“Are you going to be trouble for me?”
“Depends on what you have to ask.”
11
DEAN MARTIN was singing “Amore” and there was laughter from a table of young black gangster wannabes. Zella was halfway through her cigarette and working on a second shot of whiskey. We hadn’t gotten to anything pertinent yet but we’d cleared a few hurdles.
I wasn’t trying to be her friend. It was enough to seem like I wasn’t an enemy. Her cigarette and whiskey helped toward that end. And the fact that I was willing to walk away meant that I had hard feelings of my own. Putting that all together, Zella almost felt almost comfortable enough to speak.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“Always. You know I haven’t had a decent meal in almost ten years.”
“Leviathan has great steaks.”
“You know what I thought about every day since they sent me up to Bedford Hills?”
I shook my head, wishing that I could have a cigarette too.
“Two things,” she said. “The most important is that I regret giving up my baby. I delivered her and relinquished all my rights because I thought that I’d be in prison until she grew to be a woman and I didn’t want her to spend her whole childhood waiting for a mother who would never come. I was wrong, and now I want to see her more than anything.
“Can you find my daughter for me, Mr. McGill?”
“ Why?” I asked, serious as a judge at the Inquisition.
“I just told you.”
“ Wherever this child is now, she’s with the only parents she’s ever known. I can find her, but not if you want to rush in without a meeting with the people who took her in after you gave her up.”
“Yes. Yes, I understand that.”
Zella’s previous beauty was returning. There was color in her face, and the beginning of a certain poise that prison wouldn’t have allowed.
“ What’s the second thing?” I asked.
“Harry.”
“Tangelo?”
She nodded, lowering her head as she did so.
“ What? You sorry you didn’t kill him?”
“I don’t even remember shooting him in the first place,” she said, raising her head defiantly. “The doctors call it selective amnesia. The trauma of shooting him wiped the memory from my head. The first thing I knew, I was in the police station being questioned by a woman named Ana Craig. She told me what happened.”
“But you must’ve been mad at what he’d done.”
“He didn’t deserve being shot and scared like that. Harry’s a weak man. I can only imagine how he felt when I kept on shooting at him. I’m actually glad that Minnie hit me . . . stopped me from killing him.”
“That’s not what you said at the bus station this morning.”
“All I meant was that I was crazy. I didn’t know what I was doing. If somebody hadn’t framed me for that heist, the DA would have let me out on diminished capacity.”
“So what do you want to do about Harry Tangelo?”
“I want to apologize to him,” she said. “I want to look him in the eye and say I’m sorry.”
If she was just some prospective client that walked in my office, I would have turned her away. Mothers and guilty lovers, they use private detectives like paper towels in a public toilet.
But Zella wasn’t a stranger. If she was a runaway train, I was guilty of switching the tracks.
“I can probably find out who your child was adopted by,” I said, “but I can’t promise that they will agree to meet you. I can also locate Harry Tangelo, but the same holds true for him.”
Zella brought out the envelope of cash that I’d given her that morning. This she placed on the crescent table.
“I spent a little more than sixty-seven dollars of it but you can have the rest.”
“You get what you pay for,” I said, leaving the white envelope on the pale yellow tabletop.
“ What does that mean?”
“You’re hiring me to see your child and old boyfriend. I’ll probably be able to find them, but the meetings, as I said, might prove to be a little more tricky. You hold on to the money until I come back with some answers.”
“You don’t want the money?”
“Not until I know that I can earn it. I wouldn’t want a hot-blooded mama like you to think I had cheated.”
That was the first time I’d seen her smile.
It was a nice smile. Very nice.
“So what now?” she asked.
“I buy you another drink, put you in a cab, and tomorrow I start the job you gave me.”
“That’s all?”
“Unless you need me to find somebody else.”
“No.”
“And you don’t plan to shoot Tangelo anymore, right?”
She smiled again. “No, Mr. McGill, and . . .” She paused, looking at me directly.
“ What?”
“I wanted to apologize for what I said to you at the bus station this morning. I was raised better than that.”
“Hey. If you can’t lose your temper after eight years being locked up for a crime you didn’t commit and another one you weren’t responsible for, then this would be a harder world than anyone could bear.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. McGill. It has been hard. Maybe I’ll take you up on that drink.”
NEAR TWO in the morning I put a slightly tipsy Zella Grisham into a yellow cab, paid her fare up front, and even kissed her on the cheek. The way she leaned into that kiss I could probably have climbed in with her. But I try my best to maintain a certain decorum with my clients.
