Slugfest

Forty-eight

“I’ll feel pretty stupid if I let you stay here tonight and wake up dead tomorrow morning.” Moochie may have been won over, but J. C. said out loud what she and I were both thinking.

We were still actively trying to convince Jamal and Emma to turn themselves in to the police, but we weren’t heartless enough to send two hungry orphans out into a monsoon with no place to stay for the night. That said, we fell a little short of the complete kumbaya chip that would allow rational people to offer their floors or sofas to total strangers. Especially ones who might be involved in multiple murders.

“We can sleep in the hallway,” Jamal said.

“The Dons will freak,” J. C. said.

Not mobsters or British professors, J. C. explained that the Dons were a gay couple, both named Don, who lived next door and returned from their house in the Hamptons early on Sunday mornings to beat the traffic. A couple of kids huddled in the hallway would send them straight for the telephones. One would call the cops and the other would call their real estate agent. Their apartment would go on the market and that would be unfortunate since they’d just completed a lengthy renovation and a new owner would only rip everything out and the building would once again be filled with dust and tarps and men with carpenter’s butt who frightened Moochie and Tommy.

Jamal motioned to the terrace. “Out there’s okay. I can move the bench so that it’s in the sheltered part so that I can’t be seen from the street.” Without a word he had assumed it was his presence that was the issue, not Emma’s. If anything, I trusted her less than him.

J. C. was not inclined to have anyone redecorating her terrace, even one who’d taken a blue ribbon at the Big Apple Flower Show, but she gave it some thought.

“I will fill a coffee can with kitty litter. If you have to pee, you’re not going in my planters and you’re not going to go over the side of my terrace. That point is nonnegotiable.”

Jamal nodded in agreement.

“I may still have a tent from my hippie days. If I do, it’s in the storage room downstairs.”

Some New York City apartment buildings have storage rooms in their basements that can be rented by the owners or tenants. They’re the graveyards for baby carriages, abandoned bicycles, and exercise equipment too expensive to toss but too guilt inducing to leave in the owners’ apartments. J. C. plucked a set of keys from a bowl on the counter.

“C’mon.”

Jamal was relieved. “That’s cool. I’ve never slept in a tent. I think it’s a white thing, wanting to sleep on the ground.” His comment cut the tension.

That left Emma without a bed and all eyes were on me to offer her the sofa in Lucy’s apartment. Lucy didn’t have much that could instantly be turned into serious cash, although they’d do well on eBay. The shoes and handbags were expensive—and so plentiful I doubted Lucy would miss any, but it wasn’t my place to volunteer someone else’s home to a stranger. Particularly one who still had some explaining to do.

J. C. bailed me out.

“I’ve got bivvy bags. You can both use them.” Jamal and Emma looked at her as if she’d offered them Depends. “Short for bivouac?” Judging by their expressions bivouac must have sounded like a new drug for insomnia or acid reflux.

“They’re sleeping sacks,” I said. “When you don’t need or don’t want to carry a tent.”

“I knew I liked you,” J. C. said. “The girl who lives upstairs, your friend—I bet she wouldn’t know a bivvy sack from a flour sack. C’mon, Jamal, you’ll have to help me hunt through my things.” She walked to the door and picked up her iron bar. The boy seemed hurt that she thought she’d need to defend herself against him. I was a little surprised myself.

“What?” she said, looking around the small apartment at the three people she was now conspiring with. “This?” She rattled her saber. “The gate in the storage room sticks. Sometimes it has to be pried up.”

She gently pushed the boy ahead of her on the steps and I overheard them as they headed down to the storage room. “Let’s go, Jamal. I’ll tell you about the time Teddy Roosevelt and I went hunting in Alaska.”

“For real?” he asked, looking back up at her.

“No. Not for real.”

They disappeared into the zigzag of the staircase. Emma had said she hadn’t eaten since the bagel I’d bought her that morning and I was hungry myself so I jogged down two flights of stairs to catch up with them and hung over the railing. “J. C., okay if we raid your fridge?”

“Be my guest.”

Climbing back up the stairs, I hoped for something that didn’t need to be reheated. “Emma?”

I tapped on the bathroom door. No answer. I looked outside on the terrace but she wasn’t there either. Upstairs at Lucy’s the door was still locked. I unlocked it and searched the apartment. Puzzled, I went back to J. C.’s and waited for her and Jamal. After fifteen minutes they returned with their outdoor gear, laughing as if she was a den mother and he an overgrown Cub Scout.

“Did you see Emma?” I asked, as they entered the apartment.

They shook their heads. Jamal went straight for the terrace. J. C. and I followed. Had they discussed an escape strategy or was it the only logical explanation for her disappearance?

The rain had let up a bit. Judging from the faint scrapes on the terrace’s painted floor, Emma had dragged the pot of Pieris over to the railing, stood on the pebbled mulch, and hoisted herself onto the fire escape ladder that dangled, extended over the front of the building. In the process she’d torn down one of J. C.’s lattices covered with clematis and Boston ivy.

“She said she was strong.”

“And athletic,” J. C. said, “but that is not a nice girl.”

Standing on the terrace, we heard a soft knock that escalated into furious, impatient tapping on J. C.’s partially open door. We must have looked an odd trio to the newcomer, as we stood in the steady drizzle, J. C. with her ever-present iron bar which—now that I knew her better—seemed more like Little Bo Peep’s staff than a pugil stick; an inner-city kid holding two bivvy bags and a stack of tent poles as if he had no idea what they were used for; and me.

“Is this a private slumber party or can anyone join in?”