“Pssst, Tyler! Are you asleep?”
His eyes opened slowly to the slender silhouette looming in the moonlight. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“It’s almost five.”
“Thanks for the bulletin.”
“Are you always this grumpy in the morning?”
“I don’t know. I’m never up this early.”
“Monday night at the Lyons, I called you a clown. And you said, ‘Thanks, I love clowns.’”
He yawned. “So what?”
“You love them so much you framed circus posters and hung them on the wall. Why?”
“You woke me just to ask that?”
“Of course not. I was frightened to wake up in a strange bed.”
“Where did you expect to wake up? On a bus for Cleveland?”
“You knew I wouldn’t leave last night, didn’t you?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t.”
“Hoped nothing. You invested a fortune in women’s clothes... They are for me, aren’t they?”
“Yes, Mayson, they’re for you.”
“Then thank you. And don’t worry, I’ll repay you.”
“They’re a gift.”
“You don’t know me well enough to be making gifts.”
“Then how about discounts? Give me your ninety bucks and we’ll call it even.”
“Those clothes are worth ten times that. And besides, I’ll need the money for my bus ticket.”
Dawn crept into the window, exposing her disheveled clothes and hair. “You’re not going anywhere, Mayson.”
“Tyler, I stayed last night but I can’t again. I’m leaving this morning.”
“That’s smart,” he sat up now. “Leaving in broad daylight will will make it much easier for Duke to spot you. Maybe your thoughtfulness will persuade him to knock a few months off your life sentence.”
“You’re not clever, Tyler.”
“Clever or not, you’re not leaving. That’s final.”
“I’m not one of your possessions!” she barked. “I’ll go when and where I please. And further, I’m not very happy that you carried me into your bedroom last night.”
“You were asleep. Half a bottle of Chianti — how do you drink that stuff?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“All right, I’ll close it. You’re not leaving.”
Jumping up angrily, she stormed out.
He rose too, peering out at an endless, granite hell that not even the morning sun could brighten. On the streets below, a city’s police force searched for a murder suspect hiding in his apartment. Would the FBI join them today? What had Mayson stumbled upon at Morris’s apartment Sunday night? It was much too dangerous to stay and find out. They’d have to leave soon. Turning at a sudden rustle, he found her in the doorway. “Now what’s wrong?”
“You’re in your underwear.”
He glanced at his plaid boxers. “So what? I have swim trunks shorter. Pretend we’re at the beach.”
“I’ll pretend no such thing. And I’m not one of your puttanas. Now put your pants on.”
“See? There you go again...”
“Tyler...”
“All right, goddamnit.” Grabbing his slacks from the closet, he quickly pulled them on.
“And while we’re on the subject of underwear,” she said. “I noticed you bought me such intimate articles last night.”
“A kind you don’t like, obviously. And the bras — too large, I bet? “
“Stop. You’re embarrassing me.”
“You needed underwear,” he shrugged. “I got it. What’s wrong with that? I’m gonna make coffee.” He started for the kitchen.
She followed him. “Do you really think my breasts are too small?”
“Underwear we can’t discuss.” He opened the cabinet. “But women’s breasts; now there’s a safe topic.”
“Not ‘women’s’ breasts,” she blushed. “My breasts. Well, are they too small or not?”
“They’re fine.” He glanced now, pulling the mugs down. “You take yours with one sugar, right?”
She nodded as he started the microwave. First movies, now preferred condiments. He’d really noticed her this past month. “Your museum includes piano recitals. Do you play?”
“No.”
Was he embarrassed to admit it? “There’s nothing wrong with playing the piano, you know.”
“No, there’s not.” As the microwave beeped, he pulled the mugs out, adding sugar to hers.
Sipping her coffee, she studied him in his gray flannels. Shirtless, shoeless, tangled gold hair in his eyes, he needed only a straw hat and corncob pipe, with perhaps a dangling weed in his teeth to make an elegant Huck Finn. “What’s wrong?” She became conscious of his staring.
“Your face,” he nodded.
Yes, she felt it now - her cheeks’ pleasant warmth. She was smiling. “Tyler, what’s going on? Why are we sipping coffee in your kitchen, me smiling, you, half-dressed?”
“Because you need help. Beyond that, I haven’t a clue.”
She studied her elegant Huck Finn again, with his broad shoulders and chest, and his lean-muscled arms. Madonna mia, his flat stomach even had ripples. “You’re very hard to understand.”
“And you’re not?”
Taking her coffee into the study, she drew her hair back to look at herself in the mirror. As he drifted in, she asked, “I don’t suppose you’d have time to buy me some makeup?”
“Write down what you want.”
She turned from the mirror. “Shouldn’t you be getting to the firm?”
