Escape the Night (49 page)

The shadow reached the door.

Carey clicked on the tape.

The door opened; the tape started spinning.

From it, the shadow's voice repeated, “Barth wrote this check to Phillip …”

The shadow stopped in the doorway.

Its voice kept speaking: “The other half is Miss Ciano.”

Covered by the sound, Carey began sliding to the left.

The voice was thin and clear. “It would be ironic if she died, as did your father and uncle, as part of John Carey's terrible legacy. I doubt you could preserve your sanity.”

The shadow knelt, listening to itself.

“Peter, Peter—I could have let this man kill
you
, or shot you myself. Instead, I've extended our balance of terror …”

Carey kept sliding behind parallel statues, toward the shelter of a massive warrior. Only the window was behind him.

“What I propose is that we vanish, leaving Barth as the killer of your uncle, Levy and this man …”

The shadow vanished.

Carey heard the soft creak of something moving, as if drawn to the sound of the voice. Reaching the warrior, he rose to his knees.

“Not one name or scrap of paper connects me to these men or to this place …”

Carey turned, aiming the revolver toward the sound of the tape. Disembodied, the voice seemed to issue from the serpent: “Neither of you knows my name or has even seen my face …”

The gun glinted in Carey's hand; the window behind him cast too much light …

“I can utterly disappear, and there will be nothing but your word to say that I exist …”

Carey no longer heard the shadow crawling, saw only shadows that did not move.

“By leaving, you can spare yourself involvement with tonight's untidy incident and let Barth solve your considerable problems with the police, all the while preparing to discharge your substantial debt of gratitude to me.”

Sweeping the room with his revolver, Carey still saw nothing.

“Most important, you'll both still be alive …”

A sound: clothes brushing the floor. Carey could not place it.

“
You're
the only living witnesses who could conceivably link me to this time or place …”

The floor creaked, closer. Perhaps the shadow had chosen not to stalk the tape, but him.

“Any time you wonder who I am, consider keeping my two million dollars, or perceive some further reason to regret our deal, remember that I could find and kill you both with infinitely greater speed and certainty than you could ever help anyone find me.”

He would have to guess.

“Now, Peter, I need your answer …”

Carey aimed his gun at the voice.

The voice stopped.

All at once, Carey heard the shadow.

He turned, looking up.

The shadow stood over the warrior statue, revolver aimed at Carey's head.

Carey froze, face turned toward the shadow, gun pointed uselessly toward the spinning, silent tape.

The shadow seemed to pause. “So much like your father,” it said softly, leaning closer with the gun. The floor creaked …

The shadow started.

A hand reached out to grasp its arm; the gun twitched, fired …

Its bullet smashed the window. Carey jerked up his gun; the shadow wrenched his arm free from the hand which grasped it as its taped voice asked: “Well, Peter …”

Carey aimed at his head and fired.

He felt the gun recoil in his hand, heard someone scream.

The shadow tottered, gun extending toward Carey in eerie slow motion.

The gun dropped, shattering the statue of the warrior, and then the shadow fell sideways at Carey's feet.

His head rolled into the light.

His face was wizened, sallow as parchment. His eyes stared back at Carey.

There was a bullet hole in his forehead.

Carey reached out to touch his bow tie.

“Peter?”

It was Noelle who knelt beside them. Carey looked across the dead man, into her face.

“He was the faceless man,” he said softly. “The one who killed my father …”

A light was on; Phillip turned from the wheel of his father's car
.

“
Peter!
”

His uncle stood, mouth open. Peter stared at him
.

“
I came to get Dewey
.”

In the pale light, Phillip looked frightened. Peter's voice grew smaller. “I want my elephant
.”

Phillip did not answer. Fearful, Peter backed away, to find his father
.

A second man stepped from behind the car
.

Peter stopped, staring
.

The man took Dewey from the front seat, and held him out. “Here, Peter, is this what you want?
”

The man smiled
.

