Abel Baker Charley

by John R. Maxim

  “Sonnenberg!” Baker roared at him, the knowledge sinking in that it was Sonnenberg who had taken Tina. The head of the man in black snapped up. He pinched his face shut and shook his head violently, grabbing the pulpit's railing for support.

  “Look at this.” Harrigan pointed. Stanley Levy was also blinking. He stepped uncertainly away from the pulpit's base far enough so that he could look up as if to confirm the identity of the person standing there. Stanley's mouth moved, but he seemed to have trouble speaking.

  “See anyone else you know?” Harrigan gestured toward Stanley with the muzzle of his gun.

  Baker stared stupidly.

  “What do you need, hints?” said Harrigan. “Okay, try this one. Stanley Levy is to Domenic Tortora as blank blank is to Marcus Sonnenberg. You fill in what's missing.”

  Dumbfounded, almost entranced, Baker looked at Stanley. He looked into the softening eyes of a little man whose body seemed to be shrinking and bending as he watched. Rearranging itself more than changing. Baker could not believe it. But for a gray head of hair tied into a careless bun, he was looking at Emma. Mrs. Kreskie.

  “Emma Kreskie.” Harrigan said it for him. “What about you, Miss Burke? Who do you see?”

  Tanner had seen it even before Harrigan. If anything, having seen Stanley dress up as his own mother, she was less surprised. She knew nothing of Emma Kreskie. She was seeing Mrs. Levy again. Except this Mrs. Levy seemed unable to speak. Stanley had mentioned an Emma. A cousin. “My God,” she mouthed, the full horror of it dawning on her. “There are three of him too.”

  “The lady wins a prize,” Harrigan answered. “More exactly, this mess is another one of those Chimeras Duncan Peck is so hot to find.” He looked up at the teetering figure in the pulpit. “Except what, Sonnenberg? What was Stanley here? Practice? A near miss? What?”

  The name, Harrigan saw, seemed to jerk at the man in the pulpit each time it was spoken. And each of these tugs in turn appeared to cause an equal reaction in the man who was now only on the edge of being Stanley Levy. Emma is to Marcus, he told himself, what Stanley is to Domenic. Domenic goes back to Marcus so Stanley goes back to Emma. And vice versa. What did Sonnenberg call it back at the house? His connection with Tortora, I mean. A symbiotic relationship, he called it. Symbiotic, my ass. The guy's a skitz for the record books.

  “Sonnenberg!” Harrigan had one more hunch to play. “Sonnenberg!” He called the name again. Both times, the man in the pulpit twitched as if jerked by a string inside his brain. He seemed caught halfway. He was trying, Harrigan was sure, to be Tortora now. The man in black would be almost there, almost believing it, almost slipping into the persona of Domenic Tortora, but Harrigan could prevent it, he realized, simply by speaking the wrong name. Sonnen-berg's name. While Harrigan reminded the man he was Sonnenberg, it seemed, the man could not believe he was Tortora.

  “Mr. Hershey!” the man in black croaked. He staggered against the side of the pulpit nearest Roger Hershey. “Shoot this man,” he rasped, his voice high again. And then at once he appeared to reconsider. Looking away as if to capture a thought he'd lost, he flitted a hand toward Hershey, erasing the order. Harrigan half-turned toward Roger Hershey, ready to crouch and fire if Hershey raised his rifle. Hershey met Harrigan's eyes. His head shook slowly, sadly. In slow motion, he took both his hands from the grip and stock of his rifle and folded them across his chest.

  “Sonnenberg.” Harrigan looked up again. “It's time we cut the godfather bullshit.” His tone was firm but less rough than the words he chose. “You're Marcus Sonnenberg now. Dr. Marcus Sonnenberg. You can be whoever the hell else you want after we leave with the kid. Right now you're Sonnenberg. Sonnenberg is who I want to talk to.”

  The man on the pulpit swallowed. He'd begun breathing heavily. “First . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut once more. “First you must answer for my son, Baker. Baker must answer for my—”

  “That's my line, Sonnenberg,” Harrigan interrupted. “Anyway, you don't have a son. That son was Tortora's and even that was probably faked. By Sonnenberg. You can't stand up there being a Maf because there isn't any Maf. There's only Sonnenberg.”

