“What’s the matter?” asked the groundskeeper. “We ain’t there yet, you know.”
“I know, I…I’ve changed my mind.” Grace’s heart was pounding. “I don’t feel well. Thank you for your help.”
He looked at her strangely, studying her features as if for the first time. Hoping to distract him, Grace hurriedly pressed a twenty into his arthritis-stiff hand, then turned and fled back down the hill.
She didn’t stop running till she reached the subway, slipping into a nearby café to catch her breath and collect herself. How could people deface a man’s grave? What sort of a person did that? She’d been too far away to read any of the graffiti, but she could imagine the poisonous things that had been written. Her eyes brimmed with tears. None of them knew Lenny. What a decent, loving, generous man he had been. Sometimes even Grace felt that that man was slipping away from her. That the reality of who Lenny was had already been lost, crushed beneath a mountain of lies and envy and loathing. People called him wicked, but it was a lie.
You weren’t wicked, my darling. It’s this world that’s wicked. Wicked and greedy and corrupt.
In that moment Grace realized that she had a choice. She could give up. Turn herself in, accept the rotten hand of lies that life had dealt her. Or she could fight.
Rabbi Geller’s words came back to her: It’s for God to judge. Not man. Perhaps Grace should leave the crushing of her enemies to God? Let him right the wrongs the world had done to her and to her darling Lenny?
Perhaps not.
Grace knew what her next move would be.
DAVEY BUCCOLA FUMBLED WITH THE KEY to his hotel room. He was very, very drunk.
When Grace slipped through his fingers, so did the money. He’d betrayed her, and she knew it, and it had all been for nothing. Too depressed to face going home to his mother’s house, Davey had hung around the city, spending what was left of his savings on strippers and booze.
“Stupidfugginthing.” He tried the key again twice, before it dawned on him: I’m on the wrong floor. As he staggered back down the hall to the elevator, the walls lunged toward him and the floor moved up and down, up and down, like a ship on the high seas. Davey remembered the fun house at the Atlantic City amusement park his dad used to take him to as a kid. He felt nauseous. It was a relief to step into the elevator.
“What floor?”
The woman had her back to him. Even in his drunken state, the PI in Davey took note of her long auburn hair and shiny black trench coat. Or was it two trench coats?
“What floor?” she asked again. Davey couldn’t remember.
“Third,” he guessed. The woman reached forward and pressed a button.
Then she pressed a gun into the small of Davey’s back.
“Make a move and I will kill you.”
UP IN HIS HOTEL ROOM, DAVEY sat on the edge of the bed, stone-cold sober.
“I know how it looks. But I can explain.”
Grace raised the gun and pointed it directly at his head. “I’m listening.”
GETTING HOLD OF A GUN WAS a lot easier than Grace had thought it would be. She’d assumed it would be a complicated, dangerous process, but it turned out you could buy them on the street. Like chestnuts. She’d noticed the man loitering in the alleyway, exchanging money with neighborhood kids in what Grace assumed must be drug deals. Yesterday afternoon she walked right up to him.
“I need a gun. Do you know anyone who can help me?”
The guy looked Grace over. With her shaven head and baggy masculine clothes, he put her down as a dyke, probably fresh out of prison. He wasn’t a fan of carpet munchers, as a rule. On the other hand, she certainly wasn’t a cop, and he could use the money.
“That depends. How much you payin’?”
They agreed on a price that was twice what the pistol was worth. He instantly regretted not having held out for more.
As Grace walked away, he called after her: “D’you know how to use that thing?”
Grace stopped, thought about it, shook her head.
“Fifty bucks, I’ll give you a private lesson. I’ll even throw in some ammo, how’s that?”
“Twenty,” Grace was amazed to hear herself saying.
“Thirty-five. Tha’s my final offer.”
“Deal.”
“OH GOD, GRACE, PLEASE! DON’T SHOOT!”
