Peter’s face was pink, his eyes wide and perplexed behind the mirrored lenses. “Wicca is an earth-based, goddess religion. It has nothing to do with the devil.”
I clenched my teeth. “Tredwell put that pentagram there and you know it.”
“Tredwell? From Ruby’s?”
“What the hell other Tredwells are there?”
A metallic ringing pulsed out from beyond the lip of the stage, and we both turned to it. “That’s my cell phone,” I said. Peter followed the sound and answered it. “It’s detective somebody.” Eyes narrowed, he handed it to me.
Krull.
It wasn’t Krull. It was Art Boyle. “Hi, Miss Leiffer. Johnny asked me to call you. Wanted me to tell you we got a make on the fingerprints from Yale St. Germaine’s apartment.”
“That was fast.”
“Yeah. We had ’em on file because the guy had a previous conviction for shoplifting some . . . uh . . . paraphernalia . . . from the House of Pain down on Christopher Street.”
I stared at Peter, my jaw tightening. “What was the name?”
“Tredwell Hague,” he said. “You know him?”
After I hung up with Boyle, Peter and I sat cross-legged on the edge of the stage. Odd to be sitting there with him, unafraid, but everything about these past few days had been odd.
It didn’t take us long to put it all together. Ever since Peter had taken the job at Ruby’s, Tredwell had been trying to ask him out. Peter had repeatedly turned him down. “He’s too young, I’m not into purple hair and have you noticed he’s kind of stupid?” Peter said. “Besides, he kept trying to get me to go to these dungeon places, and I don’t do S and M.”
When he saw Yale and learned about his relationship with Peter, Tredwell had, quite literally, seen red. He’d followed me out of Ruby’s, pulled me into Cheap Trix and fed me every horror story imaginable to get me to warn off my best friend. I remembered how long he’d taken in the bathroom there. Obviously straining his brain to come up with a frightening enough plot.
Before he’d received the call from Boyle, Peter had told several people—Tredwell included—about his date with Yale at Temple Bar. That was all Tredwell could take. Since I’d clearly failed to turn my friend against the love of his life, the spurned waiter had decided to take matters into his own hands.
Yale’s address was listed. Obviously he was the only Yale St. Germaine in the phone book.
When Tredwell thought Yale was out with Peter (“I was actually at my cousin’s place, hiding from the police”), he’d gone to the apartment and taken out twelve months worth of sexual frustration on Yale’s belongings. The fact that he’d left not only his fingerprints but also his bow tie behind was, for Tredwell, typical.
“Total nut job,” Peter said. “I can’t even believe he told you we were dating.”
“First you were convincing him to do drugs. When that didn’t impress me, he said you’d coerced him into S and M—”
“Yeah, right. What a prick.”
“And then you’d forced him to worship the devil.”
“You believed all that?”
I had to admit it. Out loud, it sounded ridiculous. But I’d never questioned Tredwell, never thought for a second he might be lying. “I wanted to believe it,” I thought and said at the same time. “Because . . . if it were true, it would’ve answered a lot of questions for me. I saw something . . . a crime. And if you were the one who did it, you’d be in jail by now. Everyone would be safe.”
Peter had picked up a small handful of dirt from the stage and was slowly letting it sift through his fingers. “Sounds like you’ve been through a lot,” he said, without a hint of sarcasm in his voice. I was actually starting to like this guy.
“It’s those mirrored lenses, you know,” I said. “The criminal has the same ones as you, and that’s what got me going in the first place.”
Peter removed a small plastic case from his jeans pocket and plucked the contacts out of his eyes. “I just thought you were trying to piss me off when you said they weren’t one of a kind, but it turns out you were right,” he said as he did it. “This actress came into Ruby’s last night and she had them. Thought she was the cat’s ass because she had an audition for some dumb soap opera . . .”
I shook my head at how small New York could be.
“I figured, a wannabe soap star who eats at Ruby’s is not exactly on the fashion forefront. I was wearing these only to avoid the cops.” Peter snapped the box shut and looked at me. His eyes were a dark, denimy blue and as stunning as the rest of him.
