The Long Good Boy (12 page)

We went under the sidewalk bridge, the moon no longer lighting our way, then out into Keller's courtyard. When we got to the port, I put Clint down and unhooked the leash, crouching right next to him.

“This is it, kid,” I told him. “I'm counting on you.”

His eyes were bright. He wagged his tail.

I didn't push the port open for him, in case he had to come out this way. I pointed, my heart racing. “Go,” I told him, “take it,” and before he'd disappeared, I was running, too, out of Keller's courtyard and into the one next door, climbing up the tree, running over the old roof, crouching low, as if I weren't a modern ape at all but one of my distant ancestors, going over the parapet and onto Keller's roof, then, belly down, leaning over the edge and waiting for the pop and the single bark that would tell me the window was unlocked.

I tried not to look down, and when I failed, and my stomach had spun out of control, I told myself that falling off the roof was the least of my problems. With that cold comfort, I closed my eyes and pictured Clint coming out of the port on the inside of the refrigerator, passing sides of pork hanging in rows, going straight back, then to the right, nosing his way through the plastic ribbons, just enough for him to skinny by. Instead of looking down into the parking area in front of Keller's, the place where I'd first noticed the cat port, I imagined Clint tacking up the stairs, heading left, then right, those short legs propelling him forward.

Then there was the short distance to the bathroom, nosing open the door, putting his whiskered face behind the toilet seat, then behind the lid, jumping back when each slammed closed, a politically correct male if ever there was one. Then he'd back up and dash forward, hopping up onto the lid and once more onto the sill.

But there was no pop, no movement, no bark, no little dog making things ready for my own test of courage.

Had he stopped to taste a side of pork? Was the bathroom door closed, the place he had to go impenetrable? Or had Clint met the cat? Helpless, I wondered if there was a standoff on the staircase, kitty's back arched, her fangs bared, Clint unable to get by.

Hanging over the edge in the dark, I waited and waited, the fear in my throat now, thick and sour. Had I expected too much? Should I have waited for Chi Chi's help? What if nothing happened? How long would I wait before trying to get Clint back out safely? And what if I couldn't?

And then it happened. There was an almost inaudible sound, metal on metal, a nearly imperceptible movement of the window, a single bark. I whistled, Clint's signal to jump back down. He had done his part. Now I had to do mine, the part I hadn't let myself think about. I had to hang off the roof over the cobblestone courtyard and somehow get my body into the window before I lost my grip, literally and figuratively, and fell to my death in the rat-infested hellhole below me.

Hey. No problem. I was an experienced, highly paid professional, wasn't I?

I decided to go backward so that I wouldn't have to look. The parapet was low. This roof was not cocktail-party ready. Though the view was spectacular, the lights from the Jersey side shimmering in long wavy lines across the Hudson River, the roof was unimproved, no decking, no fancy railing, no chairs, no plants. Just the parapet to grasp. I swung one leg over, then the other. Then, holding tight to the lip of the low wall, I lowered myself until I was hanging straight down, which, if I was really lucky, would put my legs parallel to the window Clint had unlocked for me.

Feeling around with my feet, I found the opening. I sneaked a peak, but closed my eyes tight when my knife fell out of my pocket, hitting the building, then bouncing far out into the courtyard. The sound it made on the stones below let me know what my body would do if I failed to hold on, how I'd be smashed against the building on my way down to becoming a corpse.

It was instantly clear that the only way I could get inside would be to let go of the edge of the parapet and hope I could grab the top of the window as I fell. This meant I had to pull the window open with my foot. I began to scan my memory for ideas for other ways to earn a living, but the image of Rosalinda in her white dress, the bodice covered with blood, stopped that in a hurry.

I was able to find purchase on top of the window where it had popped open about an inch when Clint had released the latch. Carefully, using the toe of one sneaker, I was able to pull the window open, then with the side of my foot push it out all the way. Then I reached with one hand, barely touching the top of the window. Once I let go, I'd have to move with speed and grace. I didn't know if either was my forte, but at this point I was really out of choices. I doubted I could hoist myself back up from my stretched-out position hanging like a rope down the side of the building anyway. And time was ticking by while I hesitated.

