“I dunno. What else works for people like me, who are always on the go? But it’s got its flaws like any dating system,” I said. “This isn’t logging me on, Sal. I’m getting an error message: incorrect password.”
“Oh right. I changed my password. Log-in is still Bigwitch, password is now … oh dear, I’ve forgotten. But I wrote it down somewhere.”
She began shifting around the papers on the table, looking for the new password.
“You still see Mike?” she asked, as she picked up one scrap of paper, discarded it, and picked up another.
“Yeah, he was just here. But that’s not going too well. He’s looking for monogamy, I think, with someone else.”
“Aw, it’s too bad he didn’t go for monogamy with you when you wanted it, after that wild Halloween when we all almost got killed,” Sally said. “And the guy who lies? Do you still see him?”
“Gus? Yeah, now and then.”
“And you say I’m crazy,” she said. “You know nothing about this guy.”
“Wrong, I know a lot. I know he has money, because he always stays in nice hotels. I know he’s an actor. I know he has imagination, wit, and intelligence because of the quality of his lies, and I know he’s got sensitivity and a masterful sexual technique. What else do I need to know? Everything else is superficial bullshit. Have you found that password?”
“No. Wait, try this: Atlas.”
I typed it and got another error message.
“Don’t you get tired of lying?” Sally asked.
“I don’t see him that often and we don’t talk that much. It’s just a more advanced version of role-play. And it’s nice, because we can say whatever we want without it being taken seriously or being held against us later. Yet, in this weird way, it feels more honest than any other so-called relationship I’ve been in, Sally. It probably is nuts, you’re right,” I said.
“But you and Mike lie, too, or withhold the truth at least, with your ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. Oh, here’s the password, Pangod, one word. Of course. Because I had that dream about the god Pan. You were in it actually,” she said.
“I was?” I said as I typed. I didn’t hear what else Sally said. This time, the password worked, and I tuned Sal out.
The first thing I wanted to check was the name Hufnagel, a more common name than you might think out there in cyberspace; 482 documents came up in the Net search. More information would be needed to narrow the search and I didn’t have more. Next, I went to the European wire services to see what they were reporting about the Coney Island corpse. The guy was French, so French police and Interpol were probably looking into it and the Europeans might have a few little stories on him.
But no.
They had big stories, all recent, having run in the last few hours.
Frenchie, the John Doe, had been identified by French police, using fingerprints and the tattoo, as Luc Bondir, a biochemist. A French national, he was believed killed when his illegal drug lab burned down in the mid-1980s. The charred remains of a man with nine fingers were found in the smoldering ruins and identified as Bondir at that time. Bondir had originally lost his finger after running afoul of the criminal gang that distributed the LSD and methamphetamine Bondir produced. The case was closed, until Luc Bondir’s body washed ashore on Coney Island fifteen years later.
It made me think of something my friend Louis Levin had once said about time travel. Time travel wasn’t possible and never would be, because if it was, for sure some asshole in the future would use the technology to dispose of a body, and we’d have unexplained, anachronistic bodies falling out of the sky. Or some do-gooder would travel back, kill Hitler in his crib, and send the body into another time. Or drunken frat boys or bachelor partyers with access to the technology would use it for a variation on the old gag of getting the groom drunk, stripping him naked, painting him green, and dropping him on the steps of city hall in a neighboring town … in a neighboring century.
Fuck, I thought. Scientist dead for fifteen years suddenly washes ashore in Coney Island. It wouldn’t be long until this story broke here in the new world.
Sally’s psychic hot line rang, and she went into the bedroom to take the call, followed by Louise Bryant.
Bonobos were next. There was quite a lot on these, the horniest chimps in the world, starting with an article by Natalie Angier in the New York Times. According to Angier, the female domination in bonobo society is so benevolent it hardly counts as domination. It is more of a partnership in many ways. Females rule, but everything is shared equally, regardless of rank. They were … Commies. Horny Commie chimps.
