Читать книгу The Night Watcher - John Lutz - Страница 17

Outside the window, a cruel winter wind blew icy rain almost horizontally along the narrow avenue. The small patch of sky visible between the buildings across the street was gray as a bullet. Who was it who said weather needn’t affect mood?

Myra sat at her wide, custom-built cherry-wood desk in her Myra Raven Group office and tried to reason on the phone with Web Thomas without sounding desperate. “I managed to rearrange schedules here at the office so I could be away for the weekend, Web.” Making him feel guilty.

Not Web. He probably couldn’t even spell guilty. “I wish we could make it, Myra. I talked to somebody on the phone this afternoon, and the place is snowed in tight. She said it’s still snowing upstate.”

What did this guy want? Did he forget that he was the one who worked to talk her into this? They’d had three dates and he’d pushed her for three days—and nights—at what he called his “cottage” in upstate New York. Then suddenly, like so many before him, he’d changed his mind. Maybe because of something she’d done or said, some way she’d glanced at him. Whatever the reason, she knew he’d come to see her differently. Even through the phone connection she could feel him pushing her away.

Myra had been very much looking forward to this weekend. She knew that to somebody as rich as Web, a cottage could be somebody else’s idea of a mansion. She also knew from a conversation she’d overheard that he’d recently bought a new all-wheel-drive BMW that could probably cut through snow like an Olympic skier.

So maybe he didn’t want to risk a new car on icy country roads. “Our company car is a Lexus SUV,” she told him.

“That would be great except for the bridge.”

“Bridge?”

“Yeah, you have to drive across an old covered bridge to get to the cottage, and the weight of the snow caused the thing to collapse.”

He hadn’t missed a beat; maybe his excuse was genuine. Maybe he was going to suggest someplace other than his cottage. Dinner, a show, a hotel here in town. Or her place, her bed. She was ready to offer her bed if he hinted.

But he didn’t suggest something else. “Maybe it’s just as well, Myra. I’ve got a load of reports to go over, anyway.”

That was a laugh. If anyone had a make-work job, it was Web. Worthless Web.

“Maybe if—” She stopped herself. She had pride—maybe too much of it.

“Myra? You still there?”

“Not anymore,” she said, with more bitterness than she’d intended.

He laughed. “You’re taking this a bit too seriously.”

She didn’t like his laughter, or his remark. Because she was beginning to take him seriously.

“Here’s an idea, Myra. Why don’t we just meet at the Royalton about eight, have something to drink, then go on up to a room? The snow is all upstate, not here where we can still get together.”

Too late. And not even dinner and a show. “A weekend at the Royalton?’

“Not a weekend. Just tonight. I wouldn’t try to talk you into an entire weekend.”

“No, thanks, Web.” I don’t want to be your casual fuck.

“It isn’t as if we don’t know each other well enough, Myra.”

She didn’t like that last remark, either.

He didn’t misinterpret her silence. “Why don’t you think about it and call back in an hour or so?” he asked in a forced conciliatory tone.

“No need for that, Web. I already have my weekend appointments set up, including this evening and tomorrow morning.”

“I thought you rearranged your schedule.”

“I was going to,” she snapped.

“C’mon. You’re a group, Myra—all your advertising says so. You have salespeople to do that sort of work.”

“I have salespeople because I’ve got a successful agency. And I have a successful agency because I still do myself what I ask my people to do.”

“Your people. Jesus, Myra! The world won’t stop spinning if you take a weekend off and enjoy yourself. Your people should be able to get along for a short while without you, maybe even sell a few condos and co-ops.”

She knew he wouldn’t understand. He’d been born to money, gone to excellent schools, then gone to work in the family business—yacht parts or something—and that was the extent of his experience and the limits of his horizons. He hadn’t come from where she came from. Hadn’t even visited. They were good together in bed, but not in the rest of the world. “If you don’t understand,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Now you’re pissed at me.”

“No, I’m just frustrating you and you’re misinterpreting it as my being pissed. That’s because you’re used to getting what you want.”

“My, my…coldhearted bitch.” He said it as a joke, but it had steel in it.

What did he expect? Of course she was angry. Fighting mad, in fact. He had left her no escape route from her embarrassment at being stood up, no way to save face, to maintain her facade. So she became combative. Even a sparrow would fight to the death when cornered. He didn’t think of her as a sparrow. She lowered her voice. “I thought you liked it that way, Web.”

“Myra, play above the belt. This kind of confrontation makes no sense. Why don’t you think things over, then call me back in about an hour and give me a definite answer?”

“I’ve got a better idea, Web. Why don’t you call me back—when you have a piece of property to sell?”

