Downtown

4

It had stopped snowing.

She was wearing a short black coat over the green dress. The red rose was still in her hair. Black coat, black hair, green dress and shoes, red rose—all against a background of white on white. The silent night Andy Williams had promised. Still and white, except for the flatness of the black and the sheen of the green and the shriek of the red in her hair.

“You’ve got trouble, huh?” she said.

He debated lying.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve got trouble.”

Their breaths pluming on the frosty air.

“Come on,” she said, “I’ve got a limo around the corner.”

He thought that was pretty fortunate, a rich Chinese girl with a chauffeured limo to take her hither and yon in the city. He didn’t want to go anywhere in this city but out of it. Straight to Kennedy, where he would catch his plane to Boston and Mama, or else try to get a plane to Florida. Get out of this rotten apple as soon as possible, call his lawyer the minute he landed someplace. Dave, they are saying I murdered somebody in New York, Dave. What should I do?

Hushed footfalls on the fresh snow. Everything looking so goddamn beautiful. But they were saying he’d killed somebody.

The limousine was parked outside a Chinese restaurant on Elizabeth Street. Long and black and sleek, it looked like a Russian submarine that had surfaced somewhere on an Arctic glacier. There were Christmas decorations in both front windows of the restaurant, all red and green and tinselly. The building up the street seemed decorated for Christmas, too, with green globes flanking the—

“Hey,” Michael said, “that’s a …”

“I know,” Connie said, “the Fifth Precinct. Don’t worry about it. Just get in the back of the car the minute I unlock it.”

She hurried ahead of him on the sidewalk, struggling through the thick snow in her high-heeled pumps while up the street a Salvation Army band played “Adeste Fideles,” and a man with a microphone pleaded with passersby to be generous. It was a little past ten-fifteen by Michael’s watch, but the streets here in Chinatown were still crowded with Christmas Eve shoppers. He watched Connie as she stepped off the curb, walked around to the driver’s side of the car, and inserted a key in the lock. She opened the door, nodded to him, and immediately got into the car. He came up the street swiftly, stopped at the back door on the curb side, opened it. He got in at once, closed the door behind him, and said, “Where’s the chauffeur?”

“I’m the chauffeur,” she said.

“This is your car?”

“No, it’s a China Doll car.” She turned on the seat, looking back at him.

“China Doll Executive Limousine Service,” she explained. “I’m one of the drivers.” To emphasize the point, she settled a little peaked chauffeur’s hat on her head. The rose seemed suddenly incongruous. She handed him a card. Everyone in this city had a card. The card read:

CHINA DOLL

EXECUTIVE LIMOUSINE SERVICE

Charles Wong, President

“Charlie Wong!” he said.

“You know him?”

“He tried to hold me up!”

“Charlie? No. He’s a respectable businessman. He has twelve limos.”

“I don’t care if he has a hundred limos. He stuck a gun in my face.”

“Charlie?”

“Well, a plastic gun. Yes, Charlie! A big Chinese guy with …”

“No, you must be thinking of another Charlie Wong. Wong is a very common Chinese name. Sixty-two percent of all the people in China are named Wong.”

“Is that true?”

“I think so. My name isn’t that common. Kee. That’s my family name. Connie is my given name.”

“That’s a very nice name,” he said. “Connie Kee.”

“Yes, it’s illiterate.”

“Alliterative.”

“Yes. Although actually, it’s Kee Connie. The same as it’s really Wong Charlie. In China, they put the family name first.”

“Then what should I call you?”

“Connie Kee. Because this isn’t China, you know. This is America, you know.”

“Right now I’d rather be in China,” he said.

“Would you like to drive me to Kennedy?”

“If you’re going to China, you’ll need a visa,” she said.

“In that case, I’ll go to Boston.”

“I’ve never been to Boston, so I don’t know. But when my uncle Benny went to Hong Kong—this wasn’t even mainland China—I know he needed a visa. Anyway, you don’t want to go to Kennedy,” she said, shaking her head.

“How about La Guardia?”

