Sliver

  She sat silent.

  “Kay?”

  “It’s too complicated to go into,” she said. “Thank you, Martin.”

  “You heard what I said? It was a tragic accident, it couldn’t possibly have been anything else.”

  She said, “I heard.”

  “Will you congratulate Norman and June for me?”

  “Yes, I will,” she said. “Thanks again, Martin. Good-bye.”

  She hung up.

  Leaving him wondering, no doubt, about her mental health.

  She wondered about it too.

  Thinking that someone could take the chrome Art Deco handle from any shower in 1300 Madison Avenue, could take it off with a screwdriver probably, and—wire it or tape it or something—to a piece of two-by-four or a baseball bat or something. . . .

  Pete? Petey? Her baby? Her love?

  No, never, he couldn’t.

  He could lie, yes—small wonder, with an actress for a mother and a corporate exec for a father. But lying was a far, far cry from killing. Killing was—

  Killing was a major event. . . .

  10

  THEY WATCHED THE WAGNALLS, the Bakers. The Ostrows, the week’s man from the Yoshiwara Company and his guests.

  She watched him watching.

  He glanced at her.

  She smiled. Said, “You know what I wouldn’t mind taking a look at?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Us,” she said.

  He grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.” He leaned to her; they kissed. “Don’t go way,” he said.

  He swiveled, got up, went to the foyer.

  She swiveled and rolled sideward, her chair bumping his; watched him walk through the foyer and into the back room. Light went on as he went in among the cartons and what-all. He turned to the left, went from sight.

  She swiveled, reaching; touched the 13A middle button, the 2 button.

  Watched him on 2 moving through darkness down to the lower right of the screen. He switched the light on in his messy Conran’s bedroom, closed the door. Turned to the wall and crouched down between the door and the first section of accordion-folded closet door, made a lifting movement.

  His head and shoulders blocked and shadowed what he did.

  He stood and turned, a dark cassette-shape in his hand.

  She touched another button and the 2 button, her hand shaking. She gripped it with her left. Watched the Gruens playing bridge with two men.

  She scanned the monitors. Saw Denise arguing with Kim in the 5B living room, put them on 1. “—job, I’m not going to jeopardize it for a measly five hundred dollars!” Denise said, throwing her napkin on the table, getting up and going to the window. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” “Now comes the good stuff,” he said, coming in. She put a hand up.

  “Will you for once use your head, Denise?” Kim said, pouring cream into her coffee.

  He sat, swiveled, taking a cassette from its black slipcase.

  “You could wind up making four or five thousand,” Kim said. “Even more. And no taxes. May I please smoke one effing cigarette?”

  They watched Denise and Kim.

  The Bakers, the Coles.

  She watched him press a button on the right-hand VCR, feed the cassette into the opening and home it, press other buttons, click a switch in the center bank.

  They watched themselves on 2.

  “Jesus, I’m fat,” she said.

  “You are not,” he said, “you’re gorgeous. . . .”

  “Oh God, baby, that feels good,” she said, lying back across the bed, his hand caressing her right breast, his head over the other.

  He took her arm; she got up, watching; moved over, sat in his lap.

  They watched Kay and Pete.

  She decided to make the next day, Friday, an at-home day. She hadn’t planned to but she was too tired to get up early.

  “I have to go out this afternoon,” he said, leaning over an elbow on the counter, watching a muffin in the microwave, Felice standing on his back sniffing at the cabinets.

  “Just as well,” she said, pouring the coffee. “I’ve really really got to do some work. Where are you going?”

  “Ohh . . . downtown,” he said, smiling. “Christmassy stuff. Nothing involving anybody you know.”

  He helped her clean up. They kissed at the door. “Call before you go,” she said.

  He smiled at her. “Love you,” he said.

  “I love you, Pete,” she said, looking into his eyes.

  They kissed.

  She called Sara and asked her to make cancellations and apologies, new appointments.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Just farther behind than I realized.”

  Not to mention turning paranoid.

