Ghostheart

by R.J. Ellory

  So Harry Rose moved once more, out of the tenement on East 46th, to an altogether more upmarket place across the Bergen Turnpike near Columbia Park. He was thirty years old, he had money to burn, and there was something inside of him that made him feel that his life had turned a corner. Two men he’d killed – out of principle, for revenge – and the only true friend he’d ever had was hiding out in Mexico. So when he met Maggie Erickson one Saturday morning in the apartment block elevator, when he helped her carry her bags across the hall to her parents’ apartment on the floor beneath his, when she turned and thanked him, told him that gentlemen seemed to be a dying breed these days, Harry Rose felt something inside of himself that was not only alien as an emotion, but somehow magnetic in its pull.

  He backed up to the elevator, held it open until she’d opened her own front door and stepped inside, and when she turned and smiled at him, fluttered her eyelids like she was a little embarrassed or coy, he came right back out of the elevator, and in his most charming manner asked her if there might be a possibility she would share a cup of coffee with him one afternoon at the corner delicatessen. Blushing once more, Maggie Erickson said she would like that very much, and they set a date, a time, and a meeting place. Maggie was not the kind of girl who would ordinarily agree to such a thing, but there had been something about the man, something about his manner, his forthrightness, that had appealed to her. For all of her twenty-eight years she had lived with her folks – good people, Christian people – but there was something inside of Maggie that made a fire in her belly. She wanted more, knew that more was out there somewhere; it was waiting for her, and perhaps she’d agreed merely because such a thing was different. Sometimes different was enough it seemed, and maybe here she had experienced the same kind of magnetism that had so effortlessly drawn Elena Kruszwica to Jozef Kolzac. Maybe it was a facet of Harry Rose that had been inherited from his own errant and inimitable father. Whatever it was, Maggie didn’t speak of Harry to her parents, considerate enough not to give them any cause for concern, excited enough to feel that here was someone they might disapprove of. Perhaps that was another reason: the forbidden, the taboo, the frowned-upon. Her education and upbringing taught her that such meetings were always chaperoned, that there were polite and conservative introductions to be made between parents and potential suitors before any such rendezvous, but she’d seen the spark of fire in Harry Rose’s eyes and it had matched the fire in her belly, and the idea of that man sitting drinking tea while her parents spoke of politics and church and family picnics made her cringe with embarrassment. Maggie Erickson was no Alice Raguzzi, but she sure as hell was no Shirley Temple either.

  And Harry Rose? Harry went back up in the elevator to his own apartment and wondered if he’d gone crazy, if there might be some slim chance he would become a real human being after all.

  They did meet. Three days later. Met where they’d said they’d meet. And Harry brought flowers, a discreet little arrangement of roses and carnations, and Maggie Erickson took Harry’s arm as they left the apartment building and walked down the block to the corner delicatessen. Harry found her witty and charming, almost intellectual in her grasp of literature and politics, and when he asked her if she would care to have dinner with him one evening, he was as surprised to be accepted as she was to be asked. There was something about this girl, something that belied the appearance she presented. While Alice Raguzzi and ‘Indigo’ Carol Kurtz had seen all the rough edges and sharp corners of life, while they talked when their mouths were full and used the john with the door open, while they may have known everything about people from the gutters to the stars, there was something missing. That something was class. Maggie Erickson had class, class enough to have plenty to spare, and though she was no wallflower, though she could talk Harry sideways into Sunday and show him how things really were, though she was well-read and educated in a way that Harry would never understand, there was something about her that ran a whole lot deeper.

  She was quieter than either Alice or Carol, but quiet waters ran deep. Harry knew that for a fact, and when she challenged him about the way he spoke of people, when she made him open doors for her and wait patiently while she finished her meal, Harry began to see that perhaps there was another side to folks that he had never paid any mind to.

  Honest Harry Rose started to consider the possibility that there might be some part of life he had missed. The part with class, the part with a certain sense of grace and decorum. Maggie taught him to think of all people in the same light, that there was a reason they were the way they were, that they all carried their troubles no matter their background or upbringing. ‘People are people,’ she’d tell him. ‘People do the things they do because they believe them to be right even when they’re wrong. And people do wrong because they never took the time to figure out a better way to do it.’

  And Harry listened. Perhaps for the first time he listened to someone other than himself. He began to think that there might be a way to handle people without his fists or a gun, that there might be a way to close down some of the chapters of his past and start again.

  Perhaps … just perhaps.

  Seemed someone somewhere was stoking the fires, and as sparks became small flames, as smoke started to rise and make its way towards the sky, Maggie also believed that perhaps she’d found an out. Middle-class America was its own kind of prison – comfortable, good food, a warm bed to sleep in and a roof over her head, but a prison all the same. Harry Rose carried a key it seemed, and he knew what was on the other side.

  It was the end of a decade – a decade that had seen changes throughout America that were perhaps the most significant of the century. And Harry felt he had changed as well, changed inwardly as well as for the world, and when dinner date followed dinner date, when he took his Maggie dancing to the Regent Astoria off Broadway, when Christmas unfolded into a brand new year, he knew – he just knew – that now he was away from Queens he would never go back.

