'We all have our various ways of gaining a livelihood.
Some of us have damp ways, and some of us have
dry ways.'
For her first twenty-four hours in New York Cissy Kohler had not left the apartment. Most of the time she lay on her bed, blowing skeins of smoke at the ceiling. Jay raised no objection. He spent most of the time on the telephone.
The morning of the second day passed in much the same way except that this time when she heard Jay's voice talking in the next room, she picked up the bedside phone, covered the mouthpiece and listened.
'Look, I tell you, she hasn't written any memoirs, I've checked her stuff.'
'Couldn't she have smuggled them out?' A man's voice, deep, almost growling.
'Maybe. I doubt it. It's no problem. I know guys, give 'em a couple of facts and a week, can write stuff so authentic she won't know she didn't do it herself.'
'OK. So long as we don't find something showing up somewhere else. Exclusivity is what we put our money in. Feeling here is we want to go with this soon as we can. We've been getting a bit of pressure from some strong people, nothing we can't cope with yet, but the sooner we get this in the public domain, the better.'
'Say anything too soon and you'll have wall-to-wall reporters. This has got to be private.'
'So why not take her round to the clinic now, get it over with before he snuffs it?'
'I've told you, he'll go home to die, I know that for sure. She can get to Bellmain at home, but she wouldn't get past first base at the Allerdale. It's like the Pentagon. My way is best, believe me.'
'When I stop believing you, you'll know. Believe
me.
Keep in touch.'
She was lying on her back reading her Bible when Jay came in.
He said flatly, 'You were listening.'
'Yes.'
'Shit. Listen, Cissy, I've got to talk to these guys like that.'
'Who are they, Jay?'
'Hesperides. It's a finance corporation. They back a lot of media enterprises. They've invested a lot of money in you. Cissy.'
'Don't you mean they've invested a lot of money in you, Jay?'
'I suppose. But I needed that money to get you out.'
'So you made promises? And to Sempernel too? You're pretty free with promises, Jay. What about those you made to me?'
'You'll get what I promised, Ciss. Listen, I'll be upfront with you, I owe these guys. They backed another project I set up, only it didn't work out. Now I've got to keep them sweet, or else . . .'
'Or else they'll want their money back? Give it to them. Tell them we'll pay them off when I get my compensation.'
'They don't just want their money back, Ciss. They want it back times a couple of million. And they're very concerned about their corporate image. By which I mean they think that anyone who jerks them around and stays healthy is a bad advertisement.'
She thought about this, then shook her head.
'I'm sorry, but I don't see there's anything I can do. I don't even know yet if I'm grateful to you. Most of the time I doubt it. After you've done what you promised, maybe I'll have room in my mind to think things through. Meanwhile, don't let these people near me, for I won't lie. The best I can give is silence.'
'That's all I want,' he said, smiling. Their gazes locked for a moment, then he pulled back his focus to take in the whole of her face.
'Cissy, you look terrible!' he said. 'You mustn't stay stuck in here all the time. We've got to get you out in the fresh air.'
'In New York? Has some kind of miracle happened since I was last here?'
'Come on,' he said.
She didn't want to go but had no will to resist. The buildings loomed menacingly, the traffic and people rushed by in a torrent that threatened to sweep her away. It was a relief to reach the Park a couple of blocks to the east. They walked in silence for half an hour and then, because he'd observed how unsettling she found the streets, they took a cab home.
The next morning they went out again, and again in the afternoon. She realized to her mild surprise that she was enjoying the Park. Here at least there'd been little change and from time to time some small thing, like a kid's kite bucking against the wind, or the World Series intensity of a softball game, would join the lacerated edges of her torn-apart life. Such healings were fragile as spans of snow across a dark and fathomless crevasse, but they brought a life and colour to her cheeks which, though quickly fading, did not completely fade.
At breakfast on the fourth day. Jay announced he had to go out and might not be back in time for their morning walk.
'So I'll go by myself,' she said.
He looked at her assessingly, then smiled.
‘Why not?'
She watched from the window till he emerged five storeys below and climbed into the driving seat of the blue Lincoln which had been waiting for him at the airport. His backers obviously liked to keep up appearances at both ends of a bargain.
The Lincoln pulled away. She turned and picked up the first volume of the telephone directory and looked up the Allerdale Clinic. It was on East 68th, between Madison and Park. She looked out at the grey skies, put on her raincoat and went to the elevator.
She'd chosen right. Rain was already pocking the sidewalk. A cab came by, hesitating before going on to pull up in front of the next building. While she debated whether to pursue it, another pulled in before her and a young black woman got out. Two cabs in New York on a wet morning! It had to be a good omen. She climbed in.
East 68th Street was a narrow canyon of big handsome houses.
The Clinic was so discreet she hardly knew it was there even when she was dropped right in front of it. She entered what could have been the vestibule of a very expensive, very old money apartment house. Jay had said a quiet life came expensive these days. Obviously a quiet death didn't come cheap either.
An elegant receptionist looked up from a computer keyboard and asked if she could be of assistance.
'I'd like to see one of your patients,' said Cissy. 'Mr Bellmain.'
The girl touched a couple of keys and said, 'Your name
is . . . ?'
'Waggs,' said Cissy. 'Mrs Waggs.'
'Thank you. Would you take a seat?'
