In This Rain (43 page)

Ford stood at the window with Cole and Montgomery. They watched the shadow that was Lowry converge on the other shadow. As both moved deeper Ford lost them in the rustling foliage. He strained to see. Montgomery’s hand squeezed Cole’s arm. The darkness in the garden was hypnotic, hallucinatory: the rhythmic sweep of headlights, the bobbing of branches, the spattering of rain.

A gunshot broke the spell and sent them pounding out the door.

Heart’s Content

The right-hand path seemed most likely. Rain slicked Joe’s bare arms and soaked his shirt as he ran.

When the walkway lights sprang on everything changed. Bushes loomed or shrank, trees blocked his way or showed another.

“There,” Ann shouted. Joe cast around, saw a leaf-draped shelter. Corrington reached it just after they did. Greg Lowry stood outside, gun in his hand, cell phone to his ear. A bulky form sprawled on the patterned brick.

“Blowfish,” Corrington said.

“Eighth and 126th,” Lowry was saying. “The Garden Project, in the garden. Yes. No. No. Fast. At least two. One down, the other over the fence in the back, probably down the alley to 127th. I’m going after him.” He pocketed the phone. “Cops and ambulance on the way. There was someone else, someone waiting. The whole time we were in there! He shot this one as I got close, ran and jumped the fence. Stay here!” He took off running.

Blood seeped through the gangbanger’s hooded sweatshirt. Joe knelt, felt for a pulse, and found one. He unzipped the sweatshirt, bunched up the cloth, and pressed it against the wound. Blowfish stirred and groaned. A .22 lay by his right hand. Ann, crouching beside Joe, wrapped a handkerchief around the gun and pocketed it. She asked, “Will he make it?”

Joe said, “If that ambulance gets here fast.”

She leaned forward, face close to Blowfish. “Who sent you here?”

Blowfish didn’t answer, Joe not sure if that was because he didn’t want to or he couldn’t. Rain pelted harder, spattering around them. Joe saw Ann reach toward something glittering on the bricks. She swept it into her hand and stared at it. “This is Jen’s chain.”

“Are you sure?”

“She wore it around her waist. It’s been cut.” She leaned toward Blowfish again. “Walter Glybenhall gave this to you to plant here, right?”

This time Blowfish managed a whisper: “Don’t know shit about that.”

“If that’s true, Blowfish,” Corrington said, “why are you breaking into my garden in the middle of the night?”

“Who was waiting for you?” Ann demanded. “Who shot you?”

“Wasn’t no one

”

“Who’re you protecting, Blowfish? Because he’s sure as hell not protecting you.”

“Wasn’t no one.” Blowfish’s words were soft and his lids slowly closed.

“Where the hell’s that ambulance?” Joe said.

Corrington took his cell phone out. He punched a number and spoke; Joe couldn’t hear him over the rustling of the leaves in the rain until he lowered the phone and told them, “Nine-one-one dropped the call.”

“What?”

“They have no record. Rainy night in Harlem, lots of calls for ambulances. It’s on its way now.”

“Dammit! That means they didn’t send Greg any police backup, either!” Ann said.

“Hell!” Corrington pulled out his phone again.

They waited there like that, rain trying to push through the grape leaves, Joe trying to hold back Blowfish’s blood. Finally, a siren wailed. Rain sparkled in powerful headlights. “I’ll let them in,” Ann said, running to the gate. In a few moments she came back with the EMTs. Another siren howled and a police car bounced onto the curb.

Ann flashed her badge at the cops who came quick-walking up the path. “This was a DOI operation,” she told them briskly. “My boss chased another suspect over that fence. I’m going in the ambulance with this one in case he wakes up. Here’s his gun. Mr. Corrington can tell you whatever else you need to know.”

Well done, Joe thought. Someone had to stay with Blowfish, to catch anything he might say. With Greg Lowry out in the night chasing the shooter, Ann was the closest thing they had to law enforcement. Unless these cops were particularly sharp, they wouldn’t know this was the infamous Ann Montgomery, wouldn’t know that badge was no good, wouldn’t know they were being set onto the well-respected Ford Corrington as a smoke screen. He met Ann’s eyes and nodded as she left, gave her a small smile. Her eyes were shining.

Sutton Place

“I’ll take my own car,” Ann told the EMTs.

