by Sam Stewart
Or …?
Stop Mack.
He went back to the window now and stared at the white sky that looked almost luminescent, like a backlit scene.
Paris, he was thinking. He could picture it too. Mack in some room. Or maybe he was picturing Mack in Saigon in that wine-colored robe with the girl kneading opium.
Think.
What the hell do you think I’m doing here, Dumbo?
Guessing, You’re just guessing. You make the wrong guess, you’ll really blow the thing. Think. Something’s there.
Nothing. Then a blur. It got up on its motorcycle and raced out of his mind. Too rapidly to catch.
Something you saw.
He’d seen nothing. He was staring at the snow.
Try Rule #6.—You remember Rule #6?
He was staring at the snow. Rule #6 was something about looking … seeing.… See the forest.… See the trees.…
Not yet, but keep going.
Rule #6: Look very carefully at what you don’t see.… He was looking at the snow. In the light of the street lamp it looked like a terminal pillow fight.
So?
And then he suddenly remembered. It wasn’t something he’d seen here, it was something he hadn’t.
He went back to the bedroom and opened the closet.
Jackie, the Best-Dressed Dealer in the World, he’s got an outfit for everything. Riding? No sweat. He’s got the jodhpurs and the boots. Tennis? Got the whites. Diving? Got the blacks. Skiing …?
No. Nothing. Not a thing. That’s what he hadn’t seen.
And Jackie was a skier. Took her skiing vunce too, she got ze bumps all over.
So the stuff isn’t here because he took it and he went to St. Moritz.
Or …?
Fuck off.
Or …?
It isn’t here because he took it to the cleaners. Or he lost it, or he ripped it, or he never owned it to begin with.
Listen—I’m sorry.
Shit. He was standing there examining the closet. Stranded between the pulls of not thinking too much and not thinking quite enough. He got down on his haunches and looked around the floor; checked the corners of the closet; saw the big yellow box. He pulled it out and could feel that it was empty. In the light, he looked at the label.
Koflach, 911 VIP, GröBe 44.
A top-of-the-line ski boot for a top-of-the-line skier. And the only place on earth you take a ski boot is skiing. Okay? You want to say it’s at the shoemakers?
No.
St. Moritz.
You are truly amazing, Dr. Watson.
He went back to the living room, picked up his overcoat and turned out the light.
Going through the door now, he stopped and then turned, looking back through the darkness. At the bedroom closet, he hesitated, thought. He was thinking, Hey Watson, what the devil’re you doing? but he knew what he was doing. He picked up the blue Garcia .45 and sighted down the barrel at a target on the wall. He drew the thing back now and tested it for weight—aluminum, light—but he picked up the Terrier and figured he was home. He swung out the cylinder and checked the full load. Using the ejector, he spilled out the cartridges and held them in his hand. Jackie had it loaded with a big low-velocity two-hundred grainer that’d stop a little truck.
He sighted at the wall again and dry-fired twice. Then he reloaded it and packed it in his belt.
20
Cy in the car saying, “This is how it went.” They were cruising Santa Monica, heading for the ocean under cinderblock skies. “Okay, so I went to see Schneider in New York but that wasn’t the only reason. I was there to see a guy,” Cy said. “I need to get some money for a flick and he’s a guy that gets money. Okay? I had dinner with him Thursday at The Palm, it’s like eating in a foxhole. I mean it. It’s a war zone. It’s noisier’n war. Anyway, the guy—”
“What’s his name?”
“Abdajanian. Slovo Abdajanian. You think he’d have a nickname …? No, you call him Slovo. Get that around your tongue. You’d do anything to avoid it.” Cy jumped a light. “Where was I?”
“I don’t know,” Burt said. “Having dinner with an Armenian rug merchant.”
“No. You don’t want to get him wrong,” Cy said. “Slovo’s connected, he’s a very influential guy, does a lotta favors for the biggies. I don’t know where they all come from. Iran. Japan. These’re guys’ve got funny-colored faces and a Bentley at the curb. Some of it’s oil money. Real estate. Smartass arbitrage. Other hand I did a little business with Slovo over Children of the Sand. I go to a meeting there’re guys there with bad nose-colds and Colombian accents. You wouldn’t want to make any Juan Valdez jokes, you’re getting where I am.”
