But I resisted the urge to walk over and tell her that I was on to them. That I knew what she’d done to me. I needed to bide my time. To get Anna’s money back, I needed to find Vasquez; and to find Vasquez, I needed Lucinda.
That was my mantra. This was my mission.
She would lead me to him.
I guessed that Lucinda wasn’t a stockbroker anymore.
I overheard a conversation Lucinda had with the man at Penn Station on Wednesday morning the next week. The man mentioned selling short for a client, how this client was a veritable meal ticket for him, which meant that he was a stockbroker and Lucinda wasn’t. Because another stockbroker might be inclined to know people in other brokerage houses and might be inclined to ask them about their co-worker Lucinda, who, it would turn out, didn’t exist. No, Lucinda obviously had another occupation these days. A lawyer, an insurance agent, a circus clown. And Lucinda, no doubt, wasn’t even her name.
I knew the name of the man she was about to con out of his money, though. I knew this because another man had come up to them while they were having coffee together that same morning and said: Sam, Sam Griffen, how are you doing?
Not too well, actually. Mr. Griffen blanched — his face turning the color of soap, as Lucinda turned away and stared at the price list on the wall.
When Mr. Griffin regained his voice, he said: Fine.
Then Lucinda got up and walked off with her coffee cup — just another commuter on her way to the subway. And Mr. Griffen sat and talked with this unwelcome intruder for five minutes. When he left, Mr. Griffen sighed and wiped his face with a stained napkin.
I thought it was unnerving being this close to a victim without being able to warn him. Like standing next to a child who can’t see the speeding car bearing down on him but being forbidden to tell him to get out of the way. Watching this horrible accident unfold in close-up and super slow motion. The worst kind of voyeur.
I thought she saw me once.
I’d followed them to a coffee shop north of Chinatown one morning.
They’d taken a table by the window, and I saw Sam Griffin reach for her hand and Lucinda give it to him.
I couldn’t help remembering the way that hand had felt in my own. Just briefly. Remembering the things the hand had done to me, the pleasure it had conjured up for me that day at the Fairfax Hotel. Like opening up one Chinese box and finding another inside, and opening that one up, too, and then the next box, each box smaller and tighter than the previous one, opening them faster and faster until there were no boxes left and I was trying to catch my breath.
I was still trying to catch my breath, still lost in memories of guilty pleasure, when they exited the coffee shop. I had to turn and dart across the street. I had to hold my breath, count to ten, then slowly turn back, fingers crossed, and see if I’d been spotted.
No. They’d gone off somewhere in a taxi.
Then I lost them.
One day.
Two days.
Three days.
A week. No Lucinda. No Mr. Griffen. Nowhere.
I scoured Penn Station from one end to the other, coming early, staying late.
But nothing.
I started to panic, to think maybe I’d missed the boat. That she’d already taken Mr. Griffen off someplace for an afternoon of sex and Vasquez had already caught them in the act. That he’d already taken their wallets and asked Mr. Griffen why he was fucking around on his wife. Maybe even called Mr. Griffen at home and stated his dire need for a loan. Just ten thousand dollars, that’s all, and he’d be out of his hair.
When the next week came, and I still couldn’t find them, I was ready to give up. I was ready to admit that a forty-five-year-old ex–advertising executive had no business thinking he could win here. That I was hopelessly out of my element.
I was ready to throw in the towel.
Then I remembered something.
THIRTY-FIVE
Okay,” the deskman said. “How long you want it for?”
This deskman was the very same one who’d given me the key to room 1207 back in November when I’d stood in front of him with Lucinda on my arm.
I was back at the Fairfax Hotel, and the deskman was asking me exactly how long I’d be needing room 1207 for.
Good question.
“How much is it for two weeks?”
“Five hundred and twenty-eight dollars,” the man said.
“Fine,” I said. So far, I was on paid suspension. And $528 was a bargain in New York City, even if the room had bloodstains on the carpeting and the stink of sex in the mattress sheets.
I paid in cash and received my room key. There was a pile of magazines sitting on top of a beat-up couch, the only true piece of furniture in the lobby. I stopped to peruse them: a Sports Illustrated from last year, a Popular Mechanics, two issues of Ebony, and an old U.S. News & World Report: SHOWDOWN IN PALM BEACH COUNTY . I took the Sports Illustrated.
I rode the elevator with a man wearing a University of Oklahoma jacket who actually looked as if he were from Oklahoma. He had the slightly bewildered look of a tourist who’d fallen for the picture on the cover of the brochure — the one taken in 1955, when the Fairfax wasn’t being subsidized by federal welfare checks. He’d probably tried his hand at three-card monte and already purchased a genuine Rolex watch from the man on the corner. He looked like he was ready to go home.
So was I.
But I was on a mission now, so I couldn’t.
For just a moment as I was opening the door, jiggling the key inside the somewhat resistant door lock, I couldn’t help tensing up and waiting for someone to blindside me into the room. No one did, of course, but that didn’t stop me from sighing in relief as soon as I made it inside and shut the door.
It looked a little smaller than before, as if my imagination had given it a size more commensurate with what had gone on there. But it was just a room in a cramped downtown hotel, big enough for two people who pretty much intended to stay glued to each other, conducive to sex if for no other reason than its restrictive dimensions. The kind of room where two is company but three’s a disaster — remembering what it was like to be stuck in that bird’s-eye seat on the floor.
I lay down on the bed without taking my shoes off and closed my eyes. Just for a few minutes.
When I woke, it was nearly dark.
For a few seconds, I had no idea where I was. Wasn’t I home in bed? Wasn’t Deanna next to me or downstairs whipping up something tasty for dinner? And Anna — chatting away on-line in the next room, homework spread out on her lap like a prop to throw me off the scent?
There was a musty odor in the room, mustier even than my furnished apartment; the mattress felt hard and lumpy at the same time; the ghost images of a chair and table I didn’t recognize were hovering precipitously by the foot of the bed. And I finally woke to my current surroundings as to a radio alarm that’s been set too loud — I groaned, winced, and looked furtively for a stop button that didn’t exist.
I got up and made my way into the bathroom to splash some cold water onto my face. My body felt like pins and needles, my mouth dry and pasty. I looked down at my watch: seven twenty-five.