A few minutes later, heading back to the pulpit after seating a foursome, Eric saw a solo waiting for him there; the guy in his thirties, sporting a striped boatneck shirt and a beret.
“Just one?”
“Are you Eric?”
Bracing for the next shitstorm, Eric just stared at him.
“Paulie Shaw said you might want to talk.”
“Paulie?”
The culture dealer; Eric needing a moment to place the name, the conversation.
A vision then came to Eric of the Eighth Precinct detectives entrapping him in a dope buy to squeeze him into cooperating; of more shit in the papers, of killing himself.
“Paulie Shaw?” the possible undercover tried again.
The Picasso shirt was a nice touch.
“I don’t know you,” Eric said.
“All right, whatever.” He shrugged, then nodded to the menu. “Can I get a table?”
An hour later Eric brought over the coffee himself, sat down across from the Halloween Frenchman.
“So, who are you?”
“Morris.”
Eric sat there, trying to chess this through.
Bree came over, bused the table without looking at him once.
“Come to my office,” Eric said.
“OK. You tell me,” agonizing over the least indictable phrasing, “what might I want to talk about . . .”
Morris continued to stroll about the low cellar, eyeing the graffiti on the joists. Then, without taking his eyes from the crude messages overhead, he reached into his jeans and passed over a slim tube of paper like a European sugar packet.
Eric unraveled the twisted ends: four, five lines’ worth, a BJ-in-the-bathroom special.
Embarrassed by his shaking hands, he passed it back. “After you.”
“I don’t do that stuff.”
“Me neither.”
Sighing, Morris took a Bic pen from the neck of his boatneck shirt and, using the long clip on the cap as a scoop, did half the powder. “I’ll be up all night now,” passing it back. “Your turn.”
The flake brought tears to his eyes; Eric asking the price for an ounce before he was even done blinking away the prisms.
“Twelve hundred,” Morris said.
“For an ounce?” All caginess lost to the singing in his blood. “What the hell, Maurice, I may not be Superfly, but I’m not Jed Clampett either, man, Jesus Christ, cut a girl some slack.” Eric suddenly so slick.
“Well, what were you thinking?”
“Seven hundred.”
“Funny.”
“Funny?”
Morris spasmed, did a little jig off the coke. “Shiver me timbers, Popeye.”
“What?”
“I’ll go eleven fifty, but that’s it. Guh,” tossing his head like a horse.
“Seven fifty.”
“Do you see me standing here with a pushcart or something?”
“Eight and that’s as I low as I go,” Eric said, then, “as high.”
“Well, look.” Morris patrolled the cellar stiff-armed, silently clapping his hands. “I mean you can bop on over to the Lemlichs, try to score your eight-hundred-dollar ounce there, and either walk away with a bag of Gold Medal or not walk away at all, OK?
“But this right here is signed, sealed, and delivered, no-risk white man’s coke for a white man’s market. Pricey, but worth it. You can step on it two, three times, it’ll still be good to go, or even if you don’t want to bother, at twenty a twist, a hundred a gram, you still clear sixteen hundred on the package. It takes money to make money, hoss; if it didn’t, every pauper’d be a king.”
“Eight fifty.”
“Up all night for nothing,” Morris muttered, then scrawled a phone number on the back of the empty coke wrapper, passed it back to Eric with another complimentary full twist from his jeans.
“Tell you what. Take this, think on it some more, change your mind, call the number, OK?”
“Eight seventy-five.”
“Bye now.”
Rejuvenated by the blow and by the knowledge of that second twist in reserve, Eric remained in the cellar after Morris had left. He thought of Ike Marcus, of Bree, of how he could drink all night now and be OK.
And the dig about going to the Lemlichs? Why not? Anybody over there in the PJs who stood to profit off the sale of an ounce, who had their shit together enough to even have an ounce to sell, would never be so boneheaded, so shortsighted, as to kill the goose.
Takes money to make money . . .
He was going to the PJs after his shift tonight; no, fuck it, going now, get somebody to cover and go.
He marched back up to the dining room and stepped to the pulpit.
“Listen I have a personal emergency,” laying a hand on the hostess who had covered for him earlier, the girl looking down at her arm as if he had just licked it. “I’ll be back in a while.”
As he made for the door, he crossed paths with Bree, carrying a tray of desserts.
“I didn’t mean to come down on you like that,” she murmured. “I guess you have your reasons,” then moved on before he could respond.
Eric took a breath, rubbed his face, then returned to the reservations pulpit.
Maybe he’d go tomorrow night.
At ten that evening, Matty was at home, gearing up to walk over to 27 Eldridge, hang around the shrine for a while then maybe head over to the No Name to consult with his mixologist, when his cell rang.
“Yeah, hey, this is Minette Davidson. I was wondering, I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’m downstairs.”
“Downstairs?” Then, realizing that she thought he was at the precinct, “Give me two minutes.”
She was seated on the bolted rack of molded plastic chairs in the wedge-shaped vestibule where he had first laid eyes on her husband, staring at that same wall of memorial plaques over the reception desk.
“Hey.”
