by Richard Vine
Well, I had an answer: I can know it—my desperately wicked heart. After so many nights lying alone in the dark, sleepless, I have gotten thoroughly familiar with its every weakness and quirk. I know my deceitful heart very well.
Better make a list of all your little moral victories, Jack. No, not later. Right now.
Surely there had to be some.
Let’s see, I may have failed my wife, terribly, but at least I had acted—or failed to act—out of emotional injury, not out of malice. Over the years, I had even managed to do a proper thing or two with Hogan, for people like Mandy, Angela, and Melissa. I felt I could meet Philip’s criterion: my accounts were square.
That was all. Still, it seemed like a reasonable tally for a guy in the world I inhabited—a flawed man adrift among faithless lovers and hustlers, in a vast city, alone….Or so I thought as I stood by the windows and watched the wet snowfall and waited for Angela.
Just as I turned and started to walk back across that enormous dark room, I heard a knock at my door.
56
Angela swept into the loft, late and ashen, glancing around quickly.
“Melissa’s quiet tonight, is she? Thank goodness.”
She took the girl’s vacant spot on the couch.
“I’m doing everything for Philip now,” she said. “Claudia has nearly abandoned him, and his old mother is useless. The damn biddy can’t grasp that her son is dying before her, just like her husband.”
“It’s a lot to take in.”
“Tell me. But blanking out is just a cheat.”
Angela joined me in a last drink, rehearsing her woes.
Few visitors relieved her these days, even momentarily. Claudia appeared less and less often, standing helplessly among the IV stanchions and monitors, holding Philip’s hand sometimes but unable to speak to him, crying. She watched, tight-lipped, as his ex-wife lifted his bony hips onto a bedpan. Angela comforted the girl. She told Claudia what few coherent phrases her wasted lover, their dear one, had uttered in the course of the day. She said not to worry, that Philip would want her to go on with her life and career.
Much later, I would learn that Claudia was granted nothing from the estate—possibly because Philip’s dementia had set in before he could get around to making a codicil, possibly because he actually wanted things that way, to square his accounts. Nevertheless, his lover did all right for herself. Claudia’s family had a little money of its own, and after the publicity of the Oliver case her career soared for a few years. Her work was featured in international surveys from Germany to Japan to Australia, before she faded from the art press and the galleries, from critical consciousness altogether, after becoming the wife of a famous auto manufacturer in Turin.
But that was still the unknowable future, as Angela and I sat—fatigued and drinking—in the Wooster Street loft that cold night.
“How’s Melissa?” she asked. “Did the two of you have a good time tonight?”
“Yes.”
“What a relief. I was hoping you might.”
I couldn’t make sense of her facial expression. Resolved to tell her what had happened, I began by explaining that Paul was even worse than she had suspected. I filled her in on his relationship with Amanda, on the Balthus Club, on Virgin Sacrifice—and on his plan for Melissa. Finally, I described the Crosby Street party.
“How could you, Jack?” Angela said. “I can’t believe you used Missy that way.”
“It’s not like that.”
“No? Wheedling Mandy’s laptop away from her. Dangling her in front of Paul like fresh bait.”
“I know how it sounds. But I didn’t really use Melissa. If anything, I kept her from being used.”
Angela was too spent, too deeply outraged, to argue. The weight of it all—the failure of her show, Philip’s dismal condition, my recklessness with her daughter—all of it seemed to crush her now. She fixed me with her weary, red-rimmed eyes.
“You’ve never been a father, Jack. You’ll never understand.”
“No, I won’t.”
“This is no lark for me, this damn SoHo life. I’m not a gypsy like you. I have a child to raise. It’s what I live for now.”
She must have felt utterly abandoned in that moment. I had deceived her, Melissa was growing smugly independent, and her beloved Philip was about to fade out of her life for a second and final time.
Over the months that followed, Philip’s slipping away from Angela, from life itself—through a protracted round of vomiting, spinal pain, hallucinations, and morphine—was neither fast nor decorous, though it was faster than the doctors predicted. The disease took over his being, and he was spared no bodily humiliation: dribbling oatmeal on his chest, spilling cups of pills, staining himself repeatedly with excrement.
Nevertheless, my friend would eventually manage to accomplish his dying rather bravely—for Angela’s sake, I think. Although he did not know who she was, Philip intuited that this woman would remain by his side to the end. Someone would be there to watch his face, to hold his thin hand as he died. Occasionally he called her, weakly, “dear child.” When others turned away, in sadness or disgust, his ex-wife stuck with him—stubbornly, unquestioningly—through the last fetid days.
For that loyalty, for those tortuous hours, I was ready to forgive Angela almost anything.
57
On Christmas Eve, Hogan called at about ten o’clock. He had gotten stuck late at his office and, sure that I wouldn’t be doing much that night, invited me out for a drink. We had steaks and beers at Fanelli’s, amid the old boxing pictures, and when the waitress laid our bill on the checkerboard cloth, Hogan picked it up.
“I owe you one,” he said.
“Thanks, I’m not sure for what.”
“For serving up Paul Morse.”
“It doesn’t seem like so much.”