Work. He’d forgotten. “I’d better take a shower.”
He’d almost finished dressing when she slipped quietly into the bedroom. “What’s wrong?” He caught her solemn face in the mirror.
“Nothing.” She idly studied his dark suit and white Oxford shirt. The garnet-and-gold striped tie went well with the suit, she decided, following his loops, tucks, and slashes that ended finally with a perfect Windsor knot. “How can you remember all those steps?” she marveled.
“I do this every morning,” he smiled. “For a small fee, I’ll be glad to teach you the process.”
She gazed at their reflections. Her head barely reached his shoulder. “How tall are you?”
“Six-three. Why, are you writing a book?”
Six-three, her guess to the inch. “Do you really like that movie, My Fair Lady? It’s one of your museum pieces.”
He noted her restlessness. “I’ve seen it about twenty times.”
“I didn’t ask how many times you’d seen it.” She flicked at lint on his suit. “I asked if you liked it.”
“Why else would I sit through it so many times?”
“Why must you be so difficult?” Slipping into the bathroom, she returned with a damp tissue. “Now hold still.” She dabbed his jaw. “You clumsy gavonne, you nicked yourself shaving. Well, did you like it or not?”
My Fair Lady, he remembered. “Yes, I did.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?”
“Why did you like it, you idiot! Certainly there was something worth remembering, or else you wouldn’t have included it in your museum.”
He studied their reflections. They were sniping at each other in the mirror and she was driving him crazy. “I don’t know why I liked it, I just did.”
“After twenty times, nothing stands out in your mind?”
He looked at her expectant face. Of course. “The actress; you look like her.”
“You think I look like Audrey Hepburn?”
“Isn’t that the reason for this drill? You look just like her. Everyone must tell you that.”
A shadow fell over him. “Tyler, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He squirmed into his jacket, checking his watch. “Did you jot down the makeup you wanted?”
“The pad on the hall table. Then you won’t tell me?”
“Nothing’s wrong, goddamnit!”
His sharp tone revealed the opposite. Something was wrong. He just had no intention of revealing it. There was something, however, she must reveal. The time had come. “Tyler, you were right. I was at Morris’s apartment Sunday night. I found him dead.”
Slowly he turned. “The .38 was yours?” When she nodded, he asked, “Where is it now?”
“At the bottom of the East River.”
“Morris had it before that night?”
Again she nodded. “Long before our relationship deteriorated. So long, I’d forgotten about it.”
“How do you forget a snub-nose .38?”
“Because I no longer needed it. After moving into the Lyons, I stored it in an old chest, where it remained until I lent it to him.” She sighed over his obvious confusion. “Tyler, I come from a world you can’t begin to understand. While you were struggling with table manners and ballroom etiquette, I was learning how to protect myself on the Brooklyn streets. When you were returning from oyster roasts, I was locking up Cellini’s Market and contemplating the six treacherous blocks home. The odds of being mugged weren’t much different than getting picked off by a sniper in Vietnam. So I bought a gun for protection.
“Fortunately I never had to use it.” She dropped on the bed. “But the peace of mind was worth the pennies I scraped together to buy it. Only after quitting Cellini’s and moving to the Lyons did my fear finally disappear. I bought the BMW and no longer had to walk the dangerous streets at night. The .38 was stored and forgotten.”
“Why did Morris borrow it?” He dropped beside her.
“The same reason I bought it: protection.”
“But if you felt safe at the Lyons, why wouldn’t he in his maximum-security apartment on the Upper East Side?”
“I guess we found out it wasn’t so secure after all,” she replied.
“But Morris was skittish - obsessed with his mortality. He said there’d been some recent muggings in his neighborhood, one just that week in the Essex garage. That was enough for him. Despite his fear of guns, he was convinced he needed one. So I lent him mine.”
“Why not just sell it to him?”
“Tyler, it’s perfectly legal to own a gun. How was I to know it’d become the weapon in a murder case? Every time I asked him about it, he promised to buy his own and return mine. But he never did, and after a while, I just forgot about it - until Sunday night, anyway.”
“Tell me about that night, Mayson, beginning to end.”
“End?” she frowned. “It hasn’t yet. The scene inside his apartment is still so horribly fresh, like...” She glanced at his hand, suddenly over hers. The sensation was much too sweet to be safe. Discreetly, she slipped her hand away.
