Holy Terror Page 6

  ‘Oh, yes? Like what? What else am I good for?’

  ‘You could be a magician. Look at that David Copperfield. He makes a fortune.’

  ‘I can just see two thousand people flocking to Carnegie Hall to see an ex-detective produce hard-cooked eggs out of his ears.’

  She took hold of his chin and turned his face sideways until he was looking directly into her cornflower-blue eyes. ‘Think about it. It could have been you that was shot today. Then it would have been Salvatore coming to tell me that I was a widow, and I’m not even married yet.’

  ‘You always said you wanted to be a free spirit.’

  ‘If it’s a choice between losing you and keeping you, I’d rather not be free at all.’

  ‘Well, that’s just as well. We Irishmen expect our women to cook all of our meals and wash our shirts and blacklead our stoves, at the same time as bearing us twenty-three children and holding down a job at Grand Central Station, sweeping out the trains, to keep us in beer money. You won’t have the time to be free.’

  She was silent, stroking his hair. After a while he said, ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think this is the right moment to tell you.’

  ‘Tell me, for Christ’s sake. Don’t keep me in suspense.’

  ‘Well, I had a call today. I could get a job.’

  He stared at her. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning nothing at all. Except that I could get a job.’

  ‘A good job, you’re talking about, like you had before? A full-time, well-paid job?’

  She nodded. ‘Frank Rossi wants me for a new late-night discussion show.’

  ‘So you’re going to take it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wanted to discuss it with you first.’

  ‘Why do you have to discuss it with me? It sounds like a wonderful offer. Take it.’

  ‘It’s just that if I did take it… well, you wouldn’t have to work at that security job any more. You’d have time to look around for something that wasn’t so dangerous.’

  ‘Lisbeth, I used to be a police detective. As far as I’m concerned, this job doesn’t even register on the Richter Scale as mildly risky.’

  ‘How can you say that, when you could have been killed today?’

  ‘A 747 could have fallen on my head, whether I was chief of security at Spurr’s Fifth Avenue or not.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I could have been sitting here on my own this evening. And every other evening to come.’

  Conor kissed her. ‘Do you know what my grandfather used to say? He said that when a woman comes to live with a man, she brings two suitcases with her. One suitcase filled with pretty underwear and another suitcase filled with chains.’

  Lacey went to change while Conor finished his beer. He glanced toward the bedroom door and he could see her reflection in the mirror. After his experience with Paula, he still found it extraordinary that he could love a woman so much. But he loved everything about her, right down to the way she scolded him for eating hamburgers, and the way she sang shrill, wildly off-key songs when she was decorating. Bob Seger would have wept to hear her sing ‘Hollywood Nights’.

  Her real name was Lisbeth Johannsen. She was very tall, with shoulders like a swimmer. She had blond flyaway hair, high Nordic cheekbones and a tip-tilted nose. Conor always said that she had pink satin pillows instead of lips.

  She had started her working life as a researcher for NBC, eventually graduating to television reporter and then to early-evening anchor. But her career was mortally wounded by a disastrous two-and-a-half-year relationship with Larry Elgar, a failed producer who drank Stolichnaya for breakfast and regularly beat her. She couldn’t turn up to present the six o’clock news with two black eyes and a plaster over the bridge of her nose, so she was forced to quit. Eventually, however, a gay friend called Sebastian Speed found her a part-time job at American Interior magazine, producing photographic features on elegant people’s elegant homes.

  Lacey first met Conor at one of the press conferences after the Forty-Ninth Street Golf Club trial, when she was filling in for NBC’s regular trial reporter. They were literally pushed together by jostling and shouting pressmen, and he put his arm around her to protect her. She met him next at a formal cocktail party given by the Mayor at Gracie Mansion. That was after Conor’s resignation, and hardly anybody would talk to him; not that he was ever an easy man to talk to. He looked sober and handsome that evening, in a snow-white shirt and a navy-blue suit. She wore a very low-cut dress of blue shot silk, with her hair pinned up. ‘You remember me,’ she introduced herself. ‘You saved me from the baying mob.’

