Holy Terror (28 page)

He posted Sidney outside the Hallmark gift store, directly opposite Kaufman. Sebastian he positioned at the east intersection of Lexington and 51st, in case Hetti left the pharmacy and started to head north. Ric stood point on the east side of Lexington at 49th. Conor himself went inside.

The pharmacy was coldly air-conditioned and brightly lit. Conor took a quick look around the shelves of hairsprays and cut-price perfumes to make sure that Hetti wasn't here already. When Conor had first graduated from the Police Academy, there had been a long counter at Kaufman with pound cake under domed glass covers and a narrow kitchen at the back from which they served up meatloaf and mashed potato and chicken with stringbeans and gravy. All that was gone, but Morrie was still here and so were three or four others who remembered Conor coming in hungry and exhausted at eleven o'clock at night.

‘She ain't back yet.' Morrie was barely visible
over the top of the counter. A freckled bald head, thick 1970s sideburns and heavy-rimmed glasses.

Conor checked the Dexatrim clock on the wall. ‘You told her ten minutes?'

‘Shell be back,' said a tall, gingery pharmacist from the back of the dispensary. ‘She comes in regular. Very strange woman. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.'

Morrie said, ‘How're things going, Conor? I heard about that robbery business down at Spurr's. They still trying to nail you for that?'

Conor nodded. ‘Drew Slyman's on my tail. He's the kind of guy who believes you're guilty even after you've been proven innocent.'

‘Drew Slyman? I never took to that guy. A
gonef
.'

They were still talking when Morrie gave an upward jerk of his head and said, ‘Hey… that's her coming now. You want to step back in here?'

He opened the side door and Conor stepped into the dispensary, keeping himself out of sight against a row of shelves. He heard the door open, a momentary blare of traffic noise, and then he heard Hetti's stiletto heels approaching the counter. He could see her reflected in a curved make-up mirror on display on one of the opposite shelves. She was wearing a black straw wide-brimmed hat and a short black dress with a sparkling silver brooch. She looked as if she were going to a funeral in Beverly Hills.

‘Sorry about the delay,' said Morrie, and handed over her pills. ‘The usual warning… don't take this in conjunction with alcohol or any other prescription drugs, especially phenylpropanolamine.'

Hetti put the pills in her purse. Then she lifted her
head and said, ‘You're agitated about something. What's wrong?'

‘Excuse me? Agitated?'

‘Yes … I can sense it. Something's not quite right.'

‘Hey, everything's fine. My wife's put her back out. One of my sons got caught for drunk driving. The cat's sick and my mother-in-law's coming to stay the weekend. Why should I be agitated?'

Hetti paused for a long, long time. Conor stayed rigidly still, his head pressed back against boxes of dextromoramide. If he could see
her
in the make-up mirror, then all she would have to do was look toward it and she would be able to see
him
. But she kept her eyes on Morrie, saying nothing, her eyes as dead as black beetles.

‘Hmmm …' she said at last, and turned to go.

Conor was about to move when she stopped, and turned around again. ‘There's something… I don't know what it is. You should let me give you some hypnotherapy some time.'

‘Sure. Sure thing. Pleasure to see you. Have a nice day.'

Hetti walked out of the store. Morrie waited for a moment, peering out into the street. Then he touched Conor's arm and said, ‘OK, that's it. She's crossing 50th, she's headed downtown. Good luck, that's all I can say.'

‘Thanks, Morrie.
Mazel tov
.'

Conor pushed his way out of the pharmacy into the street. It was like walking into a steam laundry. Sidney had already seen Hetti and was walking down the opposite side of Lexington Avenue, eighty or
ninety feet behind her. Ric had seen her, too, and had detached himself from the comer of 49th Street to walk three-quarters of a block ahead of her.

Conor looked back and Sebastian was there, too. They had her boxed in, whichever direction she decided to go.

Hetti stopped at 49th Street. She crossed over Lexington Avenue and continued to head west, up the slope of 49th Street toward Park Avenue. Conor whistled and waved to Ric that he should head in the same direction on 48th, and hurry, so that he came out onto Park ahead of her.

