Black Market

18

Manhattan

It was probably a dream, and a very bad one.

He was standing in an unfamiliar room where the walls met the ceiling at angles that would have been impossible in anything other than dream geometry. Through the half-open door, a pale pearl light created a slat of dull color.

A shadow moved into the light and stood there, just beyond the door. He knew that the figure was Nora. He wanted to move forward, to step out of the room; he wanted to see Nora and hold her. But something held him back, rooted to the floor. He cried her name aloud.

And then-

A bell was ringing. And he imagined it rang in Nora's hand.

Disturbed, sweating, Arch Carroll sat up and rubbed his eyes.

Then he realized that the bell was real. Someone was ringing the doorbell, and this was the sound his dream had absorbed. He swung his legs over the side of the rumpled covers on his bed and wandered from the bedroom. He squinted into the spy hole of the Manhattan apartment he'd once shared with Nora.

“Who is it?”

He could see nothing except swirling blackness where the hallway had definitely been last night.

Years before, he'd lucked into the West Side apartment, a sprawling three-bedroom with a river view. The apartment was still rent-controlled at two hundred and seventy-nine dollars a month, an impossible bargain. After Nora died, Carroll had decided to hold on to the place and use it nights when he worked late in the city.

“Who is it? Who's out there?” Doorbell goddamn ring itself, or was he still dreaming?

Whoever was out in the hallway didn't answer.

Carroll went back for his Browning and then unlocked the Segal, leaving the heavy link chain secure. He opened the door about four inches, and the chain snapped against the sturdy wooden jamb.

Caitlin Dillon was peering in at him through the crack. She looked frightened. Her eyes were hollow and dark.

“I couldn't sleep. I'm sorry if I disturbed you.”

“What time is it?”

“I'm embarrassed to say it's before six. It's about twenty to six.”

“In the morning?”

“Arch, please laugh at this or something. Oh, God. I'm going.” She suddenly turned to leave.

“Hold it. Wait a minute. Hey, stop walking!”

She half turned at the elevator. Her hair was wildly windblown and her cheeks were flushed, as if she'd been riding horses in Central Park.

“Come on in… Please come in and talk. Please?”

Inside the apartment, Carroll whisked clean the kitchen table. He made coffee. Caitlin sat down and twisted her long fingers together nervously. She opened a box of cigarettes and lit one. When she spoke her voice was husky, strange.

“I've been chain-smoking for hours, which is uncharacteristic of me. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't stop pacing around, either. All that information about the stolen securities kept spi

Carroll shook the last remnants of the bad dream from his mind, jerking himself into the present. “Green Band's moving at last. Only I can't figure out the direction they're taking.”

“That's one thing that bothers me,” Caitlin said. “And then I start to wonder how much has been stolen and how far this whole incredible thing goes. I calculated an amount in the region of a hundred million, but God knows how much more has actually disappeared.”

She sighed and crushed her cigarette impatiently. “Also, I'm still really ticked off at not being invited to that meeting in Washington. Do they honestly think I've got nothing to contribute? None of them understands the financial world. They really don't.”

Carroll had never seen her in quite this frame of mind. It was like watching her from a whole new set of angles-she was angry, she was worried, and she seemed confused. Her usual business-world professionalism couldn't help her now; she was reduced to asking wild questions that neither of them could answer. Suddenly Caitlin Dillon wasn't quite so untouchable. If he was the son of two generations of New York cops, she was a ruined banker's daughter, and equally serious about her obligations to her past.

Around seven-fifteen they put some Sara Lee Danish in the oven, the only moderately edible items in Carroll's kitchen.

“When I was thirteen or so I actually won a Bake-Off. This was at an Ohio country fair,” Caitlin admitted as she pulled the steaming pastries out of the oven. She kind of looked the part at the stove, too-pure Lima, Ohio.

They moved out to a windowed nook that overlooked the river and the New Jersey Palisades. One whole wall of the room was covered with 35-mm pictures of the kids. A single, fading picture was of Carroll as a sergeant in Vietnam. He'd taken down the last pictures of Nora only a few months before.

“Mmmfff. Tremendous.” He licked sticky crumbs off his fingers.

Caitlin rolled her eyes. “I'm not impressed With your kitchen supplies, Arch. Your cupboard's stocked with four bottles of beer and a half jar of Skippy peanut butter. Haven't you heard-the contemporary man in New York is a gourmet cook.”

Maybe her boyfriends were, Carroll thought to himself. None of the “contemporary men” he knew could cook anything more complicated than Campbell 's tomato soup.

“What can I tell you? I'm basically an ascetic. Skippy peanut butter happens to be cholestrol free.”

A different kind of look crossed Caitlin's face. A private-joke smile? He wasn't sure he'd read it correctly. Was she laughing at him now?

Then came a quick reassuring smile that was warm and even more comfortable.

“I think we're going to need at least an hour,” she said somewhat mysteriously. “Uninterrupted time. Phone-off-the-hook seclusion and quiet. You didn't have any big plans for the morning, I hope?”

“Just sleep.”

“Boring. Also not very ascetic.”

Carroll shrugged his broad shoulders; his eyes burned with curiosity. “I'm a boring person. Daddy, sometimes mom, of four, straight job with the government, occasional terrorist contact.”

There was a dense silence as he and Caitlin finally walked out of the windowed nook. They cleared their throats almost at the same moment. Caitlin reached for him, and then they were lightly, just barely, holding hands.

Arch Carroll was suddenly very aware of her perfume, the shh-shh of her jeans, the soft silhouette of her profile…

“This is one of the more impressive New York apartments I've been in. I really didn't expect this. All the hominess, the charm.”

“What did you expect? Hunting rifles on the wall? Actually, I sew. I can knit. I do iron-on patches for four little kids.”

Caitlin had to smile.

It was the first time he'd seen this particular smile. Irony but also a nice warmth glowed in her eyes at the same time. He felt as if they'd crossed some invisible barrier, made some slightly more solid co

They started to kiss and touch each other lightly in the narrow hallway. They kissed chastely, gently, at first. Then the kiss became harder, with urgency and surprising strength on Caitlin's part.

They kissed all the way to the front bedroom, where amber morning light was flooding the room. Huge, curtainless windows faced the Hudson, which was a flat, slate blue lake that morning.

“Caitlin?… Is this really wise?”

“It is really wise. It doesn't mean the end of the world, you know: It's just one morning. I promise not to get hurt, if you do.”

She put a gentle finger to Carroll's lips, softening the blow of her last statement. She then lightly kissed the back of her own finger.

“I have one small favor. Don't think about anything for ten minutes or so. No Ohio jokes, either. Okay?”

Carroll nodded. She was smart about this kind of thing, too. A little scary smart. She'd been here before: I won't get hurt; don't you get hurt.