Near Enemy (18 page)

But you never took him in?

Oh, I’d have loved to. But he’s never diddled anyone out here, best we know. And what people do in there—

Dandy shrugs.

—is what they do in there.

I find I’m developing a fondness for Dandy, despite myself. Figure I’ll prod him a little. See if he’s got any more information that might come in handy. Who knows?

Handy Dandy.

Detective Dandy, that’s two dead tappers turning up in less than a week. That’s not suspicious?

Nurse shoots me a look. I shoot one back. Call it a draw.

Meanwhile, Dandy stashes his notebook and starts rummaging through his trenchcoat pockets. Looks distracted while he answers me.

Hey, it happens. Friend, to tell you the truth, I don’t concern myself too much with the electric wonderland. I work out here. With the real bodies.

Finally finds what he’s hunting for, which turns out to be a pack of cigarettes. Taps one out. Protruding butt looks like
a chimney on a factory. Offers it to both of us in turn and we both decline. Dandy shrugs and sticks the butt in his mouth, stows the smokes and starts another pocket excavation. While he talks, his cigarette bounces like a conductor’s wand, counting the orchestra in.

And see, because I’m out here with the real bodies, that means that, unfortunately, even when a fetid ball-hair like Loeb expires, I have to make inquiries. You know? Especially when we get an anonymous tip to check it out.

Still rummaging. Seems frustrated. Looks up. Cigarette bobs.

I don’t suppose for some reason either of you carries a lighter?

I pull out my Zippo. Spark it. Dandy looks pleasantly surprised. Dips his cigarette, then takes a deep inhale. I ask him one last question.

You ever work with a cop named Joseph Boonce?

Long exhale.

Boonce? Never heard of him.

How about Robert Bellarmine?

Dandy chortles.

Bellarmine? Of course. Never met him personally. I’m way too low on the totem pole for that. But I know him, sure. Everyone does. That cop’s going to be our next mayor.

Dandy must have decided he’s gotten as much as he’s going to get from us, up to and including the light from my Zippo, because in the end he doesn’t even stick around long enough to finish that smoke.

Butts it out on Loeb’s belly. Looses an acrid stink. Dandy looks at us conspiratorially. Bounces those Groucho brows.

The guys from forensics are not going to like that. At. All.

Then he scribbles something and rips the page from his notebook. Holds it out to Nurse.

Like I said, on the department totem pole, I’m so low that
I’m basically underground. But I do like to solve mysteries. So if you hear anything else about suspicious deaths among the tapped-in, give me a call.

Dandy’s about to leave when he remembers one last thing. Snaps his fingers. Goes back to pocket-fishing. Pulls a card out. Hands it over.

I found this on the doormat outside. Must have fallen down from the jamb when you opened the door. Mean anything to you?

I take it. Read it.

PUSHBROOM
.

I shrug.

Nope.

He winks.

Well, keep it. As a souvenir.

Then he salutes and says he’ll see us around, and disappears back down the stairwell.

I pocket the card. Nurse pockets the slip. Then says to me.

Well, I suddenly find myself free tonight. How about you, Spademan? You got any pressing plans? Or should we find a way to kill some time together?

Puzzle it out. Assemble an inventory of what I know so far for sure.

In short, not much.

Someone grabbed Lesser and dragged him to a black room. Someone found a way to kill people through the limn. And someone apparently hired Pushbroom, the cutthroat sweeper agency, to track down and murder all the people in the nuts-and-bolts world that I actually care about.

Might be the same someone, in all three cases.

Either way, I’m still stuck wondering what exactly I’ll find when I rip open the envelope at the end of this game.

Because so far?

No clue.

Though I am starting to wonder if I won’t find Nurse’s name in there somehow.

Either that, or she’s turned out to be the world’s unluckiest nurse.

In the meantime, the Pushbroom calling card stuck in the doorjamb at Loeb’s apartment is troubling me, so I tell Nurse I’ll spring for a cab to take her home. Just to be safe.

