If only there were an intercom in this building. There certainly should be.
Maybe she would be able to hear something at the staircase. She started in that direction, and all of a sudden around the corner there she saw two men coming.
All in black.
With machine guns in their hands.
She shrieked and flung herself at the nearest door. She fell through, rolling, the door banging against the wall, and heard the sudden vicious chatter of the machine guns behind her. Ralph and Morton had been farther down the hall, exposed, vulnerable.
She had never moved so fast in her life. She rolled to her feet; she grabbed the edge of the door; she slammed it. There was a latch on the inside, and she locked it, even though she knew it could only delay the inevitable for a few more seconds.
She was in Patrick’s insomnia room. A game of solitaire was in progress on the table. A notepad there had obscure rows of numbers.
Patrick? He had gone downstairs. Those two men had come up from downstairs. Patrick could no longer be alive.
She shook her head, having no time to think about Patrick now, Patrick or anything else. She hurried to the window, flung it open to the cold damp air, and stuck her head out. “Help!” she cried. “Help!”
The fire escape was down to the right, three windows away. Even a circus performer wouldn’t be able to get there from here.
Would no one hear her? “Help! Please, help!”
No lights went on in the row of black buildings before her. Nothing happened.
The door crashed open behind her. She spun around, flattening her back against the wall beside the window. The two men came in, and one of them stood in the middle of the room while the other one came over and shut the window. He smiled crookedly at her. “Not in New York,” he said. “It is well known no one listens in New York.”
He had blood on his face, on one sleeve, on the knee of his trousers. She stared at him in horror.
He continued to smile. “You have nothing to fear from us,” he said. His voice was insinuating, like a seducer’s. “Just tell us where the diamonds are,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. My husband kept them; I don’t know what he did with them.”
He stopped smiling. Mocking her, he looked troubled. As though he really worried about her, he said, “We aren’t going to have to force you to tell us, are we? We don’t want to have to hurt you.”
She looked at the other one still in the middle of the room, his machine gun pointed at her head. He looked so young, so much more innocent than the other one. Would he stand by and let her be tortured?
He’d have to, of course. The older one must be in command here.
She wouldn’t be able to stand torture, she knew that.
It was all over now, all Joseph’s plans, just as she’d feared. Even if she didn’t tell them, even if she let them kill her without telling them, they wouldn’t have to search very hard to find the diamonds. So it was all over, no matter what she did.
The important thing was to stay alive. For her own sake, and the sake of the children.
She said, “You won’t kill me?”
“Why should we kill you?” It was the same seducer’s voice he used, and it made her know he did intend to kill her. But the other one? Would he stand for it if she cooperated, if she pleaded with him, mentioned the children, did whatever they asked?
She said, “Down to the right. The last room on the left. In the closet. There’s a pair of overshoes in there.”
“In the overshoes?”
She nodded. “In two cloth bags inside the overshoes.”
He said to the younger one, “Watch her,” and left the room.
She looked at the younger one. Wasn’t his face familiar? She felt as though she’d seen him somewhere. At some diplomatic function perhaps, or some social occasion in Tchidanga.
She tried to smile at him, but it didn’t work very well. She said, “You don’t have to kill me, you know. I won’t cause you any trouble.”
He didn’t say anything, but she thought she detected sympathy in his expression. She said, “I have three children, you know. They’re all I care about, not the diamonds or politics or anything else. I wouldn’t want to leave them alone, with no one. So you don’t have to kill me, you can leave me here, and I promise you I’ll never”
The other one came back in. He nodded to the younger one and patted the pocket of his jacket. “Got them,” he said. He turned and looked at Lucille and said, “I’m sorry.”
Looking at him, meeting his eye, she realized with a shock that he wassorry. It wasn’t mockery after all; he was deeply troubled by what he was doing here tonight.
Too late she understood she’d made her appeal to the wrong one.
7
Aaron Marten stood at the window looking out over Riverside Drive and the Hudson toward New Jersey. A few lights defined buildings over there even at this hour of the morning.
Jock Daask said, “It’s the woman I’m thinking about.”
