Heading home, finally, I told myself to try to calm down. I was determined to help Sarah get over her trauma, though truthfully I was too tired to really think straight at that moment. So instead I decided to let everything rest for a few hours and try for some distance. In fact, I began imagining myself in a hot bath, gazing at my now-wilting roses. Home Sweet Home.
Mine was a standard one-bedroom in a building that had been turned into a co-op five years earlier, the owner offering the individual apartments to the tenants. I'd stayed a renter, however, passing up the "low" insider price, $138,000, because I didn't really have the money, and when I did have it someday I would want something bigger. I wished I had more space-a real dining room and a bigger bathroom would do for starters, along with some place for more bookcases. And if a baby should someday miraculously come along…
I'd often thought you could tell a lot about somebody from where and how they lived; it's revealing as a Rorschach test. What, I often wondered, did my apartment say about me?
A decorator might conclude I'd done up the place with love, then lazily let it go. They'd decide I cared about nice things, but once those nice things were there, I neglected them. It would be true.
I'd covered the walls of the living room with pale blue cloth, then hung a lot of framed pictures and old movie posters. Okay, I like movies. For me even the posters are art. My couch was an off-white, more like dirt-colored actually, and covered with pillows for the "feminine" touch. I'd hoped you'd have to look twice to realize it was actually a storage cabinet in disguise, with drawers along the bottom of the front. The floor was polished hardwood, rugs from India here and there, in sore need of a vacuuming, and even a couple of deceased insects that'd been there for over a week. That sort of said it, I thought glumly. I'm a workaholic slob.
The bedroom revealed even more about me. The bed was a brass four-poster, queen-size, partly covered by an heirloom quilt. It hadn't been made in a week. (Who has the time?) The room itself was long and divided into areas for work and sleep. Opposite the bed itself was an antique English desk, on which sat my old Macintosh, and next to that was my file cabinet, the indispensable part of the "home office" the IRS loves to hate. On top of it was a stack of marked-up scripts, notes scribbled all over them in six different colors. You never realize movies are so complicated till you see a breakdown sheet. Camera angles and voice-overs and…
Next to the bed was a violin case and three books about Indian ragas. What was that about? somebody might wonder. Some kind of Indian music nut? I was, albeit a very minimally talented nut.
The kitchen was the New York efficiency kind painted a glossy tan, the color of aerosol olive oil. The cabinets contained mostly packages of pasta, instant soup, and coffee filters. Not even any real food. I live on deli takeout these days. An inventory of my fridge at this moment would clock two cartons of "fresh squeezed" orange juice, a half quart of spoiling milk, a bag of coffee beans, plastic containers of wilting veggies from the corner salad bar, and three bottles of New York seltzer. That was it.
God help me, I thought, my mind-state turning even more morose. This is my life. I had become that retrograde Woman of the Nineties: works ninety hours a week, makes ninety thou a year, weighs ninety pounds, and thinks (pardon my French) Cooking and Fucking are provinces in northern China. Well, the ninety-pounds part of that obscene quip didn't fit-and it wasn't the nineties anymore, anyway.
In any case, was my apartment a place to raise a child? No earthly way. Like Carly, I'd have to spring for some decent space, preferably with a washing machine…
A parking slot was open right in front of my building, a minor miracle on this day of uncertain events. As I was pulling in, I glanced over to see a man walking past, not catching the face but sensing something familiar in the walk. He was in the process of unbuttoning a Federal Express uniform, peeling away the top to reveal a dark suit. He certainly seemed to be in a big hurry, carrying an unmarked shopping bag. Maybe, I thought, his shift was over and he was meeting his wife, or a friend.
I wondered if he'd left a package for me, and told myself to check with the super. Not the usual delivery guy-did they come on Sunday now?-and also…
Where was the truck? They always parked right here by the building.
I was still so upset over Sarah, I couldn't immediately process those illogical observations, so I just grabbed my pink roses, dripping from the bottom of their paper wrapping, and opened the car door. It was definitely good to be home. I loved my Chelsea neighborhood, where you got to know the locals, running into them in the delis, the little restaurants, the dry cleaners. Just like a small town. If you worked at home, the way I sometimes did, you even got to know the mailman and the delivery guys for UPS and FedEx…
Hey! That guy. I finally placed the walk, a kind of a strut. He was the slimeball who'd been outside Paula Marks' building last week, carrying a gun and threatening me. What's he doing here?
My pulse went off the charts. Was he one of Nicky Russo's wiseguy crew after all? Had he come back, with his pistol, to pay me a return engagement?
My God.
Chill out, I told myself, take a deep breath. He's leaving. Just try and find out who he is.
Roses in one hand held up awkwardly around my face, I slowly ambled down the street after him. I didn't have to go far. Within about a hundred feet, he unlocked a long black Lincoln Towncar, stepped out of the FedEx camouflage, tossed it onto the seat along with the bag he was carrying, pulled the cap off his bald head got in, and sped away.
