The World's Finest Mystery Part 100

He leaned toward his guests then, and grinned, and in the heavy Brooklyn accent the cabby must have used, delivered the long-awaited zinger to his story.

"He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Look, mister, you shoulda tole me you was a New Yorker!' "

He burst out laughing, just as Laura knew he would. Nessie burst out laughing, an instant later. Laura laughed, too. Politely. Everyone was laughing but Lucille, who was standing just behind Nessie's chair now, looking somewhat bewildered.

"Yes, Lucille?" Laura said.

"Ma'am, shall I start clearing?"

"Please."

Bobby's hand was still under the table. Laura watched him incredulously. A fork slid off the plate Lucille was lifting from the table, clattering to the floor. She flushed a deep red and immediately knelt beside Nessie's chair to retrieve it. When she rose again, her eyes met Laura's.

There was knowledge in those eyes.

She had seen.

"Delicious," Nessie said, and folded her napkin.

At five minutes to twelve, Laura went into the kitchen to pay Mrs. Armstrong and Lucille and to thank them for helping to make the dinner party such a success. Mrs. Armstrong accepted her check and told Laura what a pleasure it always was to work for such a fine lady. Lucille took her check and said nothing. Her eyes avoided Laura's.

Mrs. Armstrong and Lucille were wearing almost identical black topcoats and carrying black handbags. Mrs. Armstrong was carrying a red umbrella. Lucille had no umbrella, and when Laura asked her if she'd like to borrow one, she replied, "No, thank you, ma'am, I'm only catching a bus on Fifth," which was the longest sentence she'd uttered all night long.

Her eyes still avoided Laura's.

It was as if she were somehow blaming Laura for what she'd seen earlier.

When the two women left the apartment, Laura double-locked the service door behind them. Bobby was sprawled on the living room sofa, sipping a cognac and watching an old cowboy movie on television.

"Nice party," he said.

"I thought it went smoothly," Laura said.

"Want a nightcap?"

"Thanks, no. Are the kids okay?"

"What?"

"I asked you to look in on them while I..."

"Slipped my mind," Bobby said. "Got involved in the movie here."

"I'll do it," Laura said, and went out of the room and down the corridor to the children's bedrooms.

Both of them were asleep. Seven-year-old Jessica had the blanket twisted around her like a strait jacket, and Laura had difficulty unwinding it without awakening her. She extricated her daughter at last, and then kissed her on the forehead and went next door to where five-year-old Michael was sleeping with his face to the wall. Laura touched his brow, smoothed his hair, kissed him on the cheek, and tucked the blanket tighter around his shoulder.

When she came back into the living room, Bobby was still watching television. He did not look at Laura as she came into the room.

She sat beside him on the sofa and, without preamble, said, "About Nessie."

"What about her?" Bobby asked.

He still did not turn away from the screen, where a band of hapless cowboys were being ambushed at a waterhole by a larger band of Indians.

"Do you find her attractive?" Laura asked. She was not at all asking about Nessie Winkler's attractiveness; only a blind man would not have noticed her startling beauty. She was simply asking whether Bobby was sleeping with her. Nor was she even asking that. She didn't know what she was asking. Maybe she only wanted to know if he still loved her.

"I think she's a good-looking woman, yes," Bobby said.

"That doesn't answer my question," Laura said, and became immediately frightened of what might follow. She did not want this confrontation. She had been foolish to bring it to this dangerous point in the short s.p.a.ce of several sentences.

Bobby turned from the television screen. His eyes met hers. Blue, steady, level- challenging. Evenly s.p.a.cing his words, stretching them out interminably, he said, "What, exactly, is, your, question?"

Tell him, she thought.

Tell him the question is one of trust; you either trust someone completely, or you don't trust him at all.

Tell him you stopped trusting him five years ago.

Tell him you would appreciate it if he kept his wh.o.r.es out of your home where they only embarra.s.s and humiliate you before the hired help.

Tell him, d.a.m.n it!

"Well?" he said.

She was trembling.

She smiled and said, "I forgot the question."

His eyes held hers a moment longer, as if to make certain the matter had been finally and irrevocably put to rest. He turned back to the television screen.

"I think..." Laura started.

"Yes?" he said.

"I think I'll go down for a walk."

"At this hour?"

"I need some air."

"It's still raining, isn't it?"

"I think it's let up."

"Suit yourself," Bobby said, and shrugged.

Laura walked out into the entrance foyer. She took her yellow slicker and rain hat from the closet, put them on, and let herself out of the apartment.

The streets glistened with reflected light, green and yellow and red from the traffic signals, white from the overhead street lamps, a warmer white from the headlights of infrequently pa.s.sing automobiles. The rain had indeed stopped. The city smelled fresh and clean.

Laura walked.