“No good, either. They’ll be watching all the bus stations, railroad terminals, and airports.”

“Then how would you like to drive me to Sarasota?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” she said, “but I have a twelve-thirty pickup. Why’d you kill that movie director?”

“I didn’t kill any goddamn movie director,” he said.

“The police think you did.”

“The police are wrong.”

“Right or wrong, everyone in this city knows what you look like.”

“How can they know what I …?”

“Because they showed your picture on television.”

“My picture? Where’d …?”

“Right on the screen, just as you were running out.”

“Where’d they get …?”

“On your driver’s license. Nice big close-up of your face.”

“Oh shit.”

“Actually, it wasn’t that bad a picture.”

“Then they will be watching the airports.”

“Is what I said.”

“Because if they have my license …”

“Oh, they have it, all right.”

“Then they know I’m from Florida …”

“Oh, they know, all right.”

“And they have to be figuring I’ll be heading down there.”

“Is what anyone would figure.”

“So I can’t head down there.”

“Not if you killed this guy Randall.”

“Crandall,” Michael said.

“I’m sure they said Randall.”

“It was Arthur Crandall,” Michael said.

“Well, I won’t argue with you. I guess you know who you killed.”

“I didn’t kill him. And it was Crandall, damn it, I have his card right here.” He fished into his jacket pocket.

“See?” he said, and showed her the card that looked like a strip of film. “Arthur Crandall, there’s his name in black and white.”

“There’s his address, too,” Connie said.

The entrance to the building on Bowery was a door with a plate-glass upper portion upon which the words CRANDALL FILMS, LTD. were lettered in big black block letters. Michael wondered what kind of film company would have its New York office here in this bedraggled part of the city; he guessed that War and Solitude had been a flop of even vaster dimensions than Crandall had described. He tried the doorknob.

The door was locked. A dim light inside showed a steeply angled flight of steps leading upstairs. To the right of the door was a store selling plumbing appliances. To the left was a hotel that called itself the Bowery Palace. Michael stepped back and away from the door. He looked up at the second-story windows, where the name of Crandall’s company was positioned in yet larger block letters. Not a light was showing up there.

Apparently, the police hadn’t got here yet. Either that, or they’d already come and gone. A traffic signal was on the corner, and several enterprising Christmas Eve businessmen had set up shop there with buckets and chamois cloths, pouncing on the windshield of any car unfortunate enough to get caught by a red light. There was even less traffic in the streets now; the storm had frightened off all but a few hearty adventurers, and the rest were already home for Christmas. The windshield-washers on the corner kept looking up the avenue for signs of fresh customers. Meanwhile, they kept passing around a pint bottle of something that looked very dark and very poisonous. When one of them spotted the black limo, he started for it at once, bucket in his left hand, chamois cloth in his right. Connie waved him off. He kept coming.

“My windshield’s clean,” she said.

“I’m Freddie,” he said. “Clean your windshield?”

“I just told you it’s clean.”

“Clean your windshield for a dollar?”

“A dollar!” Connie said. “That’s outrageous!”

“So make it half a buck,” Freddie said, and shrugged.

“Now you’re talking,” Connie said, and Freddie dipped the chamois into the bucket and slapped the cloth onto the windshield. A greasy film of ice immediately formed on the glass.

“Terrific,” Connie said sourly.

“I want to find the backyard,” Michael whispered.

“Why?” Connie asked.

“See if there’s a fire escape.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

“Are you a movie star?” Freddie asked Michael.

“No.”

“‘Cause you look familiar,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a scraper, would you?” he asked Connie.

“In the trunk,” Connie said, and went around to the back of the car.

“Haven’t I seen you on television?” Freddie asked.

“No,” Michael said.

“In a series about Florida?”

“No.”

“You sure look familiar.”

“I have a very common face,” Michael said.

“Ah, thank you,” Freddie said, and accepted the scraper from Connie. “This should do the trick.”

She was no longer wearing the green satin, high-heeled pumps she’d had on a few minutes ago. Black galoshes were on her feet now, the tops unbuckled. She looked like pictures Michael had seen of flappers in the Twenties, except that she was Chinese. She saw him looking down at the galoshes.

