He grinned.
I wondered what kind of revenge he had in mind where Thomas Love was concerned. I was big on revenge, when it was righteous and fair. I’d never bought into the New Testament bullshit of turning the other cheek. An eye for an eye, that’s what mattered. That’s what had come first.
Eli and I had never talked about religion. In the next hour, I realized why.
He fixed me with a level gaze, and said, ‘You should be an atheist, Ronnie. It surprises me that you’re not.’
Eli said this kind of shit all the time to be provocative, so I managed not to become angry right away.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re not stupid. When you come across a relatively intelligent person you’ve got to assume they’re an atheist. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
I looked down at the chequered tablecloth and sighed. ‘Why would you even say that? It’s like you want to have a fight right before you’ve got to rely on me for help.’
‘I saw you say Grace, right then.’ He nodded at my plate. ‘Before you ate that, I saw you pause and, I don’t know, say something in your head.’
‘It’s habit.’ I shrugged. ‘If I tell my kids to do it, I’ve got to remember. Got to set an example and all that.’
‘But you believe it, don’t you?’
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
‘Fascinating,’ he said.
‘You know Eli dies in the Bible from falling backwards out of a chair and breaking his neck.’
He smirked. ‘Is that meant to trouble me? It’s a story book. I could write a story about a guy called Ronnie who rides a flying shark into an active volcano with a load of nukes strapped to him but it still doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Aren’t you Jewish, with a name like yours?’
‘My parents were Jewish.’
‘And you didn’t for a moment think they might be right?’
That smirk again. ‘It’s all stories. Why would I take them seriously? I read about four books a week when I was a teenager. Even if it’s non-fiction you’ve got to take it all with a pinch of salt. You’re reading one person’s interpretation and that’s it. With religious texts it’s even more. You’re reading dozens, maybe hundreds of interpretations of fiction.’
I felt a little sorry for him. ‘It’s there for a reason. Those stories are there to give you guidelines, teach you about right and wrong—’
‘If you think the Bible teaches you right from wrong, then you must think you’re going to hell.’
He didn’t shy away from the direct accusation.
Everyone in the pizza place seemed quiet when he said that, like they were listening in to hear their fates. I tried not to think of other people in terms of the blip on their souls; it became too easy to slip into contempt, then hatred, than sadism, then chaos. Damned as we all were, shouldn’t we make the best of it? Or, damned as we all were, an opposing voice so frequently said inside my head, why should any of us care?
‘Yeah,’ I said, finding it easier to vocalize than I’d predicted. ‘We all are.’
‘Then why worry about any of this?’ Eli indicated at everything about us, with this funny little smile. ‘If you’re right, then no matter how fucked up things get, this is all better than where we’re going.’
I wasn’t hungry any more. The rest of my pizza went untouched.
I still haven’t spoken to my kids, I thought.
That night, morbidly dossing around on my laptop in my single room, I looked up the Richard Ramirez interview that Eli had quoted at me and watched it on YouTube. The room was featureless, blank. The most exciting item it contained was a painting of a beach above the bed. There was a Bible on the bedside table.
Killing is killing, whether done for glory, profit, or fun. Men murdered themselves into this democracy.
Something about Ramirez, about his peculiarly compelling face and the way he spoke, reminded me of a man I knew back home, Mark Chester. Mark Chester was a contract killer. He was friends with Noel, and Daisy, but he was someone I’d cross the road to avoid. I didn’t like the way he looked at people, like everyone was fair game. You could never tell if he was thinking about killing you or fucking you, I’d said to Noel tonnes of times, or in what order.
There are different sects of Satanism. The Satanist admits to being evil. We are all evil in one form or another, are we not?
It didn’t sound like Satanism to me, admitting to being evil. Catholics admitted to being evil, to being sinners. Admitting to evil didn’t mean worshipping Satan. That would be ridiculous. I snorted out loud to myself in the empty room and shut my laptop, thinking this Ramirez wasn’t that fucking smart.
