Seven Minutes to Noon

finally said. “It’s showtime.”
    Mike smiled and almost pulled a voice, a lady’s voice Alice guessed by the hitch in his expression the moment Giometti called them all ladies. Who would it be, she wondered? He did a fierce Julia Child and Katharine Hepburn. Alice herself began to smile in anticipation of a little levity. But as quickly as Mike’s humor rose, it now fell, and instead of speaking he seemed to deflate against the back of his chair. Alice squeezed his hand.
    “Get out of here, Paul,” Frannie said.
    Giometti left the room and Dana shut the door behind him.
    Alice took off her dress and stood there, exposed, as Frannie placed the transmitter box between her breasts and Dana taped the wires securely against her skin. The little black button would be hidden just beneath the neckline. When she was all rigged up, Frannie stood a few paces away and in a casual voice — as if in normalconversation, or shopping for dinner at the local butcher’s — said, “Testing, testing, Mary had a little lamb.” She circled Alice, reciting nursery rhymes. The same rhymes Alice lulled her children with at bedtime or to pass long hours in the car. Here, the poetry lost its innocence, like a bouquet of lollipops held by a lurking, parkside stranger. The candies and the words, stripped of their promise to anoint the sweetest of dreams, became beacons of every mother’s worst fears.
    Giometti knocked three times on the door. “All set,” he called in.
    Apparently, he had been testing the remote end of the device, heard the nursery rhymes, and now they were ready. Ready. Alice would never be ready for this but she would do it anyway.
    Dana opened the door. Giometti was standing on the other side, hands jammed in his pockets. He glanced at Alice, issuing a smile that abruptly turned him handsome through the mask of pocked, toughened skin. His tiny gesture was the warmest he had offered her yet and it fortified her immensely. If cool Giometti was on board, then the plan was right. Maybe her errand would somehow advance the search for Ivy and slow the danger to herself and her babies. Maybe, in the end, no one else would come to harm.
    Frannie assessed Alice, who took a deep breath, feeling the wires cinch her skin.
    “Ready?” Frannie asked.
    “Ready.”

Chapter 30
    Alice moved along Court Street’s concrete sidewalk feeling like she was in another body, another life. Dana was with Frannie, Giometti and a technician in a white Van Brunt Bakery van that had parked at a meter across the street from Cattaneo’s. Alice sharply missed Mike, who was back at the precinct, reading wanted posters or staring into the fish tank or just sitting there, waiting.
    Humidity cloyed at her skin and she could feel sweat dripping down the wires taped under her dress. She wanted to puff out the fabric around her sore, swelling breasts, to create a little breeze, but was afraid she would disturb the transmitter. So she did nothing, simply willed herself to walk forward along this familiar yet suddenly foreign street. Nothing looked real; it was like a movie set with flat fronts whose simple signs and offerings misrepresented the true stories behind them. Not even the people seemed the same. As she walked, she waved to old Mrs. Foglia across the street, plodding along with her shopping bags. Alice said hi in passing to an acquaintance from the park, as she would on any day, trolling Court Street, running errands. Going to the butcher shop to find out if her landlord’s secret partner wanted her babies or her blood.
    Alice kept walking.
    She was a survivor. She had survived abandonment by her father, she had survived the film industry and she was surviving motherhood. She had cleared every hurdleso far, despite obstacles, and she had to continue. Put aside her fear.
    Nothing could happen to her; she was protected.
    The wires clung to her damp skin.
    She kept walking.
    Two small boys she recognized from the playground zoomed toward her on their bicycles. Their babysitters, jogging to catch up, smiled at Alice as they passed.
    She crossed Warren Street, past the locksmith, an antique store, and the old vegetable place. The front door to Cattaneo’s was closed to seal in the air-conditioning. She pulled it open, feeling suddenly faint. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside and let the heavy door fall shut behind her.
    The rotund young man behind the counter smiled. “How can I help you?”
    “Is Sal around?”
    “In the