Escape the Night (22 page)

“All right, then,” she said. “You've got me for the evening—metaphorically speaking.”

Carey's smile became a laugh. “Just don't start without me,” he answered, and hung up.

When his telephone rang, Martin was there to answer: the instant the blackout began, he knew that the small man would be calling.

“Tonight?” he asked.

“Yes.” The small man's tone was so mild that only Martin could have sensed its sarcasm. “This should make things easier for you.”

Martin smiled to himself: the small man hated his dependence. “Which things?” he probed casually. “Is there something you want first?”

There was silence.

“Don't toy with me.” The unseen voice was soft and cool. “Not now, and not ever.”

Martin waited.

“
Levy
,” the small man hissed, and hung up.

By 5:10, when Peter Carey began edging nine stories down the darkened stairwell, Van Dreelen & Carey was nearly empty; only midtown had gone dark, and those with light at home were struggling to break free. He joined a file of reluctant bodies descending as if into a cave; it stopped to admit more bodies on each floor, then inched forward again. Trapped in darkness, Carey felt the loss of movement and control: it was 5:50 before he reached the sidewalk and began to search the milling throngs for Noelle. A long ten minutes later he saw her threading across the intersection through a mass of cars with their motors off, locked bumper to bumper in an immovable grid that kept even buses from running. Noelle kissed him as she reached the corner. “All the traffic lights are out,” she said. “It's like this for blocks, even police cars and ambulances are stalled. The people stuck in subway trains are just sitting there like they're in some catacomb. Leaving the paper, I heard people shouting because they're trapped inside the elevator. There was nothing I could do.”

“Want a drink?”

Noelle looked back toward the street; pedestrians had begun moving in silent packs among the cars. “Maybe a quick one.”

Ducking into the nearest bar, they were surprised to find it empty; bars were the demilitarized zone of the city, offering safety from its normal terrors. “They just want to get out of here,” Noelle suggested. “I didn't see too many cops on the street.”

Carey nodded; the room was faint as dusk. “These used to be more fun.”

They went to the bar and ordered two Gibsons. The bartender, a beefy man who looked glad to see them, asked, “Mind straight up? My cubes are melting.”

“Sure,” Carey said.

The bartender seemed relieved. Mixing the drinks, he wondered, “Think there'll be looting?”

“When it gets dark.” Carey turned to Noelle. “Cheers.”

They drank quickly. As they left, Carey said, “You know, it's strange how divorced we are from the things that run our lives, like some poor guy on a respirator. Food, heat, light: we don't even know where they come from anymore, but we'll pay any price to get them. And when they go, we're helpless.”

Noelle pulled up her collar. “They'll have it fixed by morning.”

Carey felt the chill of winter. The high-rises towering above Fifth Avenue were dark, their windows like dead cells. Noelle watched grim men and women hurry past them. “They still don't want to look at people,” she remarked.

“They just want to get home. Like me.”

They began to angle up Fifth Avenue toward Central Park South. The buildings of Carey's childhood—Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral, F. A. O. Schwarz, where his laughing father once bought him a toy yacht—were as dim as his memories, and the Plaza looked like a bank that had closed. “My father used to bring me here,” he said.

Noelle nodded; he had never taken her inside.

For a moment, Carey stopped to stare at the entrance to Central Park. It snaked and wound in darkness, toward the tunnel …

Noelle took his arm. “Come on.”

They turned down the sidewalk of Central Park South, passing dark hotels; neither they nor anyone sane would risk crossing the park at night. The street was like a parking lot; some commuters had locked their cars and begun walking. Ahead, the Gulf & Western Building was an abandoned shell, forty-four stories of soot-colored glass. Noelle stopped to stare at it. “Imagine the neutron bomb.”

“I am,” Carey said.

Crossing the street, they turned beneath the shadowy glass building up Central Park West, hustling the last twelve blocks to the Aristocrat.

The doorman smiled in the dusk. “Something, isn't it.”

