The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [13]
“That’s just the point, John.” As Miss Howard went on, both Cyrus and I drew closer, now very interested in what she was saying and not wanting to miss a trick. “You would think that the Spanish officials would react that way, wouldn’t you? But not at all. Señora Linares claims that the kidnapping occurred when she was walking alone with the baby in Central Park one evening. She couldn’t see the abductor—he came from behind and hit her on the head with something. But when she went home to tell her husband what had happened, he reacted strangely—bizarrely. He showed little concern for his wife, and less for his daughter. He told her that she must tell no one what had happened—they would wait for a ransom note, and if none came, it would mean that the child had been taken by a lunatic and killed.”
Mr. Moore shrugged. “Such things do happen, Sara.”
“But he didn’t even try going to the police! A full day passed, no ransom note came, and finally Señora Linares declared that if her husband wouldn’t go to the authorities, she would.” Miss Howard paused, wringing her hands a bit. “He beat her, John. Savagely. You should see her—in fact, you’re going to see her. She didn’t know what to do—her husband said he’d do worse if she ever talked of going to the police again. Finally, she confided in a friend of hers at the French consulate, a woman I helped out with some minor marital rubbish a few months ago. The Frenchwoman told her about me. The señora’s waiting for us. You’ve got to come and talk to her—”
“Wait, wait, wait, now,” Mr. Moore answered, holding up his cigarette and trying to salvage his night of pleasure. “You’re forgetting a few things here. In the first place, these people are diplomatic officials. The laws are different. I don’t know exactly what they are in a case like this, but they’re different. Second, if this Linares character doesn’t want to pursue it, then who are we to—”
Mr. Moore was interrupted by the sudden appearance, behind Cyrus and me, of the woman he’d just minutes ago been in bed with. She’d apparently retrieved her clothes from the hall and was fully dressed and ready to depart.
“Excuse me, John,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t sure what these people wanted, but it does sound important—so I thought I ought to go. I’ll see myself out.”
She turned to leave, and Mr. Moore suddenly looked like he’d done a few seconds in the electrical chair: He cried “No!” desperately, secured his sheet around himself again, and bolted toward the bedroom door. “No, Lily, wait!”
“Call me at the theater tomorrow!” the woman answered from the front door. “I’d love to take this up again sometime!” And with that she was gone.
Mr. Moore stalked over to Miss Howard and glared at her what you might call hotly. “You, Sara Howard, have just destroyed what was well on its way to becoming one of the three best nights of my life!”
Miss Howard only smiled a bit. “I won’t ask what the other two were. No, really, I am sorry, John.
But this situation is desperate.”
“It had better be.”
“It is, trust me. You haven’t heard the best part yet.”
“Oh. Haven’t I…?”
“Señora Linares came to me in the greatest secrecy, after normal business hours. In order to make sure that she wasn’t followed by anyone from the consulate, she took the Third Avenue El downtown. When she got off the train at Ninth Street, she walked along the platform toward the stairs down to the street—and happened to glance into the last car of the train.”
Miss Howard stopped for a moment, causing Mr. Moore to get a bit agitated. “Sara, you can dispense with all these dramatic pauses. They’re not going to improve my mood. What did she see?”
“She saw her child, John.”
Mr. Moore’s face screwed up. “You mean she thought she saw her child—wishful thinking, that kind ofthing.”
“No, John. Her child. In the arms of a woman.” Miss Howard allowed herself one more smiling pause. “A white American woman.”
Mr. Moore digested that little tidbit with a kind of tormented but interested moan: the newshound was winning out over the libertine. He