29
I WALKED HELEN back to her brownstone office on West Twelfth. At the door I reached out to shake her hand but she leaned in and kissed my cheek instead. The good doctor had never kissed me before. She was Katrina’s friend and therefore, in some way, always my enemy—or at least in league with my antagonist.
Katrina and I had been on opposing sides for two decades. There had been brief respites; usually when her machinations to find a better life failed and she realized that I was the only one left to help pick up the pieces. This was no trouble because I wasn’t faithful or jealous, and I loved all three children even if only one was mine.
Katrina and I didn’t hate each other. It’s just that our interactions failed to generate love and love was something we both needed.
And so that kiss, from Katrina’s friend and physician, spoke of a new era between my wife’s world and mine. This was not a truce I was looking for.
Not at all.
CROSSING Fourteenth Street, I glanced at my phone to see an e-mail from the new and improved Bug.
Seldon Arvinil was fifty-three, a professor of political science at City College, married, with three children, the youngest of which was nine and the eldest nineteen. His wife’s name was Doris Borman-Arvinil. They lived nine and a half blocks from my apartment.
I VEERED to the east on my stroll up to the Tesla Building because Claudia Burns’s address was on East Twenty-second. That address turned out to be a package-mailing business that also kept private mailboxes.
I smiled at the subterfuge designed just for a guy like me. And when that grin appeared I realized that the fever had departed, at least temporarily. I missed the subtle rewiring of my mental faculties. In some ways it felt as if I was smarter under the influence of the symptoms provided by the infection.
HEADED BACK toward the west, I tried to use my more mundane thinking processes to understand the problems I faced.
Claudia was connected to the mother of the woman who slept with the man who was subsequently shot by the woman Zella who I falsely framed for the heist.
Zella was the only client I ever had who I knew for a fact was innocent of the offense for which she was charged. This being true—how could her boyfriend and his sidetrack girlfriend be implicated in the crime?
There was no answer forthcoming.
I reached my office door on the seventy-second floor without a workable resolution to my problem. I was about to push the buzzer when she called to me.
“Leonid.”
Aura was coming down the hall to the right, from the service elevator no doubt. The man at the front desk, Warren Oh, had probably been asked to call her when I arrived. She took the service elevator and made it to my floor just in time.
At least my detecting skills were good for something.
“Hey, honey,” I said.
I don’t know if anyone else thought that Aura was beautiful. She was certainly good-looking on any scale. But she was unusual because of her Nordic and Togolese heritage. Her skin was the color of darkly burnished gold and her hair was so light brown as to be confused for blond. Her eyes . . . I still don’t have a color to define them; certainly not brown or blue or green—there was ocher in there and some gray, but that wasn’t all of it.
Aura is taller than I am and solidly built but not heavy.
She walked up to a foot away from me and stopped.
Looking in my eyes, she saw something. For a moment she wondered and then smiled.
“Have the women been after you?” she asked.
“Fallin’ from the sky.”
She laughed quietly and reached out to touch the knuckle of my left hand.
If I hadn’t known that I was still hopelessly in love with her, that touch reminded me. It went all the way down, past where the fever had been.
“I have to go,” she said.
I took in a deep breath and nodded.
When she turned away I resisted the urge to follow her.
I stood in the hallway a full three minutes after she had gone.
USUALLY MARDI WAS in competition with the Mona Lisa for subtlety in her humor, but not that day. She took one look at me and broke out into a smile, an actual grin.
“ What are you so happy about?” I asked.
“Lots of things.”
“Like what?”
“ Well, for one, I can tell by your eyes that the fever is gone.”
“By my eyes? Maybe you should take the back office and I could be out here takin’ the calls.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head with sudden gravitas. “No. I can read things but I can’t translate them.”
I have never in my life heard a more cogent or succinct understanding of true detective work.
“ What else makes you happy, Mardi?”
“You’ll see.”
Another surprise.
TWILL WAS SITTING at his desk, perusing a dark red hardback book that had no dust cover. He had his feet in an open drawer and his back to the aisle. I stopped behind him. He kept reading and I stood there, waiting.
The standoff didn’t last a whole minute.
He turned toward the aisle, kicking the bottom drawer shut to obtain enough momentum in the office chair.
He had on a wheat-colored silk T-shirt and black skinny jeans. His tennis shoes were dark green and he wore no socks.
“Pops,” he said with a grin.
I stifled my own smile and took the seat next to his desk.
“Son.”
He hadn’t been in the office long, but Twill and I had a rapport from before the days when he could talk. All I had to do was look at him and he perceived the drill.
“Me an Em—” he started.
“Em?”
