accomplished by moving was to put myself at risk. At greater risk.
I made two phone calls, then put my phone away. One was to check my voicemail, which was filled to capacity, but not with anything I needed to hear. The other was to Kurland, who told me Julie had checked out of the hospital and was staying with him. He must’ve known I was on the run—how could he not?—but he didn’t say anything about it. He put Julie on the phone when I asked him to. We didn’t talk long.
It got colder as the afternoon wore on, but with my sweater and my hat, it wasn’t too bad, at least until the sun went down.
My eyes got used to the dark, my body to not moving. No one bothered me. Once I saw a cop pass on the path beneath me and I was tempted for an insane moment to call out to him. A voice from the rock. A voice from on high crying, “Here I am!”
But I stayed silent and he passed, and the time passed, and then it was 11:20 and I had somewhere to be.
There was a different woman at the front desk, but she was cut from the same bolt. Willowy. Slender. Glossy lips, slightly parted. Soft voice.
“Have you been here before?” she said.
I told her I had.
“Would you prefer a massage or a scrub?”
I had too little money for either; I didn’t even have enough to use the facilities.
“Actually,” I said, “I’m just here to meet someone. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes. I was hoping you’d let me wait for him back there.” I nodded toward the changing area. I could see her getting ready to say no. Before she could get the word out, I held out two folded bills, a twenty and a ten. It was the last of my cash.
She took it, spread the bills, and took a minute to consider whether it was a respectable bribe or an insult. She pocketed the money. “Stay in the changing area,” she said. “Keep your clothes on.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
Thankfully this time there was no one else there. I pulled one of the high-backed couches toward me to block the view a bit more. It was five minutes to midnight.
The train ride downtown had been excruciating. I’d kept my hat pulled low and my jacket collar high and a copy of the
Now I was indoors and alone, but if anything the tension was worse. Because now I was waiting for a man who’d told me he’d kill me if he ever saw me again. A man who’d killed two people because of me.
I asked myself why I was here. I’d asked it all the way down. The answer was because he’d killed Di. (Candace, I reminded myself. He’d killed Candace.) I’d believed Ardo when he’d said they didn’t kill women. In his own crazy way, he’d meant it—it seemed to be a point of pride with him, of integrity, maybe dating back to when he’d been a child and seen his sister shot by the Arrow Cross.
But Miklos hadn’t seen his sister shot. And Miklos didn’t seem to have a problem killing women.
He’d certainly attacked Julie, and I was confident he’d been the one who’d strangled Candace—why the hell should I believe he wouldn’t have killed Dorrie?
If nothing else, he was my leading candidate for who Dorrie had been preparing to leave the city to get away from. I already knew Dorrie had been afraid to tell me about him once—she hadn’t said a word to me about the incident with Julie’s hand. That didn’t guarantee it was Miklos she’d been too scared to tell me about this time...but how many people that frightening could she have known?
The clock on the wall ticked slowly toward true north.
I was carrying nothing I could use as a weapon. I thought for a moment about tracking down the barber’s shears Lisa had found for me the last time I’d been here—at least they had a sharp point. But realistically I might just as well have asked her for the manicure scissors, for all the good they’d do me. Might as well ask for a toothbrush.
12:01 came and went, 12:02. Then I heard the dull chime that accompanied each opening of the elevator door. Moments later I heard heavy footsteps on the wooden walkway. Over the tops of the couches I could see the crown of his head approaching.
When he turned the corner and saw me, he didn’t recognize me, not at first. Then I saw recognition blossom on his face as he extended his key toward one of the lockers. He let his hand drop, tossed the key on the seat beside him.
“Blake?”
His hands slowly closed into fists. Opened and closed. Slowly.
“I’m just here to talk, Miklos.” I held my hands up, palms out. “I’m unarmed.”
“So?” He laughed. “So what you’re unarmed? Mr. Lucky.” He stepped forward, closing the distance between us. “Tell me, Mr. Lucky, do you want I should kill you fast or slow?” The smile that spread across his face was an ugly thing. “Or should I make you suck me off first like your faggot bartender friend would?”
I felt sweat running down my sides, from my armpits to the bandages strapped around my torso. This would work or it wouldn’t work—and if it didn’t work, I was dead. It was that simple.
“Before you kill me, Miklos,” I said, “there’s something you need to see.”
“Something I need to see like what?”
“Evidence,” I said. “Evidence you left behind, tying you to Candace Webb’s murder. Starting with those King Kong fingerprints of yours, but that’s just the beginning.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” he said. “You got evidence like that, you’d take it to the police, get them off your back.”
“I can’t go to the police—thanks to you. Even if I showed them I didn’t do Webb, they’d lock me up for Ramos. But I’ll tell you who I can go to, Miklos. I can go to your boss. And we both know how he feels about killing women.”
“This
“Well, maybe you can explain that to Ardo. While you’re at it you can explain why you weren’t able to take a gun away from a woman half your size without killing her. He’s probably a very reasonable man when it comes to these things. That’s certainly what they say on the street.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You remember what he told me,” I said, “the last time we were all together? ‘People who work for me sometimes make mistakes. They pay for them when they do.’ ”
He remembered. I could see it in his face.
“I’ve also got evidence, Miklos, that you were a regular at Julie’s place long before Ardo sent you there to break her hand. How do you think he’s going to like that? That you were giving your business to a woman who stole customers from him?”
Between clenched teeth he said, “What do you want?”
“I need to get out of town—at least till this blows over, maybe for good. And that takes money. You know how much money I have?” In another context, my thumb-to-forefinger gesture might have meant
“Yeah? How?”
“You give me ten thousand dollars, cash, I’ll hand you all the evidence I’ve got and we’ll go our separate ways. You’ll never see me again and neither will Ardo.”
He reached out and closed one hand around my throat. “How about I break your fucking neck and take the evidence off your dead body?”
“You think I’m stupid?” I said. “It’s not on me. I’ve got it downstairs, in my car.”
“Your car.”
“That’s right. And if I’m not downstairs in five minutes, unharmed, my friend who’s driving my car has instructions to take the evidence to Andras, hand it over to him. He’ll know what to do with it.” I stared at him over his outstretched arm, tried to keep my voice from breaking. “I think you know he’ll do it, too. My faggot bartender
