Shadowkiller by Wendy Corsi Staub Page A

cigarettes between swigs from Starbucks cups; fancy women window-shopped; hand-holding lovers strolled and mooned; nannies pushed their charges in baby carriages; office workers scurried around all of them.
    Sometime in the past twenty-four hours, enterprising downtown restaurateurs must have hastily dragged chairs and tables from winter storage to transform sidewalks along the network of side streets into outdoor cafés that ordinarily wouldn’t materialize for another couple of months. People lingered at small, votive-lit tables drinking wine, gazing at the pedestrian parade.
    Although Carrie had never walked up this stretch of Broadway before—all the way from the financial district through Tribeca and SoHo—the terrain felt familiar. That was because she’d prudently learned the lay of the land long before she even moved to Manhattan four months ago, having been taught, as a child, to take a methodical approach to new ventures.
    â€œIf you do your homework in advance of any situation,” Daddy told her, “you’ll always be able to fit in, no matter where you go or what you do. No one will ever guess that it’s your first time for anything.”
    Like everything else he’d ever said, those words resonated—particularly years later, when she was able to grasp their bitter irony.
    And so, she’d spent a good portion of last autumn in Midwestern libraries, poring over street maps, tour guides, photo collections. She learned New York City’s key landmarks and thoroughfares, and how they all fit together. She practiced the mathematical formula one could use to figure out the nearest numbered cross street for any address on any avenue in the city. Brilliant.
    As Daddy so aptly, and frequently, said, “Order is a great person’s need and their true well-being.”
    Only later, much later, did she realize that he was quoting the Swiss writer Henri-Frédéric Amiel—and that Daddy wasn’t exactly prone to giving credit where credit was due.
    That wasn’t his worst fault, though. Far from it.
    â€œExcuse me, ma’am?” Someone tapped her shoulder as she stood waiting for the light to change at Third Street in the heart of Greenwich Village.
    She turned to see a middle-aged couple. Tourists—she could tell by the pastel jackets—and undoubtedly from the Midwest: the flat A that drew “ma’am” into two syllables was unmistakable.
    â€œCan you please tell us where Houston Street is?” The woman pronounced it like the city in Texas.
    â€œYou mean Houston?” Carrie couldn’t help asking, emphasis on the proper pronunciation: How— rhymes with “now” —ston. Not H-you —rhymes with “new”— ston .
    â€œHouston, How-ston—whatever you call it. Do you know where it is?”
    Carrie resisted the urge to inform this impudent stranger that one shouldn’t just go around calling things whatever one felt like calling them. Some people simply had no sense of right vs. wrong, of order vs. chaos.
    Suppressing a sigh, she pointed back over her shoulder, to the south. “It’s down there. Go past Bond Street—you’ll see it on the left but you don’t have to cross it if you stay on this side of the street, because it only runs east of Broadway—and then go across Bleecker, and it’s the next intersection after that.”
    â€œAfter Bleecker?” the man asked. “Are you sure?”
    Carrie just looked at him. Granted, he didn’t know her; didn’t know how her mind worked, or that she never made mistakes when it came to directions—or anything else. Never . But still . . .
    â€œI’m sure,” she said crisply, and turned away.
    Behind her, the woman called, “Thank you.” “Thank” was also two syllables. Thay-ank.
    The light changed and Carrie resumed walking north, inexplicably unsettled at having heard