She protests. A little.

Less about the cab than about going home alone.

You remember I live up near Fort Tryon Park, right? That’s a two-hundred-dollar fare, easy. Two fifty with tip. And I never did get paid by Loeb.

I pull out my money roll. Count what’s left, which isn’t much.
Not enough to cover the whole ride, but maybe enough to start a conversation.

So we flag a cab. Open negotiations.

Cab pulls up a half hour later to the gates of Fort Tryon Park, a patch of tree-choked wilderness nestled high on the rocky northern tip of Manhattan. It’s late now, long past midnight, and Nurse gets out, alone, and thanks the driver, then stoops to snatch her white leather handbag from the backseat. She stands upright, straightens her skirt, her white uniform bright as a flare on the darkened block. Closes the back door and turns to walk home. Cab’s taillights pulse red, then the cab pulls away, down into the further darkness of the avenue, shrouded under a canopy of drooping branches.

And Nurse heads off alone, clutching her bag, toward the black iron entrance gate to the park.

It’s pretty safe to assume she doesn’t notice the Town Car with its headlights off, half a block back, that’s been following the cab since midtown and is now rolling to a stop.

Safe to assume, too, she doesn’t notice the two men inside the Town Car. Both in gray coveralls.
Pushbroom
in script stitched over their hearts.

Safe to assume she doesn’t notice them get out of their car together.

Or notice that they follow her into the darkness of the park.

Nurse’s cab pulled away already. Disappeared up the street.

Then stopped.

Now sits idling.

Cabbie having already killed the lights.

Cabbie sits in the driver’s seat and watches in the rearview as the two men in the coveralls get out of their Town Car and trail Nurse.

Then the cabbie turns the ignition off. Gets out of the cab. Tosses his tweed cap into the backseat.

White knight in a yellow cab.

Okay. I confess.

I’m the cabbie.

The Pushbroom card was troubling me, and I wanted to keep an eye on Nurse, so I convinced the real cabbie to grab coffee for an hour and rent his cab to me. Let me drive Nurse home. Just to be safe.

Put down a hefty deposit, too, and promised him double on my return. Cabbie wasn’t hard to convince. Seemed eager for the coffee break.

Even threw in the tweed cap for free.

Nurse told me she lived near Fort Tryon Park, but I didn’t expect she lived
in
Fort Tryon Park. Because best I know, there’s nothing in Fort Tryon Park save for trees, the Cloisters, and bushes reliably bursting with cutthroats and pervs.

I quicken my step to catch up to Nurse and her two pursuers. By the time I pass through the gates of the park, Nurse has twenty paces on the men behind her and I’m a good twenty paces behind them.

But closing.

The four of us, now in a loose caravan, wind through the wrought-iron entrance gate.

Black mouth of the park, in a permanent gape.

Swallows us all.

The first man in coveralls hustles to close the gap on Nurse on the lamplit path.

Few working lamps in the park anymore. No one wants to pay to keep them lit. So there’s no pools of light, just pools of darkness, surrounded by pools of deeper darkness.

Second man in coveralls lags behind lazily, just a backup, really, keeping an eye on things, though there’s nothing much out here to keep an eye on.

Second man no doubt starts to wonder if he even needs to be here, given it’s just one woman. Which is right about the moment when I close the gap on him.

Gloved hand clamps over his mouth.

Traps the scream in.

Hand’s gloved, so he won’t try to bite.

Like I said, some things in the universe feel simple.

Cause and consequence.

Take our second man, for example.

The one who’s now stashed in the bushes, hands clutching feebly at a throat wound that’s not going to get a chance to heal.

That’s the consequence.

Some might say the cause is a long life of bad choices and regrettable inclinations. All of which led him here, to a dark park, following an innocent woman up an empty path, within reach of my gloved hand.

I don’t see it like that, though. To me, it’s much simpler.

The cause is hidden in my hand, blade still half-extended.

With plenty more consequence to come.

