by A. E. Roman
Then I saw Olga Rivera. My old so-called buddy Albert Garcia was at her side, shaved, wearing a rumpled black suit. I looked at Olga, in her plain brown skirt, flats, dull gray blouse. She held a small brown knapsack in one hand and had a tight grip around Albert’s arm with the other. Her face was red and wet with tears.
“She stabbed me,” someone said. I turned and saw Atlas, drunk, wearing a dark suit, no shirt, and flip-flops.
“Olga stabbed me,” Atlas said. He held up his left hand. There was a tiny wound on his thumb. “Passion. You don’t stab somebody without passion.”
“She stabbed you?”
“Family meeting in Connecticut,” said Atlas. “After Tiffany came home. I said something nasty about Albert. Olga pointed a knife. I grabbed the knife. I practically stabbed myself. But still. It’s the quiet ones.”
Atlas stared at his cousin Olga, who was now standing alone and wiping at her teary eyes. Atlas was energized, sniffling. He said he had a cold and showed me a diamond-encrusted watch.
“Guess how much.”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand.”
“Weird what happened with Irving, huh?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Atlas. “I was a little surprised.”
“Any idea why he did it?”
He locked his eyes on my face and asked, “You ever see the movie Blade Runner?”
I nodded.
“When Rutger Hauer says to Harrison Ford, ‘I wanna live, fucker,’ you understand him. Evil or not, he wants to live. That’s what we all want, Chico. And when Rutger dies at the end, bleeding to death, you wanna cry a river, because you know he won’t live, they won’t let ’im. That’s what happened to Irving.”
Atlas shook both hands at the ceiling and said: “I wanna live! I wanna live, fucker!”
I had no idea what the hell Atlas was talking about. I had no idea what Irving’s situation had to do with Harrison Ford or Blade Runner but I had given up trying to make sense of what came out of the mouth of Kirk Atlas.
The creature looked at me, smiled, and said: “I’m a good actor, huh?”
“Unbelievable,” I said. “There are no words.”
“Anyway,” said Atlas, “I thought Irving was a total fag.”
“Why is that?”
Atlas raised an eyebrow. “Poetry? C’mon. Not that I got anything against queers. Hollywood is full of ’em. But that Irving he had passion. Who knew? That’s the money shot. That’s what I’m trying to do in my work on Doomsday—desire, hysteria, emotion, passion. You coming to my mother’s funeral for Pilar?”
“Sure,” I said. “What do you think about—”
“Dude!” Atlas said and put up a silencing hand. “Tomorrow we grieve and prosecute. Tonight we celebrate.”
Kirk Atlas didn’t give two shits about Pilar’s death. One less lover to keep, I guess. And he didn’t seem to give a crap about Irving’s confession to killing his uncle Benjamin, either.
Kirk Atlas was a lovely young man.
“C’mon!” Atlas walked out to the terrace. I followed.
Olga was on the terrace, looking over the edge. The brown knapsack was now on her back.
“Hello, sweetie,” Atlas said, putting his short muscled arm around Olga’s shoulder and kissing her forehead. “Where’s Albert?”
“He’s inside,” Olga said. “We had a fight.”
Olga began to weep. “It’s so awful. First Pilar. Now Irving.”
“Don’t cry,” Atlas cooed into Olga’s ear. “Don’t think about that stuff tonight.”
Olga wiped her eyes.
Then we all went into the quieter master bedroom where two pairs of boxing gloves and copies of GQ and Playboy sat on the king-size bed.
Albert Garcia, cradling a bottle of Cristal, was in the bedroom, stoop shouldered and staring at an object on the windowsill.
I went and stood by Albert and saw that he was admiring a small crystal sculpture, two figures on a pedestal. One figure was a woman with wings straining to hold up a crystal earth twice her size. The second figure was a fallen woman with wings, draped across the crystal silhouette of a city. The spire of a skyscraper ran through her chest.
“Struggle and loss,” Albert said. “In the beginning and in the end. What can you do? Absolutely nothing.”
