He finishes his drink and nudges the glass across the bar.
He feels godlike. He likes the feeling.
He has always liked the feeling.
* * *
On Third Avenue R.J. paused to clear his head and hail a taxi. His blood was still toxic but he was coming around. A little brisk exercise after drinking always cleared his head better than coffee.
Hookshot was right. Enough to drink; things to do now, and he needed a clear head to do them. His desire for any more to drink had shrunk, dwindled away to a small kitten next to the raging lion that had been inside him earlier.
He could handle it now. He was that kind of boozer: drink when he wanted and stop when he was ready. It was hard, but he was no goddamn alky, no matter what anybody said.
He took a deep breath of city air and coughed it right back up. It was cold, and he smelled rain around the corner. He didn’t mind rain or cold, especially when he was working. And R.J. Brooks was working.
He’d known he had to do something, even when he was saying he wouldn’t. After all, it was his mother. It didn’t matter whether she was a great mother or what he thought of her. She was his mother, for Christ’s sake. And if your mother was murdered, you had to do something about it.
A taxi pulled up to the curb beside him. He waved it off. He could think better on his feet. He was sure he could make it home before the rain.
R.J. turned up his collar and began to walk. He got into a good steady rhythm, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind.
He was in the mid-Sixties when he forgot all about the weather.
The dark Mercedes screeched in off the street and nearly pinned him against the side of a restaurant. “Jesus!” he shouted, cracking his elbow against the stone wall as he jumped for safety.
The two men in black leather who jumped out of the car were on him so fast he could only try to cover up, not fight back. He felt the first couple of blows, then nothing much at all until an old wino poked at his face with a greasy handkerchief. “What the hell…?”
“Easy, fella.” The old man looked like a worn rake handle. Rags hung off his bones like tattered wrapping paper, and his fingers worked with the crackle of oilskin. “Better take it easy, you don’t wanna spend the rest of the night up to Bellevue.”
His head was pounding, and he could see his blood on the crusty rag when the wino took it away from his face.
“Those guys—who were they?”
“What guys?”
“The guys who just kicked the shit out of me.”
The wino shook his head, or maybe it always shook like that. “You got it bad, kid?”
R.J. stumbled to the sidewalk. The mist thickened. His jacket was ripped, a hole in the knee of his pants. His whole body throbbed dully. “What time is it?” The air frosted in front of his face as he spoke.
“Don’t know anything about time,” the wino said. “It’s dark.”
“And here comes the rain,” said R.J.
“You wanna come with me, I got a place down by the river.”
R.J. took a step and staggered against a lightpost, bracing his arm for support. “I’m okay. I got a place. Thanks.”
He took a deep breath, then tried a few steps. His knee was stiff and a couple of ribs were bruised. He could feel clotted blood on his cheekbone. His ears throbbed from a dozen punches.
At first he’d thought it might be Rex and one of his asshole buddies. But it was Burkette’s bodyguard, with a pal riding shotgun.
R.J. had walked right into it, eyes blurred by whiskey and self-pity. He was lucky it wasn’t a whole lot worse.
He dug a pair of tens out of his pocket. “You’re good people, pops. I won’t forget it.”
The old man looked at the money and nearly fainted.
CHAPTER 6
For three days he stayed in the apartment with his tabby cat, Ilsa. He didn’t go out, didn’t see or talk to anyone. He read the newspapers and watched TV. He taped everything about his mother’s death on his VCR. Over and over, he watched the news reports and Casey Wingate’s biographical portrait.
Something still bothered him. A man in the crowd of gawkers outside the hotel when his mother’s body was taken away. Very nondescript sort of guy, no reason to notice him—except R.J. did notice him, and couldn’t figure out why, except that he must have seen him somewhere before.
So what? What did it mean?
He didn’t know. But he intended to find out, as soon as he healed up a bit, at least to the point where he didn’t walk like an old man.
It took two days. The first morning when he woke up it took him half an hour to get out of bed. All his muscles hurt and his head felt like a bowling ball on a swivel. He took a lot of naps and sipped on some bouillon.