First man doesn’t notice the commotion on the path behind him. Too busy closing the gap on Nurse.

She must sense him now because she starts to stride more quickly, though she isn’t running. Or screaming. Not yet.

Instead, the first man hustles and watches as she hunts around in her handbag for something. Probably searching for a handheld, he assumes.

Or maybe a whistle.

Go ahead, the first man thinks.

Let her whistle.

I figure there’s now enough ground opened up between me and the first man that my only chance is to catch him at a dead run. Second man didn’t put up much of a struggle, but I did lose a stride or two.

And the first man’s now close enough to reach out and tap Nurse on the shoulder from behind.

Her striding. Him reaching.

Finally, he reaches her.

Taps.

She spins.

He expects her to scream now, but she doesn’t.

Just smiles.

Smiles and jabs.

Turns out it’s not a whistle she was fishing for.

It’s a syringe.

That’s now buried needle-deep in the first man’s face.

Nurse thumbs the plunger calmly.

Who knows what’s in the needle, but whatever it’s full of, so is the first man now.

Some kind of wobble juice.

Man wobbles.

Drops.

The heavy kind of drop, with no effort to catch himself, so his head bounces hard on the pavement, like someone trying to crack a stubborn egg on the edge of a porcelain bowl.

Egg cracks.

Spills.

Meanwhile, I play catch-up.

When I get there, Nurse is standing over him, looking down.
Then she looks at me. At my face. Then down at my box-cutter. Doesn’t seem too alarmed by either.

Nods to the box-cutter.

Don’t worry, you can put that away. What I pumped him full of? He’s not getting back up.

She looks down again at the first man, dropped in a heap, foam now edging his lips. He gives one last startling spasm, then stills. I say to her.

Nice job.

Thanks.

I take it whatever was in that needle is not as subtle as what you used on Langland and Loeb.

She looks me over again.

Smiles.

Well, look at you. You figured one thing out.

Actually, that’s two things I’ve figured out so far, if anyone’s keeping count.

Nurse prods the dead man with her crepe-soled shoe.

Says to me.

Should look like natural causes. At first glance, anyway.

Nods back toward the bushes.

What about yours?

I wince.

Doesn’t look too natural.

She tosses her syringe into the underbrush. Wipes her hands down on her skirt.

Don’t worry. A couple bodies in these bushes won’t raise anybody’s eyebrows. We take care of a lot of trespassers that way.

We?

She hikes her handbag strap back up on her shoulder.

Come on. Let me take you home to meet the sisters.

The Cloisters sits like a low-slung stone fortress on a hilltop at the highest point of Fort Tryon Park. It’s got views on all sides, of the city to the south, the Bronx to the north, and the Hudson River to the west, and on the other side of the river, unspoiled New Jersey.

Unspoiled New Jersey. Sounds like an oxymoron, I know.

But the millionaire who built the Cloisters way back when also bought up all the land in Jersey on the other side of the river so no one could build anything that might sully the view.

Remains unsullied, to this day.

Might be the last thing in this city you can say that about.

As we walk toward the Cloisters, Nurse tells me the story.

Not her story. That comes later.

The story of the Cloisters.

The Cloisters, she says, used to be a museum, assembled from different medieval missions found all over Europe. All the stones were shipped over here, to America, at the behest of a millionaire. Then he bought all this land in virgin Manhattan and reassembled the monument here, at the park’s highest point, then gave the whole thing to the city as a gift. After the millionaire died, the city ran the Cloisters as a museum, stuffing it full of artifacts and knickknacks. When hard times hit, the city stripped out all the art and put the building on the market. Real estate wasn’t exactly booming, but this was an easy sale: good bones, prime location, river views. A few overseas investors sniffed around, but eventually got outbid by an anonymous consortium. Snatched up the Cloisters for a fortune, then closed it to the public. Refurbished it. Restored it. Then reopened it as a private home. Part sanctuary, part commune, part refuge, part retreat. And who was the money behind this private consortium?