“That cost me six hundred bucks,” said Atlas, coming over with his arm draped around Olga. “I bought the painting in the hall from a man who died of AIDS. The nude in the poolroom I bought from the wife of an artist who died at the World Trade Center. And the one by the terrace was done by some South Bronx street kid who got shot and died in the eighties. This is the first piece I ever bought by an artist who was still alive. But you never know.”
Olga elbowed Atlas in the ribs. Atlas dropped his arm from around her shoulder.
“Albert told me you box, Chico,” said Atlas, sniffling.
“Not anymore,” I said.
“We gotta box,” Atlas announced, grabbing the gloves off his bed. “See if you still got any game, Chico. We got a crowd!”
Albert tapped Atlas on the shoulder and smiled wide and toothy, “Let’s do it.”
Atlas laughed at Albert.
Albert leaned forward, “You and me. Let’s go.”
“Same old Albert,” Atlas said, sipping his Cristal, following Albert out of the bedroom. “I love that little guy. Always have.”
I watched Marcos-Kirk-Atlas-Rivera who stood shadow boxing now in the empty center of his monstrous living room, just a few rows smaller than Madison Square Garden, as the partygoers lined up along the walls.
“Who wants some medicine?” Atlas called out.
“I do,” Albert responded, standing, legs apart, directly across from him.
“Let’s do this!” Atlas said, slipping out of his blazer and slipping on his red boxing gloves.
I looked at Kirk Atlas and then at Albert. The idea of fighting a man who was obviously outside your skill level. Disgraceful.
Olga Rivera entered the living room, eyes searching.
“You’re just in time for the main event!” Atlas said, pounding his boxing gloves together. He flexed his muscular pecs. Albert put his gloves on, trembling hands and all.
“Don’t be stupid, Albert,” Olga said.
“Don’t do this guys,” I said. “This ain’t a fair fight.”
“I’ll show you a fair fight,” said Albert and punched his gloves together. “Let’s rumble!”
“Please, Albert!” Olga came forward and kissed Albert’s cheeks passionately over and over again and pulled on his arm. “Stop this. You’re not a brute.”
“Get a room!” yelled Kirk Atlas. Everyone laughed. He chugged back half a bottle of champagne, burped, hoo-ahhed, and the mob of partygoers cheered for blood.
Albert Garcia and Kirk Atlas squared off. The partygoers formed a ring around both fighters. Someone made the sound of a bell. Ding! Ding!
Albert took a hard jab at Kirk’s face. Bam! It connected. Maybe Albert could pull a little David and Goliath outta his ass and miraculously whoop Kirk Atlas.
Maybe.
“Not bad,” Kirk said and came forward and hit Albert in the stomach. Albert buckled a bit and Kirk gave him an uppercut that sent Albert stumbling backward into the crowd. They held him up and pushed him back at Kirk.
Maybe not.
Kirk punched Albert in the face and sent him reeling back at the crowd, who held Albert up again and pushed him staggering forward once more at Kirk. Kirk threw a punch at Albert’s face. Olga jumped in front of Kirk’s fist and took it on the chin, managing to say only: “Stop—”
The blow sent Olga slamming like a rag doll back against Albert, who stumbled with her into the crowd. But this time the crowd broke and Olga and Albert fell to the floor in a tiny pile.
“Coming through!” I yelled and pushed past the crowd. I pulled Olga up from the floor. I shook my head and threw a look of contempt at Kirk Atlas. A look he shot right back at me. I glanced down at
Olga. Her eyes were closed. The blow had removed her glasses.
“Olga? Olga?” I said.
Olga opened her eyes slowly. She stirred and stared up at me. She placed her face near mine, gentle, soft, big black eyes, short black hair.
Then I saw that something had slipped out of Olga’s knapsack besides homework. A .22, with a mother-of pearl handle.
Yeah, primo, it’s true. It’s the quiet ones.
TWENTY-TWO
Back home, cozy in my underground Pelham Bay nutshell, I was feeling grateful and lucky to be alive. I lay back on my bed, with Boo asleep on my chest. I thought about Olga Rivera and her mother-of-pearl-handled .22. The same kind of gun that Tiffany owned and the same kind of gun that Irving placed in his story. My cell phone rang and Boo went berserk barking like it was a tiny electronic intruder.