“I changed my shoes,” she said.

He looked up into her face. So goddamn beautiful.

“I bought these in a thrift shop,” she said, “to keep in the trunk. For inclement weather.” On her lips, the word “inclement” sounded Chinese. She shrugged, and turned to where Freddie was already scraping the windshield. “You want to watch the car for me?” she asked.

“No, ma’am, I don’t wash entire cars,” he said, “I only do windshields.”

“You keep an eye on the car for me, I’ll give you that dollar you wanted.”

“Make it two dollars.”

“Two dollars, okay,” she said, and locked the car and then turned back to Michael and said, “Let’s go.”

Michael looked at the Bowery Palace Hotel. He nodded, and then started toward its entrance door. Connie followed immediately behind him.

“Ask for room five-oh-five,” Freddie called after them. “It has a mattress.”

The hotel lobby was done in what one might have called Beirut Nouveau. Plaster was crumbling from the walls, electrical outlets hung suspended by dangling wires, the bloated ceiling bulged with what was certainly a water leak, wooden posts and beams seemed on the imminent edge of collapse, wallpaper was peeling, framed prints of pastoral scenes hung askew, and ancient upholstered furniture exposed its springs and stuffing. Altogether, the place looked as if it had recently been attacked by terrorists with pipe bombs. The clerk behind the scarred and tottering desk looked like a graying, wrinkled Oliver North who had just made his last covert deal with the Iranians.

“Good evening, Merry Christmas,” Michael said to the clerk, and walked directly past the desk, and then past a hissing, clanging radiator that seemed about to explode and then past two men in long overcoats who were flipping playing cards at a brass spittoon against one of the flaking walls. It took Michael a moment to realize the spittoon wasn’t empty. Behind him, he heard Connie clanking along in her unbuckled galoshes. “Merry Christmas,” she said to the clerk, and he replied, “Merry Christmas,” sounding somewhat bewildered, and then—as Michael approached a door under a red-and-white EXIT sign—“Excuse me, sir, may I ask what you think you’re …?”

“Building inspector,” Michael said gruffly, and would have flashed his driver’s license or something if he’d still had it in his possession.

“Merry Christmas,” the clerk said at once,

“I’m sure you’ll find everything in order.”

“We’ll see about that,” Michael said, and opened the exit door, and stepped out into the backyard. Telephone poles grew from the snow-covered ground, their sagging wires wearing narrow threads of white. Fences capped with snow spread raggedly north, south, east, and west. Where tenements rose to the starry night, there were clotheslines stiff with frozen clothes. Not a breeze stirred now. Moonlight tinted the backyard world a soft silvery white.

“It’s beautiful,” Connie said beside him.

“Yes,” he said.

He sighed then, and looked up at the back of the hotel, getting his geographical bearings, and then turned his scrutiny to the building on its left. A fire escape zigzagged up the snow-dusted, redbrick wall.

“You’d better wait for me here,” he said.

“I’ll go with you,” Connie said.

He looked at her.

“There’s no reward, you know,” he said, and was sorry the instant the words left his mouth.

“Is that what you think?” she asked.

“I don’t know what I …”

“I mean, is that what you think?”

“All I know is that a very beautiful girl …”

“Yes, I know.”

“… has latched onto a stranger …”

“Yes.”

“… who she thinks killed someone, which by the way I didn’t. Not tonight, anyway.”

“Then when?” she said at once.

“A long time ago. I’ve been living a very quiet life since I …”

“Are you married?” she asked.

“Divorced.”

“Then what’s wrong with my latching onto you?”

“I find it peculiar, that’s all.”

“You have a very low opinion of yourself, don’t you?”

“No, I happen to have a very healthy ego, in fact.”

“What happened? Did they break your spirit in jail?”

“Jail? Why would I …?”

“For killing somebody.”

“It was my job to kill those people.”

“More than one?” she asked, astonished.

“Yes, but …”

“How many?”

“Eleven or twelve.”