Yet she couldn’t escape his eyes, insistent but gentle. He wanted to help and she wanted to know why. He meant to calm and yet frightened her, as much as the police, she was beginning to realize. “When Morris called that night, he sounded desperate, failing to mention he’d tried you first. But I should’ve assumed it. Anyway as he began groveling, I quickly saw an advantage to accommodating him. I had nothing to lose. He’d made it clear he was out to get me. I knew my days at Lieber Allen were numbered. He didn’t explain his predicament, but the desperation in his voice was real as he begged me to drive him out to La Guardia. There was no time to waste. Everything, Babe, depends on me making that flight.
“My antennae went up. What did he mean? When I asked why he didn’t take his car, he said it was in the shop.
So what about a cab? I asked. Look, Babe, he snapped. I don’t have time for this. Now come get me!
Why should I? I asked. You want to destroy me and I’m supposed to drop what I’m doing, and rush you out to the airport? You’ll have to do better than that.
“He must’ve wanted to break my neck,” she sighed. “But he was in such a hurry.”
Look Babe, I’ve been a putz, all right? You want an apology, you got it. And I said, I want more than an apology, you arrogant sonofabitch! I want Lambrusco and my other assignments back. And I want Senior Associate. Now do you still want a ride?
“For cab fare,” Tyler smiled. “You were negotiating me right out of the picture. What did he say?”
“That we’d talk on the way. And I said, ‘Talk’s cheap, Morris.’ To which he sighed, ‘All right, Babe, we’ll see.’ “
“Then you went for the jugular, right?”
“No.” Her eyes dimmed. “That’s when I realized something was wrong. That he wasn’t rushing to meet a deadline, but to avoid one. My suspicions grew on the drive over to his building. Why had he cut his vacation short? Why leave again so soon? And why consider giving me not only what he’d stolen but more?
“I got there around nine and parked in the basement. His BMW was down there, too, in the usual corner spot. Why had he lied about it being in the shop? Why not take it to the airport? Why Senior Associate? A zillion questions swirled in my mind as I rushed up to his apartment. I knew something was wrong and yet...” She shook her head.
“What, Mayson?”
“Don’t you see? I knew something was wrong and yet it was only my welfare I was concerned about. If Morris was in trouble, why stick my nose into it? Didn’t I have enough problems of my own?”
“But you did stick your nose into it. You went upstairs using the freight elevator. Why, is it quicker?”
She nodded. “I began using it when I did his laundry. That’s why I had the key, and to meet repairmen and decorators. I was his Girl Friday. Didn’t you know?”
He shook his head. “Why didn’t you go to Lamp?”
“What would he have done, assign me to someone else? I would’ve been branded a complainer.”
“Not if you’d gone to him with the real rub, not this Girl Friday bullshit - Morris’s sexual extortion.”
Meeting his insistent eyes, she no longer saw a reason to protect her terrible secret. “It was harmless at first, the kind you swat with an insult or curse. But six months ago it got ugly. Words, what you call my Italian shock waves, became useless.”
“The same time I arrived,” he sighed. “A grievance, lawsuit... you could’ve done something, Mayson, and yet you didn’t. Why?”
“If I’d started making noise, even with cause, I would’ve lost any hope of advancing at the firm. And a lawsuit? So what if you win damages after five years and a dozen appeals? I wanted to practice law. Become a partner. I figured if I kept my mouth shut and worked hard, I’d be rid of Morris sooner or later. I just didn’t realize it’d be Sunday night.”
“Since the Essex records don’t reflect a visitor that night, how would the killer have gotten up to Morris’s apartment unless he had a key?” Tyler asked. “Who besides you had one?”
“Just Morris’s sister in Connecticut, that I know of.”
“What about Lamp?”
“He or anyone else at the firm could’ve gotten one if they wanted. All they’d have to do is steal the key long enough to make a copy at that little shop in the square. Everyone knew Morris took his jacket off the instant he arrived in the morning. He’d wrap it over his chair and there it’d remain until he left in the evening, unless he had a client meeting.”
Tyler glanced at his watch. It was almost nine but he had to hear the rest. “Tell me about the apartment.”
She gazed at her knotted hands. She’d prayed for that night to go away. But it hadn’t, its threatening shadow growing until now, when she was forced to confront it and to trust the last person on earth she could ever have imagined. “By the time I reached his apartment, I was so frightened, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t see Mrs. Carter or bother knocking. I just groped for my key, unlocked the door and went inside.” She shook her head as the horrible scene was replayed in her mind. “You wouldn’t believe it, Tyler, unless you’d seen it with your own eyes. Not a piece of furniture was left standing. Bookshelves, cabinets, drawers — everything had been ripped out and tossed on the floor.
“Wading through it, I recall thinking just one word: desperation. Whoever ransacked the apartment had been desperate to find something. Had they? Or was it still buried somewhere in the rubble?” She sighed. “Poor Morris. All this destruction had taken place in the hour since our call. Then I realized he must be buried in the rubble, too; maybe if I hadn’t kept him on the line all that time, he wouldn’t be.”
