The Green And The Gray

1

The play at the Miller Theater had been one of those modern psychological dramas, exactly the sort of thing Roger Whittier would expect from a Columbia University student production: dark and pretentious, relying heavily on deep sociological quirks, without any pretense of rationality in its plot. From the polite applause bouncing off the lowering curtain, he guessed that most of the audience had found it as mediocre as he had.

Which was practically a guarantee that Caroline would love it.

Suppressing a sigh, he continued to slap his hands together, trying not to be embarrassed by the fact that his wife was one of the half-dozen people who had jumped to their feet in standing ovation. In four years of marriage he had yet to figure out whether Caroline's enthusiasm in these situations was genuine, driven by sympathy for the underdog, or just stubborn defiance of popular opinion.

The applause went down, the house lights came up, and the rest of the audience got to their feet and began unscrunching their coats from the backs of their seats. Roger joined the general chaos, mindful of his elbows as he pulled on his topcoat and buttoned it. He'd endured the play; and now came the verbal diplomacy as he tried not to tell Caroline exactly what he'd thought of it. The more enthusiastic her response, in general, the stonier the wall of silence that went up if he tried to point out how much the thing had actually stunk.

A flying elbow jabbed him in his right shoulder blade. "Sorry," he said automatically, half turning.

The offender, a small wizened man with an expensive topcoat and bad comb-over, grunted something and turned away. Roger turned away, too, muttering under his breath as he struggled to get his right arm into a sleeve that had pretzeled itself into a knot. What in hell's name was I apologizing for? he growled to himself. He finished with his coat and turned to see if Caroline was ready.

Caroline wasn't ready. Caroline, in fact, had vanished.

He looked down, a fresh wave of annoyance rolling over the pool of resentment already sloshing through his stomach. She was on her knees on the floor, her back twisted into half an S-curve as she scrabbled around in the shadows. "Which one is it this time?" he demanded.

"My opal ring," Caroline's voice came back, muffled by distance and the dark hair draped along both sides of her face.

Roger looked away, not bothering to reply. It was always the same lately. If she wasn't running late because the water heater had drained too far for another shower, then she was misplacing her watch or losing her ring or suddenly remembering that the plants needed watering.

Why couldn't she ever get herself organized? She was a real estate agent, for heaven's sake—she certainly had to have her ducks in a row at work. Why couldn't she do it at home, too?

She was still bobbing around, searching for the missing ring. For a moment he considered getting down and seeing if he could help this along a little. But no. She knew better than he did where it had slipped off, and he would just be in the way.

Taking a deep breath, trying to calm himself, he watched the other people streaming out the doors. If she didn't hurry, he told himself darkly, they weren't going to get a cab.

The last stragglers were strolling toward the exits by the time Caroline finally spotted her ring, hiding behind the front leg of the chair in front of hers. "Found it," she announced, retrieving the wayward jewelry.

Roger didn't reply. He's angry, she realized, an all-too-familiar sinking feeling settling into her stomach. Angry, or annoyed, or frustrated. Like he always seemed to be lately. Especially with her.

She felt her eyes filling with tears as she carefully climbed back to her feet, tears of frustration and some annoyance of her own. I didn't drop it on purpose, she thought angrily in his direction. I didn't see you offering to help, either.

But it was no use. He hadn't liked the play, and he was probably steaming over that man who'd bumped into him a minute ago. But no matter what happened, or whose fault it was, in the end it all got focused on her. On her slowness, on her lack of organization, on whatever else she did that irritated him.

He was already moving toward the aisle by the time she had collected her coat and purse, his back rippling with impatience. Roger never yelled at her—that wasn't his style—but he could do a brooding silence that hurt more than her father's quicksilver temper ever had.

In some ways she wished he would yell. At least then he would be talking honestly instead of pretending everything was all right when it wasn't.

But that would require him to be assertive. No chance of that happening.

No chance of getting a cab now, either. That would irritate him all the more, especially given the near-argument they'd had on the subject as they were getting ready to leave this evening.

With a sigh, she headed off behind his impatient back, her vision blurring again with tears. Why couldn't she ever do anything right?

Sure enough, by the time they stepped out into the cool October air, the line of cabs that would have gathered at the curb for the post-performance crowd had vanished. "Blast," Roger muttered under his breath, looking up and down Broadway.

But the Great White Way was quiet tonight, or at least this stretch of it was. The university had a significant chunk of the street blocked off with a construction project up around 120th, and the city's own orange-cone mania had similarly struck down at 103rd, sealing off most of the street there. The cabbies, who had enough trouble just battling regular Manhattan traffic, had taken to avoiding these particular twenty blocks entirely.

