Crime School

All the rest was swept into the trash bag, a major job and an important step in making a fresh start. There was another audition tomorrow, and her lucky blue suit had come through the day unscathed.

A good omen.

The X on the discarded blouse was now covered with rotted garbage, solidified milk, bottle caps, candy wrappers and deli containers. Stella never saw the folded note in the garment’s small breast pocket; it was lost in the clutter of her life. And so she never read the words, I can touch you any time I want.

CHAPTER 10

The early morning temperature was eighty-two degrees, and the East Villagers were already showing some wear as they moved down First Avenue in the rush-hour traffic of wheels and feet.

The tour guide stood at the front of the bus beside the driver. Microphone in hand, she pointed out the more colorful examples of New Yorkers in the wild. However, most of the Fi

For the past hour of gridlock, the bus passengers had been bored out of their minds. Their translator had taken sick this morning, and the American tour guide had not yet grasped that they neither spoke nor understood English, except for the word tourist and a few helpful obscenities. Now they crowded together on one side of the vehicle, their sense of expectation heightened as they watched the strange man moving down the sidewalk.

Something was about to happen.

The traffic was begi

He pivoted neatly to march in front of the bus, and the driver slammed on the brakes. The riders smiled in unison. Finally, something of interest – a near-death experience.

The Fi

The Fi

The man stopped, and so did the bus. It knelt down on one blown-out tire as the driver muttered a word for defecation and frustration. The tour guide cautioned her disembarking passengers not to wander off before the replacement bus arrived. Even if the Fi

They formed an audience on the sidewalk, and, behind the safety of their sunglasses, they watched the wooden man. He stood near the door of an apartment house. A fence of bars protected a tiny courtyard and a bed of daisies gamely growing in the heat. The man moved closer to the iron gate. He opened his canvas bag and pulled out a camera, then stared at his wristwatch.

The Fi

He glanced at his watch again, and the tourists nodded to one another. It would not be long now.

The man turned his entire body to face the door in the courtyard fence, and twenty pairs of Fi

Beyond the iron bars, a red door flew open. A slender blonde crossed the small courtyard with a fast click of white high heels. Her blouse was also white, and the pale blue skirt matched the garment slung over her arm. The young woman opened the iron gate and hurried to the curb, one hand raking through her long hair, combing it on the run. She lifted a waving arm to fish a cab from the stream of traffic.

The Fi

After do

She yelled, ‘Damn tourist!’ And the twenty Fi

The man pointed his camera at her. Some reflex made the woman toss her hair and pose for him with a smile. A cab stopped, the blonde stepped in and rode off, never noticing what the wooden man had done to her.

The show was over. The man moved on. And the Fi

The cab was trapped in midtown traffic, and Stella Small’s anxiety was climbing with every dime on the meter. She banged on the bulletproof glass that separated her from the driver. Of course, he would not turn around. What was the point? He spoke no English, and Stella knew that when she yelled, ‘There won’t be any ransom! I’m dead broke!’

The turba

She looked down at her watch for the third time in as many minutes, and she was still late.

‘Okay, you win!’ She waved money so the man could see it in his rearview mirror. After paying him, she stepped out of the cab two blocks from the hotel. Her pale blue blazer was carefully folded over one arm to protect it from soot and the droppings of low-flying pigeons.

She was swept up in the crowd of pedestrians and moving along the sidewalk at a fast clip. Two women walking toward her were actually slowing down, completely misunderstanding the concept of rush hour. And now they were breaking the prime law of survival in New York City, going beyond dangerous eye contact to overt staring. Stella wondered if they had recognized her from a recent walk-on part in a television soap opera.

Dream on, babe.

An old man stopped to gawk at her, and Stella smiled for him.

Yes, it’s me, the famous actress with no speaking roles.

She was attracting hard looks from everyone she passed. A middle-aged couple stopped to point at her, their mouths working in silence, obviously starstruck. The daytime soaps must be more popular than she had supposed.

Don’t you people have regular jobs?

The actress pushed through the hotel door and walked into an icy wall of machine-made air. Near the entrance, a bored young man never even glanced her way. He plucked a sheet of paper from his stack and waved it in her general direction. A woman near the closed doors to the ballroom was calling out the names that began with R. Stella Small sighed – saved by her rank in the alphabet.