swinging around an iron railing and diving down the steps of what appeared to be the entrance to a basement apartment. Like a hunted animal going to ground.
Allie sucked in a harsh, rasping breath that seared her lungs and ran hard for the iron railing. A throbbing ache flared in her right side, threatening to buckle her body and make her slow to a bent-over walk.
She swung around the corner rail, as she’d seen her quarry do, cutting her hand on a sharp spur of wrought iron. She lunged down two of the concrete steps and then stopped, gasping for air.
A Hispanic boy about fourteen was standing hunched in the shadowy corner of the entranceway. He had his narrow back to her, but his head was twisted around so he could see her, the glow from the street catching his smooth features. Allie could hear the spattering of his urine on concrete; she breathed in the ammonia stench of it. He continued to gaze insolently over his shoulder, light from above causing the white of one eye to glitter. “What the fuck you want, lady?”
She didn’t answer.
He turned his body toward her and stood with his feet spread wide, zipping up his pants. Grinned.
Allie bolted and ran across the street, then walked back the way she’d come. She looked behind her several times to make sure the boy wasn’t following.
After a few blocks, her breathing evened out and the pain in her side faded away. But her thighs still ached and her knees felt weak. She walked slowly, trying to collect her thoughts.
At least she’d met people who’d seen Hedra pretending to be her. Hedra using her name and clothes and mannerisms. Not the sort of people who’d talk to the police, though, even if they might be believed. Even if the police could locate most of them.
But what did it all actually prove? The police would think it had been Allie herself who’d frequented Wild Red’s, dressed and made up for picking up men, then, in less extreme clothes and makeup tonight, she hadn’t been recognized. Certainly that’s what a prosecutor would maintain in court.
And it sounded plausible, she had to admit. More plausible than
Again, Allie found herself wondering if Hedra really existed.
Chapter 32
THE next morning, in her room at the Willmont, Allie counted her money. She still had enough to meet her needs for a while, but even living as she was, Manhattan proved expensive. It was a city where money talked, growled, and laughed, and would step over you for dead. Even the air was expensive; a doctor would tell you that. Trading the computer for cash had been no problem; deal enough with computers and computer people, and you learn where hard and software might be bought and sold cheap and without questions. But stolen jewelry was another matter. She had no idea where to exchange it for cash.
From the brown envelope she’d stuck behind the bottom dresser drawer, she got out one of Mayfair’s gold chains, a thick, eighteen-inch one lettered 14 KARATE on the clasp. There was also an
She returned the envelope to its hiding place behind the drawer. Then she slipped into her jacket, dropped the chain in a pocket, and left the hotel. Eyes in the lobby followed her, as if the chain were visible and everyone knew it wasn’t hers. She almost laughed. A murderer worried about being branded a thief.
Selling the gold chain was easier than she’d imagined. She’d walked down Forty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth, the diamond district. Here, during the day, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds in all kinds of settings were displayed like mere baubles.
Halfway down the block, Allie had gone into a small shopping arcade lined with tiny shops, chosen the smallest, and told the man behind the counter she wanted to sell her husband’s gold chain. He was a tiny man with a black beard and had a skullcap perched on the back of his head like a dark bald spot. He studied Allie for a few seconds, then examined the chain briefly with the jeweler’s loop that was dangling from a red string around his neck. He held the chain up to the light, then let it coil gently down into the small metal cradle of a scale.
In a thick Yiddish accent he said, “I can give you five hundred dollars, no more.”
Allie didn’t want to seem eager. “Can’t you make it seven hundred?”
The man shrugged. “So I’ll make it five-fifty. And I mean no more. Really. Final.
“Cash?”
The man played the chain like liquid through his fingers, thinking about that. Though he was small, he had long, elegant fingers. “Sure, cash,” he said. He handed the chain back to Allie, said, “Wait here,” and disappeared beyond a thick hanging curtain that soaked up light like velvet.
He came back a few minutes later with eleven fifty-dollar bills. No receipt was offered or requested. There was no paperwork. This was a simple transaction between buyer and seller, what had made the world work for centuries.
“If you’re in possession of any other such items, bring them in,” he said, smiling. He’d chosen his words carefully, hadn’t said “If you own” or “If you have.” “If you’re in possession of,” was what he’d told her. As if it didn’t matter whether she was the legal owner. She wondered if anyone in the world was actually honest.
Allie smiled back, nodded, and left the shop.
Sunday morning she heard about a theft in the Willmont; an old man’s cash from his Social Security check had been stolen when he was out of his room. She wondered if she should keep the rest of Mayfair’s jewelry where it was hidden behind the drawer.
She decided the smart thing would be to sell all of it as soon as possible where she’d sold the gold chain, then keep the money with her.
She was there a few minutes after the shop opened Monday morning. The same man, wearing his yarmulke