It was so loud here, so much louder than London. Nobody knew when to sleep here, when to just shut the hell up.
I still haven’t spoken to my kids, I thought.
*
Thomas Love wanted to meet for brunch. Brunch.
‘Is Thomas Love even his real name?’ I asked, pouring a takeaway black coffee down my throat, unable to wait until we got to the café in question. ‘He sounds like a porn star.’
‘I don’t think Love was his real surname.’ Eli seemed thoughtful. ‘But I don’t know what he was originally called. Came from real upper-class stock though, whole family was from Ascot.’
We halted outside some upmarket place with flowers around its windows. ‘Should have known it’d be somewhere like this.’
I peered through the glass and couldn’t help but wonder if Love hadn’t deliberately picked this place because he knew we wouldn’t start anything. It was too crowded, too full of couples, businessmen, people you couldn’t pay off or silence… I was glad we had bothered wearing suits.
Places like this reminded me why New York had never appealed to me in the same way that London did. London claimed to be a classless society, even if that claim was a barefaced lie, but New York was living this reality. The only people who could still afford to live here were the white, old and wealthy. It was openly hostile to the young, to aspirers. You couldn’t afford to be an amateur any more. Not many places tolerated it. You had to emerge into the world a fully formed hardened professional or you’d be eaten alive, reduced to staring in a thousand windows like this until you either killed yourself, moved away, or stopped looking in at windows.
‘Eli. Well, you haven’t changed.’
We both turned in unison.
The only kind of arseholes who wore white suits were those who knew they could afford to buy another if it became tarnished. He had the same bowl haircut he’d been sporting in his photo, but the skin of his face was pulled back a little tighter now, was more artfully tanned. He looked like a rock star.
If Eli killed him, I realized I wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.
‘Tom!’
The two of them did that half hug half handshake thing that men did when they weren’t sure how to greet someone and then parted, with Tom smoothing down his lapels and Eli smoothing back his hair, as if they’d both contracted something unpleasant.
‘Your hair still hasn’t moved,’ Eli remarked, playfully swatting at his head. ‘Is it made of plastic now too?’
‘At least I still have hair.’ Love swatted back, aiming for the edges of Eli’s slightly receded hairline, and then spotted me. ‘You must be Ronnie O’Connell. I’m Tom. Tom Love.’
We shook hands and he was stone-cold.
I looked around, half expecting him to have a bodyguard, but he was alone as far as I could tell.
He ordered a glass of wine with breakfast even though it was ten in the morning. The smell made me feel ill and I drank my coffee in double time.
‘Trent,’ Tom said, having just ordered eggs florentine. ‘Now that’s a name I haven’t thought about in a while.’
‘When was the last time you heard from him?’ Eli folded and refolded his napkin.
‘Must be three years ago now, maybe longer. He sent me a couple of postcards. Obviously I don’t have them o
n me but I’m sure at least one is in my apartment somewhere.’
‘You still have them?’ I didn’t think Tom seemed the sort to keep things for sentimental value; I imagined his apartment to be as sterile and white and minimal as the man sitting across from me. ‘After all this time?’
‘I liked the photo on the front. Burning palm trees.’
‘Where did he send it from?’
‘The stamp said St Louis, Missouri.’
‘What was he doing there?’
‘Teaching English… Probably. It’s what he did after he left us. Melissa heard from him more recently, I think. From LA, she said.’ Tom picked up his glass and smiled. ‘No hard feelings about that, Eli. It was nothing personal.’
‘Water under the bridge. Or something.’ Eli downed his coffee like it was a shot of whisky.
I wondered whether they were alluding to business or Melissa.
‘What do you do, Ronnie?’ Tom turned his attentions to me, briefly.
‘I run a gentleman’s club in London. I also work in exports. I suppose I’m an entrepreneur, if you wanna get all French about it.’
Euphemism inside euphemism.
‘So what brings you both out here? Is it really just to look for Trent? Seems a strange time to become so interested in his whereabouts. As I recall, you didn’t take that much interest in him when he was alive—’
‘You think he’s no longer alive?’ Eli sat up straighter in his chair.
