The Shadow of Your Smile

  37

  Shaken, and with blood dripping from her badly scraped hand and leg, Monica nevertheless refused the suggestion of several bystanders to call an ambulance. The bus driver who thought he had run her over was trembling so badly that for twenty minutes he was unable to continue his route.

  A police car summoned by a frantic 911 call from a woman who also thought Monica had gone under the wheels of the bus arrived on the scene, which now became the center of attention at Union Square.

  “I can’t really say how it happened,” Monica heard herself saying. “I absolutely wasn’t trying to cross the street, because the light was turning red. I guess the person behind me was rushing and I was in his way.”

  “It wasn’t an accident. A man pushed you deliberately,” an elderly woman at the front of the crowd insisted, her voice rising above the comments of the other spectators.

  Startled, Monica turned to look at her. “Oh, that’s impossible,” she protested.

  “I know what I’m talking about!” Her head wrapped in a scarf, her coat collar up, her face half covered with round-framed glasses, her lips a tight line, the witness tapped the police officer on his sleeve. “He pushed her,” she insisted. “I was standing right behind him. He elbowed me to one side, then his arms went back and he gave her a shove that sent her flying.”

  “What did he look like?” the cop asked quickly.

  “A big guy. Not fat, but big. He had on a jacket with a hood, and the hood was up. He was wearing dark glasses. Who needs dark glasses when it’s dark out? I could tell he wasn’t a kid. Past forty anyhow, I’d say. And he was wearing thick gloves. Do you see anyone else around here wearing gloves? And did he do what the rest of us did when we thought this poor girl might be dead? Did he holler or scream or try to help? No. He turned and shoved his way out of the crowd and took off.”

  The policeman looked at Monica. “Do you feel as if you might have been pushed?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do, but it couldn’t have been deliberate.”

  “We don’t know that,” the policeman said, soberly. “There are mentally ill people who shove people in front of trains or buses. You may have just come in contact with one of them.”

  “Then I guess I’m very lucky to be here.” I want to get home, Monica thought. But it was another fifteen minutes, after telling the cop she was a doctor and could take care of her scrapes, then giving her name, address, and phone number for the police records, before she was able to get into a waiting cab and escape. Her crushed shoulder bag beside her, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  In an instant, she was reliving the sharp pain in her arm and leg as she slammed onto the pavement, then the acrid smell of the bus as it bore down on her. She tried to calm herself but the cabdriver had seen the commotion and wanted to talk. Trying to keep from trembling, she answered in monosyllables to his sympathetic diatribe that there ought to be a way to make sure crazies took their meds regularly and didn’t end up going off half-cocked and hurting innocent people.

  It was when she was finally in her apartment, with the door closed and locked, that the full impact of having come so close to death hit her. Maybe I should have gone to the hospital, she thought. I don’t have a single thing in the medicine chest to calm me down. It was then, with the blood now crusted on her hand and leg, that she realized she had forgotten that Ryan Jenner was coming for the Michael O’Keefe file.

  I have his home phone, she thought. He gave it to me the other night. I’ll call and apologize. Will I tell him what happened? Yes, I will. If he offers to come over I’ll take him up on it. I could use some company.

  I could use Ryan’s company, she told herself.

  Okay, admit it, she thought.

  You’re attracted to him, big-time.

  His apartment and cell phone numbers were now in the small address book she always carried in her shoulder bag. Wincing at the sight of her crushed compact and sunglasses, she fumbled for the book. Still sitting at the table with her coat not yet off, she dialed Jenner’s apartment number, the first one she had listed. But when a woman answered and said that Ryan was changing his clothes, Monica left the message that she would send the file to him in the morning.

  She had just replaced the receiver when the phone rang. It was Scott Alterman. “Monica, I was listening to the radio and heard that you were almost run over by a bus, that someone pushed you?” She was surprised that reporters had released her name, and wondered how many friends and colleagues had also heard the report.

  Scott’s voice was shocked and concerned, and Monica found it comforting. It brought back the memory of how kind Scott had been to her father when he was in the nursing home, and that he had been the one to phone her with the news that her father had passed away.

  “I just can’t believe that it’s true,” she said, her voice tremulous. “I mean that I was pushed, that it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Monica, you sound pretty shaken up. Are you alone now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I could be there in ten minutes. Will you let me come?”

  Suddenly feeling her throat tighten and tears welling in her eyes, Monica said, “That would be nice. I could really use some company right now.”

  38

  Everything had been going so well. Sammy Barber had collected the money from Dougie-the-Dope Langdon, driven to the storage building in Long Island City, and stashed all those beautiful hundred-dollar bills in his safe in the space he rented there. Then, feeling on top of the world, at five thirty he had called Monica Farrell’s office, giving his name as Dr. Curtain in honor of a guy who had been his jail cell mate while he was awaiting trial. The secretary had told him that Dr. Farrell had canceled all her appointments because of an emergency at the hospital.