  His only response was a smile. But Lacey persevered, even when he was silent, and the next day he called her up and asked her for dinner.

  They explored each other that evening, talking for hours. She was fascinated by Conor’s mixture of sly flirtatiousness and the unusual logic by which he lived his life. Every time she felt that she had opened up one door in his personality, there was another door, and another. He was romantic and occasionally sentimental, and he could take a joke, but she felt that beyond the very last door there was a man who was capable of making very hard decisions indeed.

  For his part, he had never met a woman so outspoken, but he was alarmed by her disregard for her own emotional safety. He didn’t know how she could have stayed with a sadistic creep like Larry Elgar for so long. And she still blamed herself for provoking him into hitting her. ‘I should have known better. I was strong and he was weak.’

  ‘Not too weak to crack two of your ribs.’

  ‘So what? Physical strength, that doesn’t count for anything.’

  He fell in love with her because she was driven and unusual and beautiful. But he fell in love with her most of all because she was vulnerable and he wanted to protect her – just like, ultimately, he wanted to protect everybody. To protect and serve wasn’t just a slogan.

  She walked in wearing a plain white linen dress. ‘Do you want another beer?’

  ‘No thanks. I could use a shower.’

  ‘You don’t mind about the job?’

  He shook his head. He did mind, but how could he tie her down? He had learned a long time ago that nobody owns anybody else.

  While Conor was showering, Lacey sat on the edge of the bathtub and talked to him. He was very muscular, and she liked to watch the foamy water running down his chest. ‘So tell me all the grisly details about the hearing.’

  ‘There’s not much more to tell you. I can get to see Fay whenever Paula thinks it’s convenient.’

  ‘So what does that mean? Convenient?’

  ‘In practice it probably means that I’m allowed to act as babysitter whenever she and that oily broker friend of hers decide they want to spend a long weekend upstate.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Can you appeal?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m beginning to think that it might be better if I turn my back on the whole situation.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Conor came out of the shower, looking as tired as a marathon swimmer, his chest hair spread in a dark wide fan. ‘Meaning I may be prepared to wait to see Fay until she’s old enough to come find me for herself.’

  Lacey stood up and rubbed him with his towel. ‘You’ve had a bad day. You don’t want to make decisions like that, not until you’ve gotten over it.’

  Naked, he held her close, and kissed her, and stroked her hair. She touched the star-shaped scar on his left cheekbone. It was kind of a code. It meant that she knew what hardships he had been through, and that she was prepared to share them.

  The doorbell rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Lacey. ‘It’s probably Gina, wanting to borrow some coffee.’

  Conor continued to towel himself while Lacey opened the door. In the steamed-up mirror over the washbasin, he didn’t look like himself at all. Older, tireder. A man who had lost his mission in life.

  The bathroom door was slightly ajar. He heard Lacey saying, ‘It
’s OK … I’ll get him. Just hold on a minute.’

  She came into the bathroom. It’s Drew Slyman, and he’s brought two uniforms with him.’

  ‘Slyman? What the hell does he want?’

  He wrapped the towel around his waist and went into the living room. Lieutenant Slyman was standing by the window. The pharmacy sign across the street made his face glow green. Two police officers stood beside the couch with matching Village People mustaches and self-satisfied looks on their faces.

  ‘O’Neil …’ said Lieutenant Slyman. ‘Sorry to interrupt your ablutions.’ He stepped away from the window, looking around the apartment and rubbing his hands together. ‘This isn’t quite what you’re used to. But maybe, well … let’s not beat around the bush. Maybe that was your motive.’

  ‘Motive? What are you talking about? My motive for what?’

  ‘Oh, come on, now. You didn’t think we were that slow, did you? I don’t exactly know yet what kind of a complicated stunt you’ve been trying to pull here, but believe me I very soon will.’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Lieutenant Slyman, spreading his arms to appeal to his officers. ‘He doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about? What did you think I was going to do, once we’d taken those safety deposit boxes back to Spurr’s? Say: “That’s it, fine, case closed, ex-Chief O’Neil has stitched everything up, we can all go home early?’”

