Shadow Woman

20

Ultimately, it seemed to Seaver, all investigations came down to staring through a pane of glass at some doorway late at night. Sometimes it was sitting in a car that smelled like old cigarettes, and sometimes it was renting a rat’s nest of an office like this one, barring the door, and trying to drink enough coffee out of styrofoam cups to stay awake until something happened.

This time the doorway was on a little storefront with a big sign that said OPEN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, so the surveillance was worse than it had usually been in the old days. And Manhattan presented special problems. You couldn’t sit on a street in a parked car for twelve hours without collecting a stack of tickets, and even if you did, there wasn’t much chance you could use the car to follow anybody. Suspects in Manhattan scuttled underground to slip into subway trains, or stepped into yellow cabs that barely came to a complete stop before they were off again on a long street that looked like a river of identical yellow cabs, each of them blowing its horn and weaving erratically to keep going ten miles an hour faster than the speed limit. Or the suspect veered into a doorway a hundred feet away and vanished into a building that had fourteen elevators and sixty floors. Cars weren’t much use. The quarry had to be stalked on foot and not taken down until he was indoors, away from the hundreds of faces that were always visible on the street.

Seaver had mailed a small package addressed to Valued Cardholder, Box 345, 7902 Elizabeth Street, New York, NY 10003. The outer wrapping was bright orange with iridescent yellow stripes on it, so he would have no trouble spotting it when the mail was picked up. He couldn’t sit here waiting for the dark-haired woman to show up in the flesh. There was a better than even chance that the mail would be picked up by some intermediary, and Seaver would have to follow the package.

If the woman had been hiding fugitives for anything like the eight or nine years since Miranda’s reincarnation, then the woman must have built some high walls between her and people like Stillman. She couldn’t let people like him find her easily. She would know what Seaver had known—that even though some part of a career criminal’s stunted brain believed that some day she might be his last chance of surviving, the reason he would need her at all had a lot to do with his inability to choose a future benefit over an extra pack of cigarettes right now.

Seaver was prepared for the intermediary. Inside the package was an expensive sports watch packed with a photocopy of a typed message explaining to Valued Cardholder that it was a reward from Visa for using a credit card. Inside the watch, and running off its battery, was a small radio transmitter with a range of a thousand yards.

If Seaver got lucky, the dark-haired woman might strap the watch to her wrist. Even if she didn’t like it that much, she would at least see it was too good to throw away, so she would shove it into a drawer in her apartment. It didn’t matter. As soon as she had it, he would have her. When he had her, he would have Hatcher.

Seaver reached over to the desk and pulled the plastic top off the next styrofoam cup of coffee. It was not much warmer than the air around it now, the white powdery substance that symbolized milk already beginning to coagulate in little gooey lumps that floated just under the oily surface. He covered it again and walked to the sink, ran the water until it was steaming hot, stopped the drain, filled the sink a few inches, held the cup in the water, and looked around for something heavy enough to keep the cup from floating up and tipping over.

He could find nothing in the little bathroom to hold it down, so he took the extra ammunition clip out of his pocket and carefully placed it on the lid. Since he had nothing else to do, he used the opportunity to urinate. That was another problem with doing surveillance at this stage of his career. He had not sat around like this drinking quarts of stale coffee in at least ten years, and his kidneys were treating it as a new and unpleasant experience.

He yawned, zipped up his pants, took his coffee cup out of the water, and set it on the edge of the sink while he washed his hands. When he carried the cup back to the window he could still see the bright orange package through the bronze and glass door of the woman’s mailbox, so he sat down and took a sip.

He had a perfect view of the small shop from his office window. His elevation placed the rows of mailboxes in his field of vision, and he could see the surface of the counter and part of the workspace behind it where bored employees wrapped, weighed, and stacked packages, sorted letters, and sent faxes. The streetlamp in front of the shop threw a splash of light on the sidewalk outside the door.

He sipped the lukewarm coffee and watched. At this time of night, so few customers came in that his cop’s brain wondered whether the purpose of keeping the shop open might be that other customers besides the dark-haired woman were doing something illegal: leave your money in some other mailbox on Tuesday, and come back on Wednesday and pick up your heroin from your own. But he had watched the boxes for a full cycle of shifts now, and he had detected no signs that he could interpret as commerce. Nobody who came in to open a mailbox seemed to take the time to look around him first for cops or thieves. Nobody seemed to bring anything in with him that ended up in one of the other mailboxes.

