Allie walked on. A few seconds later the messenger flashed past on his bike, whipping the vehicle from side to side between his legs, wove with breathtaking elegance between a car and a bus, and disappeared. Nonchalant survivor.
Allie knew where she was going now. She’d thought of it last night, slumped on the hard floor in Grand Central Station. Sleep had come to her only in snatches until almost three A.M. Seconds after closing her eyes, the dream would begin. Sam lying on his back with the stumps of his wrists at his sides. Sam staring at his hotel room ceiling with those wide and terrified eyes. Sam and the blood. Hedra and the blood. Sam, already dead, gazing at Hedra. Saying, “Allie …” The blood, blood, blood.
When she finally did fall asleep, it was into a red ocean where dead things swam.
A floor was a poor substitute for a bed. She still had an incredibly stiff neck. And she’d been mortified to find the money near her on the floor. Mortified but grateful to the stranger who’d mistaken her for one of the dispossessed and homeless.
She’d conserved her change for the phone and used the dollar to buy a doughnut in a coffee shop in Grand Central. She’d made herself eat it methodically, so the counterman wouldn’t realize she was starving, then washed it down with a glass of water. Half a hamburger for supper and a doughnut and water for breakfast. Surprisingly, as she’d hurried out of the station she felt satisfied. And she walked now with a sense of purpose.
She knew where Mike Mayfair lived, all by himself in his loft apartment in SoHo. He’d be in his office at Fortune Fashions by now, leaning back behind his desk and making life hell for his secretary. Or sitting in his car in stalled traffic. Either way, there’d be no one in his apartment.
Allie had become a beggar. Now it was time to be a thief.
Chapter 29
MAYFAIR’S apartment building was a drab gray structure that housed a flower shop and a book shop in its ground floor. Allie walked around to the side of the building, where there was a narrow gangway that smelled of garbage and stale urine. She glanced up and down the street, then sidled around the corner and walked to the black iron fire escape that stair-stepped jaggedly down the side of the building.
She leaped up and grabbed at the gravity ladder that would lever down to street level, but her grasping fingers missed it by six inches. “Damn!” she said, so loudly she was shocked by the volume. But there were only a few low, dirt-caked windows on the sides of the buildings that flanked her; no one had heard.
Allie moved down the side of the building to a steel dumpster overflowing with trash. She stood on her toes and peered inside, hoping to find a piece of rope or twine she might weight and toss up to snag the gravity ladder and pull it down. The sweet garbage stench of the dumpster nauseated her, and all she saw were stained cardboard boxes, empty cans and bottles, and black and green plastic trash bags.
Backing away from the horrid smell, she noticed that the dumpster rested on small steel wheels. She studied it. Though it had to be heavy, especially laden as it was with trash, she told herself it wasn’t all that large.
Holding her breath against the sickening stench, she got behind the dumpster. She turned and rested her back against hard steel, and pushed with her legs.
The wheels squealed and the dumpster moved a few inches over the rough pavement.
She took a deep breath, smell or no smell, and pushed harder, felt the steel at her back move again. More than a foot this time.
And she knew she could do it.
Slowly, so the wheels would make as little noise as possible, she shoved the dumpster beneath the fire escape. Then she closed its steel lid and climbed up on it.
She easily reached the counterweighted fire escape ladder and pulled it down to her. It squealed, too, but in a lower octave and not as loud as the dumpster wheels.
Though SoHo had become gentrified and quite expansive, it was still the kind of neighborhood where no one would pay a great deal of attention to someone ascending a fire escape in broad daylight. And most New Yorkers, if they did see Allie, would shrug and go on their way. It didn’t pay to get involved with strangers climbing fire escapes. Besides, they would conveniently reason, she probably lived or worked in the building and had forgotten her key.
She was careful at each window, but most of the shades were pulled, or the glass looked in on empty offices or apartments being readied for refurbishing.
When she reached the top floor, she found the window to Mayfair’s loft apartment locked.
She removed a shoe, then she looked around and gave the glass pane a tap with its soft heel. Nothing happened. She struck again, harder, and the upper-left corner of the glass fell neatly into the apartment and shattered on the kitchen floor.
Cautiously, she angled her arm in and found the window lock. It didn’t move easily, but she managed to twist it until it wasn’t clasped. She hastily slipped her shoe back on, then she slid open the window and ducked inside.
The glass on the tile floor crunched beneath her feet.
She stood poised to scramble back out the window, but Mayfair’s apartment
All the kitchen appliances were white and new-looking. The table had a glass top and white metal legs. The chairs were white metal with padded gray seats. The walls were white. Faucets and stove hardware gleamed silver. There was not a sign of a dish or a pot or pan or kitchen utensil; everything was in the neat white cabinets. Allie thought the kitchen looked like the kind of place where autopsies were performed.
She left the kitchen and found that the rest of the apartment was one large room with a sleeping area set off by a folding screen. One wall was mirrored floor to ceiling, and modern sculpture rested here and there on glass- topped, sharply angled tables with stainless-steel legs. The wall behind the low-slung, green leather sofa held a vast unframed canvas coated with thick white oil paint except for an olive-drab square near the upper-left corner. Allie doubted if Mayfair was a collector; probably he’d hired a decorator. Probably he’d attempted to seduce her
