Diablerie

by Walter Mosley

  "Ben!" fat Joey said in greeting.

  He was sitting at the bar, drinking from a large glass of clear liquid.

  My hand disappeared into his powerful, fleshy grip.

  He pulled me to a bar stool, where I perched nervously.

  The ex-intelligence officer had brown eyes and brown hair that was probably dyed. His face was very round, rotund actually. His smile held no warmth or even mirth, but that seemed to me an honest expression. He didn't know me; why feel all personal and cuddly?

  "Cass says you got problems," Joey said.

  "Yeah."

  "Between him and me, we've seen a whole world of trouble," Bondhauser confided. "Magda."

  "Yes, Mr. Bondhauser."

  Magda was wearing a red dress that day. She was so beautiful that I could imagine someone aching just by looking at her.

  "Make the rooms ready for Mr. Dibbuk here. He'll be meeting Cassius Copeland up there."

  "Yes, sir."

  When she turned away, I felt a little sad. My time in jail, however long it was, had made me feel that I would never behold beauty again. There was a feeling growing in my chest. It was like a small sphere of radiant energy, pulsing out of sequence with my heartbeat. After a moment I realized that this feeling was yearning—something that I had never allowed myself to feel as an adult.

  "You want a drink, Ben?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "What's your poison?''

  I wanted to say cognac, cognac in a big snifter with a lime peel on a dish at the side. And not just one snifter, but many of them over the next few days, while the police searched for me and while my wife rutted with the detective—rich amber liquor moving through my veins like chamber music on a sunny afternoon in a many-windowed room in July.

  "Cranberry juice," I said. "No ice but a twist of lime."

  Bondhauser called the order over to his bartender. There was a hint of disappointment in his tone.

  "Cass is a great friend of mine," Joey said then.

  "He's a good guy."

  Joey looked at me, pondering my diffident reply.

  "Lotta good guys in the world, Ben," he said. "Work friends, drinking buddies, guys who'll lie to your wife when you need 'em to. But a great friend, a friend like Cass, is there when you need him and he's there for the long haul.

  "There was a time once when I was out on my own. My boys didn't want me and their enemies wanted me dead"—it seemed as if Joey was staring straight through my forehead, into my mind—"I was what they call persona non grata. And Cass was the only man in the world who would go to bat for me.

  "I'm not talkin' about raisin' his voice and complaining. He put his ass on the line. And when it was all over, and I was back in the saddle, he didn't even ask for a—for an extra nickel or the slightest consideration.

  "You see how he eats at the counter here?"

  I nodded as the bartender brought my red drink.

  "He doesn't have to do that. I let all my old friends, the ones that abandoned me, eat at the bar. But Cass knows that he could come up to my house any day and eat up in the bed with my wife and kids. He could have my whole damn house, my bank account, and I wouldn't flinch. Cass is a great friend. There's not enough gold in the Federal Reserve to pay for something like that."

  I said nothing to all this. Bondhauser had gotten passionate over his notions of Cass, and even though I agreed with him, I didn't believe anything I could say would match his fervor.

  "And so," Joey said, "when Cass comes to me and tells me that one of his best friends is in trouble, I stand up. I call the FBI. I tell my man there, Heydrich Lawry, that I need him to come up with some pretext to bring that man out of the tombs.

  "Don't get me wrong, Ben. You don't owe me a damn thing. I did all of that because of Cass. He's the real article and I owe him big."

  Magda came up behind her voluminous employer. I was glad to see her. Joey Bondhauser's emotional demonstration made me nervous. I didn't know what to say or even how to sit or hold my hands.

  "The rooms are ready, sir," she said.

  "Good," Joey said to her while looking at me.

  He gripped my hand again and brought his face close to mine.

  "I will go as far as Cass asks me to help you, Ben. Don't forget that."

  The "rooms" made up a beautiful suite on the top floor of the skyscraper that housed Joey Bondhauser's Steak House. The sitting room had a western view. The Hudson was prominent and buildings leading uptown glittered in the afternoon sun.