The second day was worse. All the aches, pains, and bruises had gotten stiff. Trying to make his body do something was like operating strange machinery with worn controls. He spent much of the day in bed again, or in the easy chair with the television on. He took three long, hot baths, hoping the heat would loosen up the aches. More bouillon, two slices of toast.
For breakfast on the third day he had hot tea and honey with dry toast. Lunch was a cup of yogurt. For dinner he managed a small broiled steak, tossed salad, and baked potato. He drank bottled water. Ilsa stayed out of his way.
That night a friend on the nursing staff at Lenox Hill Hospital came in to look at his wounds, patch him up, and give him a rain check for carnal intimacies when he was back on his feet.
He didn’t go to the office or even phone in. But Wanda called and left random messages on the answering machine. They got a little meaner each time.
“And if I didn’t feel so sorry for you because you’re obviously stupid from a blow on the head, I’d walk out of this office for good, and let you find some other idiot to take your abuse. As if you could. As if anybody else would.
“Lieutenant Kates has called seven times. Second place to Mrs. Burkette, with three calls. She wants to know if you’re all right, and do you need another meeting to discuss details.” Wanda cleared her throat, or maybe it was a laugh.
“Henry Portillo called, but he didn’t leave a message. Only one collection agency called, so business is good. You should drop by and see for yourself.” And she hung up abruptly.
On the fourth day, R.J. ate scrambled eggs and bacon and started exercising. Situps, pushups, crunches, leg lifts—the whole regimen. It hurt like hell but he forced himself to keep moving the muscles, working through the soreness until he finally felt a little bit of his old supple strength coming back.
Afterwards he jogged a mile downtown and walked back. He took a cold shower, standing under the icy water as long as he could stand it. He toweled off. Before he got dressed he examined his body and face in the mirror.
Bruised ear, short hairline cut in the eyebrow. A jagged abrasion on his right cheekbone counterpointed the scar-dimple in his chin. A couple of dull purple spots along the rib cage, knee still slightly swollen. Nothing permanent, nothing so awful he couldn’t live with it.
He shaved and brushed his teeth, ran his fingers through his damp hair. Time for a haircut, but that would keep, too.
He dressed in stone-washed jeans and a crew-necked sweater, then filled Ilsa’s bowl with Friskies. He clipped the Big E onto his belt at the base of his spine, threw on a jacket and went out.
* * *
At the corner of Columbus and 72nd Street he called the office.
“Where’ve you been, boss?” Wanda demanded. “Everybody’s looking for you.”
“Just so they don’t all find me at the same time,” he said. A fierce looking Rastafarian appeared outside the booth and glared at him through the glass.
“Hookshot said he saw you the other night. We were worried.”
“Not to worry, kid. Any hot messages?”
He watched the Rasta’s antics as Wanda worked the list. He wasn’t really paying attention; the Rasta was more interesting. But then h
e heard Wanda read off a name that caught his interest.
“Jackson Yates?” R.J. had never done any business with the society lawyer and didn’t know him. He was too high-class for R.J.’s kind of work, and they didn’t exactly socialize in the same places. “What’s he want with me?”
“Ask him, if you ever get around to doing any business ever again. And Lieutenant Kates wants you to call him, like now.”
The Rasta tapped on the glass with a ring the size of a golf ball, pointing at the telephone. He wore a pearl earring in one nostril, and three strands of bright beads around his neck. His hair was braided into dreadlocks, and freckles spotted his orange complexion, making him look like a speckled perch out of water.
“Okay, here’s what you do,” R.J. said, ignoring the pest. “Call Ms. Burkette and tell her the job’s finished, that she’ll be okay. I’ll send my final artwork and a bill to her lawyer in a couple of days.”
The Rasta walked off a few steps, muttering to himself, then charged back and kicked the door.
“And call Kates. I want to see him too, later this morning. Tell him it’s about the Fontaine case.”
“Belle Fontaine? Are you mixed up in that?”
“Just tell him.”
