for this job. That’s the truth.”
He shook hands with Graham and performed an awkward half bow in Connie’s
direction.
As he walked across the lobby, his wet shoes squashed and squeaked.
Outside, he dodged some reporters and refused to answer the questions of
others.
His unmarked car was at the end of a double line of police sedans,
black-and-whites, ambulances and press vans. He got behind the wheel,
buckled his safety belt, started the engine.
His partner, Detective Daniel Mulligan, would be busy inside for a
couple of hours yet. He wouldn’t miss the car.
Humming a tune of his own creation, Preduski drove onto Lexington, which
had recently been plowed. There were chains on his tires; they crunched
in the snow and sang on the few bare patches of pavement. He turned the
corner, went to Fifth Avenue, and headed downtown.
Less than fifteen minutes later, he parked on a tree-lined street in
Greenwich Village.
He left the car. He walked a third of a block, keeping to the shadows
beyond the pools of light around the street lamps. With a quick
backward glance to be sure he wasn’t observed, he stepped into a narrow
passageway between two elegant townhouses.
The roofless walkway ended in a blank wall, but there were high gates on
both sides. He stopped in front of the gate on his left.
Snowflakes eddied gently in the still night air. The wind did not reach
down here, but its fierce voice called from the rooftops above.
He took a pair of lock picks from his pocket. He had found them a long
time ago in the apartment of a burglar who had committed suicide.
Over the years there had been rare but important occasions on which the
picks had come in handy. He used one of them to tease up the pins in
the cheap gate lock, used the other pick to hold the pins in place once
they’d been teased. In two minutes he was inside.
A small courtyard lay behind Graham Harris’s house. A patch of grass.
Two trees. A brick patio. Of course, the two flower beds were barren
during the winter; however, the presence of a wrought-iron table and
four wrought-iron chairs made it seem that people had been playing cards
in the sun just that afternoon.
He crossed the courtyard and climbed three steps to the rear entrance.
The storm door was not locked.
As delicately, swiftly and silently as he could manage, he picked the
lock on the wooden door.
He was dismayed by the ease with which he had gained entry.
Wouldn’t people ever learn to buy good locks?
Harris’s kitchen was warm and dark. It smelled of spice cake, and of
bananas that had been put out to ripen and were now overripe.
He closed the door soundlessly.
For a few minutes he stood perfectly still, listening to the house and
waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Finally, when he could
identify every object in the kitchen, he went to the table, lifted a
chair away from it, put the chair down again without making even the
faintest noise.
He sat down and took his revolver from the shoulder holster under his
left arm. He held the gun in his lap.
The squad car waited at the curb until Graham opened the front door of
the house. Then it drove away, leaving tracks in the five-inch snowfall
that, in Greenwich Village, had not yet been pushed onto the sidewalks.
He switched on the foyer light. As Connie closed the door, he went into
the unlighted living room and located the nearest table lamp.
He turned it on-and froze, unable to find the strength or the will to
remove his fingers from the switch.
A man sat in one of the easy chairs. He had a gun.
Connie put one hand on Graham’s arm. To the man in the chair, she said,
“What are you doing here?”
Anthony Prine, the host of Manhattan at Midnight, stood up. He waved
the gun at them. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Why are you talking like that?” Connie asked.
“The Southern accent? I was born with it. Got rid Of it years ago.