Finn dropped her bag on the narrow bed, went back to the door and made sure it was firmly locked. Then she went into the bathroom, ignored the toilet and splashed her face with lukewarm water from the taps. She looked at herself briefly in the cracked and chipped mirror on the front of the medicine chest then looked away again.
Her boyfriend’s getting his throat slit and then her being chased halfway down the city in the middle of the night didn’t do much for her appearance. Tense and exhausted didn’t begin to describe it. She could probably pack a lunch in the bags under her eyes and imitate a raccoon while she was doing it. She used her sleeve to dry off her face rather than one of the gray Coolidge towels on the plastic bar beside the sink. Finn went back into the bedroom, flicked off all forty watts of the overhead light and lay down on the old iron bed. Light from a neon sign washed in the window, which was partially open with a screen insert in the bottom. “Oh Mama” next door had changed to “Oh God,” but at least Finn had to give him credit for stamina. Outside and over her head, trucks rumbled over the old steel bridge and cars made smaller, insectlike sounds as their wheels spun over the grated surface of the road. “Oh God” changed to “I’m gonna let it go!” And then he did, in a series of incoherent grunts and squeals, and finally he was silent. She fluffed up the tiny pillow behind her head and looked at her watch. It was three o’clock in the morning.
According to her mother, anthropology and archaeology were guesswork and personal interpretation backed up by a smidgen of logic to make it look more scientific. She tried to apply the same system to her present situation. At first there didn’t seem to be any connection between Peter’s and Crawley’s murders, but the disappearance of the doodles beside the phone and being followed by Raptor Head had changed that. Following her meant that he’d been watching the apartment, waiting for her. He probably had been willing to wait for the entire night. Following her in the morning would have been easier with all the traffic, and there was a good chance he wouldn’t have been detected. The real question was why he was following her at all. The only connection she could see was the Michelangelo drawing: someone was so hell-bent on covering up the fact that it existed they were willing to kill-and more than once-to see that the secret was kept.
Finn frowned and yawned. That sort of made sense, but the logic didn’t really hold up. Why come after her once she’d talked to the cop? And anyway, all Crawley had to do was hide or even destroy the drawing and the secret would have been safe, because the computer and all the material about the drawing’s provenance said it was by Santiago Urbino, a sixteenth-century secondrater. The only proof one way or the other lay in the digital chip in her camera. She stared into the gloom at her pack nestled at the end of the bed. Could that be it? Did Raptor Head or whomever he worked for know about the shots she’d taken? It was impossible; the file room at the gallery had been empty when she’d photographed the drawing and she hadn’t told anyone what she’d done, not even Peter. Finn yawned again. She had one last card to play, but that would have to wait for tomorrow. Next door she heard the sound of laughter and the sound of bedsprings creaking as one of the couple got up. She grimaced. At least someone had enjoyed their evening.
12
Finn knew she must have fallen asleep because she was suddenly awake. The sounds outside had faded to an occasional truck muttering its way across the bridge over her head. Thankfully her sleep had been deep and dreamless. She glanced at her watch, simultaneously aware that she’d slept in her clothes. She looked at the dial of the Timex and it took a little while for it to sink in. It was six in the morning and there was light coming in through the grimy window. “Oh Mama, oh God, I’m going to let it go” was quiet in the next room.
So what had woken her up? She stiffened on the bed, all her nerves jangling at full alert as she concentrated. Squeaks and creaks normal for an old building, rumbling echoes from the bridge, a distant siren and a scratching sound. Mice, or worse, in the walls? Rats? She’d heard of New York rats, even seen a few. Great big filthy things with yellow teeth sometimes so long they’d pierced their own lower lip. It was the stuff of bad horror movies at the drive-in.
No. Not a Hollywood rat. She let her eyes go wide and stared at a point in the air halfway between the bed and the ceiling, the same kind of thing she did in a life drawing class, concentrating on nothing, waiting for the sound to come again. And it did. Not scratching, but an insistent rubbing sound, metal on wood. She sat up quietly and looked at the door. There it was-a square tongue of metal moving slowly up and down the crack of the door, looking for the hasp of the lock. A steel ruler. Somebody was trying to get in and she doubted that it was Eugene. Raptor Head? More likely. She swung her legs off the bed and reached out, grabbing her pack. Here was one of those situations you never see in movies: the woman is about to get raped or murdered by the guy with jackknives for fingers coming through the door and she has to pee so bad she knows she’ll wet her pants in another second.
“Shit,” she whispered. She cleared her throat loudly and then thumped her feet on the floor. The scratching stopped, the gleaming end of the ruler frozen. On tiptoes she slipped into the bathroom and pulled down her jeans and panties. Without letting her bum anywhere near the toilet seat she squatted over the bowl, peed and wiped faster than she’d ever done in her life.
She turned and flushed, pulling up her panties and jeans, watching the condom and the cigarette butt swirl desultorily away along with the two cockroaches who seemed to have moved into the toilet and formed a suicide pact while she was sleeping. She buttoned up her jeans, slipped out of the bathroom and grabbed her pack. Finn stared at the door. The straightedge was still there, not moving. She leaned over the bed and pressed down, making the bedsprings squeak, then heaved a dramatic sigh as though she were settling herself for sleep again. She moved over to the window and waited, her eyes on the door.
A full minute passed and then the sawing motion of the ruler began again. Pushing the pack up onto one shoulder Finn quietly pulled up on the window. She was surprised when it slid easily. She grabbed at the screen insert, easing it to the floor. With the window wide open she stuck her head out to see if there was any way to escape; if not, she’d have to stand by the door and belt the guy with her pack when he finally slipped the lock.
Outside the window there was a fire escape landing and another section of stairs that led to the roof. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. She threw one leg through the opening, ducked her head and stepped out onto the fire escape. It seemed to shiver as she put her weight on it-she could actually see the rusty bolts pulling away from the brick wall. She began to climb as quietly as she could.
There was a curved handle at the top. She grabbed it and pulled herself up and onto the roof. She’d been expecting some kind of doorway leading down to a stairway, but there was nothing-just a rippling, wobbly-looking expanse of tarred roof with puddles here and there.
There were half a dozen toilet standpipes and a curved vent stack, but that was it. She’d gone from the room below into the frying pan up here. There was no fire; things couldn’t get any worse. Then they did. She clearly heard a loud clang as somebody stepped out onto the fire escape. It had to be Raptor Head. Finn figured she had about thirty seconds before he’d be joining her on the roof.
To the left, glittering in the early morning sun she could see the windows of the curving Confucius Tower. To the right was the dirty streak of the East River and the mosaic of rooftops between the river and the Coolidge. She could scream for help, it wasn’t likely to get her any. She was on her own.