House Haunted (27 page)

Red rage engulfed him. He pushed open the car door, grasping the huge wrench before coming to his senses enough to leave it where it was. He got out of the car and stalked to the cage. The cop tried to ignore him.

“Is this how you cops take care of other people's property?” he sputtered.

The cop looked up slowly. He was young and looked just a little nervous. He smiled. “Is something wrong, sir?”

“Somebody went through my goddamned car while it was here.”

“I'm sure—” the cop began.

A sudden realization came to Gary, and he threw the nudie air freshener down. “Forget it.”

“Sir, if you'd like to file a complaint—”

A sudden, horrible realization came to Gary Gaimes. He trotted back to the Datsun, got in, and yanked open the glove compartment door. He pulled everything out—flashlight, maps, candy wrapper.

It was gone.

The knife he had used on Marilyn Fagen was gone.

Shit.

He rammed the key into the ignition, turned on the engine, and pulled out. As he rolled past the cage he saw the young cop talking frantically into his phone, following Gary with his eyes.

Shit. Shit.

Gary pulled out into traffic. Immediately, a brown Dodge eased out behind him, two grim faces in the front seat.

Shit. Fuck.

Gary made a quick left, heading toward Chinatown. The Dodge followed. He prayed that Mott Street would be relatively empty; if he could get through that to Broadway he could lose the cops.

Mott was jammed solid, delivery trucks halfway out on either side. A UPS truck sat in the exact center of the street. The delivery man unloaded cartons from the open back. Gary came to a halt three cars behind him. The UPS man finished, took his time closing the truck up and getting his customer, a small excitable Chinese man who kept counting the boxes on the sidewalk and gesturing at the spot on the delivery man's clipboard where he was supposed to sign. The two cars in front of Gary began to honk their horns. The Chinese man and the UPS driver blithely ignored them, lost in their calculations.

Gary looked into his rearview mirror. The Dodge was four cars behind.

Fuck.

Gary turned off the engine, pocketed the keys, and pushed open the door to the Datsun just wide enough to slip out. Keeping down, he pretended to study the ground for something he had dropped. He made his way to the sidewalk, shielding himself behind the stack of cartons the UPS man had just delivered. He kept walking toward Broadway. Beyond the brown delivery truck, he stopped. He looked back over the crowd. The UPS man had finally gotten the Chinese to sign and was slamming the back door of his truck.

Down the street, the brown Dodge sat patiently, the two cops still in the front seat.

Invincible.

Smiling, Gary turned and walked to Broadway.

As he was about to descend into the subway, he changed his mind and hailed a cab. They would be watching the subway exits near his apartment.

He flagged a yellow checker, giving it an address, and watched out the back window for signs of pursuit. The brown Dodge was history. No other cars followed them. He laid his head back against the seat and smiled.

He left the car four blocks from his apartment. Two blocks away, in front of an entrance to Gramercy Park, he saw the first police cruiser. The two young cops inside looked more like they were on their lunch break than waiting for a big bust.

He backtracked, coming behind his apartment complex. There was an alley shared with the building behind that led to a locked door into the laundry room. It hadn't been opened since a mugger had beat up Mrs. Garfinkle and taken her husband's wallet ten years ago. At one time the residents had used the courtyard to dry their clothes. Now all the lines were gone, leaving only the skeletons of the metal hangers. There was nothing but garbage in the alleyway, in the courtyard, now.

Another blue and white police cruiser guarded the back street. Gary passed them on the opposite curb, crossed the street, and came back toward them. He slipped quietly into the alley of his building's twin. He moved crates aside, passed into the courtyard, negotiating it quickly and then passing into the other short alley. He stopped before the locked door and pulled out his key chain.

His mother had had this key since 1946, when she had first moved into the building. She had told the super it was lost when he collected them all. Gary knew that the lock hadn't been changed; the landlord was so cheap he had tried to charge Gary's mother for the lost key.

He fit the key into the lock. For a moment he felt panic when it didn't move. Then he pressed it further in, finessing its age. Something clicked. The key turned and the door cracked open.

He pulled the door back. He was confronted with the white enameled back of a clothes drier, installed with its two brothers when the courtyard had been closed. He pulled himself up over the back of the drier onto its top. Before jumping down he pulled the door closed behind him.

As expected, the laundry room was empty. The old people in the building rarely used it before noon, coming down in packs.

It was well lit, as was the corridor outside. Gary went to the doorway of the laundry room and peered into the corridor. Empty. He made his way to the stairs and climbed to the lobby.

He heard voices before he eased the door open. Cops, talking football. One of them laughed and said, “Shit, yeah.”

Gary left the door closed. Forgoing the elevator, he pushed open the stairwell behind him. The door made a grinding sound when it opened. Gary froze, listening. After a moment, he heard the same laughter coming from the lobby. Again he heard, “Shit, yeah.”

He eased the door closed behind him and climbed. At each landing he paused, listening.

When he got to the third floor, his heart began to pound. He waited a long time, listening for the slightest sound. His door was only fifteen feet away from where he stood.

Nothing.

He was just about to push the stairwell door open when he heard a cough.

He pulled his hand from 'the door. Outside in the hallway, someone snorted, shuffled his feet.

Gary edged away from the door. Noiselessly, he ascended the stairs to the fourth floor. Once again he waited by the stairwell door, listening.

Nothing.

He waited a full count of sixty. Still nothing. Then he heard a door open, close. The rattle of a key chain. A hacking cough.

