by R.J. Ellory
‘No, nothing like that. He said that you and Edward Bernstein were business partners. He called him Lenny, like I said. He asked about my relationship with you—’
‘With me?’
Harper nodded. ‘Yes, with you. He asked what my relationship was with you.’
‘And what did you tell him, John?’ Walt smiled, smiled like he was being nonchalant and relaxed.
Harper was aware of a cool tension in that moment, as if it could have been possible to say the wrong thing. ‘I said you were a friend of the family, that you had been there after Garrett’s death—’
‘Garrett? He asked about Garrett?’
‘He didn’t know who Garrett was.’
‘So how did he know to ask about Garrett? You told him about Garrett?’
Harper shook his head. ‘No, not directly.’ He turned and looked at Cathy Hollander. All of a sudden he felt nervous, like there was something for him to be afraid of. Cathy looked back at him without changing her expression.
‘He asked who called me. I told him Evelyn called me. He asked who Evelyn was and I told him. I happened to mention Garrett in passing, that was all.’
The waiter appeared as if from nowhere. He smiled broadly. He held a bottle in his hand and showed the label to Walt.
Walt little more than glanced, said, ‘Yes, that’s fine,’ and waited patiently while the bottle was uncorked. The wine was poured, tasted, complimented, and then Walt said he would take care of its service.
The waiter vanished as effortlessly as he had appeared.
‘So . . . anything else he asked you?’
Harper was silent for a while. He remembered the thought. He put his hand in his pocket and took out the money Walt had given him in the Cantonese restaurant. ‘I don’t need this money,’ he said. ‘I brought this back for you.’
Walt laughed suddenly. ‘Jesus, John, what the hell is this? Keep the money for Christ’s sake. You need some money . . . everybody needs some money, right Cathy?’
Cathy was smiling. She reached out her hand, closed it over Harper’s. Harper felt the notes crumple within his fist. More than that he felt the pressure of her fingers, the closeness and promise he wished they represented. ‘Put the money in your pocket, John. One thing you’re going to learn about Walt is his generosity.’
Harper planned to repeat himself, to tell Walt that he really didn’t need the money, but Walt was asking questions again.
‘So that was all he asked about? Nothing more specific, just passing the time of day right?’
‘Right, like he was interested in who I was and how I’d heard about my father—’ Harper stopped. It felt so strange, so out-of-place to be saying such a thing. My father . He repeated it over in his mind – My father . . . My father . . . My father – but still felt awkward and unsettled. ‘I think he was trying to find out anything that might give him a lead on who did the shooting.’
Walt smiled. He seemed more settled, less angular in his manner, as if Harper’s words had satisfied what he wished to know.
The waiter appeared bearing dishes. Even as he was serving Walt was distracted by someone entering the restaurant.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Freiberg exclaimed. ‘Well I never—’
Walt stood up and started waving his hand in the direction of a man who’d entered. Heavy-set, shorter than Harper, hair dark and thick, greying at the temples. He possessed an air of great confidence, certain and assured in his movements. He saw Walt and laughed out loud.
‘Well, fuck me!’ he exclaimed.
Walt waved him over, and as the man started towards their table Walt leaned down and whispered to Harper: ‘Don’t say anything about Edward, don’t mention his name, okay?’
Harper looked confused.
‘It’s okay . . . trust me,’ Walt said. ‘Don’t say anything specific, right?’
Harper glanced at Cathy.
She nodded, raised her hand and pressed her index finger to her lips.
Harper didn’t have time to speak, to ask what was going on. The man had arrived at the table and was standing over them.
Walt reached out and shook his hand. ‘Jesus, Sol, how ya doin’?’
‘Good, good, good,’ Sol said, and then he glanced at Harper, double-took, frowned and shook his head. ‘What the fu—’
Freiberg laughed. ‘Sol . . . want you to meet someone. This is Edward’s son, John.’
‘Well, Jesus Christ Walter, what the hell is this all about, eh?’
Walt was laughing, and Sol was leaning across the table and reaching out his hand.
Harper took it without thinking, felt his hand almost crushed with enthusiasm by the man ahead of him.
