THE UP AND COMER

by Howard Roughan

  "That's very quick thinking," said Benoit. "However, that the call itself may have lasted only a minute doesn't rule out Mr. Randall's having talked to Tyler Mills or gotten a message from him."

  "No, but what it does do is allow for the possibility that Mr. Mills called and got my client's voice mail, listened to the outgoing message, and hung up before leaving one. Thus giving substantial credibility to Mr. Randall's claim that he never got any message."

  Point taken, apparently, as Benoit said, next, "Let's move on, shall we? You told us that you were at your office that evening, Mr. Randall, is that right?"

  "Yes, I was working late."

  "Could any of your co-workers substantiate that?"

  "Offhand I can't remember."

  "As for the pictures, do you have any idea what they're for, or why Tyler Mills might have had them in his possession?"

  "Honestly, I don't," I said.

  Benoit stood up and walked a few steps away from the table. He had his back to me. "Do you think your wife might know?" he asked into the air.

  With that, Jack's patience ran out. "That's it, guys, this little Q and A session is over. I don't know what the story is with those pictures, but here's what I do know for damn sure. If you expose them outside of this room and it costs this young man his marriage, you better pray a hell of a lot more turns up in your case against him. A hell of a lot more. Because his case against you will be the likes of which this city hasn't seen for quite some time. And if you think I won't fucking make that happen, try me. Because when you do, it won't be my ass and pension on the line, I assure you."

  At the very least I expected Hicks to pull some Johnny Bravado routine in return. He didn't. As for Benoit, he watched as Jack picked up his recorder and motioned for me to get up.

  "This isn't over," said Benoit.

  "It sure looks over to me," said Jack.

  The two of us walked out of the room without so much as a nod good-bye. When we got onto the elevator we were alone.

  The doors closed.

  "So they can't fall in," said Jack, staring ahead.

  I looked at him. "What?" I asked.

  "Why manhole covers are round… it's so they can't fall in."

  THIRTY

  The phone call to Jack came three days later. It was from a "friend" of his who was familiar with the comings and goings at the precinct that Detectives Hicks and Benoit worked out of. Don't ask how, said Jack to me in my office while lighting up a cigar, just listen.

  "Yesterday morning," he began, "a drifter type was arrested for a robbery committed in your friend Tyler's building two weeks before his death. It would seem the hapless fellow had tried to sell some of his booty to a local pawnshop, not realizing that thanks to our good mayor's vigorous crackdown on passing hot property, it was akin to turning himself in." Jack pushed a slender puff of smoke out the side of his mouth. "I must say, that's the problem with life on the lam. It's hard to stay current on every city's new crime initiatives.

  "Now here's where it gets interesting. When the detectives ran a check on the drifter, it turned out that he was wanted in Miami for killing a man after, of all things, breaking in to his apartment. With the obvious similarities, it wasn't long before the drifter was asked where he was the night Tyler died. Lo and behold, he had no plausible alibi."

  I started to smile. Jack stopped me.

  "Wait, it gets better," he said. "Are you ready for this?"

  Like a kid at Christmas. "What?"

  Jack took the cigar out of his mouth. "The guy's dead."

  I looked at him. "You're kidding me."

  "No, he hung himself last night in his holding cell."

  Again with that irony thing. He hung himself.

  "Sounds too good to be true," I said, amazed.

  "That they had their man? You're probably right," said Jack. "Take the evidence they have, or rather, don't have, and he no more did it than you did. Thing is, though, with him dead and buried, no charge against you will ever stick."

  "How do you figure?"

  "Easy. We, of course, would never claim to have heard anything about what I just told you. Instead, if need be, we would trace the crime history of Tyler's building and claim to stumble upon this drifter. The extenuating circumstances of his file alone would amount to oodles of reasonable doubt. The dumbest D.A. in the world could see that, especially when he gets wind that the drifter had been questioned about Tyler's murder before he killed himself. Easy. See what I mean?"

  I did.

  Said Jack, "It all adds up to one thing."

  "What's that?"

