Before I Say Good-Bye (37 page)

“Quick, the fire escape,” he snapped.

The flames were leaping at the curtains. “Open the window, damn you,” he shouted at Bonnie.

“They’re working on the fire escape, Adam. We can’t go out there. It’s not safe,” Bonnie sobbed.

He was pushing Bonnie outside, onto the fire escape and into the pouring rain. Nell saw the wild look on Adam’s face as he took the time to close the window behind him, sealing her in that room.

She was alone—just her and the heat. The unbearable heat. The mattress was burning. With strength
born of desperation, Nell managed to slide off the bed, then to stand and steady herself enough so that she didn’t fall. Supporting herself against the dresser, she managed to pull her hands free from the bonds that Bonnie had left loose. She shoved the dresser to one side.

The door was on fire. Nell tried to turn the handle. It was red hot. The blisters, the smoke—she had known this was going to happen. Blood was dripping in her eyes. There was no oxygen, only smoke. She couldn’t breathe.

Someone was hammering at the door to the apartment. She could hear them. The door wouldn’t open. The key was gone.

Too late, she thought as she slid to the floor and began to crawl. You’re going to be too late.

eighty-nine

A
THIN TRICKLE OF SMOKE
slid into the hallway. “The place is on fire,” Sclafani yelled. As one, he and Brennan and Dan Minor kicked at the door. It refused to budge.

“I’ll go to the roof,” Brennan shouted.

Sclafani turned and raced down the stairs, Dan at his heels. They reached the lobby and raced out into the street, running to the side of the building that held the fire escape. The rain pelted them as they rounded the corner.

“Good God, look!” Dan exclaimed.

On the fire escape above them there were two people, slipping and stumbling on the wet and treacherous steps.

Even in the dim light and through the driving rain, Jack saw the face of the man above and knew that they had cornered Adam Cauliff, the man Benjy Tucker had seen in the wet suit, and who had caused him so many terrible nightmares.

I
NSIDE THE BURNING BEDROOM
the smoke was overwhelming. Nell could see nothing as she crawled across the floor, gasping for the last remaining hint of air. She was choking on the smoke. The window. She had to find the window. Suddenly her head touched a solid object. The wall! She must have crossed the room—the window must be right there. She pulled herself to her knees and stretched her arms up to grip the windowsill. All she felt, though, was heated metal. What was it? Was it a handle? A handle of the dresser. Dear God, she had gone around in a circle. She was at the door again.

I can’t make it, she thought. I can’t breathe.

She suddenly felt as if she were in the riptide again, being pulled down into a swirling vortex. She was beyond exhaustion. Unable to breathe. Desperately in need of sleep.

A voice came to her, only this time the voice that filled her head was not that of either of her parents—it was Dan, saying
Nell, I need you.

Turn around, she told herself. Picture the window. It’s straight ahead. Stay near the bed, then go to your right. Still hobbled by the cord around her legs, she crawled across the room.

I need you, Nell. I need you.

Choking and coughing, Nell plunged forward, willing herself to reach the window.

“P
OLICE
! S
TOP
!” Sclafani shouted to the couple on the fire escape above him. “Put your hands up.”

Adam stopped and spun around as Bonnie tried to get past him. He grabbed her. “Go back,” he shouted, as he pushed her back up the stairs.

At the third floor he slipped and grabbed the railing with his bandaged right hand. Shrieking with pain, he nonetheless forged ahead.

They made it past the window to Bonnie’s apartment on the fifth floor, and reached the top landing on the sixth floor. Below them they heard the shattering of glass and saw smoke billowing up from the fire.

Adam looked up from the sixth-floor landing. The roof was six feet over their heads.

“It’s useless, Adam!” Bonnie screamed.

Adam hoisted himself up onto the metal railing and reached up. His fingertips touched the edge of the roof. Too frantic to notice the terrible pain that came from putting pressure on his injured hand, he grasped the edge of the roof and tried to pull himself up.

