Clare, and headed for the door.
The snow was coming harder when I stepped outside. My hair was white by the end of the block and frozen by the time I walked down the subway stairs at Fourteenth Street. When I walked up again, at 110th Street and Central Park West, a wind was blowing and streetlights were coming on. I headed south and west.
Werner’s block was a mixed bag- a few lovingly restored seven-figure brownstones, a few of their beaten, boarded-up cousins, a seventies-ugly housing project, and an even worse senior center from the 1980s- all bookended by slouching brick tenements. There was a coffee shop at one end of the street and a pizza parlor at the other. Werner’s building was in the middle, a four-story brownstone, not boarded but by no means restored. It was soot-streaked and the front door was wire glass and metal bars. The intercom was outside, mounted in the recessed doorway.
There were three apartments to a floor; Werner was in 2-B. I leaned on the button but got no answer. I tried his neighbors and got the same. I stepped back from the building and looked up. All the second-floor windows that I could see were dark. There was a narrow passage between Werner’s building and the one next to it, and I could see a side door about twenty feet along, under a security light, but the alley was protected by a high metal gate that no one had been considerate enough to prop open with a coffee cup. I pulled out my cell phone and tried Werner’s number again. Again the machine. I dropped my phone into my pocket and walked to the corner and into the pizza place.
There were a half-dozen tables, all empty, to the right as I came in, and to the left a counter. The guy behind it was rolling out dough and listening to forrГі on a loud radio, and he barely glanced up when I came in. I ordered a slice and a Pepsi, and he slid a large piece of pizza into the oven and filled a tall cup with ice and soda. I took the cup to a table by the window and waited for my pizza and stared through the snow at the front of Werner’s building.
I made the pizza last, and the soda too, and the whole time I ate, I saw only one person pass through Werner’s door. She was a small, round woman, with a long, puffy coat and frizzy hair exploding from under a white knit cap, and she was inside the building before I could make a move. A minute later I saw a light go on on the top floor. I was throwing out my greasy napkins when the second person came along. He wore a red parka and he was tall, and underneath the snow on his head, there was dark hair. He had two sacks of groceries, and he set them on the sidewalk as he dug in his pockets. I ran out the door, zipping my coat as I went.
“Gene,” I called, as I crossed the street. He didn’t look. “Hey, Gene,” I said again, coming up beside him.
He pulled a heavy key ring from his pocket and stooped for his bags. He looked at me curiously.
“Huh?” he said.
Unless Werner had developed an overbite and bad acne scars since Terry Greer’s bar snapshots had been taken, this wasn’t him. “Sorry,” I said. “Wrong guy. I was supposed to meet Gene, but he hasn’t shown up yet. Gene Werner- you know him?”
A wrinkle of distaste crossed the man’s face. “I know who he is.”
“I was supposed to meet him here half an hour ago. Have you seen him around?”
“Not lately,” the man said. He slid his key into the lock and pushed the front door open. I followed behind him and stepped into the doorway. He turned and elbowed the door shut. I stopped it with my foot.
“You mind if I wait inside? It’s pretty cold out here.”
He shook his head. “No can do- building rules. Sorry, man.” He leaned against the door.
There was nothing to be gained from a shoving match; I moved my foot back. “Do you remember when you saw him last?” I asked as the door swung shut.
The man shrugged and shook his head. “Sorry,” he said again. He carried his bags to the elevator and watched me through the glass until I walked away.
It was full dark now and snowing harder. The wind was heavier too, swirling between buildings and spinning the snow in dizzying vortices. Spikes of icy air ran down my collar and up my sleeves. Across the street, lights were going out in the pizza parlor, and at the coffee shop the roller gates were already down. I headed east, toward the subway.
I spotted him in less than a block, when he stepped out from the shadow of the senior center and began trudging along behind me. He couldn’t have been worse at running a tail if he’d been pounding on a drum. And I recognized him right away too, from the gray parka and biker boots and big shoulders, and from the wide face with tiny features: Babyface, Holly’s new boyfriend.
I knew he hadn’t tailed me to 108th Street- it would’ve been impossible to miss him on my way there- which meant he’d picked me up at Werner’s place. Which meant he’d been staking it out. I’d have to remember to ask him why. I paused at the corner of 108th and Central Park West and made a show of checking my watch. Babyface ducked behind a van. He was nothing if not earnest.
There was little traffic on CPW: a few cabs cruising slowly south, slewing when their brake lights flared, a FedEx truck double parked at 106th Street, delivering God only knew what in the middle of a blizzard, a Number 10 bus lumbering uptown, and another headed back down. Across the street, Central Park was a landscape through static: bare trees, footpaths, streetlamps, and stone walls, all gray and grainy and dissolving in a whirl of snow. The northbound bus was still three car lengths away when I sprinted across the avenue, and its horn was still braying when I went into the park at a run.
The footpath was slick and I skated downhill and slid to a stop where the path forked north and south. I paused to make sure Babyface was with me. He was- standing by the entrance, backlit and steaming. I moved under a streetlamp, to make sure he could see me, and then I headed south. The path curved uphill and was sheltered from the sideways snow by rocky outcroppings to the left and by a canopy of branches overhead. I stepped off the path and into the gap between two large rocks, and I waited.
I heard Babyface- his fraying breath and scuffing boots- before I saw him, and then a broad expanse of gray nylon passed, like the side of a freighter. I let him go fifty feet up the path and then I stepped out.
“Gets cold, just waiting,” I called.
Babyface spun and his hands came up in a dishearteningly practiced way. “What the hell do you want?”
“Same thing you do, I guess: Gene Werner. You see him around?”
“All I see around is you, and I’m getting fucking sick of it.”
“You get sick of Holly too? Is that what happened to her?”
At the mention of her name, Babyface stiffened and took a step toward me- and stopped in his tracks when a Samoyed came around the corner behind him. The dog was dragging a well-bundled woman on a red nylon leash, and he froze when he saw Babyface and emitted a nasty growl.
Babyface looked at the dog and the woman and then back at me, and looked like he might growl too. Instead, he said, “Fuck it,” and turned and ran up the path, past the woman, and around the corner. The Samoyed barked and snapped, but Babyface never looked back. The woman reeled in her dog, and her mouth was a perfect “O” when I ran past.
I didn’t get far. Babyface sprinted, arms pumping and shoulders bouncing, and took a sharp left where the path forked again. I did the same and I was gaining ground until the next turn, when I hit a wide crescent of ice. My boots flew up and my legs churned in the air like a cartoon, and I came down hard on my ass and elbows and on the back of my head.
Through the rush in my ears, I heard his footsteps fade in the distance, and I thought about hauling myself up and going after him. But my legs had emptied out and my head had filled with sand, and all I could manage was to lie there, while snow fell on my face and wind carried my breath away.
17
I took inventory in the morning, in the bathroom mirror. The worst was the purple egg on my left hip, followed by the cuts and bruises on my elbows and the knot on the back of my head. I was stiff and limping on my way to the kitchen, but there was coffee at the end of the road, and a note from Clare: “Back later. Coffee’s fresh.” I ran my fingers over the neat lines of tape and gauze on my elbow.
The people on the subway the night before had scrupulously ignored my wet and muddy clothing, and avoided