‘It’s unlikely, I think.’
Tom was casting his eyes about for his food, as was I. Our eyes met while searching for a waiter.
The doilies were doing my head in. I kept pushing mine back and forth, hoping I could maybe slide it off the table.
‘Maybe you should ask Melissa?’ Tom’s face split with an expression of utter elation at the sight of his breakfast being brought over. As it was set down he looked Eli in the eyes and said, ‘She’s the one who used to talk to him the most. Are you still in touch?’
I thought Eli was going to leap the table and throttle him, but a plate full of croissants and fruit was blocking him.
My gaze drifted downwards, out of habit, and I saw Tom was holding a gun down by the side of the table, imperceptibly, as if it were a mobile, or a cigarette. But it was there all the same, and it was aimed at me.
Tom picked up his fork with his right hand, speared a load of spinach and egg yolk, and ate with the nonchalance of a cat.
It was almost offensive he could function, I thought, with a haircut that infantile. It was the sort of haircut Noel would have taken a photo of and messaged to me.
I glanced at Eli, but there was no way to silently convey what was happening out of his view.
Tom wasn’t going to shoot me. Not here. Not unless he had to. So I picked up my coffee, took a sip, and a bite of French toast. Then I said, ‘Eli, I’m not one to make a drama but I thought you should know there’s a gun being pointed at me this side of the table.’
Eli made to stand up.
Tom made a clicking sound with his teeth. ‘Bad idea. Really bad idea.
Caught in an awkward crouch, Eli lowered himself back into his seat.
‘You think I’d be so stupid?’ Tom said, his voice low, a hiss.
Eli shrugged. ‘Honestly … yes.’
‘Yes, insult the man with the gun pointed at me. Very smart,’ I muttered, moving the doily around the table again at right angles. ‘Fuck’s sake.’
Eli shook his head. ‘How did you know?’
‘I’ve known you were coming for years. You’re just the right brand of insane to hold a grudge this long. When I said you haven’t changed, I meant it.’
Tom bared his teeth when he spoke.
‘Who brings a gun to brunch?’ I snapped, more to myself than anyone else.
Tom ate his breakfast with one hand.
I carried on eating because I was hungry and being shot on an empty stomach was an only slightly more tragic prospect than being shot whilst satisfied and eating bacon. It also took my mind off the silent stand-off.
Eli wasn’t touching his food.
‘I haven’t spoken to Melissa for a while,’ he said, straightening his cutlery.
I watched the couple at the table to our right, an animated Chanel ad, but they were oblivious, staring only at each other and occasionally at their iPhones. Great. No one notices when you’re in a crisis yet if you were murdered in front of them they’d probably have the presence of mind to film it.
‘She next?’ Tom asked.
‘What makes you think there is a next? I might just hate you.’
‘You’re looking for Trent, you came for me first… I’m getting the impression I should probably phone Cam when I leave. Of course you’d call on Melissa.’ He decapitated his English muffin with the side of his fork without looking at the table. ‘It was her that must have hurt the most, after all.’
I wondered if I could knock the gun out of his hands from here, maybe disarm him. Not without causing a scene, and we couldn’t be causing a scene right now. Not this early in the game.
I eyed the couple decked out in Chanel again, and then raised my hand to motion for a waiter.
The gun immediately disappeared, as I asked, ‘May I have some Dijon mustard please?’
‘Of course, sir.’
The waiter was standing in the exact spot where Tom’s trigger finger had been, so much more helpful than he could have imagined.
Saved by condiments, I thought. Fucking hell.
As the waiter walked away, Tom stood up, glowering.
‘Don’t bother looking for me at home,’ he said, moving away. ‘You won’t find me.’
Eli picked up his knife and fork, relief descending upon the table now that the firearm was concealed. ‘You know I’ll find you eventually.’
‘I’m sure we’ll continue this conversation then.’
Tom swept out of the café.
