When had he ever been so hungry and tired – so cold? What was he to do? The motel room was just across the parking lot. Franny’s eyes never left the door as he winced at fresh pain from an Achilles tendon. The door was a hundred miles away for one who lacked the good legs to carry himself across that dark patch of ground.
A pair of headlights entered the lot. The car was aiming straight at him, rushing toward the telephone booth and blinding him with brilliant light magnified in reflections on four walls of glass. Two thousand pounds of steel and chrome stopped just short of the booth, with a squeal of brakes and tires spitting gravel.
Which one of them was playing with him now – torturing him? This was too cruel. Was it Nick Prado or Mallory?
Chapter 19
On this dark morning, lightning split the sky over the treeline of Central Park. The stone steps of the fountain were wet with mist, and Mallory’s hair was netted with fine pearls of water. Across the wide driveway that separated the hotel from its courtyard, a high wind rustled the multinational flags that decorated the landmark facade.
She could not have orchestrated nature any better.
Another gift to the cause was a crowd of animal-rights activists ganging along the sidewalks. A small army of angry people held up giant photographs of wounded animals. Others waved signs defaming a hotel guest, a film star who wore furs in public.
A bellboy was loading suitcases into the trunk of a long black limousine. When the chauffeur walked to the rear of the car to settle the tip, Mallory sprinted out from the cover of the fountain and pushed her way through the crowd on the sidewalk. She opened the driver’s door and slid in behind the steering wheel. On the other side of the glass partition, Emile St. John was the lone passenger in the back seat. Mallory turned around to smile at him. Hers was not an expression of warmth – more like a promise of something nasty. And St. John was taken by surprise.
She depressed a button on the dashboard. The door locks clicked shut all around the car. Another button rolled down the glass wall that separated them. „Good morning.“ She managed to make this sound like a threat as she turned the key in the ignition and fired up the engine.
„Is this a kidnapping?“ St. John had recovered from his jolt, and now he seemed merely amused. „Nick will be so envious. Where are we going?“
„Nowhere.“ She maneuvered the long car across the lanes of the driveway. Grille and bumper nearly touched the parked cars at both curbs and effectively blocked the flow of traffic. The engine idled as she turned to face him, not smiling anymore. „You were a good cop for a lot of years, St. John.
It’s not your style to run away.“
„I’m afraid I’ve aged into a coward. I’m too old to do Max Candle’s routines.“ He waved one hand in the air to say, It’s that simple.
The chauffeur was politely tapping at Mallory’s window. She ignored him. „You asked Nick Prado to take over the hangman act. He’s about your age, isn’t he?“
„But Nick isn’t aware of that. I never had the heart to tell him he was getting old.“ St. John turned to the side window to see a red sedan pulling up to the limousine’s broadside. The car’s windshield faced the limo’s side windows, and the driver was waving at them, flicking the air in a shoo-fly gesture, as if this would clear away the tons of metal stretched lengthwise across his path. St. John held up two fingers to the driver to tell him this wouldn’t take long, only a few minutes. He was wrong about that.
The hotel doorman was knocking on the rear passenger window, trying to get St. John’s attention. The luxury limousine was well padded against city noises, and the man’s voice was little more than the buzz of an insect, but Mallory could guess what he was saying. The opposite side window gave her a view on the driveway curving back to the busy artery of Central Park South. A cab had pulled up alongside the red sedan, its headlights a foot from the side of the limousine. As these vehicles were disgorging passengers and baggage, two cabs and another private car were queuing up behind them, locking them into the driveway.
The courtyard lit up with a flash of lightning.
She paid no attention to the more insistent rapping at both windows. Her tone was casual. „The doctor said your accident amounted to a nasty rope burn.“ Actually, the doctor had refused to say anything. A raid on the hospital computer had been more helpful. „Now what about Franny Futura? Is he dead yet?“
The bang caught up to the lightning bolt, louder than gunfire.
St. John turned to the window pocked with a smattering of raindrops. Another man was knocking on the glass and gesturing toward a yellow cab sandwiched between the limousine and the other cars.
Mallory tuned out the knocking man. „Where is Futura?“
St. John only shook his head, distracted by the men at the windows. The chauffeur retreated, but the doorman did not, and the cabby had escalated to the sexually graphic gesture of one extended finger, a traditional New York traffic signal directing St. John to insert his car into a dark orifice. Outside the baffle of thick glass, the chauffeur engaged the cabby in a dumb-show shouting match. More cars were pulling into the driveway.
„Where is Futura?“ There was no pressure in her voice. She had all day for this. Other drivers were gathering around the cabby and the chauffeur. Round eyes, Asian eyes and every shade of skin could be seen through the rain-streaked glass.
„Mallory, I’d tell you if I knew where Franny was.“
„Sure you would.“
The cabby had driven off the chauffeur with a raised fist, and now he renewed his attentions to the window, hammering on it with his fist. Though the law forbade the nonemergency use of car horns, Mallory ignored the lawbreaker who leaned on his horn in a continuous shriek. The line of cars was now stretching into the street. Backing up into traffic was not an option for any of the enclosed vehicles. Nor could they jump the curb thronged with activists. One of the protesters waved a giant photograph of an animal’s chewed-off leg left in the metal jaws of a trap. The mist had changed to a light rainfall, but none of the animal people showed signs of leaving. They had become an audience for the angry motorists assaulting the car.
„You’re not afraid, St. John. That’s not why you’re running back to Paris. You just don’t want to be here when another man dies.“
More drivers were carting bags from the back of the line and glaring at the limousine. Other men had joined the cabby, who was hammering on the hood with both fists, frustrated, eyes popping with an implosion of anger, trying to get at this rich bastard who was ignoring him. Other drivers were warming up their fists on the windows and the trunk of the car. Their mouths opened and closed with screams that broke through the barrier of thick glass. The words were muffled and some were foreign, but the sentiments were clear. It was easy to lip-read the word asshole and its many translations.
A gridlock of traffic blocked two lanes of Central Park South.
St. John was finding it more difficult to keep his tone civil as the windows were assaulted with more hands and angry faces pressed to the glass. „Mallory, this is old business that should’ve been taken care of long before you were born. In the war, I resolved the killing with my religion as – “
„You never resolved a thing. You still carry it around with you.“ She had hit home. It was in his eyes, the pain of a stab in the soft spot.
One of the cars at the end of the drive tried to back into the street and hit a carriage, freeing the horse from its traces, and now the old brown mare was running down the sidewalk and scattering pedestrians. Cheers from the animal-rights people penetrated the glass. The overturned horseless carriage cut off more traffic, and now the line of immobilized vehicles extended past the intersection.