‘John,’ Walt said. ‘This is Sol Neumann, a friend of your father’s.’
Neumann smiled broadly. He continued punishing Harper’s hand with his relentless grip. ‘Friend? An acquaintance really, not so much a friend. It is a pleasure to meet you, John . . . may I call you John?’
Harper nodded. He needed his hand back before he lost all circulation in his fingers.
‘Join us,’ Walt said. ‘We’re having some lunch. You are welcome to join us, Sol.’
Neumann released Harper’s hand. ‘Most kind, most kind,’ he said. ‘I was looking for someone. I am attending to something for Mr Marcus. I don’t wish to offend Walt, I would love to eat with you, but—’
Walt raised his hand. ‘Say no more Sol, business is business. If you are busy we shall eat together another day, yes?’
Neumann grinned enthusiastically. ‘Yes, another day, another day.’
He shook hands with Walt, again with Harper. He nodded politely at Cathy, and then he made his farewell. ‘Respects to your father,’ he said to Harper as he backed away from the table. He continued walking backwards until he reached the bar, and then he raised his hand once more, turned, and was gone.
The waiter, silent, almost motionless during the entire exchange, stepped forward once again and served starters.
‘Asshole!’ Walt hissed once the waiter had disappeared. ‘Like that asshole Duchaunak . . . fucking Marilyn Monroe freakin’ weirdo motherfucker,’ and then he sat back and raised both his hands, palms forward in a conciliatory gesture. ‘I shouldn’t say such things,’ he said. ‘I apologize, John, there was no need for such an outburst.’
Harper was taken aback, wondered what the hell was happening. ‘He seemed friendly enough,’ he said, and even as he said it realized how utterly naïve he sounded.
‘They’re all friendly,’ Walt said. ‘Smiles and shaking hands, all of them, people like Neumann and Duchaunak—’
‘Sol Neumann is a cop as well?’ Harper asked.
Walt laughed, Cathy also. ‘Sol Neumann a cop?’ Walt said. ‘No, John. Sol Neumann is about as far from a cop as you could get.’
‘He knows my father,’ Harper said.
Walt raised his hand and gripped Harper’s shoulder. ‘Eat, John, eat. Don’t worry yourself with any of this.’
‘What was this thing you said about Duchaunak, the thing about Marilyn Monroe?’
Walt smiled and shook his head. ‘Frank Duchaunak is a haunted man, John. He has a thing about Marilyn Monroe.’
‘A thing? Whaddya mean?’
Walt glanced at Cathy.
Cathy leaned towards Harper. He could smell her perfume. ‘Frank Duchaunak was born on August fifth 1962,’ she said.
Harper frowned. He didn’t understand.
‘The day Marilyn Monroe died,’ Cathy explained. ‘He figures this has some meaning and significance in his life, and he is a little obsessed with the woman.’
‘Obsessed?’ Harper asked.
‘Books, posters, videos of every film she made . . . and that doesn’t even get close to the Di Maggio baseball.’
‘What baseball?’
‘Apparently Frank Duchaunak paid five thousand dollars for a baseball signed by Joe Di Maggio because he believed Marilyn Monroe might have held it for him when he signed it.’
>
‘You’re kidding?’ Harper said.
‘No word of a lie,’ Walt said. ‘It is what it is . . . and hey, I don’t have a problem with a guy having an interest, you know? Some guys like racing cars, others like to collect stamps or shot glasses or whatever, but you get a guy like Duchaunak with this Marilyn thing, and hey, this goes a little out into left field, if you know what I mean.’
Harper – about to ask another question, a question about Sol Neumann and Mr Marcus – was interrupted by Walt Freiberg’s cellphone.
‘Ah, for Christ’s sake,’ Walt said under his breath, and retrieved the phone from his jacket pocket. He looked at the screen, and then edging his chair back he stood slowly, his expression changing as he rose.
‘You have to excuse me,’ he said. ‘I have to take this call.’
Harper smiled, nodded.
Walt Freiberg started walking, and as he did so he took the call. ‘Tell me all about it,’ he started. ‘I want to know what the fuck went wrong—’
Harper strained to hear what he was saying but Walt walked out of earshot and made his way towards the exit.