They grinned back.

He had lit the lobby with lamps that ran on batteries. “Thanks,” they called back, and then took ten pitch-black flights, stopping to see if the Krantzes were all right.

The small woman came to the door, peeking beneath the chain latch, Abner yipping at her feet. “We have candles,” she explained to the dog.

Carey smiled. “Call me,” he advised Abner, “if you need anything,” and then they groped a few dark feet to his apartment.

Inside, Carey lit a candle and examined the wires of his useless alarm system. “It'll be like this all over midtown,” he said. “Mass flight, and no alarms anywhere. Perfect for break-ins.”

Noelle touched his shoulder. “Let's start a fire.”

Carey locked the door behind them.

Martin opened Levy's outer door with the passkey.

Closing the door, he took a flashlight from his bag, blessing the power of uniforms. Dressed as a security guard, he had marched past the battery-lit reception desk and two nurses' stations with no questions asked, until he reached the darkened wing of offices, where there were no patients needing light.

Now he moved the beam around Levy's front room, frowning at the minimal decor, until he found the file cabinets tucked behind the receptionist's desk.

Six.

The locks were simple. Picking the nearest cabinet, he worked its lock and then carefully slid the top drawer open, taking out a file.

Levy had coded them.

Martin paused. Levy would keep an index at the office: no man could commit six cabinets of coded files to memory.

Turning off the flashlight, he sat at the desk, letting his eyes adjust to darkness. Levy must be an old man, he thought. He would hide the index in a place which did not require him to stand.

Martin edged toward the inner office.

There would be a desk inside.

He reached for Levy's doorknob …

Carey and Noelle lay watching the flames rise, just beyond their light. He felt her hair against his face. Softly she asked, “What was Levy like today?”

“Like a psychiatrist, I suppose.” Carey stared into the fire. “He struck me as a very
sad
man, in his way.”

“Sad about what?”

“About what he sees, I guess.” Idly, Carey drank some of the wine they shared. “I think he's still sad about my father.”

“Did you talk about that?”

“No.” Carey hesitated. “I wanted to.”

“What would you have asked?”

“I don't know—impossible things, really. What was he like, what would he be like now, what would
I
be like if …” Carey's voice trailed off. “The man's a professional. He wouldn't answer me even if he could.”

“But you told him about the amnesia?”

“And the dream. Couldn't leave that out.”

“Show-off.”

Carey smiled absently. “That's when he really looked unhappy—guilty, almost. It's funny—I felt sorry for him. I guess it's a good trick for a psychiatrist.”

“I doubt he wants your sympathy, Peter. Are you going back?”

“So it seems—although part of me keeps saying I shouldn't.” He began playing with her hair. “You know I really don't remember that much about him. More a feeling …”

“Your father?”

Carey nodded. “It's just that sometimes I think—you know, if he had lived—that then I'd have his qualities.” He reflected for a moment. “Did I tell you that he saved someone's life once, during the war?”

“I knew that, yes.”

He looked over her shoulder at the fire. “It's something I think about, now and then. I don't know if I could do that.”

Noelle was quiet. “Does it really matter?”

“I guess not.” He shrugged. “At least what I have of him is good. He had this terrific smile. I remember him walking so quick and straight and proud that people must have felt lucky just to talk to him—except that he always had time for me. There was only once when he didn't, and that was when my grandfather died, flying this silly fucking kite to please me.” Still Carey watched the flames. “The last thing he did was call out to my father—he'd forgotten who I was. Yet I can never forget why he died. Now I'm not so sure I want to remember my father's dying. It hardly takes a genius to see that the dream symbolizes something pretty bad.”

She rolled onto her back. “But the dream
is
pretty bad, Peter. You should hear yourself screaming …”

“I have—recently.” He looked down at her. “Let's skip it now, all right?”

“Okay.” For a moment her eyes probed his and then they smiled. “Anyhow, what I really want to know is what you told him about me.”

Carey tilted his head. “I told him that you're kinky.”