  With no Christmas shopping done yet either.

  She read at the desk. Felice slept on the bed.

  He called at 1:37. “How you doing?”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ve really made some headway.”

  “Bad news. Allan got the ax.”

  “Damn,” she said. “Those bastards . . .”

  “The whole department practically.”

  “How’s he taking it?” she asked.

  “He’s fine; Babette is having hysterics. I’m leaving now. I should be back around five.”

  She said, “I was just thinking about maybe coming down and watching while I eat a yogurt. . . .”

  “Do you want to? I’ll leave the key for you, behind the mirror.”

  “Would you?” she said. “I think I will.”

  “You know how to start up, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “See you later.” A kiss.

  She kissed. “Love you,” she said.

  “Me too.” Kiss, kiss.

  She hung up.

  Sat looking at the page before her.

  Tried again to think of a present for him. Maybe something for those bare walls.

  She read a few minutes, then turned the lamp off, the machine on. Got up, went to the bathroom, washed. Got her keys.

  Told Felice she’d be back in a while.

  Took the stairs down to thirteen.

  She didn’t look too bad, all things considered. She drew a bottom corner of the mirror’s gilt frame farther from the black-and-white-checked wall. The key missed her cupped fingers, bounced on the table, a tiny crescent gouged in the tan lacquer by the cylindrical tip. She fingertipped her tongue, rubbed the lacquer. The nick stayed.

  She unlocked 13B, went in.

  Switched on the foyer light as she closed the door; pocketed the key. Looked at the gray screens gleaming in the living room, at the kitchen, the half-open doors to the dark bathroom and dim back room.

  She went to the back-room door and opened it. The blind’s narrow slats were edged with sunshine, lighting the workbench and its tools and dismantled monitors, the transformer’s metal doghouse in the corner by the window, the rowing machine, cartons, odds and ends of scrap lumber. . . .

  She went to the center closet, drew the accordion doors apart. Reached in and pulled the plywood door open. Ducked and went through—parting clothes and accordion doors—into the sunny blue-and-tan Conran’s bedroom. The blind was up most of the way, the window open an inch or so at either side.

  She surveyed the clothes-strewn room. “Pete?” she called.

  She went to the door.

  Looked out across the foyer into the living room—the side of the tan leather sofa, blue sky above a building over on Park.

  She closed the door. Turned to the wall and crouched.

  Felt the parquet floor before her. The wood pieces were smooth, tight-fitting. She pushed, pressed; nothing slid or yielded.

  She tried the baseboard—three or four inches high, some thirty inches long—grasped at it and pulled. It held firm, though a hairline crack divided it from the white wall. She pressed an end of the board, pressed the other end.

  Remembered his moveme
nt. Lifted.

  The board came up and off, grooves at either end sliding on metal tongues in the door and closet-door frames.

  She put the board down beside her and raised a gray metal handle in the opening, drew out a wide shallow gray-metal drawer. Hundred- and five-hundred-dollar bills lay in it, five paper-banded sheaves—three of one hundreds, two of fives. A maroon leather box the size of a cigar box, manila envelopes. Cassettes.

  Three black slipcases lying side by side on others.

  She picked one up; a K was penned on the label on the spine.

  The next cassette, labeled K2, was the one they had watched the night before; she picked it up. The next cassette was labeled R. Rocky?

  Four cassettes were in the lower layer: N, N2, N3, and B.

  Which puzzled her till she remembered that William G. Webber, 27, was Billy Webber.

  She crouched there, looking at the cassettes in her hands. Afraid she hadn’t been paranoid at all.

  He should have allowed longer than twenty minutes, a Friday a little over a week before Christmas; they were rolling past Seventy-second Street and the watch said 1:55 already.

  But hey, it was a Checker cab, a relic from the past, with plenty of space and a pulled-down jump seat to put the feet on. Easy listening on the radio. So he’d be late; they would wait for him. . . .

  He was on his way to the Pace Gallery to choose between two Hoppers. Then Tiffany’s.

