But no.
Charlie Nichols was her father.
Isn’t that what she’d written on the photo?
To My Dear Daddy.
Then why had she signed her name Judy Jordan?
“What I’d like to know,” Connie said, “is if Judy Jordan is Helen Parrish, then how come she’s not Judy Nichols if Charlie Nichols is or was her father?”
“I love you,” Michael said, and kissed her fiercely.
The Amalgamated Dwellings, Inc., were cooperative apartments at 504 Grand Street, but the entrance to the complex was around the corner on a street called Abraham Kazan, no relation. You went down a series of low brick steps and into an interior courtyard that might have been a castle keep in England, with arches and what looked like turrets and a snow-covered little park with shrubs and trees and a fountain frozen silent by the cold.
The lettered buildings—A, B, C, and so on —were clustered around this secret enclave. Judy Jordan lived in E. The name on the mailbox downstairs was J. Jordan.
“Women who do that are dumb,” Connie said.
“Using an initial instead of a name. You do that, and a rapist knows right off it’s a woman living alone. You can bet I don’t have C. Kee on my mailbox.”
“What do you have?”
“Charlie Kee.”
“That’s a very common name in this city,” Michael said. “Charlie.”
“Which is why I put it on my mailbox,” Connie said, and nodded.
“Why?”
“So a rapist would think it was a common man named Charlie Kee up there.”
“How about the postman?”
“Mr. Di Angelo? A rapist? Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I mean, how will he know where to deliver mail addressed to Connie Kee?”
“That’s his worry,” Connie said.
Michael looked at the name on the mailbox again.
J. Jordan.
“I’ll go up alone,” he said. “You go back to the car.”
“If this blonde is as beautiful as you say she is …”
“She may also be dangerous.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Connie, please go wait in the car for me, okay?”
“I’ll give you ten minutes,” she said.
“If you’re not back by then, I’m coming up after you.”
“Okay. Good.”
He kissed her swiftly.
“I still think I ought to go with you,” she said. But she was already walking out of the courtyard. Michael pressed the button for Judy Jordan’s apartment.
“Yes?” a woman’s voice said.
He could not tell whether the voice was Helen Parrish’s or not. As a matter of fact, he’d completely forgotten what Helen Parrish had sounded like.
“Miss Jordan?” he said.
“Yes?”
“Charlie Nichols sent me,” he said.
“Look,” she said, “this is an inconvenient time. I was just dressing to …”
“I’d like to talk to you, Miss Jordan, if …”
“Oh, well, all right, come on up,” she said, and buzzed him in.
He climbed to the third floor, found her apartment just to the left of the stairwell, and was about to ring the bell set in the doorjamb when he hesitated.
If Judy Jordan did, in fact, turn out to be Helen Parrish, or vice versa, then the woman inside this apartment was the person who’d set the whole scheme in motion, the MacGuffin as she might be called in an Alfred Hitchcock film. Was he going to simply knock on the door and wait for the MacGuffin to answer it, perhaps to do him more harm than she’d already done? Michael did not think that was such a good idea. He reached into the right-hand pocket of his new bomber jacket, and took out the .32 he had appropriated from Arthur Crandall. He flipped the gun butt-side up, and rapped it against the door. Twice. Rap. Rap. And listened.
“Who is it?” a woman said. Same voice that had come from the speaker downstairs.
“Me,” he said.
“Who’s me?”
“I told you. Charlie sent me.”
“If it’s about the money, I still haven’t got it,” the woman said from somewhere just inside the door now. There was a peephole set in the door at eye level. She was probably looking out at him. He still couldn’t tell whether the voice was Helen Parrish’s.
“I’d like to talk to you, if I may,” he said, ducking his chin, trying to hide his face so that if this was Helen Parrish looking out at him, she wouldn’t get such a good look.
“Just a minute,” she said. “I’m still half-naked.”
He wondered if this really was Helen Parrish, half-naked inside there. He thought back to the beginning of their relationship together, their gentle, easy conversation, the way they’d held hands, the way they’d looked deep into each other’s eyes. He thought what a shame it was that she’d turned out to be a MacGuffin but maybe all beautiful women turned into MacGuffins sooner or later. He certainly hoped that wouldn’t be the case with Connie.
He looked at his watch.
What the hell was taking her so long in there?
He rapped on the door with the gun butt again.
Three times.
Rap. Rap. Rap.
“Miss Jordan?” he called.
No answer.
“Miss …”
“Put your hands up, Mr. Barnes.”
A man’s voice.
Behind him.
“Up!” the man said. “Now!”
The thing in Michael’s back felt very much like the muzzle of a gun.
Michael raised his hands over his head, the .32 in his right hand. The bandaged left arm hurt when he raised it. He almost said Ouch.
“Just let the gun fall out of your hand,” the man said. “Just open your hand and drop the gun.”
He opened his hand. The gun fell out of it. Dropped to the floor. Hit the floor with a solid thwunk.
“Thank you,” the man said. “Now stand still, please.”
Kneeling to pick up the gun now, Michael supposed. There was a small scraping sound as it came up off the tile floor. A hand began patting him down. All his pants pockets. Then the right-hand pocket of the jacket, and then—
“Well, well, another one,” the man said.
Frankie Zeppelin’s .45 came out of Michael’s pocket.
“Mr. Barnes?” the man said.
And hit him on the back of the head with at least one of the guns.
He heard voices.
A man’s voice. A woman’s voice.
“… blow the whole thing,” the man said.
“… other choice, do you?”
He opened his eyes.
A tin ceiling.
The shrink he had gone to in Boston had an office with a tin ceiling. Michael used to lie on his couch and look up at all the curlicues in his tin ceiling. He was not on a couch now. He was on a bed. An unmade bed. The bed smelled as if someone had peed in it. He wondered if it was a child’s bed. The bed had a metal footboard, which he could see by lifting his head. Wrought iron painted white. He was spread-eagled on the bed with his ankles tied to the footboard and his arms up over his head and tied to the headboard, which was also wrought iron painted white.
He had never seen this room in his life. The room looked like the sort he imagined you’d find in any cheap hotel that catered to hookers and dope dealers. He figured this had to be a drug plot. Otherwise why would a man who’d known he was Michael Barnes—or at least Mr. Barnes—have hit him on the head with his own gun and then tied him to a bed in what was truly a very shitty room? A drug plot for sure. Paint peeling off the walls. A pile of dirty laundry in one corner of the room. No curtain or shade on the window leading to the fire escape. And—hanging crookedly on the wall beside the window —a framed and faded print of an Indian sitting on a spotted pony. Michael was really very surprised and disappointed by this totally shitty drug-plot room because the building itself had looked so nice from the street and the hallways had been so neat and clean, which proved you couldn’t always judge a book by its cover.