Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [61]
Disturbed, sweating, Carroll sat upright.
He rubbed his eyes, swung his legs over the side of the rumpled covers on his bed.
And then he realized that the bell was real. Someone was ringing the doorbell and this was the sound his dream had absorbed.
He wandered from the bedroom. He squinted into the spyhole of the Manhattan apartment he’d once shared with Nora.
“Who is it?”
He could see nothing except swirling blackness where the hallway had definitely been last night.
Years before, he’d lucked into the West Side apartment, a sprawling three bedroom with river views. The apartment was still rent-controlled at four hundred and seventy-nine dollars a month, an impossible bargain. After Nora died, Carroll had decided to hold on to the place and use it nights when he worked late in the city.
“Who is it? Who’s out there?” Doorbell goddamn ring itself or was he still dreaming?
Whoever was out in the apartment house hallway didn’t seem to want to answer.
Carroll reached back for his Magnum.
Arch Carroll finally unlocked the Segal, but he left the heavy linkchain secure.
He swung the front door open about four inches and the chain snapped against the sturdy wooden jamb.
Caitlin Dillon was peering in at him through the doorway crack. She looked frightened. Her eyes were hollow and dark.
Chapter 43
“I COULDN’T SLEEP.”
“What time is it?”
“I’m embarrassed to say it’s before five. It’s about twenty to five. Okay?”
“In the morning?”
“Please laugh at this or something. Oh, God. I’m going.” She suddenly turned away.
“Hold it. Wait. Hey, stop walking.”
She half turned at the elevator. Her hair was windblown and her cheeks were flushed, like she’d been riding horses in Central Park.
“Come on in…. Please come in and talk. Please?”
Inside his apartment, Carroll whisked clean the kitchen table, and he made coffee. Caitlin sat down and twisted her long fingers together nervously. She opened a box of cigarettes and lit one. When she spoke her voice was husky, slightly unfamiliar.
“I’ve been smoking for hours, which is uncharacteristic of me. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t stop pacing around. All that information about the stolen securities kept spinning through my head, Arch…”
Carroll shook the last remnants of the bad dream from his mind, jerking himself into the present “Green Band’s moving. Only we can’t figure out the direction they’re taking.”
“That’s one thing that bothers me,” Caitlin said. “And then I start to wonder how much has been stolen and how far this whole incredible thing goes. I calculated an amount in the region of a couple hundred million, but God knows how much more has actually disappeared.”
She sighed, crushing her cigarette impatiently. “Also, I’m still really ticked off at not being invited to that meeting in Washington. Do they honestly think I’ve got nothing to contribute?”
Carroll had never seen her in this frame of mind. It was like watching her from a whole new set of angles—she was angry, she was worried, and she seemed temporarily confused. Her usual business-world professionalism couldn’t help her now; she was reduced to asking questions which neither of them could answer. Suddenly, Caitlin Dillon wasn’t quite so untouchable.
Around five-fifteen they made Sara Lee danishes, the only moderately edible items in Carroll’s kitchen.
“When I was thirteen or so I actually won a bakeoff. This was at an Ohio county fair,” Caitlin admitted as she pulled the danishes out of the oven.
They moved out to a windowed nook which overlooked the river and the New Jersey Palisades. One whole wall of the room was covered with thirty-five millimeter pictures of the kids. A single, fading picture was of Carroll as an Army sergeant in Viet Nam. He’d taken down the last pictures of Nora only a few months before.
“Mmmfff. Tremendous.” He licked sticky crumbs off his index and middle fingers.
Caitlin’s eyes rolled back into her forehead. “I’m not impressed with your kitchen supplies, Arch. Your cupboard’s stocked with four bottles of beer, a half jar of Skippy peanut