Chapter 43
When the city of New York decides to take a recess from winter it can change overnight. I came up out of the IRT at Seventy-second Street into bright sunshine. It was only a short walk to Marlene's block.
Marlene's apartment was one of those rent-controlled wonders that New Yorkers are willing to kill for, four big rooms in a well-kept building with an elevator for less than three hundred dollars a month.
It was a quiet block. There were still knee-high mounds of snow along the curbs where the plows had given up. Just behind one of them there was a parked ambulance. Its driver had the window rolled down to take advantage of the unexpected sun; he was wearing shades, a black man reading a copy of Penthouse. He looked vaguely familiar. An old woman was walking a dog—a real one; I saw it lift its leg to one of the city's always imperiled shade trees. An elderly man was peering out at the sunshine from the steps of Marlene's apartment house, trying to decide if it was warm enough to allow his old bones a walk to the 7-Eleven on the corner.
He looked familiar too. With good reason. As I climbed the steps he caught my arm. "Aren't you Stennis?"
As soon as he spoke I knew who he was. Marlene had brought him around to the office now and then. He wasn't a boyfriend, or even a date; he was just a guy she went to the movies with now and then. "Nice to see you, Mr. Keppler," I told him. "Is Marlene in now, do you know?"
"In?" He scowled at me. "Of course she isn't in," he went on in a disagreeable tone. "What do you think? Where've you been? She told me before she went to the hospital the first time you were someplace out of town. But didn't you know anything?"
I putted my arm free, staring at him. "What hospital?"
"St. Luke's. Where she's dying from cancer," he said bitterly. "So now it's too late you can finally take the time to come see her, eh?"
I couldn't speak for a moment. I stood staring at him.
"I didn't know! Tell me!" I said finally, abjectly begging, He did, with an old man's attention to the details of terminal illness. According to Mr. Keppler, Marlene got sick the first time over a year ago. She'd had to close down the office, because she was facing at least six months of radiation and chemotherapy. Then she'd been back in her apartment for a while, but she'd regressed. He had gone to the hospital to see her the day before.
She had, he said, no more than a month to live.
I cannot say how I felt then. I don't know the words to describe it. It wasn't that I wanted to cry; it was a shock too complete and unexpected for that.
"But," I said stupidly, "I just talked to her yesterday."
"You called her at the hospital? That's good," said Mr. Keppler grudgingly. "You were lucky, because it's a real miracle she could talk. When I went to see her last night she was in a coma."
I let him go, my hand on the door to the building.
I watched him walk down the steps, leaning heavily on his cane, making his way past the ambulance at the curb, where the driver was looking sidewise at me from behind his glasses.
It would have been a natural question to ask who it was I had spoken to on the phone yesterday. I didn't have to ask it. I already knew the answer. I remembered it from Henry Davidson-Jones's office, when I had heard Marlene's voice on a tape and it had not been Marlene speaking then, either.
The sun was still out, but the winter wind was chilling my bones. Everything had suddenly become very different.
I turned around and walked quickly to the curb, not looking at anyone. When I got to the street I turned left, walking along the parked cars. When I got to the ambulance I stopped short. I reached in the open window and grabbed the wrist of the black man in the sunglasses.
"Nice to see you again since that time in Nice," I said conversationally.
His reflexes were fast. He tried to pull his hand free, but I had it solidly. "Got a gun in your pocket?" I asked. "Or is it whoever's upstairs in Marlene's apartment that's got the gun?"
"Get your hands off me," he snarled, trying a sudden lunge. I put my elbow in his throat to stop that.
"You don't need a gun," I told him. "Just relax. If you want to take me to Henry Davidson-Jones you don't need anything at all, because that's where I want to go. Right now."