Alice maintained a brisk but unexceptional pace down Second Avenue until she reached First Street, when she turned right and broke into a full sprint toward the 6 train at Bleecker. She scurried down the subway stairs and was about to swipe her MetroCard at the turnstile when she stopped herself. Could the police trace a MetroCard that had been purchased on an Amex? If they knew she was on the 6, couldn’t they contact the driver to stop the train? She’d be trapped.
She searched her wallet for cash to buy a new card, but found she was down to her last $14. She wouldn’t get far without more cash.
Ben’s apartment was only five blocks away. She poked her head out from the subway stairs, searching for signs of police, then made her way south on Mulberry, turning on Spring Street, and then south again on Mott. She rang the buzzer, tapping her forehead softly against the door as she prayed Ben would answer. Two more attempts at the buzzer. Nothing.
She was about to give up when a heavyset man emerged from the building, lugging two overstuffed Hefty bags of garbage. The top of his bald head was sweaty despite the cold. The key ring clipped to his belt loop was worthy of a prison warden.
“Are you the super?”
He nodded as he turned sideways to maneuver his stomach and the trash bags past her. Alice grabbed one of the sacks and helped drag it to the curb. “Thanks, lady, but condo only. No units on sale now.”
“My brother lives here. Ben Humphrey?” She fumbled through her wallet to pull out her driver’s license.
“Oh, yeah. From Life with Dad. I know all about his family. You’re all grown up now, but, yeah, I can still see that same face.”
“This is awful, but I managed to leave a file in my brother’s apartment that I desperately need for a meeting I have in, like, less than an hour. And of course, with my luck, Ben’s not home. Is there any way you can let me in?”
One of those people who paid cash for everything, her brother found the $400 cap on ATM withdrawals “miserly” and was in the habit of storing large amounts of cash in his dresser drawer. He jokingly called it his drug-dealer stash.
The super hesitated.
“It will take two seconds. You can even watch me go inside if you need to.” She flashed her warmest, most trustworthy smile. If she had to, she could sneak the money while pretending to look for her file.
“No problem. I know how much Mr. Humphrey loves his sister.” He was already flipping through the keys. They rode up to the fourth floor together. She could still hear the super breathing hard from the exertion of hauling the garbage bags. He slipped the key in the door, but the knob budged on its own. “What do you know? You didn’t even need me.”
“Ben?”
She knew her brother was in the habit of leaving the door unlocked when he was home, but she didn’t think he was stupid enough to do so when he was out.
The place was messier than it had been three nights earlier. The kitchen cabinets were open. A stack of entertainment magazines had slid from the coffee table onto the floor. Thebathroom door was ajar, and she could only imagine the filth to be found there. But she saw no obvious drugs or paraphernalia in view, and was relieved not to be confronted with undeniable proof that her brother was using again.
She walked directly to the dresser in the bedroom area of his loft and opened the top drawer. A pad of bills about an inch thick was tucked to the side of a row of neatly folded boxer briefs, one of the perks of sending laundry out for service. She shoved the wad of cash in her purse, not bothering to count. The police would know her brother lived nearby. The super would tell them she was here.
In her rush to walk away, she almost didn’t see his cell phone on the nightstand. They would be tracking hers, but probably not his. An extra phone could come in handy.
Where was he?
She looked out the window, hoping to see him strolling toward the building, cup of coffee or bagel bag in hand. She couldn’t wait here all day.
As she stepped away from the window, she caught a glimpse of the dusty framed photograph on the sill. It was one of her favorites as well—an eleven-year-old Alice decorating her napping teenage brother with a shaving cream beard while her conspiring father caught the footage. Her father might have hated his wife’s penchant for mid-1980s decor, but Ben had loved it, sneaking into his father’s office whenever possible to laze on the red sofa.
And then she realized why some of the photographs on the Hans Schuler thumb drives had struck her as dated. When she’d discovered those hidden images, her attention had been pulled to their most vile elements, and then immediately repelled. She had never focused on the background, but now she remembered. The pictures that had seemed scanned—the ones that appeared to be of a young girl and an older man—had contained images of steel gray brocade curtains, a red velvet sofa, and the black-and-white-striped wallpaper that her father had once called schizophrenia-inducing.
And now that she recalled the background of those horrible photographs, she understood her dream from the previous night. She had dreamed she was a child, standing in her father’s office and not wanting to leave, because some part of her subconscious had known. In her sleep, she had been on the verge of figuring it out.
The pictures of that young girl with the older man had been taken twenty-five years ago in her father’s office in Bedford.
Setting aside her guilt, she slipped Ben’s cell into her purse. She’d explain it all to him later.
She left her brother’s apartment in such a fog that she did not see the man step from the green Toyota and begin to follow her on foot.