It was an American flag, but different, All red vertical stripes and no stars. She’d asked him about it once. “The Sons of Liberty,” he told her. “Here in New York, they were the first leaders of the revolution. Washington came through in ’76 and took Manhattan—for a little while, anyway—but they laid the groundwork.”
She’d put it out of her mind ever since. But now he was pulling the flag back, bracing the frame with one hand and digging behind it with the other, rummaging in a cubbyhole concealed midway up the wall.
“Is it your wife?” Seelie asked. “Is she home early?”
That didn’t seem likely, but it was an explanation she could accept. A little normality. Arthur shook his head.
He showed her his prize from the cubbyhole. A phone, slim, no case, on the cheap side. The kind you could buy for a little cash down and then pay for minutes as you went along. One of her friends was a small-time dope dealer; he had at least three phones just like it. Arthur shoved it at her.
“Hold on to this.”
“You’re scaring me,” she said. But she took the phone.
“It’s probably nothing. It’s just—”
Three more knocks, slow and loud.
“It’s probably nothing, but just in case, hang on to that for me. Stay here and stay quiet. Keep the door shut.”
She did everything but the last part, leaving the lights out and the door cracked so she could see. She tugged on her socks, black with Halloween-orange stripes, and her old tennis shoes as she watched. Arthur’s free hand dipped into the bedside table drawer.
It came out holding a gun.
Seelie didn’t even know Arthur had a gun. He never seemed like the type. But there it was, dull metal with a rough grip and a snub nose. He held it behind his back as he approached the front door.
He hesitated, just for a moment, then opened it wide.
The man on the other side, cast under the stark hallway lights, was cadaver thin. Skin like wax paper stretched across high cheekbones. His bloodless lips were a razor-thin line. He wore a black raincoat, slick from the drizzle outside, and beads of water pooled on the broad dark brim of his hat. A string tie adorned the emaciated hollow of his throat. His outfit reminded Seelie of an old-time preacher. A missionary maybe.
“Can I help you?” Arthur asked.
Behind his back, his grip tightened on the revolver. The missionary spoke with a German accent. Maybe Dutch, his refined lilt tinged with a burr of pleasure.
“Hello, Four-Nineteen.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong door, pal.”
Seelie watched through the crack in the doorway. Arthur’s thumb slowly, carefully drew back the revolver’s hammer. Her mouth went dry.
“You were sloppy in Philadelphia, Four-Nineteen.”
The hammer went click. Arthur brought his arm around and the missionary grabbed him by the other shoulder and yanked him close, hugging him like a long-lost brother.
When someone died in the movies, it was operatic. The gun went off with a peal of thunder and the victim flew back, propelled like a cannonball, spinning and trailing arcs of blood before crashing down to earth.
This wasn’t like the movies at all.
There was a sound. A polite but gruff cough. Arthur said, “Oh.” Then he stumbled back a couple of steps and sat down. His hand clutched his abdomen like he had a stomachache. Scarlet trails leaked between his fingers as the missionary stepped into the condo, closing the door behind him. A discreet pistol with a long gray tube screwed to the muzzle nestled in his other hand.
“Very sloppy,” the missionary murmured. Talking to himself now. Arthur was dead.
Huddled in the office, peering out through the crack in the doorway, Seelie tried to make herself very, very small.
The man rolled Arthur onto his back and patted him down. Now the cell phone, so innocuous, felt like a burning coal in Seelie’s pocket. Coming up empty, the killer grunted. He stepped back into the hallway and returned with an alligator-skin case, a vintage doctor’s bag. The bag plopped down next to Arthur’s body. Brass hasps flipped open under the man’s delicate thumbs.
Seelie looked to the front door. He hadn’t locked it. It was fifteen feet from her hiding place to the door, with a killer and a gun in between. Fifteen feet looked like a mile from here. Even lugging her backpack, Seelie was fast. Was she that fast?
The killer’s shadow moved in and out of her narrow frame of view. He took something from the doctor’s bag and rose, turning his back to the corpse on the floor.
Turning his back to her, too.
Seelie looked over her shoulder. No other way out of the office. Just the window, five stories straight down to the sidewalk. Lamp on the desk. She harbored a momentary fantasy of creeping up behind the guy and braining him with it. Then she thought better, as common sense outweighed her courage and her fear. Arthur’s floors were wood grain. They squeaked. The tiniest sound and he’d turn and gun her down, easy as breathing. Her other options played out in the nervous flutter of an eyelash.
If she stayed put and he didn’t search the place, he’d leave and she would be safe.
If she stayed put and he did, she would be cornered and trapped and dead.
Staying put meant trusting to chance, and Seelie never ever trusted to chance. Chance was a malicious bastard who would stab you in the back with a smile. Seelie took care of herself.
She needed a plan.
4.
A glassine pop sounded beyond the crack in the door, then a mechanical hum. Seelie was in motion, the hum fading to silence behind her back. She couldn’t worry about what it was, not yet. Arming herself came first.
Her gut reaction still had some merit. She took hold of Arthur’s desk lamp. It was brass with a green accountant’s shade, an imitation of vintage style, and heavy in her curled fist. She followed the cord, moving on her tiptoes, and yanked the plug. She made her way back to the door, quietly curling the cord around the base of the lamp so it couldn’t trip her up.
There was another pop, like a bulb burning out, and a split-second flash of hard white light. All she could see through the crack was Arthur’s corpse, sprawled in a puddle of cold blood. She had to take a chance. Clutching the lamp close to her chest, she gave the door a tiny push with the tip of her index finger and prayed the hinges didn’t squeak.
It glided wider, silent. The missionary had his back to her and his attention on the far wall. He raised a bulky gray box to his face and as the room lit in a blinding flash, she realized what it was.
He had a Polaroid camera, a model right out of the eighties. The chunky gray box hummed and spat out a square of glossy plastic. He took the photograph by the white border, gave it a vigorous shake and set it on the floor next to the others he’d taken, leaving them to develop. The popping had been the old flash bar clamped to the top of the camera, a row of bulbs burning out one by one with each squeeze of the trigger.
Seelie poked her head out a little farther. Now she knew what he was doing, just not why. Another flash lit up the curving kidney-shaped bookshelf. The missionary was moving along, shelf by shelf, taking pictures of Arthur’s book collection one chunk at a time. Hovering close enough to capture every spine, every title and author’s name.
Four pictures. A replacement flash bar poked from the open doctor’s bag, next to Arthur’s body. When he needed to reload, he’d turn around. Turning around meant seeing her. How many flashes did those old things have? Seven? Six? Five? She’d seen Polaroids before—a hipster friend with a passion for photography had sworn by them, collecting and repairing every model he could scrounge up—but she never had a reason to care.