Page 4 of The Writer

Not tonight.

Declan’s got a full dance card.

Five minutes until the next train.

He’s brushing the dust from his jeans when his phone buzzes again. This time it’s a text:

Pick up, you shit!

When the phone starts to ring again, he has half a mind to chuck it against the far wall but decides not to. Sometimes it’s better to rip off the Band-Aid. He thumbs the side button.“Look, man, I’m a little into something right now. Can this wait?”

Cordova’s scratchy voice comes back at him. “Where are you?”

“Busy.”

“Busy where? You near the Upper West Side?”

Declan glances around the empty subway station. At the dirt and grime. The streaks on the ground around him left by his shoes, his fingers. There’s a poster on the wall opposite for a new shark exhibit coming to the museum next month. The date grabs him—next month.

He swallows.

“Declan, you there?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Call came in. Sounds like a B and E gone bad.”

The clock at the far end of the platform reads 9:52 p.m. “Sounds like someone else’s problem.”

“Got at least one dead with shots fired at the responding officers. Your name came up.”

“Came up how?”

“I don’t know the details, but LT wants us there. How fast can you get to two eleven Central Park West? The Beresford.”

Four minutes until the next train.

He doesn’t have to do this.

He doesn’t have to do a damn thing but get back up on the edge of the platform and count to a little over two hundred and—

Cardova says, “You need me to send a car for you?”

Somewhere behind Declan, a woman giggles; the sound echoes off the subway tiles. A moment later, two twenty-somethings come down the steps from the street. Pretty girlin a slinky black dress leaning heavily on a guy in a sports coat, jeans, and Birkenstocks, both of them drunk. Probably looking for a little privacy. Evidently, neither one is happy to see him standing there, because they quickly turn around and stumble back up the steps.

Life goes on.

Declan blows out a defeated breath and looks down at the scrape on his hand. Pink and ugly, but no longer bleeding. “I’m in the park. I can be there in a few minutes.”

“Take the Central Park West entrance. You want the tower apartment. I’ll meet you. Move.”

CHAPTER FOUR

BY THE TIME Declan ascends the steps to Eighty-First, the drunk couple is gone and he is no longer shaking. The anxiety is still there, though. It’s bubbling beneath the surface of his skin, looking for a way out. It’s not until he catches sight of the Beresford building that he’s able to focus, get his head in the game.

Less than a block away, the twenty-two-story Beresford looms over Central Park West like some patriarch of old New York. Built in 1929 in the Renaissance style, it’s one of the most prestigious and luxurious apartment buildings in the city. The limestone exterior is adorned with gargoyles, dragons, and floral patterns, from the oversize doors at street level to the three towers at the top. A modern-day castle. The building screamsmoney.

You will never live there, his father had told him about a year before he died. They’d been on the bus, heading home from the Irish fair at Coney Island. His mother was sleeping. One of Declan’s few memories of the three of them together outside their cramped apartment.You’re ever lucky enough to set foot inside, it will be to clean up the shit of someone who does live there. You remember that, because folks like that got a way of making their shit sparkle. Make you think youwantto clean it up. You do it, there’s nothing wrong with honest work, but don’t let them trick you into thinking you belong. That happens, and they own you.

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