Who is Charlie Conti?

by Claus von Bohlen

  Something else you’ve got to get used to when you talk to Izzy is that she doesn’t really differentiate between fact and fiction. Like when she watches TV, she doesn’t realize that the actors are acting. I’ve tried explaining it to her but she doesn’t get it. Or at least, she gets it that when someone dies on TV they’re just pretending, but she doesn’t understand that actors are not who they pretend to be. Actually it’s not such an easy thing to explain. I mean, when someone’s acting a role they’re not just pretending to have certain emotions; they’ve got to actually feel those emotions, but I guess they’re just not really their own emotions, not in the normal way. Anyway, I’m probably not the best person to explain about acting, given that I never wised up to what Ray was doing.

  The fact that Izzy doesn’t really have a concept of time, or at least, that her concept of time is different to normal people’s, well, it means that the idea of change doesn’t really affect her. I mean, little changes affect her, like changes in her daily routine or whatever; she doesn’t like that at all. But bigger changes don’t have much impact. She hadn’t seen me since the barbecue party at the beginning of last summer, but I’m her brother Charlie and I turn up from time to time and it doesn’t matter what I look like or where I’m coming from or what I’m doing. I’m the Charlie she grew up with and I’m the same Charlie now, period. In her timeless way Izzy really has a beautifully clear grasp of the facts. And that’s partly why I wanted to see her so badly.

  *

  The Hog’s Back was a real dive bar. It was also a biker hang out – there were a couple of Harleys parked outside, all polished paint and gleaming chrome. It was a sunny day but you’d never have known that inside the bar; thick curtains covered the windows and it could’ve been night. It took my eyes a while to adjust. Although it was only mid-afternoon the bar was loud and busy. Bearded guys in black leather jackets jostled for space. A couple of busty bargirls bantered with the customers. There was a brief silence while the music was changed. When it started again there were cheers and whoops from the crowd as one of the bargirls climbed onto the bar. Behind her, hanging from the wall, there appeared to be thousands of dead rats, a huge bulging display of rats tied to each other and to the wall, faintly lit by the red bulbs overhead. I looked more closely, already feeling the bile rising. And then I realized that they weren’t rats at all but women’s bras, thousands of women’s bras. I remembered that I’d heard of this place before; it had a reputation for brawls and wildness – on crazy drunken nights women were encouraged to take off their bras which were hung from the wall as souvenirs. Looking at the display behind the bar I could see that the bras furthest on the outside were old and dusty whereas those in the centre were more recent additions and looked a lot cleaner.

  The girl who was now stomping up and down on top of the bar in her cowboy boots glowered furiously at the customers. The more she stomped the more the bikers whooped. She singled out one of them, a huge man with a massive hooked nose like a cartoon Fagin from Oliver Twist. His ears and eyebrows were liberally pierced. He wore a black leather waistcoat on top of a black t-shirt; his arms were as thick as the bargirl’s thighs and covered with tattoos. Squatting down on the bar, she leant over the biker-Fagin and grabbed hold of him by his studded belt. She hauled him onto the bar – he must have been willing, she couldn’t have moved him otherwise – until his ass was sticking up into the air. Then she grabbed a flat wooden paddle from behind the bar and began to spank him while the other bikers roared their approval. She gave him five or six spanks then pushed him back onto his stool and resumed her stomping. The biker-Fagin followed her movements with a look of doggy devotion.

  I went up to the bar. To tell the truth, I was pretty nervous. I was about to sit on one of the wobbly old stools when the second bargirl, not the one who’d been dancing but the other one, came up to me and said: ‘Hey kid, how old are you?’

  ‘I don’t want to drink, I just want to speak to –’

  ‘Don’t get fresh with me. I asked you a question, how old are you?’

  ‘I’m twenty-one, but I just –’

  ‘You got ID?’

  ‘No, but like I said –’

  ‘Listen kid, if you don’t have ID you better get out. Go find someplace else.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the biker-Fagin turn around like a kind of man-mountain. Then he said, ‘Aw, cut the kid some slack. He jus’ wants a drink.’