The sky grew increasingly somber. Large, widely separated drops of rain began to measle the sidewalk. As Hetti reached Park Avenue a dazzling stroke of lightning struck the top of the PanAm building, followed by a bellow of thunder. The rain began to quicken, and by the time Conor and Sidney had got to Park Avenue, it was coming down in torrents.

‘Where is she?' said Sidney, frantically looking around. ‘Don't tell me we've lost her.'

‘No – there she is,' said Conor. And there she was – entering the revolving doors in the front of the Waldorf-Astoria.

They splashed across the street, into the shelter of the hotel's canopy. Conor cautiously looked through the doors. He could see Hetti in the vast, glossy 1930s-style lobby. She was standing beside a banquette, talking to a florid-faced man in a yellow flannel sport coat. He had a heavy black mustache and cropped black hair. Hetti was nodding, and making a circling gesture with her right hand. The man was leaning forward slightly so that he could
hear her better, but by the expression on his face he didn't look very impressed with what she was saying.

Sidney recognized him immediately. ‘That's your man,' he said. ‘There was an article about him in last month's
Theater
. How religious pressure groups are threatening freedom of expression.'

Ric joined them, shaking his hair like a wet dog, then Sebastian. ‘Look at this silk shirt. It's supposed to be dry clean only!' There was another crackle of lightning, and another avalanche of thunder. Beside them, the Waldorf-Astoria's doorman lofted a huge umbrella and crossed the sidewalk to greet the arrival of a white stretch Cadillac. Out of the front of the car climbed the greasy-looking bodyguard who had accompanied Hypnos to the Rialto Theater. He was wearing a smart gray suit now, although his cheek still bore two maroon bruises from Sebastian's kicking and there was a band aid across the bridge of his nose.

They pulled up their collars so that the bodyguard wouldn't recognize them, and half shielded their faces with their hands, but they needn't have worried. There were too many wet people clustering in the hotel's entrance for them to be noticed. Besides, the bodyguard was preoccupied with taking care of his charge: a blond fortyish woman in a short white Valentino dress who was climbing out of the softly lit white-leather interior of the Cadillac's back seat.

The bodyguard ushered the woman into the hotel, while a miserable-looking bellhop scurried out and collected shopping bags and packages from Bergdorf
Goodman, Norma Kamali, Charles Jourdan and Galeries Lafayette.

The blond woman went directly toward Hetti and Victor Labrea. She bent over and kissed Victor Labrea's cheek and he took hold of her hand. Conor saw heavy gold rings on all of his fingers, and a gold chain around his wrist that could have been used to bring up an anchor.

The woman picked an invisible hair from the man's shoulder with long, purple-painted nails, and every now and then she patted him or stroked him. She ignored Hetti; and from the way she was standing and the way that she was gesturing, Conor could see she didn't like Hetti being there at all. At one point, it looked as if they were arguing.

Suddenly, the conversation broke up. Victor Labrea stood up and began to walk toward the elevators, with everybody else promptly following him.

‘This is it,' said Conor. ‘Let's find out what room they're in.'

‘And then what?' Sebastian demanded.

‘We go in and rescue Lacey and take back the stuff from the safety deposit boxes, that's all.'

‘We just “go in”? We just “rescue Lacey”? We just “take back the stuff”?'

‘Do you have any other suggestions?'

Sebastian flared his nostrils and perched his hands on his hips. ‘Other suggestions?' He hesitated for five or ten seconds, then he said, ‘No, I guess I don't.'

‘Let's do it, then, before it's too late.'

They crossed the Waldorf-Astoria's lobby with its chandeliers and its gleaming pillars and its art deco
statues. The thunder and lightning and the mid-morning darkness gave it a heightened sense of imminent apocalypse. Expensively dressed men and women milled around the reception desk, confused and irritated and not a little alarmed that the storm had washed out their shopping expeditions to Bloomingdale's and their lunch dates at the Quilted Giraffe.

In spite of the blandly tinkling piano music, it had something of the atmosphere of
The Poseidon Adventure
: the world turned upside down.

Conor walked quickly to the concierge's desk. The blond woman's bags and packages were propped up on a trolley, ready to be taken up to her room. The concierge himself was talking on the phone – a smooth, bald character with steel-framed eyeglasses.