Davey Buccola was sobbing. Grace felt oddly detached. It was almost distasteful, listening to him beg for his life, rivers of tears and mucus streaming down his contorted, terrified face. As if any words of his could change her decision.
“Give me the file.”
“The file?”
“The information you promised me. The information you were going to give me in Times Square, remember? Before you got greedy and decided to turn me in for two hundred grand.”
“It wasn’t like that, Grace. I was trying to protect you.”
Grace moved her index finger over the trigger. “One more lie out of your mouth and I swear to God I will blow your head off.”
Davey whimpered with fear. She meant it. This was not the Grace Brookstein he’d met at Bedford Hills. This was a totally different person. Cold. Ruthless. Reckless.
“There is a file, isn’t there, Davey? I hope for your sake you weren’t lying about that as well.”
“No, no, it’s here. I have it.”
He’d missed out on the reward, but Davey had still hoped to find a bidder for his gold mine of secrets. So far no magazine editors had taken his call, but he was working on it. He reached under the bed.
“Stop!” Grace commanded.
Davey froze.
“Keep your hands where I can see them. On top of your head.”
Davey did as he was asked.
“Good. Now walk into the middle of the room and kneel down.”
Davey felt his stomach turn to liquid. Oh God. The classic execution pose. She’s going to put a bullet in the back of my neck.
“Please, Grace…”
“Be quiet!” Cautiously, keeping the gun trained on Davey, Grace squatted down on her haunches and reached under the bed herself. She pulled out a brown manila folder.
“Is this it?”
Davey nodded. “Once you were safe, I was going to take it to a lawyer, I swear to God! I would have helped you launch an appeal.”
Grace pressed the folder to her chest like a lover. Then she released the safety catch on the gun. “Have you shown this to anyone? The police, or the press?”
Davey shook his head vehemently. “No one. The only people that know this exists are you and I.”
It was the right answer. Grace smiled. Davey felt relieved. She’s going to let me live.
Grace picked up a pillow from the bed. Holding it in front of the gun, she said coolly, “You betrayed me. Do you know what the punishment is for traitors, Davey?”
Before he could answer, he heard the muffled sound of the shot, followed by a warm, wet sensation in his lower body.
After that, there was nothing.
MITCH CONNORS SURVEYED THE SCENE. THE hotel maid who made the call had such poor English, and was so terrified and hysterical, he hadn’t known what to expect. But it definitely wasn’t this.
Despite himself, Mitch burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny!”
Davey Buccola was in the middle of the room, naked and trussed up like a chicken with the cord from the window blinds. Literally like a chicken. After he’d passed out, someone—Grace—had tarred and feathered him. Feathers from the hotel pillows had been stuck to his limbs with hair gel, and the word traitor written across his forehead in permanent marker. The same permanent marker, Mitch presumed, that was sticking out of Davey’s asshole now like a poultry thermometer.
“From where I’m standing, buddy, it is a little funny.” Mitch was starting to like Grace more and more.
A single bullet was lodged in the wall next to the window. Below it, in a pile on the floor, lay Davey’s soiled clothes. Buccola must have been so terrified when Grace fired the shot into the pillow, he’d lost control of his bowels.
“She’s psychotic!” Davey sobbed. “She could have killed me! I want police protection.”
“Yeah, and I want Gisele Bündchen to lick whipped cream off my balls but it ain’t gonna happen,” said Mitch wryly. “Untie him, somebody, would you? If I have to look at that ass crack for one more second, I’m gonna need some serious therapy. I may never eat chicken again.”
“Shouldn’t we take some pictures first, boss? Document the crime scene?”
“Who for?” Mitch laughed even harder. “Colonel Sanders?”
“You’re not taking this seriously!” Davey Buccola did his best to sound indignant, not an easy thing to do with a Sharpie stuck up your ass. “Grace Brookstein threatened me at gunpoint. That’s armed robbery! Don’t you care?”