While My Pretty One Sleeps (17 page)

She got up and began to retrace her steps. Wait a minute, she thought, it was just past here. We took the fork on the right and went up that incline. Somewhere along there is where that damn nag decided to take off.

She knew she was right. A sense of anticipation combined with mounting dread made her heart pound furiously. During the sleepless night, her mind had been an out-of-control pendulum. She
had
seen a hand . . . She
should
call the police . . . Ridiculous. It was all her imagination. She'd look like a fool. She should make an anonymous call and stay out of it. No. Suppose she was right and they traced the call somehow. In the end she returned to the original plan. Look for herself.

It took twenty minutes to cover the ground the horses had made in five minutes. “This is where the stupid thing started eating all the junk-food weeds,” she remembered. “I tugged the reins and it turned and went straight down here.”

“Here” was a steep rocky incline. In the gathering darkness, Kitty began to make her way down it. The rocks slid out from under her sneakers. Once she lost her balance and fell, scraping her hand. I really need this, she thought. Even though it was very cool, beads of perspiration were forming on her forehead. She wiped them away with a hand now soiled from the loose dirt between the rocks. There was no sign of a blue sleeve.

Halfway down she came to a large rock and paused to rest on it. I was crazy, she decided. Thank God I didn't make a perfect fool of myself by calling the police. She'd catch her breath and get home to a hot shower. “Why anybody thinks hiking is fun is
beyond me,” she said aloud. When her breathing became even, she wiped her hands on her light-green jogging suit. She grasped the side of the rock with her right hand as she prepared to hoist herself up. And felt something.

Kitty looked down. She tried to scream, but no sound came, only a low, disbelieving moan. Her fingers were touching other fingers, manicured, with deep-red polish, help upward by the rocks that had slid around them, framed by the blue cuff that had intruded upon her subconscious, a scrap of black plastic, like a mourning band, embracing the slender inert wrist.

•   •   •

Denny Adler, in the guise of a wino, settled at seven o'clock on Friday morning against an apartment building directly across from Schwab House. It was still raw and breezy and he realized the odds were against Neeve Kearny walking to work. But long ago when he was tracking someone he had learned to be patient. Big Charley had said that Kearny usually left for her shop pretty early, somewhere between seven-thirty and eight.

At about quarter of eight, the exodus started. Kids being picked up by a bus, headed for one of those fancy private schools. I went to a private school, too, Denny thought. Brownsville Reformatory in New Jersey.

Yuppies began to pour out. All in identical raincoats—no,
Burberrys
, Denny thought. Get it straight. Then the gray-haired executives, men and women. All sleek and prosperous-looking. From where he was positioned, he was able to observe them clearly.

At twenty of nine, Denny knew this wasn't his day. The one
thing he couldn't risk was the deli manager getting mad at him. He was sure that with his record, he'd be pulled in for questioning when he completed the job. But he knew that even his parole officer would go to bat for him. “One of my best men,” Toohey would say. “Never even late for work. He's clean.”

Reluctantly Denny stood up, brushed his hands together and glanced down. He was wearing a filthy loose overcoat that smelled of cheap wine, an oversized cap with earmuffs that practically covered his face, and sneakers with holes in the sides. What didn't show was that under the coat he was neatly dressed in his work clothes, a faded denim zip-up jacket and matching jeans. He was carrying a shopping bag. It contained his everyday sneakers, a wet washcloth and a towel. A switchblade knife was in the right-hand pocket of the overcoat.

His plan was to go to the subway station at Seventy-second and Broadway, make his way to the end of the platform, drop the coat and cap into the shopping bag, change the filthy sneakers for the others, and sponge off his face and hands.

If only Kearny hadn't stepped into a cab last night! He could have sworn she was going to walk home. It would have been a great chance to hit her in the park. . . .

Patience born of the absolute certainty that his goal would be achieved, if not this morning, maybe this evening, if not today, maybe tomorrow, sent Denny on his way. He was careful to walk unevenly, to dangle the shopping bag as though he was hardly aware he was carrying it. The few people who bothered to glance at him edged away, the expression on their faces either disgusted or pitying.

