Buttering toast, he said, “By the way, I stopped by your place a couple of times last week and buzzed your apartment. No answer. The second time, I felt somebody behind me and when I turned around, the guy asked me if I knew you.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. He had me trapped in the entryway.”
“He was a mugger?”
“I thought it was a possibility. He held out his hand and said his name, or anyway, a name.”
“Which was what?” I asked.
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Did you shake hands with him?”
“No,” Adam said. “Why would I do that? It was one o’clock in the morning. The guy was a total stranger.”
“Was his manner threatening, or what?”
“Let me put it this way. He was acting like a husband.”
“Acting like a husband? In what way?”
“Suspicious, tough, pissed.”
“You sound like an expert in husbandly behavior. There are a hundred apartments in that building. How did he know it was my apartment you were buzzing?”
“He was looking over my shoulder while I did the buzzing, so maybe he read your name beside the doorbell.”
I said, “What did he look like?”
“Huge, like an NBA center,” Adam said. “Maybe three hundred pounds, all muscle, like he’d been lifting weights in prison.”
The ghost touched me. My skin shrank. I felt very, very cold.
I said, “Any facial hair?”
“Big red handlebar mustache,” Adam replied, talking with his mouth full of toast and drawing in the air a cartoon of Bear’s mustache.
~ * ~
FOUR
~ * ~
1
CLEMENTINE SAID, “MY DEAR CHILD,
you’re having an anxiety attack. Hence the tremor, the twitching eye, the shortness of breath, the perspiration, the fact that the smallest noise startles you, et cetera. Fright often brings on such symptoms.”
We were alone together in my apartment. Clementine seemed oblivious to its splendors. No doubt she had become familiar with them while supervising the installation of the cameras and microphones. She was the last person in the world I wanted to talk to, but when I called Henry from the hotel room and told him I was too terrified to go home by myself, she was the person he dispatched to walk me back to the apartment. He himself was too far away to help, exact location unspecified.
Clementine said, “You really should ring up Henry, you know, and report in.”
It was easier to do as she suggested than to be stubborn about it. I punched the hot key on the videophone, and two seconds later, Henry’s image flashed onto the screen. Wherever he was, he seemed to be in bright daylight. Behind him I could see sunlight bouncing from a windowpane, a bookcase, a table. I squinted, trying to read the titles of the books, as if knowing what was on the shelves would tell me where he was. To a rational mind, it wouldn’t have mattered where he was. To my addled brain, in this moment, it was vital, but as luck would have it, I had enough of a grip on myself not to ask.
“You’re all right?” Henry said.
“Fine.”
“Clementine can stay with you, if you want.”
I said, “That really won’t be necessary.”
“Whatever you say,” Henry said. “But pay attention to what she tells you. She knows her business.”
Back in the living room, I found Clementine with her cell phone to her ear. I could tell from the signs of delight in her face that she was talking to Henry. When she caught sight of me, she turned her back and murmured a few final words, then hung up.
She said, “Henry tells me you want to be alone. Does that still apply?”
“If you don’t mind. I can’t write when someone else is around.”
“Right. Before I go, we should discuss one or two matters. The first is your protection. A team of ten chaps is assigned to you. They will be in place at all times, day and night. I promise you they will keep you safe. Second, though I don’t believe you’ll need it, you should have some means of self-defense. Have you ever used a firearm?”
“My father taught me to shoot a .22 rifle. I had a boyfriend in college who liked to shoot rats at the town dump. We went on rat-shooting dates.”
“What sort of firearm did you use?”
“A .357 Magnum Smith and Wesson revolver.”
Clementine lifted her eyebrows. “You fired it?”
“Lots of times. It was fun.”
“You didn’t mind the recoil, the report?”
“No. We wore earplugs.”
From her large reticule, Clementine produced a semiautomatic pistol. It was stubby and sort of earth-toned. I hadn’t known that guns came in any other colors but black and blue and nickel. This one was loaded. Handling the weapon with aplomb, she removed the magazine and ejected the cartridge from the chamber, catching it in midair.
“This is a Heckler and Koch .40-caliber model P2000 SK semiautomatic pistol,” she said, handing it to me, butt first.
The gun was very heavy, about the weight of a two-quart milk carton.
“This weapon is the ne plus ultra of handguns,” Clementine said. “It makes a very loud noise when it goes off. It holds ten rounds, nine in the magazine, one in the chamber. The trigger is stiff. That makes it less likely to go off accidentally, but you have to use some strength to shoot it. Try. Squeeze, don’t pull.”
