Closing Time

by Fusilli, Jim;

  I watched a small plane float above the palisades. Early stars were pearls in the night sky.

  Addison answered the call.

  “You want him,” I said, “he’s on the piers near Little West 12th. In an old Sealand container.”

  “What did you—”

  “He’s dead,” I interrupted. “I’ll wait ten minutes.”

  I cut the line, then dialed my home number.

  “Hey, Dad. Guess what?”

  “Bella—”

  “I signed up to try out for the basketball team. Dad?”

  “No, that’s great, Bella.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, you know …”

  “Rough day.”

  “That’s a good way to put it,” I said.

  “Come home, Dad,” she replied. “I’ll kiss you happy.” I told her I’d be right there.

  FOURTEEN

  Since I watched a man kill himself I’d spent the day doing next to nothing. I worked out hard. I lay on the couch and watched an oddball Elliott Gould festival on TCM, picked up an anthology of Hegel’s lectures and immediately put it back down. I made a call to Sharon to let her know, but she already knew. “I was going to call you,” she said. “You OK?” After that, I called Julie to thank her. “We’re worried about you,” she said, and I knew it was true: Julie Giada is incapable of telling a lie, an admirable trait (though likely a handicap in her profession). Addison called me, but I let the machine take it. After talking to him on Monday at the pier, again two hours later on my front steps and at the Midtown Precinct yesterday morning, I’d had my fill of Luther Addison. The high point of our second talk, as the wind off the river kicked up behind us: “Lieutenant, I don’t give a fuck if you believe me.”

  I snuck into Bella’s room as she slept, took Moose from under the covers and put my old basketball near her pillow. Before I could leave the room, she wiggled, found the ball and, frowning in her sleep, slapped it away.

  Yeah. Well.

  I returned Moose to her arms and put the ball on the chair by her desk.

  This morning, I decided to get away, to try to banish thoughts of Amaral, his terror, his body at my feet, the stark photos Addison thrust in front of me in his squat, stuffy office, and I went uptown to Modell’s at Herald Square and bought Bella a few pairs of shorts, socks, a couple of t-shirts. (I stood before the sports bras much as Champollion must have first stared at the Rosetta Stone: What the hell …?) To compensate for not getting her that piece of equipment—the female equivalent of a jock, I guess—I tossed a couple of pairs of wristbands into the basket. Then, knowing my daughter, I threw a headband in there, too.

  I decided to walk back on the shady side of Broadway to let my mind go, and though I saw in the distance the early yellows and reds of the trees in Madison Square Park and, as I drifted to Fifth, NYU students going by in packs, cops in blue-and-whites monitoring Washington Square, I was doing nothing more than thinking. I was trying to understand what I had learned.

  The Madman Weisz, I knew, wasn’t going to fold as easily as a heartsick elementary schoolteacher or an assistant in a SoHo art gallery. When the time came for him to take form, a diamond glint in his empty eyes, it wouldn’t be as a confused, despondent man or a pretty woman with money on her mind. That I knew.

  And I knew that when I went in after Weisz it wasn’t going to be with Tommy the Cop out front or with Crazy Jimmy at my back. Or with Addison hectoring me, offering an odd form of support and protection. (He’d had his shot at Weisz.) No, I was going in alone: The diamond glint in Weisz’s hollow eyes would be trained only on me, focused with feral intensity or the cleverness of a man who once was and, I believed, was still brilliant. His savagery had shown itself when he killed a mother and child; his brilliance when he managed to slip away without a trace.

  I wondered if he knew that the day when I would summon him from the ether was closer now. I wondered if he knew that I was learning what it would take to bring him down. I had the option of hoping he did not, so that one day I would take him without warning and do what had to be done; or of hoping he did, so that he lived now filled with dread and uncertainty, in constant trepidation, peering around corners, with the sense that the hot blade was poised inches from his pale skin. I wondered if I had become his obsession, as he had become mine.

  When I pulled back from these festering thoughts, I saw that I’d blown past Canal and was back in TriBeCa. I thought about stopping off for lunch at a Korean-run salad bar on Hudson that served Mongolian stir-fry alongside the requisite pork fried rice, stuffed cabbage and macaroni-and-cheese, but decided instead to drop off the Modell’s bag and see what Mrs. Maoli had on the stove. Or eat the cold braciole that was in the refrigerator, a remnant of last night’s splendid dinner.

