'Yours isn't safe anymore. Take the Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan.'
'He turned off Willow Street, heading for the Bridge.
'You know your directions pretty well for a foreigner,' he noted, the remark being a remote form of accusation.
'I learn quickly.'
Several seconds passed. He was still perplexed by what had transpired.
'Who were they?' he asked at length.
'Your latest troublemakers' she said. They were on the Brooklyn Bridge. From the corner of his eye he could see her admiring the Manhattan skyline. An overloaded car cut across the solid line into the lane in front of them. Standard bridge etiquette.
'You're a popular man' she added.
'You now have two competing sets of goons after you' He gave her a long, hard, and inquisitive look, removing his eyes from the road, also standard bridge etiquette.
'How do you know that?'
She fed him a cryptic smile.
'Call it my artistic temperament' she said.
'Or attribute it to the fact that I've spent my life as Arthur Sandler's daughter. I can sense it ' she declared.
'I know.'
He was without a reply since obviously she was not a woman to reveal one iota of unintended information. They neared the exit ramp in Manhattan. He continued to study his rearview mirror as he asked,
'Where to next?'
'We're going to West Thirtieth Street,' she said.
'Between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues' He looked at her as if to ask whether or not it was a serious request.
– Yes,' she answered,
'I'm serious.'
The block of Thirtieth Street on which she lived met Thomas's expectations and surpassed them. It was a dark, heavily littered street which even during a bright afternoon would be worth a detour.
There was an all-day garage which had closed at six, two vacant vandalized store fronts which had been Spanish grocery shops, and in a row toward Eleventh Avenue were three decaying warehouses. Across the fronts of these iron grates and metal grills had been pulled, protecting the interiors from becoming nocturnal discount centers for shoppers armed with crowbars.
Nestled among these establishments were several old brick tenements, walk-up buildings in various stages of repair and disrepair.
In better days the block had been a Lithuanian enclave. Now the newer immigrants from the West Indies and Central America populated the streets. The newer immigrants plus Leslie McAdam.
The only sign of life on the street was a tawdry bar close to the corner, outside of which several flashy models of Detroit workmanship were double-parked. A Rheingold sign flashed in the bar's window.
They walked by it quickly, just long enough to see two large black men fondling an equally large black woman at a window cash register. There was boisterous activity at a bar farther into the noisy dimness.
Leslie explained that she lived one flight above it, and that she was in the habit of moving quickly past the bar and into her doorway, key in hand, of course.
'One night I was followed in' she said.
'They thought any white girl on the block had to be selling herself Thomas closed the front door behind him. The alcove and hallway reeked embarrassingly. They climbed the dimly lit staircase, the noise from the bar thundering on the other side of the wall.
'Aren't you scared?' he was going to ask, but didn't, because obviously she wasn't. Not in relation to the more direct threats on her life, those she'd lived with for so long.
Then he was struck from nowhere by a more invidious thought.
Was this all part of a trap? Why was he defenseless being lured to a roach farm in the west thirties. He didn't know why he thought of it.
After all, he trusted her didn't he but there was something macabre, out of place, about this setting. Suppose he was being taken here for his throat to be perforated? More than one person had insisted that she was a fraud. This was exactly the type of building in which a body would be found two weeks after the fact and the murderer would never be apprehended.
He was on his guard as she unlocked her apartment door, stepped through it, and allowed him to follow.
Then the thought of a physical threat to him eased away as he observed her surroundings.
'What's the old axiom?' she asked.
'Be it ever so humble…
The chairs were overstuffed and threadbare, the floorboards worn and creaky when walked upon. The walls were of a gray plaster which might have been a pale green in better days but which had passed many years since last being on familiar terms with a paintbrush.
The kitchen was narrow and cramped. It featured a single fluorescent light overhead. The stove was old- fashioned, the sink basin curiously stained with green, and the linoleum worn almost to the underlying woodwork.
Thomas took it all in as he sat gingerly upon the set tee half waiting for a spare spring beneath him to barge upward.
'It's not Versailles, is it?' she said with an apologetic smile.
'I suppose it's comfortable,' he said.
'If you have to make do' There was noise from the sidewalk below where two sodden revelers were engaged in a heated and profane discussion with the fat woman from the cash register. Leslie went to one of two windows and pulled the shade down. Thomas glanced to the next room, a bedroom which was even more sparse than the living room. A simple wooden dresser. A narrow single bed which had a dingy brown cover over its concave middle.
Thomas watched Leslie return from the window and sit down beside a dim thirty-year-old lamp beside the sofa. Here was a woman of grace, charm, and youth in a setting of gloom and despair. Here, within gray walls that were despairing, amid furniture which could better serve as firewood, and above a watering hole where man's primordial instincts took their last stand, the putative last of the Sandlers lived in exile. In a world removed from the faded elegance of the mansion on Eighty-ninth Street, she sought and awaited what she claimed would be her rightful restoration.
Her hands were in her lap. She was clearly embarrassed to be seen in such surroundings.
'No one will ever accuse me of squandering my inheritance in advance she said, forcing a slight smile.
'How did you find this'- he searched for the word' place 'I needed something fast' she said.
'This is what I could afford The noise from the bar increased with profane shouts. There was the sound of a television and jukebox below.
Thomas could hear footsteps on the floor above him.
'How safe is it?' he asked.
'How safe is anything?' she said.
'This is safer than most. Four escape routes. Kitchen window, bathroom window, front door, back fire escape to the neighboring rooftops, six different escape routes from there' 'You've got the angles figured well he said, admiring her inventiveness as a latter-day Houdini.
'There's no particular brilliance involved. just self-preservation She glanced around the drab room, focusing on the empty, dirty walls. She slipped out of her shoes and undid the top button of her blouse, aspiring toward whatever small comfort she could find.
'I suppose what bothers me most,' she said with a half sigh and as if in response to a question, 'is the unimaginative squalor of it all 'Sorry?' he asked.
She turned to him, her arms folded as if stepping back from an easel to study it.
'The apartment,' she said.
