Hanging Time

76

Milicia was wearing sunglasses, had pinned her hair into a tight bun and put a silk scarf on her head, tied around the back like Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy used to do. People turned to look at her. She knew she looked good. She was carrying her leather carryall and the Channel Thirteen bag with Hannabelle inside. She strode along Fifty-seventh Street, moving confidently now. The two Klonopin she took after her shower must have worked.

Usually, she didn’t like taking pills of any kind. But Charles had told her that in really stressful situations, it was okay to get a little help to calm down. He told her the experience she was having now with Camille and the police ranked very high on the stress scale. She should have gone to Charles in the first place. This mess wouldn’t have happened if she had gone to Charles instead of Jason Frank.

She glanced around casually. She wasn’t stupid. She knew someone had to be following her. But who was it? She stopped in front of a restaurant with bottles of Chianti and piles of fresh uncooked spaghetti in the window and carefully studied the street reflected behind her. No one seemed to be watching her. But how was she supposed to know? It didn’t have to be someone in uniform. It could be anybody. The person or persons following her could be Chinese or Hispanic, or black. The cop who had come to her apartment was Chinese, her doorman said. In the station house a lot of the police didn’t look like police.

A feeling of unease drifted over Milicia as she thought of all those people looking like Haitian taxi drivers, and Indians on messenger bikes, who might really be cops.

She went into the restaurant. She took a table where she could watch the street from the window and ordered some spaghetti with tomato sauce and a glass of red wine. When the spaghetti came, she ate it slowly, thinking things over, sipping the wine and ignoring the unhappy dog scratching at the canvas bag by her feet.

After her meal she felt better. She paid her bill and headed east toward Second Avenue. Things looked normal around her. But still she had an uneasy feeling that anyone and everyone could be a spy.

On Second Avenue, unlike the night before, there were no police cars on the street. She did not know how this could be. They had sent a sick woman home by herself, a woman who was not safe without supervision. How could they do that? Weren’t they responsible if they took her home in a police car, left her there, and something happened to her? She felt a surge of anger at the thought of something happening to Camille.

She scanned the street, looking for someone who appeared to be hanging around. She saw several dozen parked cars and vans: All were empty. None of the passersby paid any attention to her. As she approached the door of the building, it suddenly occurred to her that maybe Camille wasn’t alone. Maybe they had sent a social worker or a cop with her, maybe she was somehow being supervised. Maybe she was under house arrest.

She glanced around one more time, saw nothing to arouse her suspicions, then opened the outside door. Inside, she had no problem using her key. Bouck was in the hospital. She knew that part wasn’t a trick. She had called to make sure. He was in intensive care, couldn’t even speak, the nurse had told her. His guns had been confiscated. She could go into Bouck’s house anytime she wanted: She had no more reason to be afraid.

Milicia climbed to the second floor and opened the door at the top of the stairs. Inside, she stopped short. Camille was on her hands and knees in the middle of a lake of soap and water, scrubbing the floor, singing a tuneless little song.

At the sight of her sister, Camille stopped singing.

“Hi, baby,” Milicia said, setting the canvas bag down. “I brought you a present.”