New York Dead

Chapter 37

Late Friday morning it started to snow. The big flakes floated straight down, with no wind to blow them into drifts, and, gradually, the city grew silent as traffic decreased and the noise of what was left was muffled by the carpet of white.

As delighted as a child, Stone forgot working on the house and trudged up to Central Park, where he watched children sledding and building snowmen. As it started to get dark, he hiked down Park Avenue, watching the lights come on and the taxis and buses struggle through the deepening snow. By the time he got home, twelve inches had fallen on the city, and it seemed to be getting heavier. Then it occurred to him that Teddy O’Bannion lived in Brooklyn. He grabbed the telephone.

“Don’t worry, Stone” – Teddy chuckled – “the subway is just down at the corner, and I can get a cab from your place. I’ll start early, so I’ll be sure to be on time.”

Stone hung up relieved. The thought that he might have to replace Teddy on this mission had never occurred to him, and even the possibility made his knees tremble.

In the study, he pulled the drop cloths off the crates holding his books – his and his great-aunt’s and his father’s and his mother’s. He estimated there were more than two thousand of them. He took them from their boxes and began arranging them carefully on the shelves. This was a job he would not want to do again. He arranged them by category – art books, fiction, philosophy, politics, biography – and alphabetically by author. It was slow going, and he often had to shift books to keep them in order.

At eight o’clock, he fixed himself some dinner and ate it at the kitchen table, watching the news on CNN.

When he had finished his dinner, he returned to the arranging of the books and became so absorbed in the job that it was nine forty before he realized that Teddy O’Bannion had not arrived.

Worried, he called Teddy’s number. It was busy, and it remained busy during his next ten attempts. He called the operator and had the number checked: out of order, she would report it. What was going on?

At ten thirty, he began to face the reality that he was going to have to walk into Apartment 9 – A and take videotapes of a strange woman and man in bed together. The thought made his bowels weak. He wished he had not eaten such a large dinner. Teddy’s phone number still would not ring.

At a quarter to eleven, Stone realized that he would have to shower and change, so that he would be presentable to the doorman at the apartment building. He hoped to God it would be a different doorman; he couldn’t afford to be seen twice by the same man.

In the shower he ran over what might go wrong. The couple wouldn’t be there – that was the best thing that could happen. The man would overpower him and call the police – that would end his relationship with Woodman amp; Weld, and he would end up in court, if not in jail. The man would produce a pistol from a bedside drawer and…

The doorbell rang as he stepped out of the shower. He got into a terry-cloth robe and raced down the stairs. Teddy O’Bannion stood, knee deep in snow, on the front stoop.

“Jesus, I’m sorry, Stone,” he began. “There was a fire in the subway station at the corner, and it knocked out not only the trains but every phone in the neighborhood, including mine.”

“Come on in, Teddy,” Stone said, nearly trembling with relief.

“I’m double-parked out there,” Teddy said, brushing snow from his coat. “I had to come in the wife’s Jeepster. Good thing I had something with four-wheel drive, but it still took me an hour and a half from the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Stone pointed him at the camera case. “Look that over while I change.”

When he came back down, Teddy was impatient to go. “I’m not going to get a cab in this,” he said.

“I’ll come along and wait for you in the car,” Stone replied.

Five minutes later, they were grinding slowly up Park Avenue. Stone turned into the right street and stopped the Jeepster a few doors down from the apartment building. “You’d better hurry,” he said to Teddy. “You don’t want to run into these people in the lobby and let them get a look at you.”

Teddy reached inside his coat and produced a nine-millimeter automatic pistol. “Don’t worry,” he said, grinning, “I’m ready for anything.”

Stone grabbed at the pistol. “Are you crazy, Teddy?” Then he laughed. The thing was a water pistol, albeit an extremely realistic one. “What the hell are you doing with this?”

Teddy took the water pistol back. “I’ll explain later,” he said, getting out of the car. “Keep the motor running, no matter how long it takes.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t want to freeze to death.” Stone handed him the key to 9-A.

Teddy pointed at the car phone. “I’ll call you, if I can, when I have some results.” He closed the door and trudged through the snow toward the building, finally disappearing into the entrance.

Stone turned the radio to a jazz station and settled down to wait. Five minutes later the car phone rang.

“Hello?”

“They were in before me, but I think they’re still awake. I can hear music and voices, if I put a water glass against the wall.”

“Take your time,” Stone said. “We’ve got all night, if necessary.”

“It won’t take that long,” Teddy said. “In my experience, people who are fucking illicitly don’t waste much time getting down to it.” He hung up.

Stone turned the heater up a notch, pushed the seat back, and made himself comfortable.

A sharp rapping against the window woke him. He was momentarily disoriented, and, by the time he figured out where he was, the rapping came again on the window. The car’s windows were blocked by a blanket of white, and, when he rolled down the driver’s side window, snow fell into the car.

“Teddy?” Stone said to the figure outside the car.

“What’s up, here, mister?” a voice said.

Jesus, a cop. “Oh, Officer, I’m just waiting for a friend,” Stone said, scrambling around in his sleepy mind for a story.

“You been here half hour, pal,” the cop said. “Let’s see your license and registration.”

“Well, to tell you the truth,” Stone said, “there’s somebody in there with my wife, and I mean to find out who it is. She thinks I’m in Chicago on business.” This was fairly close to the truth.

The cop shook his head. “Listen, pal, let me give you some advice. Go to Chicago, and forget about it, then come back and forgive her. You don’t want to know who the guy is.”