  “The hell with this,” Baker snapped. He slipped loose the arm into which Tanner's fingernails had been digging and moved off toward the bank facade.

  “Wait,” Harrigan called. “The guy's almost Sonnenberg again. You want to talk to him or don't you?”

  Baker turned his head but kept walking toward the Greek Revival building. “Talk to who, Harrigan? Sonnenberg? Like you said, there's nothing left in there.” Baker climbed the steps of the bank.

  “Jared!” It was Sonnenberg's voice. Pleading.

  Baker hesitated. He did not want to stop and turn.

  “Jared!” Sonnenberg's voice choked again.

  Reluctantly, Baker turned to face him. “Doctor?” He spat the word.

  “I'm . . . sorry, Jared.”

  “Tina's all right?” His eyes were blazing.

  “She's well, Jared. Sleeping. I'm sorry, Jared.”

  Baker took a single step closer. “Why, Doctor? Why did you take her?”

  Sonnenberg raised both hands to his oversized hat and took it off. Removing it seemed to help him concentrate. He opened the buttons of the heavy black overcoat, paused as if feeling for the effect, then shrugged the garment to the pulpit's floor. It did help. It was easier for him to be Sonnenberg now. He did not answer Baker's question. But there was an answer. Harrigan, watching closely, could see it in his eyes. And he could also see that a full understanding of his actions was beyond him. Absently, sorrowfully, Sonnenberg ran his fingers over the detail of the pulpit's stonework.

  “Bitter pulpit,” he muttered to himself. He raised his eyes to Jared Baker. “Named after Karl Bitter,” he added. “The man who carved it.” Sonnenberg paused to take a long breath. ”I intended no play upon his name, but I suppose there's a metaphor in there someplace. What words does one speak from a bitter pulpit? Does one preach repentance and regret? Or do I preach tolerance and understanding to one who despises me? Understand yourself, Jared, and you'll understand me. Understand me and you'll understand yourself. There's truth to that, Jared, although I suspect you're not of a mind to listen.”

  “No, Doctor,” Baker answered. “As a matter of fact, I'm not.” He turned once more and stepped through the doors of the bank facade. Tanner Burke followed him.

  “I'll listen.” Connor Harrigan remained at the base of the pulpit. A few feet away sat Stanley Levy, or what remained of him, staring indifferently at the floor, shoulders hunched, back bent, looking old. He reminded Harrigan of bag ladies he'd seen around Grand Central Station.

  Sonnenberg did not look at Harrigan. His sorrowful face stayed fixed upon the doors that Baker had entered. But he responded.

  “To what purpose, Mr. Harrigan?” he asked.

  “Like you said. Understanding.”

  ”I doubt you'd profit by it, sir. Nor am I of a mood to endure the snorts of a cynic such as yourself. You view the capacity of the human mind only in terms of corruption and venality. I fear its grander potential is beyond you.”

  “We're talking grand all of a sudden?”

  Sonnenberg ignored the question.

  “Grand as in what?” Harrigan pressed. “Grand theft auto? Grand larceny? Grand juries? What?”

  ”I rest my case, Mr. Harrigan.”

  Harrigan reddened. “You're a patronizing old screwball, aren't you. Where do you get the balls to feel so superior?”

  Sonnenberg bit his lip. A reply had begun to form, but he seemed determined not to discourse with this man or be distracted by him.

  Okay, Harrigan thought. Let's try sticking the needle a little deeper.

  ”I mean, you spend maybe twenty years bouncing between two different people, each as phony as the other. One's a second-rate Dr. Strangelove and the other thinks he's Don Vito Corleone. One carves up people's heads and the other breaks legs if people don't pay off his loan sharks. Plus
which he causes ice picks to be stuck in the bodies of people who inconvenience either one of them. And now crude old Connor Harrigan learns that there's a nuance to all this that's too delicate for a dope like him to understand.” Harrigan stepped closer. He began to slide his revolver into his belt but glanced at Stanley, Mrs. Kreskie, whoever, and thought better of it. Sonnenberg turned his head still farther from Harrigan and kept it locked upon the bank building.