Peter liked his bow tie
…

PART III

M
OUNT
S
NOW,
V
ERMONT

MARCH 1983

CHAPTER 1

Noelle Carey cried out.

Peter was ten feet ahead, skiing for his life. Pines flashed past at the corners of her eyes and then the trail burst abruptly into a glistening sweep of white. Peter dug in his ski poles; snow rose like mist and melted on her face. She pushed to catch him.

Peter curled in a shell, heading breakneck for the marker.

Straining forward, Noelle tucked her ski poles in a last rush down the slope. Snow swept beneath and behind her in a shooting line; her knees were like springs; the marker raced at them. Peter's back drew closer.

She was three feet from him when he passed the stake.

He spun, grinning through a nimbus of powder. Noelle stopped next to him.

“Bastard,” she repeated.

“Well,” Peter grinned. “You're one year older now.”

He looked so pleased with himself that she began laughing.

At first, she had wondered how they could go on.

Her nightmares of the ugly man were constant. Peter held her; in the morning light, his face would remind her of all the things she had learned in SoHo that she never wished to know.

Peter, who no longer dreamed, treated her with haunted kindness. He would not speak of how he felt. The police, probing the frightening and inscrutable, bled them of emotion; his apartment made them feel caged.

Gregorio had broken down the doorman.

Visiting, she would pace from room to room, imagining the moments she had valued as pictures stolen by a pervert. It became hard for her to work.

She began to wonder about leaving the city.

She had mentioned this one evening, sitting by the fireplace. For a long time, Peter simply looked at her, as if she should be listening to the sound of her own question. Finally, he said, “Then you'd be changing who you are, Noelle. I wonder if you want that.”

She was silent. At last, she looked into his face.

“No,” she told him softly. “That would be too much.”

In April, on a fresh spring day, Carey called her at work.

“I've been thinking,” he said. “Can you look at a house with me?”

There was a pause. “When?”

“Around five.”

“I don't know, Peter.” Carey could almost hear her thinking. “I'm really kind of tired.”

“I'll buy you dinner afterwards, near your place.” He felt curiously desperate. “Looking at houses is something new for me. I'd like your opinion.”

Noelle hesitated. “Okay,” she finally said.

They were in the subway before she asked where it was.

“Near you,” Carey answered.

She looked surprised. “The Village?”

“Uh-huh. I'll show you when we get there.”

A woman was standing in front of a town house on St. Luke's Place. “If there's anything that scares me,” Carey murmured, “it's a realtor in furs.”

Noelle had stopped, staring at the town house.

It was three stories of fresh-scrubbed brick in the middle of the block. Steps climbed between wrought-iron railings to an arched oak doorway; the door and railing ran in perfect symmetry with its neighbors' down the south side of the street. The street itself was cobblestoned and flanked by gaslights and parallel rows of trees, leaves touching in an arbor, high above Noelle. Carey turned to her. “Best block in Manhattan, Ruth says.”

Noelle said nothing.

When the realtor unlocked the door, she disappeared inside.

The woman started after. “Let her go,” Carey said.

Ahead of them, doors began opening and closing, rapid tootsteps took the stairway to the second floor and then back down again. In the living room, Carey half-listened to the realtor's rhapsody of hardwood floors and intricate molding and exposed brick in the library. It didn't really matter; Carey had seen the house that morning.

“Noelle?” he called.

No one answered.

He found her standing in the middle of the street, hands on hips, grinning at the house.

“Buy it,” she said.

The night he moved in, they made love for the first time since SoHo.

Afterwards, she told him, “I know how hard it's been—dealing with what happened, and then dealing with me.”

Carey felt relief course through him. “Sometimes caring for you kept the other from crashing down on me—I can't face that yet, or really even talk it out. It's just that I got lonely …”

“It hurt me so much, Peter. Inside.”

She wept in his arms.