“I’m not breaking any laws, am I – parked outside my own house?” Stone tried to sound annoyed.

“I guess not,” the cop said. “I won’t wish you luck, though.” He turned and waded away through the snow.

Stone took a few deep breaths of fresh air before he raised the window. He looked at his watch: ten past midnight. Teddy had been in there less than an hour. He arranged himself again and settled down to wait, switching on the windshield wipers to clear the snow. As he did, Teddy walked out of the apartment building and started toward the car. He didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.

“Get in, and let’s get out of here,” Stone said, opening the door for him.

“No hurry,” Teddy said. “Nobody’s going to be following me. Not for a while, anyway.”

“Tell me what happened,” Stone said, guiding the Jeepster up the block through the deep snow.

“You can hear pretty good with a glass against the wall, you know.”

“So what did you hear?”

“I heard the music for a while, and their voices, and then I heard the voices move away, so I figure they’d gone to the bedroom.” He shifted in his seat to get comfortable. “Now, there are two ways you can do this,” he said. “One, you can wait for them to go to sleep and then wake them up. That’s good enough, really; I mean, you got them in bed together, right? But the best way is to catch them doing the actual horizontal bunny hop. That way, there’s no talking their way out of it.”

“So, what happened?”

“You can hear pretty good with a glass against the wall,” Teddy said again, maddeningly. “I could hear them talking over the music. I reckoned they were sitting in front of the fireplace. But then I heard them move away, so I figure they’re headed for the bedroom, right?”

“And?”

“I was right. That’s where they were going. So I wait, maybe three minutes, and I go in.”

Stone’s heart was in his mouth. “Teddy, for Christ’s sake, tell me what happened.”

“I’m telling you, Stone; just be patient. Anyway, I leave the camera case and my shoes outside the door, I unscrew the bulb in the vestibule, and I go in real easylike with my key, and, right from the front door, I can hear them going at it, you know?”

“Teddy, spit it out. Did you get the shot we need?”

“So, what I do is, I switch on the camera, but not the light, so I’m recording sound, right?”

“All right, Teddy, go on, give me the gory details.”

“Then I tippy-toe to the bedroom door, and there they are in the moonlight. I think it’s probably good enough without the light.”

Stone was alarmed. “You didn’t use the light?”

“So I run a few feet with just the moonlight. The lady’s on top, she’s really taking a ride on the guy, you know? And they’re building up to it. Both of them are sounding like something at the zoo, no kidding. So, I’m grinding away in the moonlight, and they’re grinding away in the bed, and I can tell things are coming to a head, so to speak, so I wait until just the right moment, when they’re both bellowing like seals, and I hit the light!” Teddy was sounding absolutely delighted with himself.

“Thank God you hit the light.” Stone breathed, his heart pounding.

“Now, tell me, Stone, what’s your first reaction, somebody suddenly shines a bright light on you?”

“Oh, shit,” Stone said. “I’d throw up a hand to shield my eyes. You didn’t get their faces?”

“Stone,” Teddy said, sounding hurt, “you underestimate me.” He held up the water pistol. “That’s where this came in.”

“You shot them with a water pistol?” Stone asked, baffled.

“Right. I mean, here you got these two naked people, they’re on top of the covers, and they’re throwing their hands across their faces to shield their eyes or to keep me from photographing their faces, so with one hand, I give ’em a shot or two with the water pistol, aiming at tender spots like the armpit or the ribs, and, what do they do? Why, they grab at the places I squirted them, don’t they? And they leave their faces exposed, just long enough for me to record them for posterity.”

“Great! Then what happened?”

“Then the guy, who’s on the bottom, remember, tosses the lady in the air, and he starts for me. But I’m outta there, filming all the way, of course, and outside the door I got this little hook that goes one end over the doorknob and the other end hooked to the door molding, so the guy can’t open the door from the inside, right?”

“Wonderful,” Stone said.

“So, I ring for the elevator, and, while it’s coming, and while the guy is trying to break down the door, no doubt bruising his shoulder pretty badly, I slip into my shoes, stick the camera back into its case, and then the elevator comes, I ride down and walk right out of the building. To make it even nicer, the doorman is asleep!”

“Perfection,” Stone said. “Teddy, you’re a wonder.”

“Of course, our guy is going to have to call downstairs and get the doorman to open the door for him, and that’s going to be just a little embarrassing for him.”

Stone pulled up in front of his house. He reached into a pocket and handed Teddy a thick envelope. “Five thousand, as agreed,” he said.

“I thank you, sir,” Teddy said, glowing. He handed over the case. “Your camera, and your videotape.”

Stone got out of the car, and Teddy drove away. He let himself into the house and called Bill Eggers.

“Jesus, Stone, I haven’t slept a wink. How’d it go?”

“It went perfectly, absolutely perfectly.”

“You’ve seen the tape, then?”

“Well, no, I haven’t; I don’t have a VCR. But my man says he got it all, and he’s a good man.”

“You gave him the five grand without seeing the tape?”

“Take it easy, Bill, it went well, believe me.”

“I hope so, for all our sakes. Meet me at the office at nine tomorrow morning, and we’ll have a little private screening.”

“All right, but don’t worry, Bill. It went well.”

“If you say so,” Eggers said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Stone wearily got undressed and went to bed, but it was his turn not to sleep. If he’d known where to get a VCR in the middle of the night, he’d have gone out and gotten one. He hoped to God that Teddy O’Bannion’s confidence in his own work was not in any way misplaced.