The Chalk Girl

THIRTY-SEVEN

The dead man in the Ramble is the last thing I think about when I go to bed – but not to sleep. I lay awake and wonder – did somebody close the wino’s eyes before he was buried? Or do bugs get into his coffin and crawl on his eyeballs? I wake up my parents to ask them.

—Ernest Nadler

Hoffman lingered in the drawing room, not liking the looks of the visitor, and who could blame her?

Grace Driscol-Bledsoe rose from her chair to tower over her son’s former – schoolmate, co-killer – oh, what was the word she was searching for? No matter. ‘Don’t worry, Hoffman, I’m sure I can take Miss Fallon two falls out of three.’

When the door had closed behind the departing nurse, another brown bag full of cash was passed from Grace’s hand to her guest’s. ‘That should tide you over.’

‘Thanks.’ Willy Fallon tossed the paper bag on a chair, so dismissive of money. She stood before the front window and pulled back a white gauze curtain. ‘I think I’m being followed. It’s just a creepy feeling.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised, my dear. Do you think the police know what you did – you and your little friends?’

‘You still worry about that, don’t you?’ Willy turned on her, smiling just a bit too wide, telegraphing that she was here to make more demands.

Grace, an old campaigner, launched the first salvo. ‘Obviously someone knows. While you were hanging in that tree – surely you must’ve formed an idea of who would benefit by your death. Perhaps someone regarded the three of you as loose ends? Maybe someone who needs to put all that unpleasantness behind him?’

Well, Willy Fallon had never been the brightest student at the Driscol School. The older woman leaned toward the younger one, willing her to work it out. Think! You psychopathic moron! Ah, a light shone in Willy’s eyes, evidence of a brain at work, albeit a tiny one. ‘You had a thought, my dear.’ Grace said this with absolutely no sarcasm.

‘When we were kids, Humphrey told me you were making payoffs – to keep it quiet.’

This came as no surprise. Children were the best of spies in every household. She often wondered how much her daughter had pieced together from those bad old days. Oh, and now she could see that Willy was having another thought. Two in one day – how taxing.

‘I think we can help each other, Grace. Just give me a name. I’ll take care of it. I’ll get rid of him for you.’ Smiling, she bent down to pick up her bag of cash. ‘Say we double this . . . once a month?’

‘I’m truly shocked.’ And did Willy believe that? Well, of course she did. The girl was an idiot. All that remained to Grace was to sit back, assume a worried look and perhaps profess a sudden onset of palpitations in that place where common people kept their hearts. Eventually, after much prodding by the idiot, a name would escape Grace’s lips.

Rolland Mann had gone out in search of a disposable cell phone, but he would not throw this one away. There were reporters around every corner, waiting for crumbs from One Police Plaza, and some might be waiting in ambush. In any case, he was not done calling home, hoping that Annie would answer the phone. He wanted the privacy of his office, where the news media could not hound him for updates on the Hunger Artist. He tightened his hold on the cell phone hidden in his pocket, so badly in need of this tether to his wife.

He was within yards of the courtyard gatehouse when a young woman crossed his path on the plaza. Such a cruel smile. The newspaper photos on the front pages of late had never captured that quality, only the practiced grin of a professional party girl, who had fallen off the scandal sheets years ago. Today, she planted herself in his way and folded her arms to announce that Willy Fallon was back. Badder than ever. Bigger news.

No lie.

Down the sidewalk, he saw snouts lifting to catch a scent in the air, and the first of the paparazzi was running toward them. Then another and another. The photographers caught him in the act of running away from Willy.

While the socialite preened for pictures, Officer Chu kept the distance of a good shadow, and he scribbled in his notebook – just a few lines about Miss Fallon’s odd run-in with the acting police commissioner and his sudden flight, hands flailing.

Rolland Mann ran like a girl.

Willy Fallon was on the move again, waving goodbye to the gang of photographers. How they loved her. One of them blew her a kiss. And Arthur Chu followed her.

The woman spoke on a cell phone as she walked westward, and the young officer dutifully noted the exact times for three calls in a row. After the phone was returned to her purse, she absently glanced at her wristwatch. Now there was an attitude of urgency as she looked around her, up and down the street.

Hunting a cab? Lots of luck at this hour. Even if she found one, a car could only crawl in this traffic.

