and changed channels every time a commercial came on. “I don’t see how Marty Stanton can stand up under this barrage,” she said.
“Well, so far he’s done nothing but issue a bland statement through his press secretary,” Stone said. “He doesn’t seem to be at work in his office in the Executive Office Building, and he hasn’t appeared outside the vice president’s residence. It’s as if he’s taking an artillery barrage and chooses just to go underground until it stops.”
“How can he do anything else?” Ann asked. “If he sticks his head up, he takes another bullet.”
The cuckolded husband of Stanton’s paramour seemed to be the only participant in the story who was enjoying it. He announced that he had filed for divorce from his wife and moved out of their home.
Ann picked up her cell phone and listened to her voice mails. “That’s weird,” she said. “I have a voice mail from Don Dugan, asking me to call him. What could he possibly want?”
“Maybe he’s still annoyed about being barred from the campaign and wants to try again. I’d ignore the call.”
“Done,” Ann said, erasing it. She called back three of her favorite reporters and gave them just a little more information. “Director Lee spoke with Mrs. Stanton briefly Saturday night but did not discuss her endorsement. She has written Mrs. Stanton a letter thanking her for her support. No, the director will have no further comment on the matter.” Finally, she hung up and got her feet on the floor. “Whew! I’d better get to the office early today. It’s going to be chaos.”
“If you need to hide, come here,” Stone said.
“That’s exactly what I’ll do.”
The phone rang, and Stone picked it up.
“It’s Dino.”
“Hi, there. How’d the interrogation of Anita Mays and Bill Murphy go?”
“Well, there’s kind of a problem about that,” Dino said.
“What kind of problem? They lawyer up?”
“Yes, but there’s more. Ms. Mays was on her way in from Rikers Island this morning on a prison bus, when the bus was broadsided by a heavily loaded beer truck. Mays got out through a broken window and disappeared into the rush hour crowd.”
“Was she handcuffed?”
“Yes, she was cuffed to a chain that ran the length of the bus, but the chain was broken in the impact.”
“Any reports of her?”
“Not a one, and we don’t know who her friends are.”
“Does Bill Murphy know about her break?”
“No, we’ve kept the escapees’ names off the news. There were two others. We’re going to start in on Murphy in a few minutes. We’re waiting for his lawyer to arrive.”
“Good luck!”
—
Anita Mays sat on a rooftop overlooking Barrow Street and spotted the two cops in an unmarked car parked outside her shop. Satisfied there was no one inside the place, she climbed off the roof and down a ladder to the fire escape, then down to the ground. The plot of land behind the shop was filled with odd pieces of statuary that were too big to display inside, and she found the spare key under some dirt inside a concrete planter and let herself into her apartment through the rear entrance. She paused inside and listened for footsteps from upstairs but heard none. She was alone in the building, and she knew exactly what she wanted.
She and Bill had been loading the van when the cops took them, and they hadn’t finished. Her backpack still lay on the bed where she had left it, hidden under the pulled-back duvet. She had her wallet in there, and the thirteen thousand dollars that the guy Jim had paid her for the two pictures. She also had three sets of fake IDs—driver’s licenses, birth certificates—and her own passport.
She showered and changed into motorcycle leather, then packed a bag and left the apartment the way she had come in. She emerged into the block behind the shop and walked to the garage where she kept her motorcycle. There she exchanged the license plate with one from another bike parked nearby. She strapped her bag to the luggage rack and got into her helmet. Five minutes later she was headed north on the West Side Highway and thence to Connecticut, where her older sister lived in a village called Roxbury. Halfway there, she found a mall with an electronics store and bought herself a pre-paid, throwaway cell phone and called her sister.
“Hey, Berta,” she said.
“Hey, Nita.”
“Is your garage apartment available for a couple of weeks?”
“Sure. I had an ad in the paper to rent it, but