Page 90 of The Tenant
She smiles sleepily. “Thanks. You’re a doll.”
A few minutes later, she is completely passed out in the back seat. Which is good, because by now she might have noticed that we are nowhere near wherever she is meeting her friends for drinks.
But the sedatives won’t last forever. That’s why I also have a bottle of chloroform next to me. That will knock her out long enough for me to bind her wrists and ankles with duct tape when we get to our final destination—a patch of woods not too far from where I used to live in Telmont, New Jersey.
And then Stacie Parker and I are going to have some fun. Well, I’ll have fun at least. And when the fun is over, I’m going to bring Blake a little souvenir for the kitchen. I think he’ll really enjoy it.
59
“I need to move out,”Amanda tells me over the phone. “Blake has become intolerable. I can’t deal with him anymore.”
I got the call from Amanda right after I got out of the D train station in Brooklyn. Apparently, Blake has been terrorizing her since I moved out. He wants her to leave, and she wants to leave. I’m not sure what prompted this. I can imagine that hair in the Chinese food might have pushed him over the edge. He’s squeamish.
I doubt anyone has found the little gift I left in the kitchen yet—I’d know if the fingers had surfaced. And I’m even more doubtful that Blake discovered Stacie’s blood on the floorboards of the living room. I saved the blood after I killed her and spilled it right in the center of the room to make it easy for the police to find, in case they are completely incompetent. I don’t think it will be hard for them to believe Blake killed Stacie though, especially since he won’t be alive to defend himself.
“I understand if you can’t live with him,” I say. “I mean, that’s why I left. I couldn’t take it anymore either.”
“I never thought so before”—Amanda’s voice trembles—“but I’m beginning to worry he could be dangerous.”
I still don’t believe Blake is capable of hurting anyone. He doesn’t have it in him. Take it from a woman who knows.
“What if we talk tomorrow?” I suggest. “I can come over before Blake gets home from work, and we can talk about finding a new place together.” When she hesitates, I add, “I mean, it’s not like you’re going to move out this second, right?”
“I guess,” Amanda says, although she sounds doubtful.
“Listen,” I say. “You scope out some apartment listings. We’ll make plans to check them out.”
The plan seems to placate Amanda. She agrees to meet at the brownstone tomorrow, early evening.
That means I don’t have much time. Whatever is going to happen must happen tomorrow.
So it’s a good thing I’m here in Brooklyn, a block away from Elijah’s apartment. He’s got a few things for me, and he didn’t want to carry them around. One especially.
Elijah lives in a four-story walk-up, and of course he’s on the fourth floor. The street is relatively deserted except for a man lying on the sidewalk, clutching a drink in a brown paper bag. Several storefronts are shut down and boarded up, with the wooden planks covered in obscene graffiti. It’s not exactly prime real estate, like our brownstone on the Upper West Side, and I find myself clutching my purse closer to my chest. With Elijah’s brains, he could be incredibly successful, but he lacks Blake’s ambition, and I get the feeling he’d rather spend his free hours playing video games than climbing the corporate ladder. Plus, his social skills are severely lacking.
I walk up to the intercom and hit the button for apartment 4A. Almost instantly, the buzzer sounds, and I’m able to go inside.
I huff and puff my way up the stairs to the fourth floor. I don’t know how he manages to live here, although I can just imagine Elijah dashing up all those stairs every day. He probably enjoys it.
When I get to apartment 4A, I have to take a second to catch my breath before I ring the doorbell. Again, Elijah answers almost immediately like he’s been waiting just behind the door, and his face lights up at the sight of me standing there red-faced.
“Whitney.” He grins. “Come in.”
I don’t bother to correct him this time. It’s not like anybody important is going to overhear in this hellhole.
I slip inside Elijah’s small apartment and take off my jacket. It’s the first time I’ve ever been here, and I’m surprised by how clean it is. I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. I had imagined dirty pizza boxes and lots of bottles of Mountain Dew. Maybe he cleaned because he knew I was coming. The furniture is sparse—a sofa, a wide-screen TV, a bookcase constructed from cinder blocks, and a coffee table with a game controller abandoned on it.
As for Elijah, he looks about the same as always. He’s wearing another old T-shirt with a pair of jeans, and even though we’re indoors, he’s wearing his white Linux baseball cap with the penguin on it. I’ve only seen him without it a handful of times, and his thinning sand-colored hair was always plastered to his skull, like a case of chronic hat hair.
“Nice place,” I comment.
He beams at me. “Thanks.”
Okay, enough small talk. “You got everything?”
The smile drops off his face. He usually seems proud to help me with everything I ask him for, but not this time. “I do.”
“Let’s have it then.”