The surveillance officer followed her to the subway station on Warren Street, and watched her step down below the sidewalk. He was impressed that this rich bimbo might know how to operate a turnstile. Then it occurred to him that she had probably used mass transit more than once to elude reporters on a bad-hair day. Yes, he was right. No need to stop at the cashier’s booth to buy a ticket to ride. She pulled a yellow transit card from her purse.

Was that purse a good deal fatter now? Had he missed something?

Rolland Mann looked up when his pouting secretary walked in. She had resented him from the moment he had moved his belongings into Commissioner Beale’s office, perhaps finding it ghoulish that he was so confident of the old man’s impending demise. ‘Any calls, Miss Scott?’

‘Yes. She didn’t leave a name this time, either, but it’s the same woman.’

Not the woman he most wanted to hear from, not Annie. She knew better than to call him on his office phone. He still doubted that his wife could have made her way through the door to the street. On those rare occasions, when he had taken her out for dinner, she had been nervous and jumpy, only calming down when they were home again. That was years ago. Today, she would not, could not, leave the apartment. But she could overmedicate. Yes. She was probably deep in a barbiturate haze, unable to hear the phone ringing.

Miss Scott broke into his thoughts. ‘The woman said you better call her back or else.’

‘Or else what?’

‘She didn’t say, and I don’t read minds.’ The secretary slapped a piece of paper on the desk. It was only a telephone number and the brief threat.

It could only be Willy Fallon.

‘And I’m not paid to listen to your friend’s obscenities.’ Miss Scott slammed the door on her way out.

Now he knew that his secretary had finally been successful in finding another position. Another runaway woman.

He pulled the throwaway cell from his pocket and called his residence. One ring, two rings – three. Annie, my Annie, come to the phone.

Willy Fallon climbed out of the subway near the Greenwich Village movie theater. She turned a corner and walked westward into that patch of New York City where grid logic broke down, where Fourth Street ran north and south of West Tenth. When she was within half a block of Toby Wilder’s apartment building, she saw him step out on the sidewalk.

Lunchtime.

She knew her quarry was a creature of habit, thanks to a tip paid to a local shopkeeper, a man who bragged that he could set his watch by Toby Wilder. Willy followed her old classmate on a trek across the Village to a Mexican restaurant on Bleecker Street. She saw him pass through the door to reappear at a table by the window. He never noticed her standing there on the sidewalk, watching him. When he did happen to look out on the street, he paid her no more attention than the fire hydrant.

He was still beautiful.

After all these years, it rankled her that he would never know what she had done to him. While she stood by the window, another patron rushed in the door to find a table on the far side of the room and close to the kitchen. Why would Humphrey’s sister pick the worst seat in the house while better ones went begging?

Phoebe Bledsoe was taller now, but she still lugged around all the baby fat of childhood. And apparently she had not outgrown her crush on the boy by the window. The girl settled into the chair with the worst possible lighting to watch Toby Wilder from a shy distance.

Pathetic.

Willy entered the café and walked up to the far table to see her favorite expression – naked fear – on Phoebe’s face. Willy sat down, liking this power over the other woman – hardly a woman – a lump of a schoolgirl who would never grow up. ‘What’s that?’

Before Phoebe could close her hand over the gold cigarette lighter, Willy grabbed it, saying, ‘You never smoked. You wouldn’t dare. Neither would I, not if Grace was my mother.’

‘Give it back!’ Humphrey’s sister was anxious, reaching for the lighter that was evidently precious to her.

Willy played a schoolyard game of keep-away, holding it high, tossing it from hand to hand, and then she took a closer look at her prize. It was heavy – solid gold. The scratches in the metal appeared to be damage at first glance. At second glance, she remembered where she had seen this lighter before. The surface scratches had been deeper then, and it had been easier to read them as a clear date – the year of her birth – though not the same month and day.

Smiling, Willy cadged a glance at Toby Wilder. It had to be his birth date scratched into the metal. Turning back to Phoebe, she held the gold lighter just out of reach. ‘I know where you got this. You found it in the Ramble. You went back for it.’

It was supposed to be found beside the wino’s dead body – this cigarette lighter dropped on the path by Toby Wilder – with his fingerprints on it. Planting the lighter had been Humphrey Bledsoe’s idea – that moron. He thought the police kept everyone’s fingerprints on file, even those of schoolboys.

