Part 29 (1/2)

”I'm not lying. They need a bunch of signatures to engage in legal action, and he's the board president so he had to be there. So I did tell your sister I'd put in a good word-”

”If I slept with you.”

”Yes, I did tell her that,” he said, having the grace, finally, to be the tiniest bit embarra.s.sed. ”But the fact is, even if he votes for you, it won't make a difference. They have eleven votes against you. Even if I could swing him your way, you're gone.”

”Well, then who owns the apartment?” I asked.

”It will take them years to figure that out, and the longer it takes the better it is for the building. I mean, they never liked the Drinans either.”

”It doesn't matter if they liked them or not, it was their apartment!”

”It was the Livingston apartment,” Vince corrected me, quite serious for once. He looked startled; there was something about the import of this whole insane situation that I wasn't getting. ”Those people, they came into the building, they weren't vetted, they just came in.”

”I think they were born there, Vince.”

”It's not like citizens.h.i.+p, Tina; it's not like if you're born in a building you have property rights. I didn't think I'd have to explain that to you. And if that first will wasn't probated? The building has more of a claim than anybody. And maybe they should-you know the story about what happened to the mother, they put her in some loony bin and threw away the key and then she died in there. It's totally Victorian.”

”It's a Victorian building,” I reminded him.

”Well said, but why should they get the apartment? It was her apartment.”

”What's your point, Vince?” I asked.

”My point is, neither you or the Drinans is going to get that apartment, I don't care how hard you try,” Vince said, all convivial now. ”It's the Livingston Mansion Apartment, Tina! You might have had a chance with one of the minor apartments. But that one, no way.”

”I see,” I said, although I did not.

”Listen,” he sighed, suddenly filled with pity and goodwill toward me, G.o.d knows why. ”I'll see if I can buy you some time. I really can put in a good word, and it might keep dear old dad on the fence for a little while.”

”How many times do I have to sleep with you for that whopping favor?”

”It's for free,” he said, grinning at this. ”Come on, Tina, let's grab a cab, you can't walk all the way home in those shoes. I won't bother you. I promise.”

”Your promises,” I sighed, indicating that I didn't think much of them. But I wasn't too mean about it.

28.

”SO HOW DID IT GO?” LUCY COOED ON THE PHONE THE NEXT morning.

”Just great, Lucy,” I said. ”Vince is definitely on board.”

”I knew you could do it,” she replied smugly. ”Thanks, Tina. I owe you one.”

”Anything for the cause,” I said. ”You need anything else, just let me know.”

I hung up and stared at the ceiling. I thought about calling her back and telling her everything Vince had said-that we would never win this, the building didn't want any of us, their goal was to boot both the Drinans and the Finns, the building was going to win, and we needed to come up with a better strategy than having Tina sleep with everybody on the board. But she never listened. Alison didn't listen much these days either; they both seemed like people I had known slightly a very long time ago. I wondered if that might have been why I had just disappeared finally: because n.o.body was listening anyway. And then I thought about Mom, and what she would say, and what she would want me to do, and I wished I had called her just once from out there at the Delaware Water Gap. Then maybe I would have been the one she called when she needed to talk to someone about doing the right thing, keeping that beautiful apartment for the people who had actually lived there. But I didn't call her; I just never did. I was too busy running away.

Finally there wasn't anything else for it. I went to the Ninety-first Precinct and marched up to the front desk. ”I need to talk to Detective Drinan,” I told the desk sergeant. He barely glanced up at me; he was busy opening mail with a plain silver letter opener that looked like a really boring dagger. He took his time, sliding the pointy end into the top of the envelope and moving it carefully all the way across. I don't know why people think mail is more important than people, but they certainly do. In any case, this desk sergeant finished opening his manila envelope, considered the first three pages of the contents, paper-clipped the docs to the outside of the envelope, and set the whole event down on the other side of his desk. Then he deigned to talk to me.

”He expecting you?” he asked, picking up a phone on his desk carelessly, like he might make a phone call in the middle of our conversation, that's how unimportant I was.

”I don't think he's expecting me,” I said. ”But you know, he might be. Actually, he actually might be.” My fascinating conjectures held no interest for the desk sergeant, who just nodded and hit a few b.u.t.tons as he shouldered the receiver.

”What's your name?” he asked.

”Tina Finn.”

”Yeah,” he suddenly said into the receiver, bored as h.e.l.l, ”somebody named Tina Finn is here for Pete.” He paused. ”Uh huh.” Another pause. ”Uh huh.” Pause. ”Yeah, okay.” He hung up the phone and reached into the bag of chips that was sitting alongside the pile of mail. He put a potato chip in his mouth and crunched it a few times, then he picked up his letter opener and started slitting the end of another manila envelope.

”So, should I wait here for him?” I asked. The desk sergeant didn't even look up.

”He's not here,” he said.

”He's not,” I said.

”He have your number?”

”No, actually, he doesn't.”

”You can leave it if you want,” he said, pulling out some more docs and glancing through them.

”What kind of police station is this?” I said, a little loud. He looked up, raised his eyebrows at me. I swear, I never did know how to talk to the cops. ”I could be a witness for a murder or something, and you can barely talk to me!”

”Are you?” he said.

”No. I am not.” And then I held up the brown paper bag I had brought and dropped it into the middle of his mail call. ”This is for Detective Drinan. This is important. It is important evidence for a case that he thinks is really important, and you need to give it to him as soon as he gets back.”

”You can wait for him if you want,” he said, completely unmoved by my theatrics.

”No,” I said. ”I'm not going to wait. He knows where to find me.”

Which he most certainly did. Seven hours later he was at my front door. In his left hand he held a child's green hand-knit sweater with a broken cable on one arm, evidence from a previous life, which I had left in the brown paper bag at the front desk of his precinct. ”So,” he said, ”you have my attention.”

I already had that, I thought. What I said was, ”Come on in.”

I had spent the afternoon unloading what I could from that room and piling it all over the television area. There was stuff everywhere: clothes and shoes and dishes and books and photos and art projects and knitting.

”Holy s.h.i.+t,” he said when I walked him back there.

”Yeah, it's a lot of stuff,” I agreed.

”Where'd you find all this, that room in the back he used as a storage s.p.a.ce?”

”I-”

”You took all this out of the boxes? Why'd you do that?”