As he crossed Seventy-second Street and West End, he collided
with an old broad who was walking with her head down, her arm clamped around her pocketbook, her mouth mean and small. It would have been fun to give her a shove and grab that bag, Denny thought, then dismissed the idea. He hurried past her, turned onto Seventy-second Street and headed for the subway station.

A few minutes later he emerged, his face and hands clean, his hair slicked down, his faded denim jacket zipped neatly to his neck, the shopping bag containing the coat, cap, towel and washcloth tied into a neat bundle.

At ten-thirty he was delivering coffee to Neeve's office.

“Hi, Denny,” she said when he went in. “I overslept this morning and now I can't get going. And I don't care what everybody else in this place says. Your coffee beats the stuff they brew in the coffeemaker.”

“We all gotta oversleep once in a while, Miss Kearny,” Denny said as he pulled the container from the bag and solicitously opened it for her.

•   •   •

Friday morning when Neeve awakened, she'd been startled to see that it was quarter to nine. Good Lord, she thought as she tossed back the covers and jumped out of bed, there's nothing like staying up half the night with the kids from the Bronx. She pulled on her robe and hurried into the kitchen. Myles had the coffee perking, juice poured and English muffins ready to be toasted. “You should have called me, Commish,” she accused.

“It won't hurt the fashion industry to wait on you for half an hour.” He was deep in the
Daily News
.

Neeve leaned over his shoulder. “Anything exciting?”

“A front-page account of the life and times of Nicky Sepetti. He's being buried tomorrow, escorted into eternity from a High Mass at St. Camilla's to interment in Calvary.”

“Did you expect them to kick him around until they lost him?”

“No. I was hoping he'd be cremated and I could bid for the pleasure of sliding the coffin into the furnace.”

“Oh, Myles, be quiet.” Neeve tried to change the subject. “Last night was fun, wasn't it?”

“It
was
fun. Wonder how Sal's hand is. I'll bet he wasn't making love with his latest fiancée last night. Did you hear him say he's thinking of getting married again?”

Neeve downed the orange juice with an all-in-one vitamin. “You're kidding. Who's the lucky lady?”

“I'm not convinced ‘lucky' is the word,” Myles commented. “He's certainly had a variety of them. Never married till he made it big, and then runs the gamut from a lingerie model to a ballerina to a socialite to a health nut. Moves from Westchester to New Jersey to Connecticut to Sneden's Landing, and leaves them all behind in a fancy house. God knows what it's cost him over the years.”

“Will he ever settle down?” Neeve asked.

“Who knows? No matter how many bucks he makes, Sal Esposito is always going to be an insecure kid trying to prove himself.”

Neeve popped an English muffin into the toaster. “What else did I miss while I was fussing over a hot stove?”

“Dev's been summoned to the Vatican. That's just between us. He told me as they were leaving, when Sal went to pee—
excuse me, your mother forbade me to say that. When Sal went in to wash his hands.”

“I heard him say something about Baltimore. The archdiocese there?”

“He thinks it's coming.”

“That could mean a red hat.”

“It's possible.”

“I must say you Bronx boys have been achievers. Must be something in the air.”

The toaster popped. Neeve buttered the English muffin, generously spread it with marmalade and bit into it. Even though the day was obviously going to stay gloomy, the kitchen was cheerful with its white-stained oak cabinets and ceramic-tile floor in tones of blue, white and green. The place mats on the narrow butcher-block-top table were mint-green linen squares with matching napkins. The cups and saucers and plates and pitcher and creamer were legacies from Myles's boyhood. The English blue willow pattern. Neeve couldn't conceive of starting the day at home without that familiar china.

She studied Myles carefully. He really looked like himself again. It wasn't just Nicky Sepetti. It was the prospect of getting to work, of doing a job that was needed. She knew how Myles deplored the drug traffic and the carnage it was causing. And who knows? In Washington he might meet someone. He should marry again, and God knows he was a good-looking guy. She told him that.