Of course, they could always walk over to Amsterdam and flag down something there. But Amsterdam turned one-way-north at 110th, which would force the cabby to head farther east to Columbus, which was currently handling much of the Broadway traffic in addition to its own. It probably wouldn't get them home any sooner than just walking the twenty blocks, not to mention the expense involved. There was always the subway, of course, but Caroline had an absolute phobia about riding it after dark.

But to walk would mean giving in.

"I suppose we could walk," Caroline offered timidly from beside him, her voice sounding like someone easing her way onto thin ice.

"I suppose we could," Roger echoed, hearing the hardness in his own voice. That had been their pretheater argument: a brief staking out of turf on Caroline's current favorite subject of exercise, and how both of them needed more of it.

And once she got an idea or crusade into her head, there was no getting it out of her. Three cheers for the underdog, four cheers for the noble cause, damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead.

He frowned sideways at her in sudden suspicion. Could she have lost her ring back there on purpose, staging the whole thing to force them to walk home like she wanted?

For a long second he considered calling her bluff, either walking them over to Amsterdam or using his cell phone to summon a cab right here and insisting they wait until it arrived. But the wind was starting to pick up, and standing around freezing would definitely qualify as a Pyrrhic victory. Better to get home as quickly as possible, even if it meant giving in.

Besides, she was probably right. They probably could both use more exercise.

"Sure, why not?" he said, turning south along Broadway. "Unless you think you'll be too cold."

"No, I'm fine," she assured him. His sudden capitulation must have caught her by surprise, because she had to take a couple of quick steps to catch up. "It's a nice night for a walk."

"I suppose," he said.

Caroline fell silent, without even a passing mention of exercise. At least she was being a gracious winner.

Broadway's vehicular traffic, as he'd already noted, was running sparse tonight. What he hadn't anticipated was that pedestrian traffic would be similarly low-key. Once they'd made it out of the immediate Columbia area, they found themselves with the sidewalk virtually to themselves.

Construction blockages wouldn't explain that; there must be a football game or something on. Or maybe it was still baseball season. He was a little vague on such things.

Though it could also be the weather that was keeping everyone inside. The wind had picked up since their arrival at the theater, and had become a steady blast of Canadian air pressing against their backs and carrying the promise of an extra-cold winter ahead.

Caroline was evidently thinking along the same lines. "We're going to need to bring the trees in soon, before it gets too cold," she commented as they hurried across 104th Street in anticipation of an imminent red light. "We let it go too long last year, and they did poorly when spring came."

"What constitutes too cold?" Roger asked, glad to have something to talk about that didn't involve either exercise or the play.

"Certainly before we get a hard freeze," she said.

"Okay," Roger said, though he had only a vague memory of tree problems last spring. The two semidwarf orange trees, like the rest of their indoor jungle, were Caroline's responsibility. "You want to put them in the bedroom again?"

"I'd like to," Caroline said. "I know you don't like them blocking the balcony door there; but the alternative is to block the living room door, and we certainly look out that one more often—"

"Shh," Roger cut her off, looking around. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Caroline asked.

"It was like a cough," Roger told her, frowning. Aside from two more couples a block up the street, there wasn't a single human being in sight. "A very wet cough, like you get when you've got fluid in your lungs."

"I hate that sound," Caroline said, shivering.

"Yeah, but where did it come from?" Roger persisted, still looking around. All the shops in the immediate area were closed, there were no alleys, and the nearby doorways were too well illuminated by the streetlights for anyone to be hiding there. He couldn't see any open windows above them, either.

"I don't see anyone," Caroline said. "Maybe you imagined it."

I didn't imagine anything, Roger groused silently to himself. But he couldn't argue against the fact that there was no one in sight. "Maybe," he said, taking her arm and starting forward again, the back of his neck starting to creep in a way that had nothing to do with the wind. "Come on, let's go."

They continued south, past the torn-up pavement and flashing yellow lights at 103rd, heading for

102nd. Ahead on their left, he could see the theater he and Caroline sometimes went to, its marquee and windows dark. Had they started closing early on Wednesday nights?

"Roger, what's wrong with the lights?" Caroline asked quietly.

He frowned. Focusing on the theater, he hadn't even noticed that the light around them had gone curiously dim. The street lamps had turned into children's nightlights, putting out hardly any glow at all and looking like they were having to strain to manage even that much. The headlights of the passing cars seemed unnaturally bright, the doorways now resting in deep puddles of shadow.

Ahead, as far down Broadway as he could see, all the streetlights had gone equally dim.

He looked back over his shoulder. The lights had dimmed just behind them, too, but only for a single block. North of 103rd, they were blazing away normally.

It was probably something to do with the road construction, of course. Something to do with torn-up streets and damaged power lines.

But then why hadn't he noticed it as they approached? Why had the lights only now gone so oddly dim?

