Come Out Tonight (11 page)

On the first floor, the door to Arlene’s apartment was closed, but I could tell she was in from the light leaking through the crack at the bottom.
 
On the second landing, one naked bulb illuminated Jessica’s threshold, still festooned with yellow tape.
 
As I turned to climb to the top floor, I could hear a door opening.
 

“Almost there,” Ryan called out from his doorway. I looked up to see a clean-cut twenty-something in a Harvard sweat shirt over gym shorts.
  
“Sorry about the climb,” he said as I reached him, panting.

The apartment was nice in a studied sort of way.
 
The furniture was clearly new: a modular set encircling an expensive carpet in the center; a leather recliner set just so to complete the conversation group, with a flat-screen TV on the wall across from recliner.
    

Ryan motioned to the modular set.
  
“So how can I help you?” he asked as we sat down.

“Well, you might start by telling me where you were the night of Jessica’s murder.”

At the word murder, he gave what looked like an involuntary shiver.
 
“I was out of town on business,” he said.
 
“I just got back today.
 
The whole thing was quite a shock.”

I nodded.
 
To him, maybe.
 
Unfortunately, to me it was all too common.
  
“Your business?” I asked, taking out a flip pad.

“Bio-medical research,” he said.

“Where were you and when?”

“The West Coast for the past three days.
 
Checking out the competition,” he said, with a slight smile.
 

I wrote down the academic establishment, the dates and his contacts.
 
His alibi would have to be checked out.
 
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business is that you take no one at their word.
 

“How well did you know Jessica?” I asked, still writing.

“Hardly at all,” Ryan replied.

“Do you have any idea who might have strangled her?”

“She was strangled?”
 
he said, shivering again.
 
“No, not really.”
 

I looked up.
 
“What do you mean by ‘not really’?
 
You
do
have an idea who strangled her or you
don’t?
”

“Did I say ‘not really’?” he said with a wry smile.
 
“I have no idea at all who might have killed her. I hardly knew her, as I said.”

“I understand she had a boy friend.”

“A boyfriend?
 
I wouldn’t be surprised.
 
I never saw him, but I’d hear someone thumping up the stairs at all hours, and a real racket below me, a lot of laughter, shouting.
 
I stamped on the floor a few times to tell them to keep it down.”

“How do you know it was a boyfriend?”

Ryan looked at me as if to say, you think I can’t distinguish between the sounds of two people having vigorous sex from a couple of girls having cupcakes at a pajama party?
 
“The thumping up the stairs sure sounded like a man,” he said instead.
 
“Want some tea?
 
I was just about to make myself a cup.”

“Sure, thanks,” I said, writing.

Ryan went off to a kitchen on his left.
 
I could hear that hollow sound water makes when it fills a kettle, a refrigerator door opening and closing.
 
I walked up to the window and stared out at a fire escape running up and down the side of the building.
 
Across the alley stood another brownstone with another fire escape.
 
Maybe Jessica’s naked silhouette, outlined in a bright window, drew the killer to her.
 
As I remembered, her window had been open the morning they found her. So, it could have been anyone – from the alley, from this building, from the other building - who climbed up to her window to do the deed.
 
It could have been anyone.

A whistling tea kettle brought me back, and I made my way into the little galley kitchen where Ryan was busy pouring water into a ceramic teapot, the scent of jasmine permeating the room. Two Channel Thirteen mugs were set out on a tray along with the teapot, cream, sugar, lemon, and two wooden coasters.
 
The thought of a man doing all this brought back all my tantalizing thoughts of what it would be like to live with Clark Kent.

Still, there was something about Ryan which seemed a little studied, like his apartment.
 
On the surface, he seemed completely frank, disarming, even, but there was this niggling feeling that he wasn’t telling me everything.
 
“You never saw him?” I asked as we sat down again.

“The boyfriend?
 
Never. I’m on the third floor, though, and I don’t make a practice of looking down a floor to see who’s coming in.” He paused.
 
“You might ask Arlene.”

I nodded.
 
I hadn’t gotten a lot from her either.
 
I wondered if both of them knew who this mysterious boyfriend was, but just weren’t saying.
 
“I don’t suppose Jessica and you were ever a couple?” I tried, just for the hell of it.

Ryan looked shocked.
 
“No, never.
 
I hardly knew her.”

“Ah, yes, you did say that,” I said, taking a sip of tea.
 
“Were you ever in her apartment?”

“Um, maybe once.
 
She asked if I could move her bureau.
 
And once to help her with her computer.”

“That would be twice, then.”

“Yeah.
 
You’re right.
 
That would be twice.”

“But you hardly knew her.”

“Right.”

“And you don’t know this boyfriend’s name.”

“No.”

“And never saw him.”

“Never.
 
How many times do I have to tell you that, Detective?”

I set my half-drunk mug of tea back down onto its coaster.
 
The interview was effectively over.
 
I didn’t want to go back to my apartment and find Julian in my bed, but I had nothing else to ask.
 
I thanked him and let myself out.

HENRY

“Anything wrong, Henry?” my doctor asked as I came into his office.