“Mirabelle Mycroft . . . Me and her had a pizza with Kent and Luscious McKenzie last night. The Last Ray of Day, the place is called, over on Ninth Ave.
“I sat next to his girl and he was there next to his sister.”
“ What was he like?” I asked.
“That’s hard to tell, Pops. I mean, he wasn’t pushy or nuthin’, but he was hard-like. You know, he gave you this look that said Who the fuck do you think you are to be sittin’ here with me? But he smiled and shit, and asked about what I did.
“Luscious was fine. Mixed white and black, with green eyes and hair like Ms. Ullman. She the kinda girl have men jumpin’ outta trees an’ shit.”
“And Kent?”
“ We ate through two pizzas and he excused himself to have a cigarette. While he was gone and Em was trying to talk to Luscious—”
“They didn’t get along?” I asked.
“Mirabelle was just nervous. Her brother was too quiet and Luscious said anything come into her head. Anyway . . . Kent was outside and Em went to the bathroom. That’s when Luscious slipped her card into my hand. It was real slick-like. She was tellin’ me that her moms was from Texas and she was lookin’ me in the eye, and then she give me the card.
“So after we finished Kent took us to this rock-and-roll club down on Varick. The kinda music you like, Pops. Him and Luscious run into some’a their friends, and I say that I’m takin’ Em home.”
“And did you leave her alone like I said?”
“Pretty much.”
“ What does that mean?”
“She needed a hug ’cause she was so nervous. And it’s just a quick turn from there to a kiss. And you know you can’t tell how a girl’s gonna kiss you. But I told her that I was on the job and I had to go. She understood, for the most part.
“I left her going into her place and called Luscious.”
“Hold up a second, Junior. I told you that this was just a fact-gathering mission.”
“I know,” he said defensively. “I just called to see what she had in mind. I figured if she said she wanted to get together that I could ask how connected she was to Kent and then maybe get a thing or two about him. You know, I could do most’a that on the phone.
“But instead of a hookup she
told me that Kent wanted to have a meet with me.”
“ What?”
“That’s what I said, man.” Twill even gave a mild expression of surprise. “I mean, she was actin’ like one of his crew. He’d been checkin’ me out while I was checkin’ him. That meant his sister and father might’a got it wrong. If anybody’s doin’ somethin’, it’s Kent.”
“ What did the girl say . . . exactly?”
“She said that Kent liked what he saw and wondered if I wanted to get together today.”
“ What were you talking about to him?”
“Places I go, scams I heard of down around the Village—light shit.”
“You think he’s trying to protect his sister?”
“Maybe so. But that don’t mean he’s not in charge.”
“ What did you tell the girl?”
“That I’d meet Kent at the NYU student center this afternoon at two. And before you start talkin’ about gatherin’ and not doin’ . . . I don’t have to go. I could just shine it on and let you take over.”
“ What’s your read on this Kent, Twill?”
“It’s hard to say, Pops. I mean, havin’ the girl call me for him makes him at least a little bit in charge. But who knows? Maybe he’s her connection and this is just a favor. I won’t be able to tell until we talk—if we talk.”
Twill sat there in his reclining office chair calm as a pensioner on vacation in Bali. He had his hands laced behind his head, the expression on his face free from concern. He was telling me with his posture that the decision was mine and mine alone.
Like hell.
“Broad daylight?” I said.
“In a public place.”
“Don’t go anywhere with him until you check in with me.”
“You got it, Pops.”
30
THE FEVER I’d been experiencing had also been a kind of fuel. If I was weakened, I didn’t know it, or at least I didn’t care. If I was sick, it didn’t conflict with my state of mind or sense of well-being. But now that I was on the mend I could feel the exhaustion in my bones. Rising up out of my teenage son’s client’s chair, I felt twice my weight; like a fighter answering the penultimate bell in a grueling match.
The twenty feet from his desk to my door was like the last mile for a condemned man—I had no idea whether I’d make it under my own power.
I grabbed the doorknob as much to steady myself as to enter my sanctum. I turned the knob, but before I could pull it my cell phone sounded.
Teetering toward my desk, I answered. “Hey, Luke. How’s my client?”
“Fine, last time I saw her,” the pool shark intoned. “I think she likes Johnny. He’s good with ladies just outta prison, opens doors and shit like that. They eat it up.”
“Couldn’t have a better bodyguard than Johnny Nightly.”
“No, sir.”
“So do I need to do anything?”
“No.”
“Then why’d you call?”
“Sweet Lemon.”
The exhaustion increased with that simple two-word declaration. My mind began to wander but my mouth stayed on point.
I took a pill from Helen Bancroft’s little bottle and popped it into my mouth.
“ What did Lemon want?” I said, thinking randomly about the streets of New York and swallowing hard.