  “Okay.” Harrigan shrugged. “So I have to guess. But you'll tell me if I happen to hit it, won't you, Sonnenberg?” He held up his left hand and began ticking off his fingers. “You create Domenic Tortora for these reasons. One. Cultivated nice guy Sonnenberg needs a cultivated bad guy Tortora who is willing to behave in ways that nice guy Sonnenberg considers indelicate. Sonnenberg, for one thing, doesn't like to kill. He hardly kills at all except for an occasional lapse like knocking off Santa Claus down at St. Elizabeths. Tortora doesn't like to kill either, but he'll always come through in a pinch. Us unrefined types call that schizophrenia and you a psychopath. But what do we know about grander potential?

  “Two. It occurs to you that anyone with an upper-class dago name, as opposed to Mario Greaso for example, plus a black hat and coat, a fat wallet, a big house in Bronxville, and lots of mysterious absences, can function very nicely on the edges of the dago underworld. Automatically, that gives you the dago Brylcreme set looking to do you favors. It gives you cops looking to get on your pad, judges looking for you to get them elected to the Appellate Court, where the real money changes hands, and it makes everybody else afraid to fuck around with you.

  “Three. It gives you a place to go if the shit hits the fan like it did today up in—”

  “Hardly, Mr. Harrigan.” Sonnenberg stopped him with a wave of his hand. “Being Domenic Tortora full time would be more than I could bear. I happen to loathe oregano, tomato paste, and the entire expatriate population of Sicily. Tortora will vanish forever before tomorrow comes, doubtless leaving rumors involving cement overshoes and the like.”

  “What happens to your kid?”

  “Tortora's kid,” Sonnenberg corrected, “assuming you refer to the bad seed ravaged last night by our friend Abel. In any case, his care has been provided for. If he survives, I'm sure we may count on him to carry on the more sordid traditions of the Tortora family name.”

  “Which is not the name he was born with.”

  Sonnenberg leaned forward. “So that it's clear, Mr. Harrigan,” he said, sighing, “I'm speaking to you not because you've so cleverly drawn me out but because you prove to be a perceptive man in your own vulgar fashion. I'll retain that favorable impression only as long as you avoid asking the obvious.”

  So, Harrigan realized he'd guessed right about the kid. He was a prop. Picked up someplace along the way by Tortora or Sonnenberg and used to create the illusion of a life history. An orphan, maybe. Abandoned, more likely, given what a shit he must have been even as a baby. You'd think Tortora would have picked a foundling with a better disposition if he knew he'd have to look at him for the next twenty or thirty years. Which probably meant that Sonnenberg hadn't figured on needing to be Tortora that long. So what happened? Try a simple answer, Connor. Try one thing led to another. Like Tanner Burke says. The guy doesn't so much plan as he gets caught up in his own momentum. Which makes him a bitch to anticipate. And which starts to explain how he gets caught up in these lives he leads.

  “You want perceptive and vulgar? You got it.” Harrigan nodded. “Tortora's kid was a central casting prick. If he wasn't any loss, why did you go through the whole charade of having him order Tina Baker's kidnapping? Back at your house, as I recall, you acted like this was news to you.”

  “It was,” Sonnenberg admitted. “To a large extent, it was.”

  “Which makes you a certifiable wacko.” Harrigan couldn't resist it. “You know that, don't you?”

  Baker found no bank behind the stone facade. No brass teller's cages or roll-top desks. Federal period, the sign said. He stepped into a large drawing room seven decades farther back in time than the bank that housed it. Not quite as far as Williamsburg but close enough. The age of Duncan Phyfe and Hepplewhite. Cabinetry that was light and graceful, chairs and settees with soft curves to their woodwork. It looked like Sonnenberg's home.

  “Daddy?”

  Baker's head turned and Tanner's with it. The silent call came from a chamber off the drawing room. As Baker moved toward it, his eye twitched. It was not yet a stab of warning, only alertness. Like a dozing watchdog who lifts one ear at a sound too faint to cause alarm.

  There were several chambers. Bedrooms, mostly, that could be entered off the central parlor. They were all period rooms, Federal style more or less, all reproductions of rooms found in fine homes of the era. Baker saw the name Haverhill. The Haverhill Room. A waist-high glass barricade had been moved away from its entrance. And he saw Tina.

