She started pulling out lengths of two-by-four and molding and handing them to me.
“Hold these.”
She dug further and pulled out some galvanized metal strips. These she kept herself as she started walking again.
“I’m going to need some supplies,” she said. “I’ll need a hammer, nails, screws, a cordless drill, some of that Gorilla Glue, a soldering iron, oh, and a protractor.”
“Why on Earth…?”
“I told you: I need to build a shelter.”
HARI
“Your skills may prove crucial to my future, and to yours as well.”
Yeah, right, Hari thought as she stopped before a Chelsea townhouse on West Twenty-first Street. Her “skills” were with numbers—specifically forensic accounting.
Seeing a client on a Sunday was no big deal—she worked seven days a week, after all—but a house call? Normally she didn’t visit a client’s home unless big bucks were in the offing, but this fellow had all but begged her, saying no way could he come to her. She’d considered blowing him off, but his address was between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, a short, tree-lined walk from her office in the Flatiron District, and the May day was mild and sunny, so why not?
The tall, narrow, Victorian row house dressed in dark brown stone loomed behind a low, wrought-iron fence. Each floor had its own large bay window. A tiny patch of lawn sat on either side of the short slate walk leading to the front steps.
Wouldn’t mind living here, she thought as she climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. Back in the seventies, when NYC was on the on the verge of default, these things could be had for a song. Now they went for millions.
A long-haired twenty-something wearing jeans and a red T emblazoned with i > u opened the door. He’d affected that three-millimeter facial stubble that guys in his generation thought so cool. Hari wrote it off to clueless trendiness.
“Don’t tell me you’re Arthur Palaez,” she said.
He grinned. “No way. I’m Donny Tuite, his assistant.”
“‘Tweet’? As in what you do on Twitter?”
“Not even close.” He spelled it for her.
She stuck out her hand. “Hari Tate. Your boss and I have a ten o’clock appointment.”
“Really? Oh, man. When Art said a Harry Tate would be stopping by—”
“—you expected a guy.”
“Right.”
He wasn’t a good liar. In her line of work Hari ran into lots of really good liars—accountants who cooked books for a living numbered among the best—and she’d developed a feel for falsehoods. Donny had known her gender. Why pretend he hadn’t?
She forced a smile. “You’re not the first. Are you going to ask me in or are we just going to stand here flapping our gums?”
“Oh, yeah, no, come on in.”
Another set of oak doors, these adorned with frosted glass designs, divided the tiny vestibule from the rest of the house. She followed Donny through to the oak paneled foyer. A long narrow staircase ran up along the wall to her right. An ornate chandelier, festooned with heavy red glass grapes, hung overhead. Far to the rear, daylight filtered in through tall windows overlooking a courtyard.
“I should be wearing your T-shirt,” Hari said.
His gaze dropped to her breasts and lingered. She’d been working on dropping some weight and was actually getting her waist back, but still had a ways to go. The good thing was her bust hadn’t shrunk.
“I don’t know if it would fit.”
“Maybe not, but I think it might be more accurate.”
He grinned—he had a nice smile. “I think I like you.”
“You’ll get over it.”
He pressed a button on an intercom/alarm panel to the left and said, “Ms. Tate is here.”
“Be right down.”
Donny turned to her. “He’ll be right down.”
“No kidding? Right down? Thanks for telling me. I never would have known.”
She wanted to pull the words back. Dial it down a bit, Hari. Her ex had told her she needed anger-management training. She didn’t think so. She just needed fewer people saying dumb things.
Also, she was low on caffeine.
But he just laughed. “You’re a tough one, but I guess that was—what would you call it?”
“How about redundant?”
“Nailed it. Captain Redundant.”
She kind of liked Donny. Except for the stubble and the white lie about expecting a guy, he seemed genuine, comfortable in his skin. She tried to make nice-nice.
“I like these old places,” she said, looking around. “They’ve got character.”
“This one’s got some history. Back in the fifties and sixties it was divided into apartments—one to a floor. Then a psychiatrist named Gates bought it and totally restored it. He lived here until just a couple of years ago when he blew a hole through his head in Times Square. Nobody knows why but there must have been something hinky going on because he left the place to one of his patients.”
“I guess you’d call that a close doctor-patient relationship.”
“I guess, right? Anyway, the patient had an accident here and didn’t want to stay, so she put it up for sale almost immediately. Art came along and snapped it up.”
Right on cue, a slim, olive-skinned man of about forty descended the stairs and thrust out his hand.
“Arthur Palaez.”
Hari introduced herself, and Arthur—“call me Art”—offered coffee which Hari could not refuse. The meeting would go much more smoothly if she was properly caffeinated. She told Donny she took it black. As he went off to make some fresh, she followed Art as he bounded up the stairs to the second floor.
“When you said you couldn’t come to my office,” Hari said, puffing, “I assumed you were disabled in some way.”
“I am,” he said, tapping a finger against his temple. “Agoraphobia. I totally flip out if I have to leave the house. I do so only for the direst emergencies. But tell me about you. Indian? Pakistani? Bangladeshi?”
Seriously?
“Han Chinese—pure bred.”
He blinked. “Pardon?”
Oh, hell. “My grandparents were from Mumbai. Does it matter?”
“I just like to be aware so I don’t tread on any cultural differences.”
“I’ll take a load off your mind: I’m American. Born and raised in Mineola.”
“I guess I was also asking because Tate isn’t