“You mentioned the same thing last night,” Myles told her. “I'm thinking of volunteering to pose for the centerfold of
Playgirl
. Do you think they'll take me?”

“If they do, bimbos will be lining up to seduce you,” Neeve told him as she took her coffee back to her room, deciding it was high time to get a move on and go to work.

•   •   •

When he came out from shaving, Seamus realized that Ruth had left the apartment. For a moment he stood irresolute, then lumbered across the foyer into the bedroom, untied the cord of the maroon terry-cloth bathrobe the girls had given him for Christmas, and sank down on the bed. The sense of fatigue was so overwhelming that he could barely keep his eyes open. All he wanted to do was get back into bed, pull the covers over his head and sleep and sleep and sleep.

In all these years with all the problems, Ruth had never
not
slept with him. Sometimes they'd go for weeks, even months on end without touching each other, so strained with the money worries that their guts were torn out, but even so, by mutual unspoken consent they had lain together, both of them bound by the tradition that a woman slept at her husband's side.

Seamus looked around the room, seeing it through Ruth's eyes. The bedroom furniture that his mother had bought when he was ten. Not antique, just old—mahogany veneer, the mirror veering crazily on the supporting posts over the dresser. He could remember how his mother polished that piece of furniture, fussing over it, rejoicing in it. For her the matching set, the bed, dresser and chest, had been an accomplishment, the realized goal of a “nice home.”

Ruth used to cut pictures from
House Beautiful
of the kind of rooms she'd like to have. Modern furniture. Pastel shades. Airy
open look. Money worries had squeezed hope and brightness from her face, had made her too strict with the girls. He remembered the time she'd shrieked at Marcy, “What do you mean you tore your dress? I
saved
for that dress.”

All because of Ethel.

Seamus leaned his head on his hands. The phone call he had made lay on his conscience. No way out. That had been the title of a movie a couple of years ago.
No Way Out
.

Last night he'd almost hit Ruth. The memory of those last few minutes with Ethel, the exact moment when he'd lost all control, when he'd . . .

He slumped back on the pillow. What was the point of going to the bar, of trying to keep up a front? He'd taken a step he wouldn't have believed possible. It was too late to call it off. He knew that. And it wouldn't do any good. He knew that too. He closed his eyes.

He wasn't aware that he'd dozed off, but suddenly Ruth was there. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. The anger seemed to have drained from her face. She looked haunted and panic-stricken, like someone facing a firing squad.

“Seamus,” she said, “you've got to tell me everything. What did you do to her?”

•   •   •

Gordon Steuber arrived at his office on West Thirty-seventh Street at ten o'clock on Friday morning. He had come up in the elevator with three conservatively dressed men whom he instantly recognized as government auditors returning to pore over
his books. His staff had only to see the scowl that made his eyebrows meet, the angry stride, to have the word begin to spread. “Watch out!”

He cut through the showroom, ignoring both clients and employees, walked rapidly past his secretary's desk, not deigning to respond to May's timid “Good morning, sir,” and entered his private office, slamming the door behind him.

When he sat at his desk and leaned back in the ornate morocco leather chair that always inspired admiring comments, the scowl disappeared and was replaced by a worried frown.

He looked around the office, drinking in the atmosphere he had created for himself: the tooled-leather couches and chairs; the paintings that had cost a king's ransom; the sculptures that his art consultant assured him were of museum quality . . . Thanks to Neeve Kearny, there was a damn good chance he'd be spending more time in court than in his office. Or prison, he reflected, if he wasn't careful.

Steuber got up and walked over to the window. Thirty-seventh Street. The frantic atmosphere of the street peddler. It still had that quality. He remembered how as a kid he'd come directly from school to work for his father, a furrier. Cheap furs. The kind that made I. J. Fox creations look like sables. His father declared bankruptcy every couple of years like clockwork. By the time he was fifteen, Gordon knew he wasn't going to spend his life sneezing over rabbit hairs, talking dopes into thinking they looked good in mangy animal skins.