Part 31 (2/2)
”Could you tell us what it even means?” Len asked, sweetly mystified. ”I never really considered the question, even though I helped make it happen. How can a building own an apartment?”
”We hold it in trust and arrange for its sale. The proceeds go into a fund that we can use as an endowment of sorts to support the maintenance of the building,” Roger Masterson explained. I thought he was going to start licking himself any second, he was enjoying this so much. ”It's quite an exceptional situation. It gives us the opportunity to protect and restore a historic property and also support our own investment in the building as cooperative owners of the property. And you all should know that it's our importance as a historic property that is in play here. Sotheby's, Christie's, Corcoran-all the brokers of important properties-have agreed to wait and let our own interest play out here. No one is going to provide any real opposition to our position. It is not in their interest to do so.”
”Isn't that like price fixing?” the malcontent in the corner called out.
”Not at all,” Gary said with a cool, knowing smile. ”Here, let me walk you through the legalities of a situation like this.”
”You have to go,” someone breathed into my ear. I almost fell over I was so startled, but she reached out and held my arm firmly to keep me steady and to keep me from giving myself away. I turned slowly. The most beautiful face I've ever seen was right next to my own. ”Before they finish,” Julianna whispered. ”They can't find you here.” And then she stood and silently reached her hand out to me. I took it and followed her into the kitchen, where she moved with graceful a.s.surance to the cabinet door that opened onto that terrifying crawl s.p.a.ce. I looked around, realizing that I would have to get back in there. But Julianna pa.s.sed right by the cabinet as if it were invisible.
”I presume you came up the fire escape,” she said, opening the kitchen window onto the night air. ”Quickly, quickly!” she urged.
30.
IT WAS SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER TO CLIMB DOWN THE RICKETY OLD fire escape than it had been to climb up the twisting staircase trapped inside the walls of the building. The skeletal ladders fit together like a perfect wrought-iron jigsaw puzzle, and within seconds, it seemed, I was on the landing outside the window of my own apartment. The euphoric sense of relief I had experienced as I clambered down the outside of the building waned slightly when I realized that I once again was unable to get into the apartment because, not surprisingly, the window was locked. I stood there and pondered this for a moment. And then I saw the ghost.
She was right there at the window, looking at me. At first I didn't know what I was seeing; I thought I was looking into a pair of disembodied eyes afloat in an undifferentiated and murky universe. They frightened me so completely that I pulled back and careened for a moment near the edge of the s.p.a.ce that opened on the landing beneath me, at which point she held up a hand, instinctively, to warn me to be careful. Then she looked over her shoulder and back at me, and I thought, the ghost, it's the ghost. Her hair was pulled back under a kerchief, and her skin was as dark as the air around her. I took a step forward and reached my hand out to the window she stood at. There were bars across it. She looked like she was in a cage.
We considered each other for just a moment, and then I knew what to do. ”Stay there,” I said. And I took off my s.h.i.+rt, wrapped it around my fist, and stuck my hand through my own window, which was right next to hers. Then I reached in, turned the window latch, yanked the window up, climbed inside, and found my cell phone.
”You have to get over here now,” I said to Pete when he picked up. ”Now, right now, you have to come right now.” Then I ran through the apartment, undid all the locks, and headed down the stairs, because I didn't want to wait for the elevator.
”Frank,” I said. He looked up from his little stand, where he was reading yet another magazine. ”You have to come. You have to bring the master keys. There's a person trapped in Mrs. Westmoreland's apartment, she's locked in there, you have to help me get her out.”
”Tina-look, I don't know,” he began. ”You know they're saying you're not supposed to be here. I'm not allowed to help you with anything. They told me I could get fired if I did.”
”She's an illegal, Frank,” I said. ”Westmoreland's got an illegal up there, locked in a room. She's an illegal.”
That was all it took. Frank and his master keys got us into Delia Westmoreland's apartment, where we found the ghost hiding in a closet and praying to the G.o.ds of her homeland to come and save her. She was so lost in that other universe she didn't fully recognize the real thing when we showed up. She fought and cried and insisted in some strange tongue that we had to go, that they couldn't find us there. Then Mrs. Westmoreland showed up and insisted that she was calling the police to have me arrested. I told her there was no need, as they were already on their way, which she didn't take too well. Then when Pete arrived, Mrs. Westmoreland went into a rage and claimed to have sponsored the ghost-whose name was Gcina-for citizens.h.i.+p, out of the goodness of her heart.
In the middle of all the yelling, Pete took us all down to the local precinct, where I dragged him into a corner for a minute to tell him what I had heard at the board meeting. You could tell he didn't really believe me, but before I could explain, I was dragged into an interrogation room and asked about the ghost. I told them I had been hearing her in the wall for weeks and I knew she must be in some kind of trouble, but I didn't put it all together until I saw her. Meanwhile Gcina was giving up her story in an interrogation room down the hall. And then some cop asked me what I was doing out on the fire escape, and Pete said go ahead, tell them about the other stuff, so I told them about the co-op board meeting, and rather than laughing me out of the room, the cops went back to the building and asked Julianna Gideon to come to the precinct and verify my story. Her mother, predictably, threw a fit and insisted on coming with her and calling a lawyer and generally screaming at everyone in the most horrible way possible. She especially reamed out Frank, who was just sitting in a corner quietly waiting to be told he could go home. Then when the lawyer arrived, the cops wouldn't let Mrs. Gideon go with Julianna into the interrogation room, where she apparently validated every detail of my story about what was said at the board meeting. They took all of that back to Mrs. Westmoreland and told her she was going to be on the hook for abduction and harboring an illegal alien, but that conspiracy to defraud the courts was even more serious, and if she would flip on the whole cabal of board members at the Edge they'd take that into consideration.