She whipped her head to him, looking a little wild beneath the rough corona of her hair, then gestured to the epigraph beneath the bronze profile of patrolman August Schroeder, killed in 1921.
“ ‘Grief is a country unto itself,’ ” she read. “No argument there.”
“Come on out,” he said.
Given the massive bridge supports that dominated the immediate area, at night the view directly outside the precinct was the same at nine in the evening as it was at five in the morning: lifeless, save for the coming and going of police and the overhead rumble of unseen traffic.
They stood next to each other in the desolate silence; Minette, despite a heavy sweater, hugging herself in the still-warm October air.
“So what can I help you with,” he finally said.
“Billy spent all day trying to put together twenty thousand dollars for the reward pot, are you aware of that?” Her eyes roaming the shadows without focus.
“Yeah, I am.”
“He said it was your idea.”
“Look, it was, but—”
“I just want to make sure it was real.”
“I mean, there’s no guarantee . . .”
“That it came from you.”
“It did.”
“OK.” Nodding, still scanning the heartless view. “That’s good enough for me.”
“You didn’t need to come all the way down here. We could have talked on the phone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no, I meant as a burden on you.”
“Yeah, no, well, I guess I just needed to get out of there for a little, for a few minutes.”
“Your place.”
“Yeah. It’s like a tiger pit now sometimes, so just, you know, for a few minutes.”
“Sure,” he said, then, “Where’s your, where’s Nina?”
“At my sister’s with her cousins. I just need a little break.”
The desk sergeant came outside for a smoke, nodding to Matty, then stepping away to give them privacy, but a moment later a van pulle
d up, and a moment after that four vice cops were escorting a procession of six Asian women in cuffs to booking, the first in line the tallest, most attractive, and well dressed, the trailing five looking like peasants: squat, with pushed-in faces and dazed expressions.
“Aw, fuck no,” the sergeant moaned, “not Oriental Pearls.”
“Sorry there, Sarge,” the lead cop said.
“Where the hell do I go now?” he bawled, the vice crew cracking up.
“This funny, huh?” the tallest hooker snapped. “I make good money. More than you.”
“So what? My wife makes more money than me.”
“She do half-and-half too?”
“That’s what they tell me.” Cracking everybody up again.
“You know what?” Matty said, laying a hand on Minette’s arm. “Come upstairs.”
He steered her through the vacant squad room into the lieutenant’s office, pulled the interior blinds, and parked her on a leatherette couch half-piled with case reports.
“Do you want something to drink?” Pulling up a chair.
She shook her head, then hunched over and put her face in her hands, Matty once again giving her a moment, then, “What’s going on.”
“I didn’t bargain for this,” she whispered, hiding her eyes.
Matty nodded, thinking, Who does.
“I loved that kid, I swear to God, but Jesus . . .”
“You know what?” Resting a hand lightly on her arm. “You’ll do what you have to do.”
“How do you know.” Hiding now behind the heel of her fist.
He didn’t, but what could you say.
“Look, it’s only been a week.”
“Exactly.” Another defeated whisper.
“I tell you what.” Matty hunched forward. “You take care of your family, and I’ll take care of everything else.”
He sounded rock solid, like what he was saying made any kind of sense, but it was more than just a positive-thinking con job; he personally wanted her to be stronger; that’s the way she came to him in his visions and he insisted on it now.
“You take care of them. You can do that,” he said down low, putting everything he had into coming off both sober and supernaturally prescient, his mouth inches from her lowered head. “I know you can.”
She finally raised her eyes to him, to the all-knowing tone of his voice; looked at him with a desperate and helpless attentiveness.
“I know you can.”
Looked at him like a rock in a raging sea.
“You just let me worry . . .”
“OK,” she said as if drugged, then reached up and, cupping his face in her hands, put her tongue in his mouth, Matty having time only to tentatively rest his fingers on her shoulders before she was already backing away, shocked and done.
For a moment they just sat there, big-eyed with thought, each looking around the room as if having lost a separate item, until Minette got up and without a word headed for the door.
He understood that it was a Fuck God kiss, a onetime protest, he understood and accepted that; and so all he could be right now was relieved to see her go; but when, with one hand already on the door, she turned back to him, breathing like she was confused, like this wasn’t what she had expected, took a half step towards him for more, then bore down on herself: No; that was the heart-stomper, Matty slumping as if punched.
She turned again and left, quietly closing the door behind her.
“Jesus,” Matty said, wiping his mouth, then wishing he hadn’t.
Restless, agitated, trying not to think about the thing that didn’t happen, Matty found himself still in the empty office an hour after she left, going through 61s and 494 sheets, perusing that day’s mayhem, sorting them into kickbacks to patrol and squad-worthy, felonies obviously but domestics too; always potential starter kits for something more serious; DOAs and Missing Persons for the same reason.
The day had been slow: a few harassment complaints, two weaponless muggings, a few petit larcencies, and an aggravated assault already closed by arrest.
