The Man in the White Linen Suit

by David Handler

  “He’s getting angrier,” Yvette said. “And violent.”

  “Has he struck you?” Sylvia asked her.

  “Not yet, but he’s really starting to scare me. Can’t you do anything?”

  “Such as what?”

  “Talk to his doctor maybe?”

  Sylvia let out a pained sigh. “I don’t know what good it’ll do, since he refuses to undergo any kind of testing. But I can try.”

  “Thank you, Sylvia.”

  As we left Yvette’s doorway, she waggled her little fingers at me and mouthed the words Call me.

  We resumed walking toward the grand staircase. “Your father mentioned he has a Studebaker GT Hawk garaged near here. He doesn’t actually drive the thing, does he?”

  “As a matter of fact he does, even though his doctor has forbidden it.”

  “Where does he drive it?”

  “Out to the Hamptons.”

  “In that case, please let me know the next time he’s going, will you?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to make sure I’m not on the road at the time. I can’t believe he has a driver’s license.”

  “He doesn’t. He doesn’t have insurance either, but he never lets such petty concerns bother him. He’s Addison James.”

  My trench coat and fedora were where I’d left them. I put them back on and then helped Sylvia on with her raincoat, one of those cheap black plastic ones that fold up into little travel pouches.

  We rode the elevator down to the lobby in silence. The rain was still coming down hard. We waited under the awning out front while the doorman hailed a cab for us.

  “I’m heading downtown. Can I drop you somewhere?”

  Sylvia nodded. “My office.”

  The cab pulled up smartly at the awning. The doorman got the door. We hopped in and off we sped.

  “Our first stop will be Sixth Avenue and 52nd Street,” she informed him, crinkling her nose. Lulu had gotten damp again.

  “Are you willing to pay Tommy off if that’ll get Tulsa back?” I asked her.

  “I detest the idea of rewarding such behavior,” she fumed, falling silent for a moment before she said, “Do you think fifty thou would satisfy him?”

  “It might. Trouble is, I’m not convinced that he has the thing. He’s always been a straight-arrow newspaperman. Going on the lam with Tulsa isn’t exactly his style. And it’s not as if he’s made a ransom demand.”

  “Where is he hiding? What does he have to say for himself?”

  “Don’t crowd me, Sylvia. Let me do my job.”

  She rode in brittle silence as the cab worked its way slowly down Broadway in the sluggish rainy day traffic. “Tell him I’ll pay him whatever he wants to buy his silence,” she said finally. “The media must never find out that Tommy has written Addison’s last three books. If they do, then Addison will be painted as a world-class literary fraud. His name will be ruined, his life’s work trashed. Nothing that he’s accomplished over the past forty years will ever be seen in the same light again.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?” She glared down her nose at me. “I don’t think so. For you, this is nothing more than a payday. For me, this is Addison’s legacy. I can’t imagine that means anything to a man such as you.”

  Lulu let out a low growl from the floor of the cab. I told her to let me handle it.

  “A man such as me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you don’t care about a single damned thing.”

  “Sylvia, if it makes you feel better to believe that, then go right ahead. But I’m not who you think I am. And I’m not the bad guy here.”

  “Who is?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I will before long. There’s something clumsy about the way this went down. We’re not dealing with a polished professional.”

  “Whom are we dealing with?”

  “Someone who’s greedy and frightened.”

  “Everyone I know is greedy and frightened.”

  “Then you need to start hanging around with a better class of people.”

  “I don’t ‘hang around’ with any class of people. I have better things to do with my time.”

  After that Sylvia James didn’t say another word to me. Just sat there silently picking at her scalp as we worked our way toward Midtown. When the cab dropped her outside of the offices of Guilford House she didn’t offer to split the fare. Didn’t say goodbye. Just got out, slammed the cab door shut behind her, schlumped across the sidewalk in the rain and passed through one of her building’s revolving doors, disappearing inside.

  She never looked back.

