The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist) (60 page)

After a late lunch at the local grill with Bob Montgomery, Probst was at his office with the rest of the company, with the draftsmen, clerks and secretaries who were beginning the last leg of their day, their afternoon coffee breaks behind them. He was letting everyone leave thirty minutes early today to give them a jump on the evening rush at the polls, and to judge from the absence of laughter or even conversation leaking into the hall outside his office, they were returning the favor with special diligence. Metal drawers rumbled in the silence as Carmen filed. Probst was proofreading and signing her morning production of letters. Typewriter bells rang faintly in the hall, the patter of rain and keys blending. Someone in narrow heels was walking briskly towards him. The heels reached the carpeting of the outer office and fell silent.

“Oh, Mrs. Probst,” Carmen said.

Probst’s arms went numb. He stared through the open door to the outer office and saw her shadow, the back of a familiar skirt.

“Hi, is he here?”

“Yes, go right in. Mr. Probst—?” Carmen sang.

“Thank you,” Barbara said.

He spun in his chair to the window, and reflected in the glass he saw his wife shut the door behind her, rest a closed umbrella against the wall and stand looking at him, her hands at her sides. “Martin?”

Her real voice was different from her phone voice, more nasal and clipped. He’d forgotten her. He’d been wrong to think she’d have no power over him when she returned.

“Martin, help me.”

He spun around.

It wasn’t Barbara. It was a woman with Barbara’s light hair, her body, her clothes, her hairstyle and posture and something like her fair skin, except where raindrops had eaten it away. Her hands were dark.

She smiled at him hopefully. “I’m back,” she said, tossing her raincoat on the coatrack. He shrank away. She sat down on his lap sideways and put her arms around his neck. The arms were damaged, purple and black, with scabs and ulcers and long fingers of
green beneath the dark skin. She smelled of rotten perspiration. Her lips touched his like ice. She was Barbara’s corpse.

“Who are you?” He tried to stand, dumping her off his lap. She landed in a crouch.

“I’ll be yours,” she said.

“Out, get out.”

“I’ve been with Rolf,” she explained.

Clumsily he put on his coat. Devi Madan. He opened the door and marched past Carmen, and Devi Madan followed.

“Where are we going?” She slipped her arm around his waist.

Jammu made her first pass around Singh’s building and saw that his car wasn’t in the fenced-in lot. He’d gone to Webster Groves. Could he have taken Barbara with him? Hardly likely. She was inside this building, unprotected, and Jammu had time to circle the block once more, to let the criminal pressure build up in her, and to rehearse the scene again. She would give Barbara a chance to speak. One sentence, a few words, enough to fill her killer’s ears with the slick, vulnerable intelligence she so hated, and then it was a Beatles song. Bang, bang—

No.

A Country Squire, repainted but inevitably Pokorny’s, was parked behind a low boarded-up building across the street. Jammu stepped on the gas, shifting up. She would have done it, but she wouldn’t now. She went back to her desk on Clark Avenue.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Martin.”

“Don’t touch me.”

They squared off in the parking lot, on the white football grid of the spaces reserved for Probst’s project managers, who were all still out on the job. Devi Madan leaned forward, her eyes wide and more hopeful than ever, with the overexcitement of a friendly dog about to lose control and yelp, and bite. “
Martin
.”

Rain was falling on the outer layer of his hair and draining onto his scalp. He didn’t know what to do, but he had to do it
quick. The reality of this Indian girl’s presence pelted him, sought gaps in his protection, tried to get inside and drench him. He turned away and unlocked his car.

She ran around to the passenger side. “Where are we going?”

“Go away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go anywhere,” he said. “You can’t be here.”

It was too late. Each word they exchanged confirmed her right to speak to him and make demands. He couldn’t even tell her to leave without implicating himself. She was in his life.

She looked angrily at the sky, up into the rain pouring down on her eyeglasses. “I’m getting kind of wet.” She was so familiar. She’s insane, he thought. It made no difference.

“Use your umbrella,” he said.

“I left it in your office.”

His was in his office, too.

“Hurry up,” she said. “Get in.”

She knew him. She knew him as surely as if a Hyde-like second Probst had been leading a life with her unbeknownst to the first. He got in the car and leaned across the front seat to raise the lock button on her door. She jumped in and shivered. “Where to?”