Beneath him he heard a grinding sound, felt a sickening lurch, as the fire escape began to separate from the wall.

O
N THE STREET BELOW,
Dan Minor could hear the sound of fire engines as they screamed their way down West End Avenue. He locked his fingers together, cupping Jack Sclafani’s foot as the detective reached up and grasped the
bottom rung of the fire escape. “Drop the ladder,” Dan shouted as Sclafani began to climb to the second floor.

Moments later, Dan was scrambling up the treacherous fire escape. Above him he could see flames shooting from the fifth-floor window. Nell! he thought. Nell was in that inferno!

N
ELL HOISTED HERSELF UP
and stumbled as she reached the window. When she crashed against it, her shoulder broke the large single pane. Behind her she felt the rush of intense heat sucked outward, and beneath her she could feel the floor starting to give way. She thrust her body forward, feeling the cool, damp air as it rushed up from below, allowing her finally to breathe again. She was only partially through the window, though, and she could feel herself sliding backward as the floor gave way beneath her feet. Her blistered hands grabbed the window frame. Shattered glass pierced her palms. The pain was too intense. She knew she couldn’t hold on much longer. Behind her was the roar of the fire. There were sirens screaming below, and people yelling all around. Inside her head, though, there was only calm. Is this what it’s like to die? she wondered.

A
DAM GRASPED THE ROOF
with his fingertips. With superhuman strength born of desperation, he began to pull himself up. Then he felt arms around his legs, dragging him down. It was Bonnie. He tried to kick free of her grasp, but it was no use. He could not hold on to the roof. He swayed and then fell back to the landing.

Snarling, he picked Bonnie up and lifted her over his head. The fire escape gyrated beneath them.

“Let her go, or I’ll shoot,” Brennan shouted from the roof.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Cauliff shouted back.

Racing up the steps, Sclafani saw what was about to happen. He’s going to throw her over, he thought. He reached the top landing and tried to tackle Cauliff. He was too late. Bonnie fell screaming to the street below.

Adam vaulted back onto the railing and once again reached up. This time his fingers barely grasped the edge of the roof before they lost their grip. For a perilous moment, he wavered, his arms flailing the air for balance.

Sclafani froze as he watched the man before him performing a deadly dance before he plunged down, falling without a sound until his body hit the pavement.

Just below Sclafani, Dan had reached the window that opened from Bonnie’s bedroom. Seeing Nell at the edge of the inferno, grasping the window frame, he grabbed her wrists and held them in his own strong, sure fingers until a moment later Jack Sclafani was beside him, helping him to pull her free.

“We’ve got her!” Jack exclaimed. “Come on. This thing is going to go.”

The fire escape was swaying wildly as they made their way down from the fifth-floor landing. Dan was half carrying, half dragging the now unconscious Nell.

When they reached the extension ladder, a fireman below yelled up to him, “Give her to me and jump!”

Dan lowered Nell into the fireman’s outstretched arms. Then he and Jack Sclafani bolted over the railing and dashed out of the way as six floors of metal fire escape collapsed and crumbled to the ground, covering the bodies of Adam Cauliff and Bonnie Wilson.

Tuesday, November 7
Election Day

ninety

A
NEW PRESIDENT
was being chosen who would lead the United States of America for the next four years. A new senator would speak for the state of New York in the nation’s most exclusive club. And at the end of the day, the city of New York would know if the congressional district over which Cornelius MacDermott had presided for nearly fifty years had chosen his granddaughter, Nell MacDermott, as their new representative.

Partially due to nostalgia, but also with a nod toward superstition, Nell had located her campaign headquarters in the Roosevelt Hotel, the scene of all her grandfather’s triumphs. As the polls closed, and the results began to trickle in, they sat together in a suite on the hotel’s tenth floor, their attention focused on the three television sets positioned on one side of the room—one for each of the major networks.