  He smiled, his feet up, his hands folded.

  Lovely to think of her back there watching on her own. His love enjoying his other love . . .

  Who would ever have thought he’d have a woman he could share it with, could actually entrust it to for a while? A woman so perfect, so loving. How right he had been to risk showing it to her. He breathed a sigh. Was anyone luckier?

  And just the other night, thanks to Sam that bastard, he’d been shivering on the precipice. What a moment that had been, when she asked him out of nowhere to tell her about Naomi. Yeow!

  Thank God he’d been able to convince her he wasn’t hiding anything. Last night clinched it, the way she’d been so open and into everything, wanting to watch them, so with it when they did. . . .

  Two firsts for her: watching them, and watching alone now . . .

  He took his feet off the jump seat.

  Sat up, cold inside.

  Turned and looked out. A Doberman eyed him from the open window of a limo alongside, paws resting on gleaming black.

  He turned the other way. Watched the Frick Museum sliding by . . .

  Could she have watched him when he was getting the cassette?

  Of course she could have, dummy.

  Was that why she had asked to see the tape? Had she somehow guessed the truth about Naomi, all of it? Guessed too—so goddamn smart she was—that he had taped it, and stashed the tape of them in the same place?

  She was watching alone on a Friday at-home day, another first—and it was on the clipboard: the address, the day, the time. He hadn’t written Pace Gallery precisely because she would be able to see it and maybe guess what he was getting her.

  Shit. Top of the world two seconds ago and whammo, paranoid again.

  He faced front, leaned forward. Squinted through the smoggy plastic barrier and the windshield beyond at the four-lane lava flow of cabs and buses oozing down Fifth Avenue. “Jesus,” he said, “what a goddamn fucking mess.”

  “It’s a gridlock alert day,” the driver said.

  He drew breath and hissed it out, shaking his head. “This goddamn city,” he said.

  Sat back.

  Stuck his feet up on the jump seat.

  Studied the Reeboks this way and that.

  Played with the muffler’s woolly fringe, listened to the easy listening.

  Icy inside.

  The way she’d watched his hands when he put the cassette in and switched over . . .

  Was she putting a cassette in right that moment? N3?

  Horns honked. Traffic was frozen.

  “You want to cut over to Park?” the driver asked.

  She fast-forwarded; the bathroom stayed empty behind white streaks, the cane leaning by the shower door. At the top of the screen someone there and gone.

  She stopped, rewound.

  Played.

  The bathroom was empty, the cane leaning by the shower door, the sound of the shower vibrant. Legs in jeans and sneakers passed outside the foyer doorway, from right to left.

  Returned, crouched.

  She froze Pete.

  Crouching in the doorway in a striped rugby shirt, a hand low before him as if to pitch a coin.

  She watched him—and let him move. He pitched, stood. Stepped aside and was gone.

  She watched the empty bathroom. Couldn’t make out the tiny something he had pitched onto the black floor a few feet in from the door, by the bath mat. Whatever it was, he was there in Hubert “Rocky” Sheer’s apartment. About to kill him.

  Pete. Her baby, her love.

  She closed her eyes.

  Opened them. Watched the shower door open, Sheer’s hand take the towel from the hook.

  She fast-forwarded—till he hobbled out with the towel around him, lifting his glare-wrapped foot over the sill, taking the cane, shifting it to his right hand. He stepped forward and stopped on the mat, head down. Bent over the cane and his left leg, the glary foot rising behind him, his left hand reaching down. His head turned toward the doorway as Pete, with both hands, slashed down a glinting club. She killed the sound, shut her eyes, rolled away swiveling.

  Sat holding her fist, biting her thumb knuckle.

  He had killed the others too, he must have; had been afraid that Sheer, who made connections . . . would make connections.

  She opened her eyes to the blue-white brightness of the left-hand monitors. Chris and Sally, Pam, Jay, Lauren. A man she hadn’t seen before on Dr. Palme’s couch.