He edged open the door far enough to see into the hallway. Mr. Grumell shuffled to the elevator, stood before it, hacked again, muttered “Goddammit” under his breath.

Gary waited; the elevator came. Mr. Grumell got on; the elevator went down.

The hallway was silent.

Gary eased the door open and slipped into the hallway. There was no one.

Gary moved down the hallway to apartment 4J. Empty, he knew. Mrs. Chapin would be working, a clerk at Alexander's on Thirty-fourth Street, until six o'clock.

Gary retrieved his key chain from his pocket and searched it. 4J. He and his mother had lived here before his father died. A two-bedroom apartment. After his father's death, his mother had moved them downstairs to the smaller apartment. “To get away from the memories,” his mother had sighed. He'd known she was lying. She had been cheating on his father for years. It was to save money. The one bedroom was fifteen dollars cheaper in rent. “You may sleep on the couch, Gary,” she had said to him.

He was filled with sudden rage at the memory. His hand began to shake when he tried to put the key in the door of 4J.

Bitch
, he thought, finally getting the key in and opening the door.

The apartment smelled like it had. It smelled like his father. No. It smelled like cabbage and potatoes; his father had smelled like ... aftershave. A spicy, outdoors scent. Being in here made him remember it. He had only smelled it once anywhere else, the first time he had gone to the house upstate. It was in the air there: a sharp, piney odor.

Bitch
. He had only been five years old when his father died, before his mother laundered Gary's mind and eyes and nose and ears clean of him.

The apartment smelled like cabbage and potatoes. Beer. There was a half-empty case of Bud on a chair next to the front door. Mrs. Chapin wasn't the neatest of housekeepers. Dust balls in the corners. A sheen of dust along the ridge of the china cabinet in the dining room.

Gary made his way past the kitchen to the back moms, pushed open the door to the second bedroom.

His room.

It was a mess; boxes and newspapers stacked, Daily Newses yellowing to brittleness. Hatboxes. Unreturned beer cases. A fading blue dress laid carefully over the arm of a frayed club chair.

Gary stared at the window. He vaguely remembered the view, remembered the cowboy wallpaper his father had put on the walls: the large rodeo lassos with a buckaroo's ten-gallon-hatted, smiling face in the center. There was faded red wallpaper on the walls now. It looked like old Christmas wrap. Gary looked at the edge curling near the doorjamb; he pushed the curl back with his finger. There, underneath, was the glue-encrusted, time-worn hint of a lasso rope.

Bitch.

He went to the other bedroom. An old unmade bed, the smell of unwashed panty hose. Dark. Too many curtains. Foot powder, Dr. Scholl's footpads, unopened, on the dresser.

Gary pulled back the curtains, tried to open the window. It was painted shut. Gary hit the window at the edge with the flat of his hand.

He pushed the window and it hesitated, then slid up. The storm window was still in place. He pushed that up, too.

A chilling breeze struck him. Fresh air for the foot smell impregnating the room. He put his head cautiously out the window and looked.

Below, through the alley to the back street, the young cops stood near their car. They had gotten out, leaned against it.

They would have to consciously study the back of his building, where he stood, to see him.

No one below in the courtyard. No one on the other fire escapes on his building or the one behind. He studied the roofline of the building facing the back street and saw nothing.

One leg out the window, then the other. He was out on the fire escape.

He climbed nimbly down to the third floor. If there was a tricky part, this was it. Two apartments, two fire escapes, over. He climbed over the outside of the railing, measured the distance. He would not have to jump but would have to be sure with his footing to grab across and carry himself over.

He accomplished the first vault with no problem. His foot just snugged into the railing, his hands quickly following. He pulled himself over onto the landing and waited.

The cops on the back street were looking at each other; no one in his vision anywhere.

He crossed the landing, climbed the other side of the railing, prepared to repeat his vault, tipped his balance forward, and grabbed the railing bordering the landing out-side his apartment with his hands.

When he brought his feet over, the bottom part of the railing gave way.

Gary held with all his strength as an entire section of the landing, rusted through, fell away to the courtyard below him. He closed his eyes, waited for the sound. None came. He opened his eyes and looked down. The rusted rails and metal bridgework had landed flush in the middle of an old mattress.

Invincible.

Gary gingerly pulled himself up and over the railing.

He stood away from the corroded section of the landing, near the window to his apartment. He put his head close to the window and listened.

Nothing.

He studied the rooflines, the other landings, checked the courtyard, the alleyway.

He put his hand on the window to raise it. A shout went up behind him. His heart froze. He turned, looking down the alleyway to the back street. The cops had stopped chatting. One of them shouted, “Hey!” The cop was pointing up the street, away from him. Gary heard young laughter fading, running footsteps. The cop pursued, up the back street, out of Gary's line of sight.

Gary put his hand back on the window and edged it up. Six inches, then he paused. He tipped his head to listen into the apartment.

Nothing. Only the electrical tock-tock of the digital school clock in the hallway.

He edged the window up another foot.

Tock-tock.

Using the middle and index fingers on both his hands, he slid the window up all the way.

Tock-tock. Tock-tock.

He entered the apartment.

He slid the window down behind him. The apartment became stuffy and close.

Tock-tock.

He went to the hallway, edged down it. The sound of the clock became louder until he passed it.

He edged his ears and then his eyes into the kitchen. He heard voices.

A shuffle of tired feet, a clearing throat, a cough into a hand. The beginnings of a hummed tune, fading to boredom.

They were outside the apartment door, in the hallway.