Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [3]
Colette accepted the hot dog awkwardly. “All right, I’ll try.”
Using both hands, she took a bite. The two men watched. So did the two red-haired woman, approaching from different directions. And so did a third redheaded figure next to a flagpole near Broadway, who wore, in addition to a kerchief over her head, a gray wool scarf wrapped more than once around her neck.
“But it’s good!” said Colette. “What did you put on yours?”
“Sauerkraut, Miss,” replied Littlemore. “It’s kind of a sour, kraut-y—”
“She knows what sauerkraut is,” said Younger.
“You want some?” asked Littlemore.
“Yes, please.”
The woman under the flagpole licked her lips. Hurrying New Yorkers passed on either side, taking no notice of her—or of her scarf, which the weather didn’t justify, and which seemed to bulge out strangely from her throat. She raised a hand to her mouth; emaciated fingertips touched parted lips. She began walking toward the French girl.
“How about downtown?” said Littlemore. “Would you like to see the Brooklyn Bridge, Miss?”
“Very much,” said Colette.
“Follow me,” said the detective, throwing the vendor two bits for a tip and walking to the top of the subway stairs. He checked his pockets: “Shoot—we need another nickel.”
The street vendor, overhearing the detective, began to rummage through his change box when he caught sight of three strangely similar figures approaching his cart. The first two had joined together, fingers touching as they walked. The third advanced by herself from the opposite direction, holding her thick wool scarf to her throat. The vendor’s long fork slipped from his hand and disappeared into a pot of simmering water. He stopped looking for nickels.
“I have one,” said Younger.
“Let’s go,” replied Littlemore. He trotted down the stairs. Colette and Younger followed. They were lucky: a downtown train was entering the station; they just made it. Halfway out of the station, the train lurched to a halt. Its doors creaked ajar, snapped shut, then jerked open again. Evidently some latecomers had induced the conductor to let them on.
In the narrow arteries of lower Manhattan—they had emerged at City Hall—Younger, Colette, and Littlemore were swept up in the capillary crush of humanity. Younger inhaled deeply. He loved the city’s teemingness, its purposiveness, its belligerence. He was a confident man; he always had been. By American standards, Younger was very wellborn: a Schermerhorn on his mother’s side, a close cousin to the Fishes of New York and, through his father, the Cabots of Boston. This exalted genealogy, a matter of indifference to him now, had disgusted him as a youth. The sense of superiority his class enjoyed struck him as so patently undeserved that he’d resolved to do the opposite of everything expected of him—until the night his father died, when necessity descended, the world became real, and the whole issue of social class ceased to be of interest.
But those days were long past, scoured away by years of unstinting work, accomplishment, and war, and on this New York morning, Younger experienced a feeling almost of invulnerability. This was, however, he reflected, probably only the knowledge that no snipers lay hidden with your head in their sights, no shells were screaming through the air to relieve you of your legs. Unless perhaps it was the opposite: that the pulse of violence was so atmospheric in New York that a man who had fought in the war could breathe here, could be at home, could flex muscles still pricked by the feral after-charge of uninhibited killing—without making himself a misfit or a monster.
“Shall I tell him?” he asked Colette. To their right rose up incomprehensibly tall skyscrapers. To their left, the Brooklyn Bridge soared over the Hudson.
“No, I will,” said Colette. “I’m sorry to take so much of your time, Jimmy. I should have told you already.”
“I got all the time in the world, Miss,” said Littlemore.
“Well, it’s probably nothing, but last night a girl came to our hotel looking for me. We were out, so she left a note. Here it is.” Colette