with the guard. “Repair guys from the phone company. Mrs. Cameron’s apartment.”
They followed him into the elegant lobby, which was trimmed with egg-and-dart
molding and tiled with black and white marble in a harlequinade pattern.
“How can I help you?” The second doorman, a heavyset man also of Albanian
origin, had been sitting on a round cushioned stool and talking to the guard.
Now he sprang to his feet. He was evidently senior to the other doorman and
wanted it to be clear that he would be making the decisions.
For a few moments, he silently scrutinized the two, frowning. Then he lifted an
antique Bakelite internal phone and pressed a few digits.
Janson looked at Kincaid: Mrs. Cameron was supposed to be out of the country.
She shrugged, in a tiny motion.
“Repairmen from Verizon,” he said. “Verizon. To fix a phone line. Why? I don’t
know why.”
He put his hand over the mouth of the phone and turned to the two visitors.
“Mrs. Cameron’s housekeeper says why don’t you come back when Mrs. Cameron’s in
town. Be another week.”
Jessie rolled her eyes theatrically.
“We’re out of here,” Paul Janson said, tight-lipped. “A favor: when you see Mrs.
Cameron, tell her it’ll be a few months before we’ll be able to schedule another
appointment to fix the DSL.”
“A few months?”
“Four months is about what we’re looking at,” Janson replied with implacable
professional calm. “Could be less, could be more. The backlog is incredible.
We’re trying to get to everybody as fast as we can. But when an appointment is
canceled, you go to the end of the line. The message we got was, she wanted to
have the problem dealt with before she got back to town. My supervisor got three
or four calls about her problem. Bumped her up as a special favor. Now you’re
saying forget it. Fine with me, but just be sure to tell Mrs. Cameron that. If
somebody’s getting blamed, it isn’t going to be me.”
Weariness and wounded pride competed in the voice of the beleaguered phone
repairman; this was someone who worked for an immense and immensely resented
bureaucracy and was accustomed to being blamed personally for the failings of
the system—accustomed to it, but not reconciled to it.
If somebody’s getting blamed: the senior doorman flinched a little. The
situation called for blame, did it? Such a situation was best avoided. Now,
speaking into the phone, he said confidingly, “You know what? I think you’d
better let these guys do their job.”
Then he jerked his head in the direction of the elevator bank. “Down the hall
and left,” he said. “Eighth floor. The housekeeper will let you in.”
“You’re sure? Because I’ve had a very long day, wouldn’t mind knocking off
early.”
“Just go up to the eighth floor, she’ll let you right in,” the doorman repeated,
and beneath the impassive manner was the faintest hint of pleading.
Janson and Kincaid walked down the polished floor to the elevators. Though the
ancient accordion gate was intact, the cab they entered was no longer manned.
Nor was there a security camera inside: with two doormen and a security guard in
the lobby; the co-op board undoubtedly had rejected the additional security
measure as intrusive overkill, the sort of showy technology that one would
expect in an apartment building put up by Mr. Trump. A couple should be able to
exchange a chaste peck in the elevator without worrying about gawking
spectators.
They pressed the button to the eighth floor; would it light? It would not. There
was a keyhole next to the button, and Janson had to massage it with two thin
implements for twenty seconds before he was able to rotate it and activate the
button. They waited impatiently as the small cab rose and then slowly shuddered
to a halt. Given the munificence of the building’s tenants, the unrenovated
nature of the elevators amounted to something of an affectation.
Finally, the doors parted, directly onto the apartment’s foyer.
Where was Marta Lang? Had she heard the elevator door opening and closing?
Janson and Kincaid stepped quietly into the hallway, and listened for a moment.
A clink of china, but distant.
To the left, at the end of the darkened hallway, a curving staircase led to the
floor below. To the right was another doorway; it appeared that it led to a
bedroom, or perhaps several. The main floor seemed to be the one beneath them.
