Chapter 73: New Neighbor
He visited Corleone in the late morning.
The front room, the coffee, the measured quality of attention that Corleone brought to everything — it was a consistent environment, which Andrew had come to appreciate. Consistency in that particular context meant reliability, and reliability meant that when Corleone said something he meant it.
"The woman from McLaren's," Andrew said. He kept it brief — the dark hoodie, the professional-grade surveillance, Jean's observation inside the bar, the clean disappearance when Jean got close enough to be noticed. "I don't think it's Durst-connected. The methodology is wrong for that."
Corleone listened without interrupting. When Andrew finished, he was quiet for a moment in the way of someone cross-referencing what they'd just heard against what they already knew.
"You're probably right that it's not the Durst family," he said. "Douglas has been cooperative and the deterrent is holding." He turned his coffee cup once on the saucer. "A woman, professional technique, no approach made — that's observation, not threat. Someone wants to understand you before they decide what to do with that understanding."
"Any idea who?"
"Several ideas." Corleone said it in a way that communicated he wasn't going to share them yet. "Give me a few days. I'll know more than I currently do."
Andrew accepted this. Pressing Corleone for information he wasn't offering produced less rather than more.
"One other thing," Andrew said. "If you do find out who it is — I'd like to know before anything happens. Not after."
Corleone looked at him steadily. "You want the conversation first."
"Yes."
A pause. Then a small nod — not agreement exactly, more like acknowledgment that the preference had been registered.
Andrew thanked him and left.
On the subway uptown he turned the question over.
The methodology was the thing that kept snagging. A Durst-connected threat would be direct — that family operated through weight and resources and the assumption that problems could be removed rather than understood. What he'd seen at McLaren's was patient and careful and had withdrawn the moment it risked exposure.
That was intelligence work. Not criminal, not personal. Someone building a picture.
The question was: a picture of what, and for whom.
He filed it and let it sit. Corleone would know within a few days, or he wouldn't, and either way Andrew wasn't going to get the answer by thinking about it on the 1 train.
He got home at two in the afternoon, made a sandwich, and called his produce supplier to arrange the Monday delivery. The truck was going back out on Tuesday — he'd lost a week to Christie's school orientation and the various other things that had accumulated, and the regulars would have noticed. Daisy Kaplan had already sent a note through Gunther asking when he'd be back.
He was eating at the counter and reviewing his supplier list when there was a knock at the door.
He set the sandwich down.
The building was generally quiet at this hour — most residents were at work, the hallway traffic minimal. He crossed to the door and listened for a moment before opening it.
A woman he didn't recognize was standing in the hallway, holding a small gift bag, with the key to apartment 208 visible in her other hand.
She was about his age, dark hair, the kind of self-possessed ease that came either from money or from having lived in enough places that new ones didn't unsettle her. She looked at him with an expression of open curiosity that was slightly more direct than most people managed on a first meeting.
"Hi," she said. "I think we're neighbors. I just moved into 208."
Andrew looked at the key. Room 208 — across the hall, the unit that had been empty since Edmund's death and the subsequent months of the building's management trying to decide what to do with it. He'd assumed it would stay empty longer than this.
"Andrew Sanchez," he said.
"Rose Draper." She held out the gift bag. "I brought wine. I figured introducing yourself to a neighbor without bringing something was a missed opportunity."
He took the bag. A decent bottle of red, the kind that communicated she'd thought about it rather than grabbed the nearest thing. "Thank you. I don't drink, but I'll find a use for it."
She looked faintly amused rather than thrown. "Fair enough. I'll drink my half and you can do whatever you want with yours."
"You just move to New York?" he said.
"Move back. I grew up here, left for school, spent a few years in London." She glanced past him into the apartment with the natural curiosity of someone assessing a space, then back at him. "You've been here a while?"
"About two years."
"What do you do?"
"Food truck. Columbus Avenue."
Something registered in her expression — recognition, or something close to it. "The one with the Garfield decal on the serving window?"
"That's the one."
"I walked past it in February," she said. "The line was ridiculous. I didn't stop."