  The waitress turned to him. ‘Hey big boy, you want another spanking?’

  ‘Big boy’ mumbled something that sounded like ‘Never say no’. I said to him, ‘Thank you sir, but really I just got to talk to Jim.’

  There was a silence and then the bargirl asked, ‘You gotta talk to Jim, huh? Is he expecting you?’

  ‘Yes ma’am, he should be,’ I said.

  ‘Alright. Sit tight then.’

  She disappeared through a doorway at the back of the bar. I heard her go up some creaky stairs. Meantime the biker-Fagin said to me, ‘How comes a kid like you knows old Jim?’

  ‘He’s just a friend of a friend’, I said hesitantly. This was a conversation I didn’t want to have.

  Fagin found this pretty funny, I don’t know why. Then he said, ‘Sure, guess that’s how everyone knows old Jim. Course, I met him back when he was working the Vegas clubs. Boy, did old Jim have fire in his loins. Seemed like he’d get a girl knocked up jus’ being in the same room. That was before the accident of course. Things were never the same after.’

  The bargirl reappeared in the doorway at the back of the bar, followed by a slim, elegant man with an eye-patch. He was wearing a dark suit. As he approached the bar I could see that the skin on one side of his face was kind of uneven, like it had been blistered or burnt. It was like seeing a membrane under a microscope, but a membrane at the full extent of its elasticity – fine strands still holding it together but elongated oval holes threatening to tear. Whatever had done this to Jim’s skin must’ve gotten into his eye as well.

  ‘Are you Charlie?’ he asked. He had the low wheezy whisper of someone who smoked a lot of cigarettes.

  ‘Yes sir,’ I replied, ‘I’m a friend of Ray’s.’

  Jim grunted. ‘Cigarette?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  He pushed a pack of Marlboro reds over the bar towards me. I picked up the pack and put it in my pocket as Special Agent Kramer had instructed. Then Jim said, ‘Well you tell hi to Ray when you see him, and tell him that he’s still owing. You got it?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Alright now.’

  Jim turned and made for the darkened doorway at the back of the bar. The bargirls were talking to Fagin and no one else had been paying us any attention, so I slipped off my bar stool and left The Hog’s Back.

  The sunny street outside was a different world. I flopped into the seat of the Buick and took the two $100 bills out of the empty pack of cigarettes, then I put them into my empty wallet. I was pretty impressed that the FBI could recruit guys like Jim to work for them. I guess they must’ve offered him a plea bargain or something. Anyhow, I was looking forward to meeting Special Agent Kramer.

  XIII

  SUNDAY 1PM, GOT $200 from Jim in Hog’s Back was the last thing I wrote at the bottom of the 13th paper napkin. Like I said, the notes I was making were mostly times and dates of when and where stuff happened; I figured Special Agent Kramer would find it useful, though it was pretty hard to read on account of the softness of the paper. It wouldn’t take me long to type up on the laptop which was still in the car, but I guessed that Kramer would prefer to make his own notes.

  Stella and I were the only two people in the diner when the door opened and a short fat man came rolling in. He had a piggy face, very pink with dry, flaky skin. He looked around the room once then came to my table.

  ‘Mr Charlie Conti?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Kramer. It’s good to meet you.’ He extended his hand for me to shake and I tried to stand but it wa
s difficult with the table in front of me and the banquette pushing into my knees from behind.

  I’ve got to say, I was kind of shocked. Special Agent Kramer looked nothing like what I’d expected. He was wearing an open shirt, light blue except for the dark blue circles spreading out from the armpits, and his oversize trousers only just managed to encircle his gut. His jacket was all crumpled and folded over his arm. He was unshaven and had some kind of yellow sauce crusted in his stubble. His handshake was firm – he obviously had a fat man’s huge strength – but his palm was so sweaty that I had to fight the impulse to wipe my hand on my pants. I could just see Stella over his shoulder; she was perched on her stool over by the register watching us with fascination. When she saw me look at her she tried to look like she wasn’t interested.

