We knew when to cross the street to avoid an unsavory character. We knew not to recite our telephone or credit card numbers out loud in a crowded bar, not to flash cash at an ATM, and not to leave half a drink on a table and then come back and drink it. These are in the collective New York memories, the way farm kids automatically know cow stuff and children in seaside towns know about the tides. At least we do most of the time.
In addition to two salads, which wouldn’t make very effective weapons, I was packing heat—four twelve- ounce cans of diet Red Bull that could put a sizeable dent in someone’s Adam’s apple if he messed with me. I’d taken a self-defense class once, and it was one of the few things I remembered. Go for the vulnerable spots— throat, groin, shins, eyes. I doubt the manufacturers had that in mind when they introduced the new, larger cans, but it was reassuring as I walked the rest of the way home.
Thirteen
Lucy’s building was a five-story limestone next door to a church that housed a soup kitchen in its basement. Two mornings in a row I’d seen men lined up as early as six A.M.
There were a few steps down to the vestibule, where the mailboxes were, and then a locked glass front door that led to the lobby and to the apartments upstairs. Lucy lived on the fifth floor, in two studio apartments bought and combined a few years back when prices were down and she’d gotten a bonus for doing a highly rated story on the unscrupulous owners of a Long Island puppy mill. I had talked her out of adopting the three Havanese she fell in love with and now I regretted it; they’d have been good company in her absence.
My fingers were numb from the heavy bags, so I took a quick break on the third floor to switch hands and get the circulation back. That’s when I heard someone jiggling the doorknob on the inside door, downstairs. I stopped to listen. There was a frustrated push against the door, all the glass panes shaking, then the sound of a person ringing all the doorbells in an attempt to get someone, anyone, to let him in. No one took the bait. I hurried up to the next landing, banging the bag that held the cans against my right shin. One of the vulnerable parts. Ouch, that would leave a mark.
On four, I caught a glimpse of a woman through the one-inch opening between her door and the chain that held it closed. She eyed me suspiciously.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Lucy’s friend.” Then I remembered where I was. In large cities people didn’t always know their neighbors’ names. Maybe it wasn’t a geographical thing, just the times. You could have eight thousand Facebook friends but not know the name of the person living right on top of you. And as much as Lucy traveled, it was no surprise that her downstairs neighbor barely recognized her name.
“Lucy Cavanaugh, the woman on five. I’m apartment sitting while she’s away. I’m here for the flower show.” That struck a chord. The woman undid the chain and opened the door a bit more to take a closer look. She had a few decades on me, with straight blunt-cut hair, flecked with gray, that said,
She wore a black sweatshirt and sweatpants and held a long metal rod that could have inflicted serious damage. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she was an aging ninja warrior with an iron pugil stick, but I recognized the bar as part of an old-fashioned door lock, the kind where one end slips into a hole in the floor and the other into a bolt on the door. Only the oldest apartments in New York still had them.
A white Persian cat slipped out of her apartment and crept around her bare ankles to see what was going on.
“Get back inside, Tommy.” She nudged the cat with her bare toes, but he didn’t budge. “Technically this is three and your friend is on four. They don’t count the first floor in this building for some reason. Absentee Italian owners, some European thing. Did you ring my bell?”
“No, ma’am.” I dangled Lucy’s keys so she could see I wasn’t the culprit. As long as she held that iron bar I wasn’t taking any chances. The cat hissed.
“Beautiful cat.” I hoped complimenting her cat would disarm her, literally and figuratively.
“Beautiful but deaf as a post. That’s why I named him Tommy. Can’t hear a thing. But I heard something. Probably the menu deliverymen. When I first moved here it was Jehovah’s Witnesses who left stacks of literature in the hallway. No one wants to feed the soul anymore. Now it’s all about the food. I shred the menus and use them in the litter boxes.”
A second cat ran into the hallway and sniffed the plastic bags I’d placed on the steps while the woman and I spoke.
“That’s Moochie. He thinks he owns the building. Always running around, looking for food. You’d think he was a stray. Come on, Mooch.”
I bent down to play with the cat, then looked up to see if it was okay. The woman nodded. Rules of engagement: if you love my pet, you’re probably all right.
She eyed the bags. “Supermarket on Ninth delivers. They’re cheaper than the Koreans, too. Even with the delivery charges.”
I thanked her for the tip, said good-bye to Moochie, and finished my way up the stairs to the sound of multiple door locks being thrown. With the bags hoisted on one hip like a baby I unlocked Lucy’s door, then reenacted the same ritual the woman below me had—chain, bolt, bolt. I piled the groceries and my backpack on the aluminum kitchen set and collapsed on Lucy’s sofa.
The apartment had originally been a floor-through cut up into studios, two per floor, by the building’s previous owner. Lucy’s plan was to knock down the dividing wall, restoring it to a larger one bedroom; but the renovation had hit a snag after she’d had an argument with her contractor. (Never sleep with your contractor until the work is finished or at least at the punch list stage.) Now the place looked like a deranged person had taken a sledgehammer to the wall or, in the words of Rolanda Knox, “an incendiary device” had gone off. It had been that way for months, and Lucy had turned it into a focal point.
I felt a powerful desire to climb into bed and pull the covers over my head, but knew that would only have me up and ravenous at 2 A.M. so I forced myself to stow the perishables and crack open one or two of the pint containers. I fiddled with the remote for five minutes before stumbling upon the magic combination and sequence of button pushing that turned on the television. Mission accomplished, I sank into the love seat with a teaspoon and a plastic bowl of chickpea salad. If good food took time, mine was all ready. I was watching an improbable garden makeover when my cell rang.
“Don’t you pick up messages?”
“Why would I want to talk to someone whose first words to me are a reproach?”
“You’re right. Hey, Paula, it’s been ages. Don’t you pick up messages?” It was Babe Chinnery. She’d been leaving messages on my cell and at my home in Springfield. Someone had been trying to reach the woman at booth 1142 at the flower show, and since Babe’s name was on the registration, whoever it was had dialed her number. Babe thought the caller might be a buyer.
“He said he met you at the convention center. I didn’t want to give him your number. If you’d wanted him to have it, you’d have given it to him, right? Getting his name was like pulling teeth. Garland Bleimeister. Do you know him?”
The name meant nothing to me.
“Hank Mossdale was in the diner tonight. I told him some young stud was tracking you down. I think he was jealous. Guy on the phone sounded young. Are you finally taking my advice and going for some young blood?”
I’d only met one young guy at the show. I wasn’t looking for a date and I didn’t know his name but I had his bag stashed under the cheap royal blue tablecloth at Primo’s booth.
Fourteen
The next morning I left a message for Bleimeister at the number Babe had given me. At the convention center Rolanda Knox was marginally more civil than she’d been the first few days. I thought of asking if she’d seen the young man who’d tried to sneak in, but I didn’t want to bring up a painful subject. I smiled, flashed my badge, and headed for my booth, threading my way through union workers still laying down carpet and hopeful contestants spritzing and pruning their floral entries.