  On Harrison, the sun cast an uneven light onto the cobblestone, bleached and diffused. I crossed Greenwich, moving toward the silver river, passing a delivery truck filled with bok choy, cabbage and pea pods for Chinese restaurants west of Mott.

  And then I saw him, in front of my house, moving back and forth, with intent and yet meandering, his hands buried in his pockets, his slouch made more pronounced by his ambling. I stopped and watched him, and though the long bill of his strange baseball cap cast a shadow across his face, I knew he was troubled, again. Still.

  As he turned around to begin another small, lurching lap, Sol Beck saw me and stopped pacing and, without looking at the flow of traffic, ran onto Greenwich toward me. He made it across, oblivious to a barreling yellow cab that nearly took off the heels of his paint-splattered sneakers.

  He grabbed at me. I easily deflected his clutching hands.

  “I called you,” he said. The quick dash across Greenwich had hastened his breath.

  “I know,” I replied. “There’s nothing I can do. I warned—”

  “He put a bomb in my house.”

  This time his hands made it to my sleeves and he held on as if he feared he’d fall. He was pale, despite the pounding panic. “We have— We have to run.”

  “Did you call the cops?” I asked.

  “I can’t. Lin-Lin said—they’ll think she had something to do with it.”

  “She did have something to do with it, Sol. That’s why they picked her up.”

  “They didn’t keep her.”

  “Sol, she and Edie hired Vuk.”

  His eyes wouldn’t meet mine: The averted glare, perpetual for Beck, when confrontation flared. He muttered, “There’s a bomb now and she’s home.”

  I pulled away from his grip and put my hand on the shoulder of his worn, sagging blazer. “Sol, call the cops and get her out of there.”

  “Find Vuk,” Beck countered. “Make him take it away.”

  “Where?”

  “You can find him, Terry.”

  He grabbed at me again and started tugging me up Harrison, toward Hudson, toward the West Village. “We’ve got to hurry,” he panted.

  “Sol, hold it,” I protested. Yet I was going along with him, back past the delivery truck with its fresh vegetables, toward the lace curtains of Chanterelle, then to Varick near where Vuk had attacked her.

  “She’s there, saving the work.” He slapped at my arm. “Everything will—everything will be all right if we hurry.”

  Sol Beck started to trot. The tail of his frayed white shirt flapped between the vents in his coat. He turned, beckoning me to follow, an oddly hopeful glow in his sad eyes.

  I deliberated, though not for long, and then hustled to catch up, running toward a bomb.

  We made it to King, running under rusted fire escapes, dodging cars at Canal, and murky puddles from Sunday’s rain, and up the block, there was Lin-Lin, in a long, black sweatshirt and jeans, stacking paintings in front of a neighboring brownstone. Her orange cat played a comedic sentinel, peering suspiciously at us as we scampered up the block.

  Lin-Lin saw us and she seemed angry; then she immediately disguised her temper, cramming it back into the box, and he
r battered face instantly took on a calm but not quite serene appearance, as if emotion had been muted in favor of a better focus on the task at hand.

  Beck was gasping heavily, and beads of sweat turned to thin streams that ran along his sallow cheeks. He removed his hat and raked his sleeve across his forehead. “There,” he managed, as he pointed.

  Lin-Lin went back toward their brownstone without acknowledging him.

  About two dozen canvases were propped against the gate; wooden frames and stretched canvases against black cast iron.

  “You do those?” I said.

  Panting, he said yes.

  Paintings Edie and Lin-Lin would build their new businesses around. Businesses that excluded Judy.

  “Sol, where’s the bomb?”

  “I saw it. When Lin-Lin hung up, I—” Beck gasped for air. “I went downstairs. In the beams—it’s there.”

  “The bomb is in the basement?”

  “Putty and a wire; I don’t know. Maybe more. I couldn’t— I panicked when she told me.”

  Lin-Lin emerged with two more paintings and, ignoring us, added them to the stack. The cat circled warily. On Sixth, mid-afternoon traffic flowed steadily and, above us to the east, a helicopter hovered over the Manhattan Bridge.