  Jack reached over, picked up my phone receiver, and placed it down on my desk. I stared at him funny, wondering what he was up to.

  With a sly grin he explained, "You're off the hook."

  There were no questions from him about the pictures or the prospect of my having an affair. No wondering if there was any connection to be made from my being Tyler's last phone call. Jack simply turned and walked out of my office without saying another word.

  The truth was irrelevant. It was only what people believed that ultimately mattered.

  That night, I removed the bandages from my hand and chest. The wounds had finally healed.

  THIRTY-ONE

  "Excuse me, you're standing on my penis," Dwight said to the girl in the tight T-shirt with spectacular Venetian. She didn't find it amusing. She gave him the finger and walked away.

  I had ordered the stretch, specifying black and making sure there would be none of that cheesy purple neon running along the interior. One by one, I had the driver pick up Menzi, Connor, and Dwight at their offices. The bar was stocked with Cragganmore twelve-year, Herradura, Evan Williams Single Barrel, Kettle One, and a bottle of Krug Brut '85. For music? Sinatra, what else? The whole shebang was my treat to the boys, for reasons that only I would ever know, and as their self-appointed doyen for the evening, I was definitely going to do it my way.

  "Gentlemen, the night is young and so are we," I told them.

  Our first stop was the Shark Bar on the Upper West Side, and after Dwight returned to the huddle after his failed penis pickup line, Menzi had a story to tell. In his larger-than-life efforts to scope the wild Betty, his latest travels had resulted in an interesting encounter. Whereas mere mortal men sporting plane tickets aimed for such achievement as the Mile-High Club, Menzi had raised the bar considerably. He called it the Admirals Club, so named for the "members only" lounge that American Airlines offered at various airports around the world.

  Menzi described how he had recently been in the Admirals Club at JFK one night killing an hour delay before a flight to London. Monique, as he said her name to be, was there waiting for her return trip home to Toulouse. Between her broken English and Menzi's two years of high school French, he managed to strike up a conversation and then literally charm the pants off Monique in a sectioned-off computer area that was under construction.

  Admittedly, the four rounds of tequila shots after the initial martini he bought for her had significantly greased the wheels, but all in all, it was a pretty impressive story. Had it been most any other guy telling it — say, Dwight, for instance — I would've been prone to call bullshit. Not with Menzi, though. Having seen his prowess with women firsthand, I was relatively certain of the tale's validity. Especially given the very un-man as hero ending. Turns out that when Menzi asked to exchange phone numbers with Monique as she prepared to leave, she popped up the handle to her luggage on wheels and simply noted, "Had I intended to keep in touch, I never would have fucked you."

  "Strange," said Menzi, swirling the remaining ice in his vodka rocks. "She delivered the line in perfect English."

  Next stop was dinner at the Blue Door, across the park on the Upper East Side. For sure, it wasn't a place you'd find in any restaurant guide. Three reasons. One, the Blue Door wasn't really its name, merely the color of the entrance. Two, it had only one table and there was only one seating a night. Three, it was owned and operated b
y two high-priced call girls out of their top-floor brownstone apartment. "Fucking and cooking, that's what they're into," said the guy, a foreign currency trader with the Bank of Tokyo, who had given me their number. He also mentioned in some detail that they were exceedingly gifted at both pursuits. Domo arigato, I told him. You had to hand it to the Japanese businessmen. If it took place on the island of Manhattan and involved the solicitation of sex, they knew all about it.

  Alicia and Stefanie welcomed the four of us into their home at a few minutes past nine. In a word, stunning. Nice too. Model looks without the attitude. Being the polite hostesses that they were, they asked if any of us would like a blow job before dinner. Dwight raised his hand like a schoolboy. That vision alone was worth the four grand I was shelling out for us to be there.

  They really did know how to cook. A homemade gazpacho fresh from their rooftop garden to start, followed by Chilean sea bass nicely blackened and not too oily. A lemon tart and some vanilla-hazelnut coffee rounded it all off. Well done, girls.