“Keep going,” Burt said.
“So we schmooze. We have dinner and we talk about the script. I got a story, okay? About a guy—listen to this, Burt—he goes into the air traffic controllers’ room at Kennedy—delivering coffee? Pulls an M-16. Guys’re held hostage. Planes’re going—”
“Cy?”
“What?” Cy looked at him, genuinely puzzled.
“Roll it back. You’re at dinner—okay? What happened?”
“Jesus,” Cy said. “I was telling you what happened, we talked about the picture.”
Burt took a breath. He said, “Then what happened?”
“Then,” Cy said, “we got laid, we smoked dope. We went up to some apartment.”
“A house?” Burt said.
“You mean a whorehouse? No, Birdy. You don’t understand these things. This was just an apartment. I don’t want to call it ‘just,’ it’s a penthouse triplex. It’s a guy that’s got a pad.”
“What’s his name?”
“The guy? I don’t know. I think it’s Ed. Or it’s Ned Ted Fred. Maybe Jed. I don’t know. I don’t know what he does, but whatever he does I’d like to do some for a while. He’s got a triplex, Birdy. He knows something, right? Anyway he’s got about eighty-five people kind of rattling around. He’s got a guy in the kitchen cooking coke for him, huh? Scared the shit outta me too. I kept thinking, Richard Pryor. Like what if it explodes we’re on the ninety-seventh floor. You want to know the names, Burt, the coke-cooker’s Sandy. I go in to him, I say to him—”
“Cy,” Burt said.
Cy glancing over now and parking as he spoke. “Come on,” he said suddenly. “I have to get some air. I need to breathe.”
They walked along the concrete path above the ocean and the pounding of the surf. Leaning on the rail now and looking at the shimmering Pacific and the sand, Burt could start to think about a forty-foot cruiser. Tahiti. The captain deserting all the rats.
“I get clutchy,” Cy said, “and I forget how to breathe. Like I can’t get air. Like I’m drowning. I’m dry but I’m drowning.” Inhaling now and leaning on the rail. “Does that ever happen?”
“To me? I remember how to breathe,” Burt said. “Where it gets me is the stomach. Go on. Will you finish?”
“Want a drink?” Cy said. He had a flask in his pocket.
“Whisky?” Burt said.
“Chivas.”
Burt drank. He could feel the first tastes of it hitting where he lived.
“Okay, so you know me. You know how I feel about coke, Burt. I don’t need it. I don’t want to have a heart attack plus I’m pretty up. What I want … what I want sometimes is down. So I say to this character, You got a little weed? I got very mellowed out. I remember I’m in a hot tub. I remember—only very vaguely—getting laid. I go to sleep, I get up, I got a bladderful of piss.”
“Cy?”
“This is crucial to the story now, Burt. I get up and I find myself a bathroom and it’s locked. There’s a guy talking in there and I almost kill myself on the fucking phone cord like a fucking tripwire, okay? It’s underneath the door. So I listen. The guy says, ‘A hundred thousand shares.’ I go boing. I think, Christ, I’m getting an inside tip from the majors. I snuggle in closer. Guy says, ‘I don’t know how to do it on the sneak so just do it for m
e, huh? A hundred thousand options on Tate Pharmaceuticals.’ Then he says, ‘Don’t talk to me about risks, man.’ Then he says something I don’t hear because he starts to run the water.—Okay?”
“Go on.”
“There’s no on. That was it.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know. I heard the goddam water run, I really had to go. So I pissed in a ficus plant and left.”
There was silence for a time. Cy took a long and very audible breath. Burt paced around and then drank a little whisky. “So let’s get it straight. You’re in a stranger’s apartment. You’re stoned and you hear a guy talking through a door.”
