Woman in the Window (11 page)

“No, no, he’s a killer!” Her voice had risen, and a man passing their table paused momentarily, registered what she had said, raised his thick eyebrows, and went on to a wingbacked chair adjacent to their settee. She heard him banging the bell on his table. She thought she’d recognized him, probably an actor in his turtleneck sweater and expensive hairpiece, leather jacket. It occurred to her that she should point him out to Lew, the celebrity watcher.

“You
know
he’s a killer?” Lew said.

She nodded, finished her drink, pointed at the empty glass. “I really could use another one,” she told him. Lew waved to a waiter. The tables were filling up. “Yes, this cop, MacPherson—he’s part of what’s bothering me, actually; he’s just too snotty for words, such a smartass—this MacPherson dropped in on me today with the good news. The gun was used in a murder earlier that day. He shot some awful woman. …” The words were rushing out, spilling. “A porno actress, Lew, a cocaine dealer, he blew her head off, oh shit. …” She felt tears welling up, hated herself, let her voice trail off.

Lew touched her arm again, handed her the fresh gimlet.

“What a world,” he murmured.

“And then Jay told me this awful story about his wife and son being murdered—”

“Danmeier? What the hell is this?”

“Thirty years ago. Oh, it’s just awful, and for some reason it’s all just landing on me right now … Tony and Jay and that creep the other night in the shadows. … Oh, Lewis, I don’t want to talk about this anymore, okay?”

The noise level was rising as the lobby filled. The man in the wingbacked chair lit a cigar and the smoke drifted toward her, strong, rich, overpowering. She choked back a cough. He banged his bell again. His weekly
Variety
fell on the floor and he reached down to pick it up.
God, I’m making a scene,
she thought,
and this bastard is lapping it up.

Lew was saying something but she couldn’t hear him, saw his lips moving. “What?” She cupped an ear.

“Dr. Drummond,” he said. “Alex Drummond, a colleague of mine. I think you might have a chat with him. I’m not suggesting treatment, Natalie, so don’t look like that. But you could lay out some of this stuff and he might help you get a bit of perspective—”

“I don’t need a shrink,” she said. “I need a few days of vacation.”

“Sure, sure, but you are under a lot of stress, aren’t you? Well, Alex is a good man—”

“No, thanks.”

“Get serious, Nat.” He leaned forward. “Look, I know you won’t call him. Right? So let me have him give you a call—you can say no, but you’ll like him. Very serious, no nonsense, a solid guy. Okay?”

“Give it a couple of days, though. Please, Lew. I’m okay—”

“Of course you’re okay, no one’s suggesting you’re not. I mean, you’re a nut case but you’ve always been one of those.”

She gave a liberating laugh. “Okay, it’s a deal.” She picked up her drink. “To Dr. Drummond!”

“Listen, we shrinks gotta stick together.”

When they left she noticed that the actor must have gotten his earful and moved on. Only his
Variety
remained, and Lew hadn’t seen a single famous face.

Waiting for a cab she had a thought.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed, feeling much better. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Me what?” He was gesturing wildly at a Checker.

“The flowers. You sent me the flowers on my birthday. Yesterday—”

“Give me a break, Nat. You know I never can keep things like birthdays straight. … Here’s your cab.” He pecked her cheek. “Now be nice to Drummond, okay? Make me look good. “And call me if you get to feeling lonesome.”

She looked back at him as the cab pulled away. Why couldn’t he have sent the flowers? She was running out of candidates.

N
ATURALLY SHE WAS IN
the shower, with Sir sitting in the bathroom doorway watching her shape through the shower curtain, when the doorbell began buzzing with a hellish insistence, as if the Prince of Darkness waited without and knew damn well she was in there somewhere. She finally yanked back the curtain, threw her wet robe over her soaking body, cinched the belt, and went to the intercom. “Who is it and this better be good!” she shouted.

“Miss Rader? It’s me again. Dante’s Flowers, delivery for you.”

She recognized the voice, the same little guy with the cigar who’d brought the last bunch of roses.

“All right, all right.” She buzzed him in through both locked doors, heard him in the hallway. She looked through the peephole. Sure enough, same guy, same black cigar. A New York character. Somehow he was managing to whistle and smoke his cigar simultaneously. She undid the lock and opened the door.