“Chico Santana?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yes,” said a frail and older woman’s voice.
“Yes,” I repeated.
“Hello, Mr. Santana, I’ve heard a lot about you. My name is Josephine Rivera.”
“How can I help you, Mrs. Rivera?”
“I’d like you to come see me. Have a talk about my son Marcos, and my nieces Tiffany and Olga. Get a pen. I’ll give you my address.”
“I have it,” I said.
After saying so long to Boo, I took the N train into Manhattan and hopped off at the Fifth Avenue stop. I walked maybe half a block to a ritzy building overlooking Central Park. The white doorman in a dark blue uniform and hat with white gloves looked at me and said, without missing a beat, “Delivery?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I got a foot to deliver, size twelve Rockport. Where should I put it?”
I have never had a doorman to greet my guests. Rats and cockroaches don’t count.
“I’m a guest.” I grinned at the blushing doorman. “Josephine Rivera. I’m expected.”
A second doorman, with a Russian accent, escorted me up on the elevator to the penthouse. He told me that the Rivera’s penthouse took up three whole floors and the elevator door opened up inside the apartment. He had seen nothing like it in Moscow.
“Mr. Santana?” the stunning young nurse said as she stood in the doorway, barefoot. She was wearing a white uniform over her shapely figure.
“Come in. Come in, darling,” she sang with a West Indian accent. “Hurry, hurry. I have to run.”
She asked me to remove my footwear. I slipped off my Rockports and followed the nurse through a white carpeted hall. It was a humongous apartment. We passed seven rooms, a home entertainment theater, a gym, a wine cellar, a music room with a Steinway piano under twelve-foot ceilings, on our way up the winding stairs to the second floor. We came to a stop in a waiting area the size of my whole apartment. Everything I had seen so far, the walls, the carpets, the furniture, everything but the West Indian nurse, was white. The Rivera apartment on Fifth Avenue looked like the original of what Pilar was trying to copy in her much smaller place in Astoria.
“Wait here, honey,” said the West Indian nurse and disappeared beyond a pair of French doors.
I sat on the white leather sofa, but when the nurse was out of sight, I jumped up and scanned the waiting room.
There was a painting of a woman, young and beautiful, on the wall, just above the leather sofa. It was signed by Picasso. It was the real thing. Shit, they were all originals.
“Come now, sweetie,” said the West Indian nurse, poking her head out of the French doors. “Hurry, hurry.” I was escorted into a dark bedroom that smelled of menthol and talcum powder. Someone was lying in the darkness.
“Josie,” the nurse said, turning the light on low. “That young man is here. He’s very handsome. So you behave yourself until I come back.”
The room was ringed by heavy white curtains that absorbed all sound and let in no light. Photos of Marcos-Kirk-Atlas-Rivera were everywhere, on the walls, over the bed, on the chest of drawers. Marcos, clearly recognizable at five, wearing a gold paper crown; Marcos on a pony; Marcos as a tree in a children’s play.
Josephine Rivera lay quietly in a giant white bed, a white ribbon in her hair, a spot of red blood on her white nightgown. There was a bedpan by the bed; an intravenous drip ran into her arm, and on her bedside table was an asthma pump, fifteen pill bottles, and a book, In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust.
She looked like Tiffany in many ways, same perfect oval face, same high cheekbones, same broad forehead, same green eyes. She was probably in her sixties but looked older, hair in a tight white bun.
“Pull me up, Kathy.”
Kathy the nurse propped Josephine Rivera up on white pillows and leaving said, “I’ll be back soon, Josephine.”
“Take your time.” Josephine Rivera’s face was tense with pain. She looked at me and said, “Kathy has only been in America one week. Already, she isn’t just my nurse. She’s family.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the definition of family didn’t usually include a uniform and a paycheck. But I’m a private detective, not a dictionary.
Anyway, she put out her left hand and signaled for me to kiss it, like she was the Pope or something. I kissed it. It was warm and damp and smelled like rubbing alcohol. Like Hannibal Rivera the Third’s hand, there was no wedding ring.