I took a breath and opened the hand that was on the ledge. As I dropped, I grasped the open window, heard a terrifying crack as it pulled away from the frame. With no time to think, I grabbed the frame with one hand, swung my legs inside and pushed myself feet first into Keller's, my ass grazing the sill, awkwardly twisted around so that my knees were on the closed toilet lid, and finally I was standing on the floor, safe. I turned on the flashlight and looked around. Chi Chi was right. The place was a dump. Then Clint was all over me, jumping up and whining with delight, and, ingrate that I was, instead of being happy I wasn't crumpled like a marionette without strings in Keller's courtyard, I stood there wondering how I'd get back out, one of the many things I hadn't thought about. But I figured I'd take things a step at a time. For now, there was important work to do.

Flashlight on, the bar of light circling the dark bathroom, Clint following right at my heels, I found the office with the file cabinets and got to work. The file was unlocked, which was lucky, since my knife was now in the land of lost tools. The personnel files were in the bottom drawer. I found Vinnie's file, and Mulrooney's, faxing the pages that looked useful to my home. While that was happening, I began to check the contracts with haulers. The going thinking was that Mulrooney had been killed because he'd changed trash companies, perhaps as a lesson to the rest of the markets despite the new law that theoretically did not allow for a wise-guy monopoly of the carting business, you put out for bids and one comes in, take it or leave it. But there'd never been a law passed you couldn't get around.

I faxed those pages home, too, carefully putting everything back where I'd found it. Then, checking the time, and knowing better, I looked through the rest of the file drawers. I knew it must be time to go. Chi Chi never said just how early Vinnie came in when he wasn't meeting her, but it was only an hour to the time when he'd be there if they had a date. Still, this was a one-shot deal, and I didn't want to kick myself later for not looking further. I checked my watch again and went back to work.

My hands pulling file folders forward as I scanned each one, Clint asleep now on the beat-up couch on the other side of the room, I found mostly orders coming in and orders going out, the names of the slaughterhouses and names of restaurants and hotels. I checked everything, even looking for small scraps of paper in the bottom of each folder, a memo, a note, a scribbled cell phone number, something that would give me a reason to shout Eureka, albeit softly in case, against all odds, someone was passing by. After all, there was an open window. But before I had the chance to do something about that, something caught my eye, something that had been hastily stuffed in the front of one of the file drawers, as if someone was coming and whoever was reading what I found didn't want to be seen doing so. It was a page ripped out of the
Times
. Working the way I was, obsessed with the case, I hadn't read the paper or watched the news on TV. The article was short, on the bottom of page 32. It wasn't major news to the
Times
, but it was to me, and to whoever had torn this page out and hidden it in the file drawer. It was about Keller's, about the murder of their manager. The police, it said, had released both suspects. It seemed that both Capelli and Maraccio had airtight alibis for Halloween night. No one else, the article said, was in custody, but a vigorous investigation was going on.

I went back into the bathroom, pulled the window closed, and latched it. No harm in being careful. That in mind, I aimed the flashlight at my watch again, and froze. It was the same time it had been when I'd last looked.

When the hinges had started to give way under my weight, making that awful cracking that made my stomach feel as if it were filled with cold water, there'd been another sound, one too low to hear over the sound of the hinges and the sound of my own ragged breathing. I'd smacked and broken my watch. I looked around frantically for a clock, finally finding one on the thermostat in the hall. It was later, much later than I'd planned to leave, but I could still get out in plenty of time.

Against my better judgment, I took one more look around the office, finding a thin file under some papers on the desk. I took Timothy McCoy's file and stuck it into the fax machine, pressing redial, waiting impatiently for them to slide through the machine so that I could put them back where they'd been. I looked around to see if everything else was as I'd found it. Now it really was time to go.

