Dwyer said, “You think of anything else that might have happened if you had been there, please call.”
Then I did a stupid thing. I extended the conversation.
“This Ivanovich guy, the vic . . .”
“Yeah,” Dwyer said. “What about him?”
“Who was he, anyway?”
“A naturalized citizen originally from Chechnya,” Narvaez said. “Wherever the fuck that is. Owned a produce mart on Brighton Beach Avenue and owned the row house on West Twenty-first. He has a jacket. Some minor Russian mob–related stuff. Anything else?”
I shook my head and they were gone, but I got a feeling their absence would be temporary.
18
(MONDAY NIGHT)
Maggie’s condo, I guess it was really a co-op—not that I understood or cared about the differences—was in a towering apartment complex in Nassau County near the Queens border. The buildings were about as appropriate to the context of their surroundings as the Chrysler Building in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. The buildings themselves were fairly ugly, but the units were expensive. And in New York, expensive counted. It counted for a lot. In New York, expense was a drug, an aphrodisiac. In some places the important questions were: How big? How are the schools? How close to the water? How close to shopping? Here the truly meaningful question was: How much?
The security guard at the gate perked up when he recognized me.
“Where’s the courtesy van tonight?” he said, smirking. “The janitor lend you his car or something?”
You had to love this place. Even the asshole square badge making minimum wage had an attitude like he was somehow better than the peons beyond the gates. I wasn’t in the mood, not tonight. Not after the day I’d had.
“Yeah, that’s right.” I gave him my best fish-eyed stare. “And by the way, go fuck yourself.”
He wasn’t smirking anymore as I drove past.
I could tell the second she let me into her apartment that there was something going on with Maggie. What, exactly, was hard to know. Naturally blond, full-breasted, and curvy, with a stunning face, she had a great mid-twentieth-century kind of look. She told me that was what had gotten her noticed during her early acting career.
“At auditions, the rest of the girls had figures like this,” she said, holding up her index finger. “Many of them were prettier than me, but I didn’t look like they did. I had curves and breasts and I could even act a little. I was Scarlett Johansson before Scarlett Johansson, only ten years too soon and three inches too tall.”
I loved that she could laugh at herself and look at herself without false modesty, but she wasn’t laughing tonight. I got the dumb idea in my head that she had somehow found out about what had gone on between Annie and me. That was just my own craziness, though. And it wasn’t like I was feeling any intense guilt or regret over it. No matter who was in my life, there would always be Annie in it, too, in one form or another. Even if I was fooling myself and was feeling guilty below the surface, I hadn’t been inside her door long enough to give myself away. No, this was not in my head.
Maggie was fully made up and dressed about as suggestively as she could be without being undressed. She was wearing a tight, sheer black top with no bra underneath. She had on a short black leather skirt, sheer black stockings with a thick seam running along the back of her legs, and shiny black stilettos. This was similar to how she was dressed the night we met, but she was working then, her outfit a means to tip money. There was a nude dancer at the club that night, a beautiful black woman covered in a light sheen of sweat, robotically going through her routine. I remembered thinking that Magdalena seemed so much more naked than the black chick, so much more exposed, because Maggie could not hide her heart behind a performance. Tonight was the first time since that night last December that she was emitting that vibe.
She kissed me hard on the mouth and I kissed her back harder, but she pulled out of my grasp.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen.
When she reappeared she did so with a bottle of Moët and two flutes. She handed me the bottle and leaned in close to me, her breath warm on my neck, her raw herbal perfume filling up the room, her breasts pressing against me.
“Make it pop, Gus,” she whispered in my ear, then licked my neck. “I want to hear it. Make it pop.”
I did as she asked, the cork bouncing off the ceiling and a wall. Some of the wine foamed out the top. But if Maggie was upset about it getting on the rug, she wasn’t letting on. I filled our glasses. We clinked. We drank.
“You got the part! That’s fantastic.”
“I did, but I don’t want to talk about that now,” she said, taking my hand, pulling me toward the bedroom. “I don’t want to talk at all.”
Inside the bedroom, she poured us more champagne. We drank. She nudged me gently onto the edge of the bed. She placed the bottle between my feet, her empty glass on the dresser. She began to sway and dance to music that was in her head. As she danced, she slipped out of her skirt, revealing a silky black thong and lacy garter. The dance grew more fevered. Me, too, frankly. And bit by bit the clothing came off her body but for her sheer top.
Maggie leaned over and undressed me, kissing me, rubbing me as she went. When I was nude, she reached for the bottle, took a swallow, and knelt down in front of me. Before taking me in her mouth, she let the still-cool champagne leak out of her mouth and onto me. Her mouth was warm and cold at the same time and my entire body tensed. A minute later, satisfied that I was hard enough, she reached for the bottle again, took another mouthful, and straddled me. She sat still with me inside her, leaned her head forward, and placed her lips over mine, the champagne pouring into my mouth from hers. That was about the last fully conscious act between us for the next ninety minutes.