She hung up crisply but without banging the receiver.

She knew he’d call back. If not today, tomorrow. Or maybe he’d find somebody else for his hotel tryst tonight, start another surface relationship. Myra didn’t care.

Couldn’t care.

Standing up behind her desk, she smoothed the wrinkles in the slacks of her business suit, then walked from her office to the sales cubicles where her agents were seated at their desks when they weren’t showing property. The large, blue-carpeted area was brightly lighted by overhead fluorescent fixtures. A door in the far wall led to a reception area with genuine Chippendale chairs and a Sheraton pie crust table. Tasteful oil reproductions were mounted on the cream-colored walls. The reception room was lighted softly with glass-shaded lamps and a Tiffany ceiling fixture. Adjoining that expensively decorated room was a conference room similarly furnished in an eclectic mixture of modern reproductions and valuable antiques.

In the more Spartan sales floor area, half a dozen of the steel wood-tone desks were occupied this afternoon. A few of Myra’s people glanced up and nodded respectfully to her as she strode past. At the end cubicle she stopped and addressed the woman seated inside studying listings on a computer screen. Darlene, whose duty it was to keep the Myra Raven Group Web site up to date. More and more listings were attracting buyers over the Internet.

“Is the new Central Park South listing on-site yet?” she asked Darlene.

The neatly dressed elderly woman at the computer waved her into the cubicle. “I was just polishing it, editing the virtual tour.”

Myra stepped a few feet into the cubicle and watched as Darlene worked the mouse, and a video camera swept through the spacious luxury apartment. “Did we get the summer park view, as I asked?” Myra knew how desirable a park view was in the concrete world of Manhattan, which was why her office and her own apartment had one.

“Did we ever!” Darlene said. “I patched it in from a property we listed last July.” She maneuvered the mouse so a view out the apartment’s wide living room window filled the screen; then she zoomed in on what appeared to be a lush rectangle of green below.

“Marvelous!” Myra said.

Harold, one of her best salespeople, was behind her off to the side. “Myra, can I talk to you about the McCallister closing?”

Myra nodded and left Darlene to her task.

Eleanor, last month’s sales champion, was approaching Myra, head down, steps choppy, jaw set and determined. Myra knew what she wanted. She could read her people’s minds. “I’ll get with you on the closing after I talk to Eleanor about one of her listings,” Myra said to Harold.

As Harold backed away a few steps, Myra said to a young woman passing by, “Amy, get me the file on 458K West Fifty-seventh.”

“Myra,” the intrepid Eleanor was saying, “I have some serious issues on that West Fifty-seventh property.”

“Amy’s getting the file,” Myra said. To Harold: “I’m sorry, Harold, but I know what Eleanor wants and it’ll only take a minute. When you see her leave my office, come on in and we’ll get together on your closing.”

“Fine, Myra.”

Myra strode to her office, aware of Eleanor hurrying to keep pace behind her. She felt grand. The Myra Raven Group was humming.

She’d forgotten all about Web Thomas.

An hour later, still at her desk, she picked up the phone and made sure she had an outside line before pecking out the number of Prestige Available Escort.

“I need a male escort for this evening, dinner and drinks afterward,” she said to the woman who answered the phone.

“Yes, ma’am. Have you used our service—”

“I’m in your computer,” Myra said, telling the woman her PIN. “And see if Billy Watkins is available.”

Rica figured the hell with it. She’d been sitting behind the steering wheel of a parked unmarked across the street from Helen Sampson’s West Side apartment for the last two hours. There was no need to start the car’s engine; she’d had it idling so the heater could be on. Which made the windows fog up. Which made it harder to see if the lights stayed on in Helen Sampson’s apartment windows, or if Helen herself left the building. At least the rain had stopped before changing to sleet or snow. Rica was hungry, thirsty, and had to go to the bathroom.

Screw this!

She put the car in drive and pulled out of her parking slot, ignoring the blast of a horn behind her. A taxi pulled up next to her at the next stoplight and out of the corner of her vision she saw the driver working his gums and giving her hell for pulling out in front of him. She guessed he had a right, but she thought, keep it up, asshole, and I’ll put the cherry light on the roof and give you a bad time.

This whole waste of yet another evening, she thought, was because O’Reilly was an idiot. Helen Sampson was as innocent as O’Reilly himself of Hugh Danner’s murder. The woman was grief-stricken and despondent. You could feel it when you were close to her, hear it in her voice, see it in her facial expressions and body language when she didn’t know she was being observed. O’Reilly seemed not to mind diverting people on the off chance that Helen Sampson might provide some kind of lead, meet with a known arsonist or something, or maybe start a fire when she didn’t think anyone was looking. Department politics! That was the one thing about the NYPD that had surprised Rica when she finally figured out how things worked. Too much was done for purely political reasons. Made Rica want to puke. Say what you want about Stack; he was a hardhead and would never make captain, but it was because he was honest and he respected the Job. Everyone knew and said freely that he was one hell of a cop.

