#1 Lotti
Charlotte Howard closed her stenotype machine and slipped it into the carrying case. Exhausted, her shoulders slumped as she left the courtroom by the door leading past the judge’s chambers. She empathized with the judge who, like everyone else, wanted to get this trial over, but this was the third night this week he’d reconvened after the dinner break. The defense was never going to finish at the rate it was going. Their lawyers kept calling one boring witness after another.
Due process… Dull process was more like it. Anyone with half a brain could see Joey Valepo was guilty. The D.A. had proved his mob connections and even put him in the vicinity of the murder, but his lawyer was pounding away trying to cast reasonable doubt. He admitted Joey’s friendship with members of the Maccifiori family. Only natural growing up in the same neighborhood, going to the same schools. It didn’t make him a killer, or even a criminal. The young lawyer questioning witnesses had done his best to make mob connections sound like belonging to the Eagle Scouts.
And now Charlotte had the entire day’s testimony to transcribe. She’d be lucky if she got home by 2 a.m.. She was sorely tempted to break her self-imposed rule this once and take the disks home to do tomorrow, but it would ruin her entire weekend. Long ago she’d vowed that weekends were hers, and she wouldn’t spoil them with take-home work. The court supplied a tiny office where she could work undisturbed and when she finished, leave the transcripts for delivery to the judge and the record files. Much as she hated to stay, it was better than working tomorrow then coming back to deliver the transcripts. Even if she had to take the subway to Brooklyn in the wee hours of the morning. Sighing, she took the elevator down to the second floor.
By the time she finished the last disk, her head and shoulders ached, and her eyes burned as if she’d rubbed sand in them. She slipped the printouts of the transcript into the court packet and put it in the basket to be picked up in the morning. At her locker, she retrieved her tapestry bag and put on her sweater and low-heeled walking shoes. She got her keys, some change and a subway token from her purse before returning it to the locker. She never carried it on the subway late at night. No sense tempting fate. She’d never been mugged, and not looking like an easy victim was one way to keep luck on her side. Locking the office, she headed for the night elevator, which was the only one still running at this hour.
Listening to the hum as it rattled down to the ground floor, she realized how jaded she’d become after twenty-six years of court reporting. She didn’t care if Joey Valepo was guilty or not. What difference did one gangster more or less make? If the District Attorney put this one away, someone else would take his place. It happened all the time. It was inevitable. Life went on. So did crime. This was New York, what did anyone expect? She was thoroughly sick of the trial and just wanted it to be over. What she couldn’t figure out was why those mob lawyers were working so hard to keep this little weasel out of jail. Let him serve time. He’d have plenty of friends up in Ossining.
The brisk air made her shiver, and she hurried toward subway. For a moment she considered taking a cab, but waiting on the deserted downtown street where cabs were rare after business hours was less appealing than going into the subway where at least she could wait for the train in the Off-Hours zone in sight of the man in the change booth. He offered a small measure of security, though what he could do if someone tried to grab her or knife her would be too little too late. And the cops would be no better. They’d scold her for being in the subway where she had no business alone at this hour. And on top of it, she’d be tied up even longer filing a police report. She should be home in bed, that’s where she should be.
She should look for a new job, too. Or maybe move. To someplace warm. The cold wind reminded her It would be winter soon. She hated the idea of battling the freezing temperatures and snow. Maybe she should go to Florida. One of her neighbors had moved to Ft. Lauderdale. They’d kept in touch for while, and Shirley had encouraged her to come down, but Charlotte never made it. She hadn’t heard from Shirley for years.
Instead, she was still in the house her mother had helped her buy only a mile or so from the apartment she’d grown up in, because mom didn’t want to leave the old neighborhood. Charlotte sighed. Her mother was dead twelve years now, buried in Greenwood Cemetery a few blocks from the house. Where had the time gone? The neighborhood was run down, but the house was paid off, and Charlotte was still here. Alone. Her dreams of marriage and children long abandoned. Maybe it was time to go. There was nothing to keep her here. She’d be able to find part-time work in Florida and take it a little easy.
The train rumbled into the station, and she took a seat by the door as soon as it opened. Two young Hispanics jabbering in Spanish sat at the other end of the empty car. She put her bag on her lap and began reading the advertising signs across from her, forcing herself to stay alert so she wouldn’t doze off. As the doors started to close a man darted through, and she gave a nervous start. She hadn’t seen him on the platform or heard him run down the stairs. She tensed until he walked to mid-car before taking a seat His eyes closed and a moment later his chin fell to his chest. She stared at him for several moments with the strange feeling she’d seen him before…should know him, but her mind blanked. His face was half hidden by his coat collar now, and she’d glimpsed him for only a moment as he hurried past. She didn’t know him anymore than she did the two young men at the end of the car.
She was jumpy, too tired not to be. She fought to stay alert as the train stopped at Whitehall then made the tunnel run to Brooklyn. She counted off the downtown stops, then the ones along Fourth Avenue, glancing up when the two Hispanics got off at 25^th Street. The other man still slept, jerking slightly each time the train stopped and started. Charlotte reached into the tapestry bag and closed her hand around the spray-can of Mace she always carried when she walked the two blocks from the subway to the house.