  He had slipped the moorings of his former life, and the boat that had carried him thus far was allowed to drift back into the deep and turgid undercurrents of the past. It was a brand new day, a brand new life perhaps, and the world seemed so much more real and alive to Harry Rose without the pressure of looking over his shoulder. He let go of everything it seemed – Daniel Rosen and Rebecca McCready; the horrors of the war he’d been born out of; the gamblers and losers, the drunks and cheats and liars, the killers and dealers and pimps and hookers; Alice Raguzzi, Freddie Trebor, the Olson brothers and Carol Kurtz, Mike Royale and that last prevailing image of a frightened and overweight man burning alive in his own bed …

  And me too. I too was allowed to slip away. For the second time Harry Rose forgot the man who had paid his penalties for him.

  And he took Maggie Erickson away from her parents; they moved out to Englewood near Allison Park. Though they never married she did take his name, and Maggie Rose was a girl who knew better than to ask questions where questions were not required. It was 1970, it was a more liberal and permissive age, and when she became pregnant in early 1971, Harry Rose believed that finally he’d arrived. He wanted the child, wanted the child more than he wanted his own life.

  For a time, ignorant in his happiness, he would have both.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Later, much later, Annie O’Neill would wonder why she had been so trusting. Hadn’t it always gone this way? Hadn’t it always been far more complicated than she had let herself believe? Perhaps, perhaps not. It was always in the cold, harsh light of day, as the pieces scattered around her feet, pieces to be viewed in all their bitter and twisted glory, that she saw the signs. Little flags. There were always little flags.

  David came to the store on Saturday morning. He said he’d been to the apartment, figured she might not open up, but there had been no answer.

  ‘Sullivan’s always out Saturday morning,’ Annie told him, and David nodded, smiled, and asked if they could go back to her apartment.


  ‘Insatiable,’ she said. ‘You are insatiable David Quinn,’ and then he kind of smiled, and once more started massaging the back of his neck, and Annie recognized the little flag.

  They walked in silence the best part of the way, and though in itself this was nothing significant in the grand scheme of things, and perhaps would not have seemed out of place before, Annie knew something was awry, and there was a cold sense of apprehensiveness that seemed to pervade her thoughts.

  And once they were inside, had removed their coats; once Annie had made coffee and walked back into the front room; once they’d sat beside one another and David had been silent for a minute, she had to ask him.

  And he said it. In one simple statement – four words, each in and of themselves of no great meaning – he said all that needed to be said.

  We need to talk.

  She felt the emotion welling in her chest before the words had even left his lips. Before they had reached the walls. Before their real meaning had even been confirmed in his eyes.

  She felt it.

  All there was to feel.

  And once those words were out there there was no taking them back, no way she could desperately claw them from the air and return them to him. It was done.

  ‘What do you mean, we need to talk?’

  He smiled. There was something important about the way he smiled. In that moment she could not be specific as to why, nor what that expression might mean, for all her thoughts were clamoring together at the forefront of her mind and there was no room for any other consideration.

  And then he said the second thing.

  The second worst thing of all.

  And once he’d said the second worst thing Annie knew there would be no going back, that whatever might have been salvaged from this with words and expressions, whatever physical reach she might have made towards him, he was already too far from arm’s length to be grasped.

  ‘It all seems to have happened so fast,’ he uttered, and looked down at the way his own hands seemed to be fighting with one another in his lap.

  ‘Too fast?’ she asked, and there it was – so obvious in her voice, that tone of grief and loss and heartache, of seeing something she’d believed to be constant and resolute slip away so soundlessly.

  He nodded. ‘Too fast,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s just me … perhaps the fact that it’s been so long since I was involved with anyone like this –’

  ‘Involved?’ she said. ‘Is this what you call involved?’

  He shook his head. He was already back-pedalling, already wishing he wasn’t there, wishing he was elsewhere, somewhere, anywhere at all.

  He looked at Annie and smiled once more, but it was the smile one would give a grieving widow at her husband’s funeral, a smile one would give a little girl who didn’t win the beauty pageant.

  It was the smile of a traitor as he withdrew the knife and started to wipe the blood from his hands.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Annie said, even now creeping towards anger. ‘You’re telling me that you want to cool this thing off … that perhaps we ought to spend a little less time together? Is that what you’re telling me, David?’

  Annie rose from the couch, unable to bear being next to him, and she started to pace the room, started to feel redness rushing up inside her chest.

  David looked down.

  ‘Look at me!’ she snapped. ‘Look at me David Quinn.’

  David, startled by her outburst, looked up at her. It was an involuntary action, a reaction, his eyes wide, his breath caught in his chest.

  ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’ she repeated.