  Chapter Three

  Stuyvesant Town, also known as StuyTown and the White People’s Projects, was a vast eighty-acre complex of identical charm-free brick apartment towers that had been built east of First Avenue between East 14th and East 20th Streets back in 1947 by Metropolitan Life to serve as middle-class housing for returning World War II servicemen and their families. Along with its slightly more upscale companion, Peter Cooper Village, which filled another chunk of acreage between East 20th and East 23rd, StuyTown made for an immense slice of lower Manhattan that was not to be found on any must-see tourist guides. When starry-eyed young performers made their way to the Big Apple in search of fame and fortune, their dream destination was Greenwich Village, not StuyTown. In fact, many of them lived in the city for years without discovering that it even existed. Artsy it was not. Quite the opposite. In fact, if you happened to wander in there, you didn’t feel as if you were in New York City at all—more like in a Bethesda, Maryland, enclave for federal government workers, or a minimum security prison.

  The apartment buildings were situated around a central oval with a fountain. Oval was the theme of the entire place. For U.S. Postal Service purposes, each building was singled out by its oval number. I think there were nineteen in all, but don’t hold me to that. The ovals were connected by a labyrinth of footpaths that looped around and through the acres and acres of identical buildings. It was painfully easy to get lost there if you didn’t know exactly where you were going—especially after dark. When I was in college up in Cambridge I had a classmate who’d grown up there and called it a “soul-sucking hell mouth.” Apparently, when he was in high school he’d come back late one night tripping on acid and was so wasted that he couldn’t find his way home. Just kept wandering from oval to oval until he ended up slumped on a bench, sobbing hysterically. A security guard had to escort him to his building.

  Fortunately, Lulu was with me and knew exactly where we were going—she’d been to No. 11 Stuyvesant Oval once before. For Lulu, once is all it takes. So after the cab left us off on First Avenue she headed straight for it without hesitation, ignoring the intersecting paths that were of no use to her. She definitely earned an anchovy treat.

  When we arrived at No. 11, I buzzed Tommy and Kathleen O’Brien’s apartment, identified myself to the voice that answered the intercom and was buzzed in. The lobby, if you consider a wall of mailboxes and a couple of elevators a lobby, smelled like chicken soup.

  The O’Briens lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the third floor. Kathleen was waiting halfway down the hallway for me in front of her open doorway. I’d remembered Tommy’s wife as being an attractive, high-spirited redhead with rosy cheeks, sparkly blue eyes and a shapely figure. But I hadn’t seen her in several years and time had not been on her side. Just for starters, her head of wavy, flaming red hair was tied back in a tight ponytail that was, well, not red. Dark brown was more like it. She’d dyed her hair red all of those years, I guess. I didn’t really feel like thinking about it too much. Her blue eyes were dull, not sparkly, and had bags under them. Her complexion was the color of wet clay. There was also the weight issue, as in she’d put on a lot of it. Exactly how much was hard to tell because she was wearing a baggy Yankees T-shirt and an equally baggy pair of gym shorts, but I’d guess that she was a solid thirty pounds heavier than she’d been whe
n I’d last seen her.

  She eyed me suspiciously as she stood there in the hallway. We’d never been close. I was Tommy’s hotshot writer friend. The Tommy who yearned to be a hotshot writer himself. The Tommy who’d recently packed his bags and left her. “Stewart Hoag,” she said accusingly. “What brings you here?”

  “I came to tell you he’s safe.”

  “Tommy? Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “He was mugged on Friday night and disappeared—along with the only two copies in existence of Tulsa. Sylvia James has asked me to find him.”

  “Find Tulsa, you mean. Tommy, she could care less about.”

  “I thought you might be concerned about him.”

  “Why would I be? We split up. He lives his life, I live mine.”

  “Be that as it may, we need to talk. May I come in?”

  She sniffed at the air. “Does that smelly dog have to come in, too?”

  “If you don’t mind,” I said as Lulu whimpered in protest. “We’re a team.”