  Special Agent Kramer lowered himself onto the red plastic banquette opposite me and I sat back down too. ‘Look Charlie, I’m sorry about yesterday,’ he said. ‘I’ve been real busy collecting evidence and there’s a lot of people who don’t want to be tracked down for one reason or another. Course, they can’t avoid us for ever, but they can make it difficult.’

  ‘Sure, I understand,’ I said.

  ‘You have to understand that Ray Celador is very good at what he does. Very good indeed. Before he became Celador he was Kirkby, James Kirkby. There were other identities before Kirkby, but he’d always left traces, loose ends, evidence to link him to past identities. But Celador was very good, very clean. The only evidence linking Celador to Kirkby is the number on the drivers license which you photocopied –’

  ‘Scanned.’

  ‘Sorry, scanned, of course. You scanned it to make yourself a fake ID, is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said hesitantly, realizing that I was admitting a criminal offence to an FBI agent. ‘A lot of people do that,’ I added.

  ‘I won’t put that into my report, don’t worry,’ said Kramer. ‘The Bureau appreciates your help.’

  Looking down, Kramer caught sight of the pile of paper napkins I’d been writing on. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘This? It’s just a list of things that happened during my relationship with Ray – when I first met him, when he moved in, that kind of thing – as well as the places I’ve been and the dates I was there. It’s all arranged chronologically. I thought it might be helpful to prove that I couldn’t possibly have opened the accounts or smuggled the drugs that the banks and the police think I did. It’s kind of hard to read because the paper’s a bit soft, and they’re really just notes. But I thought I could explain it to you and then you could get it typed up like a proper statement.’

  ‘Huh. Let me see.’

  Kramer took the piles of napkins and started leafing through them. He was scowling, I guess because he couldn’t read my writing too well.

  ‘I’ll explain it to you if you want,’ I said.

  ‘No, don’t worry, that’s alright. I can read them ok, but I’m afraid I don’t have time to go through this stuff now. I gotta fly back to DC this evening, but I’ll take these notes with me and read them on the flight. If I need your help I’ll call you, or I’ll have you flown to the Washington office to make a statement.’

  ‘Oh. Ok.’ To tell the truth, I was disappointed. I guess I’d been looking forward to explaining the facts to Kramer, to setting out my story the way it happened. I mean, there was no one else I could talk to about it. Writing it down had felt pretty good, but it would have felt better still to explain it to someone else, to someone who believed me.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to explain. It won’t take long, like half an hour. I can go pretty fast.’

  ‘I’m sorry Charlie, I really don’t have time. The FBI has a way of doing things. We’re pretty close to Celador right now. All we need is the evidence linking him to Kirkby, then we’ll bring him in and there’s no chance that he’ll wriggle free. I just need the laptop.’

  ‘Now?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, now.’

  *

  Kramer stuffed the napkins into his pocket and gave Stella a pretty good once-over on the way out. It was hot in the car-park behind the diner. I felt like I was floating, floating like the shimmer of heat above the asphalt. I guess I’d built this meeting up into something else in my mind and it was not turning out the way I’d imagined. I’d come to see Special Agent Kramer as a kind of deus ex machina to solve all my problems; in fact he seemed pretty ordinary. But then I reminded myself that in life the good guys often don’t look like movie stars. Just because you’re overweight and sweaty and have bad skin, doesn’t mean you can’t be a hero.

  I opened the door of the Buick and sat in the passenger seat to open the glove compartment. It was like an oven inside the car. I took out the laptop and handed it to Kramer. His sweaty hand seized it greedily.

  ‘Do you want me to show you where the files are?’ I asked.

  ‘We got specialists, Charlie,’ he replied. ‘We’ll find what we need.’ He caught my eye for a second and then looked away.

  ‘Well done Charlie. You’ve done the right thing.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘So, I better get going,’ said Kramer. ‘You go visit your sister and I’ll call you soon as we get this wrapped up.’

  ‘Do you have the papers?’ I asked.

  Kramer looked at me blankly for a moment. ‘What papers?’

  ‘For me to sign, so I can get the money from the FBI fund to tide me over, like you said. I thought there’d be some paperwork.’

