Come Out Tonight (34 page)

“You were seen talking to the police earlier today.
 
Now, that’s very unwise.
 
If I hear that you told them anything about your little friend, Mr. Yielding will be very displeased....,” he said.

“My little friend...?” I said.
  

“Don’t force me to kill you, Jackman,” Brown Suit said, walking out.

I waited, trembling, till his brown back disappeared up the stairs before I left the car myself.
 
Then I tottered across the platform till I reached the stairs, tiptoed up and peeked out.
 
The streetlamp lit up a big empty circle extending halfway across the street.
  
No one was there, but who, I wondered, could be hiding in the shadows?
 
For once I was hoping to see a cluster of guys huddled on a street corner - anyone - pimps and prostitutes, hoods with track marks on their arms, whoever, but there was
 
N...O...B...O...D...Y....
 
I set off at a clip, running fifteen blocks in four minutes, sailing into the nursing home just before it closed its doors.
  
I leaned up against the lobby wall for the longest time, peeping out at the night, willing my pulse to calm down, wondering why I was here, until I finally felt ready to make my way to Sherry’s room.
 

No one was in the hallways or at the nurses’ station, so I just walked on down the hall, unnoticed and unstopped, till I got to her room.
 
It was dark, but I didn’t bother putting on the light.
 
I opened the shade as high as it would go, and the moonlight lit up her bed.
 
There she was, aglow in her nightgown, lying flat on her back, with her eyes to the ceiling.
 
I padded quietly up to the bed to see if she was PVS again.
 
She was.

I pulled a Somnolux tablet out of my pocket, dissolved it in a spoon in a little water from the pitcher on her bed table.
 
I let down the side of her bed and wrestled Sherry into a sitting position, opening her mouth and forcing the contents down.
 
Then I quietly pulled the chair up to her bedside and sat down to wait.
 
Ten minutes later, I could hear the sheets rustling.
 
A couple of minutes after that, she was sitting up in the moonlight, staring around her.

“Who?” she said to the darkness.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Henry?”

“Yes.”

“Why is it dark?”

“Because it’s night.
 
I came to see you at night.”

She was quiet a minute.
 
“Can I have a drink of water?” Sherry asked.

I poured a glass from the pitcher on the bed table and handed it to her, not letting go as she raised it to her lips.

“Were we fighting, Henry?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Why do I feel like we were arguing?”

“Why would I argue with you, darling?
 
I love you.”

“I don’t know.”
 
She took another sip, then handed back the glass.
 
“Why are you here?”

“I was the one who closed up the store.
 
It was late, but I wanted to see you.”

“That’s nice,” Sherry said.
 
“I can’t remember being up at night for a long, long time.
 
Did you give me another Somnohip?”

“Yes,” I said.
 
“It was the only way.”

She giggled.
 
“This is fun.
 
It’s like a slumber party.”
 
A Cheshire cat smile seemed to materialize out of the dark.
 
“Remember - we had a picnic on your bed one night?
 
With cold chicken and potato salad and cookies for dessert?
 
 
You were so worried about crumbs in the sheets.
 
You said the cockroaches would enjoy it more than us.”

“Yeah, I remember.
 
We had fun that night.”

“And New Year’s Eve when we shut off the lights, and drank champagne and watched the party in the next building?
  
Drunk people jumping up and down in funny hats.”
 
She laughed.
 
“And then we made love like maniacs all over your apartment.
  
I miss being up at night.”

“I remember shutting off the lights.
 
Not the rest,” I said.

“You don’t remember watching the party?”

“No.”

“Don’t remember making love in all the rooms?”

“No.”

“You were a crazy man!”

“Was I?”

“Really, Henry, you can’t remember?”

“No.
 
Do you remember the detective coming to question you?”

She thought for a minute.
 
“No, I can’t.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Maybe.”

I helped Sherry out of bed and into the chair by the window.
 
We sat and looked out at the trees in the moonlight. “You remembered anything else about the night you got hurt?” I asked.

I could just make out Sherry shaking her head.
 
“Nothing,” she said.
 
“The first thing I remember...is waking up here.”
 
Her eyes twinkled in the night.
 
“Looking at the back of your newspaper.”

I laughed, thinking back.
 
“Anything else?”

She was silent for a long time.
 
Then, I heard, “The time you half-choked me as we made love.”

“I didn’t,” I said, truly shocked that she would say such a thing.

“I can’t forget something like that.
 
You said it would improve my orgasm.”

“No way do I believe...”

“And it did,” she said with wonder.
 
“It really did.”

We talked into the night for hours until I saw a telltale yawn and helped Sherry into bed.
 
Before I could pull up the side, she was still as a statue.
 
I let myself out, opening the back door quietly, holding the tab down until the last minute when the door clicked closed.
 
I looked back once and realized I had forgotten to lower the shade.
 
I could still see Sherry, lying on her back in the moonlit bed, staring up with sightless eyes.

DONNA

The phone rang early on Thursday morning.
 
Julian rolled over and scrunched the pillow around his ears.
 
The phone was on my side of the bed, anyway.
 