“You okay, LT?”
“Not even in a neighborhood where they know the meaning of the word.”
“Lemon says that if you’re interested you could meet him at the White Horse Tavern down in the West Village at twelve-fifteen. You know what he’s talkin’ about?”
“Yeah.”
“Lemon a problem?”
The question seemed deep and broad like a mile-wide river that separated whole cultures. Was Lemon a problem? Probably. Probably he was. But I made a living, my whole life, on problems. Time on this earth for me was navigating the Problem River, making it from side to side, connecting contradictory concepts, struggling against the wind and current, the sun, and creatures, both great and small, but all deadly.
“LT?” Luke said.
“No, Luke. Lemon’s just fine, just doin’ what he does and tryin’ not to.”
“You take care of yourself now, LT.”
I disconnected the call without answering. I knew Luke wouldn’t hold it against me.
I INTENDED to leave right away but instead I slumped in the chair, leaning backward. My eyes closed of their own accord and something akin to sleep ensued . . . I was thinking about Stumpy’s horrible corpse tied to that chair, besieged by maggots and roaches. Stumpy wasn’t a brave man. Under threat he’d fold with four of a kind in his hand. But the professional gambler was cunning and aware of the lay of the land with just a glance. Whoever it was that tortured him planned to kill him anyway, Stumpy knew that. He held out because whatever it was they wanted was also the only thing keeping him alive.
And there were only two possibilities; either the men who brutalized Stumpy were looking for the money or they knew where it was and they were looking to snip loose threads. There were only two such threads that I knew of: Gert Longman, dead six years now, and me.
This realization didn’t frighten me. I wasn’t worried about becoming a feast for insects in a laundry room somewhere. Understanding that I might be the subject of concern for murderers made me wonder why—not why they were after me but why, or how, I had gotten myself into such a situation.
Why would I ever plant false evidence on a poor woman already going to jail? A woman distraught over her faithless lover and the child in her womb? I tried to remember the state of mind that allowed me to take those actions. I knew the man that did these things intimately, had all of his memories. I could enumerate each and every sin he ever committed. But try as I might I could not bring up the feeling inside that allowed me to do the things I’d done.
Of course men were after me. Of course they wanted to destroy me. Of course they did.
31
I OPENED MY EYES, understanding that I had been in a kind of existential slumber, an intellectual doze. Rather than being in a true state of restful unconsciousness, I could only be described as a philosophical recluse. My spirit had challenged the pretexts and justifications, allowing the truth of my flawed existence to come to the surface.
I felt completely rested and free.
People wanted to kill me. They had valid reasons even if they were not aware of what those reasons were. I wanted to survive because I couldn’t make up for my sins if these shadowy men achieved their purpose.
ON THE STREET, walking south, I considered Zella. She was a textbook case of a woman who suffered a severe case of bad luck. From the man she chose to be her lover to the woman she thought of as a friend, she had chosen badly. Having a loaded gun where she could grab it was a bad idea, but the worst thing about Zella’s life was completely out of her control—me. I was bad luck, pure undiluted calamity; for Katrina, Aura, Zella Grisham, and one hundred and seven other poor souls who had been blindsided by my machinations. I was Typhoid Mary’s meaner older brother, the ire of Moses on the unsuspecting peasants of the Nile Valley. I planted false evidence, sicced the dogs on unsuspecting citizens simply because I didn’t like them and was being paid to trap someone, anyone, that would fit the bill. I was a minor, mischievous deity loosed upon naïve humanity for the entertainment of the gods.
Back in the hippie days we would have been seen as Karmic siblings, Zella and I, working out the misdeeds of previous lives. But in 2011 the metaphysical world, as well as the physical universe, was comprised almost completely by corporate plans, prayers, and plagues.
I was so distracted by these useless esoteric reflections that I came up on the White Horse Tavern unawares. It was after one and there were quite a few people at the tables and bar—regulars, tourists, and the odd drop-in.
At a table in the corner, in the front room by the window, a group of nine people were being addressed by a young man wearing black jeans, a dark green sports
jacket, and a T-shirt that read GINSBERG FOR RAJAH.
“. . . among many of the recognized and lauded lights of the New York poetry scene the allure of Dylan Thomas has faded,” the clean-shaven raven-haired young white man proclaimed. “They criticize everything from his depth of linguistic complexity to the obvious melodrama of his most well-known works. But what these poetry pontiffs fail to understand is that Thomas was a people’s poet, a man that connected song and meter and the concerns of every human being living their lives and suffering the consequences. His work, in its every repetition, fights for the survival and the lifeblood of a form that most so-called great poets have moved beyond the reach of the common man. . . .”
All I Did Was Shoot My Man Page 14