Derailed

THIRTY-SIX

I was sitting on the beaten-up couch in the lobby.

I was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low over my eyes.

I was tracking human traffic like an eagle-eyed crossing guard.

How long do you want it for? the deskman had asked me when I checked in.

Why did I want it in the first place?

That day when we walked out of Penn Station and into a taxi, that day when she’d finally said yes. When she’d asked me, Where?

I’d gone and dutifully picked our hotel from a moving taxi.

But maybe not.

Now it seemed to me that I’d pointed one out to her, but she’d said, Uh-uh, then picked out another one she didn’t like the look of; and then finally, when we’d made it nearly all the way downtown to the vicinity of her office, I’d pointed to the Fairfax and she’d said, Okay. So when you really thought about it, maybe I hadn’t picked our hotel after all.

Maybe she had.

The hotel where I’d run into the wrong person at just the wrong time. Only I hadn’t really run into anyone. They’d set a trap, and I’d walked into it.

Which brought me to my hunch. An idea that occurred to me when I was standing empty-handed and frantic in Penn Station.

There was no reason on earth for her to think I would ever find out about her and Vasquez. The last time she’d seen me, I’d been running for my life down that stairway in Spanish Harlem.

They didn’t need to change addresses.

Just victims.

When she relieved Mr. Griffen of most of his cash and all of his dignity, odds were it was going to be in the very same place they’d done it to me.

So I sat on the couch in the lobby.

I waited.

I had a dream.

I was on the train again. The 9:05 to Penn Station.

I was looking through my pockets again because the conductor was standing over me, asking for money.

One hundred thousand dollars, he said.

Why so much? I asked him.

The fare’s gone up, the conductor replied.

When Lucinda offered to pay for me, this time I said no.

I made it through both issues of Ebony.

Patience, I told myself as another morning went by without a sighting. Patience. After all, look how much patience Lucinda had exhibited with me. All those chummy lunches and romantic dinners she’d had to suffer through in order to get me to go upstairs to that room. If she could do it, so could I.

From Popular Mechanics I learned the basics of hot-water piping. Which wrench was voted best overall value. How to tile a floor. Roofing made simple.

One afternoon, I called Barry Lenge from the room to see how the investigation was going. To touch base with the real world — isn’t that what Vietnam grunts used to call the world back home, the one that existed far away from the front? Which is where I was now — on the front lines, pulling guard duty to prevent any enemy incursions.

And the military reference was entirely apt. Wasn’t I exercising each morning now? Push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, isometrics—the works. So the next time Vasquez said, Good boy, maybe I’d show him how good I really was.

And something else. I still had Winston’s gun. I kept it up in room 1207 wrapped in a towel and hidden behind the bathroom radiator.

As far as the real world went:

Barry Lenge got on the phone and said there was no point in my calling him. They were still conducting their investigation. They were still crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. It didn’t look very good for me, though. I should’ve taken him up on his offer — that’s for sure. He’d be calling me soon enough.

I thanked him for his time.

Then I checked my cellular for messages and found a voice mail from Deanna.

A Detective Palumbo called for you. He said it was important. I told him you were out of town.

Time was running out.

I knew that. Running out for me and Sam Griffen both. If it hadn’t run out on Sam Griffen already.

It was Friday morning.

I was browsing through the out-of-date U.S. News & World Report, whose headline was SHOWDOWN IN PALM BEACH COUNTY .

Occasionally the deskman would glance over at me, the deskman and the bellman, too, look me over, up and down, all without saying a word.

It was that kind of hotel. People who came here had nowhere else to go, so no one expected you to go anywhere or do anything. You could loiter in peace here, sit on a couch all day and read out-of-date magazines to your heart’s content.

“Gore is confident of ultimate victory,” the magazine reported solemnly.

When I looked up again, the bellman had multiplied. He had some help for the afternoon rush; a black man dressed in a similar nondescript green uniform was leaning on the desk, talking to him.

I’d left my cell phone upstairs, and I wanted to call Anna. I got up and walked to the elevator. The bellman nodded at me, the black man who’d been talking to him momentarily stopped, turned around, then resumed his conversation.

I was thinking that I knew that bellman — the black one. That I must’ve seen him that day months ago when I’d entered the very same elevator with Lucinda. The elevator doors opened; I walked inside and pressed twelve. I got off on my floor, I hummed a song whose words I couldn’t remember, I opened the door to my room and walked inside. Which is when I realized that I was wrong, that it wasn’t that day I’d seen him after all.

I walked back into the elevator and pressed Lobby.

The black man was still yapping at the bell captain — his back directly toward me, so I couldn’t actually tell if I was right.

They call you Chuck?

I took a loping circle over to the front desk, looking sideways the whole time, holding my breath as the man’s face slowly came into view, a quarter moon into a full half, his features starting to fill in.

If you were my crimey, that’s what we’d call you.

Remember? Biding my time that day on the corner of, what . . . 8th Street and Avenue C? Waiting for Vasquez in Alphabet City, but it wasn’t Vasquez who’d walked up to me—or actually into me.

Why don’t you look where you’re going?

The face three-quarter now, and I was beginning to feel clammy and light-headed.

It was him.

Yes, it was.

The black man who’d frisked me up against the alley wall, who smelled of blood and pomade.

I quickly turned away—toward the deskman, who looked up as if waiting for a question. This question being, How smart is Charles? Very smart — or at least smarter than I was seven months ago.

Then again, even fools have their day.

After all, for once I knew something they didn’t.

I knew how they did it.

I knew where they’d be doing it again.