by Alan Glynn
‘What about family, next of kin?’ he said, ‘you have anything on that?’
I told him about Melissa, and how I’d phoned and left a message on her answering machine.
He paused and looked at me. ‘You left a message?’
‘Yes.’
He actually did mull this one over for a moment and then said, ‘The sensitive type, huh?’
I didn’t respond, although I certainly wanted to – wanted to hit him. But at the same time I could see his point. Even from the remove of a mere thirty or forty minutes, what I’d done by leaving that message now seemed truly awful. I shook my head and turned away towards the window. The news itself was bad enough, obviously – but how much worse was it going to be for her hearing it from me, and on an answering machine? I sighed in frustration, and noticed that I was still shaking a little.
I eventually looked back at Foley, expecting some more questions, but there weren’t any. He had taken the plastic lid from the regular coffee and was opening the foil wrapper on the toasted English muffin. He shrugged his shoulders again and threw me a look that said, What can I tell you? I’m hungry.
*
After another twenty minutes or so, I was led out of the apartment and taken in a car to the local precinct to make an official statement. No one spoke to me on the way, and with different thoughts vying for space in my mind, I paid very little attention to my immediate surroundings. When I next had to speak I was in a large, busy office, sitting across a desk from another overweight detective with an Irish name.
Brogan.
He went over the same ground as Foley had, asked the same questions and showed about as much interest in the answers. I then had to sit on a wooden bench for about half an hour while the statement was being typed up and printed out. There was a lot of activity in the room, all sorts of people coming and going, and I found it hard to think.
I was eventually called back over to Brogan’s desk and asked to read and sign the statement. As I went through it, he sat in silence, playing with a paper clip. Just before I got to the end of it, his telephone rang and he answered it with a yeah. He paused for a few seconds, said yeah once or twice more and then proceeded to give a brief account of what had happened. I was very tired at this point and didn’t really bother to listen, so it wasn’t until I heard him utter the words Yes, Ms Gant that I jolted up and started paying attention.
Brogan’s matter-of-fact report went on for a another few moments, but then all of a sudden he was saying, ‘Yeah, sure, he’s right here. I’ll put him on to you.’ He held the phone out and signalled me to take it. I reached over, and in the two or three seconds it took to position the handset at my ear, I felt what I imagined to be untold quantities of adrenalin entering my bloodstream.
‘Hi … Melissa?’
‘Yeah, Eddie. I got your message.’
Silence.
‘Listen, I’m really sorry about that, I was in a panic – I …’
‘Don’t worry. That’s what answering machines are for.’
‘Well … yeah … OK.’ I looked over at Brogan, nervously. ‘And I’m really sorry about Vernon.’
‘Yeah. Me too. Jesus.’ Her voice was slow and tired-sounding. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing, Eddie, it didn’t surprise me that much. It was a long time coming.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
‘I know it sounds hard, but he was involved in some …’ She paused here, and then went on, ‘… some stuff. But I suppose I’d better keep my mouth shut on this line, right?’
‘Probably be a good idea.’
Brogan was still playing with the paper clip, and looked like he was listening to an episode of his favourite serial on the radio.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard your voice, though,’ Melissa went on, ‘and I almost didn’t get the message. I had to replay it twice.’ She paused, and for a couple of beats longer than seemed natural. ‘So … what were you doing at Vernon’s?’
‘I ran into him on Twelfth Street yesterday afternoon,’ I said, practically reading from the statement in front of me, ‘and we agreed to meet earlier today at his apartment.’
‘This is all so weird.’
‘Is there any chance we could meet up? I’d like to—’
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Like to what?
She let the silence hang there between us.
Eventually, she said, ‘I reckon I’m going to be very busy over the next while, Eddie. I’m going to have to arrange the funeral and God knows what else.’
‘Well, can I help you with any of that? I feel—’
‘Don’t. You don’t have to feel anything. Just let me give you a call when … when I have some time. And we can have a proper conversation then. How about that?’
‘Sure.’
I wanted to say more, ask her how she was, keep her talking, but that was it. She said, ‘OK … goodbye,’ and then we both hung up.
Brogan flicked the paper clip away, leant forward in his chair and nodded down at the statement.
I signed it and gave it back to him.
‘That it?’ I said.
‘For the moment. If we need you again, we’ll call you.’
Then he opened a drawer in his desk and started looking for something.
I stood up and left.
*
Down on the street I lit a cigarette and took a few deep pulls on it.
I looked at my watch. It was just after three-thirty.
This time yesterday none of this had started yet.
Pretty soon I wasn’t going to be able to entertain that thought any more. Which I was glad about in a way, because every time I did entertain it I fell into the annoying trap of thinking that there might be some kind of a reprieve available, almost as if there were a period of grace in these matters during which you could go back and undo stuff, get a moral refund on your mistakes.