The license plate looked different from the usual, but I got what I needed: DL and a string of numbers.
Uh-oh, I thought. Was he leaving a package bomb for me?
I turned back and let myself into the outer lobby, glancing around as I did. There were no parcels anywhere, just blank, brown tile.
My apartment was 3A. The name on the bell was M. James. As I stepped through the inner lobby-still no package-a rumpled face appeared in the doorway just to my left. The sign on it, flaking, said SUPER.
"Oh, hi." The voice was Patrick Mooney, our superintendent, who did not normally emerge to greet those arriving. But there had been complaints from the building's managing agent that he could never be found for emergencies, so he probably wanted to appear available, even on Sundays. His voice was slurred from some midday medicinal Irish whisky. "Thought you were home. FedEx guy was here earlier looking for you."
Oh, boy. "Did he leave a package?"
"He had something with him, if that's what you mean. Like a bag of some kind."
"And you let him go up?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I felt a rush of dismay.
"Said he had to. Needed a signature." Patrick Mooney then shrugged and reached for the dooijamb to steady himself, his whisky breath wafting across the hall. Great security.
I stepped into the elevator as the door was clanking shut, and watched as he rubbed his eyes and eased his own door closed.
Now I was really puzzled. If the FedEx guy came "earlier," why was he just now leaving? A lot of scary theories went through my mind as I pushed the button for the third floor.
I took a deep breath as the elevator opened, but again I saw no packages. So far so good. Getting off, I set down my roses on the hall carpet and fumbled for my key. When I inserted it, the lock felt a little rough, causing me to think for an instant I'd used the wrong key, but then it responded.
What had caused that? I wondered. Had the guy been fiddling with my door, wiring a bomb? Using one hand I pushed it open, again holding my breath and standing aside, but it opened okay. I exhaled, then reached back to drag in the flowers.
But if he didn't leave a package, what was he doing here? Casing out where I lived? Planting a bug in the elevator? And why was he here so long?
The place was dark when I stepped in, the drapes drawn. I relocked the door, then surveyed the gloom. No explosions, so I guessed he didn't plan to kill me. Yet. Here I was, home, safe and sound. I just stood a minute, still uneasy.
Then I remembered the flowers, my dripping bouquet, and headed for the kitchen. Deal with them, and then maybe get a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and sip some in the bath. After my unnerving sequence with Sarah, thoughts of going to the office had zero appeal. Time to lighten up, way up.
Preoccupied, not looking around, I stuffed the roses into a vase by the sink, and then I thought again about the white wine and opened the refrigerator. I'd still not bothered to turn on any lights, but the kitchen and its ancient fridge were dimly illuminated by the tiny window just across. I wasn't sure where I'd put the bottle, since I'd had to rearrange things to make room for the dup of Carly's interview. (I was also planning to take home a safety dup of Paula's interview sometime later in the week.)
Why was I doing that? Taking home copies? It was a sign of deep compulsion. You couldn't really make a professional- quality second negative from a first positive-by that time it would be third-generation-but I'd brought it anyway. Now and then I just have a raw instinct that keeping a safety backup around is a good idea. But the canister had ended up devouring the entire lower shelf of the fridge.
I opened the white door and peered in. The light was out, and for a moment I stared numbly at the dark, half-filled shelves. The only thing that struck me as odd was that I could see the pure white of the empty bottom shelf.
For a second I could only stand and stare, but then I backed away, trying to figure out what was wrong, and stumbled over something. I regained my balance and flipped on the overhead light.
"What!"
The floor around me was littered with bottles, my old toaster, my tiny microwave. It was a total shambles.
I recoiled stumbling again, this time over cans strewn across the linoleum. My kitchen, it was slowly sinking in, had been completely trashed.
I felt a visceral wave of nausea. It's the scariest thing in the world having your space invaded like a form of psychic rape. I sagged against the refrigerator as I gazed around. The cabinets had been emptied out, a hasty and haphazard search. Quick and extremely dirty, as glass containers of condiments, including an old bottle of dill pickles, were shattered and their contents smeared into the floor.
"I don't believe this." I marched back into the living room and reached for the lights. This room too had been turned upside down. The TV, stereo, VCR, all had been swept onto the rug. But they were still there. That guy, that animal, who did this wasn't a thief. He'd been looking for something.
My breath now coming in pulses, I edged into the bedroom and switched on the light. The bed was the way I'd left it, the covers thrown back and the pillows in a pile. The clock radio was there, and so was the old Mac, still on the table in the far corner, my "workstation." Again nothing seemed to be missing.
I headed back to the kitchen, where the refrigerator door was still open. I gazed at the interior a moment, still puzzled, trying to figure out what wasn't right…
Shit! Shit! Shit! That's what was wrong. The field of white bottom shelf was empty. Totally empty. The film canister of Paula's interview was gone.