“Peter,” I said, “the Sixth Precinct detective squad is not going to arrest you for being an illegal immigrant.”
“They’re not?”
“No. INS would be the ones to worry about, and nobody knows, anyway.”
“Man, is that a relief . . . Now all I have to do is apologize to Yale for standing him up and kill Tredwell—not literally. What was this crime you witnessed anyway?”
I started to reply, but stopped when I heard a loud noise outside the theater door. It took only a few seconds to identify it as the sharp, leathery sound of a whip cracking. Peter and I stared at each other as the door slowly creaked open.
When it slammed shut, there was Hermyn at the back of the theater, chest thrown out to accommodate that acrobatic voice, fists pressed to her hips like a superhero.
“Oh, it’s you, Samantha,” she said. “I thought we were being robbed.”
I had to admit, ever since Hermyn had announced her engagement, I’d been dying to know what her fiancé, Sal, looked like. “Think Sid Vicious with a water pick,” Shell had speculated during her rant at the will-call window. And that image had stuck—I’d envisioned a pale, greasy-haired dentist built like a stick of gum, maybe with a few track marks. So when I finally saw him in the flesh that night outside the theater, sitting in the front seat of his Chevy Cavalier, I couldn’t help but stare. He was emphatically unedgy—a sweet-faced man, not much bigger than me, with a neat, curly cap of brown hair and square, plastic-framed glasses. “So you’re Sal,” I said as Hermyn opened the back door for me and Peter and eased into the front seat beside her intended.
“Hello, there,” he said without turning around. His head barely cleared the rest atop the driver’s seat. “We’re here to pick up Butterfly’s belated Valentine’s present.”
“Don’t call me that in front of other people, Sal.”
“What with proposing and all, I completely forgot to give it to her—”
“You didn’t have to give me anything.”
“So I left it in Bu—Hermyn’s cubbyhole last night because I wanted to surprise her at work today. Then she tells me you guys have the whole week off—”
“Did you see anybody else at the box office last night?” I asked.
“No,” said Sal. “Was I supposed to?”
Hermyn pulled the red envelope out of her jacket pocket, and started to open it.
I figured I should probably go back for the doll’s head, take it with me to show the police, but I couldn’t stand to even think of it, let alone touch it. I’d tell the police about it later, send them to the box office without me, so they could seal the eyeless head in a clean, plastic evidence bag and take it far away. Did that doll belong to Ariel? Did the blood on the ad?
“We heard quite a racket there in the theater,” Sal said. His voice was deep, especially for his size, and reminded me of a warm, heavy blanket. I imagined his patients had little need for anesthesia. “I guess everything carries in there. Makes for good acoustics. Hermyn does a great whip, doesn’t she? Most talented woman I’ve ever met.”
“Sweetheart, you’re embarrassing me.”
“I speak the truth, my love. Open your present.”
“Tell me a joke first.”
“Okay. What did one math book say to the other?”
“I give up.”
“I have a lot of problems.”
Hermyn cackled. “You are so funny.”
/> “I hear most of them from my patient, Emmett. He’s in the second grade.”
“It’s all in the delivery, Sal. Isn’t his delivery wonderful, Samantha?”
“Excellent.”
“Ohhhh, you darling man,” Hermyn said as she gazed at the contents of the envelope.
“Well, show us, why don’t you?” said Peter.
Hermyn kissed Sal deeply before passing a necklace into Peter’s hands. He held it out so we could both look at it—a thin, sparkling chain with a delicate butterfly pendant—barely bigger than the gold applique on Hermyn’s front tooth. A small diamond stood at the tip of each antenna and emerald dust had been sprinkled on its wings.
I found myself marveling at how Sal had walked into a store, noticed this sweet, fragile thing, and had immediately thought of Hermyn. No wonder she loved him. He was probably the only person in the world who looked at her boxy frame, her stern features, her spiky hair—and saw a butterfly.
“You all right?” Hermyn said to me. “You seem upset.”
“I’m fine. Just . . . tired.”