"Come by Tuesday," he said. "Line's usually reasonable before noon."
She smiled — not performed, just genuine, the smile of someone who had gotten a better answer than they expected from a conversation they'd started as a courtesy. "I might do that."
He looked at her for a moment. The directness was notable — not aggressive, just present, the quality of someone who had decided that performing disinterest was a waste of everyone's time.
He also noted, without making anything of it, that she'd arrived the day after a professional tail had disappeared from his street, and that she was moving into the apartment directly across the hall, and that she had the kind of self-possession that could come from confidence or could come from training.
He wasn't going to assume. But he wasn't going to stop noticing either.
"208," he said. "If you need anything from the building — super's number, which laundry machines work, anything — I've been here long enough to know."
"I appreciate that." She picked up the bag she'd set down. "I should go finish unpacking." She glanced at his apartment one more time — just a glance, taking in what was visible from the doorway. "Nice place."
"Thanks." He started to close the door. "Welcome to the building, Rose."
She walked across the hall, key already out, and let herself into 208 with the practiced ease of someone who had opened a lot of unfamiliar doors.
Andrew closed his door, turned the deadbolt, and stood in his hallway for a moment.
He thought about Corleone saying someone wants to understand you before they decide what to do with that understanding.
He thought about the surveillance at McLaren's — professional grade, patient, withdrawn the moment it risked exposure.
He thought about Rose Draper arriving the following day with a bottle of wine and an expression of open curiosity and a key to the apartment directly across from his.
Could be coincidence. New York was full of them.
He went back to his sandwich and his supplier list and kept the thought where he could see it.
That evening he reorganized the kitchen — a task he'd been putting off for two weeks, the kind of practical work that required enough attention to be absorbing without requiring enough to crowd out other thinking. He restocked the prep supplies he'd need for Tuesday, confirmed the cooler temperature, made a list of what the Monday delivery needed to include.
The cooking skill had been at Expert 6 for ten days. He needed to push it, and push it deliberately — not through volume but through the kind of focused problem-solving that had moved it before. He'd been thinking about a specific dish he'd been developing in his head for a month, something that combined techniques across cuisines in a way that wasn't quite available anywhere in the city right now. He'd test it on Tuesday. The regulars were honest enough to tell him if it didn't work.
He was reviewing his notes on it when his phone rang.
Ross. Voice slightly unsteady but controlled, the voice of someone who had had a significant conversation and was processing it in real time by narrating it to another person.
"We talked," Ross said. "Carol came over this afternoon."
"How did it go?"
A pause. "She was — she was honest. More honest than I expected." He said it with something that was equal parts appreciation and pain. "She wants to stay connected. To me. She said—" He stopped. "She said she knows what she's asking is a lot. That she doesn't have the right to ask it. But she's asking anyway."
Andrew waited.
"She wants to have a child," Ross said. "With me. Not — not romantically. She was very clear about that." His voice did something complicated. "With Susan. They want to raise a child together. And she wants me to be the father. She wants Ben — she already has a name, Andrew, she already has a name."
"What did you say?"
A long silence.
"I said I needed to think about it," Ross said. "Which is the most dishonest thing I said all afternoon, because I already know what I'm going to say. I just needed to be able to sit with it for a day before I said it." He exhaled. "She knew that too. She said take all the time you need."
"She knows you," Andrew said.
"Yeah." Quietly. "She really does."
Andrew didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "Ross. Whatever you decide — it's yours to decide. Nobody gets to tell you what the right answer is."
"I know." Ross paused. "I just wanted to tell someone. Before I tell her yes."
Andrew sat with that for a moment.
"Get some sleep," he said. "Tell her tomorrow."
"Yeah." A beat. "Thanks, Andrew."
He hung up.
Andrew set the phone down and looked at the kitchen wall and thought about seven years of marriage and a woman who already had a name picked out and a man who already knew his answer and just needed one night to sit with it first.
He thought about what Susan had said at lunch: I just don't want him to feel like it happened to him.
Carol had been honest. That was something. That was, actually, a lot.
He turned off the kitchen light and went to bed.
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