 
I had already been sitting in the waiting room for more than an hour, trying to get out of range of a woman’s hacking cough, finally wedging myself into the corner as far away from her as possible, where I flipped through old copies of
Field and Stream
and
What Diabetes Means to You
until the nurse called my name.
 
What could be wrong?

“Not really.
 
Just that I’m not sleeping.”

Dr. Hirsch flipped through the folder in front of him on the desk.
 
“I wrote you two prescriptions for Somnolux,” he said.
 
“The first one was in April, and then your pharmacist called to renew at the end of May.”

I nodded.
 
“I need some more.”

“Henry,” Dr. Hirsch said, taking his glasses off, folding them and putting them on top of the folder.
 
“I’m afraid you’re developing a dependency.
 
You can’t use a drug as a crutch to solve your problems.”

“Why not?” I asked.
 
“It works.”

“Yes, but you’re a young man.
 
You shouldn’t be having problems sleeping in the first place.
 
I think you should try uncovering where the real problem lies.”

Uh-oh, I thought.
 
He’s not going to renew it.
 
For a second, I panicked.
 
I had to have it....How to convince him give it to me....

“The real problem,” I said, suddenly leaning forward, “is that my fiancée….”
 
Well, strictly speaking, Sherry wasn’t my fiancée, but the guy from Vandenberg said she was in love with me, so I figured we could be pretty sure she would have been soon.
 
“My fiancée,” I continued, “is in a coma....”
 
Again, strictly speaking, Sherry was in a persistent vegetative state, but it was a matter of giving him the gist of the thing.
 
“My fiancée is in a coma, because she was hit on the head with a heavy object, and she suffered brain damage.”
 
All true.

Dr. Hirsch flinched.
 
“Oh my,” he said.
 
“That’s terrible.”
 
He took one more look at me across the desk, put his glasses back on and started writing the prescription.
 
“Okay,” he said, writing, “I’m giving you this for thirty more days.
 
I certainly hope that your fiancée will come out of her coma before then, but in the unfortunate circumstance that she does not, I want you to find someone to talk to - a psychiatrist if necessary - to resolve your sleeping problem without the further use of drugs.”

“Yessir,” I said.

“You know, these new generation sleep drugs are pretty marvelous things, but they do have side effects, Henry.
 
Have you noticed any side effects yourself?”

“Nope,” I said.
 
“With Somnolux, I sleep like a baby.”

“No cookie crumbs, missing food, open refrigerators?”

“Nope.
 
Why would I find that?”

“You haven’t heard of people getting up in the night, eating high calorie foods with no memory of having done it?”

Well, I never did find that missing box of Wheat Chex, but it had to be in the back of the cabinet somewhere.
 
“Nope,” I said.

“Any sleepwalking?” he asked.

“Not that I’m aware of, anyway.”

“Getting in your car and driving away while asleep?”

“I don’t have a car.”

“Memory problems?”

Well, that one rang a bell.
 
Just the other morning I woke up and found a strange woman in my bed.
 
Apparently, if I were to believe her, we had met at a bar and come back and had lots of rough and kinky sex.
 
Too bad I couldn’t remember a thing about it.
 
“No,” I said.

“Okay, then,” Dr. Hirsch said, handing me the prescription.
 
“I’m sorry about your fiancée, but this is absolutely the last time.”

“I really appreciate it, Doctor,” I said.

I walked slowly out of the office, down the hall to the elevator, went down five flights to the lobby, and then ran the rest of the way back to Duane Reade.
 
Rounding the pharmacy counter I handed the prescription to Carl.
 
“I need this by tonight.”

Carl looked up.
 
“Again?” he said.

“Doctor’s orders.”

“Okey dokey,” Carl said.

*
    
*
    
*

After work, I stopped by at Food Emporium and picked up half a barbequed chicken and a batard bread.
 
I carried them home, planning on eating dinner in front of the TV, watching something dumb like American Idol.
  
I got into an old T-shirt and sweat pants, turned on the TV and picked up the bag of chicken.
 
But it just wasn’t doing it for me.
 
I mean the chicken was okay, but I felt lonely.
 
I considered going to see Sherry, but didn’t feel up to it.
  
I thought of the girl in my bed Tuesday morning, but didn’t have a clue how to get a hold of her.
 
She just up and left when I asked her where the hell she had come from.

It was then that I thought of Heather Kuznitz.
 
I hadn’t seen her for a couple of months, but I had had the sense to copy the number on my hand to the bottom of my mouse pad before it wore off entirely.
 
I turned the mouse pad over and stared at the number a few minutes before I dialed.

The phone rang three times before the voice message came on with a crazy laugh. “Hi, this is Heather Kuznitz.
 
If you’re not talking to me right now it must mean that I’m either not here or I don’t want to talk to you.
 
So, leave your message at the tone, and maybe I’ll get back to you.”
 
More laughter, then the tone.

“Hi, Heather,” I said. This is Henry.
 
Um, you know, the guy in the Duane Reade where you picked up your birth control pills.
 
Uh, sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
 
Um, in case you don’t remember, I’m the, uh, guy you called Edward.... But my name’s Henry.
  
I’d....”

Suddenly, I heard the phone being lifted, then dropped, then picked up again, and Heather’s voice came on.
 
“Edward!”