“So where are you two lovebirds headed?” Sal asked.
“I’ve so got to get back to work,” Peter said. “They think I just went home because I forgot my wallet.”
We drove to Ruby’s in relative silence. When we got there, I saw two police cars parked outside and, through the frosty window, burgundy hair surrounded by blue uniforms. “Seems early for a bar brawl,” Sal remarked.
As Peter left the car, I said, “Don’t forget to renew that visa.”
He turned and winked at me, then sprinted into the restaurant.
“He is so handsome, Samantha,” said Hermyn. “Is he a model?”
“I think,” I said, “he’s just a normal waiter.”
When I asked them to take me to Yale’s apartment, I realized it was the only safe place I knew.
11
I’ll Wait Here, Butterfly
“Incredible,” Hermyn kept saying as she circled the great, multicolored pile of broken glass, china, pottery and shredded police tape sprawled at the center of Yale’s living room floor.
Yale and I just looked at each other. When Hermyn had walked through the door and gasped at the jagged mess—which stood a couple of feet high and reminded me of one of the Watts Towers, collapsed—Yale had explained, teeth clenched, “It’s art.” Obviously, he hadn’t expected her to take him seriously.
Hermyn knelt down, and grazed her fingertips over the headless body of Yale’s porcelain dog. “Lost love and . . . ohh, yes, regret. Sal would go crazy for this.”
Sal was waiting in the car. Hermyn had insisted on walking me upstairs, and when I’d mentioned several recent auto thefts that had occurred on Eighth Street after dark, Sal had said, “I’ll wait here and watch the car, Butterfly!” I’d felt so sorry for Hermyn’s fiancé, sitting out in the cold with the car turned off (he said he didn’t want to waste gas) that I’d given him my huge, bulky coat, which he’d gratefully accepted.
When I turned around, I’d seen him in the front seat with the coat thrown over him like a blanket, wriggling underneath the folds of black wool, pulling the collar and hood over his small head. He reminded me of some sort of burrowing, baby animal.
Yale’s apartment was barely recognizable. The couch was pushed up against the wall across from his two street-facing windows. But everything else in the room had been carefully swept into the center, including the police tape, which Yale had decimated as well, presumably to make one giant disposal pile. It made sense to me. Why bother with wastebaskets when your entire living room has been turned into one?
Tredwell’s waiter bow tie had been placed at the top of the heap like an angel on a Christmas tree. I pointed at it and remarked, “Nice touch.”
“I thought so,” said Yale. He was wearing sweat-pants that were rolled up at the bottom, an oversized Cats sweatshirt and thick ski socks. His face was flushed from stress and cleaning.
“Who is the artist?” asked Hermyn, who was still on her knees, stroking a remnant of a tragedy mask that bore a light gray dust from fingerprinting.
“Oh, Hermyn,” Yale said, “this isn’t art. These are my possessions—or what’s left of them, thanks to a jealous little prick named Tredwell.”
“Oh, good. Because honestly? It’s kind of over the top.”
“At least he’s gonna pay for everything.” Yale looked at me. “That’s the one thing Peter really is forcing him to do.”
Yale’s buzzer gave off a long, painful bleat. I could tell someone was leaning on it.
“Jesus Christ.” Deliberately, Yale walked to his door. “Who the fuck is it?” he shouted into the intercom.
A man’s voice: “I’m bleeding!”
I looked at Hermyn, saw the color drain from her face in slow motion.
After five years in New York, I still had a California driver’s license. But since Yale’s Wisconsin license had expired two years ago and Hermyn had never learned to drive, it was understood that I would take the wheel of the Cavalier and drive us the few short blocks to St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Sal had been shot. Exactly where, we didn’t know, because blood was all over him and none of us wanted to hurt him more by exploring.
Driving was good because it gave me a place to sit and something to do with my hands, which were trembling so hard I could barely grasp the ignition key.