Hogan grinned at me, an unusual sight. “A Christmas present came today. The porno bust gave the cops probable cause to search the creep’s loft. You know, confirming residence, looking for additional evidence. McGuinn’s vice squad pals found plenty, too. Rows and rows of Virgin Sacrifice tapes lined up on the hallway bookshelves. And behind them, a gun.”
“Amanda Oliver’s?”
“Same serial number.”
“With Paul’s prints on it?”
“No, it was wiped clean.”
“But why the hell would Paul keep it?”
“Another half-ass job,” Hogan sniffed. “That’s how it is with amateurs. They figure out how to kill—or they just lose their cool and do it, blow somebody away in a frenzy—but then they suck at the cover-up.”
I thought I understood. “That’s where the real art lies, right? In disguising your crime.”
“It’s not so easy, Jack. Murder is a big, scary thing. Most people, their heart starts pounding, their mind rushes. Adrenaline kind of short-circuits the brain. They screw up like Morse—take the incriminating laptop away, but stash it with a friend. Muster enough sense to buff down the gun, but not enough to deep-six it somewhere far away.”
“Sounds like you’ve thought it out.”
“That’s my job.”
I nodded. “Still, I wish we had a clearer idea of why Mandy was shot. Sure, she threatened to turn Paul in for the Virgin Sacrifice scheme. But he could have sweet-talked her out of that. He didn’t have to murder her—not when a little more sex would have kept her quiet.”
Hogan looked away across the sparsely populated room. “Why does anyone kill?” he said. “For that matter, why does anyone die?” He paused for a second, as if waiting, not for the first time, for an answer that did not come. “I’m still working on that one. For now, let’s have another beer.”
Once the two bottles of Rolling Rock came, I asked him if Philip was in the clear once and for all.
“The cops won’t give him a second thought anymore,” Hogan said. “They’ve got Morse in the crosshairs now. I ran into McGuinn in here the other night, fairly gone. He blurted.”
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br /> “Anything you didn’t expect?”
“Just the tidiness of it. The Homicide boys don’t usually get so lucky.”
“Such as?”
“Ballistics did a test. The gun is a perfect match. Same barrel grooves as on the slugs that killed Mandy. The DNA inside the lady was Morse’s, too, like he’d already admitted.”
“No more surprises then.”
“There better not be.”
Glancing around at the bar’s hardcore loners, I avoided Hogan’s eyes.
“What does Paul have to say?” I asked.
“The usual. That he never saw the gun before. He has no idea how it got there. What else would you expect him to say?”
“He could confess, like Philip.”
“He’s not that crazy.”
“No,” I admitted. “Not that honest, either.”
Hogan raised his bottle. “Anyway, the cops have pulled him off the streets, away from Melissa Oliver and other young girls.” He drank deeply. “Once they get the porno and prostitution convictions, he’ll be on ice for a long, long time. They’ll have years, if they need them, to build a solid murder case against him.”
“Makes the prosecutor’s job easy.”
“That’s right.”
He sat in silence for a few moments while I poured half my beer into a glass.
“You know,” I said, “there’s just one thing that bothers me.”
The news did not make Hogan look happy.
“We never completely accounted for Angela’s time on the day of the murder.”
I expected a quick response but instead got nothing. Not even a blink.
“Suppose little Melissa fibbed to us,” I said. “Either because she was forced to or because she just wanted to protect her mother.”
“What if she did?”
“Angela would have had plenty of time to get back and forth between Westchester and SoHo. Then the girl might have covered for her afterwards—that whole yoga and cookies bit—until the heat from you and McGuinn got too intense. Or until she found the computer in Angela’s room.”
“Yeah, go on.”
“Then Melissa—with or without her mother—might have decided to shift the blame to Paul Morse, after he came on to her, wanting her cherry.”
As Hogan leaned forward slowly, his jacket gapped open and I saw the butt of his gun appear and disappear.
“Forget it,” he said. “They’ve got no case against Angela. No evidence to compare to the stolen nine millimeter or to Paul’s misplaced semen and his big urge to get his hands on Mandy’s laptop. No e-mail link.”
I said nothing for a while. Finally, when the other conversations around us picked up in volume, I reminded Hogan of an awkward fact.
“That’s not exactly true, you know. Mandy wrote Angela to ask for a meeting.”
“That’s right, Flash. But Angela explained everything. To you, to me. And eventually to McGuinn.”
“Most times, you’re not so easily sold.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Just that Angela is quite a persuasive person, once you get to know her the way you did.”
“And?”
“Charm tends to get its way in this world, especially with men. Even fake tough guys like you.”
Hogan stopped the bottle halfway to his lips and lowered it again without drinking. “It’s Christmas, pal. So I’m not going to break your face for that.”
I waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t.
Hogan took the long delayed swig, a deep one. “Look, just forget the cockamamie what-ifs here. I know what’s eating you.” He stared me square in the face. “Me sleeping with Angela means nothing.”
“No, not to me.” I studied the last of my beer. “But what about you?”
He smiled. “Since when do you worry about me, Jack?”