“Which? I mean, a person gives you a contract, you ought to know whether it’s for eleven people or …”

“A contract? What con …?”

“For eleven, twelve, fourteen, however many people you killed.”

“It certainly wasn’t fourteen.”

“Then how many?”

“The figure was disputed …”

“Who disputed it? The defense attorney?”

“No, the RTO.”

“The what?”

“The company radioman. He claimed he was the one who got the …”

“Listen, do you have a tattoo?” she asked.

“No, I …”

“Because forty-three percent of all convicts have tattoos, you know.”

“I’m not a convict.”

“Well, an ex-con.”

“I’ve never been in jail in my life.”

“You beat the rap, huh?”

“What rap? I was in the …”

“Listen, if a jury found you innocent, that’s good enough for me.”

“Connie, I never …”

“Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“Do you think our lips would freeze together if you kissed me?”

He looked at her again.

“I know you didn’t kill anyone,” she said.

He kept looking at her.

“I knew it long ago,” she said. “Because you stayed for Harry. A man who killed somebody doesn’t hang around like that. Not to bring another person luck. That’s a kind and gentle person who does something like that. That’s not a murderer. Anyway, I like your cute little face,” she said, and raised her arms and then draped them on his shoulders, and stepped in closer to him. “So let’s try it,” she said.

And kissed him.

He had not kissed anyone this way since the divorce, which was exactly nine months and six days ago, the eighteenth of March, in fact, a very blustery Monday in Sarasota, Florida, he knew because he’d taken the boat out into the Gulf the moment the papers were signed, sailing off into a four-foot chop and drinking himself into oblivion the way he very often had in Vietnam, a wonder he’d got back to shore alive. Hadn’t kissed anyone this way since the last time he’d kissed Jenny—well, no, that wasn’t true.

The whole reason for the divorce, in fact, was that Jenny hadn’t been kissing this way anymore, or at least not kissing him this way. It turned out that she’d been kissing the man who was the branch manager at the bank where she worked as a teller, kissed him a lot, in fact, fucked him a lot, too, in fact. Told Michael she was madly in love with the man—whose name was James Owington, the fat bastard—married him a month after the divorce became final, easy come, easy go, right?

No, Michael thought, they didn’t break my spirit in any jail.

The V.C. did a pretty good job of breaking it in Vietnam, and Jenny finished the job later.

Kissing Connie Kee like this, he felt like weeping. Not the bitter tears he’d wept in Vietnam when his closest friend, Andrew, died in his arms, or the kind of angry tears he’d wept that day on the boat with the waters of the Gulf threatening the gunwales. He did not know whether there were any kind of tears that could express what he was feeling here and now with this beautiful girl in his arms. Were there really tears of happiness? He had read a lot about them, but he had never shed such tears in his life. He knew only that kissing Connie Kee like this, he wished their lips would freeze together out here in the cold and the dark. He wanted to go on kissing Connie Kee forever. Or even Kee Connie.

He remembered, however, that the police in this winter wonderland of a city thought he had killed Arthur Crandall. He supposed he could go visit his old friend Tony the Bear Orso at the First Precinct, explain to him that the man who’d stolen the car was now the man who’d turned up dead in it—remember we were talking about all this, Tony, old pal, remember I showed you his card? Arthur Crandall, remember? You said it looked like a piece of film, remember? His card. Well, that’s the man who’s turned up dead. In the car he stole from me. So you see, Tony, I can’t be the one who killed him. He stole my car, you see. And the other ones—the phony cop and his phony lawyer girlfriend—stole my credit cards and my license, so maybe it’s the other ones who killed Crandall, but it wasn’t me, it couldn’t have been me. In fact, I was probably sitting right there chatting with you while Crandall was getting himself killed. That’s a definite possibility and something you may wish to investigate. Meanwhile, I’ll be running on back to Sarasota, Tony, give me a call when you break the case, I’ll send you a crate of oranges.

