Woman in the Window by Thomas Gifford Read Free Book Online

the eyepiece.
    By eleven o’clock her ear was hurting from the telephone receiver digging into her small pearl earring and she needed coffee. She went and got it herself, brought it back to her desk, and the intercom began its dim, insistent buzzing. Lisa’s voice was low and amused: “I’ve got the fuzz out here for you.”
    “The what?”
    “Fuzz. A cop. Sergeant MacPherson, NYPD. Nice blue suit, brown shoes …”
    “What does he want?”
    “To see you.”
    “Okay. Have him come in.” She’d thought of little but Lotte’s fears and warnings through the night and morning. Now, the police. The police?
    Sergeant Danny MacPherson looked about her own age, central casting’s idea of a certain kind of cop: a tweed jacket, brown slacks (belying Lisa’s idea of humorous observation), a pale, rectangular face, a level gaze, hair longish and combed back from his flat forehead, a wide mouth with a firm set to the jaw: no colorful little quirks like the guys on “Hill Street Blues”: he seemed to date from the early age of television, before ugly and real became beautiful. He walked in, showed her his badge or ID card—she didn’t really look—and introduced himself. He didn’t smile. She bet he was first in his class at the police academy or the John Jay school.
    “Ms. Rader,” he said, with acute attention to the Ms. “I’m running down this gun thing that ran in the Post. And the Times and the Daily News. Did you happen to see the news last night, by the way?” He sat down, crossed his well-creased slacks.
    “No,” she said. There had been a surprisingly sardonic cast to his voice and she didn’t much like it. An Irish brogue, a smelly black cigar, and hairy knuckles would all have been more comforting.
    “Well, I did. Your little incident was turned into a cute closer on the gossip portion of the show—it was practically word-for-word from Garfein’s column: a photograph of you, the story of what a big-time agent you are, then the scene you’re supposed to have witnessed. All that same garbage about how it might make a wonderful plot for a movie.” He folded his arms. “I wasn’t amused, Ms. Rader. Can you imagine why?”
    “Not really,” she said, “aside from the fact that it’s not a very amusing story. As well as an invasion of my privacy. Which could conceivably put me in even more danger from the man who threw the gun away.” She felt Tony’s and Jay’s and Lotte’s concerns tugging at her, infiltrating her subconscious, MacPherson was bringing it all back.
    “I wasn’t amused because I don’t like being left out of funny things involving guns. Frankly, it made me feel like a horses ass—do I make myself clear? This part of Manhattan is mine, Ms. Rader.”
    “How very grand. Does that include all the people, too?”
    “When guns are involved, it most certainly does. Now before I hear your story, I have a simple question. I can’t help wondering why you didn’t report what you saw to us right away. Before you called the newspapers and made sure you got as much publicity as you could. I’m just curious, you understand.”
    “You tell me, Mr. MacPherson, is this your idea of police brutality? A withering crossfire of sarcasm—”
    “Good lord, no.” MacPherson’s face changed fractionally, whether around the eyes or the mouth she wasn’t quite sure: perhaps it was what passed for his smile. “This was more in the line of an insult. But then, I’m not very happy about you and your newspaper friends. And I’m still wondering why you didn’t give us a call.”
    “You tell me this is your turf. My God, if everybody who saw something weird went running to the cops … well, we’d spend our entire lives at the precinct house, wouldn’t we?”
    “But why run to the newspapers?”
    “I didn’t run to the newspapers.”
    “You don’t say. … Well, why don’t you just tell me the whole story.”
    “Why don’t you try not to be so supercilious.”
    “It’s a deal,