17
It was almost five. Manhattan's homebound traffic crawled
northward in fits and starts while the southbound lanes were
nearly empty. Connor Harrigan drove slowly nonetheless,
unwilling to risk being stopped for a speeding violation in a
car lately stolen from the parking lot of the Westchester Country Club. Two hot-wired ignition cables swung freely
below the dashboard. He eased the accelerator further at the
warning sign for the Ninety-sixth Street exit and allowed the car to drift into the right lane of the FDR Drive. Baker, peer
ing forward from the passenger seat, had pointed in that di
rection.
“You got any particular destination in mind?” Harrigan
asked.
“Just the park.” Baker answered with a squint of annoy
ance, as if his concentration had been interrupted. “Go down York Avenue and then cut crosstown to the Seventy-second
Street entrance.”
“While you're talking to your pals, ask them whether
Peck got his ass blown off in that fire back there.”
Baker shrugged, indicating that he didn't know and they
wouldn't either. Nor did he much care. He had Tina on his
mind. Tina and Tanner Burke.
“What about the message Peck got that made Sonnenberg
decide playtime was over?”
“Ben Coffey?” The sadness of that news had barely
struck him in the rush to escape the smoke and the guns. It
was hard to imagine that Howard—Ben—was dead. So
much talent. So much torment. So much waste. So little in common between them and yet so much. He was the first,
perhaps the only one until Tanner,
to whom Baker could
talk. The only one who understood the loneliness that came with the talent. The sense of being apart.
“No,” Harrigan answered, ”I mean the second part. Peck
read that and acted like he had something big going for
him.”
“What about it, Charley?”
”i don't know.”
”I.. . Charley doesn't know,” he told Harrigan. “All that
means is that it wasn't about me or Sonnenberg. Charley
would have heard.”
“You're sure?” Harrigan raised an eyebrow. “How could
it not be about Sonnenberg?”
Baker shrugged again and returned his concentration to
Tina. They were on York Avenue headed south but barely
moving. A sewer maintenance crew at Ninetieth Street
caused a bottleneck that brought traffic almost to a halt.
“Baker, stop with the shrugs,” Harrigan snapped. “I'm
trying to anticipate the guy if he's still on his feet.”
”I don't know, Harrigan,” Baker answered patiently.
“Then help me figure, for Christ's sake. What did you do,
give up thinking when you got Charley and the beastie?”
”I happen to have something more important on my
mind, Harrigan.”
Connor Harrigan ignored the answer. “It's not you, it's
not Sonnenberg, and it's not Coffey because they covered
him in part one. Could Peck's people have nailed whoever helped you down at the Plaza?”
“No.” That was Roger and Melanie. Baker wasn't sure
whether Harrigan knew their current names or what good the knowledge might do him. But there seemed no point in
volunteering it. “It's the same two who were covering us on
the golf course. They're probably safe. They won't go back
to the lives they had before.”
“Okay, scratch five. Who does that leave?” The car
moved forward into the intersection. A line of buses blocked
most of the next street.
“Isn't there a faster way to get to the park? Turn right
here, Harrigan. Try Second Avenue.”
“Where in the park, by the way?”
“Sonnenberg only said the park.”
Harrigan heaved a sigh and swung onto Ninetieth Street,
headed west. “That park is five miles long, Baker, and
maybe two miles across. What do you say we get a little
more specific.”
”I told you. Seventy-second Street.” Baker said this as if
he had a reason. There was none. Only that the Seventy-second Street entrance had led him once before to Tanner
Burke.
“tanner burke”
“What about Tanner, Charley?”
“go slow, baker”
“Charley says slow down.” Baker tapped Harrigan's arm.
“What for? The wimp sniffs out radar too?”
“He's not a wimp, Harrigan. He's my friend. Slow down. I think he hears something.”
Harrigan rolled his eyes but slowed the car to a jogger's
pace.
“Charley, is it Tanner?”
”i think so. keep thinking tanner, baker, i think she hears when you think tanner.”
“What about Tina?”
Baker's fingers dug into the padded
dashboard.
”i don't know, there, baker, i heard tanner, she's calling
you, baker.”
Harrigan turned left onto Second Avenue. He watched Baker, fascinated. Baker's eyes were open but they
seemed sightless. The car reached Eighty-sixth Street.
“no, baker, she's behind us now. she was on that street
with trees.”
“Harrigan.” Baker blinked. “Take your next right and go
back. Tanner's here someplace.”
“You're shitting me.”
“Just go right.”
Harrigan signaled onto Eighty-third Street toward Third
Avenue. His eyes closed, Baker directed two more right
turns and then, with a waving motion of his hand,
told
Har
rigan to slow and then stop. He opened his eyes to see a red
brownstone with a closed antique shop on the first floor.
Baker's face brightened.
“She's here,” he said, reaching for the door latch. Harrigan grabbed his shoulder.
“Wait a second.” Harrigan's face was disbelieving. “You
mean she's here? Right here in this red dump?”
Baker nodded and shook off his hand. “Let's go,” he said.
“Hold it,” Harrigan insisted. ”I don't want to sound neg
ative or anything, but don't you think this is a little bit in
credible? I mean, we drive into a city this size looking for a dame we're not even sure is here and we go almost straight
to her address?”