And why had they dimmed just as he and Caroline had entered this particular stretch of sidewalk?

Caroline had gone silent, gripping his arm a little tighter. Setting his teeth, Roger kept them moving, staying as far away from the shadowy doorways as he could. Just six blocks to go, he reminded himself firmly. It would be no worse than a nighttime walk in the woods, with the added bonus that there were no tree branches to trip over. "So what did you think of the play?" he asked.

It took Caroline a second to shift mental gears. "I liked it a lot," she replied, her mind clearly miles away from the safe and artificial world of university experimental theater. "How about you?"

"The acting was pretty decent," he said. "Though the Latin lover's accent was a little thick for my taste."

"You mean Cesar?" Caroline said, frowning. "He wasn't Latin, he was French."

"I know," Roger said. "I was using Latin lover in the generic sense."

"I didn't know there was a generic sense for Latin lover," Caroline said. "Are you meaning a 'when in Rome' sort of thing?"

"No, it's more a general melodramatic expression," he said. They were halfway down the block now, well into the darkened area. Five and a half blocks to go. "The smooth-talking romantic guy women swoon over. Usually he either seduces them or else entices them unknowingly to their doom."

"Ah," Caroline said. "Though in this case it was hardly unknowing. LuAnn knew exactly what was going on."

"Then why did she let Cesar manipulate her that way?" Roger countered, knowing full well that getting started on the play's logic would only get him into trouble. "Especially when good old solid Albert was standing there waiting for her to come to her senses?"

"I don't know," Caroline murmured. "I still don't think it was Cesar's fault."

"Maybe not," Roger said, forcing himself to let it drop. "I liked the set design, too," he added, hoping the production's technical aspects would be safer ground. "And the music was pretty good. Chopin, I think."

They had reached 101st street, and he was searching for something else positive he could say, when the dim streetlights went completely dark.

Caroline jerked to a halt with a short, involuntary gasp. "Easy," Roger said, looking around as his stomach tightened into a hard knot. The streetlights were gone, but at the same time the various apartment windows above them were still lit, giving off a cheerful glow.

Which was, to Roger's mind, the eeriest part of all. He'd never seen a power outage yet that didn't take out everything in a six-block area, streetlights and buildings alike. What the hell was going on?

"Just keep walking," he murmured.

"No," a deep voice said from their left.

Roger jumped, spinning around to face the vague shape standing on the sidewalk just around the corner from them. "What do you want?" he demanded, cursing the quaver in his voice.

"You have trees?" the man asked.

Roger blinked, the sheer unexpectedness of the question freezing his brain. "Trees?" he repeated stupidly.

"Trees!" the man snarled. "You said—" He broke off, coughing hard. It was the same cough, Roger realized with a shiver, that he'd heard back at the corner.

Except that this man hadn't been there. No one had been there.

Beside him, he felt Caroline loosen her grip on his arm. "Yes," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the man's hacking. "We have two semi-dwarf orange trees."

With an effort, the man brought his lungs under control. "How big?" he rasped.

Now, too late, it occurred to Roger that they might have escaped while the other was incapacitated.

But maybe they would have another chance. Bracing himself, he got ready to grab Caroline's hand and run the instant another fit took him.

"About six feet tall and four across," Caroline said. "They're in pots on our balcony."

The man took another step forward. The light from the apartment windows wasn't good enough for Roger to make out his features, but there was enough to show that he was short and broad, with the build of a compact boxer.

It was also quite adequate to illuminate the shiny pistol clutched in his left hand.

"Small," the man muttered. "But they'll do." He gestured back along 101st Street behind him. The streetlights there were also dark. "Come."

Roger could feel Caroline trembling against his side as he silently steered them past the mugger and down the sidewalk, trying desperately to come up with a plan. The man was obviously weak and sick. If he jumped him and wrestled away the gun...

No. If he jumped him, he would get himself shot. The mugger was a head shorter than he was, but judging by the width of his shoulders he probably outweighed Roger by a good twenty pounds.

Probably outmuscled him by a hell of a lot more, too.

"Here," the mugger said suddenly from behind him. "In here."

Roger swallowed hard, focusing on the iron fence set across an alley between two buildings to their left, its gate standing wide open. The dark concrete beyond the fence sloped downward to a flat area, beyond which he could see a set of concrete steps leading to a higher platform, beyond which was a flat, featureless wall. On the right, between the entrance and the back steps, was a shorter wall leading into a little courtyard-like area; just past that was a fire escape attached to one of the buildings. Inside the fence to the left was a stack of garbage bags.

"In here," the mugger said again.

"Do as he says, Roger," Caroline murmured.

With his heart thudding in his ears, Roger stepped through the gate and started down the slope, Caroline still clutching his arm. They had gone perhaps three steps into the alley when, behind them, the dead streetlights abruptly came back on.