The waitress came back with Hogan’s change, and he handed her a fat tip. She looked very happy. “Merry Christmas, guys,” she said.
Hogan waited, eyeing my nearly empty glass.
“And if you’re wrong about Paul?” I asked.
“Tough break.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Hogan regarded me evenly, without blinking. “Don’t go pussy-boy on me now. I was afraid you might be in over your head.”
I tried to muster some evidence to the contrary, but my mind was numb.
“Why? Because I want to be sure?” I asked finally. “Really certain, before the cell door closes on Paul?”
“Sure, certain—that’s schoolteacher talk, Jack. I live in the real world.”
“Do you?” I said. “Are you sure?”
Hogan, scratching at the label of his empty bottle, made me wait.
“Look,” he said, “how wrong could we be really? Nobody’s innocent here. The way I see it, there’s enough crap in anybody’s file to justify a capital charge. In mine, for sure; in yours. And we’re choirboys compared to Paul Morse.”
“I suppose. But I don’t feel very virtuous.”
“That’s what saves you.”
“Does it?”
“Someday maybe.”
I drained the last of my beer, preparing to leave. In a few hours, Missy would be opening her presents.
“You know,” I said, “Paul really thought I was his friend.”
“Same old Jack. A fine chum to all, even murderers and sickos.”
Hogan stood and pulled on his topcoat. We nodded good night to the bartender, his ex-fighter’s body a dark bulk against the white Christmas lights strung over the shelves of bottles behind him. I put some extra bills on the table for the waitress.
“You’re always trying to be some kind of badass, Jack, but you always end up pretty square.”
“Do I?”
“If you didn’t I’d deck you.”
I buttoned my coat and drew my leather gloves out of the pockets.
“Maybe that’s just what I need, Hogan.”
“To bring you to your senses?”
“No, to help me sleep at night.”
58
Outside, in the light snow, Hogan told me that he wanted to attend midnight mass.
“You gave me some things to think about,” he said. “Church is good for that.”
We walked east along Prince Street, past the old brick hulk that housed the downtown branch of the Guggenheim Museum. On the upper floors, all the lights were out. No one was working late that holiday night. We crossed Broadway and then the poorly lit Crosby Street, passing beyond Lafayette into what were once the upper reaches of the Italian section.
Lately, some real estate agents had taken to calling the district Nolita, for “north of Little Italy.” True to Sammy’s description, the immigrant enclave had receded, and the narrow streets were now dotted with hipster lounges and hole-in-the-wall storefronts selling one-off items by designers fresh out of Parsons and FIT.
“At least some things never change,” Hogan said, lifting his chin sharply.
Glancing up, I saw a plain stone cross on the roof of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the emblem hovering stark above the street signs and building tops. We skirted the slush at Mulberry Street and came to an undulating brick wall and the high, wide-spreading trees of the churchyard. It was quiet on the sidewalk under the branches, and we were sheltered briefly from the snow twisting down in large flakes past the streetlights. Across the street at Mekong, a few drinkers clustered at the darkened bar. Next door, plastic buckets of cut flowers shone brightly in a fluorescent glow under the canopy of a Korean deli that never closed. Hogan and I, like two workmen after a double shift, walked on without speaking.
When a car passed, splashing slush onto the bottom of my black cashmere coat, I cursed.
“Hey, life is rough,” Hogan said. “Take that rag to your Park Avenue cleaners.”
I looked down at the spatter. “One thing after another. Don’t you ever get fed up?”
“What did you expect, Flash, peace on earth for your efforts?�
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“Maybe. For one night anyhow.”
“Good friggin’ luck with that, brother.”
We walked on.
“Somehow,” I said, “I thought I’d feel a lot better about the idea of Paul in a prison upstate.”
“Don’t worry. You did your part, now the State of New York will do its.”
“Which is what?”
“Punishment. A few decades’ worth.”
“Is that what they teach you in church?”
Hogan stopped, his hands deep in his pockets.
“Maybe that perv will straighten out, but I doubt it. You think you’re going to improve a Paul Morse?”
“Maybe he’ll improve me.” I shook a few flakes from my collar. “Just the sickening thought of him.”
We trudged through the snow again, swaying slightly. Our heads were lowered, and I couldn’t see Hogan’s face when he spoke.
“Get real,” he said. “Cops don’t make people honest, any more than priests make them holy or doctors make them immortal.”
“What’s that leave?”
“Duty.”
He must have known I was lost.
“The whole idea,” Hogan said, “is just to keep everybody alive long enough to die of natural causes, and straight enough to stop screwing each other over.”
“Great. I’m deeply inspired.”
“That’s the deal.”
“Anyhow, I did what I could. For Missy’s sake.”
Hogan hunched his shoulders against the night’s cold.
“Sure, big guy,” he said. “We’re like the last knights of Christendom, you and me.”
The snow fell lightly on us, around us, between us.
At Mott Street, we turned left and walked half a block to the church’s black iron gate. We stopped, and I said goodbye to Hogan as a few last-minute supplicants passed through the gate to the forecourt.
“Sure you don’t want to come in?” he asked.
“It wouldn’t do me any good.”