CHAPTER 13

Carolyn drove through the park at Eighty Sixth Street and headed uptown toward home.

Her anger had already begun to wane. She felt not the slightest twinge of regret for what she had done to Walter.

He had it coming to him, after all. After what he had been doing to her all these years, he deserved at least that much. It wasn't that she had been getting even. It wasn't like it was with Angie. She simply couldn't allow her life to be ruined again. And Walter would have done that, if she had let him. She was glad she had been able to make a clean break with him—instead of dragging it out as she had done with Angie. She knew she and Walter would never see each other again.

Still, she felt far from pleased with herself. Her experience with Walter had done more than open her eyes to his faults. It had forced her to recognize her own. She had always believed that people got out of life exactly what they bargained for. And if Walter and Angie were the best she could do, it was not her place to condemn them. She knew she had better get busy patching up the pieces of her life, make new friends, find a new love—before it was too late.

She locked the car and strolled casually along the street toward the house. Already the rosy highlights of another dawn reflected off the picture windows of top floor apartments. From a terrace drifted down the dying merriment of an all-night party. The boy from the apartment below hers was out walking his poodle.

It was like any other weekend morning. Yet for Carolyn this one felt different. For she was coming home to an empty apartment and for the first time, she felt glad instead of lonely.

In the elevator she kicked off her shoes and rubbed an exploring thumb over the blister forming on her right heel.

She wondered if there were any part of her that had not been battered during the past week. She sighed gratefully, believing that the ordeal with Angie was finally through. In stocking feet she crossed the hall and opened the door to her apartment.

She knew even before she switched on the light that something was wrong.

Her first thought was that the place had been ransacked. The chairs had been overturned, the couch pulled away from the wall. Practically everything she owned, all the junk that had been crammed into two valises, was strewn across the couch and floor. The valises, she suddenly realized, were gone.

She picked up a paisley scarf that was now in tatters and, holding it, sank down onto the couch. Lines of fatigue etched across her forehead and around her mouth. All the joy and sense of release she had felt fizzled out of her and she felt suddenly very old.

She could understand the missing suitcases. Angie would have taken them to pack her own things. But the disorder of the room, the torn scarf made no sense at all.

Angie wouldn't have bothered: her destruction was of a subtler kind. She liked to mete out punishments she felt suited the crime. And for what Carolyn had done to her, it would be a real dilly. Already she had made a halfhearted attempt at suicide. If she had sincerely wanted to get even, she would more likely have slashed her wrists and draped her lacerated (but carefully bandaged) body across the couch. It was not Angie's custom to be piddling about her dramatic effects.

For an instant she thought of Walter. There was something petty enough about torn lingerie to be his doing. God, how her attitude toward him had changed! Still, she knew it could not possibly have been he. He could not have gotten back to the apartment before her. Besides, he couldn't have gotten in. Angie was the only other person who had a key.

More curious now than annoyed, she got up and wandered into the bedroom. It too was dishevelled, but not as completely as the livingroom. Drawers hung open, the closet had been cleared out, the bureau stood bare. Even Angie's stack of beauty magazines had disappeared.

Yet the bed was still neatly made, with Angie's pink satin mules poking out from under the edge of the spread. If she had left everything else, Angie would have taken the slippers. They had been a birthday gift from Mums and Daddy.

When she realized that Angie had, after all, sent Jimmy to collect her things, Carolyn was more than annoyed, she was furious. Not that she had wanted another scene with the girl. That she wanted to avoid at almost any cost. They had already done all the damage to each other that either of them could take. It would only be a repetition of all the scenes that had gone before. A furious, impassioned struggle, emotional murder to both of them.

But the idea of Jimmy wrecking her apartment, tearing her clothes was outrageous. And poor Bridgit! She must be terrified.

It occurred to Carolyn that, for the first time since she had picked the cat up sick and starving in the street, Bridgit had not come running to welcome her home. She had been so concerned about her own problems that she had completely overlooked Bridgit. Now, she was worried. Quickly, she began to open doors and poke into corners, calling to the cat.

When she had finished one round of the apartment, she began again, more slowly. Ten minutes later she gave up the search. Bridgit, like Angie, like the valises, had disappeared. The valises and Angie she could live without. But this time, somebody had gone too far.

