“Hey, beautiful,” Miranda said. “It was really good seeing you again. I know it was strange for you. For me, too. But I’d like to do it again, okay? Maybe we could watch the fireworks tomorrow. We should be able to see them from where I’m working. Maybe we can get some dinner first, before I have to go on. Give me a call, okay? Or I’ll call you, if you don’t.” Pause. “I love you, you know.” The machine clicked. A mechanical voice said, “Received Friday, December 30, at seven thirty-four p.m.”
She sounded so eager, so happy. Why? Why had Miranda been so trusting, so willing to take Jocelyn’s overtures at face value, so quick to forgive? I pictured Jocelyn getting this message and laughing, unable to believe her good luck. We should be able to see them from where I’m working. She hadn’t even had to come up with some excuse to lure Miranda to a secluded spot. New Year’s Eve meant fireworks on the Hudson, and sure, maybe you could see them from the roof at the Sin Factory – it was a short building, but it was far enough west that at least you’d see some of the show over the tops of other buildings. And how hard would it have been for Jocelyn to get behind Miranda while they were both watching the show, press the gun to the back of her head, and pull the trigger? For God’s sake, the fireworks would even have masked the sound of the shots. Jocelyn couldn’t have set it up better herself.
And where was she now? Collecting the money from wherever she’d hidden it, in preparation for leaving town? Or was she finding some horrible new way to do damage? The note she’d left at my mother’s building frightened me – who knew what she might do to carry out that threat?
With that in mind, I dialed Susan’s number on my cell phone. When she didn’t answer after four rings, I called my mother’s number.
“Hello? Who is this?” It wasn’t Susan’s voice, it was my mother’s, and she sounded unsteady, frightened.
I spoke as quietly as I could and kept an eye on the front door. “Mom, could you put Rachel on?”
“John! My God, are you okay? Are you safe?”
“Yes, I’m fine – what’s wrong?”
“Oh, my God, I was so worried about you, when Rachel said that woman was threatening to kill you-”
“She’s threatening all of us,” I said. “We all have to be careful. That’s why I asked Rachel to stay with you.”
“But she called!”
“Who called? What are you talking about?”
“She called,” my mother said again. “Just a little while ago. She told Rachel she was going to kill you-”
“Jocelyn called?”
“I didn’t talk to her, Rachel did. She said it was the same woman who left the note. John, she told Rachel she had a knife to your throat and was going to kill you.”
“Well, it wasn’t true. I’m fine. Can you just put Rachel on the phone, please?”
“She’s not here,” my mother said. “She went to find you. She tried to call you first, but there was no answer.”
My blood went cold. The call that had come in while I was being mugged. That had been Susan. And when I hadn’t answered “Mom, please think carefully, did Rachel say where she was going?”
“Yes, yes, I have it here. Hold on.” I heard papers rustling. I wanted to scream. “She wrote it down. She said she was going to Corlears Hook Park, to the bandstand. She said I should call the police if I didn’t hear from her in an hour. It hasn’t been an hour yet. Should I call them?”
“Yes,” I said.
Chapter 26
The bandstand at Corlears Hook Park was built in the Depression and abandoned some time in the seventies. God only knows why it’s still standing. Before Stonewall, before AIDS, and before AOL chatrooms, it used to be a popular cruising spot for East Village men looking to hook up. Now it was nothing, a decrepit pile behind a chain link fence that offered some crude shelter to the homeless during a rainstorm and convenient shadows for drug dealers to hide in at noon. But the truth was you didn’t even see that many homeless or drug dealers any more – even they didn’t feel safe there.
I climbed down the fire escape as quickly as I could without breaking my neck, then ran all out down to Houston Street. I dropped the knife in the first garbage can I passed. I couldn’t afford to have the police find it on me when they arrived. I cut across Delancey, under the Williamsburg bridge, and over to Grand Street. These were long blocks, and I was badly out of breath by the time I rounded Cherry, but I kept going. My heart wasn’t beating any more, it was exploding, twice per second, against the inside of my ribs. My throat was raw from the freezing air I was taking in and my legs were burning like I’d just climbed ten flights of stairs. But I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t slow down. I hadn’t asked my mother how long ago Susan had left – all I knew was that it hadn’t been an hour yet. But a lot can go wrong in less than an hour. I pictured Jocelyn standing behind Miranda, aiming a gun at the back of her head, pulling back gently on the trigger. A lot can go wrong in less than a second.
The park was empty. Wire fences surrounded a pair of dirt baseball diamonds. Basketball hoops with no nets stood on either end of a concrete square. In the distance, the bandstand rose behind a screen of trees, their dead branches obscuring whatever might have been going on there. But when I passed them, there was nothing to see. The bandstand was as empty as the rest of the park. I found a hole in the fence that was supposed to block access to it, and raced up to the structure. There was a pair of bathrooms on one side, but they’d been locked tight for years. I went around to the back, where a few metal doors led to storage closets or God knows what, but they were locked, too, or anyway wedged shut. The whole thing was covered with ancient graffiti and surrounded by broken bottle glass, crushed beer cans, and the droppings of the countless birds and rats that found shelter there. There was nothing else – no sign of Susan, none of Jocelyn, nothing.
I took out my cell phone again. It was futile, but I speed-dialed Susan’s number. Maybe she’d answer, maybe she was safe after all, maybe Jocelyn hadn’t found her yet or Susan had managed to elude her. The phone started to ring.
And offset by a half second or so, I heard the sound of Ravel’s Bolero beeping faintly, not in my ear, but from the back of the bandstand.
I followed the sound to one of the doors in the rear, a rusted metal door with no knob even, just a round hole where you’d expect the doorknob to be. From behind it, muffled but distinct, came the sound of Susan’s cell phone. Then the beeping stopped, and in my ear I heard Susan’s voice as her voicemail picked up: “Hi, I’m not available right now-”
I slammed the phone shut, stuck two fingers through the hole in the door, and pulled as hard as I could. It didn’t budge. “Susan,” I shouted. There was no response. “Help me get this open. Come on!” She had to be in there. Unless it was just her phone, thrown there by Jocelyn so Susan couldn’t use it, but that didn’t make any sense – why would she go to the trouble of opening one of these old doors just to get rid of a phone? I yanked harder. I planted my foot against the wall for leverage and pulled till it felt like my arms were tearing apart at the joints. The door started moving, slowly, a millimeter at a time. I pulled again, and again, and the metal groaned as the door scraped open an inch. I couldn’t see inside. But now I had leverage. I wrapped my hands around the edge of the door and dragged it open. Half a foot. A foot. Two feet.
It was a narrow utility closet with a stripped circuit breaker box on the back wall. Susan was huddled on the ground in a heap. She wasn’t moving. I touched the side of her face. It was cold.
I gently pulled her out of the closet and laid her on the ground. She was wearing the same sweater she’d had on the first night we’d talked at Keegan’s, only it wasn’t the color of ginger ale any more. The front was soaked through with blood.
In the distance, I heard sirens approaching, but that wasn’t good enough. I thumbed 911 into my phone. “Send an ambulance to Corlears Hook Park,” I said when the operator answered, “and hurry. A woman’s been hurt, badly.”