Fifth Avenue

by Christopher Smith

  “Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll treat you to a po-boy.”

  As they pulled away from the curb, the van that was parked at the street corner followed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The bar at Mario’s was three-deep in people. Some were watching the Yankees game on the television above the bar. Others were talking excitedly among themselves. It wasn’t a large restaurant--it seated only seventy--but the atmosphere was warm, the food was good and the staff was trained to the point of remembering names.

  Nestled on Third Avenue, its clientele ranged from the average blue-collar worker to the heads of corporations. When Leana and Mario entered the restaurant, there was a brief lull in the conversation as all turned and said hello to Mario, their faces bright with smiles and respect.

  Leana was aware of being watched as they followed a heavyset, dark-haired woman to a back table, which was covered with a plain white tablecloth, simple dishes and flatware. This was clearly Mario’s table, Leana thought. It was understated, but positioned so it overlooked the entire restaurant.

  Although she felt foolish for keeping them on, she didn’t remove her sunglasses.

  Mario ordered a bottle of wine. “We’ll order lunch later,” he said to his Aunt Rosa, winking at her as she left. He noticed Leana looking around the restaurant and asked if she approved.

  “It’s beautiful,” Leana said. “And obviously a success. When did you buy it? You didn’t have it when we were together, did you?”

  “I bought it last Christmas,” he said. “The family needed a place where they could eat in peace, so I opened Mario’s. This way, there are no problems.”

  She decided not to ask what he meant by that. She was glad to see Rosa bringing the wine and happier still when she and Mario fell into conversation. For the next thirty minutes, they talked and drank, recalling things they had forgotten about their affair. It lasted only six months, but it had been powerful.

  When Rosa returned, Mario ordered for them. When she left, he asked Leana if the police learned who rigged the spotlights.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said.

  “You sound as if you couldn’t care less.”

  “That’s because I couldn’t care less.”

  “Still having problems at home, huh?”

  “Is that even a question?”

  She lifted her glass of wine and sipped. There was a time when she told Mario things about her family that she only shared with Harold. They were that close. Mario’s understanding, his support and the fact that he didn’t judge those feelings was one of the reasons she fell in love with him.

  “I moved out of the house last night. I’ve decided to give it a shot on my own.”

  Mario looked surprised. “Where’s your apartment?”

  “I’m staying with friends.”

  “You moved out of your house without having a place of your own to move into?” His leaned back in his chair. “All right,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on and how it’s connected to the cut on your lip, the bruises on your face--and those you’re trying to hide around your eyes? You called me for a reason. I want to know what it is and how I can help.”

  Leana removed her glasses and told him everything. She told him what Eric Parker did to her. And she told him about her father’s reaction and ultimatum. When she was finished, Mario’s anger mirrored her own.

  “I’ve thought a lot about this,” she said. “I’ve thought about the threat Eric made me and I’ve thought about the consequences. But I can’t let him get away with what he did to me--contract or no contract. I’m sure my father will fire him, but that isn't enough. Eric will just get a job somewhere else and that will be that.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said.

  “I want him to hurt as much as he hurt me.”

  “And he should.”

  “I can’t do it alone,” she said. “Obviously. Just look at me. Will you help?”

  “You had my help the moment he did this to you.”

  She put her hand on his. “I’ve got Harold and now I have you. There have been times, over the years, that I’ve really missed you and regretted ending what we had.”

  “We can always start over, you know?”

  She looked at him with sadness. “I know,” she said. “But you’re still married, Mario, and I told you once that I’d never come second in your life again. Right now I need you to be my friend. Can you do that for me?”

  He put his thumb over the back of her hand. “I can do that,” he said.

  * * *

  “Will you be needing your car, Mr. Baines?”

  Harold descended the mahogany staircase and smiled at the tall, gray-haired man standing in the entryway of his townhouse.

  “Not necessary, Ted. I’m going for a walk.”

  He stepped into his office, which was at the foot of the stairs and retrieved the leather briefcase he placed there earlier. He locked the door behind him when he left.

  “When Helen gets back from her lunch date, would you tell her that I won’t be home for dinner? After my walk, I have a business dinner. I’ll be late.”

  “Of course, Mr. Baines.”

  When he left his apartment, Harold turned onto 81st Street. A limousine was waiting for him at the street corner. He stepped inside and told the driver to hurry.

  Traffic lurched, stopped and lurched all the way to the Lower East Side. The driver shot through two red lights and came close to busting a third. Harold smoothed his hands over the briefcase and closed his eyes. He was only dimly aware of the horns blaring around them. The driver slowed to a stop in front of a building near Houston.

  Harold looked out a window and watched a scene that was so far removed from his life on Fifth Avenue, it disquieted him.

