Already the vultures were gathering, streaming toward the flames, wondering what happened. And not too far away, sirens.

She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t help Weinstein and she didn’t want to be listed as a witness. The police might get it into their heads that she was hiding something, and they might start looking into her background, her family. She couldn’t allow that. Couldn’t stand it.

Alicia didn’t look for a taxi—the thought of being confined was unbearable. She needed space, light, air. She turned downtown.

Poor Leo!

She sobbed as she started walking, moving as fast as her low-heeled shoes would allow. But even if she’d worn her sneakers she would not have been able to outrun the guilt, the terrible suspicion that she was somehow responsible for Leo Weinstein’s death.

2.

“Thank God you’re here!” Raymond said as Alicia walked though the Center’s employee entrance. “I’ve been beeping you since eight o’clock. Why didn’t…?” His voice trailed off as he looked at her. “Christ, Alicia, you look like absolute shit.”

Actually, that was a generous assessment of how she felt, but she didn’t want to talk about it.

“Thank you, Raymond. You don’t know the half of it.”

She didn’t head for her office, but toward the front reception area instead. Raymond paced her.

“Where are you going?”

“Just give me a minute, will you, Raymond?” she snapped. “I’ll be right back.”

She regretted being so short with him, but she felt stretched to the breaking point. One more tug in the wrong direction…

She was vaguely aware of Tiffany saying hello as she hurried past the reception desk on her way to the front door. Stepping aside to allow a middle-aged woman and her two grandchildren to enter, Alicia peered through the glass at the street outside, looking for the gray car.

She was sure it had followed her back from Forty-eighth Street. At least she thought it had. A gray car—what would you call it? A sedan? She didn’t know a damn thing about cars. Couldn’t tell a Ford from a Chevy. But whatever it was, she’d kept catching sight of this gray car passing her as she walked. It would turn a block or two ahead of her, and disappear for a few minutes, then cruise by again. Never too close. Never too slow. Never a definite sign of interest in her. But always there.

She scanned Seventh Avenue outside, half expecting to see it roll by. Across the street and slightly downtown, she checked the curb in front of her least favorite part of the St. Vincent’s complex. The O’Toole Building squatted at the corner of Twelfth. Its white-tiled, windowless, monolithic facade did not fit here in the Village. It looked as if a clumsy giant had accidentally dropped the modernistic monstrosity on his way to someplace like Minneapolis.

No gray car, though. But with all the gray cars in Manhattan, how could she be sure?

Her nerves were getting to her. She was becoming paranoid.