  “Sol, call the cops,” I repeated.

  “No. You find Vuk. Make him take it away.” He was a boy, full of abstract optimism, brimming with fragile hope. Deluded, he wouldn’t allow himself to understand.

  “Listen to—”

  Beck looked at his wristwatch. “You’ve got twenty-five minutes.”

  “Sol, forget it. You need the bomb squad, not me.”

  He said, “Terry, he said if we call the police, it’ll go off.” He started to backpedal. “I’ve got to help Lin-Lin.” He turned and ran toward her.

  Once again, I followed, this time hesitantly, warily, passing a motor scooter chained to a “No Parking” signpost and a silver, nondescript delivery van in the center of the long block. Lin-Lin exited the brownstone with two more canvases, and Beck ran by her and skidded into their house.

  As I moved closer, I saw the marks on her face, the thin bandage over the stitches, the bruises, bumps and sickly purple swelling. Red scratches marred the bridge of her nose.

  Continuing to ignore me, she put down the two works and began to walk away.

  I called to her; I called to her again and she didn’t respond. I reached out and grabbed her long, shining hair and yanked, snapping her toward me.

  She hissed in pain until I let go.

  As she turned, I said, “Give this poor bastard a break.”

  “It is you who has caused this,” she replied flatly.

  “You hired Vuk. Pay him and shut him down. Put an end to this.”

  “I have things to do,” she said dismissively. “I’m protecting the work.”

  The cat curled itself around Lin-Lin’s ankle. It purred coyly.

  “Is it really a bomb?” I asked.

  “Yes. A precise one.” She turned away from me.

  I went after her.

  She stopped and said, “That was your word. ‘Precise.’ So there is a precise one here now. It will destroy his work. It will damage the house.”

  As she gestured, I turned to the stack of paintings. They were modern, if not contemporary: angular; beiges and pale ochers; weak, unsteady slivers of greens and blues. Faint colors behind heavy black lines. A touch of Mondrian, a bit of Klee. As derivative as his Hopper reproductions at the Harper Gallery, with little display now of his craftsmanlike technique.

  “Was the idea to destroy the paintings at Judy’s?”

  “I will not confirm what you believe is true.”

  I stepped closer to her. “Look at him. Look how fuckin’ earnest he is,” I said, pleading almost. “How’s he going to be when this is over?”

  “I cannot help you.”

  “Christ, how heartless can you be?”

  “Oh, Terry,” she moaned as she closed her almond eyes. “Edie was right about you. You are an innocent.”

  “Vuk is going to get his money,” I said. “He won’t let you make a dime off this work.”

  She tilted her head and gave me a look of cold, bottomless contempt.

  Beck emerged from the brownstone, carrying other canvases to add to the hoard.

  “Vuk will get nothing. And no one will believe I was involved. Edie and her boyfriend tried to hurt my Sol.” She smiled darkly. “I am so easily misunderstood.”

  Beck, straining, said, “Terry, you’ve got to get going. Find him and bring him back here and make him take it away.” He wasn’t yet wild-eyed, but he was getting there. “Lin-Lin,” he added, “you can talk to Terry later. He’s going to help us.”

  “Yes, Sol,” she said as she turned and walked away.

  I watched Beck place the paintings next to the others. “Terry,” he commanded, in a low voice. “Go.”

  I nodded and I went, leaving Beck to help stack his paintings on the street, to protect them so they could be taken from him. I knew where I had to go. It was a long shot, but it was the only thing that made sense to me.

  I went to Sixth and then north. If Beck was right, I had about 20 minutes to get it done.

  I kept moving, trotting now, squeezing by lazing pedestrians and a lanky mailman with his canvas bags on rollers, and I bounded into the All-American Diner. In front, a fresh-faced young woman entertained a small boy with ketchup-soaked french fries as she scanned a fashion magazine. I slid down the aisle, between revolving stools and empty, four-seater booths, passing faded clippings of soccer stars, Athenian landmarks, the torpid teenager burning toast, frying onions on the grill. In his customary spot in the rear, back to the wall, sat Chick Rosenzweig in a brown sweater-vest and white shirt; his friend Sid was examining his eyeglasses, cleaning the lens with a paper napkin.