  People were scoring crack, dealing crack, doing crack--among a host of other drugs. He saw an elderly woman slump against the side of a deserted bus and tie a rubber tube to her upper arm. He looked away before she could inject the heroin and glanced at the building that was to his right. He checked the address to make sure this was the correct place, saw that it was and told the driver to return in three hours.

  “Wait for me if I’m not here,” he said to the man, and stepped out of the car just in time to see a van and two Bentleys slowing to a stop in front of him. Harold thought the cars looked ridiculous here. It wasn’t often that this part of town saw automobiles worth $500,000.

  But that was part of the fun.

  He entered the building. Inside, leaning against a yellowing wall, was a tall, dark-haired man dressed in tight black leather pants and nothing else. He was handsome and built, his face and chest clean-shaven, his nipples pierced.

  The man lit a joint, inhaled deeply, held the smoke and exhaled it in Harold’s face. Nothing was going to hurry him.

  He cocked his head towards the briefcase in Harold’s hand. “That your membership card?”

  Harold nodded.

  “Then hand it over.”

  Harold did as he was told and parted with ten thousand dollars.

  He walked up a flight of stairs. The lights were dim and trippy dance music pounded down at him from the floor above. Faintly, he could hear someone screaming, then laughing, then crying. A woman...?

  He climbed the stairs faster, the familiar rush of excitement beginning to flood his senses. The second floor was an empty shell. The windows were closed and blackened with spray paint. The track lights were soft spots of red that strobed in time with the music. Metal cages filled with naked, writhing bodies acted as walls. The air was a heady mixture of alcohol and sweat.

  Harold joined a line of men and women removing their clothes and handing them over to the clothes check. He recognized a famous actor, the CEO of a powerful conglomerate, a U.S. Senator, two priests. He began unbuttoning his shirt.

  The place was crowded. He moved naked through the room, nodding at men with secrets, with pasts--men like himself.

  In one of the steel cag
es, a man was wrapped in plastic from head to foot. Soon his master would start the bandaging. Beyond the steel cage was a wading pool. In it lay a woman on her back who was staring up at the circle of ten men masturbating above her. In shadowy corners, solitary men high on whatever drug was circulating preened, posed and prowled. And finally, in the last steel cage, was Harold’s reason for being there.

  The man standing beside the black leather sling was naked save for the executioner’s hood he wore. He was tall and grossly overweight, his back and chest covered with coarse dark hair. A single latex glove was stretched up his right arm. It glistened with lubricant.

  Harold nodded at the man as he approached. As he settled himself into the sling, thoughts of Helen, George and Leana shot through his mind. He thought of his three kids, of his life at Redman International. And then he winced as the man began pressing inside of him.

  He began to perspire. His eyes watered. He felt a sudden flash of guilt and was about to stop this when the man held a coke inhaler to his nostril.

  Harold met the man’s gaze and breathed in deeply. There was a medicinal rush and he nearly gagged. He hadn’t snorted cocaine since the night of the party--just moments before he danced with Leana. The fact that she had noticed a change in him and suspected something was still too difficult and terrifying for him to believe. If anyone learned of his other life, Harold wasn’t sure what he would do.

  He took another hit off the inhaler. And another. He felt no pain now, only a sweet, gray, misty bliss. This wasn’t just coke. It was laced with something else. Harold welcomed it. He started to float.

  He focused on the man standing above him and saw only his dark eyes framed by the black hood. Harold thought they were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. He tried lifting a hand to remove the hood, but in spite of the floating sensation, his arm was oddly heavy and he could lift it only a few inches from the sling.

  And so he just closed his eyes. He was sailing now, his body on a higher plain. He had waited four weeks for this, four long weeks, and he was pleased to be here, happy to have spent the money. It was all worth it.

  * * *

  “How’d you like me to ram my cock up your ass?”

  Standing at the rear of the dimly lit room, his back to one of the metal cages, Vincent Spocatti turned away from Harold Baines only long enough to look at the woman standing beside him. She was tall, fit and attractive. In this light, her hair was red and it curled around the tips of her naked breasts.

  “It’ll make you scream.”

  He was aware of the woman’s hand moving between her legs. Spocatti looked down and saw the enormous dildo jutting from the harness around her waist. It was black and slick with lubricant and God knows what else. Her hand stroked it in time with the music.

  “You’ve got rhythm,” he said.

  “I’ve got more than that.”

  “Talent?”

  “I’ve been told that.”

  “Too bad I need to pass,” he said, running a finger along his lower lip. “I like a brown mouth.”

  “No worries,” she said. “I’m not into that, anyway."

  Though she was trying for the gutter, the tone of her voice carried with it a whiff of privilege and sophistication. He wondered who she was when she wasn’t just the pretty woman with the fake cock. He nodded toward Harold, who was writhing, peaking. “I think my friend over there would love to have a piece of you.”

  The woman squinted through the flickering red light. When she saw Harold, recognition flashed on her face and her hand stopped caressing the rubber penis. She stared at Harold.