I walked aimlessly for a few blocks and then hailed a cab. Sitting in the back seat, and going towards mid-town, I rewound the conversation with Melissa in my head and played it over a few times. Despite what we’d been talking about, the tone of the conversation had at least felt normal – which pleased me inordinately. But there was something different in the timbre of her voice, something I’d also detected earlier when I listened to the message on her answering machine. It was a thickness, or a heaviness – but from what? Disappointment? Cigarettes? Kids?
What did I know?
I glanced out of the back-seat window. The numbers on the cross-streets – the Fifties, Forties, Thirties – were flitting past again, as though levels of pressure were being reduced to allow me to re-enter the atmosphere. The further we got from Linden Tower, in fact, the better I felt – but then something struck me.
Vernon had been into some stuff, Melissa had said. I think I knew what that meant – and presumably as a direct consequence of this stuff he had been beaten up and later murdered. For my part, while Vernon lay dead on a couch, I had searched his bedroom, found a roll of bills, a notebook and five hundred tablets. I had hidden these items and then lied to the police. Surely that meant I was now into some stuff, too.
And could also be in danger.
Had anyone seen me? I didn’t think so. When I got back up from the diner to Vernon’s apartment the intruder had been in the bedroom and had fled immediately. All he could have seen was my back, or at most caught a glimpse of me when I turned around, as I had of him – but that had just been a dark blur.
He or anyone, however, could have been watching from outside Linden Tower. They could have spotted me coming down with the police, followed me to the precinct – be following me now.
I told the driver to stop.
He pulled over on the corner of Twenty-ninth and Second. I paid him and got out. I looked around. No other car – or cars – appeared to have stopped at the same time as we had, although I suppose I could have missed something. In any case, I walked briskly in the direction of Th
ird Avenue, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. I made my way to the subway station on Twenty-eighth and Lexington and took a 6 train down to Union Square and then an L train west as far as Eighth Avenue. I got out there and caught a cross-town bus back over to First.
I was going to take a taxi from here and loop around for a bit, but I was too close to home, and too tired – and I honestly didn’t believe at this point that I had been followed – so I just gave in, dropped below Fourteenth Street and walked the remaining few blocks to my building.
[ 7 ]
BACK IN MY APARTMENT, I printed out the notes and rough draft of the introduction I’d written for the book. I sat down on the couch to read through them – to check again that I hadn’t been imagining it all – but I was so exhausted that I fell asleep almost at once.
I woke up a few hours later with a crick in my neck. It was dark outside. There were loose pages everywhere – in my lap, on the couch, spread out on the floor around my feet. I rubbed my eyes, gathered the pages up and started reading them. It only took a couple of minutes to see that I hadn’t been imagining anything. In fact, I was going to be sending this material to Mark Sutton at K & D the next morning, just to remind him that I was still doing the project.
And after that, after I’d read all of the notes, what then? I tried to keep busy by sorting through the papers on my desk, but I couldn’t settle down to it – and besides, I’d already done a perfectly good job of sorting through the papers on my desk the previous night. What I had to do – and clearly there was no point in pretending I could avoid it, or even put it off – was go back to Linden Tower and pick up the envelope. I was fairly apprehensive at the prospect, so I started thinking about some form of disguise – but what?
I went into the bathroom, took a shower and shaved. I found some gel and worked it into my hair for a while, flattening it and forcing it straight back. Then I searched through the closet in my bedroom for something unusual to wear. I had one suit, a plain grey affair, which I hadn’t worn in about two years. I also took out a light grey shirt, a black tie and black brogues. I laid them all on the bed. The only problem I could see with the suit was that the trousers mightn’t fit me any more – but I managed to squeeze into them, and then into the shirt. After I’d done up the tie and put on the shoes, I stood and inspected myself in front of the mirror. I looked ridiculous – like some overfed wiseguy who’s been too busy eating linguine and clipping people to update his wardrobe – but it was going to have to do. I didn’t look like me, and that was the general idea.
I found an old briefcase that I sometimes used for work and decided to take it with me, but passed on a pair of black leather gloves that I came across on a shelf in the closet. I checked myself one more time in the mirror by the door, and left.
Down on the street, there were no cabs in sight, so I walked over to First Avenue, praying that no one I knew would see me. I got a cab after a couple of minutes and started in on the journey uptown for the second time that day. But everything about it was different – it was dark now and the city was lit up, I was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase in my lap. It was the same route, the same trip, but it seemed to be taking place in an alternative universe, one where I felt unsure of who I was and what I was doing.
*
We arrived at Linden Tower.
Swinging my briefcase, I walked briskly into the lobby area, which was even busier than it had been earlier on. I skirted around two women carrying brown-paper grocery bags and went over to the elevators. I stood waiting among a group of about twelve or fifteen people, but I was too self-conscious to really look at any of them closely. If I was walking into anything here, a trap or an ambush, then that’s just what was going to happen – I would walk right into it.
