19 Purchase Street (36 page)

She was about to settle down with the newest edition of
Vogue
, despite it having Harrie incredibly stunning on
both
its front and back covers, when she remembered the package. The one that had been outside his door when she had arrived.

“That came,” she said, indicating it.

The package was about the size of a shirt box. He thought most likely it was a gift from her and this was her tricky way of making it a surprise, so he told her indifferently, “Open it.”

It was on the side table near her. She tore off its shipping tape and brown wrapping paper to find it was a shiny white box with royal blue edging.

“It's from Porthault,” she said, recognizing the imprint of that prestigious little establishment on the cover.

“Oh?” He was distracted by a rookie halfback he had never heard of who was blasting his own holes through the right side of the Steeler line.

Leslie removed the cover from the box.

Beneath the tissue was a three hundred dollar bottom sheet and a hundred dollar pillowcase, in the sort of light mauvish gray usually associated with expensive lingerie. Leslie realized the significance of there being only a bottom sheet and one pillowcase when she read the note that was enclosed.

Bring these along

and we'll stain them together—

Harrie

The noise that came from Leslie was purely female, a combination hiss and growl.

She threw the box and all at Gainer.

He ducked, awkwardly because of his extended injured leg. Went sprawling off the chair.

At that precise instant the bullet shattered the window glass, passed through the space Gainer's heart had just vacated, struck the back cushion of the chair, tore through it and on through the wall to lodge nearly a half-inch deep in the ceramic tile over the bathtub.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

P
OLICE
cruiser.

Seal of Harrison Township on its front doors.

Officer McCatty, alone in the cruiser, brought it to an easy stop at the corner of Stoney Crest Road and New Lake Street. Taking his time, he brought out a fresh box of Dunhill cigarettes, used a two thousand dollar eighteen karat gold Dupont to light one of them. A partial pack of Camel filters and a book of matches were on the flat of the dash, but he never smoked the Camels when he was alone, just as he never used the lighter when he was with anyone. The Dunhills and the Dupont and some Turnbull and Asser sixty dollar shirts from which he removed the labels were the only small luxuries he allowed himself. It helped that he did not appear to be the sort who appreciated such things, that he had the patience to live within the means of his municipal salary while his other money, his “fuck you” money as he mentally thought of it, piled up out of sight. He figured another four years until he retired for his health, and if wife Connie was still around, which seemed unlikely at the moment the way she was acting, he would leave her.

The majority of McCatty's private thoughts were usually on what he had coming. He was just running the days off like mileage on a trip … He took a right and went at thirty up New Lake Street, across the bridge over Interstate 684 and then another right for Purchase Street. He was on routine patrol. That didn't mean he should pass by Number 19 once every hour but that was his arrangement and how it averaged out. This was his first time by since coming on duty at eight.

Heading down Purchase he saw the Rolls-Royce Corniche parked in the opposite direction. It was pulled over as far as the street's limited shoulder allowed beside a stretch of tall yew hedge close to where the wall began Number 19's property.

Passing by, McCatty took it all in. Black Corniche, this year's model, impeccably polished. Man and woman in it, the woman at the wheel. New York license plates, initialed plates LMP. McCatty kept it in his rearview mirror as he continued on to Barnes Lane, where he U-turned and went back to it.

Rack lights on, turning and strobing.

Pulled up alongside the Corniche, window to window.

“May I help you?” McCatty asked.

“No thank you,” Leslie replied with a smile suitable for a policeman.

“Parking's not allowed along here.”

“We didn't realize.”

“Are you looking for an address?”

“No.”

Gainer leaned across the driver's side to tell McCatty: “We have a problem with the car. It just quit all of a sudden.”

“Just like that?”

“Won't budge.”

“I'll call for a tow,” McCatty said.

“I already have”—Gainer held up the car's telephone—“but thanks anyway.”