So she gave up everything and got a walk on the other charges, because Gcina was from Somalia and no one knew who she was or where her family was, and in the end she didn't matter as much as the Livingston Mansion Apartment did. The police issued warrants for the arrest of every member of the board, including Roger Masterson and Len, who was in especially hot water because Westmoreland had admitted that the whole will scenario was a fake, and she claimed it was his idea. Then Gary the lawyer showed up and explained that Roger Masterson did not have to come down to a police precinct in the middle of the night and they could speak to him in his office the next day. Then some uniformed officers brought Len in and walked him right past me, as I sat in the waiting room with Pete. Then some lady from INS arrived and took Gcina off, and when I asked Pete where they were taking her, he admitted that she would be put in jail, and they would hold her probably for months and then send her back to Somalia unless she could prove that she needed asylum.
”They can't,” I said. ”Come on. You can't put her in jail. She's been in jail for months. We don't even know how long. But at least months.”
”I still can't see how you put that together,” Pete said, checking his nails. ”You really didn't have any evidence, just somebody crying in the next room. You know, if you had brought that to me, I couldn't even have gotten a warrant on it. It's a good thing you got Frank to open the door for you. No cop in the city would have done it.”
”Because she's n.o.body?”
”Because you didn't have any evidence.”
”I'm on the same landing with them. I could see, when Westmoreland opened the door going out or coming in, that the place was getting cleaned every day. And no one ever came. I never saw anybody.”
”Still not enough.”
”I cleaned houses myself,” I said. ”I know what it's like to be locked in a trailer out at the Delaware Water Gap.” And then I went on a crying jag, and Pete said he'd take me home.
Which is where we were the following morning when Doug showed up. Unfortunately I had not, for once, locked the door from the inside, both because I was so tired and because I had my own cop, and I wasn't worried about someone bursting into my world. I had not counted on Doug Drinan getting a tip-off from Len Colbert, who had used his one phone call to tell Doug that his brother might be here, fraternizing with the enemy, and he might want to come see for himself.
”I don't believe it,” he said. He was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, watching us wake up. At least we weren't having s.e.x, I thought, but Doug didn't see the upside of that. He was already in a state. ”What the f.u.c.k,” he seethed. ”What the f.u.c.k are you doing with her?”
”Oh, s.h.i.+t,” Pete muttered, groggy.
”Get up,” Doug hissed. ”Get up so I can hit you.”
”Dial it down, Doug. I'm still waking up,” Pete said.
”In our apartment,” Doug exploded. ”In our room! With her! You know what she is! You know what her mother did to our family!”
”My mom didn't do anything, she was a really nice person and she took really good care of your father,” I started.
”Tina, stay out of this,” Pete warned me.
”We know what she did. She stole our home,” Doug informed me. ”We have evidence-what she was doing, we know what she did, and we know what you're doing, at least those of us who aren't thinking with our d.i.c.ks have something of a clue-”
”Hey hey hey, I said dial it back,” Pete repeated. I opened my mouth to say something that would not have been helpful, but Pete put his hand up in a fast silencing gesture as he stood.
”We're not going to talk about it this way, Doug,” he stated. ”I want you to step out into the hallway.”
”Don't you f.u.c.king 'cop' me,” Doug sneered. ”I'm not the crook in this fiasco. I can't believe you're this stupid. Or yes I can, actually, I can believe it. After what you did-what you did, to Mom-”
”Come on, don't start this again.”
”It was your idea! What happened? You were the one who, you and Dad, she didn't want to go, I told you don't do it-”
”That's not the way it went down and you know it-”
”And then she died in there alone. She was alone-”
”She was there because she needed help! She couldn't stay here! Christ, she tried to kill him, more than once, Doug-”
”So he said-”
”I saw it! You saw what she would do, you saw the bruises, come on, man, let's not relive this.”
”He made that happen. She was defending herself. He would get drunk and start those fights-”
”I'm serious, Doug, don't do this.”
”You're doing it! You did it! You're just like him. She used to say, your brother is just like your father, a a a lowlife and a drunk-she would tell me-”
”I know what she said, come on, Doug, let's just take this down the hall-”
”No! She needs to hear this! She needs to know what you are, what you did, what you-she-” His rage took over as he glanced at me, utter madness in his face. I crept back against the wall a little. This was not a good situation. And it just goes to show, I thought: pictures don't tell the whole story. I thought of all those photos of the happy boys and their cool, interesting, rich, hippie mother. They didn't tell this story at all.
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