It was nearly midnight when he recognized the new clerk coming up out of the subway and walking toward the shop for the changing of the guard. The skinny kid with jeans and a black T-shirt came in the door, and the older man collected his belongings—a greenish brown sport coat that looked as though it had been picked up off a rag pile and a paperback book that he put in the side pocket so the coat hung down and made him look like the scarecrow he was.

But then he did something that made Seaver put his coffee cup on the desk and lean forward. He stepped behind the mailboxes. Seaver saw him reach into Box 345 and start sliding envelopes into a big padded mailer. Seaver watched as the orange and yellow package disappeared with the others.

Seaver snatched up his coat, stepped to the door, and ran for the stairwell. As he hurried down the steps, he switched on his receiver and watched the direction indicator for a base reading. He slipped it into his pocket, stepped out into the darkness at the side of the building, and walked slowly toward the street, his eyes on the lighted window of the little shop. He paused in the shadow until he saw the older man come out the door carrying the mailer under his arm.

Seaver followed the man along the dimly lighted street for three blocks, staying close to the buildings, sometimes keeping his silhouette obscured by the irregular outlines of pilasters and ornamental brickwork on the facades, sometimes pausing in the alcoves at store entrances to be invisible for a time.

The man turned left onto another street and Seaver broke into a run to shorten the man’s lead. As he turned the corner, he saw he had misinterpreted the man’s intentions. He wasn’t on his way to meet the dark-haired woman and hand her the mail. He was walking in a diagonal course along the broad, empty sidewalk toward the curb, where there was a big blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox. When the man had taken the woman’s mail with him, Seaver had been sure he wasn’t sending it off again. But he was definitely heading for that mailbox. The woman must have given him orders not to leave any packages lying around the store with her forwarding address on them.

Seaver’s mind was flooded with disappointment at the unwelcome news. There would be more airline trips, more nights sitting and watching doorways. No, it was worse than that. If that package went into the postal system before Seaver knew the address, he would have no idea whether it was going to an apartment a block away or to Ethiopia. He had to keep that man from reaching the mailbox.

Seaver called, “Excuse me.”

The man glanced over his shoulder and straightened. He was surprised to see Seaver suddenly so close. He kept going, a little more quickly.

“Wait!” shouted Seaver. “Sir?”

The man went more quickly, his long legs taking steps that made him strain. Seaver had made a mistake by not letting the man get a clear look at him right away, on a lighted street. In the light, Seaver could easily have passed for a prosperous middle-aged executive coming home from a restaurant. But the man was acting as though he expected to be mugged. Instead of stopping, he went faster. He seemed to want to get rid of the package so he would have both hands free to defend himself. It didn’t matter what he thought he was doing, or what Seaver had planned. The man was hurrying toward the mailbox.

Seaver walked faster, screwing the silencer onto the end of the barrel. “Sir?” he called. The man had obviously made his decision. Now he seemed to want to reach the big mailbox and use it as a shield.

Seaver stopped on the sidewalk with his feet apart, bent his knees slightly, extended both arms to steady his right hand, blew the air out of his lungs to keep the carbon dioxide from causing a tremor, and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped upward and Seaver heard the spitting sound.

The man pitched forward. The mailer fell and slid a few feet, but the man had forgotten it. He was writhing on the sidewalk, bleeding.

As Seaver ran to finish him, he saw that a car had appeared near the far end of the block. He clamped the pistol under his left arm, knelt over the man, and said, “I tried to warn you. There was a guy in a car shooting. Lie still now.”

The man seemed to barely hear him. He was squeezing his eyes in an agonized squint and rolling his head from side to side on the pavement. Seaver glanced down at the blood on the shirt. It was bright crimson and bubbly, so the bullet must have passed through a lung.

Seaver saw the car pull up to the curb. It was a yellow cab. “Is he all right?” called the driver. Seaver could see only the dark shape of a torso and an oval head.

“He just tripped and fell,” said Seaver. “He’ll be okay in a minute.” The wounded man struggled to reach out his arm toward the cab, and moaned.

“Does he need to go to the hospital?”

“No,” said Seaver. “I’ll take care of him.” He returned his eyes to the wounded man, shifted his position slightly, and rested his right forearm on his knee. If Seaver heard the click of a car door latch, he would move the hand a few more inches and grasp the gun. He would use the time it took the driver to walk around the rear of the car into the open to pivot and fire.

The driver shook his head doubtfully, then stared anxiously ahead through his windshield for a moment. Just as Seaver acknowledged that he now had the task of killing this one too, the driver pushed a button to roll up the window and accelerated up the street.