McCatty decided this wasn't anything, the Corniche helping him to that opinion. He also thought someday he wouldn't buy a Corniche, he'd buy a Silver Spirit. His good-bye gesture to Leslie and Gainer was something of a salute. He then executed a crisp turnaround, using the first driveway on the left, came speeding back by the Corniche as though he'd wasted enough time.

“It's not ten-thirty,” Gainer said, taking issue with the electronic digital clock on the instrument panel.

“Where's your watch?”

“Beside your sink or your bed.”

“I keep forgetting to have that clock turned back. It still shows Daylight Savings time.”

“What would they charge to adjust the clock?”

“I don't know, fifty dollars or so.”

Gainer found a ballpoint pen in the glove compartment, used the tip of it to press the tiny button adjacent to the clock, causing its digital numbers to change at a nearly unreadable rate until they reached nine-thirty.

“You're bright,” Leslie said.

Gainer was sorry now that he had bothered with the clock. Seeing the minutes and hours go by so fast had made him think his own time was probably running out even faster. He slouched in his seat feeling relatively safe, for the moment.

“They're up by now,” Leslie said.

“It's still too early. They're not regular business people, these people.”

“Aren't you glad I didn't stay home?”

“I need them to be open-minded, clear as can be.”

“Maybe they take uppers.”

“We'll give them another half hour.”

They had been parked there on Purchase Street since a quarter to eight, within easy view of the entrance gates to Number 19. They had observed numerous arrivals—the servants, the groundkeepers, the swimming pool cleaning service. As far as Gainer or Leslie knew, they were all just showing up for work.

It had been about twelve hours since that bullet missed Gainer but smashed into his life. Both he and Leslie had gone flat to the floor, stayed there below any conceivable line of fire. Gainer had thrown his shoe at the wall switch to turn off the living room lights, but even then they kept down. After an hour that seemed like three, they decided her apartment would be safer, so they crawled out and went there in a taxi, made the driver take the longer but more cautious route by way of Queens and the Queensboro Bridge.

It wasn't until they were in Leslie's bedroom, with the city excluded by drapes, that the feeling of being stalked to death diminished to some extent. Gainer couldn't sleep, sat up in bed—with a lot of pillows behind him—watching television but only really seeing it every other couple of minutes. Leslie was determined not to get any sleep. She sat up in the same manner, but around three o'clock during some of Hepburn's tears in
The Rainmaker
she was gone, tumbled over against Gainer and unconsciously snuggled down.

His mind was going like a shorted-out slide projector. It was terrifying that someone was out to kill him, especially so considering who was behind it.

Zurich, Paris and now New York.

Norma, Becque and Ponsard, and now a high-powered rifle.

If only it wasn't them he might feel he had a chance, not feel so doomed. But his fear, like a compass needle, kept pointing their way. The mob. If they wanted to whack him out, they'd do it. Now or eventually, one way or another. No matter where or to whom he ran. That was how they were.

Sorry, Norma.

Gainer glanced down at his chest. He could see the left side of it quiver with every heartbeat. His heart was really zapping, as though, like some creature caught in his body, it sensed its end.

All night he'd sat up in bed like that, going over it, his options.

The moves he might make got down to two.

One was leave everything. Leslie, everything. Change himself, fade away to somewhere and to such an extent that he wasn't anyone. It was the street thing to do and probably his best shot, but even if he got away with it, what he'd be getting away with would be almost the same as dying.

His other course was to go right at them. Go neither on the offensive nor on his knees, but straight forward, putting himself at their mercy but also taking them back a bit that he had such nerve. Maybe they would use him. He'd heard the mob sometimes handled matters that way: let the target in, kept him close, wrung whatever they could from him before following through with their original intention to eliminate. If they went for that at least it would save his ass for a while, Gainer thought. It might also give him an inside opportunity to find out who was really responsible for Norma ending up in that Dolder Grand shower stall. Long shot, but what better way was there for him to have a chance at finding that out. God, he wanted to know that …

So, now, there he was parked with Leslie on Purchase Street.

She was saying: “Lady Caroline …”

“What?”

