“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Jerome says. “We were going to surprise you. Were you here, Holly?”

“No,” she says. “I was gone. In fact, I am gone. Christmas shopping on the other side of town. That’s where I am right now. You didn’t call me right after the attack because… well…”

“Because we didn’t want to upset you,” Barbara says. “Right, Jerome?”

“Right.”

“Good,” Holly says. “Can you both remember that story?”

They say they can.

“Then it’s time for Jerome to call 911.”

Barbara says, “What are you going to do, Hols?”

“Clean up.” Holly points at the elevator.

“Oh, Christ,” Jerome says. “I forgot there’s a body down there. I clean forgot.”

“I didn’t,” Barbara says, and shudders. “Jesus, Holly, how can you ever explain a dead guy at the bottom of the elevator shaft?”

Holly is remembering what happened to the other outsider. “I don’t think it will be an issue.”

“What if he’s still alive?”

“He fell five stories, Barb. Six, counting the basement. And then the elevator…” Holly turns one hand palm up and brings the other down on it, making a sandwich.

“Oh,” Barbara says. Her voice is faint. “Right.”

“Call 911, Jerome. I think you’re basically okay, but I’m no doctor.”

While he does that, she goes to the elevator and brings it up to the first floor. With the fix in place again, it works fine.

When the doors open, Holly spies a furry hat, the kind the Russians call an ushanka. She remembers the man who passed by her as she was opening the lobby door.

She returns to her two friends, holding the hat in one hand. “Tell me the story again.”

“Mugger,” Barbara says, and Holly decides that’s good enough. They’re smart, and the rest of the story is simple. If everything works out the way she thinks it will, the cops aren’t going to care about where she was, anyway.

19

Holly leaves them and takes the stairs to the basement, which stinks of old cigarette smoke and what she’s afraid is mold. The lights are off and she has to use her phone to look for the switches. Shadows leap as she shines it around, making it all too easy to imagine the Ondowsky-thing in the dark, waiting to spring out at her and fasten its hands around her neck. Her skin is lightly sheened with sweat, but her face is cold. She has to consciously stop her teeth from chattering. I’m in shock myself, she thinks.

At last she finds a double row of switches. She flips them all, and banks of fluorescents light up with a hive buzzing. The basement is a filthy labyrinth of stacked bins and boxes. She thinks again that their building superintendent—whose salary they pay—is your basic man-slut.

She orients herself and goes to the elevator. The doors (the ones down here are filthy and the paint is chipped) are firmly shut. Holly puts her bag on the floor and takes out Bill’s revolver. Then she removes the elevator drop-key from its hook on the wall and jams it into the hole on the lefthand door. The key hasn’t been used for a long time, and it’s balky. She has to put the gun in the waistband of her slacks and use both hands before it will turn. Gun once more in hand, she pushes one of the doors. Both of them slide open.

A smell of mingled oil, grease, and dust wafts out. In the center of the shaft is a long piston-like thing which she’ll later learn is called the plunger. Scattered around it, among a litter of cigarette butts and fast food bags, are the clothes Ondowsky was wearing when he went on his final trip. A short one, but lethal.

Of Ondowsky himself, also known as Chet on Guard, there is no sign.

The fluorescents down here are bright, but the bottom of the shaft is still too shadowy for Holly’s liking. She finds a flashlight on Al Jordan’s cluttered worktable and shines it carefully around, making sure to check behind the plunger. She’s not looking for Ondowsky—he’s gone—but for bugs of a certain exotic type. Dangerous bugs that may be looking for a new host. She sees none. Whatever infested Ondowsky may have outlived him, but not for long. She spies a burlap sack in one corner of the cluttered, filthy basement, and stuffs Ondowsky’s clothes into it, along with the fur hat. His undershorts go last. Holly picks them up between two tweezed fingers, revulsion pulling her mouth down at the corners. She drops the shorts into the sack with a shudder and a little cry (“Oough!”) and then uses the flats of her hands to run the elevator doors closed. She relocks them with the drop-key, then hangs the key back on its hook.

She sits and waits. Once she’s sure Jerome, Barbara, and the 911 responders must be gone, she shoulders her purse and carries the bag containing Ondowsky’s clothes upstairs. She leaves by the side door. She thinks about tossing the clothes into the Dumpster, but that would be a little too close for comfort. She takes the bag with her instead, which is perfectly okay. Once she’s on the street, she’s just one more person carrying a parcel.

She’s barely started her car when she gets a call from Jerome, telling her that he and Barbara were victims of a mugging just as they were about to let themselves into the Frederick Building by the side door. They’re at Kiner Memorial, he says.

“Oh my God, that’s terrible,” Holly says. “You should have called me sooner.”

“Didn’t want to worry you,” Jerome says. “We’re basically okay, and he didn’t get anything.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Holly dumps the burlap bag containing Ondowsky’s clothes in a trashcan on her way to John M. Kiner Memorial Hospital. It’s starting to snow.

She turns on the radio, gets Burl Ives bellowing “Holly Jolly Christmas” at the top of his fracking voice, and turns it off again. She hates that song above all others. For obvious reasons.

You can’t have everything, she thinks; into every life a little poop must fall. But sometimes you do get what you need. Which is really all a sane person can ask for.

And she is.

Sane.

December 22, 2020

Holly has to give a deposition at the offices of McIntyre and Curtis at ten o’clock. It’s one of her least favorite things, but she’s just a minor witness in this custody case, which is good. It’s a Samoyed at issue, rather than a child, and that lowers the stress level a bit. There are a few nasty questions from one of the lawyers, but after what she’s been through with Chet Ondowsky—and George—the interrogation seems pretty tame. She’s done in fifteen minutes. She turns on her phone once she’s in the corridor, and sees she’s missed a call from Dan Bell.

But it isn’t Dan who answers when she calls back; it’s the grandson.

“Grampa had a heart attack,” Brad says. “Another heart attack. It’s actually his fourth. He’s in the hospital, and this time he won’t be coming out.”

There’s a long, watery intake of breath. Holly waits.

“He wants to know how things went with you. What happened with the reporter. The thing. If I could give him good news, I think it would make it easier for him to go.”