For a moment I just leaned against the kitchen counter, barely pushing aside an impulse to throw up in the sink. Think, I told myself, get a grip and think…
It was the film he'd wanted. And he'd wanted it badly enough to pick the lock, then rip my home apart looking for it.
I pulled at a tangle of hair, feeling my mind in chaos, and tried to reason out the situation. Why? Why would he steal a positive that couldn't be used for anything?
Finally the real truth of what had happened hit me like a fist in the chest. My Home Sweet Home had been violated.
Seething, I went into the living room and reached for the phone, the only thing not on the floor.
My first instinct was to call David, but then I decided he'd just go into a tizzy of hysteria and be no support at all. So instead I called Lou, praying I wouldn't wake Sarah. In an unsteady voice, I tried to tell him what had happened.
He seemed puzzled to hear from me again so soon, but then he quickly turned FBI, concerned for my safety.
"Guy sounds like a professional," he declared. "Probably got in with an electric picker, like the Edge. Any asshole can buy one for a hundred and thirty bucks. It'll rake cylinders at a hundred times a second. Pro like that, you can be sure there'll be no prints."
"But why would…?" My voice was still a croak. "I mean, my God, all for a lousy reel of film?"
"Fucker wants you to know he's in town. So how he did it's as important as what he did. It's a time-proven scare tactic." He paused. "Morgan, I don't like this one bit. There could be more before this is over."
"Think I should call the cops?"
"Damned right you should," he said, slowly and sadly, "but to tell you the truth, they ain't gonna do all that much. Somebody messed up your apartment and lifted a third-hand copy of a woman talking. They'll say it sounds more like malicious mischief than a crime. Then they'll write it up and that'll be the last you'll hear from them."
"Well," I said, my anger welling up, "maybe I don't feel quite so laissez-faire. Tell me, you know anybody who can run a plate for you on a Sunday?"
"You got the prick's license number?" he exclaimed. "Why the hell didn't you say so?"
"Honestly, it sort of slipped my mind. I'm having a little trouble thinking straight right now."
Fortunately my short-term memory is pretty good, even when I'm stressed, so I spewed it out.
"Don't go anywhere," he declared. "I'll get back to you in five minutes."
I hung up the phone and lay down, flat out on the carpet, trying a breathing exercise to calm down. The problem was, it wasn't working. Having had some experience with being robbed-I once got completely cleaned out when I had a ground-floor apartment down in the Village-I know you go through certain Kubler-Ross-like stages of anger, denial, depression, acceptance. You also go through a predictable series of recriminations: I should have had window bars and gates; I should have had a different lock; I should have had two different locks. In the instance just recalled, I'm virtually certain an apartment painter duplicated a set of my keys on his lunch break and then passed them on to a second-story artist. No way to prove that, mind you, but it had to be what happened. I also suspect he checked my appointments calendar to see when I was going to be out of town.
But in this case the lock was definitely picked. Nobody had a set of my keys except the super, and Steve. So the guy with the Spanish accent knew how to slip through doors and he had no financial interest in my old VCR. He only had an interest in my film. What had he said there on the sidewalk outside Paula Marks's apartment? Something about how making this picture was a big mistake?
I jumped as the phone erupted by my ear.
"The name Colonel Jose Alvino Ramos Grijalva mean anything to you?" Lou asked.
"How could it? I'm not sure I can even pronounce it."
"Well, Colonel Ramos declares himself to be a military attache at the Guatemalan Consulate here. You've got a big shot in the Guatemalan Army rummaging through your apartment. This is even worse than I thought. Those guys are killers."
"Jesus." I was still coming to grips with the horrifying fact he'd been in my apartment, in my only refuge. "Think I could bring charges against him?"
"Well, let's consider this a minute. Probably no prints, no credible witness. You'd have a damned hard time proving anything." He sighed. "Truth is, I doubt you could even get a restraining order, given what little you've got to work with."
"The bastard." I sat a moment, feeling the logical, left side of my brain just shut down. My mind went back to its most primitive level, running on adrenaline. "Look, I need to check out something. I'll call you in the morning."
"Well, be careful," he said warily. "And for God's sake don't go running off anyplace alone. I'm telling you you're not safe. Always be around people."
"I'll keep it in mind." With that I gently hung up the phone and exhaled.
Think. Some colonel from Guatemala just broke into my apartment looking for what I might know about Children of Light, where I've been going to see about having a baby. So why is he so interested in what I'm doing?
I remembered Alex Goddard wanted me to go to a "clinic" he had somewhere in Central America. Ten to one that clinic was in Guatemala. That was what this whole thing was about. And now he'd just gone back there; at least that was what he'd said.
Guatemala was a long way off, but his other operation was right up the river. I hadn't seen all of it this morning, but that was about to change. A lot of things were about to change. It was time to start getting the playing field level again.