I picked it up: it was Ralph at the precinct telling me that Alicia’s boyfriend, Diego Jimenez, had been shot dead in his home with his own gun last night.
 
Of course, Queens isn’t my jurisdiction, but I could have kicked myself for not trying to get surveillance on the house ever since I tracked Henry there.
 
Could it have been Alicia who shot Diego, or was it Henry himself?
 
If I’d done my job right, this wouldn’t have happened.
 
I’d have tracked him there and gotten surveillance, maybe even someone there to catch him in the act.

I resolved then and there to keep a close eye on Henry.
 
I clicked on the GPS icon on my home computer and tracked his location to the subway on his way up to the
Bronx
.
 
I glanced over at Julian, who had let go of the pillow and was now snoring gently.
 
I slipped on my slippers and quietly shuffled off to the closet to get dressed.
 
I figured I could take the
Lexington
line most of the way, maybe change over at Yankee Stadium.
 
Anyway, I’d figure it out.

As I should have realized, the morning trains up to the
Bronx
were few and far between.
 
By the time I got to the home, I knew from talking to Ralph that Henry’d been there the better part of an hour already.
 
Sherry was probably safe, though.
 
Thursday morning amidst the breakfast crowd and the nurses, crisscrossing the floor dispensing medication, wouldn’t be a good time to do away with her.
 

I didn’t want to be seen, so I made my way around the building to the backdoor to her room.
 
There was a window in the rear wall, and the shades were up.
 
I backed myself up to the outside wall and watched them through the window.

Henry was talking while Sherry was trying her best to eat her breakfast cereal.
 
She put down her spoon and said something, then Henry again. Then Sherry.
 
Then Henry.
  
I couldn’t hear a damn thing, but that wasn’t really my priority.
 
If Jackman raised as much as a hand to her, I’d be inside in a New York minute.

They seemed to have given up on talk.
 
Henry was grabbing at the remote from the bed table and aiming it toward the TV.
 
He pulled over another chair adjacent to Sherry’s and dropped into it.
 
For half an hour they watched TV. It was absolutely riveting, watching them watch TV.
 
Outside it was starting to drizzle, and I almost considered going home.
 
Then, abruptly, there was a change in Henry’s demeanor.
 
He jumped up and approached the TV, squinting into the screen, then cringing.
  
I surreptitiously slipped to the other side of the window, trying to catch whatever was on the screen, but between the glare from the outside light and the angle of the screen, I couldn’t make out a thing.

Then, all of a sudden, whatever it was, it didn’t matter, because Henry had clicked it off.
 
His expression had changed from anguish to something else – self-satisfaction, I’d almost say.
 
It was eerie.
 
But now I couldn’t see his face at all, since he had turned and was walking toward the door.
 
Then he was out of the room, never even bothering to say goodbye to Sherry, who was yelling after him to no avail.
 
I waited a minute or two to see if he’d return, before calling Ralph to ask him to go to the website and start tracking Jackman’s phone.
 
Sure enough, the little blinking light, Ralph said, was out the door and slowly marching in the direction of the subway.
 
“I’m going to follow him,” I told Ralph. “Keep your eye on the blinking dot, just in case he gives me the slip.”

I trailed him to the subway, keeping just far enough between us to keep a dolt like Jackman from noticing that I was there.
 
He took off a little faster than I expected, though, and it was all that I could do to keep up with him.
 
First he went south on the
Lexington
line.
 
I watched him from the end of the car with my head down.
 
He was lying back against the seat, legs outstretched and obstructing the aisle, that same smug smile on his face I’d seen in Sherry’s room.
 

When he got out at 63
^rd
, I followed him around underground; we wound our way toward what I didn’t know, until it turned out to be the F train going to
Queens
.
 
At this point, I slipped into the adjoining car, figuring that I knew where he was headed.
 
Every time we stopped, I peeked out the open doors to make sure Jackman hadn’t run off, but nothing happened until the stop before
Parsons Blvd
, when he suddenly stumbled out, a dazed look on his face.
 
I rushed out the moment before the doors closed to see him disappearing down a long flight of stairs.
 
I followed him, cloaked by a large woman with two shopping bags, running around her as he darted back up the stairs to the platform going the other way. At the top, I hung out behind a column, worried that I had blown my cover.
 
The buoyant confidence and the smug smile were gone, replaced by agitation and a look of scared confusion.
 
Yeah, he must have spotted me.

The train certainly took its time, and when it did come, it was packed.
 
A mob of schoolchildren filled the car, providing me camouflage as they jumped, jostled and leaned on each other.
 
I watched Henry weave his way unsteadily down the car, until he finally grabbed onto an overhead strap.
 
He took a look at his watch and recoiled in horror.
 
I figured he was late for at work, and that was where he was undoubtedly going.
 
Now was the time to approach him, if ever I was going to.
  

I wove my way through the schoolchildren and grabbed the strap to his left.
 
“Late for work?” I said to his back.

Jackman turned around, his expression telling me that I was his worst nightmare.

“Have a nice trip to
Queens
?” I asked.

“You been following me?”

“All the way from the
Bronx
.”