Another old news story reported had been a controversy at a zoo upstate when it opened a bonobo exhibit and drew a big outcry from parents, and not just from the churchies—there were plenty of former hippie parents with “Make Love, Not War” T-shirts in the attic who did not want their young children watching a bestial, shrieking chimp orgy. Insert your own Congress joke here. They closed down the exhibit after that.
There was a world band that called itself the Bonobos too, and a book, Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, by Frans De Waal. At the bottom of one of the sites was a hyperlink to something called the Diogenes Project—to Save the Bonobos.
This, it turned out, was a group headquartered in Kinshasa in the Congo, and headed by Dr. Karen Keyes. There was a phone number. It would be late morning in Kinshasa, I figured, and there might be someone in the office.
“Sally?” I called out. She was in her bedroom now, talking on one of her psychic hot line phones.
“Yes?”
“Can I make a long-distance call on one of these phones?”
“Yes, the pink one covered in little blue starfish,” she called back.
The distant, tinny phone in Kinshasa rang four times, and a machine picked up.
“This is Dr. Karen Keyes at the Diogenes Project. I am in New York for a women’s conference and will not be back in Kinshasa until August.”
Keyes was here for the Women’s Conference. What a coincidence.
It was 4:00 A.M. and I was fully exhausted. Tracking Keyes down in New York City would have to wait until I got some sleep.
Sally let me borrow her cell phone so I could make some calls the next day. “I need a secure line,” I told her.
“Keep it as long as you need it,” she said. We hugged, and as she pulled away from me, her face darkened.
“Oh my God, you’re in trouble, I can feel it,” she said.
“Yeah, but I can’t talk about it.”
“I can throw a tarot for you …”
“No no, not necessary.”
“Take good care,” she warned ominously. I hated when she did that.
After thanking her and retrieving the reluctant Louise Bryant, I went back to my place, made a list of “to dos” for the next day, and collapsed into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
The next morning I was awakened abruptly by my phone ringing and my machine answering. It was Mike, so I reached past my snoring cat to the nightstand and picked up the phone.
“Robin. I’m glad you’re home, Girl.”
“Hi, Mike …”
“I called last night. Did you get my message?”
“No … I guess I forgot to listen to my messages. Um, what day is it?”
“Saturday. Girl, I need to talk about … I’ve been agonizing over this … so can we talk now?”
My fears are true, I thought. He was having an affair with Veronkya the trapeze artist, she was demanding a commitment, and she wanted it today, the day she was to fly without a net. If not Veronkya, then one of the other double-jointed East European women in sequin bodysuits in that circus, maybe the lion tamer—he talked about her a lot too—or the lady who did flips while standing on two galloping horses.
I was still in a state of postsleep amnesia, aware of little more than that it was Saturday, my bedsheets smelled warm and good and clean, and I didn’t have to go to work. But now it was all co
ming back to me. There were bigger things to worry about than losing a boyfriend.
“Are you there?” he asked.
“I’m here. Mike, I’m going through a really hard time right now. You have no idea.”
“Me too. But I just had to talk to you about this.”
“Mike, whatever it is, can you just sit on it a few days, think about it a bit longer? Because I really can’t deal with it right now.”
“You’re always too busy, Robin …”
“It’s not that. I can’t really explain on this phone, Mike.”
“Give it a try.”
“Let me call you back,” I said. I called him on Sally’s cell phone and said, “There’s been a murder.”
It’s remarkable how many conversations I’ve had that began that way.
“Oh Jesus, Girl!”
“Don’t get pissed off. I didn’t kill him. I’m involved because of a quirk of fate and I’m in a very awkward position. That’s on top of the pressures of this series, and the gossip …”
“The gossip?”
“You do not want to know. It’s so bogus.”
“That stuff about you and Jack Jackson?”
“How did you know?”
“I hear things. I used to work there, you know.”