Cy nodded. “I know it sounds crazy but it happened. Okay? I swear. Hey listen—I swear it on my own mother’s grave.”
Burt didn’t move. “Cy?” Burt said.
“What?”
“We’ve got the same mother. She’s alive.”
21
Mitchell got back to his hotel around four, pretty wasted. Cold. He’d walked alone through cold streets, not finding any taxis, watching his boot marks on virgin snow, another small step for man. When it was over, he could think, he’d be in Baja, or dead. A kind of permanent hot, a kind of permanent cold. So he looked at his footsteps, his marks on the world.
The lobby was silent. A kid he’d never seen looked up from the switchboard and the dull orange lights of an electric heater, watched Mitchell take his key, and went back to his paper.
The elevator creaked.
The night-table lamp was still burning in his room, the bed still rumpled from his unsuccessful efforts at an afternoon nap. He pulled out the gun. He was standing there looking for a place he’d want to stash it when he heard noises from the bathroom, the door bursting open as he swiveled in a crouch …
And then froze; stared; suspended in the middle of his own disbelief. He couldn’t seem to move. For a time they just stood there staring at each other. Joanna looking down in amazement at the gun. Mitchell looking up at those wide brown eyes and that hair that reminded him of home fires burning, and the white flannel gown.
Joanna took a long slow breath and said, “Wow.”
He blinked, shook his head. He looked at the gun and then shoved it in his pocket. They were silent. They stared.
Joanna said, “I happened to be in the neighborhood.”
Mitchell said carefully, “I’m not gonna ask.”
She said, “I want to tell you how it’s cold in this room.”
He nodded, and then he wasn’t certain how it went, just who moved to who, but she was right there in his arms, kind of burrowing into his overcoat and tickling him with hair, and his arms closed tight around her slim cold back and his lips found warmth. He went with it, went out of where he was for a while. Then Joanna pulled away and said, “I’m no shit freezing,” and jumped under the covers and jerked them to her chin. Looking like a kid, he thought, ready for some cocoa and a bedtime story. He wondered what he was supposed to say. He said, “Body heat’ll help.”
“Or otherwise,” she said, “you’ve got a heater in your pocket. Not that I’m asking about it or anything. I mean isn’t it terrific? I’m not asking and you’re not asking?”
“You’re not,” he said, taking off his overcoat.
“Nope.”
“Good.” He went into the bathroom and slapped a lot of ice-cold water on his face and got into his bathrobe and took a pair of bathroom glasses and brought them to the bed. There was a bottle of Scotch on the dresser and he poured two shots. Joanna wasn’t kidding; it was colder than a tomb.
Handing her a glass, he said, “You’re not fooling me, you know.”
She drank. “About what?”
“About being here. You couldn’t be here because you couldn’t know I’d be here.”
“Oh.”
“Even my secretary doesn’t know.”
She nodded. “That’s true.—Where’s this body heat you were talking about, Mitchell?”
He could tell her where it was. Or maybe she could see it: his sex gone rowdy under his bathrobe. He got under the covers. He moved in close and she folded right into him, shivered on his skin. He could feel it in his spine. Joanna said, “You think you can stand not knowing?”
He said, “I couldn’t stand now if my life depended on it.”
“Good.”
She was reaching for the warmth.
Mitchell closed his eyes, kind of floating in the dark.
“That guy that lost the war because of the horseshoe nail …?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
“I was just thinking. Another guy won because of a horseshoe nail. I mean, boy—you start getting into chains,” Joanna said.
He waited for a while. “Are you saying how you got here?”
“Luck,” she said. “Timing. I called up your office. I got this really dumb girl.”
“Philomena,” Mitchell said. “A little southern type, right?”
“That’s the one.”
“What’d she do?”
“I said, Are you his secretary? She said, Me? She said, Oh no. She said your secretary was up at your apartment waiting for an Elite Courier—”
“She did?”
“—because you needed something fast. I said, Oh. I called Elite. I said I was your secretary and I wanted to be sure they had the right destination. So the guy tells me, yeah, oh yeah. We got the change. We’re now supposed to meet him at the gate to flight—”
“Jesus,” Mitchell said. “You didn’t used to be sneaky.”