  He had the money. He was set for life. He was feeling good about life, in fact. Sammy was convinced that it was his lucky day and he wanted to get the job done. That was why he had rushed over to the hospital and found a parking spot across from the main entrance, the one the doctor had used the couple of times he’d tracked her before. He had changed his mind and decided he would try to push her in front of a bus.

  He waited for about an hour and a half until he spotted Farrell coming down the steps. There were two cabs passing, but she ignored them and turned right toward Fourteenth Street.

  Ten to one she’s gonna walk back to her office, Sammy thought as he reached on the passenger seat for his gloves and dark glasses. He slipped them on, got out of the car, and began to follow her from a distance of about a quarter of a block. She wasn’t walking fast, at least not as fast as she had last week when he had trailed her. There were a lot of people on the street tonight, and that was good, too.

  At Union Square he saw his chance. The light was turning red but people were still scurrying across the street trying to beat the oncoming traffic. A bus was charging across Fourteenth Street heading for the bus stop. Farrell was at the edge of the curb.

  In an instant Sammy was behind her and, with the bus only a few feet away, gave her a shove then watched in disbelief as she somehow managed to roll out from under the tires as, brakes screeching, the bus skidded in a useless attempt to stop. He knew the old lady standing next to him had seen him push Farrell and, trying not to panic, Sammy ducked his head as he hurried past her and headed downtown.

  At the end of three blocks, he turned right and took off his gloves and dark glasses and pushed back the hood of his sweat jacket. Trying to look casual, he walked at a normal pace back toward his car. But when he got to where he could see it, he stared unbelieving at the sight of it, wheels clamped, being hoisted onto a police department carrier.

  The meter. In his rush to follow Monica Farrell, he had forgotten to feed the meter. His impulse was to go and argue with the driver of the tow truck, but instead he forced himself to turn away and start walking home. I know they bring the cars to some dump near the West Side Highway, he thought, trying to stay focused. If that old lady talks to the c
ops about Farrell being pushed and describes me, I can’t show up in these clothes to claim the car . . .

  He felt his forehead breaking into a sweat. If the old lady did talk to the cops and they took her seriously they might figure that someone was staking out the doctor, then follow up on my car being towed across the street from the hospital. Then if they look me up, they’ll find out that I’ve got a record. They might want to know what I was doing parked at the hospital and where I was when the meter ran out right around the time the doctor was pushed . . .

  Stay calm. Stay calm. Sammy walked downtown to his Lower East Side apartment, and changed into a shirt, tie, sports jacket, slacks, and polished shoes. From his prepaid cell phone he called information and, after being savagely irritated by the computer voice droning, “I’ll pass you on to an operator,” obtained the number he needed.

  A bored voice told him to be sure to have his license, insurance card, and registration and to bring cash in order to claim his automobile. Sammy gave his license number. “Is it there yet?”

  “Yeah. It just came in.”

  After twenty frustrating minutes in a cab crawling along the narrow streets of downtown Manhattan to West Thirty-eighth Street, Sammy was presenting his license to the clerk at the pound. “The insurance and registration are in the glove compartment,” he said, trying to sound friendly. “I was visiting a friend in the hospital and forgot about the meter.”

  Should he have said that? Was the clerk looking at him as if he knew he was lying? Sammy was pretty sure the young cop was giving him a steely-eyed once-over. But maybe I’m just nervous, he thought, trying to comfort himself as he walked to his car to get the insurance card and registration. Finally he completed the paperwork, paid the fine, and was able to go.

  He had driven barely a block before his cell phone rang. It was Doug Langdon. “Well, you botched that one,” Langdon said, his voice trembling with fury. “The whole city knows that an attractive young doctor was pushed in front of a bus and nearly lost her life. The description of you is pretty accurate, too. A bulky middle-aged guy in a dark sweat jacket. Did you give her your business card as well, by any chance?”

  For some reason the panic in Langdon’s voice forced Sammy to calm himself down. He didn’t want Langdon to go off the deep end. “How many bulky middle-aged men are walking the streets of Manhattan in a dark sweat jacket?” he demanded, “I’ll tell you right now what the cops will think. If they do believe that old crow, they’ll think it’s one of those guys who didn’t take his medicine. How many of them go loopy and push people off the train tracks? So quit worrying. Your doctor used up her one good-luck charm tonight. The next one is mine.”

  39

  Barry Tucker left his partner, Dennis Flynn, in Renée Carter’s apartment to wait for a police technician to padlock the door. “That lady sure was careless with her jewelry,” Flynn observed. “There’s a lot of stuff that looks valuable scattered around in that tray on her dresser, and more in boxes in her closet.”

  “You keep looking for anything that indicates next of kin,” Tucker told him. “And make a list of all the people you find in her daily appointment book. Then start with the men and check their addresses in the Manhattan phone book. See if one of them lives around here. I’m heading for that bar where Carter was supposed to meet the guy who may be the baby’s father.”

  As he spoke he took a picture of Renée from its frame. “With any luck we may solve this one pretty fast.”

  “You always hope that,” Flynn observed dryly.

  “Dennis, this one has a kid involved, who’s going to end up in a foster home if we can’t find a relative willing to take her,” Barry Tucker reminded him.