The deliveryman fell back in amazement. “You was in the shower—I’m sorry. But then,” he went on philosophically, “you don’t get flowers every day, right? Well, you seem to get ’em damn near every day, doncha? Listen, you’re gonna catch your death standing here—where do you want ’em? This thing weighs a ton—must be a coupla dozen. …”

She backed up and he came in tentatively, as if he was afraid she might think he was trespassing. He carefully left the door open. “You wanna get a vase or something? What is this, your birthday?”

“No, no, I don’t know—”

“Just popular, right?” He followed her down the stairs and around the corner into the kitchen.

“Up there,” she said, clutching her robe, water dripping from her hair into her eyes. “Could you reach that vase on top of the cupboard?”

Still holding the long, heavy box, he climbed up on the utility stool to reach the vase. She shook her head and like a dog sprayed water, saw the droplets hit his trouser leg and speckle his black shoes. “I got it,” he grunted, backing down the steps.

“Listen,” she said, “were you in the shop when these flowers were ordered? I mean, did you see the person who sent them?”

“Beats me. Probably not.” He sucked the wet cigar, shook his head. “I’m out on deliveries all day. Delivered flowers to Mrs. Robert Redford the other day. Makes you think … There should be a card inside.” He was going up the stairs.

She followed him, found two dollars on the table, and gave them, to him. “Thanks for lending a hand and not being a maniac,” she said.

He chuckled. “Thank you for not being a maniac. You do something friendly for somebody, nice lady like yourself, and you never know if they’re gonna think you’re some kind of pervert—jeez, what a world, right?” He was out the door, in the hallway. “Well, enjoy your flowers. I seen your others are still holding up real good.” He nodded and she closed the door, locked it.

Sir was watching her expectantly, suddenly tugged on his leash hanging from the doorknob.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “I’m dining chez Linehan.”

She went back down to the kitchen with a vague sense of dread. She opened the box. Twenty-four red roses. There was a plain white envelope, tiny, and a card inside.

You’re my kind of girl.

Dammit! No name.

Had she told MacPherson about the flowers?

Judging from what she had gathered from Linehan about his financial condition and from the address, she wore a heavy sweater, turtleneck, and wool slacks. The sheepskin coat. On her way out she noticed the red light on her answering machine, something she’d forgotten to check when she’d arrived home in her usual frantic rush. She played it back.

“Natalie, this is Danny MacPherson. Do give me a call. Please, home or office. Thanks.”

She looked at her watch. Too late. She was always late, running behind schedule.
I’ll remember,
she thought.
It’ll be an early night. I’ll call him when I get home.

All the way to the Linehans’ her mind clicked back and forth, from Alicia Quirk with her head shot off to the goddamn anonymous red roses to Lew and his Dr. Drummond. …

The cab dropped her at a dark, sooty brick building on Sixth Street near First Avenue. The street level was given over to a pair of India-Pak restaurants and the lobby was dimly lit, the walls stained with spots of stuff she didn’t want to speculate on, and there was no elevator. She wound her way up the stairs to the third floor, smelling the restaurants and generations of families who must have cooked every imaginable cuisine over the past century. Art, she reflected as she knocked on the door, would flourish anywhere, indestructible. Particularly if your name was anything like Rory Linehan. Late of Belfast.

He proved to be rather older than she’d expected. He came to the door wearing an ancient fisherman’s sweater that was a good match for the lobby walls. Heavy shoulders, hands the size of bricks, a pipe with a broken stem jammed into the corner of his. mouth, a fifty-year-old man with oily gray hair over his ears and a face like a Niagara of broken blue and purple veins, like worms crawling across his face. He called her. “dearie” and waved her into “this hovel we call home. Moira’s roasting a stray cat in the kitchen, she’ll be with us all too soon.” His voice was deeper, wetter than it had sounded on the phone.

Natalie summoned up a load of small talk, sat down on a couch, nearly crushing an angry black cat in the process. The animal hissed, flashed her a nasty glance, and stalked off to join several others in the general vicinity of an enormous cat box full nearly to overflowing. The living room was furnished sparsely, reeked of cat, the lingering aroma of Irish whiskey, and thousands of hours spent smoking joints. She’d never smelled anything like it, felt it sticking in her nostrils and throat, like dry fur. She thought,
Remember, art for art’s sake
…

Moira, younger, with the heavy sensuality of a disappointed whore on her face, appeared wearing jeans and a cardigan sweater, heavy breasts riding low, unbridled, nipples bulging. She brushed her faded red hair back from her tired, freckled face and nodded to Natalie. She was holding a bottle of Bushmills in one hand. Her fingernails were cracked, the bright red paint that matched her lipstick chipped. “Rory, get her a glass. She’ll be wanting a dram.”