I had never seen so much blood in my life. Thick as paint and still warm and slick, it covered the front seat and both driver’s side doors of the Cavalier. A few stray shards of glass clung to the left window, coated with the same bright, sick red. The rest had been shattered by the bullet. I felt ice-cold wind on my face and the tiny, prickly pieces through my pants and sweater, but it didn’t hurt. And I wasn’t cold. All I could hear or feel or think of was Hermyn’s moaning, “Oh my God, oh my God,” over and over again from the backseat while Sal, in the state he was in, tried to comfort her. “It’s okay, Butterfly, I’m just . . . just a little dizzy is all . . .”
At one point, Sal said, “Did they steal my car?” and I realized how delirious he actually was.
Yale kept silent. His jaw was slack and I thought he might faint.
I wondered how Sal had been able to make it to the door and press the buzzer. His blood was all over the steering wheel. How horribly intimate it is to feel another person’s blood, slippery and warm, on the palms of your hands.
The car screeched into a U-turn on Eighth Street. I said, “You never really do forget how to drive.”
“Is that so?” Yale said. I glanced at him. Two tears trickled down his cheeks, but he seemed unaware of them.
“Did they steal my car? ’Cause I have insurance so it’s okay. Lotsa car thefts on Eighth Street. Shouldn’t park cars there, but that’s okay. It’s okay, Butterfly . . .”
“We’re almost there,” I said, and ran a red light to make a left on Seventh Avenue and narrowly avoided smashing into a taxi.
“Hey, Butterfly, what do guns say when they don’t know the answer?”
“Oh, God, Sal.”
“I don’t know, but I’ll take a shot! Get it? Boy, am I queasy . . .”
By the time I braked in front of St. Vincent’s, Sal had passed out. Hermyn rushed in to get the paramedics as Yale and I hopped out of the car and opened the back door. “Oh, please don’t die,” I whispered to his still, frail body.
Yale just stared at him, his face gray beyond emotion.
In the waiting room at St. Vincent’s, the air was hot and a little moist. “I feel like I’m inside someone’s mouth,” Yale said. “It can’t possibly be sanitary in here.”
I probably would have smiled, if the situation had been different. But I couldn’t even work up a response. It was hard enough to breathe.
“I mean a human’s mouth, you know. Not a dog’s mouth. Dogs’ mouths are supposed to be extremely sanitary. You could probably eat out of a dog’s mouth and be safer than you would be at most delis. Of cours
e, the dog probably wouldn’t be too pleased . . .”
Yale kept talking and I just sat there, staring straight ahead at the blackness that pressed against the windows of the hospital waiting room. I wondered if they were bulletproof.
At least Sal wasn’t dead. The bullet had entered the shoulder, breaking his collarbone but missing his vital organs. Hermyn was with him in the emergency room, even though visitors weren’t technically allowed in there. There was a sign that said as much, but Hermyn didn’t care. “Let me through, motherfuckers!” she’d yelled in her clear, piercing voice, like an opera singer playing Shaft. The ER staff had looked at her, admiring and afraid at the same time, and absorbed her into their group.
Yale and I had gone into the waiting room and received sporadic updates from the doctor who was working on Sal.
Sal had been hit in the left shoulder, which connected to his left arm, which connected to his left hand, where Hermyn would eventually place a wedding ring after the rabbi called her Amy and asked if she would take this man. That was her real name, Amy. She’d given it to the admitting nurse. “I’m his fiancée, Amy Rosensweig,” she’d said, shedding the name by which we’d always known her as if it were a costume she’d been wearing for too long.
“Now, cats’ mouths on the other hand. Filthy . . .”
A woman two seats over was holding a little boy who was probably her son. They both had the same huge, shiny black eyes, and the little boy was shaking. He was absolutely tiny.
The woman was talking very softly to the boy. I could hear her say mi hijo, a phrase I remembered from high school Spanish. My child.
“Strike that. A cow’s mouth would be filled with cud, which is far more wholesome and probably smells better than anything in this so-called health care facility. Are you listening to me?” Yale hadn’t stopped talking, not even to inhale. I’d never expected him to react this way in a crisis situation, which proves you can’t truly know anyone, even your best friend.
“Mouths, right?” I said.
Hide Your Eyes Page 13