It wasn't until that moment that I gave serious thought to how I'd get out. It wasn't until then that I remembered the padlock on the front door.

There was no way on earth I could get Clint and myself back up on the roof. Nor could I fit through the cat port. I'd gotten so involved in my crusade, in helping these women that no one seemed to care about, I'd been sloppy.

Now I was going to have to hide until Vinnie opened up, then try to sneak out without being seen before the rest of the butchers arrived. And I was going to have to keep Clint quiet when the time came, until we were safely back on Little West Twelfth Street. This time, even though the heat was off upstairs and the bathroom and offices were almost as cold as it must have been downstairs, I was sweating. I'd made mistakes before. Plenty of them. But this one was a whopper. This one could cost me my life.

When I headed for the stairs, Clint tried to go first, but his side-to-side method was slow and clumsy. Besides, he had no idea what I was thinking, lucky dog. I pointed to the ribbon curtain and let Clint open it. Keeping him in a work mode was the best bet I had of keeping him silent when he heard the padlock coming off the front door.

Standing at the back corner of the refrigerated ground floor, I looked for a place to hide. Hiding there would mean I could get out minutes after Vinnie showed, minimizing the time I'd have to keep Clint quiet. But unless I wanted to crawl inside a dead pig, or jimmy open the trapdoor that led to the underground refrigeration system, and probably the home of hundreds of rats, there was nowhere to secrete myself and Chi Chi's dog. Forgetting my watch was broken, I checked the time again, thinking if Vinnie wasn't coming early to meet Chi Chi, it would also be much too long to be in a refrigerator.

I turned and pointed to the plastic curtain. Clint pushed his nose into the middle, and with me right behind him, we started back up the stairs, and were still there, halfway to the top, when I heard it, metal against metal. Someone was unlocking the padlock.

I scooped Clint up and ran up the stairs, not knowing which way to turn. There were two offices, a small room with a coffee machine, a beat-up round table and unmatching chairs, and a small sink with three or four dirty mugs in it. Whoever was coming might go there first to make coffee. I was pretty sure which office Vinnie used. The one I'd been in. The smaller office looked as if it was rarely used, but maybe supplies were kept in there. It must have been used for something.

There was always the bathroom. Of course, if whoever was coming had to use it, there was no place to hide in there.

At the top of the stairs, I noticed two other doors. One was to the back area, the room under the skylight. I tried the door, but it was locked. The other, my last chance, was a closet. There were five empty, bent wire hangers in it, and six other hangers with white coats hanging on them. The shelf was full of hard hats, the floor lined with high rubber boots. Whoever was coming would certainly open that door. But they might not do it right away. They might not do it until the market was about to open, and all I needed was five minutes' grace to get myself and Clint out of harm's way. If my luck held out.

I ducked inside, wedged myself into a recess on the right, and pulled the white coats closer so that if someone opened the door and reached in without really looking, they might not see me, assuming, of course, that the barky little dog I was stuffing into my jacket kept his yap shut.

That's when I realized I hadn't heard anyone coming up the creaky wooden steps.

Nor had I heard the big front door open or close.

Breathing shallowly, opening the closet door a crack, I tried my best to listen now, but there was a long way between me and the downstairs. With the sound of the compressors, it was impossible to know what was going on down there. Something not as small as I would have liked brushed by my ankle. I bit my lip to keep quiet, someone playing bongo drums inside my chest. When I finally heard voices, they were at the top of the stairs.

“What made you just show up like this, without no call? Are you crazy? Could have been someone here.”

“I missed you, honey. I thought you might be missing me.” Chi Chi. What the hell was she doing here?

I looked down at Clint, then reached into my pocket for one of my gloves, teasing him with it and then giving it to him to chew on.

“What you doing here so early? You hoping I'd show?”

“I have some work to catch up on, in private.”

“I could do you real quick, you'll feel like a million, get your work done in half the time. I could—”