Dirt

Chapter 20

Arnie Millman came out of the movie house on Third Avenue and checked his watch; nearly five. Arnie had spent the day at the movies because he didn’t have any work to do. It kept him out of the house, and that was okay with his wife. Tonight was her bridge night, and his apartment would be full of cackling hens. He always ate out on her bridge night, but he wasn’t hungry yet.

It occurred to him that he wasn’t all that far from the address Stone had shown him, Amanda Dart’s place, where the secretary, Martha, worked. Maybe he’d give Stone a couple of free hours; after all, he had nothing else to do until dinner-time. He walked briskly uptown and west, until he came to the apartment building where Amanda Dart lived.

He hung around outside until Martha came out, just after five-thirty. She was as Stone had described her – plump and a little on the plain side – and he began to follow her home. Except she didn’t seem to be going home. Martha lived on Third Avenue in the Sixties, but she crossed Third and walked uptown to Second Avenue in the Eighties. Her step was light; Arnie thought she must be in a very good mood.

She went into a fancy grocery store, and Arnie followed her. He picked up a basket and began idly dropping things into it, watching her as she moved through the aisles. She spent most of her time at the deli counter, buying a big chunk of smoked salmon, a small tin of very expensive caviar, and some cheeses, testing them for ripeness. She picked up a bunch of fresh flowers and, finally, a bottle of very good domestic champagne. Somehow, Arnie didn’t think she was planning supper alone at home. He put down his basket and ducked out of the store as she stopped at the checkout counter.

A few minutes later, she came out and headed uptown, carrying a shopping bag in one hand and her purse and the flowers in the other. Arnie followed, half a block behind her. He was right in the middle of the 19th Precinct, his old beat, and he knew virtually every shop and restaurant along the way. He was enjoying the walk.

Then something peculiar happened: the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. It used to happen when he was in a dangerous situation, when he was hyperalert, going down a dark alley after somebody with a knife, that sort of thing. Now it was happening for no apparent reason.

Martha stopped at a corner for a traffic light, and Arnie turned toward the window of an antique shop, apparently studying its contents. With little visible motion of his head, he checked down the street in the direction from which he had come. He had the odd feeling that he was being followed.

The streets were busy, lots of people on the way home from work, many of them with briefcases or groceries. He could detect no one who made him suspicious. Normally, if he had thought he were being followed, he would have checked the other side of the street as well, but he dismissed the notion from his mind. He remembered an occasion, many years ago, when he had been followed, on Second Avenue, right around here. Some part of his brain must have reacted to that memory.

The light changed, and Martha continued uptown, turning east down a street in the low Nineties. Arnie crossed the street and followed her down the other side, continuing when she stopped at a building. He saw her open a wrought-iron gate and disappear down a flight of steps to what must have been an outside door to the basement. He crossed the street, walked to the building, and looked down the stairwell, just in time to see her entering the apartment, stopping on the threshold, apparently to give someone a kiss. He couldn’t see who it was. The door closed, and Arnie was left standing on the sidewalk, frustrated.

He walked up the front steps of the building and checked the mailboxes; the one for the basement apartment was marked DRYER. Arnie stood on the stoop and looked up and down the street. It looked as though Martha was there for dinner, at the very least, and while it wasn’t his own dinner-time yet, he had no great wish to spend the next two or three hours standing in the cold outside this building waiting for Martha to come out, especially since he wasn’t being paid to do so. Even if he did wait, what would he accomplish? What he wanted to know was, who was Dryer, and what were they talking about in that apartment?

Arnie walked down the steps, tipping his hat to a middle-aged woman who was on her way up, and at the bottom turned right. There was a narrow alley beside the building, and he walked down it, hoping there might be a window opening into the basement apartment that he could see through. He found nothing but a solid brick wall.

Still, basement apartments often had gardens, didn’t they? He took out a penlight and shone it down the alley; it stopped at a brick wall another forty feet along. He walked on down the alley until the brick changed to a concrete block wall, which went up only a couple of feet higher than his head. The wall seemed to separate him from a garden, and there would be windows on the other side of it.

Arnie found an empty garbage can with a lid and carried it over to the wall. He steadied himself against the concrete blocks and tried to step up on top of the can, but it was too big a step for him. A few years ago, he’d have had no problem doing that, but now… Using his penlight, he found a wooden box full of excelsior down the alley. He carried it back and placed it next to the garbage can; it made a nice step up.

Arnie stepped onto the box and, grabbing the top of the wall with his fingers, stepped up onto the garbage can. He was head and shoulders above the top of the wall now, and he could see a row of glowing windows on the back of the building, with shadows moving across them. Must be the kitchen, Martha and her friend, Dryer, would be preparing the things she had brought from the grocery.

Arnie figured that, in spite of his years, he could hoist himself to the top of the wall and down the other side, so he could look through the windows. He was about to try this when the hairs on the back of his neck began moving around again. Then there was a tug on the tail of his raincoat, and, alarmed, he turned around to see who was there.

“What the fuck…” he managed to say aloud, before he began to fall off the garbage can.