As we polished off the pizza later that evening, I told Scott about my breaking-news beat in LA—covering wildfires, murders, shootouts, earthquakes, freeway chases, and other tragic events.
Surprisingly, he’d seen several of my stories, including my Robin Hood reports when they aired on the network. He tried every conceivable line of questioning and tactic to get me to divulge who the Robin Hood was behind the string of high-tech robberies in the mega-estates—even making outrageous guesses like Kim Kardashian and Chuck Norris—but I wouldn’t crack.
“You are tough,” he said, smiling. “I’d have better luck breaking into Fort Knox than getting an answer out of you.”
“That’s because you gave up too soon. Before you figured out my weaknesses,” I answered, then realized how flirty that sounded.
“You have weaknesses?”
Our eyes met briefly, and the charge between us was so strong that I looked away.
My cell phone vibrated in my purse, offering a good distraction.
“You’re very popular. That thing’s been ringing all evening.”
“I posted my phone number online saying I’m the correspondent to text or call if they have tips about any of the good stuff we’re seeing.”
He grinned. “So you’re tough and bold.”
I reached into my purse and glanced at the screen. Seven missed calls, and one unknown number calling me now.
I answered. “Kate Bradley.”
“Hiya, Kate. You don’t know me, but I run a wholesale party-supply shop on Twenty-Third in the Flatiron,” the man said. “I saw your report about all the balloons that are everywhere around the city. I saw the guy.”
“You saw what guy?”
“The guy who’s doing it. When I came in the front door of the shop this afternoon, a guy was leaving here with six shopping bags of our bulk-pack latex balloons. Probably had more than ten thousand balloons in those bags. That’s not unusual for us, really. But then I noticed they were all purple and white. So I followed him.”
“You followed one of your customers? What’d he look like?”
“Shorter than me, but most people are. I’m six foot two. He was wearing a gray hoodie with the hood pulled tight around his head, so I couldn’t get a look at his face. Once he went inside his apartment, I stopped following him. It wasn’t the safest of neighborhoods, and I didn’t want to get myself killed.”
“Where’d he go?”
“828 East Thirtieth Street. He went into the first apartment on the right. First floor.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
No.
That’s all the email said. One crystalline word.
I’d emailed Mark asking if I could follow up on the lead about the party-store guy, and his emphatic reply came a swift thirty seconds later. It wasn’t difficult to read between the lines of his one-word answer: the government shutdown had entered its third day, and he needed me to cover it. The story about the gifts mysteriously appearing throughout the city? Over.
At least in his mind.
In mine, that meant I’d have to chase the lead before I headed into work. I set my alarm to get up early and threw on my running gear and shoes, determined to combine my morning run with a trip to 828 East Thirtieth. The address was about two miles away, a fairly straightforward path that I could run instead of slogging through town in a taxi or on the subway. And I could listen to the news rundown on my earbuds on the way there. A gold-star multitasking morning.
As I stepped outside my apartment, I almost trampled a bouquet of flowers on my doorstep.
I reached down to pick them up and realized that they were the same purple-and-white bouquets people were finding on doorsteps all around the city.
I blinked back tears. It was easy to dismiss something like this as “trivial” . . . until it happened to you. The simple flowers—given to me by someone I didn’t know—made the city seem softer. Smaller.
I breathed in their sweet scent, remembering a morning when Eric had surprised me with a sprawling bouquet of the orange poppies that grew wild in his garden. I let the scent and memory envelop me: The air, soft and still. The low timbre of his voice. A lone butterfly fluttering by.
My neighbor Cora must have heard my door open because she peered into the hallway.
“Ov-va!” she said, picking up the flowers. “What are these for?”
“We all got them.” I pointed down the hallway, where bouquets were stationed at every door.
She eyed the scene with suspicion. “From who?”
“The same anonymous people who are doing this all over the city.”
It was the first time I’d seen her smile. “Oh good. I was worried they were from a man I know who needs a green card.” She put the flowers to her nose. “Purple is my daughter’s favorite. Purple dresses. Purple flowers. When she was little, she wanted everything purple.”
“Enjoy,” I said, then turned to go back in my apartment.
“You remind me of her,” she said. “Anna. She is about your age. Thirty.”
I turned to face her. “She lives here in Manhattan?”
She shook her head. “Optyne. Ukraine.” She looked at me with pale eyes, pausing as if wondering if she should say more. “The war is such misery there. But all my family—my mother, brother, sisters—anyone who’s left is in that village.”
“Do you go back often?”
Her face fell. “Never. I come here three years ago to make money and send it back for them.”
“Must be hard for you to be so far from home.”
Her hand caressed the flowers. “I am fortunate. I clean homes for the man who owns this building. He lets me to pay less rent so I can send more to them. They have nothing.” She gazed at the flowers. “And today? I have these.”
Then she turned and disappeared back into her apartment.
The path to the address the party-store owner had given me was an easy run, but the city smells were getting to me. I’d become used to the putrid scents wafting up from the subway vents and even the wet-dog smell of the mounds of trash bags, but the stench of burning rubber and diesel-exhaust fumes mixed with a hint of burnt pretzel was making me nauseated.
I ran faster until I spotted the apartment building I’d seen on Google Maps—three stories, with an entrance flanked by sagging faux-Corinthian columns. Luckily, the front door hadn’t closed properly, so I was able to slip inside. I knocked on the first door on the right.
“Who’s there?” a woman asked from inside the door. I had the sense she was looking through the peephole.
“Kate Bradley.” I flashed my friendliest smile. “From ANC. I have a quick question for you.”
I heard her unlock the dead bolt and unchain the door. She squeezed the door open a few inches. “How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a guy who came in here yesterday. Wearing a gray hoodie.”
She opened the door a little wider, and I could see she was petite, five four at most, and in her midtwenties, with long blonde hair tied back into a ponytail. She held a fresh bridal bouquet, white roses. “I think you have the wrong address,” she said with a slight drawl. “No guys live here.”