  She drew a breath.

  Looked over at 2. He was leaning over Sheer’s head and shoulders, astride his back as he lay sprawled on the floor. A halo shone in flashes around Sheer’s head—a metal-foil pan beneath it.

  He was drowning him. . . .

  She rolled, reached, stopped the tape, sprang the VCR’s opening.

  Took the cassette out and put it down by its case.

  Looked at the half dozen other cassettes on the console.

  The blue digits said 2:06. Plenty of time to look at some of N3 and B; he’d barely have gotten to wherever he was going on Fifty-seventh Street.

  But no, he might come back early and surprise her in the act, as in too many Gothics and thrillers—his appointment cut short for some reason, another part of the infrastructure crumbled. Let the police look at N3 and B later; now was the time to get out, taking the tapes with her, out of there and out of the building. Leaving an ordinary everyday note so he wouldn’t panic and run, or do something worse.

  He was mad. Had to be. A sociopath despite his charm, his humor, the love he’d given her—and he did love her, she was sure of that. The killings must have all sprung from the need to keep the cameras secret. Protecting his six-million-dollar toy—his baby—that she had been so quick to share.

  She bowed her head, rubbing it.

  Sat up, combed her hair back with both hands, drew a breath.

  Looked at the cassettes.

  Rolling to the right, she bumped his chair away; opened a bottom drawer, gathered slipcased cassettes, seven, from the rows inside.

  She exchanged the cassettes in the two sets of cases, trying to think about what to put in the note and where the police station was, not about his arrest and the media onslaught that would follow, the headlines, the microphones, the public exposure. She double-checked the labels on the K and K2 cassettes; those weren’t going to the police, those she would hide upstairs and break open later and destroy. She took the pen, marked their new cases.

  She brought the stack of wrong-cassettes-in-right-cases through the foyer and into the back room; through the cl
osets, into his bedroom.

  Crouching, she stocked the shallow gray drawer the way she had found it, the N’s and B on the bottom, the K’s and R above—alongside the maroon leather box, the envelopes, the sheaves of one-hundred-and five-hundred-dollar bills.

  She peeked into the box—gold coins, mounted sets. She closed it, pushed the drawer into its recess. Replaced the baseboard, slid it down tight to the floor.

  She stood and opened the door, swung it to the wall, wondering how much his money, his never-mentioned money, had softened her judgment, blinded her to things she might otherwise have picked up on.

  She backed through the closets, drawing closed the accordion doors to the bedroom, swinging closed the plywood door, drawing closed the accordion doors in the back room.

  She went through the foyer into the living room, to the console. Stacked up the right-cassettes-in-wrong-cases. Drew the clipboard to her, turned back the top yellow sheet, took the pen. Stood leaning over the console, frowning at the pad. A meeting, suddenly called, at which her presence was urgently required? Fishy . . .

  She looked up, squinted for something better—at him in the number-two elevator in his coat and striped muffler, a woman with him. She stared. Put it on 2; it stayed blank, she found the switch.

  He stood in the elevator, looking pained, rubbing behind his neck, the overcoat open. The Stangersons’ maid moved forward, ready to step off. On ten.

  She dropped the pen, opened the bottom drawer on the right, grabbed the stacked cassettes and put them down in with the others. Closed the drawer, fixed the chairs, the clipboard, put Dr. Palme on 1, switched the sound on, made for the foyer; turned back, leaned, slapped shut the VCR and turned it off, hurried to the foyer; opened the door as he came out of the elevator. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He winced at her, rubbing behind his neck. “My cab was in an accident,” he said, his voice shaky.

  “Oh Lord,” she said. “Are you all right?” Stepped forward.

  “I don’t know.” He moved to her as the elevator door slid closed. “I think so. I got thrown around and I was seeing double for a while but it’s clearing up now.” He blinked a few times.

  “Did you hurt your neck?” she asked.

  “Yeah, a little,” he said.

  She turned him around. He pulled the muffler off as she patted at the back of his neck.