There was something evocative about the scent of the streets and the sound of rainwater rushing along the curbs. She could remember coming downstairs after summer thunderstorms when she was a child, taking off her shoes and socks against her mother's wishes, splashing in the curbside puddles. She could remember being fifteen and wildly infatuated with a boy named Charlie, with whom she'd walked dizzily through a springtime city washed by rain. And she could remember meeting Bobby- in the rain.

What do I do now? she wondered.

Do I confront him the way I started to do five minutes ago?

What do I say?

Look, Bobby, enough is enough, I want out. I'm thirty-one years old, there's still a life ahead of me if I can find the courage to reach out for it. I don't have to stay married to a man who's got his hands all over every new girl in town, the h.e.l.l with that.

But is that what I really want to do?

Throw away nine years of marriage because my husband has a few minor flirtations... or adventures... or affairs... or whatever the h.e.l.l you choose to call- d.a.m.n it, I choose to call them infidelities! He has been unfaithful to me!

But...

Even so...

Do I... do I break up a marriage because of infidelity? Even the word sounded old-fashioned. Wouldn't it be better, really, to look the other way, pretend it never happened, pretend it wouldn't happen again?

Like the rainstorm, she thought.

It had been raining at ten o'clock when Bobby explored Nessie's smooth white flesh under a similarly white tablecloth. But the rain had stopped shortly after midnight, and now the streets smelled fresh and clean. There was hardly even a memory of the storm now.

Wasn't that the best way, after all?

Banish each sudden storm to a safe distance in the past, and then quickly forget it?

Bobby was a good provider. The children had a good father. He was handsome, witty, hard-working, and fun to be with most of the time.

Count your blessings, she thought. You've got everything you want or need. He probably loves you to death. It's just that he has a roving eye. It's the same in every marriage. Live with it. Forget it.

The hollow rea.s.surances echoed noisily in her mind, raising a mental clatter so overwhelming that at first she wasn't certain she'd heard the other sound at all. She stopped mid-stride, stood stock still on the sidewalk, heard the click of the traffic signal as the light changed to red at the end of the block.

Silence.

And then the sound again.

A whimper.

She turned toward the brownstone on the right.

The woman lay crouched in the far corner of the small courtyard, in the right angle formed by the facade of the building and the side of the stoop leading to the front door. She was wearing a black coat, and Laura could barely see her until she moved closer to the low iron railing that surrounded the courtyard.

She peered deeper into the gloom.

The woman whimpered again, and Laura went immediately to her. The woman's coat was open, her clothes disarrayed, her dress pulled up over rain-spattered pantyhose.

The pantyhose were jaggedly torn.

At first, they didn't recognize each other.

The courtyard was quite dark, and the woman was crouched into the deepest corner of it, as if seeking anonymity there. She looked up as Laura knelt beside her, and flinched as though expecting to be struck. Her eyes were unfocused, she continued whimpering piteously, and then the whimper changed to a name, and she repeated the name over and over again- "Oh, Mrs. Hollis, oh, Mrs. Hollis, oh, Mrs. Hollis" -as if the litany would invoke the past and somehow change it to a brighter present. Laura was startled at first to hear her name, and then she looked into the woman's face- and saw that it was Lucille.

She leaned in close to her.

Lucille was trying to tell her what had happened. She was not articulate to begin with, and shock now rendered her almost unintelligible. Laura gathered that she and Mrs. Armstrong had parted outside the building, the cook to walk toward Lexington Avenue to board a subway train, Lucille toward Fifth to catch a downtown bus. The man had confronted her suddenly... stepping out of a doorway... ramming his forearm across her throat... knife point coming up, gleaming in the dull glow of the street lamp further up the street. He'd forced her into the courtyard, into the darkness... forced her legs apart... slashed her pantyhose...

"I didn't know anybody was on the street with me, I didn't hear a thing, didn't see a thing until he... until he..."

Suddenly Lucille was sobbing.

And Laura began to tremble.

She trembled with rage and with fear.

Seeing Lucille this way, vulnerable and exposed, whimpering like a small animal that had been mercilessly beaten, Laura wanted only to kill whoever had done this, find the man who had so abused this woman and simply and swiftly kill him.

At the same time, she was terrified that the man might suddenly appear again, spring out of the darkness to claim her as his next victim, overpower her as he had Lucille, leave her quaking and whimpering on the stone floor of the same courtyard.

"I'm going to call the police," she said. "If I leave you for a minute, will you be all right?"

"No, please," Lucille said.

"I'm only going as far as the nearest telephone."

"No. I'm bleeding, I think. Oh G.o.d, Mrs. Hollis, I'm bleeding."

"The police will send an ambulance."

"No, I don't want the police."

"What?"

"No police. Please."

"Why not?"

"They'll think it was me."

The two women looked at each other, their eyes searching in the darkness.