Johnny Benedetto, down the block in Pokey Ryan’s car, fought off the urge to go into the house. He knew Pokey would take care of everything and wanted to see what was moving around outside. You never knew. So far nothing but neighbors huddling under the street lamp. The usual. And the old lady in the wild makeup. She scurried back and forth across her lawn like a berserk bumper car.
Johnny was spent. He was yawning five times a minute. He pinched himself hard. He took deep breaths. A whole family of coons came down single file from the woods and gingerly picked their nocturnal route past the mailbox. When they saw all the commotion at the Breslinsky house they stopped, turned around, and marched, just as cool as you please, through the backyard next door. He watched them dine on the contents of three garbage cans, get up one by one onto the birdbath, and wash their hands as though they were human. You had to admit that animals were sometimes more understandable. There was nothing more treacherous than a human out for blood. He fell asleep with his mouth wide open and a deaf ear to the rhododendron bushes rustling.
CHAPTER 6
By Tuesday Claire was seeing truly great shots wherever she looked. That was the way it went, wasn’t it? The minute you didn’t have your camera, everything looked like the potential cover of Life magazine. They finished supper quietly. Everyone was spent from too many avid discussions of the theft, the murder, and, good Lord, the implications. Claire was fed up with being locked indoors—even terror becomes tedious—so she decided to go for a clandestine walk with the Mayor. She had to go out sometime. Her parents’ fierce, well-meaning warnings about solitary ventures made sense, but not to live freely was not to live at all. You might just as well have been murdered yourself. It made Claire boil to think that some vermin could stilt her life-style any more than he already had. She had to think. Get out. They wouldn’t jog, just go for a normal walk. It wasn’t as though she had to wait around the house for a phone call or anything. With one last mournful look at the phone, she left. Johnny Benedetto had no doubt heard about the robbery. Not that he should care. Murder, apparently, was the only subject grand enough for him. Annoyed, she decided to cut across Eighty-fourth to the rim of the woods. The Mayor looked back at her with approval. He’d watch out for them. On a bench right across from White Hill, who should be out watching the sun set but Iris von Lillienfeld. Iris’s face was hidden by a broad-brimmed straw hat, but it was her all right. Natasha, her poodle, posed at her feet. Claire hastened her step. She felt, rather than heard, the car engine pull up alongside her.
“Get in the car.”
“Exactly what do you mean, ‘get in the car’?”
“Just get in. I wanna talk to you.”
Claire fingered her New Delhi bangles. “I can hear you very well.”
“Get the fuck in the car.”
She sat down primly and left the door open. The Mayor jumped in, too.
“Close the door.”
She did. He slipped the stick into gear and took off.
“Where are you going?” For one panic-stricken moment she thought Johnny might be the murderer. He had, she supposed, just as much reason as anyone.
“I’m just takin’ you someplace. To talk. All right? Just to talk.”
“Fine.”
The Mayor watched Natasha’s pretty face grow small in the rearview mirror. It was superb for her to see him whizzing off like this.