Not bothering to think what she intended to do, Carolyn put on a pair of sandals and slammed out of the apartment.

Too nervous to wait for the elevator, she ran down ten flights of fire escape steps to the ground floor.

The little Renault leaped forward. She hardly noticed the lights. On Thirty Eighth Street she turned and slowed down as she neared the bar where she had last seen Angie.

Directly across the street, she parked and turned off the engine.

For a few minutes she simply sat in the car, smoking a cigarette and wondering what to do. She knew that Angie (and probably Jimmy, too) was somewhere in the neighborhood. Yet she had no idea where Jimmy lived or where he might have taken the girl. She didn't even know what she wanted from them if she found them, except to find out what they had done with Bridgit. If anything had happened to that cat as a result of Angie's stupidity... Well, she didn't know in exactly what manner but Angie would pay for it somehow.

Now that she had come this far, she couldn't just sit still and wait for something to happen. But she didn't quite know where to begin. The bar, of course, was closed. She had not expected to find anything there. But Angie had gone into the bar and vanished. Obviously there must be an exit other than the main door and it was her business to find out where it led to.

She got out of the car and stood leaning against it, smoking and examining the front of the building across from her. Five floors of corroded sandstone, some of its windows curtained, others with white X's splashed across them.

It looked like any tenement anywhere in the city. Following the scattering of X's, she discovered that the building was one of three about to be torn down and replaced. None of the buildings had an obvious front entrance. Their ground floors all seemed to be commercial sites. But near the corner, at the end of the last building, an alleyway made a narrow slit between two stores.

She felt a tremor of elation. Quickly she ground the cigarette under her heel and started across the street.

Almost running, she took the last few steps to the alleyway and plunged into the entrance. It was dark and smelly in the narrow passage. Creeping sideways to avoid overflowing garbage cans and the mucky filth down the center of the alley that sucked at her feet, she worked her way through to an open courtyard crisscrossed by clotheslines and frayed electric wires. A dim light bulb hung from a pole in the center of the yard.

She walked directly to the middle building, the one that housed the bar, and into the damp, gloomy hallway.

Despite the growing light outside, she could see only a few feet beyond the doorway. But it was enough to convince her she had been right.

At the end of the hall was a narrow door that must be the back entrance to the bar. Set into the wall beside it, a bank of mailboxes flaky with rust. Lighting matches, she scanned the name plates. Under 5D, a piece of adhesive splotchy with ink and the imprint of a thumb carried the name J. Turner. There were no bells. She walked back to the stairs and started to climb.

When she reached the top floor, she felt winded and filthy and perspiration itched across her back. She rapped loudly on the door of apartment D.

Before she could rap again, the door swung open.

Jimmy stood just inside, wearing only shorts, and by the expression on his face, she knew he had been expecting someone else.

Practically naked and outlined clearly in the doorway, he looked gigantic. Carolyn wondered fleetingly what she had intended to do. Beat him to a pulp? Maybe kick him in the shins?

She found herself grinning foolishly and mumbling Angie's name.

It was a moment before he recognized her. Then he shrugged. "I don't know where the hell she is," he said. "She's not here."

"She was here," Carolyn said.

"So she was here. She's not here now." He started to shut the door. Carolyn wedged herself in the doorway. He looked annoyed, but he let go of the handle and walked away from her.

She trailed into the apartment after him. "I know she was here. I followed her."

He picked up a can of beer and took a gulp from it. "What do you want from me?" he said. He took in the tiny room with a wide sweep of his arm. "Do you see her?"

She didn't even bother to look. She knew by his attitude what had happened. Angie had run out on him, too.

He paid her no further attention while he finished the can of beer and started on another one.

She sat down on a kitchen chair that, with a bed and table, furnished the room. Both windows were open wide but not a breath of air filtered in. The place was dusty but neat, not from tidiness so much as from lack of clutter.

Carolyn marvelled that Angie preferred this airtight box to the air conditioned comfort of Columbus Avenue. It had been because of Angie that Carolyn had left the old brownstone she loved. Angie was terrified of cockroaches, revolted by dingy apartments. At least, that's what she said. Glancing about her, Carolyn realized that there were many things about the girl she had never found out. She was sure she would not have liked most of them.