  "Would you like me to stay with you?" pale-eyed Magda asked.

  "Don't you have to be at work?"

  "Mr. Bondhauser says that you are my most important job today." Her look was both defiant and submissive.

  "Wow. Imagine that. A lowly computer programmer tended by a woman worth ten of him."

  "What can I do for you?" she said in the same mild accent that Svetlana had.

  "I'll call the restaurant if I want anything," I said. "Right now all I need to do is rest."

  Magda nodded and left the room.

  I went to the window and stared at the stone and steel, the glass and smatterings of flesh that made up my adopted city. My fingers were tingling, and if I closed my eyes, I was back in that cell with the man who never spoke. The smell of the jailer who had released me was still in my nostrils.

  I thought about Cass's offer to kill Star Knowland. Her death would have probably vouchsafed my freedom. That, along with the view, brought to mind the scene in the movie The Third Man where Orson Welles asks Joseph Cotten, what difference would it make if one of the tiny ants so far below stopped moving?

  Very little, I thought, but still I couldn't be the one to give the order. I could not ask for her death. I didn't believe that I had murdered a man. If I had, wouldn't I be able to kill Star, a real enemy?

  "Hello?" she said.

  "Hey, Lana. How are you?"

  "Ben. Where have you been? I thought you'd be back yesterday."

  I told her about my arrest.

  "Are they going to take you to Colorado?" she asked me.

  "I don't know. But will you meet me at the hotel tonight?"

  "Yes. I have missed you. I want to make love."

  There were many books on the shelves of Joey Bondhauser's little getaway. He had the complete works of Dickens, Twain, Hugo, Balzac, Conrad, Zola, James, and many others. One shelf was stacked with modern, well-read paperbacks. I got the feeling that Joey let many people stay in his "rooms." The classics on his shelves were probably put there by some designer, but the paperbacks were brought in by his guests.

  I glanced through these soft-cover books, uncharacteristically drawn to the stories told. I read the first few pages of a couple of thrillers, but they didn't grab me. There was one book, however, among the mysteries and nonfiction hits, that struck a note. It was a book called The Night Man, about a guy, a kind of mortal vampire, who only went out after the sun set. His name was Juvenal Nyx and he abhorred the daylight because of a philosophical turn of mind. It was a story, of course, about unrequited love. Juvenal fell for a woman who was a painter, a watercolorist, a child of light. The fiber of him was antithetical to everything she thought and believed, but he loved her anyway.

  It was a silly story, really, contrived to an absurd degree. Even the names announced themselves as symbols and metaphors. But for some reason I found myself identifying with the man that lived in darkness.

  The doorbell was a small line from some piano sonata. When I first heard it, I thought that a radio alarm had gone OK But when the musical phrase repeated, I went to the door.

  Cass was standing there. Unexpectedly for both of us, I put my arms around him and held on tight.

  "That's okay, brother," he said as I released him, looking sheepish. "Jail's a bitch, 'specially when you ain't been there before."

  We went to the living room and sat. The way Cass was dressed was unusual for him. Instead of black on black he wore a dark blue business suit with a yellow shirt, a bu
rgundy tie, and ruby cufflinks. He smelled of sweet cologne and carried a fancy red-brown leather briefcase. After asking me about "my head," he got up and concocted a drink from gin, orange juice, seltzer, cranberry juice, and a powder that I didn't recognize. He made this drink at the stand-up bar placed at the end of the bookcase.

  "You got trouble, Ben," Cass said after he was seated again.

  "No kidding."

  The security chief reached into his briefcase and came out with an edition of Diablerie. It must have been the second issue, because the first, I knew, had a picture of Lena Hess, the new singing sensation from France, on its cover.

  This copy sported a glamour-mug portrait of Michael Lord Hampton. He was a rapper before but now was making a name for himself as a serious actor. He was a handsome man—dark and deadly-looking.

