“I had a feeling I’d run into you,” she said happily, sliding in next to him and depositing a Ghurka shoulder bag at her feet.
“That’s funny,” said Mitch. “So did I.”
“I wouldn’t say the lieutenant sounded totally enthusiastic about me coming in, but she did say it was okay. She’s kind of a tight-ass, don’t you think?”
Mandy smelled of a heavy, fruity perfume, the kind that Mitch had always associated with the old widows he used to ride up and down in the elevators with in Stuyvesant Town when he was a kid, the bubbies with their shopping carts and moustaches and Eastern European accents. Styles must have changed, he decided. Because Mandy Havenhurst was nobody’s idea of a bubbie.
“The lieutenant came to see you this morning?” he asked her politely.
“No, no. I just bumped into her, is all. She was on her way out to talk to Red.”
“She was?”
Mandy stared at him intently now, as if suspecting his words held some secret double meaning. “Yes, she was.”
“Hey, did you know you made the papers today?”
“No way, really…?” Mandy drew her breath in sharply when he showed her the headlines. Then she heaved a long, pained sigh. “Lies,” she said between gritted teeth. “Nothing but lies. But what can I do-people have been telling them about me since I was thirteen years old. That’s what happens to you in this world when you’re someone like me. I’m pretty. I’m blond. And my family has money. Therefore, I am automatically considered a bitch-by people who don’t even know me. I’m used to it. But it hurts.” She turned the tabloids over so she wouldn’t have to look at them. “God, I’m so glad I’m coming in to the city today. It’ll be impossible out there. Reporters will be calling nonstop. And poor Bud will be wigging out.”
“Are you going to speak to them?”
“No way,” she said with sudden savagery.
“But if they have the story wrong don’t you want to tell your side?” he asked, wondering just exactly what her side might be. The facts in the stories seemed to jibe with what the lieutenant had told him about Mandy’s stormy past.
Mandy’s response was, “Why bother? Once people make up their minds about you there’s not a goddamned thing you can do to change it. No one ever believes me when I tell them that the men I’ve loved were abusive toward me, both physically and mentally. That I’ve had to literally fight for my life in order to survive their cruelty. I don’t know why I provoke that in men, Mitch. I really don’t.” Her big blue eyes locked on to his now. “When I love someone, I’ll crawl across broken glass on my hands and knees for him. There’s nothing I won’t do. And I’m as kind a person as you’ll ever meet. I don’t have a nasty bone anywhere in my whole body.” She sighed. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lower lip. She said, “I sure wish we could get together tonight.”
“Like I said, I’m going to be tied up all-”
“The God’s honest truth,” she broke in, “is that there’s something I have to talk to you about. It’s really personal, Mitch. And it’s really, really important. Could we meet somewhere after your dinner date? Just for a little while?”
Mitch wavered. She was married. She was crazy. She was trouble. But he was also intensely curious. What did she want to talk about? Was it the murders? Was it Bud? He had to find out. He couldn’t not find out. So he agreed to swing by her apartment at about ten and buzz her. She lived at 20 E. Sixty-fifth Street, a very posh address. They would go out for a nightcap together-someplace quiet where they could talk.
Their train pulled into Grand Central right on time. They separated in the Grand Concourse, near the clock, in a shaft of the bright morning sunlight that streamed in the newly scrubbed windows. As Mitch started to say good- bye Mandy surprised him by throwing her arms around him and giving him a big juicy kiss on the mouth, her pelvis pressing tightly against his own. Heads turned. Wolf whistles sounded. All of the blood in Mitch’s body seemed to rush right to his head. “Later,” she purred. And then she was off, the heels of her backless sandals clacketing sharply on the marble floor.
Mitch stayed right where he was for a long moment, waiting for some of the feeling to return to the lower half of his body. No, I really do not want to get mixed up with this woman.
He found he was way out of sync as he made his way across the floor of the giant terminal. The commuters criss-crossing in front of him were moving with much greater urgency than he was. Sauntering along at his Dorset pace, he kept bouncing off of them, like a human bumper car. But Mitch found this to be a short-lived phenomenon. It took less than thirty seconds for his metabolism to rev back up from small-town slo-mo to Big Apple overdrive. The city’s pace simply demanded it. Soon Mitch was darting this way and that, back in the flow, just another one of the hyper multitude.
He made his way down the long tunnel to the subway and caught the shuttle across town to Times Square. There was no faster way to get across town, day or night. When the one-stop shuttle pulled in at Times Square he maneuvered his way across the crowded underground station and down the steep stairs for the number One train, heading downtown. It had been a while since a train had come through. Folks were stacked up ten-deep at the edge of the platform, fanning themselves impatiently. The warm air was heavy and reeked of overflowing garbage cans and unwashed people. Burrowing his way in among them, Mitch found himself missing the crisp, clean, sea air of Big Sister. Also the sheer luxury of having so much space to himself. Here in the city, there was no such privilege. Everyone shared the same island.
When he finally heard the train pulling in Mitch began working his way closer to the edge of the platform so he’d have a shot at getting on. Boxing out was a standard aspect of belowground life in New York. Nothing unusual about this. Until, without warning, Mitch suddenly felt it-the ultimate New York nightmare.
He felt someone trying to shove him onto the tracks right in front of the onrushing train.
It all happened so fast that Mitch had no chance to react. No chance to resist. No chance whatsoever. One second he was fine. The next second he was teetering helplessly there on the edge of the raised platform, fighting desperately to hold on to his balance, to his life-as the tracks yawned before him and the four-hundred-ton train bore down on him, someone’s full weight pressing violently, murderously against him. Brakes screeched. A lady screamed.
Two things saved Mitch’s life. One was his unadulterated love of high-caloric sweets, which made him just an exceptionally hard man to knock off of his feet. The other was the immense construction worker standing next to him, who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him back at the last possible second as the train shot past him.
“Damn, you got to be more careful, man,” he scolded Mitch. He was Jamaican by the lilt of his accent. “Take your time. That’s how accidents be happening.”
“That was no accident-somebody pushed me!” Mitch cried out, his eyes flicking wildly around at the passengers surrounding him. “Who? Did you see who?”
“Didn’t see nobody, man,” Mitch’s savior replied gruffly. The other passengers offered him nothing more than blank stares. They were like zombies. The un-dead. “You lost your balance. Too big a hurry.”
Now Mitch saw it-a blur of green streaking up the stairs back up to the station. Someone wearing an olive- colored trenchcoat with an upturned collar and a baseball cap with its visor pulled low. Someone he was not able to recognize. He could not even tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Hey!” Mitch shouted at his would-be killer. “Hey, stop!”
The figure sped up. Mitch went after it. Fighting his way through the crowd. Dashing up the stairs in breathless pursuit. He caught sight of his attacker sprinting down a narrow, dimly lit corridor. He broke into a mad sprint of his own across the underground station, running into people and over people, leaving grumbles and curses and spilled purses in his wake. Trying to keep up with that distant figure in green, gasping for breath, his loaded day pack growing heavier and heavier on his shoulders. And he was keeping up. Until, that is, he ran smack into a phalanx of slow-moving Japanese tourists in shorts and sandals who were walking, what, twelve abreast? There were small children and elderly grandmothers among them. And, for a brief moment, he could not get around them. That brief moment was all it took for the figure in green to shoot through the turnstiles and up the steps and out into Times Square. Gone.
Mitch did go tearing up the steps onto Forty-second Street, his chest heaving, but it was no use. Whoever it was, they had disappeared.
But who was it? And why had they tried to kill him?
