An art, Danner decided. There was definitely an art to pipe smoking, and he would master it.
Finally the tobacco was burning well, and he flicked away the paper match and stepped from the shelter of the doorway. Though it was cold, he’d stroll around the block and finish this smoke before going home. He was tightly bundled against the weather, liked to walk, and there was something comforting about the pipe’s glowing bowl nestled between his thumb and forefinger, a tiny, tamed, and fiery force he possessed almost as if it were a pet.
After returning to his apartment fifteen minutes later, Danner hung up his coat with the dead pipe in its right side pocket. He’d just started the eggs on the stove when there was a slight sound behind him. Like a sudden intake of breath.
He didn’t have time to turn around before an explosion of pain behind his right ear made him bunch his shoulders and bend forward at the waist, almost as if he were taking a bow. When he attempted to straighten up, everything around him suddenly started whirling with dizzying speed. He was vaguely aware of his left leg buckling.
He knew nothing more until he regained consciousness.
Danner lay quietly with his eyes closed, disoriented rather than afraid, trying to put the pieces together. Did I have a stroke? A cerebral hemorrhage like my father?
He couldn’t be sure. He did know he couldn’t move his body. It felt as if he was tightly bound. His arms were twisted around behind him, and with one exploring fingertip he could feel rough grout and the sharp edge of a kitchen floor tile. And he was wet. His clothes, his entire body. Why was he wet?
He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly but could do nothing about it.
Cautious here…be cautious…Do nothing sudden….
Slowly he opened his eyes, and immediately a stinging sensation made him clench them shut. As he did so, his vision registered movement nearby, and he knew he wasn’t alone. He realized also that he was bound, tied up and lying on his kitchen floor.
And now he was afraid.
Don’t panic! Oh, God, don’t panic!
He forced his eyes open narrowly, trying to make out what was happening, trying to make some sense of this. His eyes still stung, bringing tears. Something must have splashed into them. He could see, but barely, blearily.
There was dark movement and a soft sound close above him, like the single unfolding rush of vast wings spreading wide. Against the looming darkness appeared a pinpoint of light. The light grew in size and intensity, then became brilliant.
It was so sudden. Light, pain, time, all converged in and around Danner. Someone was screaming. Einstein was right: time was relative. It could even stop. Time and pain were unending. The dark thing had carried Danner to an unimaginable height and dropped him into the sun.
He was burning on the surface of the sun and it would never end!
TWO
She thought about how large and strong his hands were, and gentle. He even punched the elevator button with a kind of softness, as if he knew his strength and didn’t want to harm the mechanism.
Rica Lopez removed her gloves and stuffed them in the pockets of her wool coat, then stamped her feet. It was below freezing in New York City, and what was left of the snow had turned to hardened clumps of gray slush. The two police cruisers parked outside were splattered with grime, as was the unmarked Ford Victoria that Rica and Ben Stack had arrived in. A knot of people, probably residents of the building who were still uneasy about going back inside, stood off near one of the radio cars. They were huddled together as if for warmth and staring curiously at Stack and Rica, like a small herd of sheep wary of what might be wolves.
It took only seconds for a chime to sound in the high-speed elevator and the doors to slide open onto the thirty-first floor of the Ardmont Arms. Stack waited as he always did for Rica to leave the elevator first. He was that way with doors and turnstiles and every other known kind of egress and ingress, Rica thought with a smile. Ladies first. An old-fashioned kind of gent was Ben Stack, for an NYPD homicide detective.
It was easy enough to find the right co-op unit. There were three uniforms lounging outside its door, keeping an eye on the hall and elevators, waiting for further instructions from Stack or Rica, maybe trying to keep away from what was inside the apartment. As Stack and Rica walked along the hall’s plush blue carpet, past gilded white apartment doors identical but for identifying brass numbers and letters, Rica began to smell the faint burnt scent wafting from the luxury co-op unit with the open door. Mingled with the burnt smell was the scent of something sweet, a distinctive odor Rica had experienced only once before, when a truck driver had been trapped in his burning cab after an accident on the Veranzano Bridge. The scent had clung to her clothes, her flesh, her dreams, for weeks. It still clung to her memory. Now here it was again. Seared human flesh.
The three cops in the hall knew Stack. Everyone on the force seemed to know Stack and admire him, the cop who could instantly calm a panicked child with his touch and smile, and who had taken down three Gambino family members in a Brooklyn restaurant, two with his service revolver, one with his fists.
“We got a homicide, sir,” the youngest of the uniforms said. He had brown eyes, long lashes, hair so black it looked dyed. Too pretty to be a cop, Rica thought. Maybe prettier than I am.
“Bill and I got the call half an hour ago. Then Ray, here.” He nodded toward one of the other three cops, a tall, laconic-looking man with a bushy gray mustache. “We handled traffic for the FDNY.”
Stack looked at Rica, who shrugged.
“We didn’t see any fire department downstairs,” Stack said. “Just your cars, and some of the residents standing around looking confused.”
“The FDNY already left,” the uniform said. “The fire was out when they got here. They knew right where to go. I mean, which unit. This building’s got a sophisticated alarm system tells ’em all that up front when they get the alarm forwarded. The door was unlocked so they barreled ass on in here. When they saw the body, they got out and turned everything over to us.”
“Anyone been in since?”
“No, sir. Scene’s clean except for some big footprints on the carpet from the fire department’s boots.”
“So what makes this a homicide?” Rica asked.
“All I know is, the fire department said it looked fishy. I mean, maybe it’s not a homicide. Ray and me, we only gave it a look. Guy on the kitchen floor, cooked. That don’t happen a lot.”
“Not according to the Gallup Poll,” Stack said.
Jesus! Rica thought, as even here Stack politely stepped aside and let her enter the apartment first. Miss Manners would approve, Rica thought. When at a homicide scene, the gentleman always…
“Looks like the kitchen’s this way,” Stack said, stepping in front of Rica now to take the lead. The gentleman should always be first to look at a dead body.
As they approached the short hall to the kitchen, their soles began making squishy sounds on the soggy gray carpet. The apartment’s sprinkler system was unitized, as in many expensive co-ops where priceless art or furniture might be a room away from a simple kitchen or wastebasket fire; no need to saturate the entire unit and cause unnecessary water damage.