"Stop," the mugger ordered. "There."

Roger frowned. The man, now in silhouette against the light, was pointing at a long bundle of rags lying at the far end of the line of trash bags. "There what?" he asked.

"Oh, my God," Caroline breathed, letting go of Roger's arm and stepping over to kneel beside the bundle.

And then Roger got it. The bundle wasn't rags, but a young girl, fourteen or fifteen years old, dressed in some odd patchwork outfit made of green and gray material. She was curled into a fetal position against the cold night air, her eyes closed.

"Take her," the mugger's voice said in Roger's ear.

Something swung toward Roger's face; reflexively, he flinched back. But the something didn't connect, merely stopping in midair in front of him.

It was the mugger's hand. In it was the mugger's gun.

Its grip pointed toward Roger. "What?" Roger asked cautiously.

"Take her," the other repeated, thrusting the gun insistently toward him. "Protect her."

Carefully, Roger reached up and touched the weapon. Was this some sort of trick? Was the other going to suddenly reverse the gun and shoot him? His fingers closed on the gun, and the weapon's gentle weight came into his hand as the mugger let go. "Protect her," the other said again softly.

Brushing past Roger, he headed silently down the slope farther into the alley.

"Roger, give me your coat," Caroline ordered. "She's freezing."

"Sure," Roger said mechanically, watching the man's broad back retreating. Was he staggering a little? Roger couldn't be sure, but it looked like it. A mugger who'd lingered too long after happy hour might explain why Roger was now the one holding the gun.

But the man hadn't sounded drunk. And there certainly hadn't been any alcohol on his breath when he'd handed over the weapon.

And that cough...

"Roger!"

"Right." Still watching the man's unsteady progress, he stripped off his coat and handed it over. He glanced down long enough to see Caroline sit the girl up and get the coat around her shoulders, then looked back down the alley.

The mugger was gone.

He frowned, peering into the semidarkness. The man was gone, all right. But gone where?

Cautiously, he crossed to the low wall and peered over it.

The man wasn't there. He wasn't on the fire escape, either, or on the stone steps, or the platform across the end, or huddled around the corner against the cul-de-sac around the back. There were no doorways Roger could see, nothing a person could hide behind, and all the first-floor windows were barred. And he certainly hadn't gotten past Roger and escaped out the alley mouth.

He'd simply vanished.

Roger looked down at the pistol in his hand. He'd never held a real handgun before, but he'd always had the impression the things were heavy. This one didn't seem to weigh much more than the toys he'd played with as a boy. Could it be one of those fancy plastic guns the newspapers were always going on about?

But it didn't look plastic. It was definitely metal, and it sure as hell looked like one of those army pistols from World War II movies. He turned it over in his hand, angling it toward the streetlight for a better look.

And for the first time noticed that there was something marring the shiny metal on the right side of the barrel. A streak of something dark that came off as he rubbed his finger across it.

Blood?

"Roger, stop daydreaming and give me a hand," Caroline called.

Taking one last look around, he walked back up the sloping concrete. Caroline had the girl wrapped in his coat and on her feet, propping her up like a rag doll. The girl's eyes were open, but she looked dazed and only half awake.

And there were a set of ugly bruises on her neck.

"Roger, snap out of it," Caroline ordered into his thoughts. "We have to get her home."

"No, we have to call the police," Roger countered as he dug into his pocket for his phone, feeling his face flush with annoyance. Did she really think he'd just been standing there with his brain in idle?

"We can call them from the apartment," Caroline said. "We have to get her out of this air before she catches pneumonia."

"The police have to be called," Roger insisted. "This is a crime scene. They'll want to look for clues."

"We can tell them where we found her," Caroline shot back. "They can look for clues with us back home just as easily as they can with us standing here."

Roger ground his teeth. But she was probably right. And given the unlikelihood of a quick police response to a non-emergency situation, the girl could well freeze to death before they even got a car here.

Or rather he could freeze to death. It was his coat she was wearing, after all.

"Fine," he growled. "Come on—uh—Caroline, what's her name?"

"She doesn't seem to be able to talk," Caroline said, her voice low and dark. "It looks like someone tried to strangle her."

"Yeah, I noticed." Roger turned around, his skin tingling with the odd impression that someone was watching them. But there was no one in sight.

But then, there hadn't been anyone in sight when he'd heard that first cough, either.

Shoving the gun into his pocket, he stepped to the girl's side and put his arm around her slim waist.

A fair percentage of her weight came onto his arm; she really was in bad shape. He just hoped he wouldn't end up carrying her the rest of the way to the apartment.

He hoped even more that whoever had tried to do this to her wouldn't get to them first.