  “Look who it is, Sid,” Rosenzweig said, looking up from his Daily News. “The bodyguard.”

  Sid turned, and a splash of fear crossed his round, aged face.

  “Your son needs you,” I said directly, as I sat on the revolving stool nearest Rosenzweig’s sidekick.

  “Son?” Rosenzweig mocked. He looked down at his paper. He put his index finger in the ring-handle of his coffee mug.

  “Solly’s in trouble?” Sid asked.

  I nodded. “It’s the wife.”

  Rosenzweig peered up at me.

  “She hired the guy to plant a bomb in the gallery. She wanted Sol to leave his agent and when he wouldn’t, she set out to damage the gallery so he’d have to make a move.”

  “The kid’s got loyalty? Don’t shit me, bodyguard.”

  “Now your son’s got nobody.”

  “That’s right,” he nodded. “He wanted it that way.”

  “Chick,” Sid said, “Solly’s a good boy.”

  Rosenzweig didn’t argue.

  “The bomber’s after him now,” I said. “He planted a bomb in his house.”

  “There’s a bomb in his house? Get the cops.” With scorn and a sneer, he added, “I’m retired.”

  I came off the stool to coax him and I slid in next to Sid, who inched over to give me room. “Put it aside, Chick.”

  “Think it goes that easy, bodyguard?” he asked as he shook his head.

  “Blood’s thick,” I said.

  “Chick, it’s Solly,” Sid added. “He needs you. Solly, he needs you.”

  Rosenzweig was about to challenge his compassionate friend, but he cut it off. He turned to me. “The place on King Street?”

  I nodded. He knew where his son lived.

  “You see the thing?” he asked.

  “The bomb? No, but your son did.”

  “What it is? RDX? Pentolite? Slurries?”

  I shook my head. “He said putty and wire. In a beam in the basement.”

  “Did he see a timer?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “See, no timer means the guy is there. The guy is there to set it off.” He paused. �
�What do you think, Sid? I go save his ass?”

  “It’s Solly, Chick.”

  “Yeah. Solly.”

  I said, “Come with me.” I withdrew my cell. “I’ll call the cops and we’ll head over there.”

  “The kid don’t want the cops,” Rosenzweig said as he pushed up against the tabletop. “I got to save his ass again. Just like when he was a kid. Couldn’t fight for shit. Sid,” he intoned, “give me my hat.”

  Sid reached to his right and pulled two berets from the seat. They were identical: brown, worn, neat. Sid looked at both, then passed the right one to Rosenzweig, who, with a deliberate flash of bluster, placed it on his head.

  “Sid, go call Marion. Tell her you’re gonna get her something at Carvel’s,” he said, as he reached into his pocket and tossed a $5 bill on the tabletop. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Rosenzweig walked past me and, with shoulders thrust back, headed down the aisle.

  We pushed south on Sixth, passing the drugstore, the bakery, the old folks huddled in Father Demo Square, a lone, sagging tree and pigeons pecking at birdseed. I told him about the deadline; by my watch, we had 15 minutes.

  Rosenzweig shook his head. “No timer means no deadline, kid. The guy’s there with his finger on a button. The bitch lied again.”

  He was walking fast, with a gait that, while not at all limber, displayed his cockiness.

  We crossed Houston, hopping down from the high curb. I said, “There’s no way to dismantle it if he’s sitting there.”

  “I got to get in through the back or from next door,” Rosenzweig said thoughtfully. “This guy, he know you?”

  I shrugged. “He might.” Lin-Lin might’ve described me to him; and if he was nearby, he’d have seen me tagging along with Beck, arguing with Lin-Lin near the pile of paintings. Or maybe he saw me years ago with Marina: the tall guy with the beautiful, gifted Italian woman.

  “I gotta go my own way then,” he said. “He sees you go to the house, he’ll let ’er rip.”

  “I don’t think you can get in any other way,” I offered.

  Rosenzweig said, “I’m a super, kid, remember? I can make anybody think I’m coming in to fix their pipes.”

  We reached King. There was no time to argue with him. Without a toolbox, a man in a natty brown sweater and matching beret, no matter how long he’s been a janitor, isn’t going to fool anybody in this part of town. I was certain now: I undid the cell and punched 911 to get the Bomb Squad.