Lang had to be there. They scanned the area for fish-eye lenses, for anything
that might suggest surveillance equipment. There was none.
“OK,” Janson murmured. “Now we go by the book.”
“Whose book?”
“Mine.”
“Got it.”
Another faint sound of china: a cup clinking against a saucer. Janson peered
carefully down the staircase. There was nobody visible, and he was grateful that
the stairs were of worn marble: no squeaky floorboard would serve as an
inadvertent alarm system.
Janson signaled Jessie: remain behind. Then he swiftly descended the stairs,
keeping his back against the curving wall. In his hands was a small pistol.
Ahead of him: an enormous room, with thick curtains drawn shut. To his left:
another room, a sort of double parlor. The walls were of white painted wood,
intricately paneled; paintings and engravings of no particular distinction hung
at geometrically precise intervals. The furnishings had the look of a New York
pied-a-terre designed, long-distance, for a Tokyo businessman: elegant and
expensive, yet devoid of individuality.
In a flash, Janson’s mind reduced his surroundings to an arrangement of portals
and planes: one representing both exposure and opportunity, the other the
prospect of safety and concealment.
Wall to wall, surface to surface, Janson progressed through the double parlor.
The floor was a polished parquet, much of which was covered with large Aubusson
rugs in subdued colors. The rug did not, however, prevent the soft creak of a
plank underfoot as he reached the entrance to the adjoining parlor. Suddenly,
his nerves crackled as if receiving a jolt of electricity. For there, in front
of him, was a housekeeper in a cotton uniform of pale blue.
She turned toward him, holding an old-fashioned feather duster out in front of
her, frozen, and her round face was contorted into a terrible grin—a rictus of
fear?
“Paul, watch yourself!” It was Jessie’s voice. He had not heard her descend, but
she was a few feet behind him.
Suddenly the housekeeper’s chest erupted in a spray of scarlet and she toppled
forward onto the carpet, the sound muffled by the soft woven fabric.
Janson whirled around and saw the silenced gun in Jessie’s hand, a wisp of
cordite seeping from its perforated cylinder.
“Oh, Jesus,” Janson breathed, gripped with horror. “Do you realize what you just
did?”
“Do you?” Jessica strode over to the body and, with a foot, nudged the feather
duster that remained in the housekeeper’s outstretched hand.
It was not a device used for cleaning house, save in the bloodiest of senses:
artfully concealed beneath the fan of brown feathers was a high-powered SIG
Sauer, still affixed to the dead woman’s hand by an elastic strap.
Jessie had been right to shoot. The safety was off on the powerful automatic
handgun, a bullet chambered. He had been a split second from death.
Marta Lang was not alone. And she had not been unguarded.
Was it possible she was still unaware of their presence? At the end of the
second parlor was another doorway with an ordinary swing door, evidently opening
onto the formal dining room.
There was another sound of movement, coming from within.
Janson lurched to the wall to the left of the door frame and spun around,
holding his Beretta chest high, preparing to squeeze the trigger or deliver a
blow, as was required. A burly man holding a gun burst through, apparently
having been sent to investigate. Janson smashed the butt of his Beretta on the
back of the man’s head. He went limp and Jessie caught him as he went down,
gentling him to the carpet silently.
Janson stood still for a moment, composing himself and listening intently; the
sudden violence had drained him, and he could not afford to be anything less
than focused.
Suddenly, there was a series of loud blasts, and the swinging door was
perforated by several magnum-force bullets, spraying splinters of wood and
paint. Were they fired by Marta Lang herself? Somehow he suspected that they
were. Janson looked at Kincaid, verifying that she, like him, was out of the
line of fire, safely to the side of the doorway.
There was a beat of silence, and then the sound of quiet footfalls: Janson
instantly knew what Marta Lang—or whoever it was—was doing, and what he had to
do. She was going to peer through the bore holes her gun had drilled in the
wooden door, assess the damage. She had established a line of fire: surely
nobody would remain standing where bullets had just flown.