So, yes, maybe he should drop in on the First, it wasn’t everyone in this city who had Police Department connections. On the other hand, if he could not convince Tony the Bear that he’d had nothing whatever to do with the murder of Arthur Crandall, he might find himself sharing a cell with Charlie Bonano—why were so many people in this city named Charlie? Except for Charlie’s News, which was a store selling books, and magazines, and cards, and newspapers, Michael did not know a single Charlie in Sarasota.

Did not know any other Charlies in the entire state of Florida, for that matter. But here in New York, three of them in the same night, and two of them named Charlie Wong. Remarkable. The very same night. Two Charlie Wongs. He wondered if Charlie was as common a name as Wong, and he thought of asking Connie—once they were finished with all this kissing—what the statistics on the frequency of Charlies in any given location might be. She showed no indication of wanting to stop the kissing, however, until a light snapped on overhead and someone shouted, “Hey! What the hell are you doing down there?”

They broke apart at once and looked immediately heavenward because this sounded like a demand from a vengeful God instead of a person shouting from the fourth-floor window of the tenement to the right of the hotel—which, they now discovered, was where the shout had come from: a light was showing in the fourth-floor window, silhouetting the person doing all the yelling.

“I’m gonna call the police!” the person —man or woman, it was difficult to tell— shouted.

“No, don’t do that!” Michael yelled, and he yanked Connie out of the glare of the moonshine and ran over the snow and into the shadows created by the rear of Crandall’s building. They both listened. They could sense but not see the person up there straining to catch a glimpse of them in the dark.

“I know you’re still there!” the voice shouted.

They said nothing.

A window slammed shut.

They waited.

Silence.

The light upstairs went out. The backyard was dark and still again. She grinned at him. He grinned back.

And then he leaped up like Superman for the fire-escape ladder, caught the bottom rung on the first try, and yanked it down.

There was a small Christmas tree on one of the filing cabinets, decorated with Christmas ornaments and lights that Michael now turned on to add a bit more illumination than was flowing in from the street lamp outside. The lights had a blinker on them. In fits and starts—on again, off again, yellow, green, red, and blue—Michael and Connie took in the rest of the office.

From the looks of the place, there’d been one hell of a party here. Someone had decorated the single large room with red and green streamers strung from wall to wall, crisscrossing the office like the rows and rows of protective barbed wire around the base camp at Cu Chi.

Dangling from the streamers were cardboard cutouts of Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, all of whom —together with the Easter Bunny and the Great Pumpkin and St. Valentine’s day, especially St. Valentine’s Day—Michael had learned to distrust in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in February of 1968, when Jenny (then) Aldershot forgot to send him a card asking him to be her valentine. And when, too, what with all that hardware flying around, he’d begun to doubt he’d ever get back home again to Jenny or anyone else, ever get back to shore again. He should have known then and there that one day she’d start up with a fat bastard bank branch manager, oh well, live and learn.

In addition to the streamers and the dangling reminders of Christmases past, there was a huge wreath hanging in the front window, which Michael hadn’t noticed when he was looking up at the window from the street outside. There were also a great many ashtrays with dead cigarette butts in them, and a great many plastic glasses with the residue of booze in them, and a folding table covered with a red paper cloth upon which rested the tired remnants of a baked ham, a round of cheese, a crock of chopped liver, a tureen of orange caviar dip, a basket of crumbling crackers, several depleted bottles of gin, scotch, vodka, and bourbon, and a partridge in a pear tree. Or at least what appeared to be a partridge in a pear tree, but which was actually the tattered remains of a roast turkey on a wooden platter with a carving knife and fork alongside it. There were red paper napkins and green paper plates and white plastic knives and forks in evidence on every flat surface in the room. What at first appeared to be another red napkin lying on top of a large desk otherwise covered with plates and such—blink ON, blink OFF, went the Christmas tree lights—actually turned out to be a pair of red silk panties someone had inadvertently left behind. It must have been one hell of a party.

“Did you ever do it on a desktop?” Connie whispered.

“Never,” Michael whispered back.

He wondered if she was propositioning him.

He also wondered if she was wearing red silk panties under her green silk dress.

“What are we looking for?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he said.