On the way up in the elevator, I could feel the rate of my pulse increasing. I had pressed the button for the twenty-fifth floor, intending to take the stairs back down to the nineteenth. I was also hoping that after a certain point I might be left alone in the elevator car, but it wasn’t to happen. When we arrived at the twenty-fifth floor there were still six people left and I found myself getting out behind three of them. Two went to the left and the third one, a middle-aged guy in a suit, went to the right. I walked behind him for a few steps and willed him to go straight on, willed him not to turn the corner.
But he did turn the corner, so I stopped and put my briefcase down. I took out my wallet and made a show of going through it, as though I were looking for something. I waited a moment or two, then picked up my briefcase again. I walked on and turned the corner. The corridor was empty and I breathed a sigh of relief.
But almost immediately – behind me – I heard elevator doors opening again, and someone laughing. I walked faster, eventually breaking into a run, and just as I was going through the metal door that led to the emergency stairs, I looked back and caught a glimpse of two people appearing at the other end of the corridor.
Hoping I hadn’t been seen, I stood still for a few seconds and tried to catch my breath. When I felt sufficiently composed, I started walking down the cold, grey stairs, taking them two at a time. On the landing of the twenty-second floor I heard voices coming from a couple of flights below me – or thought I heard voices – so I slowed my pace a little. But when I heard nothing else, I picked up speed again.
At the nineteenth floor I stopped and put my briefcase down on the concrete. I stood looking at the stack of unmarked cardboard boxes in the alcove.
I didn’t have to do this. I could just walk out of the building right now and forget the whole thing – leave this little package for someone else to find. If I did go ahead with it, on the other hand, nothing in my life would ever be the same again. I knew that for sure.
I took a deep breath and reached in behind the cardboard boxes. I pulled out the plastic A & P shopping bag. I checked that the envelope was still inside it and that the stuff was still inside the envelope. I then put the plastic bag into the briefcase.
I turned around and started walking down the stairs.
When I got to the eleventh floor, I decided it was probably safe enough to go out and take an elevator the rest of the way down. Nothing happened in the lobby or out on the plaza. I walked over to Second Avenue and hailed a cab.
Twenty minutes later I was standing outside my building on Tenth Street.
Back upstairs, I immediately took the suit off and had a quick shower to wash the gel out of my hair. I changed into jeans and a T-shirt. Then I got a beer from the fridge, lit a cigarette and went into the living-room.
I sat at my desk and emptied the contents of the envelope on to it. I picked up the tiny black notebook first, deliberately ignoring the drugs and the thick wad of fifty-dollar bills. There were names and phone numbers in it. Some of the numbers had been crossed out – either completely or with new numbers written in directly above or below them. I flicked backwards and forwards through the pages for a few moments, but didn’t recognize any of the names. I must have seen Deke Tauber’s name, for instance, and a few others that should have been familiar, but at the time none of them registered with me.
I put the notebook back into the envelope, and then started counting the money.
Nine thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars.
I took six of the fifties and put them into my wallet.
After that, I cleared a space on the desk, pushing the keyboard of my computer to one side, and started counting the tablets. I put them into little piles of fifty, of which there were nine when I’d finished, with seventeen loose ones left over. Using a folded piece of copy paper, I shovelled the 467 tablets back into the plastic container. I sat staring into it for a while, undecided, and then counted out ten of them again. These I put into a small ceramic bowl on a wooden shelf above the computer. I replaced the rest of the cash and the container of tablets in the large brown envelope and took it with me into the bedroom. I put the envelope into an empty shoe-box in the bottom of the closet, and then covered the sh
oe-box with a blanket and a pile of old magazines.
After this, I toyed with the idea of taking one of the tablets and of getting down to some work straightaway. I decided against it, however. I was exhausted and needed to rest. But before I went to bed, I sat on the couch in the living-room and drank another beer, all the time looking up at the ceramic bowl on the shelf above the computer.
PART TWO
[ 8 ]
ALTHOUGH THINGS BEGAN to get a little blurry later on, looking back now – from my wicker armchair in the Northview Motor Lodge – I can remember the next day, which was a Thursday, and the two days after it, as just that … days – distinct entities of time that had beginnings and endings … you got up and then x number of hours later you went to bed. I took a dose of MDT-48 on each of these mornings, and my experience of it was pretty much the same as it had been during the first session, which is to say that I came up on it almost immediately, remained in my apartment the whole time and worked productively – very productively – until its effects wore off.
On the first day, I fielded a couple of invitations to go out with friends, and actually cancelled something I’d had on for the Friday evening. I finished the introduction – a total of 11,000 words – and planned out the remainder of the book, in particular the approach I was going to take with the captions. Naturally, I couldn’t write these until I had a clear idea of which illustrations I’d be using, so I decided to get the laborious process of selecting the illustrations out of the way as well. This took me several hours to do. It should have taken me about four to six weeks, of course, but at the time I thought it best not to dwell on such matters. I gathered the relevant material – cuttings, magazine spreads, album covers, boxes of slides, contact sheets – and arranged it all on the floor in the middle of the room. I started sifting through it and made a sustained series of confident, resolute decisions. Before long I had a provisional list of illustrations and was in a position to start writing the captions.