  Kathleen peered at me, mystified, before she let out a sigh. “Fine.”

  It was a bit warm in there—Met Life hadn’t wired Stuyvesant Town for air conditioners when they’d built it and stubbornly refused to upgrade. There wasn’t a window unit to be found anywhere in the entire complex. But there were shade trees outside of the windows, so it really wasn’t too bad with all of the fans that Kathleen had going. It was certainly cooler than my place.

  The living room had wall-to-wall carpeting and a decidedly suburban vibe, circa 1962. The floral-patterned sectional sofa and matching armchair had plastic slipcovers over them. So did the lampshades on the end tables. Framed high school graduation photos of the O’Briens’ two girls sat atop a TV that was tucked inside a decorative shelving unit. Hardcover copies of the half-dozen most recent Addison James blockbusters were prominently displayed on the shelves. Two framed still lifes, rather awful, hung from the wall over the sofa.

  “I take painting classes at the YMCA,” Kathleen said defensively as I eyed them. “What the hell else is there to do?”

  She led me down a short hall to the eat-in kitchen, where there was a dinette set next to a window with a nice view of the barges going by on the East River. An open box of Entenmann’s chocolate doughnuts was parked on the table. She was having herself an afternoon doughnut and coffee break—or perhaps binge would be a better way of putting it. Kathleen poured me a cup from the electric percolator on the counter and set it before me.

  “Have a doughnut,” she said, grabbing one for herself.

  “Thanks, I’m all set.”

  “You take milk in your coffee?”

  “Please.”

  As soon as she started for the refrigerator Lulu parked herself in front of it, gazing up at her beseechingly.

  Kathleen frowned down at her. “She wants something?”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a jar of anchovies, would you?”

  “Your dog likes anchovies?”

  “She has unusual eating habits.”

  “Is that why she smells so awful?”

  “No, that has to do with the rain. Her coat is imbued with an oil that—”

  “It’s okay, I really don’t need to know.” Kathleen found a jar of anchovies in the refrigerator door, opened it and offered one to Lulu, nearly losing a finger in the transaction. Then Lulu curled up contentedly at my feet.

  Kathleen sat down across the table from me and lit a Kent, which had advertised itself on TV commercials back when I was a little kid in the Fabulous Fifties as the only cigarette that featured the “scientific” Micronite filter. Only recently, in 1991, had a huge lawsuit finally unearthed that for several years back in the Fabulous Fifties one of the chief ingredients of the “scientific” Micronite filter had been highly toxic asbestos. Just one of those dirty little secrets that had made the fifties so fabulous.

  Kathleen took a deep drag, blowing the smoke toward the window, and studied me in a less than friendly fashion. “Her name is Norma, as you no doubt know. She’s an editor at Deep River. She’s young, skinny, and for months he swore to me it was strictly business. She was helping him structure his idea for a novel. ‘If it’s strictly business,’ I said to him, ‘then why are you coming home at three in the morning with a hickey on your neck?’ So I took up with Richie, and Tommy and I were living here under the same roof, leading our separate lives, for six whole months until he decided to move out a few weeks ago. No discussion. No nothing. He just packed some clothes, stuffed his briefcase full of pages, picked up his typewriter and cleared out. I haven’t spoken to him since.”

  “And are you happy with Richie?”

  “He’s a nice, regular guy,” she said, brightening slightly. “We met at the Y. He takes painting classes, too. He’s divorced, lives on Oval Seven. He’s a cop. Was a cop, I should say. He had to take early retirement because of a medical disability. Got two herniated discs in his back after some crackhead shoved him down a flight of stairs.”

  “What does he do with himself now?”

  “Odd jobs. He’s good with his hands. He repairs things for tenants. Drives them to the airport and picks them up. That sort of thing.”

  “He has a car?”

  She nodded. “A Trans Am. Keeps it in that big garage on East 20th. You want to know the best thing about Richie? He actually enjoys being with me. Tommy doesn’t anymore.”

  “What’s Richie’s last name?”