ON THE STREET I considered taking the subway uptown. I think pretty well surrounded by the rumble of the underground rails.
“Leonid,” a man called.
I was unarmed and on an empty street. That could have been the moment of my death. Could have been. Probably would be one day. But not that night. It wasn’t my assassin but Carson Kitteridge, recently promoted to captain on the NYPD. His was an at-large position that allowed him to work wherever he was needed.
Carson was even shorter than I, five-five—no more. Pale white, he had less hair than I did. His suit was light-colored and well worn.
“Kit,” I said. “I thought they reassigned you after the promotion.”
He strolled up next to me with no expression that I could read.
I’m a burly guy, in excess of one-eighty in my boxers. Kit isn’t even a lightweight, but there’s a gravity to him that makes bad guys think twice. For many years his main goal was putting me in prison. Possibly my greatest single achievement was denying this brilliant cop that aspiration.
“ What you up to, LT?”
“Headed home. That is, unless you wanted to grab a drink. You on duty?”
“ What you up to, LT?” he said again.
“ Why don’t you tell me?”
“ What do you have to do with Zella Grisham?”
“I was hired to meet her at the bus station. She liked the color of my skin and the cut of my suit and asked me out for a drink.”
“ What was she talking about?”
“This and that. Nothing special.”
“The heist?”
“Claims she didn’t do it. I believe her.”
“You armed?” he asked.
That was an unexpected question, enough so to make me look around the dark street. I had a license to carry a concealed pistol. I’d been granted that when I used to have friends in high places.
“No,” I said. “ Why?”
“Just wondering if you knew what you were getting into,” Carson said. “I see you don’t.”
“ What’s that supposed to mean?”
A wan smile passed across the policeman’s lips and vanished—like a shark’s fin.
“See you later, Leonid,” he said.
With that he turned and walked away, making the most of his ominous innuendos.
I stood there a few moments more. Again I thought about taking the subway, but when a yel
low cab slowed down to see if I needed a ride I jumped in, knowing that Carson Kitteridge never made idle threats.
12
KATRINA WAS STILL snoring so I settled in on the cot in my office. Between the buffers of the traffic from the street and a solid oak door I was able to drift off; not that sleep was any succor.
Freud says that dreams use the content of the past day or so to chum the depths of a timeless unconscious. That’s what my father taught me when I was eleven years old, wishing that I could go to a normal school. I wanted to learn about cowboys and steam engine trains, spacemen and naked women—all the things that I was sure other little kids were learning.
In the dream that night my father was lecturing about guilt.
He was wearing a white suit and a brown T-shirt. He was old, but because he was sitting behind an ivory-colored desk I couldn’t tell if he was infirm or not.
“A truly guilty man is like a maniac,” he was saying (maybe to me). “He doesn’t know his disposition because he believes in a set of rules that defy the beliefs of the worker.
“The worker deals in reality and rules. She cannot afford insanity or feel guilt because she is the law and the foundation upon which the law is based.
“You, Leonid,” he said, shifting his gaze in such a way that I was the only subject in the world. “You are both insane and guilty of terrible acts performed in the haze of your madness. You don’t know it. You don’t realize or even remember the crimes you have committed. You believe in the lies of the despot and have therefore sentenced yourself to the ultimate punishment.”
This pronouncement tore at my heart. I wanted to speak up, to deny the accusations leveled by my judge, my father. I tried to speak but my voice was gone. I tried to stand but found that I had no legs. My arms ended in stumps. And though I racked my brain I couldn’t recall the good things that I’d done.
“You are the living dead,” someone said.
I wanted to cry but I had neither breath nor eyes.
I wanted to wake up but instead I fell into a dark cavern of pitiless sleep.
IF A DEAD MAN could shake off that ultimate repose, he would have felt like I did with the sun lancing painfully into my eyes that morning. My body was too heavy to lift, the air so thick that breathing felt liquid, viscous. The thought that I was experiencing a heart attack went through my mind and I sat bolt upright, then laughed.
“A dead man scared to life,” I muttered, and smiled again.
KATRINA WAS on her back in the bed, fully clothed. Her eyes might have been open.
“You up?” I asked.
“ What happened?” She tried to rise on her left arm, but the elbow slipped out from under her and she fell back on the pillow.
I turned to her and held out my hands.
Pulling her to an upright position, I smiled at the similarities between us that morning.
“ Well?” she said.