Gert MacDermott was with them, along with Liz Hanley and Lisa Ryan. Only Dan Minor was unaccounted for, and he had just called to say that he was on his way down from the hospital. Campaign aides wandered in and out of the room, nervously picking at
the elaborate food and drink that had been laid out for all comers. Some of the aides were optimistic, some were fearful—it had been a particularly tough campaign.

Nell turned to her grandfather. “Win or lose, Mac, I’m glad you made me run.”

“And why shouldn’t you have run?” he responded gruffly. “The party committee agreed with me—the sins of the husband should not be visited on the wife. Although, being perfectly practical about it, if there had been a trial, you inevitably would have been dragged into it, and the media circus around it probably would have made your campaign impossible. With Adam and the rest dead, though, it was yesterday’s news.”

Yesterday’s news,
Nell thought. Yesterday’s news that Adam had betrayed her. Yesterday’s news that he had cold-bloodedly made sure that anybody who could incriminate him, including Jimmy Ryan and Winifred Johnson, died on that boat. Yesterday’s news that she had been married to a monster. I lived with Adam for three years. Did I always sense that at the core of our relationship there was something terribly wrong? I guess I should have.

The investigator from Bismarck has uncovered more disquieting information about Adam. He’d used the pseudonym Harry Reynolds on one of his questionable deals in North Dakota. He must have told that to Winifred.

Nell looked across the room. Lisa Ryan caught her eye and gave her an encouraging thumbs-up sign. At the start of the summer, Lisa had approached Nell, offering to help with the campaign. Nell had gladly taken her on, and had been more than pleased with
the result. Lisa had worked tirelessly on the campaign, spending her evenings at headquarters, talking with voters on the phone, mailing out campaign literature.

Lisa’s children had spent the summer at the shore with her neighbors, Brenda Curren and her husband. She had thought it better if they were out of the neighborhood until the talk about their father died down. It hadn’t been too bad, though. Jimmy Ryan’s name was in the police files, but he had received scant attention from the press.

“The children know their father made a terrible mistake,” Lisa said candidly when Nell first met with her. “But they also know that his life was taken because he was going to face up to it. He wanted to atone. His last words to me were, ‘I’m sorry,’ and now I know what he meant. He deserves my forgiveness.”

It had been decided that if Nell were elected, Lisa would work in her New York office. I hope that comes to pass, Nell thought, as she shifted her focus back to the array of television sets.

The phone rang. Lisa answered it, then came over to Nell. “It was Ada Kaplan. She’s praying you win. She said you’re a saint.”

Nell had sold the Kaplan property back to Ada for exactly what Adam had paid her for it.

Ada had then sold it to Peter Lang for three million dollars. “Not a word to my son,” she’d told Nell. “He gets what I promised him. The difference goes to the United Jewish Appeal. That money will be used to do good things for needy people.”

“You’re neck and neck, Nell,” Mac said, fretting. “It’s tighter than I expected.”

“Mac, since when do you fidget while watching returns?” Nell asked, laughing.

“Since you got in a race. Look at that—they’re calling it a toss-up!”

It was 9:30. A half hour later, Dan arrived. He immediately sat next to Nell and put his arm around her. “Sorry to have taken so long getting here,” he said. “There were a couple of emergencies. How are things going here? Shall I take your pulse?”

“Don’t bother—I already know it’s off the charts.”

At 10:30 the pundits started declaring a shift in Nell’s favor. “That’s it! Keep it up,” Mac muttered.

At 11:30, Nell’s opponent conceded. The cheer that went up among those gathered in the suite was thunderously echoed in the auditorium below. Nell stood surrounded by the people who mattered most in her life as the television monitor picked up the crowd in the Roosevelt’s ballroom, celebrating Nell’s victory. The crowd began to sing the song that had become associated with her campaign ever since the band first played it when she announced her candidacy. It was a turn-of-the-century favorite “Wait ’Til the Sun Shines, Nellie.”