  ‘Why not? None of the boxes was missing. I put them back into the strongroom myself. You saw me.’

  Slyman came up close. His eyes were shining and his mouth was even more Cupid-like than ever. ‘Yes, I did. But you know me. I always like to be extra-specially thorough, cover my ass. I went through that list you gave me and I managed to contact nine of the fifteen lessees of those safety deposit boxes and tell them what had happened.’

  ‘Thanks a lot. That’ll be great for business.’

  ‘I invited all nine of them to come to Spurr’s and check that their boxes were still virgo intacta, so to speak. Only seven of them live in the midtown area and only four of them were able to drop into Spurr’s, but those four were enough.’

  ‘I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

  ‘The boxes were empty, that’s what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Empty?’

  ‘I’m still trying to work out how you did it. It’s possible that you could have switched boxes, who knows – but there were no other boxes in that Brinks-Mat truck. My strongest suspicion is that they were empty even before those poor saps came in to steal them.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning only one thing. That you had already cleaned out those boxes before your Brinks-Mat robbers got there.’

  Conor shook his head in exasperation. ‘This is ridiculous, Slyman, and you know it. I can’t open the strongroom on my own. They give me only half the code and a senior member of Spurr’s staff has the other half.’

  Lieutenant Slyman took out his notebook and flipped it open. ‘That’s right … this week it was Darrell Bussman. Well, Darrell Bussman’s still in a coma, and so he can’t speak for himself, but I’d sure like to talk to you.’

  ‘Darrell wouldn’t steal from Spurr’s. Give him a couple of years he’s going to inherit most of it.’

  ‘Well, this wasn’t exactly stealing from the store, was it? It was stealing from its customers. And from what your people have told me, the contents of those safety deposit boxes could have run into billions. Hard to resist, especially for a young man with a taste for Ferraris and women and betting on the track. And even harder to resist for an ex-cop on a third of his previous salary and a whole lot of legal bills to pay.’

  ‘You’re talking out of your ass.’

  ‘Am I?’ Lieutenant Slyman tucked his notebook back in his pocket and bared his teeth. ‘You’d be surprised how often I’ve seen sons-and-heirs get too greedy and good cops turn rotten.’

  ‘So what’s supposed to be missing?’ asked Conor, trying hard to suppress his temper.

  ‘Hey, you’re talking like you don’t even know.’

  ‘Of course I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned, what people want to keep in their safety deposit boxes is their own business.’

  ‘Well, we don’t know either, not for sure. None of the four lessees would give me any specifics on what their boxes had contained, and only one of them said that he was covered by insurance. But you should have seen how worried they were. I mean they were practically filling their pants. It’s my guess that those boxes contained some pretty compromising material, and it’s my guess that they’d all pay a whole lot of money to get it back.’

  ‘You’re trying to suggest that I was going to blackmail them? Come on, Slyman, you’re way off beam.’

  ‘I don’t think so, somehow. You know – you were my role model once. I really admired you. The way you broke the Baroccis, incredible. But you never knew what side you were on, did you, and you never knew when to stop. You had to go on to break the Forty-Ninth Street Golf Club, too, and the Golf Club were the only team of law-enforcement officers that ever put the fear of God into the goodfellas, ever.’

  ‘They were extortionists and murderers, Slyman, and you know it.’

  ‘Maybe they were. But they were our extortionists and murderers. All you had to do was to turn a blind eye.’

  ‘Couldn’t do that, Slyman.’

  ‘I know. You were always such a saint. But even saints can fall off their pedestals, can’t they? You’re under arrest for the theft of personal property from four sample safety deposit boxes lodged in the strongroom at Spurr’s Fifth Avenue. Do you want me to read you your rights?’

  Conor said, ‘You bet. And I want my attorney present. And I’m not moving out of this apartment until he’s here.’

  Lieutenant Slyman shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you don’t have the right to insist on that. You’re charged with abducting a police officer, four counts of larceny, one count of grand theft auto, seven counts of dangerous driving and criminal damage. And more, do you want the whole list? You’re under arrest, O’Neil. You’re coming downtown and you don’t have any choice in the matter.’

