Dirt

Chapter 30

Stone stood half a block from Amanda’s building and waited for Martha to some out. Martha knew him by sight, and he would have to be careful.

It was nearly six when she left the building, and she walked with great purpose down Lexington Avenue, went into a Gristedes market, stayed twenty minutes, and left with nothing in her hands. Probably having her groceries delivered. She walked on downtown, did some window shopping, and then did something Stone thought odd: She went into an expensive cosmetics shop and spent nearly forty minutes there, allowing a salesgirl to make her up, then leaving with a loaded shopping bag. This seemed strange, because Martha, on the occasions when he had seen her, had never worn makeup at all. There was a new man in her life, Stone figured.

She continued downtown until she reached her building and went inside. Stone intended to wait until she emerged again. If she was still all made up she might have a date later. Then he saw a van parked a few yards down the street from her building; it was gray and had a telephone company logo on the sides. What surprised him was that Bob Cantor was behind the wheel, wearing a hard hat. Stone approached and knocked on a window.

Cantor jumped, then grinned and let Stone in. “Just in time,” he whispered, “she’s on the phone with a guy.” He flipped a switch, and the call was played over a speaker.

“…really sorry, but I’ve got this meeting,” a man’s voice was saying.

“Aw…” Martha responded, “and I just made myself look so pretty for you.”

“I’ll miss that, baby, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“I’ll have to call you; it’s a rough week.”

“Oh, all right,” she said, the disappointment heavy in her voice. The call ended.

“How much did I miss?” Stone asked.

“Nothing important.”

“Did she make the call?”

“No, he called her.”

“Shit. If she makes any calls, can you extract the numbers from the keypad beeps?”

“Sure.”

“What about Caller ID? Can you pick up her incoming calls?”

“Nope; that has to be done centrally, at the exchange. Nothing I can do about it.”

“What did you find inside her apartment?”

“Nice place; not large, but good furniture – antiques, nice upholstered pieces, a baby grand piano, out of tune. Her clothes are pretty dull, but there was a new black dress in a Saks bag that looked more elegant than her other stuff. I found some credit card bills; she’s got a balance on her Visa of six thousand and change, pretty high for a secretary, but she pays on time.”

“She makes good money, so the Visa balance isn’t out of line,” Stone said. “What else? Any photographs of men?”

“Nope, only one photograph; looks like her parents. She reads a lot, almost all hardbacks; there are a lot of bookcases in the place. She buys expensive-looking sheets and towels, there are a couple of good oriental carpets in the place. All in all, a fairly high-end joint, especially for a single woman.”

“Anything else?”

“I saved the best for last; her apartment’s already wired, and by the same guy who did your job.”

“Jesus, that’s four residences they’ve gone after; these people must have some money behind them.”

“Either that, or one of them knows his way around electronic surveillance. The equipment isn’t very exotic or very expensive, but whoever did it knew what he was doing.”

Music suddenly came from the speaker in the van.

“Sounds like WQXR, the classical radio station,” Cantor said. “Interesting lady; pity she’s not more of a looker.”

“Where are you going to park the recorder?” Stone asked.

“Right here; I’m in a legal parking spot, and I don’t have to move the van until tomorrow morning, when the alternate side parking rules change. I’ll just leave it until then.”

“Good. No point in surveilling when she’s at work, either. Just check her between quitting time and bedtime; let’s see if the guy really calls back or if he’s just handing her a line.”

“Okay. How long do you want me to keep the recorder going?”

“The rest of the week, if you can check out the other two names I gave you while the recorder listens.”

“Sure thing. Tell me, did you set your alarm when you left the house?”

“Damn it, I forgot.”

“They’ll come back, I promise you.”

“How will I know if they do?”

“You won’t, unless you know exactly what to look for.”

Stone opened the door of the van. “I think I’d better get home.”

The phone was ringing when he opened the front door.

“Hi,” Arrington said. “How about tonight?”

“I’ve got to do something tonight,” he said. “and I’m afraid you can’t help.”

“I can be very helpful,” she said.

“I know, but this one I need to do alone. How about tomorrow?”

“You’re on; see you later.” She hung up.

Stone walked around the house and took a good look at things; nothing seemed to have been disturbed in his absence. He switched on the living room lights and left the house by the front door, careful to set the alarm this time, then walked around to the other side of the block and rang the bell of a neighbor of his acquaintance.

“Hi,” he said to the woman. “I’ve forgotten my front door key; could I go out the back door of your house? I’ve got a kitchen door key hidden.”

“Sure,” the woman said, then let him into and out the rear of her house.

It was dark now, but the lights in the common garden had not yet come on. Stone stood very still for ten minutes, sweeping the entire garden, looking for any sign of movement. There was none. He walked slowly toward the back door of his own house, as if out for an evening stroll, then stopped again at his back gate. Still no movement in the garden.

He went to his kitchen door and let himself in, then disarmed the burglar alarm. Without turning on any lights, he went upstairs to his bedroom, changed into slippers, got the loaded riot gun, and went back downstairs to his study. He sat himself down in a comfortable chair and began to wait. The only light in the room filtered in from the living room, where a single lamp burned.

It had been a long time since he had been on a stakeout, and he tried to remember how he had dealt with the boredom without falling asleep. Reading was out; so was listening to music or watching television. Instead, he tried to remember things, things from a long time ago; that, he knew from experience, would keep him awake and wouldn’t interfere with his hearing. He tried to remember all the names of his high school graduating class, scoring about 80 percent, he reckoned.

The graduation memory done, he started on girls. He tried to remember each of the girls he had slept with from his freshman year at NYU, when he had had his first sexual experience, until he graduated. He began with Susan Bernstein, his first, who had invited him back to her dorm room and brazenly seduced him, cheerfully waiting until he had recovered from his first, premature ejaculation so that they could do it again, this time for a considerably longer period. He had slept with her throughout his freshman year; he tried to remember each experience. She didn’t come back his sophomore year; she had quit school to marry a jeweler in the diamond district.

He worked his way through the college years, lingering over the first experience he had had with two girls, at a summer house in East Hampton. The girls, he remembered, had been just as interested in each other as in him, something that had fascinated him to no end. Then there had been the assistant professor of English whom he had screwed late at night in the faculty lounge and on three other occasions, always in the same room. For some reason, doing it there had turned her on.

He was somewhere in the middle of his senior year, in the back seat of a Cadillac convertible parked on a dark Greenwich Village street, fucking the beautiful daughter of a New Jersey car dealer, when he was suddenly snapped back to the present. He had heard a noise from somewhere downstairs.