Not long after, the waiter brought over my mustard.
‘Well, I suppose now it’s interesting,’ Eli mused. ‘Paranoid old fucker.’
‘Interesting is not the word I’d have gone for.’
‘Now it’s fun.’ Straightening his cutlery again.
‘How’d you figure that? If he thinks you’re on some mad rampage, won’t he try and warn everyone else?’
‘He has no idea where Trent is, even if he did get a postcard. And he won’t warn Melissa. He’ll warn Cam maybe, but not her.’ With some deliberation, Eli picked up a croissant and looked at it with unfathomable loathing. ‘He hates her almost as much as I do.’
He wasn’t going to explain if I asked him to elaborate, so I didn’t for now.
For now, I gestured at Tom’s empty plate and sighed. ‘And he’s left us to pick up the bill.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘I’m going home.’
‘Don’t be melodramatic.’
‘I’m not. It’s a simple statement. I’m going home, then I’m going to Chicago.’
Eli caught up with me and grabbed my arm.
‘Fuck off.’
‘It’s not as if your life was really in danger.’
‘If it wasn’t then, it fucking is now! How was I meant to know you were such a flaming nut-job that he saw a revenge plot coming for over a fucking decade? No wonder your old mate Trent has gone off the fucking radar!’ I resumed walking, but couldn’t remember where our hotel was.
‘Wait!’
‘No! What part of “fuck off” are you struggling with?’
Eli slowed, and for some reason I stopped with him.
He lowered his voice and turned slightly away from the bagel stand we’d halted next to. The man behind it surveyed us, arms folded.
‘Are we really going to have a domestic in the street after brunch, Ron?’ Eli said, deadpan. ‘Is that what you’re going to make happen right now?’
‘Yep. Get domestic on me.’
‘Fine.’ Eli looked over his shoulder at the bagel man again, who was still s
taring at us. ‘You owe me.’
‘Like fuck I do. I can’t take on the debt for all this shit you’ve done for Dad, it’s not fair. Why can’t he come with you, eh? If it’s so fucking important.’
‘Because is it fucking important!’ he snapped, hands balled into fists. ‘Of course I’d ask you before your father. You have twice the mind of that man, and you know it.’
The bagel man was freaking me out, so I started walking again.
‘You’re not going to make me stay with flattery.’
‘Just come and search his apartment with me.’
‘Why? So I can have a gun pointed at me again?’
‘No, because… Oh come on, you can’t turn down a good mystery. You really don’t want to know where Trent is?’
‘Why should I? I didn’t know him.’
I sidestepped a child only to find myself facing a pack of dogs on a spiderweb of leashes. I turned and crossed the road, still with little idea of where I was going.
‘Yeah, but you wanna know.’
‘Why?’
He caught my arm again. ‘A guy disappeared, no one knows why or where and you’re telling me you have zero interest?’
I stopped again, because he was the only chance I had of finding our hotel. ‘Yeah, I’m interested, but it’s not about that. It’s about a load of people who now know you want them dead, and are going to be waiting for you. I didn’t sign up for that, this isn’t fucking Thunderdome.’
‘I told you, he won’t have warned Melissa. Or Trent.’
‘And you know that, how? You don’t even know where Trent is.’
‘Just… come to his apartment, help me find that postcard. If you still want to go home after that, then fine.’ A fleeting moment of humility, but it was replaced with something like hate, a promise of hate. ‘But I won’t forget it.’
Great. I took him at his word and thought, I’m going home.
‘Well, where the fuck are we staying again? Because I’m not going without a weapon.’
I wondered if I’d imagined that moment before, as he smiled at me. ‘Neither am I.’
*
I walked into the building first. It occurred to Eli that the doorman might know what he looked like, if Tom Love really was as paranoid as all that. I’d changed into the most poncy outfit I’d packed, another one of my suits, and slicked back my hair. By the time it came to waving ‘Afternoon’ to the guy behind the desk in the entrance hall, he didn’t give me a second glance.
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