‘May I help you, sir?' he asked, covering the telephone mouthpiece with his hand.

‘Don't you know who I am?'

‘I'm sorry, sir?'

‘Don't you know what my name is?'

‘Sir – I regret—'

‘You can't remember who I am but you're here to help me. You're still trying to think of my name but it won't matter if you do what I ask. You'll be able to relax. You want to relax, don't you?'

‘Sir – I—'

‘
Relax
. You don't have to worry about what I'm saying to you. I'm going to ask you some questions and all you have to do is let your unconscious mind answer.'

‘Yes.'

‘There are some packages here. Do you know who they belong to?'

‘Mrs Labrea, sir. She asked for them to be taken up to her room.'

‘What's Mrs Labrea's room number?'

‘Seven one one, sir.'

‘That's very good. You see how easy it is, how relaxed you feel? Now I'm going to take these packages up to Mrs Labrea's room right away and Mrs Labrea will be very pleased with you because you've done your job so promptly.'

‘Yes, sir. Very good, sir.'

Cautiously, Conor picked up the blond woman's shopping. He handed two of the bags to Sebastian, including the Charles Jourdan shoes. Sebastian took one of them out – a strappy purple evening number – and said, ‘Look at
these!
They're gorgeous! I wonder if they do them in my size?'

Sidney touched his finger to his lips. He had been watching Conor carefully and he could tell that the trance which Conor had been able to induce was very superficial. One noisy distraction and the concierge would wake up and catch them in the act.

‘In exactly one minute from now you're going to come out of your trance,' Conor told the concierge. ‘You won't remember that I took Mrs Labrea's shopping. The bellboy did it. You'll feel happy and satisfied and not at all anxious.'

Carrying the shopping, they walked toward the elevators. Conor glanced back but the concierge had returned to his phone call and seemed to be completely unconcerned. They stood back while a small gaggle of women in Armani and Chanel came
out of the elevator, leaving behind them an atmosphere so heavily laden with designer perfume that it was almost visible, like a heat haze.

‘You all have your scarves?' asked Sidney. ‘Good. Any sign of Hypnos blowing that burundanga at us, cover your nose and your mouth with your hand, and then pull up your scarf. Stay calm. Don't allow Hypnos or Hetti to distract you. You're going in there for one reason only: to rescue Lacey. Also, if possible, to retrieve the papers that were stolen from Spurr's deposit boxes. Any other consideration: ignore it.'

The elevator pinged to a stop at the seventh floor.

‘Seven-eleven's to the left,' said Conor. ‘Trust Hypnos and Hetti to pick a room that sounds like a convenience store.'

They hurried along the silent, chilly corridor until they reached the room marked 711. There was a room-service tray on the floor outside, with the congealed remains of fried chicken, shoestring potatoes and a Russian salad.

‘So how do we get in?' asked Sebastian. ‘I'm good, but I'm not good enough to kick a door down.'

‘We knock,' said Conor. He approached the door and gave three sharp raps. Then he indicated to Sebastian that he should hold up Mrs Labrea's shopping in front of the spyhole.

There was no answer for a very long time. At last a voice demanded, ‘Who is it? Whaddya want?'

‘Concierge. I brought up your packages.'

‘I can't see your face.'

‘What?'

‘Put down the bags. I can't see your face.'

‘Look – I'm very sorry, sir, but I'm extremely busy here – and Fm just about to drop all these packages – so if you don't mind—'

Conor heard a woman's voice snap, ‘Charlie? Is that my shopping? Open the door for goodness' sake.'

The door unlatched. Conor waited until he heard the chain slide away, and then he kicked the door inward with all the strength he could muster.

‘
Go-go-go-go-go
!' he roared, and shoved the man standing behind the door with both hands. The man stumbled, hit his head against the wall and flopped heavily onto the carpet.

‘Charlie!' screamed the woman's voice.

Conor strode into the sitting room, with Sidney, Sebastian and Ric following close behind. The room was large and gloomy, furnished with expensive reproduction antiques. Hetti was sitting on a chair with her shoes off. Hypnos was standing by the mini-bar on the opposite side of the room, a miniature tequila bottle poised in one hand. Mrs Labrea was half rising from the couch.