  ‘Oh those papers, sure…’ Kramer started patting his trouser pockets as if he was looking for them but to tell the truth it looked pretty fake to me, like he knew he didn’t have the papers and was just pretending.

  ‘I know I’ve got them here somewhere, just left the hotel in such a hurry this morning.’

  Kramer took off his jacket and laid it on the roof of the car, then he started searching the inside pockets. He narrowed his eyes like he was concentrating. It made him look kind of mean too. He picked up the laptop and, without warning, he swung it at my head as hard as he could. It connected with my chin and I was knocked sideways. I felt myself being pulled out of the car and slammed against the side of the vehicle. My vision blurred and I couldn’t see anything. I heard Kramer’s voice very close to my ear and I felt his spittle on the side of my face:

  ‘Now Charlie, listen: you’re screwed and you know it. I don’t need to tell you that. But lemme warn you: if you try to go after Celador or Kirkby or Conti, if you try and track him down, then we’ll know and we’ll come and we’ll finish you. You got that?’ He hit me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me.

  ‘I said, you got that?’

  I groaned a response.

  ‘Good boy.’ He seized a fistful of my hair and pulled my face even closer to his so I could smell his rancid breath in my nostrils. Then he slammed my head backwards against the side of the car. I guess my face slid down the black paintwork because the last thing I remember was the intense heat against my skin. Then I must have blacked out.

  XIV

  ‘AW SHIT CHARLIE, what happened?’

  It sounded like Stella’s voice. I tried to open my eyes but one of them was kind of glued shut. I felt cold, very cold, but the ground I was lying on was soft. With my good eye I saw I was in the back of the Buick. The door by my feet was open and Stella was leaning in, silhouetted against the sinking desert sun.

  ‘Special Agent Kramer…’ I said. ‘He’s not a Special Agent at all. He works for Celador.’

  Then I felt sick and leaned over to the closed door by my head and just managed to open it before retching, except I hadn’t eaten much so it was mostly stomach acid which stung in my nose and throat. When I’d finished retching Stella said:

  ‘Charlie, you should go to hospital. Jeez, look at your face. Come on, I can drive.’

  ‘I can’t go to hospital, not unless I’m dying.’

  Boy did it hurt when I tried to speak. I sat up gingerly and looked i
nto the rear view mirror. I could see that my eye was already black and swollen and there was a red mess on my chin and down my neck.

  ‘What do you mean you can’t –’

  ‘I can’t go to hospital because the police are looking for me because they think I’m a drug smuggler because there’s someone else called Charlie Conti, except he was called Ray Celador before…’ I had to stop because I thought I was going to have to retch again, but I just hung my head out the car door for a bit and the feeling passed.

  ‘So if you don’t go to hospital where are you going to go?’

  At that moment the sun dipped below the horizon and I felt more alone than I had ever imagined possible. I didn’t have a place to stay. I didn’t have any money and I couldn’t get any. I didn’t belong anywhere. I had nothing and I had nobody; I was nothing and I was nobody.

  I felt a warm pressure on my foot and realized at the same moment that my eyes were wet with tears and that Stella was holding my ankle. ‘Hey Charlie, it’s ok. You can stay at my place. You can stay as long as you like,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not really that. It’s everything. It’s this whole ugly fucking world.’ And then I started sobbing properly, like a little kid, my saliva going stringy and all. And I couldn’t stop but I was too sad to care and I thought that the world was the ugliest and meanest and cruellest joke that anyone could possibly play. And then I guess some door in my mind just opened up and I remembered my mother’s broken porcelain doll and I remembered teasing Izzy about the woman with the bullfrog cheeks and not dancing to Cotton Eyed Joe and Mikey Katzounnis who I’d never seen since and old Hartfelder with his sad green sports car with the roof down on Park Avenue and everyone growing old and slowly dying all the time except not realizing it and I guess I must have been sobbing pretty bad because Stella came round the other side of the car and started stroking my hair real soft but that just made me cry more because a little bit of kindness in this ugly world is worse than none at all on account of it makes you think how things could be.