Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

Myra 9834 sleeps in a Victoria’s Secret T, a fact I deduce because she owns five of them in a size too big to wear out in public. She wakes early to the thought of an Entenmann’s danish pastry (never low-fat, I’m proud of her for that) and home-brewed Starbucks; she rarely goes to the coffee shops. Which is a shame, since I do like to observe in person the antelope I’ve had my eye on, and Starbucks is among the best places on the veldt to do so. Around eight-twenty she leaves her apartment and heads for work in Midtown-Maple, Reed & Summers advertising, where she’s a junior account executive.

Onward and upward. I continue on my way this Sunday, wearing a nondescript baseball cap (they account for 87.3 percent of all men’s headgear in the metro area). And, as always, eyes down. If you think a satellite can’t record your smiling face from thirty miles up in space, think again; somewhere in a dozen servers around the world there are hundreds of pictures of you taken from on high, and let’s hope all you were doing when they snapped the shutter was squinting away the sun while you glanced up at the Goodyear blimp or a cloud shaped like a lamb.

My passion for collecting includes not only these daily facts but the minds of the sixteens I’m interested in, and Myra 9834 is no exception. She goes for drinks with friends after work with some frequency and I’ve noticed that she picks up the tab often, too often, in my opinion. Clearly she’s buying their love-right, Dr. Phil? Possibly had acne during the adolescence terrible ; she still sees a dermatologist once in a while, though the bills are low, as if she’s just debating dermabrasion (completely unnecessary from what I’ve seen) or checking to make sure the zits aren’t returning like ninjas in the night.

Then, after the three rounds of Cosmopolitans with the gals, or a visit to a fit-and-start health club, it’s home to phone calls, the ubiquitous computer and basic, not premium, cable. (I enjoy tracking her viewing habits; her show selections suggest extreme loyalty; she changed networks when Seinfeld did, and she blew off two dates to spend the night with Jack Bauer.)

Bedtime follows, and she sometimes enjoys a bit of distraction (buying double-A batteries in bulk tells the tale, her digital camera and iPod being rechargeable).

Of course, those are the data on her weekday life. But today’s a glorious Sunday, and Sundays are different. This is when Myra 9834 climbs aboard her beloved, and very expensive, bicycle, and heads out to cruise the streets of her city.

The routes vary. Central Park might figure, as does Riverside Park and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. But whatever the path, Myra 9834 makes one particular stop without fail toward the end of her journey: Hudson’s Gourmet Deli on Broadway. And then, food and shower beckoning, she takes the fastest bike route home-which, owing to the madness of downtown traffic, is right past the very spot where I’m standing at the moment.

I’m in front of a courtyard leading to a ground-floor loft, owned by Maury and Stella Griszinski (imagine-buying ten years ago for $278,000). The Griszinskis aren’t home, though, because they’re enjoying a springtime cruise in Scandinavia. They’ve stopped the mail and have hired no plant waterers or pet sitters. And there’s no alarm system.

No sign of her yet. Hm. Has something intervened? I might be wrong.

But I rarely am.

Five agonizing minutes pass. I pull images of the Harvey Prescott painting out of my mental collection. I enjoy them for a time and tuck them back. I glance around and I resist a salivating urge to go through the fat trash bin here to see what treasures it might hold.

Stay in the shadows… Stay off the grid. Especially at times like this. And avoid the windows at all costs. You’d be amazed at the lure of voyeurism and how many people are watching you from the other side of the glass, which, to you, is only a reflection or glare.

Where is she? Where?

If I don’t get my transaction soon-

And then, ah, I feel the slam within me as I see her: Myra 9834.

Moving slowly, low gear, beautiful legs pumping away. A $1,020 bike. More than my first car cost.

Ah, the bicycle outfit is tight. My breath is fast. I need her so badly.

A glance up and down the street. Empty, except for the approaching woman, who’s now getting close, thirty feet away. Cell phone off but flipped open and up to my ear, Food Emporium bag dangling. I glance at her once. Stepping to the curb, as I carry on an animated and entirely fictitious conversation. I pause to let her pass. Frowning, looking up. Then smiling. “Myra?”

She slows. Biking outfit so tight. Control it, control it. Act casual.

Nobody in the empty windows facing the street. No traffic.

“Myra Weinburg?”

The squeal of bike brakes. “Hi.” The greeting and attempted flash of recognition are due solely to the fact that people would rather do almost anything than be embarrassed.

I’m totally in the role of the mature businessman as I walk toward her, telling my invisible friend I’ll call back and close the phone.

She replies, “I’m sorry.” A smiling frown. “You’re…?”

“Mike. I’m the AE from Ogilvy? I think we met at…yeah, that’s it. The National Foods shoot at David’s. We were in the second studio. I came by and met you and-what’s his name? Richie. You guys had a better caterer than we did.”

Now a hearty smile. “Oh, sure.” She remembers David and National Foods and Richie and the photo studio’s caterer. But she can’t remember me because I was never there. And nobody named Mike was there either but she won’t focus on that because it happens to be the name of her dead father.

“Good seeing you,” I say, giving her my best how’s-this-for-a-coincidence grin. “You live around here?”

“Village. You?”

A nod to the Griszinskis. “There.”

“Wow, a loft. Sweet.”

I ask about her job, she asks about mine. Then I wince. “Better get inside. I just ran out for lemons.” Holding up the citrus prop. “Got some people over.” My voice fades as a brilliant idea comes to mind. “Hey, I don’t know if you have plans but we’re having a late brunch. You want to join us?”

“Oh, thanks, but I’m a mess.”

“Please…we were out all day on a Walk for the Cure, my partner and me.” Nice touch, I think. And wholly improvised. “We’re sweatier than you, believe me. This is way casual. It’ll be fun. There’s a senior AE from Thompson there. And a couple guys from Burston. Cute but straight.” I shrug mournfully. “And we’ve got a surprise actor too. I won’t tell you who.”

“Well…”

“Oh, come on. You look like you need a Cosmo… At the photo shoot, didn’t we both decide that was our favorite drink?”

The Tombs.

Okay, it wasn’t the Tombs any longer, the original one from the 1800s. That building was long gone, but everybody still used the name when describing this place: the Manhattan Detention Center, downtown, in which Arthur Rhyme was now sitting, his heart doing the same despairing thud, thud, thud it had regularly since he was arrested.

But whether the place was called the Tombs, the MDC or the Bernard Kerik Center (as it had been temporarily until the former police chief and corrections head went down in flames) to Arthur the place was simply hell.

Absolute hell.

He was in an orange jumpsuit like everyone else but there the similarity with his fellow cons ended. The five-foot-eleven man, 190 pounds, with corporate-clipped brown hair was as different as could be from the other souls awaiting trial here. No, he wasn’t big and inked (he’d learned that meant tattooed) or shaved or stupid or black or Latino. The sort of criminal Arthur would resemble-businessmen charged with white-collar crimes-didn’t reside in the Tombs until trial; they were out on bond. Whatever sins they’d committed, the infractions didn’t warrant the two-million-dollar bail set for Arthur.