“Harlem Hospital,” one of them said.

Ann turned uptown. Her car was in a garage five blocks away. She’d have taken a cab, but she’d never get one in Harlem in the night, in the rain.

And she needed her car, because she wasn’t going to the hospital.

If Blowfish talked, there was only one thing he could say: Glybenhall had sent him.

But if he said it to Ann Montgomery, who’d believe it?

Let him tell some cop. And when he did, the NYPD would find the situation so explosive they’d make endless calls up the food chain, before the full force and majesty of the law made its next reluctant move. By then the quarry would have taken flight.

Unless she prevented that.

The great thing was the rain. Splashing through puddles as she ran, she felt something like joy: a knife-edge balance, a dizzying, towering thrill. She leapt a tumbling gutter creek and half expected to keep soaring, rushing and weightless. She exulted in the elation of effort, her strides long, her breathing deep and even. The rain stayed with her, pushed, pulled, brought her along.

In the car, too, she flew, peeling up the ramp, cornering hard, beating lights and sailing down the avenue. It was impossible to be alone on the streets of New York, but as late as this with the rain this hard she came close. In the darkness and drum of the downpour, vision reduced to the wipers’ arc and the headlights’ reach, she felt herself to be solitary and almost unbearably lonely. But also singular, invincible.

Fifty blocks downtown, she slammed to a stop in front of Glybenhall’s building, sprang from the car as the doorman came near.

“Ann Montgomery,” she said briskly, striding past him. “Mr. Glybenhall’s expecting me.”

“Wait a second, miss, you can’t leave that car there— ”

“I’ll only be a minute.” She flashed her badge. “Walter Glybenhall,” she told the concierge inside, not stopping. He frowned and as the elevator doors closed she saw him grabbing the phone to warn Walter. But so what? Walter certainly was not expecting her. But there was no way he’d be able to resist this, a visit from Ann Montgomery in the middle of the night.

When the elevator opened, Glybenhall was waiting, wearing a maroon dressing gown and an indulgent smile.

“My dear Ann. Always a pleasure. Even at this hour, and with you looking as

untidy

as you do.”

“God, Walter, do you buy those cheesy robes by the case?” She pushed through the foyer and into the living room. The vast view, New York at Glybenhall’s feet, was obscured by sheeting rain.

“Why, come in, my dear, please don’t stand on ceremony,” he drawled as he shut the door behind her. “Perhaps you’d like to get out of those wet clothes? I’d be happy to offer you a dressing gown.”

“Don’t be revolting. That kid you sent, Walter. He’s going to live.”

“Beg pardon? What are you talking about?”

“We have Jen’s chain. However much you paid that kid, it won’t be enough. He’ll give you up.”

“You’re raving.”

“Why did you kill her?”

“I assume you mean Jennifer? I didn’t kill her.”

“Did it have anything to do with the rest of this? Did she figure out your plot to screw the city out of millions?”

“Plot? Screw? You make it sound so— unsubtle. But even as a child you had no appreciation for nuance. Ann, darling, if it had only been the money I’m not sure I’d have taken the trouble. The idea’s appeal was its complex structure and multifaceted rewards. With your hatred and your high-flying arrogance as my tools, I could see Corrington ruined, Charlie chastised, and Glybenhall— not Trump, not Ratner, and certainly not some visionless group of sanctimonious do-gooders, but Glybenhall— putting my stamp on Manhattan’s last great building site! Do you realize my project would have set the tone for Harlem’s future? That it would have become the benchmark against which all Manhattan development would have been measured?”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

“If there was a time when your heart interested me, it no longer does. Come, it’s time to leave.”

“I’m not leaving. I’m here to make sure you stay until Blowfish gives the cops a reason to get over their fear of offending you.”

“Whatever this— Blowfish?— has to say will have nothing to do with me.”

“Why don’t we wait and see?”

“Because I don’t like waiting.”

“Screw you, Walter.” From her pocket she pulled out her .38.

Glybenhall smiled like a tolerant uncle amused by a two-year-old. A surge of loathing, huge and hot, rocked Ann. She was surprised to find her gun hand still steady.

“Walter— ”

He nodded, and she didn’t know what that meant until she caught a movement from the corner of her eye. She spun around too late. The blow aimed at the back of her skull caught her forehead. Through the explosion of bright color she tried to lift out of her tumbling plunge and soar up again, but she just kept falling.