  She lay curled and uncovered on a canopied bed. A candle burned steadily on a washstand at its side. Her eyes were closed, but a smile stretched across her mouth when she felt him there. Baker froze at the sight of her, not fully believing that it was Tina, that she was within his reach. Tanner's hand against his back urged him forward. In steps he would not remember taking he was at her side, bending over her, not yet touching, doubting even then that she was real. Very softly, he touched his fingertips to her forehead and brushed away a strand of hair that lay across her face. Tears streaked Baker's face. His own tears. They spotted her T-shirt at the shoulder and ran across her neck. Only a bit more boldly, he ran his fingers through her soft hair and down along her cheek. He caressed it tenderly.

  “That's not a hug,” she whispered. A sob convulsed Baker. He threw himself into arms that opened for him.

  Tanner held back, smiling, wiping tears of her own. Tina Baker's eyes opened with effort and found Tanner. A hand reached out and Tanner took it in both of hers, but she did not otherwise intrude upon the moment.

  “Hello, Jared.” A woman's voice made Tanner flinch. Baker tightened but barely moved. Tanner reached a hand to the embroidered red bed curtain that hung from the canopy and tore it open. A woman sat in the darkness of the far corner, swaying quietly on an upholstered rocker. There was a Gucci purse on her lap, and against it Tanner could see the gleam of a small plated pistol. Slowly, Baker drew back his head from Tina's cheek, kissed it once more, and turned toward the voice.

  “Melanie,” he acknowledged. Odd, Tanner thought. His manner showed neither surprise nor concern. She stepped around the bed, moving, she hoped, within range of a kick should the woman lift her weapon. But the muzzle shifted in her direction before Tanner could pass the last bedpost. Not aiming. Not threatening. Rather warning her away by its presence. Tanner took a defiant step closer and waited.

  “Melanie.” Baker saw the pistol. He gathered his arms under Tina's body and lifted her from the bed. ”I feel like killing someone tonight, Melanie. I'd just as soon it isn't you.”

  ”. . . makes you a certifiable wacko. You know that, don't you?”

  Sonnenberg sneered with just his eyes. “That's one conclusion, Mr. Harrigan, witless though it may be. Rather than waste time volleying insults, however, I will point out that actors, whether on the stage or in your government's undercover activities, quite commonly become absorbed in their roles. When the news reached me of young John's destruction, I was Tortora. I reacted as Tortora. The death of a son was real to me then. The Domenic Tortora I created would never have permitted such an event to go unavenged. Sonnenberg would of course have been more pragmatic. But his influence had its limits while the reins were in Tortora’ s hands.”

  Harrigan whistled to himself. Did I say he's a skitz for the books? The guy's world class. Yet Harrigan knew there was a certain demented logic to what Sonnenberg was saying. It had to apply to Stanley as well. Getting lost in the role. Except there were three Stanleys. Stanley himself, Emma Kreskie who he thinks is his cousin, and Mrs. Levy who he thinks is his mother. At lea
st the three Bakers know who the hell they are. What was it Sonnenberg told Duncan Peck back in his study? You have to be careful, he said more or less, that the subject you pick isn't a skitz to any great degree already. Make that mistake, and all you end up accomplishing is to give form to personalities that were already the product of your subject's emotional needs. What needs?

  Sonnenberg's attention had wandered back toward the facade. “What do we suppose is keeping Jared?” he asked.

  “It's been a year and a half.” Harrigan shrugged. “They're catching up.”

  ”I suppose.” Sonnenberg nodded.

  “As long as we're passing the time of day, you mind if I ask about Stanley here?”

  ”Hmm?” Sonnenberg asked distractedly. “Such knowledge would be quite useless, Mr. Harrigan.”

  “Just curious. What happened? He was real close to his mother and she died on him?”

  “Hardly close.”

  “So why's he off the wall about mothers?”

  Sonnenberg shook his head wearily and leaned toward him. “Purely in the interest of enhancing your sensitivity, Mr. Harrigan, I will tell you that Stanley did in fact have a cousin and obviously a mother and that they treated him disgracefully. He retreated into books, the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes specifically, which they delighted in tearing into shreds whenever they found them. Their abuse was ended through the agency of an ice pick. Stanley was institutionalized as a young man. Therapy was characteristically useless, so he provided his own. He invented a mother and a cousin whose devotion would remain total as long as Stanley lived. They're quite real to Stanley and he to them. The earlier agony has been totally suppressed. In fact, he thinks all mothers are quite wonderful. That's a useful hint, Harrigan. The proper mention of your own mother could save your life someday should you otherwise upset Stanley.”