“I thought you were going to wait at your apartment for me,” Joe said a few minutes later, as they got into his car after dismissing Gen’s driver. He looked at Genevieve and saw that she was blushing slightly. Whatever she said, it would be an excuse, he knew. She obviously felt guilty. But then her chin lifted.
Guilty and defiant, he amended. Ah, yes, that was Genevieve. Then again, that defiance was part of what had saved her life.
“I was staying in and waiting, but then you called and said you’d be late. And I told you I’d find something to do to fill the time.”
“Good one,” he said.
“Hey, Joe, you’re the one who said the whole Poe thing was a smoke screen.”
He groaned. “Whether it is or isn’t, don’t you think you should be a little bit careful for a while?”
“It’s my mother I’m worried about,” she said. “She’s the Raven, not me.”
“Still…”
She gazed at him sharply. “What changed your mind?” she asked.
He was driving, but the traffic was light enough that he was able to look over at her before turning his attention to avoiding a kid on a skateboard who had just swerved into the street.
“Nothing has changed my mind,” he said, knowing it was what he wanted to believe, rather than the truth. To accept the fact that he believed a two-bit hooker—actress—had experienced a genuine psychic vision was more than he was ready to admit.
And yet it appeared, even to him, that it might be true.
After so many years prying into the lives of others, he had a good sense for whether people were lying or not. And Candy Cane, or Lori Star or whatever her real name was, hadn’t been lying.
Not only that, she was scared.
“So…” Genevieve asked, “where are we going?”
He cast a quick glance her way, a slight smile curving his lips. “I thought we should take a self-guided Poe tour. Just a pleasant walk around a few places our long-gone poet might have haunted. What do you think?”
She looked back at him, smiling quizzically herself. “You’ve acquired a new appreciation for the literary life and times of Edgar Allan Poe?”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve always been an aficionado,” he assured her.
Ten minutes later, he found a garage where he could park for a few hours without spending half a month’s rent, and they started walking.
There was something special, almost magical, about Lower Manhattan, he thought. It had nothing to do with Wall Street and all the money that changed hands there, or even the vibrancy of the people who were always rushing around following their own agendas.
Maybe it was magical, he thought, because he had learned to see it through Leslie’s eyes.
New York wasn’t just Wall Street and big bucks, or the egos of celebrities and business moguls. Nor was it any longer the huddled poverty of the thousands of immigrants who had made their way here, first via Ellis Island and now via Kennedy Airport.
It was both, and it was more.
He and Genevieve walked. They toured the area around Lower Broadway, pausing at Trinity Church, looking toward the empty place where the World Trade Towers had once stood, which gave them both pause.
Finally they moved on.
“Are we actually on a thinking tour?” she asked him, curious and amused.
“I’m sorry. Does it feel like I’m just dragging you around aimlessly?” he asked her.
“Hey, I like to walk. Just so long as we’re not walking because you don’t want me going home by myself,” she said.
He couldn’t help but ask, “Is it so bad for someone to be worried about you?”
She looked away. “I don’t want to spend my life being a burden, being someone others have to worry about all the time.”
“Hardly a burden,” he said gruffly.
And so they kept going.
“This has been my home my whole life,” she said, “and I still love being here. I love to go into Trinity and St. Paul’s. I love to go in and look at George Washington’s pew, and wonder what it might have been like when we were a country fighting for its independence.”
He flashed her a smile. “Yeah, cool, huh?”
And amazing.
They were near Hastings House, in fact, near the area where she had been held prisoner underground. He saw no deep-seated bitterness or fear in her eyes, and she had just told him that she had moved on, that she loved this part of town.
Was it true?
Whether it was or not, Lower Manhattan, the area around St. Mark’s, and his small cottage up in the Bronx, were places where Poe had spent time when he was in New York.
“‘The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne the best I could,’” he quoted aloud.
Genevieve arched a brow at him. “Is that word-for-word?”
“I think,” he said with a shrug.