Then a Missing Persons caught his eye, Olga Baker; Matty knowing the kid, a serial runaway, the mother, Rosaria, calling like clockwork once a month, the kid always coming home a day or two later, nothing to worry about, but the last time Rosaria had called in, maybe six weeks ago, he wound up going over there, a well-kept apartment in the Cuthbert Towers, a few steps up from the PJs and slightly off the beaten path. Rosaria, in her late thirties, early forties maybe, short and solid with high-piled black hair, had out of the blue asked him if he had kids, which led to Are you still with their mother, which led to Do you like dancing, which led to his, for some reason he couldn’t fathom tonight, getting out of there fast.
He had known cops who had on occasion slept with witnesses, slept with suspected perps, confirmed perps, slept with the wives, sisters, and mothers of victims, and had even slept with the victims themselves if they recovered. You walk into lives abruptly turned inside out by the arbitrary malice of the world, and you, in your suit and tie, your heavy black shoes, your decent haircut, and your air of seriousness, you become the knight, the father, the protector . . . All of which is to say that sometimes it fell right into your lap if you were that kind of individual. Which he was not, was not.
The phone number was on the report.
“Rosaria, how you doing, Detective Clark. Remember? . . . Yeah, that guy. I’m just following up here. Did Olga come home yet?” Doodling. “All right, well, we’re out there beating the bushes . . . Just, how are you holding up though, you OK? . . . Oh yeah? . . . If you’d like, I could come by, see if there’s any . . . No problem at all . . . Now’s good.”
Matty went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, tuck himself in, came back out, left the squad room, then came back in, ran Henry Baker through the computer, Rosaria’s husband coming up as still in Green Haven, then left for the field.
Rosaria Baker, technically speaking, fell into none of the above categories.
Still cranked, Eric came home, working himself up for another death-propelled slamathon, and walked in on Alessandra in the middle of packing, or unpacking, it was hard to tell until he saw that the bookshelves were half-bare.
“You might want to sit for this,” she said.
“What’s with all the sitting. Just say.”
“It’s time for me to go.”
“Yeah.” Eric tried to look wounded.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, no,” he said.
“Maybe I’m making a . . .”
“No, you’re not. You’re not,” he said tenderly, quickly.
“Carlos is picking me up in an hour,” she said, looking at the bed.
This was great; this . . . he had to do this more often, Matty necking on the couch like a teenager, his hand inside Rosaria Baker’s blouse, hers rubbing him across his thigh like she was rolling out pastry dough, making little noises and smelling like lipstick, like perfume, like hairspray, wearing stockings with garters and snaps, Matty thinking, whatever happened to that, why is that a fetish, that’s normal, that’s great, everything great, everything a slow-motion heart attack, and then they heard a key in the door and they both started fumbling and scrambling as fifteen-year-old Olga Baker, the missing person, waltzed in; the goddamn case solved.
King of Hell
Know him well
I walk right in
Don’t ring the bell
Tristan closed his book, regarded the hamsters breathing all around him, the boy with a sleep hard-on like a little periscope every goddamn night now.
He slipped out of bed and stepped out into the hallway. Standing in front of the master bedroom, one hand on the doorknob, he became giddy with fear. He didn’t, does not, understand—he stepped to him, him and his shortstop-quick hands, took it and then gave it right back to him and saw him back down and call the cops like a little fucking bitch; and still, he felt this; he could kill, was a mankiller, and still, he felt this; like he was going in
to a lion’s den.
He opened the door a crack, then dropped to his belly and crawled inside the bedroom, the smell of openmouthed sleep in here giving him another dizzy rush until he was beneath his ex-stepfather’s night table. Reaching up, he eased the top drawer open just enough to slip the Chinese paper Rolex inside, then slid it shut again.
From me to you.
“I did have, I do have my reasons.” Eric was wall-eyed high as he intercepted Bree coming up the stairs from the locker room.
“I’m sorry?” Stepping back from him in a way that told him it didn’t make a difference what he said right now.
“Last night you said to me, ‘I guess you had your reasons.’ I do.”
“OK.” She was waiting, not to hear them but to get past him. He didn’t care.
“Could you, look . . . Just come back down with me for a minute,” nodding to the cellar, then adding, “No funny stuff, I swear.”
“Yeah, about that recanvass this weekend,” Deputy Inspector Berkowitz in Matty’s ear.
“Boss, I’m not even asking.”
“With that bullshit minister’s kid . . .”
“I hear you.”
“What a waste of time and men.”
“Right.”
“You know where she got that devil-cult kidnapping story from?”
“The movies?”
“Yeah, but which one?”
“I don’t know.” Matty tired of the runaround before it even got good and going. “Rosemary’s Baby?”
“Eyes Wide Shut.”
“Eyes what?”
“You know, where they have that orgy in the mansion?”
“I didn’t see that.”
“Everybody’s in this mansion, naked and wearing like, owl masks.”
“Didn’t see it.”
“I find it hard to believe that the director who gave us Spartacus gave us that crap.”
Enough. “Look, I just got a call, the guy has decided to personally toss another twenty thousand into the reward kitty, which puts us at forty-two, so he’d like to have a presser, announce it.”
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