Linehan fetched a glass, came out of the kitchen wiping it with a paper towel. Moira splashed a great deal of whiskey in its general direction and he handed it to Natalie; the outside was slippery with drink.

“To success,” he said, and they drank. Moira smiled bitterly, made a laughing sound, and went back into the kitchen. “Light of my life, my Moira, stuck with me through thin and thin. When I met her she was a serving wench in a pub, best tits in Belfast.” He kicked a cat out of the way and lowered his thick frame into a rocking chair. A black-and-white television set was humming in the corner, the picture snowy and blurred almost out of focus. A children’s Christmas show, maybe “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”; she couldn’t be sure. Linehan was talking but she couldn’t really follow the thread of his observations. His brogue came and went, he left out words, and she eventually realized he was either drunk or stoned or both. They didn’t converse: he talked and she listened. And the words kept pouring out, opinions about publishing and New York and cats and Moira and Northern Ireland and the fucking Brits and how hard it was to be a writer in this rotten bloody world and on and on. …

She sipped at the whiskey, which was warm and, coupled with the smell in the room, was making her feel slightly nauseated. Her mind wandered away, to Jay’s warnings about what he thought of Linehan’s book and the kind of man he might be, to the realization that the atmosphere in the apartment was not only supercharged with a kind of malevolent energy but with a rough sexuality she couldn’t ignore. It made her think of animals mating. She had no frame of reference for it, no experience like it to draw upon. But the thought stuck in her mind, unavoidable, like the cats and the smell, like the remembered moans of rutting.

“So you like my bloody book, do you?”

“Very much,” she said. “I was very excited about the chance to handle it. And very pleased with the response from the publisher. In the present publishing climate, you really have done very well for yourself—they’ll be wanting to talk to you about your next book.” She was lost, trying to carry on a normal conversation with a man who was clearly coming from another planet. He looked down his broken nose at her, eyes squinting, a caricature of mistrust, canniness. Nature had given him a perpetual leer.

Moira was suddenly standing over her, dribbling more Bushmills into the glass. Then she turned away, splayed a hand on her hip. “Very excited, are you? Very excited about twenty-five hundred dollars? Now, that’s a wee bit hard to believe—himself there,” she pointed at Linehan with the bottle, “he says you got a million for some kid’s book, some dumb kid. …” She looked accusingly at Natalie, wiped back the red hair again, her eyes a curiously dull gray. She finally went back to the kitchen, where she could be heard muttering to herself. Natalie felt as if she’d been slapped, felt her cheeks flush at the attack.

Linehan was holding up the copy of
Publishers Weekly
open to her photograph. “No story about what you did for me, is there? And here we are opening our home to you!” He threw the magazine at a cat, emptied his glass. His wrecked eyes bored into her. He scratched his crotch angrily, as if it had dared to offend him. This was crazy and her face was now on fire.

Natalie stood up. “I think I’ll be going now,” she said, scooping her coat from the chair where it had been flung. She headed for the door.

With astonishing alacrity, Linehan leaped from his rocking chair and interposed himself between her and the door. His empurpled face was working, almost as if he was on the point of tears. “Now, now, you’re not going anywhere. We’ve not had our dinner yet and you wouldna want to spoil our evening, would you?”

“I really don’t care—”

She felt his huge hand clamp down on her arm, twisting the flesh. She flinched back as the pain shot along her forearm.

“Well, we care, don’t we, Moira? We invited you to dinner and dinner you shall have!” He grinned. “You’re just not used to our ways, dearie; we’re a rough and ready pair, Moira and me. No pulling of punches allowed. Now just come back and sit down.” He pulled her back to the couch. He belched. “ ’Scuse me. A breach of etiquette—mustna tell wifey. When she married Rory she married above herself, poor girl.” His voice had dropped to a moist whisper, was close to her ear. He let go of her wrist and she sank back down onto the couch. “Wouldna want to shatter the last of poor Moira’s illusions about old Rory.” His voice trailed off. He went to the dining table, which was stuck into the corner opposite the cat box, pulled out a chair, and straddled it backward, leaned his chin on his crossed arms. He was sweating. Smiling at her.