LITMIR.BIZ

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to face his benign condescension. This enigma was hers to unravel, and sharing it too soon, perhaps at all, might make the solving impossible.

      In the meantime, Marlin’s apartment felt very secure. There were two doormen: Sergio by day and Freddy by night. Marlin had given them both a detailed description of the assailant, and instructions to let nobody up to the second floor without Ms Odell’s permission, and even then they were to accompany the visitor to the apartment door, and escort them out if his guest chose not to see them. Nothing could harm her as long as she stayed behind closed doors. Tonight, with Marlin working until nine and a late dinner planned, she’d decided to spend the early evening assigning and wrapping the presents she’d accumulated on her various Fifth Avenue sorties, sweetening her labours with wine and music. Marlin’s record collection was chiefly seduction songs of his sixties adolescence, which suited her fine. She played smoochy soul and sipped well-chilled Sauvignon as she pottered, more than content with her own company. Once in a while she’d get up from the chaos of ribbons and tissue, and go to the window to watch the cold. The glass was misting. She didn’t clear it. Let the world lose focus. She had no taste for it tonight.

      There was a woman standing at one of the second-storey windows when Gentle reached the intersection, just gazing out at the street. He watched her for several seconds before the casual motion of a hand raised to the back of her neck and run up through her long hair identified the silhouette as Judith. She made no backward glance to signify the presence of anyone else in the room. She simply sipped from her glass and stroked her scalp and watched the murky night. He had thought it would be easy to approach her, but now, watching her remotely like this, he knew otherwise.

      The first time he’d seen her - all those years ago - he’d felt something close to panic. His whole system had been stirred to nausea as he relinquished power to the sight of her. The seduction that had followed had been both a homage and a revenge; an attempt to control someone who exercised an authority over him that defied analysis. To this day he didn’t understand that authority. She was certainly a bewitching woman, but then he’d known others every bit as bewitching, and not been panicked by them. What was it about Judith that threw him into such confusion now, as then? He watched her until she left the window, then he watched the window where she’d been, but he wearied of that finally, and of the chill in his feet. He needed fortification: against the cold, against the woman. He left the corner and trekked a few blocks east until he found a bar, where he put two bourbons down his throat, and wished to his core that alcohol and not the opposite sex had been his addiction.

      At the sound of the stranger’s voice Freddy, the night doorman, rose muttering from his seat in the nook beside the elevator. There was a shadowy figure visible through the ironwork filigree and bullet-proof glass of the front door. He couldn’t quite make out the face, but he was certain he didn’t know the caller, which was unusual. He’d worked in the building for five years, and knew the names of most of the occupants’ visitors. Grumbling, he crossed the mirrored lobby, sucking in his paunch as he caught sight of himself. Then, with chilled fingers, he unlocked the door. As he opened it he realized his mistake. Though a gust of icy wind made his eyes water, blurring the caller’s features, he knew them well enough. How could he not recognize his own brother? He’d been about to call him and find out what was going on in Brooklyn when he’d heard the voice and the rapping on the door.

      ‘What are you doing here, Fly?’

      Fly smiled his missing-toothed smile. ‘Thought I’d just drop in,’ he said. ‘You got some problem?’

      ‘No, everything’s fine,’ Fly said. Despite all the evidence of his senses, Freddy was uneasy. The shadow on the step, the wind in his eye, the very fact that Fly was here when he never came into the city on weekdays: it all added up to something he couldn’t quite catch hold of.

      ‘What you want?’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

      ‘Here I am, anyway,’ Fly said, stepping past Freddy into the foyer. ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me.’

      Freddy let the door swing closed, still wrestling with his thoughts. But they went from him the way they did in dreams. He couldn’t string Fly’s presence and his doubts together long enough to know what one had to do with the other.

      ‘I think I’ll take a look around,’ Fly was saying, heading towards the elevator. ‘Wait up! You can’t do that.’

      ‘What am I going to do? Set fire to the place?’

      ‘I said no!’ Freddy replied, and blurred vision notwithstanding, went after Fly, overtaking him to stand between his brother and the elevator. His motion dashed the tears from his eyes, and as he came to a halt he saw the visitor plainly.

      ‘You’re not Fly!’ he said.

      He backed away towards the nook beside the elevator, where he kept his gun, but the stranger was too quick. He reached for Freddy, and with what seemed no more than a flick of his wrist pitched him across the foyer. Freddy let out a yell, but who was going to come and help? There was nobody to guard the guard. He was a dead man.

      Across the street, sheltering as best he could from the blasts of wind down Park Avenue, Gentle - who’d returned to his station barely a minute before - caught sight of the doorman scrabbling on the foyer floor. He crossed the street, dodging the traffic, reaching the door in time to see a second figure stepping into the elevator. He slammed his fist on the door, yelling to stir the doorman from his stupor.

      ‘Let me in! For God’s sake! Let me in!’

      Two floors above, Jude heard what she took to be a domestic argument, and not wanting somebody else’s marital strife to sour her fine mood, was crossing to turn up the soul song on the turntable when somebody knocked on the door.

      ‘Who’s there?’ she said.

      The summons came again, not accompanied by any reply. She turned the volume down instead of up and went to the door, which she’d dutifully bolted and chained. But the wine in her system made her incautious; she fumbled with the chain, and was in the act of opening the door when doubt entered her head. Too late. The man on the other side took instant advantage. The door was slammed wide, and he came at her with the speed of the vehicle that should have killed him two nights before. There were only phantom traces of the lacerations that had made his face scarlet; and no hint in his motion of any bodily harm. He had healed miraculously. Only the expression bore an echo of that night. It was as pained and as lost - even now, as he came to kill her - as it had been when they’d faced each other in the street. His hands reached for her, silencing her scream behind his palm.

      ‘Please,’ he said.

      If he was asking her to die quickly, he was out of luck. She raised her glass to break it against his face but he intercepted her, snatching it from her hand.

      ‘Judith!’ he said.

      She stopped struggling at the sound of her name, and his hand dropped from her face.

      ‘How the fuck do you know who I am?’

      ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said. His voice was downy; his breath orange-scented. The perversest desire came into her head, and she cast it out instantly. This man had tried to kill her, and this talk now was just an attempt to quiet her till he tried again.

      ‘Get away from me.’

      ‘I have to tell you - ‘

      He didn’t step away, nor did he finish. She glimpsed a movement behind him, and he saw her look, turning his head in time to meet a blow. He stumbled but didn’t fall, turning his motion to attack with balletic ease, and coming back at the other man with tremendous force. It wasn’t Freddy, she saw. It was Gentle, of all people. The assassin’s blow threw him back against the wall, hitting it so hard he brought books tumbling from the shelves, but before the assassin’s fingers found his throat he delivered a punch to the man’s belly that must have touched some tender place, because the assault ceased, and the attacker let him go, his eyes fixed for the first time on Gentle’s face.

      The

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