‘You don’t try and listen,’ Cathy Hollander said.
‘Eh?’
She smiled, glanced towards Walt Freiberg as he vanished through the doorway.
‘To the conversations, the phone calls, whatever. You don’t try and listen.’
Harper shrugged his shoulders.
‘For real,’ Cathy said. ‘There are certain things Walt is very conscious of, and one of them is his work. His work is his own business, no-one else’s, and he makes it a very definite rule that nothing interferes with it.’
‘Hey,’ Harper said. ‘I’m neither one way nor the other on this thing. I’m the new kid on the block. I’m here and I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing here. Walt Freiberg is a distant memory from my childhood who happens to have surfaced. This cop guy, this Duchaunak, he tells me that Walt and my father are business partners, that they’ve been partners for many years, right?’
Cathy shook her head. ‘Whatever you say.’
‘It’s not what I say, Miss Hollander, it’s what the Marilyn Monroe-obsessed cop told me, that Walt and my father have been business partners for many years.’
‘Okay, so what?’
‘So what?’ Harper asked. ‘Well, I don’t know what kind of business and I don’t s’pose it matters what kind of business, but it seems to me that if Walt has been around my father for as long as I think then it seems awful strange that he’s so calm.’
‘So calm? What d’you mean, so calm?’
‘Your partner, your friend, whatever . . . they get shot, shot in a liquor store robbery. They’re laid up in hospital and there’s a very good possibility that they’re going to die, and you spend your time out and about having lunch in some fancy fucking restaurant—’
‘What would you have him do, Mr Harper?’
Harper looked at Cathy, his expression one of surprise. He sensed that his outburst had alienated her. He wished he could wind it back and start over.
‘Walt Freiberg has lost a lot of people,’ Cathy said.
Harper shook his head. He had no idea what she meant.
‘I can’t tell you a great deal from personal experience,’ she went on. ‘I haven’t been around for an awful long time, and to tell you the truth I don’t know a great deal more about Walt Freiberg and your father than you do, but I know that Walt has had a pretty interesting life, and when it comes to losing people Walt has done a good deal of that. Walt has made losing people something of a secondary career.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Harper said.
Cathy smiled. ‘And you’re not going to . . . here comes the man himself.’
Harper turned and saw Walt walking across towards them. He was grinning broadly. He took his seat. Harper could tell he’d been outside from the coolness he exuded.
‘Sorry kids,’ he said. ‘Just a little matter that needed sorting. Now where were we? Oh yeah, we were talking about Frank Duchaunak and his Marilyn Monroe fixation. Freakin’ whackjob if you ask me,’ and Walt Freiberg was talking, and Harper was listening, and there was something about the manner in which he spoke, the way he seemed to make everything he was saying the most important thing to be said, and there were jokes, another reference to Duchaunak thinking with his dick instead of his head—
‘Guy’s put so much trust in his dick he’s the only person I know who washes his hands before he takes a leak!’
And Harper, caught somewhere within the overlapping emotions of everything that had happened – anxiety, confusion, grief, loss, a fear of the unknown perhaps – forgot to ask about Sol Neumann and Mr Marcus, and even if he had remembered perhaps would not have possessed the nerve to ask, because everything except that which Walt Freiberg was speaking of seemed insignificant. When Walt was there it was Walt’s life, Walt’s words, Walt’s moment. Walt Freiberg possessed the ability to sweep everyone around him into the whirlwind of his own reality, and there was little that could be done to avoid its magnetism. Walt seemed to make the idea of being excluded something awkward and potentially unpleasant. John Harper, a man with little bearing and few reference points, went with the flow. He ate the food, he drank the wine, and at the end of the meal he smoked two of Cathy Hollander’s cigarettes, didn’t even try to remind himself that he’d quit.
She seemed animated, more alive, and Harper considered an odd thought: that the more time he spent with someone, the more he got to know them, the more attractive they became. It was as if the real personality shone through the exterior facade. In that moment, and those that followed as he watched her, listened to her, he believed she was the only real reason he had for staying in New York.