“Mayson, you couldn’t have saved him, with, or without those minutes.”
His hand was over hers again and it frightened her. The more she wanted it there, the more she knew she shouldn’t. She slipped her hand away again. “The bedroom was a wreck like the rest of the place. I finally found him sprawled in the bathtub, his eyes open, lifeless. He’d been shot in the head, blood dripping into the basin. For an eternity, I just stood there gaping at this bloody corpse, trying to comprehend that just an hour ago it had been the loud, obnoxious, brilliant lawyer I’d worked for. This was Morris Mendelsohn? How could it be? Finally the fog lifted and I heard the terrible quiet, wondering if possibly the killer was still in the apartment watching me. I looked back in the tub...”
“That’s when you found the gun?” he asked.
She nodded. “I grabbed it just before the spreading blood reached it. My first thought was, What if he hadn’t called, if I hadn’t arrived in time to snatch it?”
“You never considered his death a suicide?”
She shrugged, “Who rips up his own apartment before putting a gun to his head? Morris had been desperate, but to save his life, not end it.”
“So you decided to split rather than hang around and try to explain the circumstances?”
“I saw no other choice. It wasn’t just my gun I’d have to explain, but why I was there. And how long would it take them to discover our hatred of each other? They’d hardly have to open a file to put the pieces together: motive, opportunity and physical evidence.”
“The old couple who lived below made the call,” he said. “They claimed to be hard of hearing, but I guess some things you just don’t miss, like furniture being tossed around... gun shots.” Checking his watch again, he said, “So you fled — observed in the process, we know. What then? You tossed the gun?”
“Not immediately,” she replied. “At first I just drove around, up one busy street, down the next, realizing a time bomb was ticking in my purse. I had to get rid of it. Like a maniac, I raced for the East River, stopped below the Queensboro Bridge, and tossed it. When I heard the splash, I ran away.”
“You went home then?” he asked.
“To a horrible, sleepless night,” she nodded. “Hours crept by as I sat at the bedroom window, questions circling in my head. Had anyone seen me at the Essex? Who knew about the gun or my feud with Morris? Had any of my neighbors seen me come or go that night? Would my family’s past cloud the investigation? Certainly the NYPD archives had at least one room dedicated to Santa’s murders.” She sighed. “I’d wrestle with one question then confront another. It went on like that until suddenly, the gray morning was in the window and I realized that wrestling with the questions might not be nearly as bad as learning the answers. Should I wait to see or skip town? And you know the rest of the story.” Looking up now, she said, “It’s late. You’d better get to the firm.”
As he rose, she followed him out. “So what do you think?”
“That we have our work cut out for us.” Reaching the door, he withdrew a file from his briefcase. “Your first assignment,” he explained. “The records inventory Frieda and I prepared. It’s all there — cases, clients, adversaries. Assuming Morris knew his killer, he may exist somewhere in the records.”
Her eyes lifted with a budding admiration. “If I’ve ever called you lazy, you’re sure not when you don’t want to be. And I’m grateful for what you’re doing. But more than grateful, I’m desperate to understand why. I’ve given you no cause to feel anything towards me but contempt; but instead of celebrating my downfall with everyone else, you’ve joined me in it. So again I’m forced to ask: why?”
He studied her impassively. “I’ve told you: I don’t know. But if it comes to me, you’ll be the first to know. Now,” he shut his briefcase. “I must...”
“Wait!” Rushing off, she returned quickly with her purse over her shoulder, orange juice in one hand, muffin in the other.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Breakfast, you dope.”
Setting his briefcase down, he bit into the muffin. “Delicious. Can you do Eggs Benedict?”
She gave him a scrap of paper from her purse. “I found this while wading through the rubbish in Morris’s apartment. It probably means nothing.”
“Robert Hunter. 343 6217,” he read. “A client’s phone number?”
“Not one I recognize. Do you think it’s important? If so, why didn’t the murderer take it?”
“Maybe he didn’t see it. Why not disguise your voice and call the number with each Manhattan area code. If Robert Hunter answers, hang up and we’ll decide our next move tonight. Only don’t tie up the line. If I need to reach you, I’ll ring twice, hang up and call back thirty seconds later. You’ll know it’s safe to answer then. Only disguise your voice just to be sure.”
“And if I need to call you?”
“If it’s an emergency, ring twice, then hang up. I’ll call back. And another thing: stay away from the windows. If you go into the study, draw the drapes.”
“Tyler, we’re eight stories up.”
“So what? They have these things now called telescopes. And thanks for breakfast.” Kissing her head, he slipped out.