“So you know the pressures I am under. And I know you’re under pressure too, so maybe we should wait until we are both …”
“Another murder. Jesus, Girl. How do you manage to …”
“It has nothing to do with me. It just happened. And I have to deal with it now. Don’t say anything to anyone. It’s a very delicate situation.”
“So that’s where you were last night? Caught up in this murder?”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved not to have to lie to him, which I’d had to do once before when he called me after a previous date with Gus.
“It’s time for you to get a gun.”
“I have that Enfield rifle you gave me.”
“You need a smaller, more efficient weapon you can take on to the street. No time to get you a carry permit, but I know a guy …”
“Mike, I know where to buy a gun illegally,” I said, annoyed that he was treating me like some helpless waif who didn’t know her way around town. And if I hadn’t known I could have gone to Mrs. Ramirez and asked for the name of her arms dealer. But I’d managed this far without a firearm, especially an illegal firearm.
“Then get one,” he said.
“Mike, you want absentminded, clumsy me out there with a loaded weapon? I’d probably end up shooting myself. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to use a squirt gun, honey water, and bees … but I think the gun would leak in my purse.”
He sighed with, I thought, irritation. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself, Girl.”
“I have so far, Mike,” I said. “Hey, tonight’s Veronkya’s big night, isn’t it? The trapeze deal, without a net?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, tell her to … I suppose break a leg isn’t appropriate in her branch of show business, is it? Hmmm. Tell her good luck.”
“I will,” he said, and I got that nostalgic vibe off him again. It’s hard to describe this nostalgic thing. It was a sad distance in his voice I was sure I recognized from other breakups. Though the words “I am going to miss you” weren’t being overtly said, I was sure I heard them there, below the surface talk.
“Be careful, okay? Okay?” Mike said.
“Okay. You too,” I said, wondering when it was exactly that we stopped saying “I love you” at the end of our phone calls, and which one of us had stopped saying it first.
Maybe if he had a few days to think about it, he’d change his mind, I thought. In the past, we’d both come close to dumping each other for other people when we were caught up in outside infatuations who demanded commitment, but something stopped us, and reason returned. The one time he had suggested monogamy to me he did it because a friend of his had hit on me at a party. What Mike wanted at that time was for me to be monogamous while he was away in Russia doing a PBS special on mail-order brides. Mike was motivated by jealousy, and I knew I’d feel compelled to keep my word on it, but he might not, so I declined his generous offer. Sure enough, he wasn’t in Moscow two weeks before a story appeared in the ANN company rumor file about my erstwhile boyfriend being chased naked down a Moscow street by a psycho lover.
It’s that old double-standard bullshit, you know. He gets to go off on the Crusades, wenching all the way, while I sit at home watching the rust grow on my chastity belt. Mike was a hound and was unlikely to change. Despite this, somehow I had thought it would maybe work out for Mike and me, eventually. As Nora Ephron said, every cynic is secretly a hopeless romantic. Emphasis on the hopeless.
Maybe it was like Wallace Mandervan had said in an article the previous year: Forget the Orgasm pill, the only way everyone is going to be happy is if you invent a pill that lowers our expectations. But then, the species doesn’t evolve, though it would no doubt improve everyone’s love lives.
Of course, Mandervan also said that the burden of evolution falls on the young, and I was not all that young anymore.
It was a lousy time to get dumped. That nostalgic vibe I got off Mike made me think it was really serious this time. That’s the thing about nonmonogamy, though. When they wanna go, you have to let them go, without a scene, without emotional torture, without retribution, with your good wishes—what they used to call being a gentleman, more commonly known now as having class.
Men. If they weren’t trying to dump me, fuck me, beat me up, get information from me, they were running into me on streets and giving me hats and drawing me into murder cases. Why on earth did I ever think I could do a positive report about men? What was I thinking when I suggested this to Jack? But I wasn’t thinking. I was drinking.