Wet clothes, wet skin. Perfume and sweat and cold automotive plastic. Wet exhaust from passing cars. He leaned back and closed his eyes, only dimly aware that he’d made a mistake in letting her into the car. She curled one hand around his neck, laid the other on his leg, and put her mouth to his. Would he kiss her? He was already doing it. The taste of a new mouth didn’t surprise him now. Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara.

In the street a car door opened.

It was the police. Barbara pulled away from Probst, and through the windshield the two of them watched a patrolman cross the street to the precinct house. His companion remained in the squad car and rested his eyes on them uncuriously. Probst gave him a dumb smile. Barbara’s face had assumed the blankness of a reasonably law-abiding citizen’s. The cop looked away.

Jammu had said Devi Madan was an innocent girl who’d returned to Bombay several weeks ago. Jammu had lied. But Probst loved Jammu. He would be calm. He’d try to help.

He started the engine, backed out, and made a right turn onto Gravois. Two blocks up the street he pulled in alongside the taxi stand outside the National. Old women were wheeling caged groceries away from the automatic doors. He set the brake. “You need money.”

“Yes.”

He opened his wallet and counted bills. “Here’s two hundred twenty.” This wasn’t enough. He took out his checkbook. She was folding up the bills and tucking them in her purse: just another domestic transaction.

“There’s a Boatmen’s right over there,” he said. “Will a thousand be enough?”

She nodded.

He wrote out the sum in numerals and then in words. He paused. After Barbara had moved out, he’d stopped using their joint account. “Who should I make this out to?”

She was watching a taxi drive away. She didn’t bother answering. He penned in the words
Barbara Probst
.

Singh had not driven to Webster Groves. He’d merely moved his car to a lot near the river and returned to his apartment on foot. He hadn’t for a moment believed there was a letter in Probst’s mailbox. Jammu, he expected, would come to East St. Louis and see that his car was gone. She would enter the building planning to murder Barbara and pin the blame on him.

But Jammu had not arrived. He was beginning to wonder if he’d given her too little credit, if perhaps she had no objection to the experiment of releasing Barbara as he’d arranged. Perhaps Devi had sent a letter after all. Then his telephone rang.

“It’s me.”

“I called at three o’clock,” Singh said.

“I was over at your building. Do you have the letter?”

“There wasn’t any letter.”

“Did you notice who’s watching your building?”

“Sure.” Singh took a guess: “Our favorite detective.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

“It means it will be trickier getting Barbara out.”

“No. It means you kill her.”

Singh laughed lightly. “Oh, does it?”

“Yes. How do you think you’re going to get her out?”

“The back door, late tonight.”

“No way, Singh. Sorry. They’ll have the entire area bathed in infrared and a pair of men watching the back side of the building. They know you’re in there. They’ll stop you if you try to leave with anything more than the shirt on your back. The only way out is empty-handed.”

“They’ll tail me anyway.”

“You think you can’t shake them? Don’t be modest.”

Singh swallowed. Had she known in advance that Pokorny had found out about this building? No. She wouldn’t have come over here herself if she’d known Pokorny would be here. Clearly the only thing she’d known for sure was that she wanted Barbara dead.

“This is great,” he said.

“Do you think I wanted Pokorny on our ass like this? Do you think I want that woman’s body turning up over there? Two miles from my office? I’m telling you, this is the only way to save both our necks—”

Yours and Probst’s, Singh thought.

“—You do the job, you take the fall, you get out of the country.”

“I could just release her over here.”

“Are you serious? Your plan was bad enough without letting her know she’d been in East St. Louis all this time. You can’t let her out alive anyplace but New York. And that won’t work now.”

“Death is messy, Susan. You’ll regret it.”

As she walked up the long driveway she saw a gaunt and red-faced man in the window of a garage in the back yard, on the second floor. He gave her a wave and a friendly smile. She waved back. A friendly smile! She felt better, but she went to the side door of the house so he wouldn’t see her. She punched her gloved hand through the window in the door. The flying glass surprised her, which was silly considering that was why she’d punched it. She
reached through and turned the bolt. They had a fence to keep out burglars, but they left the gate wide open. One of these days she’d have to fix that.