Rica and Stack and some uniforms from the Two-oh had been keeping a loose tail on Helen Sampson, which meant she wasn’t being watched every minute, but was being observed intermittently in the hope she’d bust some kind of move that would mean something. Rica had tailed her most of the evening, watched her leave her bookshop, ride a bus, get some takeout at a deli, buy some magazines—some kind of fashion shit—then go home to her apartment and not come out. It was damn near bedtime now, at least for Rica. She was going home.

The cab driver blasted his horn at her so she’d look over at him, then made a violent twisting motion in the air with his middle finger. The guy wouldn’t let it alone, so it was gonna be his problem.

When the light went green and traffic pulled away, Rica let the taxi zoom out ahead of her. Then she got on its rear bumper, rolled down the window, and placed the flasher on the unmarked’s roof. She motioned with her left hand for the cabbie to pull to the curb.

She was going to ask him about that business with the finger.

Rica had given the cabbie a rough time, playing the game he’d started, liking the surprise on his face when he’d found out she was a cop. The fear when she threatened to have the bastard’s job. The whole thing should have been a pleasure, a relief. So why was she crying here in her bed?

Her former husband, Rudy. The smart-ass cabbie. Stack…. Men!

She knew why she was crying. It was because Stack still loved his wife Laura. That was how it went: cops’ wives got fed up with the life first and walked out. The cops, the wives, blamed the Job, and usually they were right. Eventually, both parties learned there was no going back.

The eventually was the problem.

There were more tears, over an hour’s worth, before she fell asleep.

The next morning was cold but bright, with air so brittle it seemed if you sneezed you might shatter it. Rica and Stack drove the unmarked to the deli where Helen Sampson had bought last night’s takeout. Before driving on to park outside Helen’s apartment, Stack got them each a coffee and a danish and carried them out to the car.

Rica watched how his breath fogged and trailed behind him as he stepped down off the curb to cross the street, a big man ambling along with the gait he probably used years ago on his beat, wearing a long, dark coat of indeterminate color that, like the walk, might date back to those days. It was a simple, square-shouldered coat. Not what you’d call a topcoat, or a romantic trench coat with a belt and all those pockets. A sensible warm overcoat, was Stack’s winter garment of choice. No zip-out lining for this boy. Old-fashioned kind of coat. Old-fashioned Stack. Fixed object in a shifting world.

When they pried the plastic lids off the cups, the steam made the unmarked’s windows fog up, just as they had last night. Cozy, Rica thought. Nice and private. Stack peeled back a little plastic triangle from his cup’s lid, then replaced the lid to keep the steam down so he could see better what was going on outside. Rica left the lid off her cup.

Stack, behind the steering wheel this morning, made no move to start the car.

“All Helen Sampson does is work, eat, and sleep,” he said.

“She doesn’t eat much,” Rica said. “That’s because she’s grieving and has no appetite.”

Stack grunted his agreement and sipped coffee through the little triangular hole in the plastic lid. He thought maybe it was time to tell O’Reilly that Helen Sampson checked out okay. That they were probably wasting time and effort that could be spent on other crimes instead of the Danner murder. Stack had a gut feeling this was one of those times in a case where the best thing to do was sit back and wait and see what—if anything—developed.

“We just gonna sit here?” Rica asked beside him. Something in her tone suggested she thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea. She seemed to have edged closer to Stack on the car’s bench seat. If she weren’t so pushy…

“There wouldn’t be any point in that,” Stack said tersely. Throw some cold water on her. Them.

She said, “The city’s got more than its share of unsolved homicides. Maybe it’s time to think this might be another one.” She knew he wouldn’t consider her a quitter. Nobody ever accused her of that. It was just that they were going in circles on this Danner thing. “My gut tells me we should move on,” she added.

He lowered his coffee cup from his lips and glanced over at her, obviously a bit surprised and pleased.

“Are our guts in sync?” she asked.

“In sync,” he said, starting the car with his free hand. “Let’s cut Helen Sampson loose and concentrate our efforts somewhere else while we wait for any new developments.”

“O’Reilly might not like it,” Rica said.

Stack put the car in drive and accelerated away from the curb, sloshing a little coffee from the triangle in his cup lid so it ran down his thumb. “Screw O’Reilly.”

“In sync,” Rica said.