The Girl From Nowhere Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’m sure I had locked it.”
    “Did you call the police?”
    She shook her head vigorously.
    “I didn’t want them sticking their noses in.”
    “Did you tell anyone at the Alibi?”
    “I told Shirley—the woman who looks after the girls. She brushed it off.”
    “Had you ever seen this man at the club?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “You see where I’m headed?”
    “Yes. Some creep who saw me at the Alibi got a bit obsessed with me and started stalking me. It doesn’t take a detective to think of that—but even if it’s true, how did he get into my apartment?”
    “Was this when you spoke to Jilly?”
    “Well, sure—I didn’t want to stay in that place. I’d posed for Jilly’s class a few times and she seemed nice.”
    “Why were you modeling for a bunch of students? They don’t pay you well enough at the Alibi?”
    “I just like doing it. It’s showing off my body in a nice way.”
    “As opposed to . . .”
    “You know, it’s just a group of nice kids, and a couple of older guys—not like a bunch of dirty old men.”
    “So, what about the maniac we had our little encounter with this afternoon? When did you first see him?”
    “Three weeks ago—near the apartment uptown. At first I thought he was just some sort of a vagrant hanging out on the corner, but he was there almost every day, and a couple of times I saw him near the Alibi.”
    “Did he ever speak to you—threaten you?”
    “Not then, but sometimes he would walk right by me, very close, and stare at me with those creepy eyes. There was something incredibly scary about the way he looked at me. You know how they say men undress girls with their eyes? Well, that’s the way he was looking at me, except that there was something more. He was raping me with his eyes and he wanted to kill me and mutilate me too, I was sure of it. He was like one of those sex murderers you read about—the ones who get their kicks by doing horrible things to girls and then killing them and cutting them up. You saw how crazy he looked—and with those horrible scars on his face, the burns or whatever. What would do that? Napalm? I suppose I ought to feel sorry for someone who looks like that, but . . . Anyway, he was another reason I moved down to Jilly’s. I thought I’d gotten away from him, but a couple of days ago he was outside her building when I left, dressed in that fake military gear. That’s the only time he ever said anything.”
    “What did he say?”
    “I’ll get you, you cunt.”
    Coming from her lips, that sounded shocking.
    “That was it?”
    “You know the rest. When I left Jilly’s yesterday he was standing in exactly the same place, the same expression on his hideous face. He said exactly the same thing. What made it so scary is that there’s never anyone around near Jilly’s. I walked toward Chinatown because I knew there’d be lots of people there. I didn’t know for sure if he was following me, but when I crossed Canal Street I sensed there was someone behind me. I looked back, and there he was. That’s why I grabbed your hand. I figured that if he thought I had a boyfriend maybe he’d leave me alone. You know the rest.”
    There was a silence as we each tried to size up the other. I wondered if she was having more luck than I was.
    “So what now?” she asked.
    “Good question. What would you like me to do?”
    Another silence. I was playing for time here. If it hadn’t been for the episode in the delicatessen, I would have pegged Sandy Smollett for a paranoid young woman looking for some free hands-on therapy, or one whose equivocal sexuality in a city full of part-time deviants put her in need of friendly guidance. The part-time deviant in me thought it would be interesting to offer a shoulder to lean on, or cry on, since I certainly was not immune to that brand of equivocal sexuality. The spoilsport who lives in my frontal lobe argued that the last thing I needed was a stripper who looked like Gidget hanging