Stealing Time by Leslie Glass

searched the sidewalks for a way out as first three, then four reporters came after him. There was no escape but the street and the oncoming cars. He ran into the street against the light. Cabbies leaned heavily on their horns as two drivers trying to avoid him crunched to a stop, barely missing each other. Anton spun around, swearing. "You stupid assholes!"
When he reached the other side of the street, he raised his hand. Another taxi stopped beside him. He got in, giving instructions as the driver took off. Then he saw two cops drive up in a squad car. He gave them the finger, but they stayed with him. When Anton arrived home, two more squad cars were parked across the street from his building, and Perry, the night doorman, was on duty. Perry was not one of Anton's favorites. More than once, he'd considered getting him fired. The man was a classic working drunk, never totally out of it, but always on the other side of vague. He had a big, puffy body and an enviable head of springy pale hair, and he kept several layers of smell over a solid base of whiskey and beer.
At the moment Perry had a forbidden cigarette cupped in one fist as he watched Anton get out of the cab. Slowly he doused the cigarette in the dregs of a take-out coffee, put down the container, then moved to open the door. He reeked of cough medicine and cigarette smoke.
"How's the missus?" he asked when Anton shuffled in. "She as bad as they say?"
Anton glared at him. "Get rid of that fucking cigarette."
"I don't smoke on duty. Must be all the cops. Could be anybody's smoke." The man's eyes were shrewd through his alcohol haze. He sucked his teeth and gave his head a shake. A shock of hair fell over his forehead. "Police up and down the street all night," he added with some satisfaction. "Talking to everybody and checking the garbage before pickup tomorrow morning."
Now Perry didn't look at all drunk, and Anton's pulse went crazy. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.
The doorman, in his red uniform that didn't fit, shrugged importantly. "The garbage gets picked up tomorrow morning, so they have to do their looking tonight. They're out in the park, too." He gestured with his chin across the street toward Central Park.
Anton's eyes narrowed at the lights clearly moving through the shrubs, illuminating the spring blooms on the taller bushes and trees. He made a noise in his throat as if he were choking. He couldn't seem to take in the full impact of the horrors being visited upon him.
"They're looking for the baby's body," Perry told him.
Anton saw a van cruise toward the circular drive in front of the building. It had a dish on top and a TV station's call letters painted on the side. Anton grabbed some cash from his pocket and thrust it at the loathsome doorman without looking at it.
    "If you ring me upstairs for any reason or let any of those reporters in, you'll be out on the street picking through garbage cans yourself tomorrow." Then he ran across the lobby to the elevator and pushed the button. When the door slid open, he disappeared inside.
    An hour and a half later his phone rang for about the fiftieth time, and for the fiftieth time, the two detectives in the living room tensed. Both were chubby and bald. Both wore headphones and drank a lot of coffee.
"You ready?" asked the one who had a mustache. That was how Anton told them apart. One had a mustache and one didn't. He hadn't bothered to learn their names.
Anton rolled his eyes and picked up. This one wasn't a crank call or a reporter. The soft voice of his brother, Marc, came on the line. "What the hell is going on? Some detective wants to talk to me about Roe and Paul. What happened? Is everything all right?"
"Go ahead and talk to the detective, Marc. It's for sure you can't talk to me. I'm under surveillance. And this phone is tapped for the ransom call."
There was a stunned silence.
"What ransom call?" Marc asked finally.
"Well, the police think there's going to be one."
"Huh?"
Anton hung up