will not serve. I will not be a sacrifice.”

The crowd was getting ever larger, and uniformed cops were having difficulty keeping it contained. A tall, skinny cop near the front used his nightstick as a probe to move a man back, but the man brushed it aside and pushed forward.

“I will go to jail first!” Adelaide screamed. “I mean it! I pledge that I will go to jail!”

“We got rights!” a woman in the crowd screamed.

“And sometimes we have to fight for them!” Adelaide responded. The crowd roared its agreement. She set her jaw and gave them her left profile. Cute as a feisty twelve-year-old, only with a grown woman’s sexuality. “This is one of those times.” She raised her dainty fist high above her head, as she had when she auditioned for Les Miz.

The half dozen men Barry had hired began chanting, “Adelaide! Adelaide! Adelaide!” The crowd joined in, many of them pumping their fists in the air. At a subtle signal from Barry, his hirelings pushed forward, knocking over a police barricade. The crowd followed, surging toward City Hall.

The cops moved fast, but they’d been taken by surprise and there weren’t enough of them. A line had been crossed, an invisible switch thrown. Suddenly the crowd became a mob. It was held back only a few seconds before it surged forward, knocking over some of the media, sending equipment smashing to the ground.

“Holy shit!” Adelaide thought.

“Barry!” She began calling for Barry, but in the maelstrom of motion and shouting no one heard her. “Barry!”

Adelaide could count crowds, and she estimated that at least five hundred frenetic people were charging toward her. A uniformed cop was on the ground and couldn’t climb back to his feet. He scooted backward, his soles scraping on the pavement, then he was lost from sight in the rush of humanity. That really scared her.

“Barry!”

She saw Barry emerge from the left side of the crowd and start toward her. His face was flushed an improbably bright red and he looked out of breath. He staggered, went down, and disappeared.

God! Barry, don’t have a heart attack, please!

Adelaide began backing up the steps, afraid to turn away from the crowd, almost falling as her heel caught. She realized her face was frozen in a meaningless smile that masked near panic.

The blue of a police uniform appeared in the corner of her vision, then another. More and more cops were on the steps. Some of them had long, curved shields as well as nightsticks and were forming a kind of line that was meant to hold back the crowd.

Adelaide turned and saw uniformed cops streaming out of City Hall and down the steps. It was like the cavalry coming to her rescue in an old Technicolor western. And she was overjoyed to see them. She whirled and ran toward her rescuers with her arms spread wide, dropping her crumpled jury summons. A big cop who looked like a young Gary Cooper was gazing deadpan at her. She veered toward him.

She fell sobbing into his arms.

“Arrest me!” she gasped. “Arrest me, please!”

They didn’t arrest Adelaide, didn’t charge her for inciting a riot, maybe because Barry and his—her—lawyers almost came right out and dared them to. Or maybe she was simply too cute to arrest.

But they did take her into protective custody, and she spent the night by herself in a tiny, smelly holding cell. The bed was hard as a plank, and it was impossible for her to sleep. The place was noisy, too. There were voices she couldn’t understand because of the way they echoed, and someone was snoring not far away. Now and then people came by to look in at her. Most of them were in uniform. They didn’t say anything, only looked.

But there was something in their expressions that Adelaide recognized, a kind of reserved awe. Only a few other times had people looked at her that way, the way they looked at real celebrities they knew were beyond their reach and envied. At stars.

In the morning, they drove her home under police escort. Some of the people on the sidewalk seemed to recognize Adelaide and waved. As the lead cruiser she was in slowed to take a corner, a woman began hopping up and down, mouthing her name. Ad-e-laide, Ad-e-laide. Three of the cops asked for her autograph, and she smilingly obliged and asked how the siren worked.

Her attorneys told her that next week, when she was due to appear in court in answer to her jury summons and wouldn’t be present, the police would issue a warrant for her arrest. She shouldn’t be alarmed. It was according to plan.

Scared as she was, she was also excited. She was sure, as she had been all along, that Barry was an absolute genius and one of the truly sweet men in her life.

Marge trusted Manfred Byrd enough to lend him a key to her apartment. That always seemed to Manfred to be the Rubicon, marking a client’s complete faith in him, the equating of decorator talent with honesty. A man less honest would take advantage of Marge.

She was having lunch with a friend, she’d told him, to discuss some sort of charitable contribution, and would meet him immediately afterward. Manfred thought it interesting that a woman could become suddenly very rich and give some of it away to those less fortunate. He didn’t completely understand the impulse, but he found it commendable.

Apparently her lunch had run later than anticipated. It was past two o’clock and he was alone in the unfurnished living room of her apartment. No matter. He could take the measurements he needed without her. He’d already decided that the sofa she chose would go well with the slightly burnt umber tint to the previously dead white walls. When he was finished, the room would be much warmer, and with a sense of order and stability, which was what Marge wanted.

Manfred took off his gray silk sport jacket, carefully folded it lining out, and laid it on the carpet. Then he removed his tape measure from his briefcase on the floor and prepared to go to work.

He was headed for the corner where the tall étagère was going to be, when a slight sound made him turn.

And there was a man with a gun.

Guns were not part of Manfred’s universe. All he could manage to say was, “Huh?”

There was something bulky on the gun’s barrel, and while Manfred knew next to nothing about firearms, he recognized it as a silencer. It was all he could stare at as the man moved toward him.

The gun didn’t waver as the man said, “Slip your jacket back on.”

Manfred quickly did as he was told, so hurriedly he might have heard a seam rip in the silk fabric. Dreadful sound.

“Now go out on the balcony,” said the very calm voice behind the gun. It might have been an invitation to step outside and admire the breathtaking view.

“No. You’re—”

“Outside!”

Manfred turned his back on the gunman, opened the French doors to the balcony, and reluctantly stepped outside. Though the day was calm, at this height there was a steady breeze. He couldn’t help but notice that fear was making his movements stiff. At the same time, there was an unreality about all of this.

He was shoved roughly from behind, stumbled forward, and caught himself on the waist-high iron railing just in time to keep from tumbling out into space. He gasped and began to turn around. He was dizzy, terrified.

The rudeness! This really shouldn’t be happening!

He was only halfway around when he was shoved again. This time he felt his right ankle grasped and lifted, and his perspiring hand slipped off the railing.

Along with the momentum of the shove, it was enough to tip the balance.

Manfred Byrd was airborne and for several seconds too astounded to be simultaneously frightened.

It’s all so fast!

Ten floors down he began to scream.