Josephine Rivera looked at me and said, “You look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“Hablas español?”
“Not really. A bit, but it’s rusty.”
“Learn.”
“Yes, m’am.”
“Do you have a revolver?”
“No, m’am. Why?”
“You could finish me off,” Mrs. Rivera said. “Pity.”
“Sorry. I’ll try and be more considerate next time.”
The old woman broke wind without intent and said, embarrassed, “Lovely.”
I shrugged.
“There are no peaceful deaths, Mr. Santana. Don’t believe it. Dying is painful and stupid and ugly. Try not to do it.”
“I’ll do my best. Can’t promise anything, though.”
She picked up a large gold box marked Godiva. “Chocolate?”
“No thanks, m’am.”
She patted the bed for me to sit and I sat.
“So,” I said. “I finally meet the Wizard.”
“I’m no wizard. I’m a witch.”
“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
“That all depends on you, Mr. Santana. Do you know why you’re here?”
“I shook my head. “Salsa lessons? Landscaping advice?”
She shook her head.
“I’m trying to protect my son.”
“From what?”
“From himself.”
“Explain, please, m’am.”
“Marcos comes over here once a week. Every week. He is rough with me, sometimes cruel, but he is a good boy. A good son. I have not had an easy life, Mr. Santana. My husband Hannibal’s family was nearly bankrupt when they came to Argentina from Cuba. My father, Francisco, kept them afloat long enough for Hannibal Rivera the First to get the family back on its feet. When I married Hannibal the Third, my father, my inheritance, and my money allowed his brother Samuel, a hard worker and a shrewd businessman, to eventually steer HMD from just agriculture to finance and real estate. Samuel works. Hannibal plays. We are all rich and unhappy.”
“How rich?”
“Filthy. We have more money than the queen of England. Which isn’t very hard these days.”
“Congratulations. And I’m sorry.”
“I love my son, Mr. Santana,” she said, coughed, grabbed a handkerchief, and spit up blood. “I love him more than I love anything on this earth. I would do anything to protect him.”
“Would you kill?”
“I would kill every last one of you.”
“Including your husband, Hannibal?”
She smiled. “He would be the first. Oh, once upon a time I believed that Hannibal loved me despite the sickn
ess. Now I am not so optimistic. I am speaking with you indiscreetly, Mr. Santana because I am beside myself. I have exhausted all means to get rid of you. I sent Hannibal. I sent Pena and Fiorelli. You’re still here.”
I looked around her shrine to Marcos.
“You’ve been paid to disappear, Mr. Santana. Why haven’t you disappeared?”
“I’m a people person.”
“And I’m unhappy, Mr. Santana. I’m unhappy that you’re still here.”
“Since we’re being indiscreet,” I said. “Did you know where Tiffany was?”
“No,” she said. “Do you know why I was so upset by Pilar’s news that Marcos was searching for Tiffany?”
She calmly took a photograph from the short dresser and held it out to me. It was an old and faded black-and-white photograph of what looked like Tiffany on a beach, wearing a one-piece bathing suit, sitting alone on a blanket in the white sand. The date was marked on the bottom: Cuba, 1950.
“Recognize her?”
I looked at the photograph again. Except for the Chinese influences in Tiffany’s face, they were look-alikes.
“Hannibal married that girl in the picture,” said Josephine. “His first cousin. Me. Why did I panic when Pilar came to report Marcos searching for Tiffany? Simple. I disapproved of his infatuation.”
Infatuation? It took me a second but I got the picture. I was no longer puzzled as to why Atlas was so intent on finding his cousin. So that was it. Atlas was romantically interested in Tiffany.
Kirk Atlas had been Pilar’s savior. Her alpha and her omega. Her higher power. The sun rose and set in the sky of his generosity. She wanted him all for herself and paying me not to find Tiffany or worse was just another strategy.
The poor girl was in love with a guy who didn’t deserve her love. And Kirk Atlas was in love with his own cousin. I bet that wouldn’t go over too well in Hollywood.
“How much money did we give you to disappear?” said Josephine Rivera. “I take it you have it hidden away in some account?”