She sat down, riffled the pages of a glossy magazine unseeingly. The girl murmured into a phone. A door opened and a woman came towards her. She was middle-aged, dressed in a smart black business suit. She said, 'Mrs Waggs? I'm Ms Amalfi, the Clinic's Executive Officer. How may we help you?'
'I'd like to see Mr Bellmain. I'm an old friend. I was in the area so I thought, why not call?'
'I understand. Unfortunately we have strict rules at the Allerdale, Mrs Waggs. In the interests of our patients, visitors are restricted to a list prepared by the family. I'm sure if you are an old friend you'll have no difficulty getting your name added to the Bellmain list.'
'Yes, of course, but as I'm here anyway . . .'
'I'm sorry,' said Ms Amalfi, standing to one side so that Cissy could rise. There was no contact but she felt herself drawn up and urged out. She was long accustomed to obedience to people with such authority. Only once during those slow years had she lost the control which let them keep theirs. Only once, and a woman had lain there dead.
The rain had slackened off, though the lowering sky promised only a temporary relief. She set off walking without any attempt to choose a direction. When a cab came towards her after four blocks, she hailed it, meaning to direct it back to the apartment. But she found she wasn't ready yet to step back into that particular cell and instead said, 'Macy's.'
'You always walk away from where you're heading?' inquired the driver.
'If I can manage it,' she said.
Her acquaintance with New York was restricted to half a dozen shortish visits with the Westropps, but Macy's was what she remembered best. For a while as she stepped once more into that world of hustling, bustling, commercial colour, she felt the years between slip away. But soon she began to feel fatigued and confused. Finally she took refuge in the coffee shop, sat down thankfully and rolled a cigarette. She didn't have time to inhale before two women on the next table told her she was in a non- smoking zone. It wasn't done with any of the diffident politeness she'd have expected thirty years ago, but with a mordant savagery, as though she were committing an act of public indecency.
She dunked her cigarette in her coffee and left.
Outside the rain was now bouncing off the tarmac and suddenly cabs were rarer than unicorns. She started walking up Broadway, old memory struggling against new panic. There had been changes here, new buildings for old, old vices dressed up as new. She struggled to keep her observation at an assessing, objective level, but darkness kept washing in on the flurries of rain turning the Great White Way into a tunnel of night along which the untimely car headlamps smeared light like the spoor of snails.
She tried a trick she had learnt in prison. When you can't fight your fears any more, run with them, steering them into ever more gothic regions of your subconscious till finally you tumble over into such grotesqueries that even blind panic has to pause and smile.
She was Snow White in the storm, she told herself, with malicious laughter screeching from the foul black air, skeletal arms stretching to trip her, evil eyes watching for her to stumble. But beneath it all she sought the assurance that it was only the harmless owl gliding through the storm-tossed trees under which sheltered a myriad tiny creatures, all as frightened as she.
It might have worked in a forest. But here were no trees, only concrete and glass, and the bright-eyed creatures sheltering in these doorways looked far from harmless.
She was moving faster and faster. Now she was running, crashing into other pedestrians with force enough to draw attention even in rainy New York. At an intersection the Don't Walk sign lit as she approached. She saw it but her mind was beyond obedience and she would have plunged straight into the speeding traffic if a hand had not grasped at her arm.
She spun round, ready to strike out, to scream.
She found herself looking at an elderly man wearing the black clothes, broad-brimmed hat and benevolent smile of an old-fashioned preacher.
'Lady, you want to die?' he said.
'It's the best offer I've had all morning,' she gasped hysterically.
'Business that bad, huh?' He examined her sympathetically. 'Lady, you sure are wet. How much you charge for fucking you dry?'
He thought she was a hooker. Somehow this snapped her self-control back into place.
She said, 'Twenty-seven.'
'Dollars?' he said in surprise.
'Years,' she said. 'I don't think you can afford it.'
She walked all the way back to the apartment, driving her limbs at a pace which created enough heat to drive out the damp from her flesh, if not from her clothes. She felt a tremor of something like triumph as she approached the entrance to the building. She hadn't achieved anything concrete but she'd ventured out alone, taken risks, and was returning unscathed, ready to fight another day.
As she pushed open the street door a hand grasped her elbow, a touch light as a feather, tight as a vice.
'Well, Cissy Kohler! Here's a stroke of luck! I were just on my way to see you.'
She felt herself guided across the vestibule, past the questing gaze of the concierge, up to the elevator. Its doors only opened if the man at the desk pressed a switch. The grip on her arm relaxed. She looked up into a face she had only seen this close once before in her life. Then too her hair had been dripping water down her brow and her cheeks. The man had not been smiling then as he was now, but his eyes had been the same.
He said, 'Smile nicely at the man, Cissy. Then we'll go up and have a little chat about the old days.'
All she had to do was shout. She looked into those hard condemning eyes.
Then she turned towards the concierge and smiled.
SIX
'What do you make, madame?'
'Many things.'
'For instance –‘
'For instance . . . shrouds.'
Dalziel hadn't made a conscious decision to dump Linda Steele. What happened was, it started raining as they came out of the deli. Steele waved at a cab which came to a halt some fifteen yards beyond them. A young man in a business suit immediately jumped in and the cab pulled away.
'Cheeky sod!' exclaimed Dalziel.