He did not, in truth, know what the hell they were looking for. He did not like this entire business of having been accused of murdering someone, did not like the sort of hospitality New York City extended to a visitor from the South, did not in fact like anything that had happened to him tonight with the exception of Connie Kee. He knew for certain —or, rather, felt for certain—that if he went to the police, he would find himself in deeper shit than was already up to his knees. He resented this. He was a goddamn taxpayer, and the police should have been working for him instead of against him. Why should he have to be doing their goddamn job? Well, a taxpayer in Sarasota, anyway.

He supposed he would have to learn how to do their job.

He hadn’t wanted to learn how to avoid the punji sticks planted on a jungle trail, either, but he had learned. Had learned because if you stepped on one of those sharpened bamboo stakes it went clear through the sole of your boot and since Charlie had dipped the stakes in his own excrement—

Charlie.

Even in Vietnam, it had been Charlie.

For the Vietcong.

The V.C.

Victor Charlie.

And then just Charlie for short.

Good old Charlie.

Who had taught him to dance the light fandango along those jungle paths, live and learn. Or rather, learn and live. The way he had to learn now. Here in this city of New York, downtown here in this rotten city, his problem was a dead man. Arthur Crandall. And this was the dead man’s office, as good a place to start learning as any Michael could think of.

“Cahill and Parrish,” he whispered to Connie.

“Who?”

“We’re looking for anything that might tie them to Crandall.”

“Who are they?” Connie asked, sitting on the edge of the desk and crossing her long legs.

He explained who they were.

She listened intently.

She was so goddamn beautiful.

He kept wondering if she was wearing red silk panties.

Or any panties at all.

They began searching. The first thing they found in this office in holiday disarray, the first thing they found in this two-bit Sodom and Gomorrah show-biz office was a framed newspaper article on the wall alongside the blinking Christmas tree. The article was written in French.

“Do you speak French?” he whispered.

“Chinese,” she whispered back. “And English, of course. Cantonese dialect. The Chinese. Do you speak French?”

“A little. The Vietnamese spoke French. And my mother, too, every now and then.” The article was from a newspaper called the Nice Matin. In translation, the headline read:

DIRECTOR SHOWS WAR FILM

The article told about the showing of the film War and Solitude at the International Film Festival in Cannes. The article also summarized the critical reaction to it. Apparently, the reaction had been excellent. Everyone had thought, in fact, that War and Solitude would walk away with all the honors. Michael suddenly wondered if Oliver Stone, the director of Platoon, had killed Crandall and left him in Michael’s car. The article had appeared in May, eleven years ago. Someone, probably Crandall himself, had inked in the newspaper’s date in the margin on the right-hand side of the article. The caption under the accompanying photograph read: Arthur Crandall before the showing of his film War and Solitude yesterday afternoon.

The man in the photograph was not Arthur Crandall.

Or at least not the Arthur Crandall who’d been so helpful to Michael before stealing his car. This Arthur Crandall—the one in the photograph—had a little round pig face with a pug nose and plump little cheeks. He was short and stout and he looked more like Oliver Hardy than Abraham Lincoln.

“This is not Arthur Crandall,” Michael said. “I mean, this says he’s Arthur Crandall, but he’s not the man I met earlier tonight.”

“Who later got himself killed.”

“This isn’t that man.”

“Then who is he?”

“I don’t know who he is.”

“Let’s see what’s in his desk.”

Together they went through the desk drawers. The red silk panties sat like a fallen poinsettia leaf not a foot from where they worked. He noticed that Connie smelled of oolong tea and soap, and he wondered if she knew she smelled so exotically seductive.

“I think we should take that picture with us,” she said. “In case we need it later. Whoever he is. Because sailors who measure the tide sail with the wisdom of seers, you know.” He looked at her.

“Have you ever stuffed fortune cookies?” he said.

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondered. You smell of oolong tea and soap, did you know that?”

“Did you know that the word `oolong` is from wu’ lung, which means black dragon in Mandarin Chinese?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Michael said.