The Rasta got a running start and rammed a shoulder into the folding door so hard it jammed R.J. against the phone box. Sharp pain flashed through his bruised ribs.
“Boss, you been seeing something of that Fontaine woman I don’t know about?”
R.J. looked at the wild-eyed specimen in the now-open doorway of the booth. He was breathing hard, filled with righteous indignation. He raised a finger to speak, and R.J. cracked him on the forehead with the handpiece of the phone. The Rasta folded to the ground like a bag of psychedelic laundry.
“See you later, kid,” he said and hung up.
He stepped over the soiled heap on the sidewalk and headed downtown.
* * *
At 66th Street he hailed a cab. The incident at the phone booth had got his adrenaline pumping. When he climbed out at Gramercy Park he left the door open and leaned back in to the driver.
“Wait for me.”
“Your money, Mac.”
R.J. was not fond of taxi drivers. He also disliked politicians, theatrical bigshots, corporate giants, racists, and militant feminists. But even more than that, he disliked having somebody think they were one up on him. It was bad for business.
“Special delivery,” he told the uniformed doorman at the elegant brownstone. He stood aside as a young woman pushed a baby carriage to the sidewalk.
“I’ll have to see,” the doorman said, giving him a suspicious once-over.
“Go ahead and see,” R.J. said, handing him a business card and smiling at the woman.
The doorman got on the intercom, unconsciously pulling at the seat of his twill pants. About twenty seconds later the door opened and Burkette’s pock-faced bodyguard came out with a swagger and a smirk.
“You lookin’ pretty rough there, gumshoe. Wanna exchange some photographs, or what?” he said, leaning against the door frame, arms folded.
“Or what,” said R.J., grabbing him by the testicles and squeezing. He pulled. Wide-eyed, the bodyguard followed.
The woman stopped the baby carriage and watched the grim-faced bodyguard follow R.J. down the steps with a strange, crablike motion.
On the sidewalk they squatted eyeball to eyeball beside a fire hydrant. R.J. just grinned and continued to squeeze, twisting the man’s gonads in a viselike grip.
He never said a word, just shifted the cold cigar to the other side of his mouth and kept holding the man’s attention.
Finally he stood and pulled the bodyguard over to a stone staircase leading to the servants’ entrance and heaved him headfirst down the steps. The bodyguard landed in a cluster of garbage cans with his hands clutched between his legs. He lay there without moving.
R.J. walked back to the cab, pausing to wink at the doorman. “He might want to borrow some of the kid’s diapers,” he said.
The mother laughed nervously and moved away quickly.
“Man,” said the cab driver as R.J. slid back in, “you got to be the craziest motherfucker in New York City.”
R.J. slammed the door and settled back on the seat.
“Don’t know about that,” he said, spitting the cigar stub out the window, “but I feel like the meanest.”
CHAPTER 7
R.J. spent an hour in the office. Rain pelted the window behind his metal desk, blurring his view of the building across the street. The window had Venetian blinds, no curtains. The war surplus desk held a stained blotter, a telephone, a mayonnaise jar holding three pencils and two cheap ballpoint pens. R.J. Brooks & Associates was a no-frills operation.
Wanda Groz sat in a straight chair beside the desk, a steno pad balanced on her knee. She was good-looking in a boyish way, wore simple sexy clothes that R.J. liked. She had reddish hair cut in a modified pixie, wine-dark eyes, and an appealing overbite. Unmarried, she had a daughter living with her grandmother in Buffalo. She’d never explained the situation and R.J. had never asked. Every few months he found a reason to give her a bonus, knowing the extra money went directly to the child.
Wanda had been with him for three years and gave no evidence of leaving. It was debatable who worked for whom. Still, it was an easy relationship and it worked for both of them.
R.J. munched on a jelly doughnut and sipped defensively at a cup of her coffee while dictating a final report for Tina Burkette.
“And so, in light of the enclosed photographic evidence, it seems unlikely that Mr. Burkette will reject any terms of settlement, no matter how high.”
“Amen to that,” muttered Wanda as she wrote.
