“Bennie? What about you? How do you feel about me?”
“I’m wanted for murder and am becoming one with my sunglasses. We should discuss this subject when neither of these things is true.” And maybe by then I’d know the answer.
He began watching the elevator numbers change. “So you’re going back to that hole in the basement?”
“Sooner or later.”
“You sure I can’t just stop by to check on you?”
“Too risky.”
“Do you have enough money?”
“Now I do, thanks to your continued aiding and abetting.” He’d given me forty dollars, all he had on him.
“Are you safe where you’re hiding?”
“Safer than in that booth with you.”
He smiled. “How am I going to find you again?”
“You’re not, for a while. It’s too dangerous,” I said matter-of-factly. I was the boss here, wasn’t I? “After we get it all straightened out, then we can give it a try. Us, I mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I like it.”
“You like it too much.”
We reached the ground floor. The elevator doors glided open and a horde of suits shoved their way past us into the elevator. I moved into the crowd with concern, more for Grady than for me.
“We can’t walk out together,” I whispered, as we squeezed toward the front of the lobby. A glass wall and revolving doors divided us from a congested Chestnut Street.
“I’ll go first.” His eyes were scanning the street as anxiously as mine. “This way I can scope it out.”
“No. Let me go first, then you follow. Wait ten minutes.”
“But nobody will recognize you, Bennie. I barely did. Let me go first. I’ll signal if there’s trouble.”
“No, good-bye now. Take care.” I left him by the revolving door, which emptied onto a pavement lousy with lawyers flowing into the building. They were returning to Jenkins Library after lunch, bellies full of corned beef specials. Damn the cholesterol, life on the edge.
I adjusted my sunglasses and was about to swim against the tide when an older woman, caught in the crowd, got knocked off-balance. “Oh, my!” she yelped and she tumbled right into my arms.
The crowd flowed around us, apathetic as trout. I was the fugitive, my job was to run, but I had an armful of old lady.
“My back, my back! Please help me, it went out,” she said.
“Okay, it’s all right.” I eased her to the wall of the building and out of the foot traffic. She felt as frail as my mother, brittle bones in a thin sack of skin.
“My back, I need to lie down. Please.” Her face was etched with pain, so I squatted against the granite wall and eased her head onto my tight skirt. Her pink uniform smock saidMAINTENANCE in a patch sewn over her breast, but she had no nametag. In a world of nametags, the people who clean up after us remain nameless.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Eloise,” she said with difficulty. “It hurts, my back.” Her forehead was damp at her hairline, a steely gray, and her hand clutched at my jacket sleeve. For lack of anything better to do, I got down on my knees and cradled her, a lawyerly Pieta.
Suddenly there was a disturbance at the far side of the crowd. Noises out front, on the street, then shouting. The crowd burst into excited chatter and edged back towards the old woman.
“Hey!” I shouted, and bonked a man in the calf.
Out of nowhere came a blast of police sirens, not ten feet from where I crouched. My heart began to pound. Brakes screeched at the curbside. Tires squealed. Orders were barked. Were they after me? I couldn’t see anything but a gaggle of wingtips and black nylon socks. What was going on?
The crowd pressed dangerously back toward us. I cradled Eloise, as much for my comfort as for hers. Between the ankles and feet, I could see the white flash of a squad car streaking to the curb, then another. Uniformed cops were hustling from the cars. Leaping out of the first one, his tie flying, was Detective Azzic.
Jesus. I felt a bolt of fear. My instinct was to run. I felt it in my feet, in every muscle in my legs. Adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream, telling my body to fly.
“My back, it hurts.” Eloise groaned. “It hurts so bad.”
What about Eloise? I couldn’t leave her on the pavement, she’d be trampled, and if I got up and ran now, they’d nab me for sure. No. Stay put. The crowd would screen me from the cops. I ducked lower so they wouldn’t see my face.
Then it hit me. It wasn’t me they were after. It was Grady, and there was nothing I could do about it.
In the next instant, a phalanx of uniformed cops hustled from the office building. In the middle, taller than most of them, was a stoic Grady. His hands were cuffed behind his back, and the cops yanked him along by his elbows. I felt a wrench of pain at the sight. One of the cops dangled his backpack by a strap. They shoved him into the back of the squad car, and Azzic climbed into the passenger seat in front.
“On your way, people,” said one of the cops, dispersing the mob. “There’s nothing to see, nothing to see.”
Eloise squinted up at me. “Keep your head down, honey. They’ll be gone in a minute.”
35
Ten minutes later I had my co-conspirator on her feet and was hustling in spike heels down Chestnut Street, trying to blend in with the lunchtime crowd. I looked everywhere behind my sunglasses, eyes sweeping right and left. Only public transportation and cops were allowed to drive on Chestnut Street, making the police cars easy to spot. None were around, but I was still uneasy. I couldn’t believe how fast they’d materialized at the library. They must have been tailing Grady. Maybe they were tailing me right now. My gut tensed. I hobbled along with the flow on the sidewalk, my thoughts churning.
So Grady had been arrested, undoubtedly as an accessory after the fact. Either Azzic had traced the bananamobile to him, or wasn’t worried if he could make the charge stick and wanted to increase the pressure on me. He would ruin a terrific lawyer in the process, and it was way too close for comfort. They were closing in.
I picked up the pace as best I could, fighting the panic rising in my chest, constricting my throat. I thought of the Eileen tapes. How long before Celeste discovered they were missing? Eileen’s folder had been near the top on his desk. It had to be the hottest thing going for him right now. How long before he reported it to the police? How long before Azzic realized I had something to do with it? I was running out of time. The guard would remember my disguise, no problem.
“Hey, baby,” said a voice at my arm, and I jumped. “How you doin’?” It was a short man with tattoos, and he was leering at me. “You wanna spend some time with a real man, baby?”
Then I remembered what I looked like. An oversized hooker who couldn’t walk in heels. “I am a real man, handsome. Now beat it.”
I wobbled ahead. There were fewer and fewer people on the sidewalk. The bus traffic had thinned out. Everybody was going back to work, leaving me feeling exposed. I needed to hide, but I still couldn’t risk going uptown to the basement. I needed to get off the street before another tattoo stopped me.
A bus steamed by in a cloud of sooty smoke and braked with a hydraulic squeal at the corner stop. Perfect.
I made my way to the back of the bus and took a seat in the last row, which was empty except for a teenager on the far right in a Raiders shirt. I sat down in the back row, scooted way over against the greasy window on the far left, and willed myself to calm down. Breathe easily, normally. I wiped my damp brow under my sunglasses. I