And when they were done; when the check was paid, coats gathered, farewells uttered and hands shaken; when fifty-dollar bills were discreetly pressed into receptive palms, John Harper went out of the Tribeca Grill onto Greenwich Street feeling as if he’d touched the edges of a world he could never hope to occupy. Walt Freiberg – a man who’d made losing people a secondary career – told Harper that it had been good to eat together, that they should do it again the following day, and then explained that he had some affairs to deal with and Cathy would drive him back to his hotel. He would call Harper later, perhaps in the morning, because there was someone he wanted Harper to meet.
And then he was gone. Like that. Just gone.
Harper stood there, Cathy Hollander to his right, ahead of them the black Merc that she’d driven over that morning, and he wondered where the rest of his life had disappeared to.
He thought of Harry Ivens, figured he should call him, and then realized that he’d been in New York less than twenty-four hours.
‘What?’ Cathy asked him.
Harper shook his head. ‘I arrived here yesterday,’ he said quietly. ‘I feel like I’ve been here days.’
Cathy smiled knowingly. ‘That’s New York,’ she said. ‘Well, half of it’s New York and half of it’s Walt.’
‘And you?’ Harper asked. ‘How much of it is you?’
Cathy laughed. ‘I’m just the eye candy sweetheart,’ she said, and then she put her hand through and beneath Harper’s arm and pulled him close. ‘There aren’t a hundred ways to say this, and maybe there isn’t even one way to say it pretty, but I sort of come with the territory.’
Harper once again recognized his own naivete. He wanted to ask more but couldn’t.
‘I’ll drive you to your hotel,’ she said. ‘Unless there’s somewhere else you want to go.’
Harper watched her carefully, tried to read some deeper meaning into her comment. He perceived nothing and was disappointed. He smiled and shook his head. ‘I’m tired Cathy, real tired. Feel like I could sleep for a month.’ It was only after he’d spoken that he realized he’d called her by her first name.
‘Well, seems to me the greatest difficulty people have in life is not doing the thing they feel they should do. You want to go s
leep for a month I’m sure Walt will settle the tab at the Regent.’
Harper started laughing. He realized he was a little drunk. He didn’t care.
‘Get in the car,’ she said. ‘I’ll drop you off.’
Harper did as he was told.
Cathy pulled away, turned the CD player on – Peggy Lee, radio broadcast recording, a cappella version of ‘Fever’. It felt like the woman’s voice was seducing him. He leaned back against the headrest, closed his eyes, could smell Cathy Hollander’s perfume once again. Maybe it was neither Peggy Lee nor Cathy Hollander; maybe it was New York. New York wasn’t America, never had been, never would be. It was as far from America as one could hope to get. The city owned itself, and no-one owned the city, except maybe Frank Sinatra and he was dead.
Harper smiled to himself. Wondered why he’d resisted coming back all this time. Because of Garrett? Because of what had happened back then? Back then was all the way back then. Didn’t seem like it was following him, didn’t seem like he’d find it around the corner or waiting on the junction when he took a walk.
‘Can I have a cigarette?’ he asked.
‘Help yourself,’ Cathy said, and nodded towards the glove-box. Harper flipped the catch, searched through the CD cases and traffic citations and found a pack of Winstons.
‘You can keep those,’ she said. ‘I’m actually trying to quit.’
Harper smiled. ‘That’s what I was telling myself yesterday.’
‘Hell of a thing eh? I’ve known people quit coke and heroin and pills, but never able to quit smoking.’
‘Hell of a thing,’ he echoed, and put the cigarette in his mouth. Cathy passed him a lighter from her coat pocket.
It was only minutes, but minutes stretched at their seams, and then they were pulling up outside the American Regent. Harper opened the door, and before he stepped out he paused and turned to look at her.
‘Feels like a dream,’ he said quietly.
‘Better than a nightmare,’ she replied.
He smiled. ‘I don’t know what to think about Walt Freiberg.’
‘Don’t try and think anything.’
‘He worked with my father for a long time?’
She shrugged. ‘Far as I can tell . . . haven’t been around that long myself.’