  “After what we heard from the babysitter, my guess is that the kid will be better off in a foster home than she was with the mother,” Flynn said quietly.

  That remark stayed in Barry Tucker’s mind as he drove across town to the restaurant near Gracie Mansion where Renée Carter had been dropped off to meet the mystery man. He tried to imagine either one of his children alone in a hospital, with no relative or close friend to care for them. Not in a million years, he thought. If anything happened to Trish and me, both grandmothers, to say nothing of all three of Trish’s sisters, would be fighting for custody of the kids.

  The restaurant turned out to be an English-style pub. The bar was directly inside the entrance, and Barry could see that the dining room beyond it held no more than a dozen tables. A neighborhood kind of place, he thought. I bet they get a lot of repeat customers. Let’s hope Carter was one of them. From what he could see, all the tables seemed to be taken, and most of the stools at the bar were occupied.

  He walked to the end of the bar, waited until the bartender came to take his order, then slid his gold badge and a picture of Renée across the counter.

  “Do you recognize this lady?” he asked.

  The bartender’s eyes widened. “Yes, sure I do. That’s Renée Carter.”

  “When was the last time she was here?”

  “Night before last, Tuesday, around ten thirty, give or take ten minutes.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “She came in alone, but some guy was waiting for her. He pulled out a stool for her to sit here at the bar, but she said they should get a table.”

  “What was her attitude toward the man she met?”

  “Snippy.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “No. I don’t think he’s ever been here before.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Late forties, early fifties. Dark hair. Really good-looking guy, and his clothes didn’t come off a pipe rack, I can tell you that.”

  “What was his attitude toward Renée Carter?”

  “Not happy. I could tell he was nervous. He polished off two scotches before she even got here.”

  “So then they went to a table?”

  “Yeah. Most of the tables were empty by then. We close the kitchen at ten. While they were still standing at the bar, he ordered two scotches and said something to her like, ‘I assume you still have a taste for single malt?’ ”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said something like, ‘I can’t afford single malt scotch anymore, but it’s clear you can.’ I mean, it sounded stupid coming from someone who was all dolled up like Renée Carter was.”

  “All right. So they went to the table. How long did they stay there?”

  “Not long enough to finish their drinks. I mean, I kept my eye on them, because by then it was slow and I had nothing better to do. I saw him hand her the big shopping bag he’d been carrying—you know, one of those gift bags. She grabbed it from him, got up so fast she almost knocked over the chair, and hightailed it out of here with an expression on her face that would have stopped an eight-day clock. He threw fifty bucks on the table and rushed out behind her.”

  “Would you recognize that man if you saw him again?”

  “Oh, sure. I never forget a face. Detective, did something happen to Renée?”

  “Yes. She was the victim of a homicide after she left this restaurant. She never got home that night.”

  The bartender’s face blanched. “Oh, God, that’s a shame. Did she get mugged?”

  “We don’t know. How often did Renée Carter come here?”

  “Maybe once or twice a month. Mainly for a nightcap, and she was never alone. Always with a guy.”

  “Do you know the names of any of the men she was with?”

  “Sure, some of them anyhow. I’ll make a list.”

  The bartender reached for a pad and picked up a pen. “Let’s see,” he murmured to himself. “There’s Les . . .” Aware that other people at the bar were looking at him, he clamped his lips firmly shut, then straightened up and hurried down the length of the bar to where a man was sitting alone sipping a beer.

  Sensing the bartender might have remembered something about Renée Carter, Barry Tucker followed him down past the row of barstools. He got th
ere in time to hear him say, “Rudy, you were here Tuesday night and you noticed Renée Carter leaving in a hurry. I just remembered, you said something about being surprised that the guy with her had the price of a drink. Do you know his name?”

  Rudy, a florid-cheeked man, began to laugh. “Sure I do. Peter Gannon. He’s the guy they call ‘the loser-producer.’ You must have read about him. He’s laid more eggs on Broadway than Perdue has chickens.”

  40

  On Friday morning Monica awoke at quarter of six and for long minutes lay in bed, quietly searching out the aching parts of her body. Her left arm and leg were badly scraped. Besides that the impact of the fall had made her lower back feel bruised and sore. She promised herself that for the next week or so she would take the time each morning to soak in the Jacuzzi instead of taking a quick shower.

  That decided, she turned her attention to the events of the previous evening. After Scott Alterman had called, realizing that some of her friends might have heard the same broadcast, the first thing she did was to change the message on her telephone. “Hi, this is Monica. I know you may have heard the report about my accident. I’m really fine, but am going to take it easy, so I won’t be returning messages this evening. But thanks anyway for calling.”

  Then she had turned off the ringer of the phone. Feeling relieved at having thought to avoid the concerned calls she knew she would be receiving, she had gone into the bathroom. There she had stripped off her damaged clothes, sponged the dried blood from her arm and leg, coated the injured areas with an antibiotic salve, and still shivering from the aftermath of her nearly fatal encounter, changed into pajamas and a woolly robe.