  Superimposed in red upon his blue jumpsuit was the headline, DIABLERIE EDITOR'S HUSBAND SUSPECT IN 20-YEAR-OLD COLORADO MURDER CASE.

  The brief article was on page 36:

  It was learned last week that Ben Arna Dibbuk, husband of Diablerie's own Mona Valeria, is being investigated for the murder of Sean Messier 24 years ago in a Denver suburb. Dibbuk, a computer programmer for Our Bank, was implicated by Barbara Knowland, who was featured only last week in these pages. Knowland claims that she was present when Dibbuk murdered Messier and that he had come to two of her readings and to her hotel room trying to extort money from her by saying that he would implicate her in the crime.

  Denver D.A. Winston Meeks is in New York investigating these allegations.

  Another man, Grant Timmons, had been convicted of the crime and spent more than 20 years in prison. He died in state custody two years ago.

  There was no byline but I was sure that Mona had written it. And she would have had to have done it before we went away to Montauk. Seeing her words damning me in a national publication almost defeated me. I was going down and my wife was helping secure the weights to my ankles.

  "That's a bitch," Cass said when I looked up.

  "In more ways than one."

  "How could she do that to you?"

  "I don't really understand," I said. "It's almost as if she hated me. But I haven't done anything to warrant that much, um, passion from her."

  "What do you want to do, Ben?"

  "If I go to my therapist, will they arrest me again?"

  "Probably."

  "I have an appointment with him at six today. Do you think Joey has a phone that can't be traced here?"

  "We could come up with something," Cass said. "But what can a therapist do? You got to spill some blood, man."

  "No. I don't know what happened yet."

  "It doesn't matter what happened," Cass argued. "Some bitch wants to put you in prison, for a long time. And you know they're gonna try to blame you for this guy that died in jail. You need to act."

  "Just get me a phone, Cass. I'll tell you what I want to do by tomorrow.''

  Cass left and a while later Magda brought me a beat-up old cell phone.

  "Mr. Bondhauser says that this is what you wanted," she said.

  "Yes," Shriver said, answering his office phone.

  "I can't make it in today, Doc," I said. "I hoped we could do this on the phone."

  "Why can't you come in?"

  "The police want to arrest me."

  "For what?"

  "I think it's that Colorado wants to extradite me and the NYPD has offered to hold on to me for a while. There weren't any charges."

  "It's hard to do deep therapy over the phone, Mr. Dibbuk."

  "What if I lie down and close my eyes while we talk?" I asked.

  "We can try."

  "I'm worried that maybe I killed somebody, Adrian," I said. "This Barbara Knowland says I did."

  "Do you believe her?"

  "I don't know. I mean, at first I didn't even think I knew her. I still don't remember. But then she seemed to know me and I wondered why would she lie about all this?"

  "That's a good question. Why would someone lie about you?"

  "Do you think I could kill somebody, Doctor?"

  "Yes," he said without hesitation. "There's a rage against your father in you. With that level of anger, anything is possible."

  "Why can't I remember?"

  "There could be many reasons," Shriver said. "You may simply have blacked out because of the drinking. You said that there might have been a struggle, maybe you were struck in the head and experienced limited amnesia. And of course none of it may have ever happened. Barbara Knowland might have her own reasons for blaming you."

  "How can I get my memories back?" I asked.

  "Are you sure you want to remember?"

  "Yes. More than anything."

  "Okay," Shriver said. "Every morning when you wake up, sit in a comfortable chair with your eyes closed and think about Barbara Knowland's face. Can you get a picture of her when she was younger?"

  "Yes. There's one in her book."

  "Every morning concentrate on that face for a minute and then close your eyes. Try to summon her up in your memory."

  "We could leave the country," Svetlana said at three in the morning.

  We had not made love. My mind was elsewhere.

  "Where could we go?"

  "Europe. I speak many languages. Asia. I have always wanted to live in Brazil during Carnival."