With another glance at the sleeping man, she got up as the doors opened at 36^th Street, then hurried across the platform and through the turnstile. Behind her, the train started up as she reached the stairs. She glanced back, then stopped, one hand on the rail, her foot on the second step. The man was gone. He couldn’t be—
She watched the car move past. There was no sign of him. Where could he have gone? Nervous suddenly, she ran up the steps, trying to convince herself she’d made a mistake about which car she’d been in. She put her finger on the nozzle of the Mace spray as she hurried down the deserted street, straining to listen for footsteps behind her. In the distance somewhere, a car engine revved, and she glanced back, but the sidewalk and street were empty. She hurried on, shivering as she passed through the pool of light under a street lamp then entered another dark stretch.
When she heard sounds behind her suddenly, she whirled in panic. Footsteps slapped the pavement in a rapid tattoo as a man turned the corner. Charlotte broke into a dead run, reaching into her pocket for her key, fingering it so it was ready, refusing to even think about the figure she’d seen momentarily under the street light, concentrating on survival. By the time she reached the house, her hand shook uncontrollably when she unlocked the door and bolted it behind her the moment she was inside. Her breath clawed at her chest, and she realized she was still clutching the Mace. Taking a deep breath, she dropped it back into her bag and leaned against the door. When her heartbeat finally stopped galloping, she walked into the dark living room and drew back the curtain at the front window.
The street was quiet and dark The light on the corner cast a murky glow that faded beyond her tiny stoop, but the shadows looked solid and unmoving. There was no sign of the man. He couldn’t have gone by in those few seconds! Was he waiting somewhere, or was he a neighbor as eager to get home as she was? On the river a few blocks away, a fog horn moaned. Feeling slightly foolish, Charlotte realized she’d panicked. When this trial was over, she absolutely was not going to take any jobs that required overtime. She let the curtain fall and went upstairs, still not turning on a light. She knew every inch of the house, every creaky board, every chipped cornice.
In her bedroom, she dropped the tapestry bag on the chair and undressed in the pale glow from the street lamp. She peeked out from behind the curtain as she slipped on her woolen robe. Across the street, the shadows shifted and her breath caught. She let it out when a cat slithered between two garbage cans at the curb. When she’d washed and brushed her teeth, she dropped the bathrobe across the chair and climbed into bed. She was asleep in seconds.
A bell dragged her from oblivion. Her eyes still closed, she reached for the alarm clock and hit the button, but the noise didn’t stop. She bolted up, realizing it wasn’t the clock at all— it was the smoke alarm! She stumbled from bed and groped for her slippers and robe. It was still dark, not yet morning. She coughed. The bedroom was filling with smoke! Instinctively she reached for the phone on the bedside table, but when she lifted it, there was no glow of light behind the buttons. Blindly she felt the keys and punched 911. When she put the receiver to her ear, there was nothing. No ring, no dial tone. She threw down the phone and ran to the door she’d left open. When she tripped over the chair, she grabbed her sweater and the tapestry bag.
The smoke was thick in the hall, billowing up the stairs. Choking and gagging, she held the sweater in front of her nose and mouth and started down before she realized the brightness filtering through the thick, dark smoke was flames. Panicked, she backed along the hall to the closed door of the bedroom that had been her mother’s. Inside, she slammed the door and pulled the bedspread off and crammed it against the bottom of the door as a seal. The air was clear here, but it wouldn’t take long for the fire to burn up the stairs and past the feeble barrier. The floor was already warm under her slippers. Every moment counted. She couldn’t be sure someone would spot the fire and call in the alarm quickly, not at this hour.
She ran to the window overlooking the back yard. The tiny back porch where she stored odds and ends was right beneath her, its slanted roof not more than six feet below the window. It was her only chance. When she tried to open the lock it stuck. She banged at it with the heel of her hand, then used a layer of the carryall to give her a better grip. It finally gave, and she opened the window and gulped fresh air. Behind her the fire whooshed into the draft and flames began to seep into pockets of the bedspread along the crack under the door.
Charlotte threw one leg over the sill, then the other, Turning, she tangled in the bathrobe and quickly hoisted it above her knees, then let herself slide down slowly. The siding scraped her bare legs, but her toes finally touched the porch roof. At that moment, flames shot out the window searing her fingers. She let go.
One slipper fell off as she hit, then rolled uncontrollably down the pitch. She scrabbled for something to break her descent but flew off the edge, plummeting—
She landed sprawled, and a multitude of sharp points stung her flesh. She sucked air in desperately as she realized the hedge had broken her fall. She moved gingerly and climbed out. She was scraped and scratched, but alive! The house was ablaze, the downstairs windows glowing like the fire behind a furnace door, the upstairs one she’d climbed out belching flames. When she wiped her hand across her face, it come away wet with tears. Limping, she stumbled toward the gate, then stopped with her hand on the latch when she saw the figure across the avenue near the street lamp.
The man from the subway car!
Terror filled her. He had followed her. Shaking, she backed away. Every fiber of her being screamed with the need to from the two terrors threatening her. For reasons beyond understanding, the man was more frightening than the fire. Falling to her hands and knees, she crawled along the hedge toward the back fence. When her hand encountered the slipper she’d lost, she stuffed it in the pocket of her robe. At the fence she’d never gotten around to repairing last summer, she pushed aside the two loose boards and crawled through, dragging the bag and sweater with her.
The yard next door was dark. She stumbled to her feet and ran silently past the garage and down the alley. In the distance, she heard the wail of a fire engine.

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