‘I know who this belongs to.’ Oh, that look of sick fear was priceless – almost orgasmic, and Willy hungered for more. She rose from the table and turned around to face her old classmate on the other side of the room. ‘Hey, Toby!’ He looked in her direction. Behind her, she could hear the scrape of an edged-back chair and then Phoebe’s heavy footsteps running toward the door.

But Willy was the one who commanded Toby Wilder’s attention – at last – though he seemed only mildly curious. She flung the cigarette lighter across the room. He snatched it from the air, and stared at it. And now a closer look, head shaking, not believing his eyes. He held it up to the light of the window, the better to read the faint date scratched in gold. He turned back to her, rising from his table, but Willy was already at the door and passing through it, laughing, laughing. The chase was on.

Officer Chu was in a quandary. Willy Fallon’s protection might not be his chief concern today, but it was a cop’s job. However, she did not look like a woman in any danger. Every few running steps, she turned back to smile at the long-haired young man who chased her up MacDougal Street. Savvy Village residents hugged brick walls and storefront windows, but a few tourists went down like bowling pins. Arthur Chu followed the pair on the run into Washington Square Park, where they played a fast kids’ game of catch me if you can.

Grinning like a maniac, Willy ran around the fountain, and her pursuer cut across its wide basin, slogging through the pool and getting drenched by arcs of water from the rim and the bubbling tower at the center. On the other side, he was within grabbing distance of Willy. But now a helpful, though misguided, park visitor tripped the running man to end the chase, and the poor bastard went down on one knee, wincing as bone met concrete. Willy, the clear winner, and Officer Chu were gone before the loser of the race could get to his feet.

Rolland Mann waited on the sidewalk at the corner of Columbus Avenue and West Eighty-sixth Street, hardly a neighborhood that attracted paparazzi in search of celebrities, not that his own face was all that well known around town. Four southbound buses had passed by since his arrival at this meeting place.

Willy Fallon was that late.

Two other people stood beside him, both of them tourists. They gave themselves away by waiting on the sidewalk for their chance to legally walk across the intersection. Their sheep’s eyes were glued to the glowing red sign in the shape of a hand that commanded them not to move.

The real New Yorkers were standing in the street – screw the traffic light – waiting for the next break in the flow of passing cars. Poised three steps from the sidewalk, the locals liked this competitive edge on timid curbhuggers from out of town. And, in the ongoing war of pedestrian and driver, there were points to be scored if one could terrify the other with a near miss.

A teenage girl approached the corner, oblivious to her environs, hooked into music by earphones, and she stepped off the curb. She was pretty, else Rolland would not have noticed her. And now the southbound bus was also in his line of sight as it barreled down Columbus Avenue, ramming its way across the lanes of the intersection – as it had done every ten minutes or so during the long wait for Willy Fallon.

The teenager stepped in time to the music from her earphones and never saw the bus – as she walked into its path. A stunning moment. He knew she was going to die. The bus was bearing down on her. A millisecond more, and she would be smashed like bug soup on a windshield.

The bus was gigantic, filling out his field of vision. Closer, closer.

A middle-aged man in greasy coveralls reached out, grabbed the girl’s collar and yanked her back a step. The metal behemoth, brakes screaming, came within inches – inches – of the girl, and it failed to stop for six more yards beyond the point where she really should have died. A stench of burning rubber was in the air. There was time enough for the driver’s quick look in a rearview mirror, a sigh of relief, and then the bus rolled on. Three pedestrians stopped to applaud, as they would for any near-death experience; it was a theater town.

The show was over, and the audience dispersed. The teenage girl could only stand there, staring at the departing bus, eyes glazing over as shock set in. And now her savior, the man in coveralls, released his handful of her blouse, saying, ‘Jeese, I’m so sorry, kid. What was I thinking?’

The girl turned to face her rescuer. Huh?

The hero smacked his head in a mime of Dummy me. ‘If that bus had hit you, you’d be set for life.’ The girl, head shaking, uncomprehending, was still surprised to be there, upright and alive, when the man started across the street, waving goodbye to her, saying, ‘Sorry, kid.’

The Good Samaritan’s guilt was understandable. A lawsuit involving a city bus would have paid off in millions. But that girl would never have survived a direct hit by tons of rolling steel.

Though he had been instructed to wait on the corner, Rolland stepped off the curb, moved three more steps into the street, and there he waited for Willy Fallon.