Very close to morning, she spoke again. “There's this about it,” she said softly. “I've got no reason to doubt you love me.”

He touched her face. “Nor I.”

In the morning, Noelle stayed, making coffee.

They sat in the kitchen. “The faceless man,” she finally asked. “When did you remember him?”

Peter stirred his coffee. “At the end of the tape. I knew then that he had to be the man who played it. No one else could know so much.”

For a moment, she watched him. “Is it okay now—with Pogostin?”

“Fine.” Peter hesitated. “I miss Levy, though. Sometimes I miss him a lot.”

“How long will you be going, do you think?”

“Awhile yet.” He turned away. “If I'd told my father, none of this would have happened. It's hard to figure what to do with that.”

“You were six, Peter. You couldn't know.”

“I do now.” He looked up at her. “Still, I suppose it's better dealing with a known.”

“Phillip,” she said gently. “You're dealing with Phillip.”

Phillip's will left everything to Peter.

It was three months before he could bring himself to enter Phillip's town house, and when he did, Noelle went with him.

In an attic trunk, beneath a pile of Peter's baseball cards that Phillip had saved, he found a small stuffed elephant.

He stood staring down at the doll, cradled in both hands.

Finally, he looked at Noelle. Neither of them spoke.

Quietly, she gave Dewey to a friend's small son, to take with him to day care.

“You can keep avoiding Ruth forever,” Noelle had told him. “Or you can remember the people you loved in common, and go on from there.”

It was summer, and they were painting the living room. “Then why,” Carey responded, “do you still have nightmares?”

She nodded. “I'm not saying you can change what happened, Peter. You can only change how you deal with her, now.”

He was pensive. “It's not that I avoid her, really. It's just that she reminds me of my father: what I didn't tell him, why they killed her brother …”

“Then tell her that—part of it, anyhow.” She paused. “The other part is not the fault of either one of you.”

Carey frowned, and then cocked his head. “You're getting surer of yourself, aren't you?”

She glanced at the walls. “The paint I chose worked out …”

The next morning Carey poked his head around Ruth's door. “Have a moment?”

She reached for a cigarette. “Of course.”

Carey closed the door behind him. “I'm worried about losing you.”

Ruth lit the cigarette, eyes still fixed on him. “Why?”

“We both know that your brother died because he helped me. I feel as though you've had it with the Careys—including me.”

“I'm rational enough to know who murdered Bill.” She exhaled. “I remember you were kind that morning. What more can be said?”

“Between you and me?” His speech was quiet, tentative. “A little more than that, I think.”

“Peter, please …”

“I'll remember your brother as long as I live.” Carey paused, adding softly, “Just as you've never stopped loving my father.”

Their gaze met.

“When my father died,” he finished, “I was only six, and there was no one I could share it with. Now there is.”

Her eyes filled with confusion. “You
saw
…”

“Now there is,” he repeated gently. “Talk to me, Ruthie. Please.”

The cigarette smoldered in her ashtray, ignored. “How long have you known?”

“Since the day I came here.” She looked down. “It never mattered, Ruthie. I loved him, too.”

There was silence. Finally, she gazed back at him. “I've been looking for something else, yes. This is
hard
, Peter—I think it's for the best.”

“It isn't, though. Not for me.”

Her mouth twisted. “Your father told me something like that—about twenty-five years ago.”

“Then please give me a few more months.” He waited a moment, to smile. “After all, I've got a publishing company to run.”

Ruth took another puff on the cigarette, watching its smoke. “Two more months,” she answered.

They started having lunch.

They seldom spoke of Levy, or his father. Instead, he asked her about publishing while he had the chance, using her advice to help run the firm. Their lunches became longer.

One Friday in July, during the summer doldrums which settle on Manhattan and publishing alike, their lunch hour stretched past three o'clock. “I wonder,” he asked, “if it makes sense for me as publisher to also be editor-in-chief.”