  "What about international relations?" I asked.

  She shrugged and brought two cigarettes to her mouth. She lit both and put one between my lips.

  "Things are always changing," she said. "I wanted to come to America so that life would be like Disney World. You know . . . everything safe and nice. But then I meet you and I am forced to love you. Love is not something you can say no to. You can quit a job or a club or even a country, but you cannot quit love."

  I looked at her thin legs, her dense and golden public hair. I tried then to summon up in my mind some resentment about Sergei. Hadn't Lana betrayed me too? Yes. But I couldn't be angry with her. I couldn't afford the pain.

  But neither could I call up the love that she was talking about.

  "You can learn to love me," Svetlana said.

  "Can you read my mind too?" I asked.

  "Only your face," she said smiling. "You look so worried when you can't love me back."

  "I don't understand."

  "What do you want from me?" Svetlana asked.

  "Nothing."

  "No. This cannot be. Love is jealous and what do you call it . . . small-minded. You must want something from me. My body, my money, my freedom."

  "But what if I wanted you to feel pain?" I asked, not knowing where the question came from.

  "Then I suffer for you."

  "But that's not good."

  "Love is not good," she said with intense disgust on her face and in her voice. "It is not a little boy turning in his homework. Love is when you fuck me in the ass and my blood and my shit is on your cock and on my sheets and I clean you and my bedclothes and I am happy doing this. I am happy to have you back even when you have been with another woman. I am happy when you ask me to leave my husband and my children to go running where men are trying to kill us."

  Lana was breathing hard. She took a deep draw on her cigarette.

  "Love is when I call you in the bed with your wife and tell you to come to me."

  She was lying. No, not lying, but saying what she thought I needed to hear. And she was right. I needed an example of someone giving up everything for another.

  "And if I go to prison in Colorado?" I asked.

  "You must ask me to come with you to see if I love you."

  "But you'd be throwing away your life."

  "No . . . I wouldn't," she said.

  This answer was enigmatic but I had no desire to decipher it.

  I leaned over and kissed her between her breasts. She crushed out her cigarette, then mine, and hugged me like a man hugs a woman.

  * * *

  In the morning I thought about young Star Know
land. I imagined her, tried to remember her for over an hour. I got nowhere and so I took out the beat-up cell phone that Magda gave me and called information.

  "Plaza Hotel. How may I direct your call?" a woman asked.

  "Winston Meeks," I said.

  "One moment please."

  "Hello."

  "Ben Dibbuk here, Mr. Meeks."

  The straight line of words stopped there for a moment. Meeks was shocked into silence.

  "Where are you?" he asked slowly, deliberately.

  "I'm willing to be debriefed here in New York," I said.

  "My boss now says that he would like to see you in Denver."

  "One step at a time, Mr. D.A. Promise me that I can leave and that you will not get the police to arrest me and I'll come over, today if you like."

  "How can I get in touch with you?"

  "You can't."

  "Call me back in two hours," he said. "Call me then and I'll tell you."

  Lana went off to school and I sat in the bed thinking about love. I was almost happy that I'd run into Star Knowland. She opened my life up like an overripe fig. I had been festering inside. I was rotting and didn't even know it.

  I believed that I could never really love anyone but now I saw that I could if I allowed myself to feel the pain. This was a wholly new concept for me and it was astonishing that a virtual child had shown me the way. My careless generosity with her, my callous treatment of her life, created something that marital vows and fatherhood had not given me.

  It was almost beyond belief that I could have lived for forty-seven years in backward stupidity about something as simple as this.

  My father beat me and I loved him for it. Not in spite of the pain but because he touched me with care, no matter how violently. He needed me to crawl and so I crawled. He needed me to hide from the light of others' feelings and so I built myself a shell out of alcohol and then later with that feeling in my shoulders.

  It didn't matter. I had loved him from the first moment we met. I would keep on loving him until breath left me.