”
What about that, Charley?”
“you mean what i think?”
“Please, Charley”
”i think sonnenberg knows where she is. sonnenberg
knows we can hear if we get close enough, sonnenberg
knows when he says go to the park there's only this way”
“Thank you, Charley.”
Baker understood.
“thank you, baker, it was nice what you said about how i'm your friend.”
“You're welcome, Charley.”
Baker turned to Harrigan.
“It's not so incredible. I'll explain later.
Charley, is she
alone?”
“she doesn't know, she thinks so. there's a thing on her
eyes so she can't see, but she knows you're here, she's
yelling 'jared'
but not out loud in case someone's there.”
“Let's go.” Baker stepped to the street.
Harrigan, his gun drawn, followed Baker up the narrow
stairs leading to the only apartment on the second floor.
“Shit!” he muttered, noting the heavy metal-clad door with three different locks cut into it. “Half this goddamned town
is like a fort these days. That bottom lock is for a cane bolt on the other side. Your friend Charley got us this far, see if
he can dig up a set of keys.”
“Abel?”
”i can open it, baker.”
“If there's no one inside to hurt us, Abel. I want you back before Tanner sees you.”
“she saw charley. now you like charley.”
“It's not the same, Abel. Just open the door. No more.”
Baker looked at Harrigan and then at his revolver. “Don't get nervous with that ,” he told him. “Abel's going to let us in.” Harrigan's lips parted and he shook his head. He under
stood Baker's words, but their meaning was slower to pene
trate.
“Abel. Come out, Abel.”
Harrigan fought his impulse to move out of Abel's reach.
At last he was seeing it. All of it. And still his mind could
not believe it. He watched as a man he's come to know, even
like, was changing before his eyes into something else in
steps that were impossible to describe because they were so
very small. Nothing changed, yet everything changed. The
effect was staggering. Now there was a different man, a man
Harrigan neither knew nor liked, a man who made Connor
Harrigan wish he could turn and run. The man smiled at him
and nodded once. A greeting. Harrigan shivered.
Abel turned from Harrigan and placed both hands over
the tarnished doorknob. He lifted slowly. Harrigan heard a
grinding sound above the door and looked up. The lintel was
buckling. Splintering. Thick chips of layered paint came
away and fell over Abel's shoulders. A growing strip of light
appeared at the base of the heavy door. Abel released the knob, now half-crushed and bent on its spindle toward the ceiling. Stepping away, he smiled again at Harrigan, then
raised one foot and smashed it against the door. It reeled in
ward under the blow, tearing loose from its hinges.
Abel bowed toward Harrigan, still smiling terribly, and with a sweep of his arm invited Harrigan to enter. Harrigan returned a show of teeth and stepped past him. As he looked
away, he felt a small sting on the fingers of his right hand.
Harrigan glanced down. The fingers of his gun hand met.
The hand was empty. Harrigan crouched and spun, his arms raised in a defense he knew was futile against the hands that
had snatched away his weapon so quickly that he'd sensed
no motion. But there was no attack. There was only Abel
smiling at him, the revolver held out on the flat palm
of one
hand. Harrigan swallowed and took back the weapon Abel
offered, then stepped through the door, struggling to ignore
the chill on the back of his neck.
A room on the left, the kitchen, was empty. A short hall
way, dark with faded beige paint, led to an even darker liv
ing room and a series of doors at the other end. The first one Harrigan reached was a walk-in closet. Harrigan noted a cu
rious mixture of clothing inside but turned away. The second
door was a bathroom. The light from a small opaque win
dow showed fixtures stained by years of dripping faucets
and pink tiles cracked by the building's settling. He found
Tanner Burke behind the middle door.
She was taped to a chair. More packing tape, with a folded washcloth underneath, covered her eyes. Another
strip covered her mouth. She cocked her head fearfully at the
squeak of the floorboards under Harrigan.
“It's Connor, miss. I'm with Jared.” He reached first for
the blindfold.
“get
back, abel. quickly”
“Mmmph!” Tanner's head bobbed up and down. Her
chest heaved in relief. Harrigan pried loose a corner of the
blindfold, enough to grip. 'This'll sting, lass. Hold on.”
“abel!”
Harrigan tore at the tape. Tanner's eyes winced at the
pain and the light but flashed gratefully at Harrigan. Now
they found Jared Baker and struggled to focus on his face.
Abel moved forward. With one hand he reached for the
remaining tape that gagged her and stripped it brutally from
her mouth. He grinned at her. He grinned until Baker was far
enough back to cover his face with his hands.
Tina Baker wondered dimly where they'd taken her this
time. She knew she should be concerned, and that Tanner... Liz
...
got all upset when she was being carried out, but it
was just too hard to keep her mind on anything. It was fairly
far, across a bridge and back partly toward Connecticut.
Westchester someplace. A big stone house at the end of a
long driveway. A big couch in a room that was too cold and
too dark. Stanley knew she was cold. He'd put his jacket
over her, and now he was trying to start a fire in one of those
big carved fireplaces like they had in castles.