On to other things. I crawled out of bed, still in my clothes from the night before, stripped down to my underwear, made coffee, and turned on the news, which I listened to with half an ear as I tried to figure out what to do. Had to find the man in the hat. I remembered seeing something on Kojak, in which Kojak traced a revolutionary bomb-making group through a designer purse bought at Bloomie’s. I could take the hat to Harben Hats.…
Mike had the hat. I called him back, but he was gone already, so all I could do was leave a message, asking him to courier the hat back to me as soon as possible, that it was important, though I had no idea if it was important or not. For all I knew, there were ten thousand hats like that.
Somehow, I had to thwart Reb and Solange’s investigation, which was going to be tricky. If I told them the truth, they wouldn’t believe me. They’d think I was trying to scam them. Also, there was no guarantee if they did believe me that they would stop pursuing the story. The lives of others were of little concern to someone like Reb Ryan, whose ethic was pure journalist—the story, the truth, at any cost. Hell, the man had put lots of people into danger, from cameramen to civilians to whole countries, in pursuit of stories.
They didn’t know what my connection was. Solange presumably knew about the man in the hat because she had spoken with Benny Winter and he’d told her. She had no idea it was somehow connected to the Man of the Future series, to questions I was asking.
Someone had the bonobos, someone I had asked questions … Jesus. That could be anyone from a cabbie to Jack Jackson. Chances were, though, it was someone I’d formally interviewed, or pre-interviewed in depth.
Whatever this Atom thing was, we needed to find it, and use it to get the bonobos back.
It would have been nice to be able to pick up the phone and get advice from friends and mentors about this. Even if I hadn’t promised to keep it quiet, I would have had a hard time finding someone to discuss it with, since most of my friends were away at the moment. My building super, Phil, who was as close as a man can get to being a saint without giving up drinking, women, and bawdy music-hall songs, was off in India volunteering for the Leprosy Eradication Project. Tamayo Scheinman
was unreachable. Claire Thibodeaux was traveling with the President in Africa and not due back in Washington for days. Bob McGravy was in Eastern Europe. You couldn’t have a conversation with Susan Brave-Ruper without being interrupted twenty or so times by her baby, and in any event, she’d tell her husband and he was a gossip.
I was on my own.
While I waited for Jason to come by at noon, as we’d arranged the evening before, I made some calls on Sally’s cell phone. The escort Charlotte hadn’t called me, so I dialed up one of the call-girl sources to see if she could track down possible Charlottes and beep me with the info.
Next I called the women’s conference, but the office wouldn’t tell me which hotel Dr. Karen Keyes was staying in.
“According to the schedule, she’s hosting a fund-raising tea at a restaurant called the Sad Marquis this afternoon, two P.M. It’s a hundred dollars a head. You might be able to speak with her there,” said the chirpy woman in the conference office.
Had to get a weapon. Though Mike was a big believer in guns, I’m not good with guns and felt I was better served with some odd, seemingly innocuous weapon. That gave me the element of surprise. The pepper spray wouldn’t surprise the thugs if they came back, and it was too small in any event. The honey water and squirt gun idea still appealed to me, though it was more a delayed justice weapon, like the poison ivy in my window boxes. The honey water might not attract any bees at the time it was applied, but it might later. That wasn’t going to be effective under the present circumstances.
Just about anything can be turned into a weapon if it falls into my hands, and I blame this on my father, a weekend inventor, who taught me how to spot the hidden menace in things, then died before he had a chance to teach me how to thwart it. I did pick up a few tips about how to turn a menace to one’s own advantage though. A potato peeler, a glue gun, an Epilady hair removal system, an eyelash curler, all were weaponry.
The problem was finding a really effective weapon. Finally, I opted for a combination of a camera flash attachment, to stun and blind, and pepper spray, to hurt.
Promptly at noon someone buzzed.
The Last Manly Man Page 10