TWO

The motel was a Days Inn just off the highway, the lot almost full. Snow blew past the pole lights. She checked in as Roberta Summersfield, used the credit card she had in that name.

The room was on the second floor. She carried her bags up and two minutes later was in the shower, her clothes strewn on the bathroom floor. The water grew hot quickly, and she ducked under the shower head to let the stream play against the knotted muscles of her neck. The heat began to loosen her shoulders, the tightness in her scalp.

When she was done, she toweled off, then dressed in turtleneck sweater and jeans. She put the bag with the money up on a shelf in the closet.

Twenty minutes later, she was sitting at the hotel bar, a glass of red wine and the remains of a hamburger in front of her. It was the first she’d eaten since that morning.

At a table to her left were three businessmen in their forties—suit jackets, loosened ties, out of shape. They looked over every few minutes, and she knew they were talking about her. She also knew none of them would have the courage to approach her. It would save her the trouble of shutting them down if they did.

There was a wide-screen TV above the bar, a laugh-tracked sitcom she didn’t know. The barmaid took her plate, pointed to her empty wineglass. Crissa said, “Please,” and the barmaid took a new glass from the overhead rack, poured from the bottle.

At ten, the news came on. The lead story was the storm, but five minutes later they got to the robbery. A young female reporter stood outside the darkened storefront, bathed in the bright light of the TV camera, snow flitting past, yellow police tape behind her.

Why bother sending someone out there now? Crissa thought. It’s all over with.

When the reporter said the robbers had escaped with two hundred thousand in cash, Crissa said, “Bullshit.”

The barmaid turned to her. “Excuse me, honey?”

Crissa shook her head. The barmaid looked back at the TV. They’d moved on to sports.

Everyone’s scamming, Crissa thought. One way or another. Like Wayne used to say: Nothing’s on the level when the world is round.

She was feeling the wine, the aftermath of the day’s adrenaline rush, the tension of the week. The way it goes sometimes, she’d told Smitty, and that was true, but it didn’t make her feel any better. Thirty-one five wasn’t worth the preparation they’d put into it, the risks they’d taken. It would barely pay her rent for the year. She would put aside part of it anyway, for a trip somewhere warm. Tortola, maybe, or Green Turtle Cay in the Abacos. A Christmas present to herself.

It had become a pattern. A few months of normalcy, relaxation. Then the money at hand would start to run low around the same time she began to get bored. She’d wait for word, a call from Kansas City or St. Louis or Phoenix or a dozen other cities. She’d hear what they had to say. Then, more often than not, she’d be working again—and the cycle would start over. It didn’t make for much of a future, she knew. But for now it was the only life she could stand to live.

*   *   *

It was late in the afternoon when she reached New Jersey. She’d called the car service en route, so when she returned the Taurus at the rental agency in Newark, the Town Car was waiting. The Sikh driver loaded her bags in the trunk, asked the address, didn’t speak again for the rest of the ride.

The sky was gray and overcast, spitting snow, as they crossed the George Washington Bridge, the city spread out before them. They took the West Side Highway to 125th Street, turned south on Broadway. When they reached 108th he made the left, pulled up in the loading zone in front of her building.

Reynaldo, the doorman, came out to greet her. She paid the driver in cash, tipped him twenty dollars, heard the trunk click open.

Reynaldo already had her bags when she stepped out under the awning, flecks of snow blowing around her. He closed the trunk, tapped it twice, and the Town Car pulled away.

“Welcome back,” he said. “How was your trip?”

“Could have been better.”

As they started up the steps, a cat raced out from the foyer, slowed when it reached her. It was solid black, its left ear chewed off short and ragged. It eyed her for a moment, then brushed past her legs and into the street.

“I don’t know who that belongs to,” Reynaldo said. “It’s been hanging around here all week. Those cats, they’re mala suerte. Bad luck.”

“I don’t need any more of that.”

He carried the bags across the marble-floored lobby, pressed the elevator button. It was warm in here, the prewar radiators clanking and hissing. She went to the bank of mailboxes, unlocked the one for 12C. Junk mail, credit card solicitations, utility bills.

When the elevator arrived, she said, “I can take it from here,” and gave him a five. She rode up to the twelfth floor, walked down the empty hall, and set her bags in front of the door. Kneeling, she checked the small strip of clear tape that bridged the bottom of the door and the vinyl runner. It was untouched. She keyed the door open, listened for a moment before going in. The clock ticking in the kitchen, nothing else.

She dropped the mail on the foyer table, punched in the security code on the wall keypad, then walked through the apartment, checking rooms. There was no sign anyone had been here while she was gone.

You’re tired and paranoid, she thought—and it gets worse each time.

She brought the bags in and locked the door, two dead bolts and a police bar. In the living room, she turned up the thermostat, took off her leather jacket, left it on the futon. She was feeling the miles now, the residual stress from the last few days.

She was hungry, but almost everything in the refrigerator had gone bad. She made a sandwich of sliced turkey and wilted lettuce stuffed into a stale pita, ate it at the living room window, looking down on 108th Street, Broadway beyond.

Snow was blowing against the glass, gathering on the fire escape. The bar across the street had Christmas lights up already, blinking red and blue bulbs strung above the neon beer signs. A handful of people stood outside, smoking. One by one, they flicked their butts into the street and went back in, passing others coming out to take their place.

Past the corner, she could see the triangle of Straus Park, where Broadway and West End Avenue intersected, snow already covering the grass. A homeless man lay across a bench there, a blanket pulled over him. Catching as much sleep as he could before the police rousted him, sent him back uptown.

She ate half the sandwich, tossed the rest, got a bottle of Château d’Arcins Médoc from the rack atop the refrigerator. She opened it, poured a glass, carried it into the bedroom, and booted up the laptop on her desk. She sipped wine, went to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Web site. There was an item about the robbery, but nothing that hadn’t been in the television report. The four-paragraph story ended with a Crime Stoppers number.

She closed the laptop, brought the glass back into the living room. She turned on the radio in the wall unit. It was already tuned to WQXR, the classical station, and a Bach cello suite filled the room. It was a piece she’d come to recognize but couldn’t name.

Sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor, she unzipped the overnight bag, spilled the cash out. She sipped wine and counted it again. Thirty-one thousand five hundred. Not a dollar more. A lot of risk for little reward.

It was snowing harder now, the wind dancing it around out there in the streetlights. She put the money back in the bag, zipped it shut, got the bottle from the kitchen.

She turned off all the lights in the apartment, sat on the futon, legs tucked under her, bottle on the floor. The lights across the street lit the room in blinking blue and red. It was warmer in here now, the radiators hissing and banging, the reassuring sounds of home.

Alone in the dark, she drank wine and watched the snow.