Sutton Place

Motion.

She was in motion, and she liked that.

Not to stop was important, not to be afraid of moving and not to stop. You could trust the logic of speed. Hesitation broke the flow. Lean into it, Annie. Her father had taught her to ski, to drive. Fear ruins your rhythm. Hesitation makes you fall.

She was shivering, though. Pain in her head, queasy, so cold she was shivering; but the comfort of acceleration. Without that she’d be lost.

She lay on her side, back pressed into a yielding wall. When she opened her eyes they burned and watered. She shut them, forced them open again. Black and gray, splashes of silver, and everything moving. An attempt to sit brought a whirlpool of nausea. She moaned, sank down, and closed her eyes again.

“My dear?” A solicitous voice. Fury flared into a pummeling headache. Why angry? Walter’s voice, it was Walter’s voice.

Take inventory, she told herself. Lean into it. The weight of movement, a muted hum, the smell of leather: a car. She put out a tentative hand, felt cool steel where she expected to. Very slowly, she sat up, keeping her eyes shut until the queasiness eased.

“I hope you’re not feeling too many ill effects?”

“I’m sick enough to throw up all over your expensive upholstery.” She opened her eyes and saw black glass in front, beside, behind. Black leather, black carpet; silver door handles recessed into black steel. Beyond the windows, muted by tinted glass, mounded black forms of hills against gray sky.

“Don’t be crude.” A silver speaker stood in for Glybenhall; she could just make him out, ghostly through the glass.

“You’re doing your own driving? Don’t you have servants for these menial tasks?” Her voice sounded weak and ragged to her; she hoped he heard defiance, fury, recklessness.

“I didn’t see any reason to summon the chauffeur. I always enjoy an opportunity to drive this car. It’s powerful and quite well made.”

He swerved left. Bile surged in her throat from the motion. The rectangular mass of a sixteen-wheeler slipped by her right-hand window as though reeled in from behind.

“Take it easy, Walter, or there’ll be forensic evidence everywhere.”

“I apologize. I’ll attempt to make the journey as smooth as I can. I suppose it’s fortunate I had the benefit of driving advice from your poor father.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“No,” he disagreed mildly, “I’m going to kill you.”

He swung right again, leaving the passing lane. He was overdriving, pulling the wheel too hard for his speed. She leaned with the movement.

“It’s goddamn cold in here.” She reached out and fumbled with the door locks on either side. Useless, but it had to be tried.

“Again, I apologize. Here, this should improve matters.”

“Who hit me?”

“An associate of mine.”

“The guy from the garden, right? The one who shot Blowfish.”

He chuckled. “In fact, yes.”

“What’s so damn funny, Walter?”

“You. No matter how dire the circumstances, you can be counted on to have something to prove.”

He turned the car into a long, banked curve. Raindrops spotted the windows, leaving diagonal traces.

“Where are we going?”

“What difference can it possibly make if you know?”

“Well, wherever we are, someone will spot your license plate.”

“At six in the morning, in the rain, at five miles below the speed limit? Poor Ann. You’re beginning to sound desperate.”

“Let me make my position clear.” Ann spoke with a calm she didn’t feel, a strength she didn’t have. “I’d like to live and I intend to. Failing that, I’d like you to get what’s coming to you; in fact, knowing you will would be almost as good. And you will. My car’s still outside your building and your doorman and your concierge both saw me go up. Lots of people knew I was on my way there. And there are still the jeweler and all those other people. The cops will find them and talk to them if I disappear.”

“I’m sorry to contradict you, but your car has been relocated to an obscure street in Queens. The doorman and the concierge saw you leave the building. They will say as much to anyone else who asks. Enough of ‘those other people’ can be taken care of that the rest will pose no problem, once you, who have become a rather large irritant, are gone. It’s a shame, though. You’d been playing your part so nicely and I was enjoying myself. Until you took that extra step of trying to frame me for Jennifer’s murder.”

“Walter, you can’t be framed for something you actually did. That’s why you had me attacked, right? To back me off.”

“In the garage? I had nothing to do with that. I wasn’t told until afterward and I was quite cross; it was a stupid mistake. I thought everyone understood that throwing obstacles in your path only makes you more pigheaded. We’d counted on that from the start.”