  We retreated to their living room, where we drank brandy and had our choice of smokes. Cigars, cigarettes, or weed. The biggest turn-on, at least for me, was that the girls were educated, or, should I say, talked as if they were. Alicia was big into existentialism and could quote Simone de Beauvoir at will. Stefanie, to her credit, was something of an art buff. She was particularly fond of Leger and had gone so far as to visit his museum in Biot, France. Though when you got right down to it, she explained, her favorite place to be was the van Gogh room on the upper level of Musee d'Orsay.

  "Really?" I said to her. "I'm planning on being in Paris myself next April."

  Then came the sex. To be honest, it was my lone attempt at manipulation that evening. As I had been riding somewhat of a winning streak, I thought maybe I could do something about my guilt with Connor once and for all. If I could get him to cheat on Jessica, I reasoned, I wouldn't feel so bad about the affair. And yet, as much as he'd had to drink, he declined. In fact, when I asked him which girl he preferred, he simply shook his head and laughed.

  It was a major backfire. That Connor remained faithful to Jessica even in the face — and bodies — of Alicia and Stefanie made me feel that much worse. I declined the after-dinner sex as well, making some joke about the buddy system. Instead, I refilled my snifter and further tried to numb myself.

  Meanwhile, the two single guys weren't about to decline anything. As Connor and I kicked back in the living room and watched Robin Byrd on the tube, Menzi and Dwight paired off with Alicia and Stefanie in separate bedrooms. The girls had originally suggested a foursome, but such homophobes were Menzi and Dwight that they would have nothing to do with it.

  When we finally said farewell sometime after midnight, the two boys were walking with the happiest limps I'd ever seen. The lone disappointment for them came when they tried to get Alicia and Stefanie's phone number. That's when they were told about the policy: no repeat customers. It wouldn't be as special, said the two girls. Incredible. They obviously knew what kind of word of mouth they had to be turning away business.

  After cruising around a bit in the limo, we made a final stop at the Whiskey Bar. You would think Menzi and Dwight had had their fill for the evening. Then again, maybe you wouldn't. As soon as we walked in, their eyes lit up at the overabundance of talent that lined the walls.

  "Like fish in a barrel," said Dwight.

  "You sure your rods aren't too tired?" I asked.

  "Nonsense," they both told me.

  After ordering a round of drinks, I announced that I had to go to the bathroom. The pay phone was in the basement next to a cigarette vending machine. Four rings.

  "Hello?" she said.

  "It's Philip."

  "It's late."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "I was sleeping."

  "Sorry again."

  "You sound drunk."

  "That's because I am."

  "I'm hanging up."

  "Wait, I'm okay. Just a little happy," I told her.

  "What's this I hear about tonight being your treat?"

  "You spoke to Connor?"

  "Yes, before he left his office," she said.

  "Yeah, it's true. Tonight's my treat."

  "What for?"

  "No reason."

  "I don't believe you."

  "Can't a guy be nice to his friends?"

  "You're not that nice," she said.

  "Maybe I'm changing."

  "I seriously doubt that."

  "Are you free for lunch tomorrow?" I asked.

  "Perhaps. If I'm not too tired."

  "Very subtle."

  "Thank you," she said.

  "Do you ever wonder?"

  "About what?"

  "In another life... you and me."

  "You really are drunk."

  "I'm serious."

  "I'm hanging up now."

  "See, I knew you'd thought about it," I said.

  "You're an arrogant son of a bitch, you know that?"

  "You wouldn't have it any other way."

  "What does that make me?" she said, suspect.

  "Incredibly desirable."

  She hung up.

  I returned upstairs right in time to see the first punch thrown. I didn't need to know what had happened to know what had happened — Dwight had hit on some guy's girlfriend a little too hard. As I rushed over, I could see the guy was a jock type, dressed in shorts and a J. Crew shirt over a sinewy upper body. He landed a right cross to Dwight's unsuspecting chin.