“Lady Caroline did it. Arranged the whole thing right from the moment she decided you ought to go to Xenon.”

“I thought she's supposed to be looking after you, not me.”

“Same thing in this instance. Don't you see? She brought Harrie into it, made sure it was Harrie, whipped up her libido and everything.”

“You don't really believe that?”

“It makes sense,” Leslie said, thought for a moment, then nodded conclusively. What she didn't say was how it also conveniently diminished the power of Harrie's appeal while providing an excuse for her own jealous behavior. “What a dear lady, Lady Caroline is,” Leslie went on, “the way she maneuvered Harrie into buying and sending those sheets so I could throw them at you at precisely the right moment.”

“To do that she'd have to know what was going to happen.”

“She had access. Probably.”

“Well, I wish she'd let us in on how this is going to turn out.”

“Probably it's only sometimes she has access.”

Gainer was contributing less than half-heartedly to the dialogue. His mind was still mostly on survival. He thought Leslie was taking it too lightly, but then, what help would it be to have her shaky and sweating it out? “How do you know it was Lady Caroline?” he asked.

“Who else?”

“Norma.”

“I don't think so. There was something upper-British about the way it was done. Tidy yet roundabout. Wouldn't you say?”

“Yeah, sure, why not?”

“You definitely have Lady Caroline to thank.”

“Out loud?”

“If you want.”

Gainer looked down at his feet. His best shoes. Why had he put on his best? He wondered if undertakers put shoes on the dead, laced and tied them and everything when they got them ready. He remembered a joke about a dead short guy displayed in his coffin wearing Adler elevator shoes. The silence, he realized, told him Leslie was waiting for him to thank Lady Caroline. He wouldn't.

“Then perhaps sometime when you're alone,” Leslie suggested. “How about some Rescue? Feel as though you could use a little Rescue?”

“Got a gallon?”

When she went into her carryall for the brown glass dropper bottle, Gainer caught a glimpse of something black-blue metallic. He spread the mouth of the bag to reveal an automatic pistol. An ASP. And another, identical.

“You left those in Paris,” he said.

“These are a different pair.”

“For New York.”

She nodded, a matter of fact nod.

“And no doubt there are two more just like them in Palm Beach and in Bedford and in Vail,” he said.

“Among other necessities.”

Gainer was glad to see the ASPs. He had gotten so attached to the one he had used in Paris, he'd been tempted to make off with it. And might have if it hadn't belonged to Rodger.

“They're ready and loaded,” Leslie assured him.

“You shouldn't have brought them. If you'd asked me, I would have told you not to.”

“Hell, I thought as long as someone is already shooting at you, you might want to shoot back.”

“Under ordinary circumstances, yes, but …”

A truck appeared. Coming down Purchase Street. A huge, green garbage collecting truck grinding along. Possibly it was what Gainer and Leslie had been waiting for. She started the Corniche.

The garbage truck passed, slowed, turned in at the entrance of Number 19, stopped for the gates to be opened.

Leslie got the Corniche under way. Timed her speed so it came up to the rear of the truck just as the truck continued on. Braking smoothly, just enough, she tucked the Corniche into the lumbering slipstream of the truck, less than a foot from its hulking back end, so that as the truck went in through the gates the Corniche, hidden from view by it for that moment, slipped inside behind it and followed it up the drive.

Gainer, looking back, saw the surprise on the face of the man on duty at the gatehouse. The man's right hand went in under his jacket. Perhaps if it had been another kind of car or someone not so well-bred-looking at the wheel he wouldn't have hesitated. His hand came out empty. He hurried into the gatehouse, evidently for the phone.

At the top of the drive the garbage truck went around the service side of the house. Leslie, following Gainer's instructions, brought the Rolls to the main entrance. She had barely cut the engine when a pair of white-jacketed housemen rushed out and down the steps to open the door of the Rolls, as though they were serving expected guests. The men were too large and thick to be doing ordinary butlering, Gainer thought.