The younger one flashed his badge and said, "Sergeant Capricorn Caputo and Detective Ryan Hayes, NYPD. The younger one was wiry and had a sharp, expressionless face, something like a hatchet blade, or… no, a hatchet blade is exactly right. The older one was as big as a bear but kind of soft-looking and spongy. I peered out through the opening and saw two men in the hallway. I made sure the chain was in place and then opened the door-but just a crack. A harsh masculine voice called out, "This is the police." How could you let them up?"īefore Sal could answer, the doorbell rang, and then fists pounded the door. "Miss Tandy? Two policemen are on the way up to your apartment right now. I spoke in a loud whisper to the doorman through the speaker: "Sal? What's happening?" When I reached the foyer, I stabbed at the intercom button to stop the irritating blare before it woke up the whole house. My bedroom was the one closest to the front door, so I bolted through the living room, hooked a right at the sharks in the aquarium coffee table, and passed between Robert and his nonstop TV. Why was the doorman paging us? This was crazy. I saw three police cruisers and what could have been an unmarked police car parked on Seventy-second Street, right at the front gates of our apartment building, the exclusive and infamous Dakota.Ī moment later our intercom buzzed, a jarring blat-blat that punched right through my flesh and bones. I threw off my double layer of blankets, went to my window, and looked down to the street, nine dizzying floors below. Was the building on fire? Did some old neighbor have a stroke? That was what caused me to wake up with a hundred-miles-an-hour heartbeat.
I woke up to the scream of sirens speeding up Central Park West, maybe one of the most common sounds in New York City. So I never heard a thing-no frantic thumping, no terrified shouting, no fracas at all. I'd been asleep downstairs, directly under my parents' bedroom, when it happened.
He was right about the last part-and, as things turned out, the first part as well.īut I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? Please forgive me.… I do that a lot. The night my parents died-after they'd been carried out in slick black body bags through the service elevator-my brother Matthew shouted at the top of his powerful lungs, "My parents were vile, but they didn't deserve to be taken out with the trash!" I'm not sure if I can even tell the difference anymore. So here goes nothing, or maybe everything. I have some really bad secrets to share with someone, and it might as well be you-a stranger, a reader of books, but most of all, a person who can't hurt me.
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