“Yes,” said Lanin, then “No.” She stared blankly for a moment before her gaze settled on Marlene’s yellow VW.
“Is that your car? Could you, urn, give me a lift?” Her blue eyes were red-rimmed and pleading.
“Sure. Get in.”
Marlene cranked the engine and moved off down Henry Street, made a four-corner at Catherine, and headed back up Henry for the Bowery. Lanin sat stiffly in her seat, eyes fixed on the passenger-side mirror.
“Where’s your car?” asked Marlene conversationally.
“In the shop. We came by cab.”
“Uh-huh.” They were headed west on Canal. “You’re on what? Duane, right?”
“Yeah, 152, off West Broadway.”
Marlene hung a left on Greenwich and turned downtown. The closer they got to Duane Street, the more nervous her passenger became. As they passed Jay Street, she was twitching like a trapped rabbit and craning her neck in an attempt to cover all directions at once.
“Who are we avoiding, Carrie?” Marlene asked gently.
“Oh, God, this guy. It’s been going on for a month. I’m losing my fucking marbles behind it.” She sighed heavily and moisture pearled on her golden eyelashes.
“You called the cops?”
“Oh, right, the cops!” snapped Lanin contemptuously. “The cops do not think this is a high priority. Wait, just pull in front of this red truck.” Marlene brought the VW to the curb. Lanin gazed into the car’s mirrors and looked out the window, checking the street and the nearby cars.
“Who is this guy? Jack the Ripper?” asked Marlene.
“Don’t joke! We’re talking somebody with a serious screw loose. Look, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but could you walk me up to my loft? I have a funny feeling-”
“No problem,” said Marlene, and started to get out of the car. Lanin seemed to notice the big dog for the first time. “He’ll be okay in the car? I wouldn’t want him to get stolen.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Marlene confidently. She popped the rear hatch and massaged the dog’s floppy neck. Sweety sighed and sprayed drool. “Sweety is a doggie-college grad,” said Marlene, ruffling the dog’s ears. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you? Yeah, I sprang for the whole nine yards: obedience, guard, attack. Now that I have some assets, all I need is for this monster to take a chunk out of a citizen. Without good reason, of course. So, guaranteed, anybody who broke into that car, we’d find a neat pile of cleaned bones.”
Carrie Lanin’s building was a fine old cast-iron-fronted commercial building that had been bought by a speculator a few years back and turned into floor-through condos. Marlene vaguely recalled that Carrie had married some serious money and had done well in the divorce. There was even an elevator, which Lanin summoned with a special cylinder key.
Lanin uttered a loud wail and then a string of curses when the elevator door slid open at her floor. Marlene pushed forward to see what the problem was. It was apparently the long-stemmed rose wrapped in green cellophane, with an envelope attached, leaning against the metal door to Lanin’s loft.
“That’s from him, huh?”
“Yeah, God damn him! That means he’s figured out how to work the elevator.” She snatched up the rose and unlocked her loft door. Marlene put a restraining hand on her shoulder and said quietly, “Why don’t you wait here and keep the elevator? If he figured how to work that, he could have figured your door lock too. Let me just check it out.”
Lanin’s eyes went wide and she froze, holding the rose in front of her like the prom queen in a horror movie. Marlene went into the loft.
She was not frightened at all. Rather, she found herself wondering why she was not, and why she was putting herself into this peculiar situation for a woman she hardly knew. She took a breath, cleared her mind, and went in.
The loft’s main room was a lovely space, full of light from the huge semicircular window facing the street. The floors were shiny oak accented by bright Rya rugs; the furniture was fashionable Danish teak and Haitian cotton. It was an easy place to search: the only private rooms were two bedrooms and a small office-studio. Marlene went through these swiftly, peering under beds and into closets. She had no idea what she would have done had she found an obsessive man lurking there, but, as it turned out, the place was empty.
“Marlene?” a quavering call from the doorway.
“It’s okay, there’s no one here. I’m in the bedroom.”
Carrie Lanin came stomping into her loft, cursing under her breath. Marlene heard the sound of a sink running and the grind of a disposal. She went out to the kitchen, which was a slick number built around a sink-and-cooktop island, and was in time to see the last of the rose disappearing down the sink.
“What did the note say?” asked Marlene.
“Fuck if I know. It’s in the trash. Jesus, I need a drink, I don’t care how early it is.” Lanin reached a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s down from an upper cabinet and poured herself a large one over ice. “Want something?” she asked after a deep swallow and a mild coughing fit.
“Not for me, thanks,” said Marlene. “Where’s the trash?”
Lanin gestured at a chrome can; Marlene opened it and lifted out the crumpled envelope. “Ecch! What are you doing?” Lanin exclaimed, wrinkling her nose.
“Just curious. I think, by the way, if you’re going to have any chance of stopping this guy, you’ll want to keep his little offerings.” Marlene smoothed out the envelope and opened it. Inside was a plain card, unsigned and inscribed in black ink, “Love Til the End of time.” The writing was rectilinear and excessively neat, like the inscriptions on a blueprint or circuit diagram.
“Stopping him? What do you mean?” Lanin took another sip and, as the light dawned, she suddenly pointed her finger at her guest. “Oh, I remember now, you’re some kind of cop … no, something to do with raped women-”
“I was an assistant D.A. I used to run the rape bureau.”
“But you know people!” said Lanin excitedly. “You can pull some strings …”
Marlene shook her head. “No-hold on, Carrie! My string-pulling days are over. In any case, even if I was still with the office, there probably isn’t a whole hell of a lot I could do. Being an annoying asshole is not against the law-unfortunately, maybe, but there it is.”
“But, Marlene, the guy won’t leave me alone! He calls me every night, sometimes more than once. He uses up my answering machine tape playing ‘Twist and Shout’ over and over-”
“Why ‘Twist and Shout’?”
“Oh, because it was ‘our song.’”
“Was it?”
“Was it?” Lanin’s voice rose to a screech. “Was it? Marlene, I don’t even know this son of a bitch. It’s all in his head!”
“Wait a minute-he just, like, seized on you on the street?”
Lanin sighed deeply and rolled her eyes. “You want the whole story? You got an hour?”
As it happened, Marlene’s calendar was free for at least the next eight months, so Lanin made some coffee and Marlene sat down on the Haitian cotton sofa, and Carrie Lanin settled herself on the bentwood rocker across from her, sipping from a steaming mug enriched with a tot of sour mash bourbon and told her tale.
“I went to high school in Jersey-Englewood Cliffs. I was sort of a player in high school-captain of the cheerleaders, junior prom queen-like that. People knew me. Okay, a couple of months ago, it must have been before we went to the beach, like June, I’m in Gristede’s on Sixth, picking up some things, when this guy comes up to me in the dairy department. ‘Carrie Tiptree?’ he says-my maiden name, right? He holds out his hand and says his name’s Rob Pruitt, he went to high school with me. So I sort of smile back at him. Of course, I don’t remember him at all. I mean, if I ever actually saw him, he was just a face in the crowd. So we started chatting, he carried my packages for me, and I thought, okay, a pleasant guy, chance meeting, nothing special to look at but neat. I mean, he didn’t have red eyes and fangs. After I got home, I was curious, so I dragged out the old yearbook and looked him up.”