“Kinky?”

“Uh-huh.” He grinned at her. “You know, that you make me do things.”

“That's outrageous.” The smile moved to one corner of her mouth. “What things?”

Carey kissed her nose. “I'll show you.”

Martin pressed the Carey folder to his face.

He did not yet know why Carey's amnesia so concerned the small man; for a brief moment he did not care. In this pitch-dark time of his imaginings, the woman was inside …

He stopped himself: it was not yet time to read. Opening the file, he spread Levy's freshly taken notes out on the floor, counting pages.

Five.

Kneeling, he took the camera from his bag and photographed each page, then he placed the film back in the bag. Carefully, he inserted a small magnetic disk at the base of Levy's lamp, and then unscrewed the mouthpiece of the telephone.

Minutes later, Martin began reading, as though to touch Noelle Ciano.

Noelle's flesh quivered, nipples rising to harden in the palm of Carey's hand as he kissed the nape and then the hollow of her neck and, chest sliding against her back and spine and shoulder blades, entered her …

Carey felt the warmth inside her; as her knees rose, his legs curled into the back of hers, arms clasping her body. The flame spat and flickered, its light moving toward them, grazing their skin. Noelle turned her head, Carey's face bent to hers, and still their bodies moved, slowly, sinuously, together. Carey shivered with the blood rushing to his groin, the swelling tightness of it …

Suddenly, Carey felt his soul divide; his flesh still touched hers, warm dampness mingling, yet that same chill part of him, tauntingly aloof, now watched the dance of their bodies but would not, could not, join them …

Closing his eyes, he moved faster, straining to call it back. “Peter,” she moaned. “Please, Peter—
be
with me.”

Alone, Martin smiled in the cold.

The night was black and flat and skyless; he sensed its shapes but could not see them. The city had died around him; its people had vanished and the moon had disappeared. Only the lights of scattered cars cruised the silent dark.

All Manhattan lay before him, for he understood the night.

Hearing nothing but the sound of his own footsteps, he began to count them.

In his mind, to the pounding of each step, his body moved in rhythm with the woman.

“Not bad,” Noelle murmured. “Where is it they do that?”

Carey smiled, face next to hers. “Albania,” he answered idly. “Estonia. Several of the captive nations and a few of the Balkan countries …”

She turned her face to his. “Is that where
you
were?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that I could feel myself losing you again.” She hesitated. “It's like
you
feel it, too, and then you try to prove you're there.”

Carey was stung by her uncanny sense of him. “Was it so bad, then?”

“Bad? You're the best in Manhattan, Peter.”

Black hair spilled in his father's lap
…

“Then what is it that you want?”

She waited for his eyes to open. Much more softly, she said, “To have you here, with me.”

Martin stood at the base of the Pan Am Building.

Thirty feet above him the building disappeared; its lobbies were black caves. But in his memory, etched by the day he had followed Carey, Martin saw the image of a stairwell …

With the certainty of daylight he walked through the darkened building and took the stairs, counting fourteen floors. He stopped, opened a door, began moving again. He prowled the corridor with uncanny quickness, his flashlight moving from side to side until it caught the square gold letters he was looking for.

Ten minutes later, he stood in Benevides's office.

Kneeling, Carey spread the woolen blanket across Noelle's neck and shoulders, and then kissed her forehead.

Noelle slept evenly, like a child; as night grew deep, her lips parted, as though to smile at the coming of day.

Carey smiled at his thought.

He would not sleep.

Sleep frightened him; its first narcotic moments, drifting and seductive, were the ambush of his faceless enemy.

Tonight, his cries would not awaken her.

Staring at the fire, he imagined Charles Carey, burning in his car.

Finishing, Martin went to the telephone and dialed.

The small man answered on the second ring. “Where are you?”

“Benevides's law firm. I've used the same procedure as at both the Careys' offices.”

“What about files?”

“You were right: Carey's stalling his uncle. He's preparing for court.”