Seaver felt an abrupt, wrenching tug, and realized that the wounded man was trying to pry the pistol out of his armpit. Seaver’s right hand swatted the man’s fingers away, and he straightened his legs so quickly that he nearly toppled backward. He pulled out the pistol, aimed downward, and shot the man through the chest. This time he judged that he had hit the heart. The man gave one spasmodic jerk and went limp. Seaver gave him a kick, but it prompted no reaction. Seaver decided there was no reason to keep wondering, so he fired one more round into the man’s head, put the pistol into his inner coat pocket, picked up the padded mailer, stuck it into his belt at the small of his back, and covered it with his coat.

Seaver turned and looked around him. The little discreet surveillance had degenerated into a bloody disaster, a tangle of complications and obstacles and hazards. There was a narrow alley between two buildings to his right, but there was a high iron fence to block it. He could never lift a grown man’s body above his head and push it over the fence. He thought he might be able to carry the body a short distance, but how could he do that without attracting attention? As he considered the problem, he saw another set of headlights come around the corner at the far end of the block and head toward him. He saw the lights jump upward as the car accelerated, but then they dipped and stayed low. The car was going to stop.

Seaver stared at it, and saw the color of the paint. It was yellow, and the little marquee on the roof was visible now. It was the same cab. Seaver waved his arm frantically, and the cab pulled to the curb. The driver stepped out, slammed the door, and looked at him over the roof.

“He’s hurt worse than I thought,” said Seaver. “We need to get him to a hospital after all.”

The driver trotted around the rear of the car and opened the back-seat door. Seaver knelt and began to lift the torso of the body. “Give me a hand.”

The driver squatted to lift the feet. He backed into the cab and set the legs on the back seat, but that gave him a look at the chest. “This guy’s bleeding all over. He’s been stabbed or something.”

Seaver’s hand was already in motion. The gun swung out, he fired into the driver’s belly, then raised the barrel higher and fired into the driver’s chest, then into his head.

Seaver returned the gun to his coat pocket and walked around the car to get into the driver’s seat. He turned on the meter, then drove the cab to the rear of the building he had rented and parked it. He went up the stairs, through his little office, and into the bathroom. He washed his hands and face thoroughly, then examined his suit, shoes, and shirt for blood spatters. He saw none, but wiped his shoes with toilet paper anyway and flushed it down the toilet. He took a big wad of dampened toilet paper and wiped off the gun and wrapped it in toilet paper, then went about the little suite wiping off all of the surfaces he had ever touched. He collected all of his old coffee cups and lids, boxes, and wrappers, and locked the door behind him before he left. He dropped the trash in the Dumpster at the rear of the building.

Seaver started the cab and drove at least twelve blocks south before he found a dark alley between two stores that met a second, longer alley, so he could turn and leave it beside a loading dock. Then he walked a mile, stuffed the still-wrapped gun into the fishy-smelling center of a trash bag inside a garbage can, and replaced the lid. He walked another mile before he came to a theater. People were streaming out onto the street, walking toward parking lots and climbing into taxicabs. He attached himself to the crowd, climbed into a cab, and had it take him to an intersection not far from his hotel.

When he was inside his room, he pulled the mailer out of the back of his belt. He opened it and poured the mail out on the bed. The envelopes were all addressed to Stewart Hoffstedder, C.P.A. That was something that gave him hope, at first, because Stillman had said something about a man’s name. But the mail was almost all bills, as though they were for a real C.P.A. The bills were all for credit cards in different names—female, male, even corporate names. Were they all for this woman?

A horrible thought came to him. Stillman’s brain was probably not a perfectly developed organ to begin with. Since the age of ten it had probably been shorted out by drugs and jarred by blows. Maybe he had gotten the number wrong. Maybe this was some real C.P.A., a business manager who paid bills for a number of clients. The mail in the pouch seemed to have nothing to do with the dark-haired woman. It was possible that Seaver had scared Stillman so badly that he had cooked up a box number on the spot.

Seaver laid all of the bills out on the bed in a row and began to study them, looking desperately for similarities. On August 8, Wendy Wasserman had rented a car in Missoula, Montana. On August 10, Michael Phelan had rented a hotel room in Potomac, Montana. Katherine Webster had paid for lunch in Condon, Montana, the next morning. Seaver rocked back on his heels and smiled at the ceiling in relief. He had not wasted all this time and energy.

He glanced at the forwarding address on the label stuck to the mailer. It was just another post office box, this one in Chicago. If he needed to, he could go there and watch that one too. But right now, he had something infinitely better. He knew where the dark-haired woman was. She was on the move, driving around Montana with Pete Hatcher.