As we lay there in the now black room, the air smelling of slightly sour champagne, sweat, musk, and crushed green herbs, my head throbbed, but in a good way. My whole body pulsed with the slowing beat of my heart. The curves of Maggie’s body found comfortable niches in mine.
“You’re leaving,” I said, breaking the quiet. “That’s what this was all about.”
“Not all of it.” Maggie shimmied up my body, resting her head under my chin. “Most of it was about loving you.”
“How long?”
“Three months, at least. It’s a big part, Gus. The play’s about Marilyn Monroe waiting to be judged before God. I play the older Marilyn, the one who would have moved forward had she not killed herself. Another actress plays younger Marilyn, Norma Jean. And another one plays Marilyn at the gates. That’s what the play’s called, Marilyn at the Gates.”
“So,” I said, “you’re kinda like the ghost of Christmas that never was.”
“I never thought of it like that.” She kissed me hard again and squeezed me tight. “That’s brilliant. I can use that.”
“When do you leave?”
“Next week. Friday, I think.”
“Where to?”
“The rehearsals will be in Detroit.”
“Detroit?”
“The producers got all these concessions from the city. They’re trying to revitalize theater there. We’ll do a few weeks in Detroit after rehearsals, then we’re doing a couple of weeks in smaller cities before opening in L.A.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. What could I say? I had been Maggie’s biggest backer, pushing her to go to classes and to auditions, but I naively assumed any part she would get would be in New York. I guess I’d never considered the possibility she would take a part that would take her away from me. The universe liked reminding me that all things were fleeting. I was sick inside.
“Say something,” she said. “Anything.”
“Break a leg.”
She laughed too loudly. Then said, “With some feeling, Gus.”
/> “You don’t want to know what I’m feeling right now,” I heard myself say, easing out from under her. I sat up on the side of the bed, my back to her. “You really don’t.”
She put her arms around me, resting her head on my shoulder, and whispered, “I won’t take it, Gus. I’ll stay here and we’ll get married.”
“Don’t be stupid, Maggie. You’ll be on that plane next Friday if I have to drive you to the airport myself. The ghost of Marilyn awaits.”
The quiet in the room turned angry and cold. I stood up and went into the bathroom before I blurted something out that we’d both regret. It took everything I had in me not to scream at her that I’d just fucked my ex-wife. There would be no taking that back and no coming back from it. I stayed under the shower head for what seemed a very long time. Long enough that the urge to strike out at Maggie had passed.
When I finally came back into the bedroom, Maggie was gone. I found her in the living room, smoking, drinking a scotch, her cheeks streaked black with mascara tears. Her eyes got big when she turned to look at me.
“Those bruises, Christ! Where did you get those bruises?”
I looked at my wrist, looked down at my ribs and abdomen. We’d both been too caught up in things to notice them before.
“I had to get rough with a guy at the Paragon today,” I said, leaving it at that.
She didn’t pursue it. “What do you want from me, Gus? You’ve been the one supporting me, telling me to keep going when I got laughed out of auditions, and now . . . I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Yes, you do, Maggie. You know exactly what to do. You’ll take the part and follow the dream. You won’t be any good to me or to yourself if you are always looking back at what might’ve been.”
“But you’re so angry with me.”
I said, “You’d think loss would prepare you for more loss, but it doesn’t. I’m gonna go.”
While I was in the bedroom getting dressed, Maggie came in.
“Don’t go, Gus. Stay with me tonight.”
I shook my head.
She said, “How about we do half of my plan?”
“How’s that?” I tilted my head at her like a confused puppy.
“I’ll go out with the show, but let’s get married first.”
“No. I don’t want that. I don’t need that from you, some gesture of your faithfulness. We’re adults, Maggie. You’ll be on the road. I don’t want you to be lonely. I don’t need you to prove anything to me. I’m just not ready to lose somebody else. It’s my issue, not yours.”
“But I’ve fallen in love with you, Gus Murphy.”
I kissed her on the forehead. “That was your first mistake. I’ve gotta go.”
“Will I see you before Friday?”
“Of course. Maybe I’ll drive you to the airport. It’s my chosen profession, you know. Besides, you haven’t seen my new car.”
“You know you can live here while I’m gone. I would like that. You’ve got the key. You could get out of the hotel and live a more normal life.”
“You know, Maggie, just before we met, I was sort of seeing someone. At one point in my life, she would have been everything I would have ever wanted. She was very pretty, had a stable job helping special-needs kids. Owned a nice little house and she could really cook. We even slept together once and it was pretty good in an awkward sort of way. We could have had the kind of life I once had with Annie, but it was too late. I’d changed. If I wanted a normal life, I wouldn’t date a beautiful actress. I once had a normal life. That was taken from me. I won’t let that happen again.” I kissed her softly on the lips. “I’m very proud of you, Maggie. I gotta go.”
When I left the parking lot, I made sure to use the side gate. I wasn’t in the mood to see that same smug security guard on the way out. A snide remark or smirk and I might have shot him in the kneecap.
On the way back to the Paragon, I called Slava. He picked up this time. I let him know that the cops had tracked me down. That got his attention. I could tell by the fact that his usual cheery tone went straight out of his voice.