  “Why you asking?”

  “Just curious.”

  “It’s Filosi. We have fun together. We go to movies. Go out to dinner. He takes me for drives in the country. We even talk. Tommy and I never talked anymore. He was always locked away in the girls’ old room at his desk—eighteen hours a day, seven days a week—working himself into a state of exhaustion for that mean old millionaire who wouldn’t give him a nickel or an ounce of respect. I make Richie happy. I haven’t made Tommy happy for I don’t know how long. I gave him two daughters. Kept a clean apartment. Did the marketing and the cooking, took his mother to the doctor for him, God rest her soul.” She reached for another doughnut, munching on it. “As soon as the girls left for college, it was like our life together ended. He acted like I wasn’t even here. What’s wrong with me, anyhow?”

  “Not a thing. Tommy’s a writer. We’re lost inside of our own heads most of the time. That doesn’t make us the easiest people to live with.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know,” she said sharply. “I’m divorcing him. And I’m going to make out plenty okay, too. We’re talking infidelity, mental cruelty. Plus I’ll bet you he’s been socking away more money from that old man than he’s been willing to admit to me. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he’s got a safety deposit box somewhere stuffed full of cash.”

  “Tommy doesn’t get a share of Addison’s royalties, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just a straight salary. He’s very upset about that, too. It seems that Addison’s daughter, Sylvia, promised him coauthor credit and royalty participation for the last three books, and she never intended to keep her promise. She was just stringing him along.”

  Kathleen sipped her coffee, narrowing her gaze at me. “Did you introduce them?”

  “Who?”

  “Tommy and Norma. I figure it must have been you.”

  “You figure wrong. I don’t know a thing about the two of them.”

  She stubbed out her Kent and lit another one, gazing at me through a haze of smoke. “Yeah, you do. You just don’t want to tell me.”

  “Kathleen, I’ve never even met Norma. I haven’t seen Tommy for over six months. And why on earth would I want to break up your marriage?”

  “It’s no secret that you don’t think I’m good enough for him.”

  “It’s certainly a secret to me. I don’t know what Tommy has told you about me, but here’s my version, okay? He took a creative writing class from me fifteen years ago. I read some of his work. I thought he had real talent. Still do. I liked the guy. Sti
ll do. When he was offered the job working for Addison James, I advised him to turn it down. I thought he needed to find his own voice. But he decided to take it.”

  “We needed the money for the girls. Mary ended up going to Syracuse. Anne’s at Seton Hall.” Kathleen smoked in silence for a moment, softening slightly. “He loved being a beat reporter. He’d have been happier if he never left the newspaper. We’d have scraped by somehow. You were right. He should have turned it down. The fool’s been researching and writing an 800-page book every two years that makes tens of millions for that mean old man and all he gets out of it is $50,000 a year. Never so much as a Christmas bonus. What’s a lousy couple of thousand dollars to that cheap old bastard? Nothing. To us it would have meant a week in the Bahamas. A chance for Tommy to breathe a little.” Kathleen tilted her head at me, studying me anew. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

  “The only two existing copies of Tulsa have vanished. Tommy told me two street punks snatched his briefcase from him Friday night and a guy with a gun warned him, ‘We know where you live.’ Tommy’s been hiding out ever since, afraid for his life. Mind you, Sylvia’s not buying any of that. She thinks that Tommy’s holding Tulsa for ransom.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Tommy’s an old school reporter, not someone who’d cook up a scheme like that. Besides, there are other players in this game.”

  “Like who?”

  “The fewer details you know, the better.”

  Her eyes crinkled at me with concern. “So you’ve seen him?”

  “I have.”

  “How is he?”

  “Exhausted and terrified. He’s tangling with some ruthless people.”

  “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

  “I wanted to find out the truth for myself.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “May I see his office?”

  She got up and led me down a short hallway. “It used to be the girls’ room, but they gave it up when they went away to college.”

  “Where do they sleep when they’re home from school?”