  ‘He’s a hero!’ said Lacey, quaking with indignation. ‘How can you arrest him when he’s a hero?’

  ‘Miss, in my book he was always a hero,’ said Lieutenant Slyman. ‘The trouble is, he wasn’t always a hero for the right reasons.’

  Conor said, ‘I have to get dressed. Lacey – will you put a call in to Michael Baer – he’s probably gone home now but you’ll get him on his mobile. Tell him we’ve got some kind of ridiculous misunderstanding here.’

  Lacey picked up the phone. Conor walked toward the bedroom and one of the officers swaggered after him. ‘Back off,’ Conor told him. The officer stopped, perplexed. Conor turned to Slyman and said, ‘Next time I want to be followed into my bedroom by an adolescent walrus, I’ll call the zoo.’

  ‘Just making sure you don’t try to abscond,’ said Lieutenant Slyman.

  ‘From seven floors up?’

  ‘I don’t know. You might try to commit suicide.’

  ‘And you’d care about that? You’d push me, if you had the chance.’

  ‘Just leave the bedroom door open, will you? That’ll do.’

  In the yellow-painted bedroom with its big pine bed, Conor pulled on a fresh pair of shorts, a blue polo shirt and a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. In the comer, out of sight of Slyman and his men, he crammed more clean clothes into a small nylon bag, as well as a toothbrush and a razor from the washbasin. He slung the bag over his shoulder.

  Lacey came in. ‘Michael’s attending a B’nai B’rith dinner. He’s going to meet us at the precinct just as soon as he can.’

  He put his finger to his lips.

  ‘What?’ she said. Then she saw the bag.

  ‘You can’t go,’ she whispered.

  ‘I have to. I swear to God they’ll kill me if I don’t.’

&
nbsp; ‘But how can they?’

  ‘Are you kidding me? They have a dozen different ways of doing it, once you’re in custody.’

  ‘But how are you going to get out of here? It’s so high up.’

  ‘I’ll go over the roof. I’ll go to Sebastian’s place.’

  ‘But you can’t take heights. You know you can’t.’

  He held her close, and he kissed her. She smelled of Calvin Klein perfume and that warm natural biscuity smell of blondes. ‘I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can. Don’t say anything to Slyman until Michael shows up. And I mean anything. Don’t let these bastards bully you.’

  ‘But you didn’t do it, did you? You didn’t steal anything out of those boxes?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. They’ll kill me, Lacey. If they don’t kill me down at the precinct when they’re questioning me, they’ll make sure that I go to Attica, where they sent the rest of the Forty-Ninth Street Golf Club, and they’ll kill me there for sure.’

  ‘O’Neil!’ called Slyman, just outside the door.

  ‘Got your pants on yet? We don’t have all night.’

  ‘I have to go,’ Conor whispered into Lacey’s ear.

  ‘I never wanted anything like this to happen to you … but you’ll be brave, won’t you? I won’t let them harm you, whatever happens.’

  ‘Come on, O’Neil!’

  Lacey gave Conor a smile that he would never forget. Then she positioned herself behind the half-open bedroom door so that her back was reflected in the cheval-mirror in the opposite corner of the room.

  ‘Trust me,’ she whispered. ‘I love you.’ Then she reached behind her and tugged down the zipper of her dress, and let it fall open.

  Looking in through the door, Lieutenant Slyman and his two officers must have been able to see her – if only a dim, angled reflection. They were silent, and they didn’t shout out any more.

  She slipped her sleeves off her shoulders and then wriggled her hips so that the dress dropped down to the floor. She stepped out of it, and now she was wearing nothing but a white bra and a white lacy thong.

  Conor rolled quietly over the bed. He went to the window and eased it open. Fortunately their old air-conditioning unit was making such an irregular racket that he could have set off Chinese firecrackers and nobody would have heard. He could see that Lacey was reaching behind her to unfasten her bra but he didn’t want to look, not directly, knowing that Lieutenant Slyman was watching her.