“Paragraph. I therefore feel confident that if you instruct your lawyer accordingly, a settlement can be arrived at which is extremely advantageous to you. I hope I have proved etc., standard closing, send it registered mail.”
As he dictated the last few sentences, he sealed the hot tub photograph in an envelope and put it into the evidence safe.
“I don’t want to be standing too close,” Wanda clucked, “when you get your just deserts.”
R.J. gave her a grin and locked his hands behind his head, leaning so far back in his swivel chair he nearly disappeared below desk level.
“You think you’re so smart, but I mean it,” she said. “You’re gonna be selling pencils on street corners.”
“Mercantilism is the backbone of this nation’s economy.”
“So,” she said finally, with a sigh, “are you going to tell me how you’re involved in the Fontaine case?”
“No,” he said.
“I saw her once, walking in the Village. She was even prettier than on the screen.”
“She was a good-looking woman,” R.J. agreed softly.
“Why would someone do a thing like that to a person like her?”
R.J. didn’t have an answer.
“Well, are you going to call Kates? He’s getting real testy. I don’t think he’s forgotten how stupid you made him look on the Boccarini case last year.”
R.J. pulled a fresh cigar from the humidor and, getting up, stuffed it into his coat pocket. The room smelled of pipe tobacco and unlit cigars. He wouldn’t allow smoking in the office; Wanda had to take her breaks in the ladies’ room.
“On my way over there right now,” he said.
“What about the lawyer?”
“Said you got a letter?”
“On the front desk.” She closed her pad and followed him into the cluttered reception room. “Just came this morning, hasn’t even been date-stamped.”
“Give it to me.”
“It hasn’t been logged.”
“I’ll log it, up here,” he said, tapping his temple and reaching for his rain gear.
He turned as he shrugged on the coat, and froze. The Post, with a photograph of Belle Fontaine, was spread on Wanda’s desk.
It was all there: Chubby-cheek
ed schoolgirl, blooming cheerleader and beauty contestant, fully ripened magazine and runway model, Hollywood starlet—and distinguished actress of stage and screen. A sidebar covered her sex life, including the controversial relationship with R.J.’s father.
“You got logs up there, all right,” said Wanda, oblivious to his shock. She smoothed down her wraparound skirt. “I’m taking an early lunch, if that’s all right with you. Do some shopping for the weekend.”
“Trolling, you mean.” He shook off the effect of the newspaper; what the hell did he care what they said?
Wanda stuck out her tongue.
“Bite that off one of these days,” he told her, sticking the letter in his coat pocket. He was glad she hadn’t asked any more questions about the Fontaine case.
He’d already stepped into the elevator when Wanda called to him from the end of the hall. “Casey Wingate on the phone for you. Says it’s important.”
“I’ll catch him later,” he said. The elevator door slid shut.
* * *
He caught a cab out front and rode it to the precinct house. The driver’s name was Akbar and he didn’t speak much English, but he knew where the gas pedal was and R.J. stepped out of the cab at the precinct in record time.
A female officer with civilian hips led him across a reception area that looked like a bus station waiting room, up a flight of stairs, and to a door marked HOMICIDE. R.J. followed, watching the swing of those hips. I must be feeling better, he thought.
A dozen detectives, many of whom he knew, looked up from their files, newspapers, and crossword puzzles as he passed through the squad room. None of them had known his mother was Belle Fontaine. Now they all knew. He could feel the difference in the way they looked at him, sizing him up.
His escort left him at a glassed-in corner office where Lieutenant Kates waited with two men R.J. had never met.
“Detectives Angelo Bertelli and Don Boggs,” Kates said without preamble. “R.J. Brooks.”
They shook hands. Boggs, a heavyset guy in his early forties with a crewcut and a widow’s peak that almost met his eyebrows, wore a shiny brown suit with grease spots on the lapels and the ugliest, square-bottom green knit tie R.J. had ever seen. He tried to squeeze the bones out of R.J.’s hand. But R.J. quickly shifted grip so it couldn’t hurt, and Boggs gave up.
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