“Well … you didn’t used to be Robert R. Mitchell.”
“True.—You want to finish?”
“So I called up the airline. To confirm your reservation? So they told me you’d also made a booking at the Wien.”
“Not me,” Mitchell said.
She looked at him.
“I mean it. That was somebody else.”
“If this is somebody else, I’m being raped,” Joanna said.
“I were you, I’d call the cops.”
She said, “Now?”
He said, “Later.”
She could take everything out of his mind. She could take his mind out of his head and sail it over the moon, keep it orbiting. He could let her. Always aware of her, not of himself, just of her. He could let go of everything. Space-walk. Buck Rogers. Holding her hand and just looking at all those stars.
She said, oh-oh-oh, very softly.
He said, Yeah. Still inside her. Then quiet for a time. Still there, still smiling, still kissing very softly. He said, “You think we could just run off with the circus? Pretend we’re Siamese twins? Joined at the—what would you call this?”
“The heart?”
He was looking at her hair. He said, “You can’t know …”
She waited. “Well I can’t know if you don’t tell me, Mitchell.”
He laughed and went out of her, rolled over and she folded right into him again, her head against his chest. He said, “I could tell you and you wouldn’t even know.”
She said, “I flew eight thousand miles to you, Mitchell. My MasterCard is shot. Tell me.”
He laughed.
“Stop laughing.”
“I can’t. I’m in the middle of such deep shit and you can make me want to laugh. I love you, Joanna. I love you for that more than anything.”
“Oh.” He could feel her eyelashes beating against his shoulder and he almost dozed off. He was tired, very warm. She said, “Boy, I gotta tell you this is testing my resolve.”
He opened his eyes. “You resolved something.”
“Yeah. Not to ask you any questions.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You invited me to come with you—remember? You told me no questions.”
He lit a cigarette. “That was a long time ago.”
“Monday,” she said. “That was Monday in the kitchen and you wanted me to come.”
“And you told me where to go.”
“Well �
� that was a long time ago,” she said. “I simplified.”
“Uh-huh.”
She grabbed his cigarette, took a puff and gave it back. “I got home around midnight—on Monday now we’re talking—and I walked around my apartment and I looked at all the walls and I said, What the hell’s the matter with you, Joanna? What’re you holding out for? What’re you hurrying home to? You want to keep living where it’s safe and soundless? I said, Okay—you want to ask a lot of questions, let me ask you just one. Do you love him? I said yes. Are you sure? I said yes. So then I said, so what the hell are you doing about it? I mean everybody talks about love but nobody does anything about it.—Do you follow what I’m saying?”
Mitchell just looked at her. Leaning on her elbow with her head against her hand.
“I mean when somebody you love needs something, you give him what he needs. You don’t just give him what you want to give but what he needs to have. Otherwise the whole thing’s a hard-luck Christmas. You know what I’m saying? Like everybody getting the wrong thing always. So I figured, if you want me to be quiet, I’ll be quiet.”
He grinned, and then bit it.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” He ran his finger down her nose. “It’s just funny how many words it takes to tell me you’ll be quiet.”
“Oh to hell with you,” she said. “Jesus. You want to edit my copy? I’m telling you I love you and you’re telling me I’m talky?”
“Okay, but you didn’t let me finish,” Mitchell said. “I always loved that about you. I mean it. I’d sit there like a log most of the time and there was this bright little hummingbird flitting all around me.”
“I never flitted.”
“Okay. So you danced—is that better? I’ve got this picture of you. You’re about eight and you’re just about as skinny as a rail and you’ve got this huge black lunchbox, it looks like a mailbox.”
She said, “It was huge because it used to be my father’s.”
“It was all-over decals.”
“They were butterflies.”
“Listen—okay? We’re at Farm Hill Junction and we’re waiting for the bus. And anyway the point is, I’m just standing there—”
“Scowling.”