“Yes,” she said. “Because oolong tea is so dark.”

“I see.”

“Yes.”

He was getting dizzy on the scent of her.

“Here’s his appointment calendar,” Connie said, taking it from the top drawer of Crandall’s desk.

“Do you think it’s safe to turn on this lamp?” Michael asked, and snapped on the gooseneck desk lamp. Connie sat in the swivel chair behind the desk, and he dragged over another chair and sat beside her. Their knees touched. The calendar was of the Day At-A Glance type. She flipped it open to the page for Tuesday, December 24, and then automatically looked at her watch.

“Still the twenty-fourth,” she said.

“Ten minutes to midnight,” he said.

“Ten minutes to Christmas,” she said.

There were several handwritten reminders on the page:

Call Mama

“Dutiful son,” Michael said.

Send roses to Albetha

“Who’s Albetha?” he asked.

“Who knows?” Connie said.

Mama at Benny’s

8:00 PM

“Mama again,” Michael said. “But who’s Benny?”

“Who knows?” Connie said, and flipped the calendar back to the page for Monday, December 23.

There were three entries for that date:

Bank at 2:30

“Deposit?” Connie asked. “Withdrawal?”

Charlie at 3:30

“Another Charlie,” Michael said.

“Huh?” Connie said.

“There are a lot of Charlies in this city.”

“Yes,” Connie said. “Now that you mention it.”

“But not too many Albethas, I’ll bet.”

Christmas party

4:00-7:00 PM

“Let’s find out why he went to the bank,” Connie said.

“How?”

“His checkbook. If we can find it.”

They began searching through the desk drawers again. In the bottom drawer, Michael found two large, ledger-type checkbooks, one with a blue cover, the other with a black one. The blue checkbook had yellow checks in it. Each check was headed with the names ALBETHA AND ARTHUR CRANDALL and an address on West Tenth Street.

“There’s Albetha,” Connie said.

“His wife.”

“The roses.”

“Nice.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if she knows he’s dead.”

The black checkbook had pink checks in it. Each check was headed with the name CRANDALL PRODUCTIONS, LTD. and the address here on Bowery. Michael flipped through the business checkbook and found the stubs for the last several checks written, all dated December 23.

There was a check to Sylvia Horowitz for a $200 Christmas bonus …

“His secretary?” Connie asked.

“Could be.”

And a check to Celebrity Catering for $1,217.21 …

“The party, must be,” Michael said.

“Some party,” Connie said.

And a check to Mission Liquors for $314.78.

“More party,” Connie said.

“Some party,” Michael said.

No checks beyond the twenty-third. They leafed backward through the stubs. The last payroll checks had been made out on December 20, the ones before that on December 6. The firm paid its employees—apparently only Crandall and the woman named Sylvia Horowitz—on a biweekly basis.

“Let’s try the personal checkbook,” Connie said.

In the personal book, they found only one stub for a check written on Monday, December 23.

It was made out to cash. For $9,000.

They both fell silent.

Outside, there was only the keening of the wind. Snow broke off from the telephone wires, fell soundlessly to the backyards below.

“It’s almost Christmas, you know,” Connie whispered.

Michael looked at his watch.

“Two minutes to Christmas,” Connie whispered.

His digital watch blinked away time, tossed time into the past.

“I want to give you a present,” she whispered.

It was one minute and twenty-two seconds to Christmas.

“Because you really do have a very nice face,” she whispered. “And also, I like kissing you.” She cupped his face in her hands. “You don’t have anything communicable, do you?” she asked.

“No, I …”

“I don’t mean like a common cold,” she said.

“I mean like anything dread.”

“Nothing dread at all,” he said.

“Good,” she said.

He told himself that when this was all over and done with, if ever it was over and done with, he would remember this last minute before Christmas more than anything that could possibly happen afterward. Because in that slow-motion moment, Connie kissed him and murmured, “Merry Christmas, Michael,” and moved in so close to him that he could feel her heart beating, or at least his own, and then he heard bells going off and he thought he’d died and gone to heaven until he realized it was only the telephone.