Tripwire

wife’s cooking had brought his weight down in a hurry. The pants were a little wide by East Village standards, but that was OK because he planned on wearing two ankle holsters. William Curry was a guy who believed in being prepared. David Forster had said probably won’t be anything involved at all, and if it worked out that way he would be happy enough, but a twenty-year man from the NYPD’s worst years tends to get cautious when he hears a promise like that. So he planned on using both ankle holsters and putting his big .357 in the small of his back.
    He put the suit in a plastic cover he had picked up somewhere and added a white shirt and his quietest tie. He threaded the .357 holster onto a black leather belt and put it in a bag with the two ankle holsters. He put three handguns in his briefcase, the .357 long-barreled Magnum and two .38 snub-nosed Smith and Wessons for the ankles. He sorted twelve rounds for each gun into a box and packed it beside the guns. He stuffed a black sock into each of his black shoes and stowed them with the holsters. He figured he would get changed after an early lunch. No point in wearing the stuff all morning and showing up looking like a limp rag.
    He locked up the apartment and walked south to his office on Fletcher, carrying his luggage, stopping only to get a muffin, banana and walnut, reduced fat.
    MARILYN STONE WOKE up at seven o’clock. She was bleary-eyed and tired. They had been kept out of the bathroom until well after midnight. It had to be cleaned. The thickset guy in the dark suit did it. He came out in a bad temper and made them wait until the floor dried. They sat in the dark and the silence, numb and cold and hungry, too sickened to think about asking for something to eat. Tony made Marilyn plump up the sofa pillows. She guessed he planned to sleep there. Bending over in her short dress and preparing his bed was a humiliation. She patted the pillows into place while he smiled at her.
    The bathroom was cold. It was damp everywhere and smelled of disinfectant. The towels had been folded and stacked next to the sink. She put them in two piles on the floor and she and Chester curled up on them without a word. Beyond the door, the office was silent. She didn’t expect to sleep. But she must have, because she awoke with a clear sense of a new day beginning.
    There were sounds in the office. She had rinsed her face and was standing upright when the thickset guy brought coffee. She took her mug without a word and he left Chester’s on the ledge under the mirror. Chester was still on the floor, not asleep, just lying there inert. The guy stepped right over him on his way out.
    “Nearly over,” she said.
    “Just starting, you mean,” Chester said back. “Where do we go next? Where do we go tonight?”
    She was going to say home, thank God, but then she remembered he’d already realized that after about two-thirty they would have no home.
    “A hotel, I guess,” she said.
    “They took my credit cards.”
    Then he went quiet. She looked at him. “What?”
    “It’s never going to be over,” he said. “Don’t you see that? We’re witnesses. To what they did to those cops. And Sheryl. How can they just let us walk away?”
    She nodded, a small, vague movement of her head, and looked down at him with disappointment. She was disappointed because he finally understood. Now he was going to be worried and frantic all day, and that would just make it harder.
    IT TOOK FIVE minutes to get the knot in the necktie neat, and then he slipped his jacket on. Dressing was the exact reverse of undressing, which meant the shoes came last. He could tie laces just about as fast as a two-handed person. The trick was to trap the loose end under the hook against the floor.
    Then he started in the bathroom. He rammed all the dirty laundry into a pillowcase and left it by the apartment door. He stripped the bed and balled the linen into another pillowcase. He put all the personal items he could find into a supermarket carrier. He emptied his closet into a garment bag. He propped the apartment door open and carried the pillowcases and the carrier to the refuse chute. Dropped them all down and clanged the slot closed after them. Dragged the garment bag out into the hallway and locked up the apartment and put the keys in an envelope from his pocket.
    He detoured to the concierge’s desk and left the envelope of keys for the real-estate guy. Used the stairway to the parking garage and