“Are you thinking they have Slava’s plate number?”
“I don’t think so. You and Mikel were just two guys talking to Goran on his stoop. Even if the neighbors had noticed you guys, they wouldn’t have taken any particular interest. But once the bullets started flying, people paid attention. The cops told me this Goran guy was from Chechnya,” I said, just to see how Slava would react or if he would react at all.
“From Grozny, is the capital, but he was—how you are saying this—ethnic Russian, not like the Chechens.”
“You mean he wasn’t a Muslim.”
That surprised Slava, not a man easily surprised. “You are knowing about Chechnya?”
I didn’t answer directly. “Can’t a Muslim be Russian?”
“The Muslims, the Chechens, they hate Russia. They are not wanting to be Russians.”
“You know a lot about Russia and Chechnya for a Pole.”
He turned it around on me. “And you, Gus . . . I am thinking Americans are not knowing anything of these places.”
“I used to read the papers and watch the news. I know about the terrorism, about the kids and teachers murdered at the school and the theater in Moscow.”
That was met was a tense silence. Then, “Do police suspect you of anything?”
“Well, they know I’m full of shit, but I don’t think they believe I was involved in Goran’s killing. I think they believe I just didn’t want to get involved because of all the stuff that happened last year. They believed that.”
“Thank you, Gus. What is wrong with you? Slava is hearing something bad in your voice.”
“Bad! You mean besides getting whacked with a metal baton, being choked briefly into unconsciousness, and getting questioned by the cops?” Only at the end did I realize I was screaming at him. “You think I have reason to feel bad?”
Slava didn’t bother apologizing and just hung up. He was savvy that way. But of course, he was right. He had heard something in my voice that had very little to do with the things I listed and everything to do with Maggie leaving.
19
(TUESDAY MORNING)
I met Charlie Prince at Maureen’s Kitchen on Terry Road in Smithtown. When I was younger, Maureen’s was little more than a shack on the side of the road, serving the best breakfasts and lunch sandwiches in town. The restaurant had since moved across the street from its original locale into a converted house and it was no longer Smithtown’s best-kept secret. Sometimes the wait for a table was so long you’d think the whole county got hungry for Oreo–peanut butter pancakes at the same time. You couldn’t miss Maureen’s. There was a full-size black-and-white cow sculpture out front and a giant cow head sticking out the side of its mansard roof.
Charlie Prince was taking a selfie with the cow sculpture when I walked up to him.
“My wife’ll love this,” he said.
I knew Charlie by name and rep, knew what he looked like from photos. Although our careers on the SCPD overlapped, we’d never crossed paths. He was about ten years my junior and was in the Third Precinct when I was in the Second. We had friends in common, friends like Al Roussis. Charlie Prince was a stout African-American man with close-cropped hair and a happy demeanor. And about that happy demeanor and broad white smile, I didn’t let it fool me. Charlie’s rep was that he was a tough bastard, stubborn, and shrewd. Even the most racist guys on the job admitted, without much prompting, that Charlie was a good cop. According to Al, he was a better detective.
“Charlie,” I said, offering my right hand.
He took it. “Gus. Nice to meet you. I heard a lot about you from Al.”
“Only the good parts are true.”
“There were only good parts.”
“Then either you or Al is full of sh
it.”
We both laughed at that.
“C’mon, Gus, there’s no wait. Let’s get us a table.”
I was happy to be meeting with Charlie. Less happy about it being for breakfast. I was scheduled to work my regular shift for the next two nights, from six p.m. to six a.m. And getting up before noon on days I drove the van made me cranky. Given the previous day’s events, I suppose I would have been in a shitty mood no matter what.
When Al called at eight that morning to tell me he’d set up the meeting, I was already aching—inside and out. I was mourning Maggie, though there was more than a week before she was to leave. In a way, she was already gone. I wasn’t at all sure I wouldn’t have been better off if she had just taken off and left me a note. The goodbye sex was otherworldly, but it made the hurt that much worse. It wasn’t her fault and there was no way she could have known that her leaving would bring the ugliness and pain back to me. When I got home to my room at the Paragon last night, I’d spent an hour staring at John Jr.’s photo and having intimate relations with the minibar. I didn’t remember passing out.
I wasn’t tiptop physically. My head was throbbing. My wrist was swollen and hurt like a son of a bitch. My gut and ribs were sore. After I got off the phone with Al, I swallowed a fistful of aspirins. My next thoughts were of the guy who’d attacked me in Mikel’s room. At that moment, I would have given a lot to have had a chance to go another round with him. I wanted to make him pay. I wanted to make him pay for a lot of things, for the wounds he’d inflicted and the ones he had not. I wanted someone to pay other than me.
“Mmmm, smells great in here,” Charlie said as we sat down at a two-top table with a cow-print tablecloth. “I’m hungry, man.”
“The smell of frying bacon’ll get you every time.”
A cute redheaded waitress came by, poured coffees, gave us the specials, and left. I guzzled my coffee, flagged down a guy carrying coffeepots, and begged a refill. Guzzled that, too.
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