  “Your friend is an asshole,” she said. “Two months ago, he pissed in my mouth after I told him not to.”

  Spocatti felt a spark. “Just the piss?”

  “That’s enough. It crosses a line. It’s not for me.”

  “We all have our limits. How long ago was this?”

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t know. Two months ago?”

  “How often does he come here?”

  “Here?” She looked at him quizzically. “This is our first time here.” She tilted her head. “Are you new to this?”

  Spocatti admitted he was.

  “We move around a lot,” she said. “Have they told you that?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “The other group I belong to has one specific place they meet.” He let a beat of silence pass. “How often have you seen him in places like this?”

  “You make our club sound like a disease.”

  “That’s not what I meant--”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “No,” Spocatti said. “I’m definitely not a cop.”

  “You’d have to tell me if you were.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “Then why all the questions? What is this? A fucking inquisition?”

  He was about to speak when she held up a hand. “Never mind,” she said. “I don’t want to know.” She removed the dildo from her vagina and pointed it at Harold Baines. “I’ve been a member of this club for years--and so has he.”

  She turned to leave. “If you don’t mind, I’m going find somebody who came here to fuck, not talk.”

  As she walked away, Spocatti glanced with bemusement around the room, seeing things he’d only heard about, only read about, but had never actually seen. The thought that these people, these members of New York society, had paid actual money to come here was laughable to him.

  To gain entrance, all Vincent had to do was show the doorman his gun.

  He returned his attention to Harold Baines. The man was moaning now, his head lolling from side to side. Spocatti checked his watch and wondered how much longer Baines would be. He hoped not too much longer. Vincent wanted to tell Louis Ryan everything by nightfall.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The young man who worked for Redman Place glanced down at the three cardboard boxes stacked in the entryway of Celina’s apartment. He picked up two, calculated their weight to be around sixty pounds apiece, looked at the rest of the boxes and then looked back at her. “He came back from Redman International an hour ago. I just finished helping him carry a bunch of boxes up to his apartment?”

  Curiosity flickered in Celina’s eyes. What would Eric be doing at Redman International on a Sunday? “How many boxes?”

  “Eight?”

  “Do you know what was in them?”

  The young man shrugged. “Office supplies?”

  “Office supplies?”

  “Maybe not. I don’t know. I only caught a glimpse.” He looked at his watch. “Look, Miss Redman, if I’m going to deliver these boxes to him, I should probably get going. My break’s over in another ten minutes.”

  Celina turned to the table beside her and reached for her purse. She removed a $50 bill, glanced at him, and then removed another. “Don’t worry about being late,” she said. “You work in receiving here, don’t you? I’ll phone Jake and tell him to give you the rest of the day off--with pay.” She handed him the money. “And this is for you. Thanks for the information, Dan. I appreciate it.”

  “My pleasure.” And he was gone with the first of Eric’s belongings.

  She moved through her apartment. Every room, every corridor, was quiet and mysterious and changed. Her home seemed foreign to her now. The rooms were weirdly bare. Although she had never paid much attention to them before, Celina now was acutely aware that the photographs of Eric and her no longer rested on side tables or hung on walls. Now they were packed away in boxes.

  She stepped into her bedroom. The bed, the antique chairs and tables Eric bought for her while abroad on business all remained, as did the shelves of hardcover books they once read in bed. The books and the chairs and the tables would stay, she decided. Celina needed some tangible proof that what she and Eric had was real.

  As she turned to leave, she caught a glimpse of herself in the bedroom’s full-length mirror. She was an unfamiliar woman who no longer looked happy, but years wiser than she had only days ago
.

  She closed the door behind her when she left the room. It was getting late. She wondered if her father had finished shooting with Frostman. When she left him that morning, she returned to Manhattan to pack the rest of Eric’s clothes. Although the job didn't take long, it had seemed to her like a lifetime.

  She wondered if George was angry with her for not returning. After the way he treated her, she decided, for the first time in her life, that she didn’t really care. The phone rang just as Dan was leaving with the final box. Celina answered it in the living room.

  “Where have you been?” George asked. “We missed you this afternoon.”

  It was not anger she heard in his voice, but something else. Regret...? “I’ve been here,” Celina said. “Cleaning.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I decided to get rid of Eric’s things.”

  A silence passed. Celina dropped into a chair covered in glazed cream chintz and said, “What’s up, Dad? Why are you calling?”

  “Two reasons. First, I wanted to apologize for what happened earlier. I never should have reacted the way I did and I’m sorry. Forgive me?”

  Sometimes her father sounded so formal it amused her. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said, wanting to put it behind her. “Let’s just forget about it, okay?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “How’d your meeting go with Ted?”

  “It went fine," George said. "But we’ll discuss that later. I’m calling for another reason.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t think we should discuss it over the phone.”