I planted my feet apart, held the pistol in both hands, aimed at a bare spot on the wall, and squeezed, as my gun-nut boyfriend had taught me. The hammer clicked on the empty chamber. She was right. The trigger was stiff.
She took the pistol from my hand and showed me how to load it and unload it.
“Now you,” she said.
I loaded and unloaded the weapon several times. It had a nice balance. It smelled like a gun.
Clementine handed me an extra clip. “Wipe the magazine clean with a tissue or cloth before you load it into the weapon. Keep a round in the chamber,” she said. “Failure to do this could cost you your life, as the man who is stalking you really doesn’t sound like the sort who would give you time to pump a round into the chamber. A single extra bullet can make all the difference, especially if you’re hunting rhino, as you appear to be doing. Carry the weapon with you at all times.”
She pulled a small shoulder bag out of her own mammoth drawstring purse. “Use this bag as a holster. Carry nothing else in it except the pistol and the extra magazine. You don’t want to fumble for it.”
“Isn’t carrying a handgun illegal in New York?”
“Not to worry. If the target appears, do not hesitate. Do not engage in conversation. Draw your weapon and fire all ten rounds into his chest. Shoot as fast as you can. Then let the magazine drop, thus, reload, and shoot him in the head, twice. Can you do that?”
She handed me the gun. I went through the drill several times.
“Well done,” Clementine said. “Practice until it’s second nature.”
She handed me yet another cell phone.
“Touch zero plus one for Henry, zero plus two for me,” she said. “I’ll call you on this phone every hour. Remember, fire a full magazine into the torso, then two rounds into the head. That will leave you a reserve of seven rounds in case you need them. If you’re outside this apartment, do not drop the weapon like Michael Corleone in
The Godfather.
Your fingerprints and DNA will be all over it. Put it into your purse and quietly walk away. Do not run. If you’re here, hold on to the pistol in case you haven’t quite killed the rotter. Call me immediately. Do not, I repeat, do
not
call the police.”
Her jaw jutted. She looked quite grim, but then that’s the way she usually looked.
I said, “You sound as if you think I’m actually going to get to shoot him.”
“I do hope you will,” said Clementine. “I should think it would be quite therapeutic.”
As soon as Clementine left, I ran to the computer. I laid the pistol beside the keyboard and wrote far into the afternoon, feeling neither hunger nor thirst.
That
was therapy. My mind was entirely within the story. As she had promised, Clementine called every hour, on the half hour. Time flew, but I was aware of my surroundings. I was alert. Bear could have walked into the room and I would have fired ten rounds into his chest and two in his skull and gone on writing.
Around five, Adam called on one of my throwaway phones. I had a paragraph to finish, so I didn’t pick up. A moment later, the phone vibrated again, skittering across the polished mahogany surface of the computer table. I looked at the caller ID. Adam again. But it was the wrong phone. I had never given him the number for this particular one.
I dialed his number. He answered halfway through the first ring.
He said, “Are you OK?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You looked like you thought I was going to throw you out the window when I told you about the guy who was hanging around your door.”
“Really?”
“You know you did. And then you go into the bathroom and I hear you vomiting and making a phone call. And the next thing I know, you rush by me without a word and you’re out the door.”
I said, “So why didn’t you run after me, calling my name?”
Adam said, “Because I was stark naked. By the time I got dressed and got downstairs, you were gone. I went to your apartment and buzzed you. No answer. I’m downstairs now. Let me in, please.”
“I’m not there.”
“Where are you?”
“Hiding out.”
“What do you mean,
hiding out?”
I said, “How did you get this number?”
“I looked up the received calls on my phone and called every number I didn’t recognize. You were twelfth on the list.”
This was a lie. I had never used this phone to call Adam.
But he was the one who said, “What
is
this?”
He was annoyed. So was I. What was he doing, buzzing my apartment, hanging around downstairs, calling attention to himself, to my doorway, to my absence? Bear was no idiot. He’d read the signs. If I told Adam where I was, Bear would grab him and get the truth out of him and fifteen minutes later be ripping the door off its hinges.
As Adam walked down the street with the phone at his ear, I could hear horns, sirens, loud voices speaking English and a dozen foreign languages, his breathing.
He said, “Meet me.”
“I can’t,” I said. “That guy you saw, the big guy hanging around the doorway?”
“Yeah. What about him?”
“What day of the week was it when you saw him?”