  ‘I am,’ he said, and his tone was so matter-of-fact, so businesslike, that she could barely believe her ears. He stood up slowly, and for the first time Annie felt a sense of threat, real threat. There was something in his eyes, something cold and distant and aloof and menacing that made her shrink back inside. ‘I do not have to explain myself to you,’ he said, his voice measured, almost monotone. ‘I am telling you that I cannot continue to see you, and if you ask me why I will not tell you. I cannot tell you.’

  ‘And where the hell has this come from?’ she asked. ‘Where the hell has this suddenly come from? We spend two days in Boston together, we’re twenty-four hours apart so you can get some work done …’

  Annie stopped mid-flight. She took a step towards David, and David – for a moment – seemed to press himself further into the couch.

  ‘You’re married, aren’t you?’ Annie said, her voice cold. ‘You’re fucking married, aren’t you?’

  David laughed – a short nervous laugh, the laugh of a cornered man. ‘Married?’ he said. ‘Jesus Christ, no I’m not married.’

  Annie took another step forward and put her hands on her hips. ‘So what the fuck is this?’ she said. ‘What in God’s name is this? I thought we had something here, something real for a change … something that might turn out to mean something instead of some shallow two-week affair with about as much substance as –’

  Annie threw her hands up in despair.

  She wanted to cry.

  She wanted to shout and smash things, and she believed – later – that had she been somewhere other than her own apartment she would have done exactly that.

  ‘You want out, is that it?’ she asked.

  David shook his head. ‘It isn’t a matter of choice …’

  ‘Choice? Not a matter of choice? Oh for fuck’s sake, you people!’

  David frowned.

  ‘Men!’ she said. ‘Spineless, immature fucking teenagers, the lot of you. No more backbone than a fucking … oh, Christ I don’t know what! You come over here, you fuck me, you take everything you want from me, and then when it gets a little too close for comfort, when it starts to look like there might be some possibility of commitment you all run like scared rabbits.’

  David started to rise from the couch.

  Annie was aware then of how much taller than herself he appeared to be. He seemed coiled, like a spring, like there was a tension inside of him that could explode at any second. Again she felt threatened, intimidated, and the expression in his eyes was one of emotional deadness, as though he were fighting against something he couldn’t control.

  She hesitated for a second, just a second, and then she turned on him, her voice even louder. ‘So what the fuck is it then? You tell me what the fuck it is David Quinn. We need to talk. It’s all moving too fast. You have any kind of idea of how fucking clichéd that is? You asshole … You fucking asshole.’

  Annie’s fists were clenched, and even as she started towards him he stepped back, the backs of his legs reached the edge of the couch, and he fell once more into a sitting position.

  She was over him then, her face red, her eyes wide, and when she spoke her voice was determined and angry and cold and vicious.

  ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ she said. ‘You take your sorry pathetic self-absorbed weak-willed spineless excuses and get the fuck out of my apartment, you hear me?’

  David hesitated.

  ‘Now!’ Annie screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Get the fuck out of here now!’

  David got up from the couch and walked across the room. He walked slowly, too slowly, and when he reached the door he turned and looked at her.

  There was something then, something unspoken that seemed to issue from him. He looked lost for a moment, and then that feeling disappeared like a handful of smoke. He wants to stay, she thought. He wants to say something, to explain what’s happening here. He wants me to understand something but he can’t … can’t or won’t?

  She wanted to ask him, wanted to pull him back and make him tell her what was really going on, but once again she sensed the threat that appeared to emanate from him, and in defence of herself, in defence of her pride and her dignity, she canceled out any possibility that there might be anything reasonable about his behavior.

  The anger came like a tornado, sudden and unexpected, an
d she started across the room towards him, her fists clenched, her eyes wide and desperate.

  David made an effort to grab his jacket from the chair behind the door, but Annie was so close behind him, so angry, so violent in her outrage and disgust, that he missed it.

  Annie almost pushed him down the stairs when he reached the landing, and though there were a million words in his mouth there was only one that managed to escape.

  ‘Sorry –’ he started.

  Annie had his coat then, and when David was half way down the stairwell she hurled it after him. He tried to catch it, almost lost his footing, but he grabbed the rail, picked his jacket up off the floor, and hurried down the stairs.

  Annie rushed back into her apartment, and snatching a vase from the small table just inside she went out again.

  She threw the vase with everything she possessed, and even as she heard it shatter into a thousand pieces in the hallway below she also heard the front door slam shut.

  Like a gunshot it was, ricocheting up the well, turning the corners as it came, and penetrating her heart right where she stood.

  And then she collapsed. Fell to her knees, her hands white-knuckling as she gripped the stair-rail for support, and then she was sobbing, and it seemed everything that she’d ever suffered – every hurt, every betrayal, every loss, every weakness – came rushing out of her chest like a tidal wave.

  Eventually, after how long she didn’t know and didn’t care, she dragged herself back into the apartment and closed the door behind her.

  For a while she knelt on the floor with her head on the edge of the couch. And then she walked through to the kitchen, fetched a bottle of Sullivan’s Crown Royal that she’d secreted beneath the sink, and without a glass, without even so much as a coffee cup, she started drinking.