But it did not surprise her that the girl should be drawn to Jimmy. He had all the qualifications Angie demanded in a man: he was tall, dark and handsome, built like the "after" part of a Charles Atlas ad, and not bright enough to give her a hard time. Another one Angie could twist around her little finger. Observing him, Carolyn felt a twinge of pity for herself as well as for Jimmy. Angie had run out on them both tonight. They had a lot in common.

But she had not come here to commiserate with Jimmy. She had come for information, perhaps for bad news. And she had a feeling that her sympathy for the man would be short-lived.

She leaned forward and took a cigarette out of the pack lying open on the table. She held it, unlit, between her fingers.

She looked up at Jimmy. "Did you go to my apartment for Angie's clothes?" she asked quietly.

He glanced at her warily. "Why?"

"Somebody did," she said. "Was it you?"

He shrugged. "She sent me," he said. "Damn stuffs in the closet." He indicated a curtained, coffin-sized projection from the wall. "When I got back here, she was gone. No note. Nothing."

"You'll get used to it," Carolyn said. "She does it quite often."

He looked at her oddly for a moment, his eyes narrowed. She knew that his confidence in the girl had already been badly shaken. She couldn't tell if he had admitted it to himself, but even so, he didn't intend to let her know it.

"She'll get over it," he said and his tone was confident. The bedsprings groaned under his weight. He put his feet up and crossed his arms behind his head. "After we're married."

Carolyn did not bother with a rebuttal. "That's your problem," she said. "I didn't come here to talk about Angie, anyhow. All I want to know is, what happened to Bridgit?"

"Who the hell is Bridgit?" He was staring at the ceiling, his face in shadows.

She could not see the expression on his face but she had the feeling that he was afraid to meet her glance.

"Bridgit's the cat," she said patiently. "My cat. She was in the apartment when I left. She's not there now. Where is she, Jimmy?"

He turned toward her now and she knew instinctively that he would lie. The falseness of his concern was as obvious as the "tilt" on a pin ball machine. She waited calmly for him to speak.

"It ran out when I opened the door," he said. "I tried to catch it but I couldn't even get close." He shook his head. "I don't know what happened to it."

Carolyn snapped the cigarette between her fingers. "Have you ever had a cat, Jimmy?"

He looked at her strangely. "No. Why?"

She nodded. "I thought so," she said. "You don't seem the type. Angie doesn't like them either. Cats are interesting creatures. They develop peculiar habits. Mine, for instance, always hides in the hall closet when a stranger comes to the door. And she always knows when it's a stranger."

She watched Jimmy begin to understand and saw a flush creeping up his face, his eyelids squinting half closed. She kept her voice steady, almost conversational. "If anybody except me tries to get her out of there, she puts up quite a fight." She paused to let it sink in. "I imagine she scratched you?"

He stared at her for a long time. Then he sat up slowly and held his arms into the light. The undersides were streaked with scratches. "About twenty times," he said. "I threw her against the wall." He stopped and when she said nothing, went on. "I had to, dammit. She was after my eyes."

He sat for a long time with his face in his hands. She watched him, but she had nothing to say.

Finally he finished. "Her neck broke, I guess. Anyway..." He shook his head.

"What did you do with her?" she asked quietly.

"The incinerator. In the hall."

Carolyn sighed. She felt very tired, more tired-than she had ever been in her life. And she felt sorry for Jimmy. She couldn't really blame him for the cat and she knew he was genuinely ashamed. She couldn't even blame Angie, though it had been the girl's fault that Jimmy had gone to the apartment. The guilt was entirely her own. If she had been strong enough to get rid of Angie a long time ago, this would never have happened.

"Well, at least Angie will be glad," she muttered. "She never did get along with Bridgit."

"What about Angie?" he said. "She doesn't know what happened. She was gone..."

"She will," Carolyn said.

She saw a spark of interest light his dark eyes. "Then you know where she is," he said.

"Not at the moment. But if she's not here, she's probably at my place now. Where else would she go?"

She waited but he did not answer. He seemed distracted and confused. "Well?"

He shrugged. "Probably."

She stood up and brushed crumbs of tobacco off her skirt. "Well, put on some clothes," she said.

"What for?"

"I want you to come with me," she said, "and bring Angie back here." She started toward the door. "I can't be bothered anymore. It's your turn."