  Of course, one of the problems with these jock types was that they confused their ability to bench-press a lot of weight with being able to fight. Another one of the problems was that they rarely, if ever, thought to see who their opponents' friends were. As Dwight recoiled from the blow, Menzi — the former first-team All-Ivy tight end — stepped in, folded one of his huge hands into a fist, and proceeded to level the guy with one uppercut. Indeed, chivalry wasn't dead. He was just knocked out and bleeding on the barroom floor.

  Time to go.

  Before the bouncers could sort it out we were safely back in the limo. Dwight raided what was left of the ice bucket and nursed the side of his already swelling mouth.

  "Jesus, I go away for two minutes," I said. "What the hell did you say to his girlfriend, Dwight?"

  "Nuthin'," he claimed, sounding like he'd had a shot of Novocain. "I simply told her that I wanted every bone in her body including one of my own."

  Menzi threw back his head. "You asshole, I should've let her boyfriend have one more swing at you."

  We laughed and we kidded. We passed around the Krug and drank from the bottle. When it was done, so was the night. Dwight got dropped off first, followed by Menzi. Each thanked me profusely for one hell of a time. With both of them gone, Connor and I put our feet up.

  "Were you thinking about it?" he asked me.

  "About what?"

  "Getting your money's worth with our two very nice dinner hostesses this evening."

  "Did I think about it? Yeah. In the end, though, I guess I'd be too afraid that Tracy would somehow be able to tell."

  "I know what you mean; Jessica's kind of the same way," he said. "It's like guys must emit some type of pheromone when they cheat, and only certain women can smell it."

  "Notably our wives, is what you're saying."

  He nodded. "Do you think we could ever tell with them?"

  Like twelve cups of coffee was his question. Very sobering.

  "You're not still thinking that—"

  "That Jessica's having an affair? No, I don't think that anymore," he said as the limo pulled to a stop in front of his apartment. "I know she's having an affair." Connor opened the door and swung one leg out. "Thanks for everything, Philip. See you soon."

  THIRTY-TWO

  Two rings."

  She picked up. "This is Jessica."

  "We need to talk," I said.

  "So that's what we're calling it now?"

  "I'm seriou
s; something happened last night," I told her.

  "What?"

  "Not over the phone. During lunch... twelve-thirty. I'll be the early one."

  "This isn't one of your ploys to get me to come out and play, is it?" she asked.

  "I wish it were."

  The weather had called for a light sprinkle that day. What we got was a midday downpour. Shoulders hunched under my umbrella, I started to make my way over to the hotel at twelve-fifteen. I didn't bother with the gym bag decoy. Arousing suspicion in my office was no longer so high on my list of worries.

  Connor had closed the door to the limo so quickly the night before I hadn't had a chance to call after him. I had heard what he said; I just didn't know what it meant. Or, at least, what it really meant.

  "I know she's having an affair."

  It was Jessica and her damn tell, I was thinking. It was back. She had gone cold on Connor again. It would mean revisiting a topic that had ended with her not talking to me the first time. This time, however, I'd be more careful in how we discussed it. There was too much at stake.

  Yet again.

  I was short with Raymond while checking in. I couldn't help it. He wanted to tell me how much his mother appreciated the money I'd given him, and all I wanted to do was get up to the room and call Jessica. The sooner I called her, the sooner she'd get there. Sensing my impatience, Raymond apologized for droning on. I explained that I had a lot on my mind. While he appeared to understand, there was no smile from him when he handed me my room key.

  "This is Jessica," she said.

  "Room seven-oh-two," I told her.

  "Okay."

  I hung up the phone and started my usual pacing. Outside, the rain was beating hard against the windows. I tried to sit down on the bed, but it was no use. I was too anxious. I got up and started to pace again. It was going to be the first time Jessica and I were together in the hotel without having sex. For about a hundred and seventy-five dollars less we could've been having our conversation in a restaurant. A restaurant, though, meant the possibility of bumping into someone we knew, and when you least expected it or wanted it, Manhattan had a funny way of doing that to you. Besides, the image of having to tell Jessica to calm down, or worse, having to tell myself to calm down, amid a throng of onlookers was enough to convince me that it was money well spent. Public displays of hysteria were something to witness, not partake in, I always thought.