“Dimitri moved to his new place and you passed out.”
“Did I make a fool of myself?” She covered her face with her hands.
“Mothers get a dispensation when it comes to seeing their firstborn go out into the world.”
She put down her hands and gazed right through me. At that moment she looked every one of her fifty-three years.
“That woman is no good for him,” she said.
“She’s a piece’a work,” I agreed, “that’s for sure. But D’s got to find it out on his own. He’s never had a woman before. And you know how men are.”
“Don’t you care?”
“ What do you want me to do, Katrina? Try and break his spirit? Make him into a child rather than letting him become a man?”
“She could get him killed. You know that.”
“He knows it too.”
She let go of my hands and turned away.
I waited a moment and then went to take my cold shower.
An hour later I was leaving the house. Katrina didn’t come out to say goodbye.
13
IT WAS SEVEN-THIRTY exactly when I got to my offices on the seventy-second floor of the Tesla Building. There was light coming from under the door so I pressed the buzzer instead of taking out my keys.
The lock clicked and I pushed my way into the reception area.
Mardi stood as I came in. She was wearing a pearl gray dress under a thin white sweater.
“Good morning, Mr. McGill. How are you today?”
“ What time did you get in?”
“Seven.”
“Any particular reason?”
“I like to get in early in case there were messages from the night before. You get a lot of late-night calls sometimes.”
“Did I last night?”
“Mr. Lewis has called you four times since five-fifteen. He says that it’s urgent you call him.”
I took out my cell phone and noticed that the battery was dead. Breland could have been calling all night. He knew the home number but was aware of my prohibition about business calls on that line.
The only thing in life that truly frightens me is the anticipation of talking to a lawyer. Even good news from my own lawyer brings up bad feelings and insipient dread.
“If he calls again tell him that you don’t expect me until ten,” I said.
“Okay. Anything else?”
“How’d the rest of the move go?”
“Dimitri was fine after we left your place. Twill took us all to pizza and over to this avant-garde theater in the East Village. They performed a Renaissance play that they modernized some.”
“Twill took you to the theater?”
“I think he’s dating one of the actresses.”
“Did Shelly go too?”
“Uh-uh. She said she was going to meet someone.”
There was more to that story, but I wouldn’t be getting it from Mardi.
“So,” I said, “ what do you think about D and Taty?”
She looked up above my head and considered for a moment.
“She loves him,” Mardi said at last. “She really does.”
“You sound surprised. I mean, they’ve been together for a while.”
“At first I think it was just a convenience for her. Don’t get me wrong, she was just using him, Tatyana has had a hard life and she doesn’t have a lot of trust in men. But in the last few months something has changed in her. You can tell by the way she looks at D.”
“Love,” I said.
“You make it sound like a curse.”
“You know about Tatyana, right?”
“She’s had a hard life,” Mardi argued mildly.
“She’s dealt one too.”
“She can’t help what she had to do.”
Mardi had once planned to murder her child-molester father. She knew how to cut the deck as well as my son’s Belarusian girlfriend.
“That’s what I’m sayin’, M,” I said. “The one you fall in love with brings a lifetime of baggage. In Tatyana’s case there’s all kinds of sharp edges tucked in with the nighties and toothpaste.”
“Dimitri loves her.”
“Yes, he does.”
“So what can you do?”
“Keep lots of bandages in the medicine cabinet and hope for the best.”
BACK IN MY OFFICE, ensconced behind my oversized ebony desk, I called information and asked for Harry Tangelo’s phone number. There was no listing.
I had phone books in my closet going back six years. Tangelo wasn’t in any of them either.
Lots of people opt not to be in the phone book. If I was Tangelo and tied to a case involving attempted murder and the largest heist in Wall Street history, I might have gotten an unlisted number too. I might have even called on a friend to get me a phone in his name to avoid reporters and cops.
Maybe Tangelo left New York completely.
Failing at normal avenues of research, I signed on to the specially built computer and attendant illegal systems that Bug Bateman had supplied me with.
Bateman was the best hack
er in the world, by his own estimation. I have never found reason to argue with that assessment. The young savant and I had met through his father. The beginning of our relationship had been rocky in that he resented his old man foisting off another relic on him for his services. But as the years went by and he met my off-site (and gorgeous) assistant Zephyra Ximenez, Bug had begun to rely on me to help whip his three hundred–plus pounds into a kind of shape that Z would find acceptable.
All I Did Was Shoot My Man Page 6