And of course she told him, and then she told him a number of other things, unable to stop herself, tongue lolling out like a character from a Tex Avery cartoon, traumas she’d suffered as a child, fears and dreams, but mostly fears, about her job and her boyfriend and what sort of mother she’d make, if she even wanted to be a mother given the state of the world—oh, the state of the world, the state of the world, the state of the world. But M hardly managed to listen past the first sentence. He had enough misery to take hold of; he didn’t need more. He told Christine to get some sleep and to feel better in the morning, and she slammed shut her door and went to do just that.
No rest for the wicked, however, and at the bodega downstairs M bought two cans of Steel Reserve, butting in front of the big black youth waiting in line for a sandwich, snarling at the Arab behind his bulletproof glass, leaving twenty dollars on the counter, and pitching off into the nearest subway station. The train pulled in just as he got down there, the universe tilting in his direction like a round loading into a chamber.
There were a dozen-odd passengers in the car, but they emptied out as soon as they came to the next station, as if M was a particularly foul-smelling or unstable-seeming indigent. At the top of the stairs a drug addict was asking people for change, but he didn’t bother to ask M, indeed as M passed he decided to head right over to see his dealer even though he was a couple of bucks short and the man did not take credit, DID NOT TAKE CREDIT, discovered he needed his evening hit immediately, needed it as much as he’d ever needed anything in his life, which is to say as much as he needed every other hit he had taken.
M walked on, despair spreading in his wake. Everywhere else also, though you couldn’t blame that on M.
A soft-souled sort like Alice, thin-skinned, far from steady, and a prick like that in his hipster jeans, quoting Pitchfork reviews and the one Bukowski poem he had ever learned. Easy prey, he must have figured, easy prey, maybe not quite pretty enough for him normally, but there she was just standing behind the bar, why not throw out a few lines, snarl her with his charm. But you get tired of that sort of thing eventually, after a few fucks, tired of her bony hips and her too-kind eyes. And what else do average-looking girls exist for but to catch a bit of cum and then get tossed away, like multiuse condoms?
M was very drunk by this point.
Well, Thom would find out otherwise, wouldn’t he? The world was a crooked place but M would see it run straight this time, even it right out, Management be damned. Management be good and damned, because what was the point of all this esoterica, ritual, meditation, study, all this chicanery and brouhaha, what was the point of delving about in the darkest and most obscure corners of reality, what was the point of jeopardizing the very existence of your soul if you could not occasionally right a wrong?
Approaching the building, M held up his hand, as if getting ready to wave at someone, and his palm glowed a shade of red that no one has yet managed to name. He skipped up the steps of Thom’s stoop, and he pointed at the door, and the lock snicked open. M stopped outside of 1C, and he banged on the door three times, each blow like a sledgehammer against the wood, each blow like a fall from on high, each blow like the retort of Gabriel’s great horn.
The man who answered it was Thom, and Thom wasn’t as pretty as M remembered, not at all. He was skinny and not very tall and actually, now that M looked at him, his jeans weren’t even that tight; they were just jeans. He had a stupid beard, but that was about the worst you could say of him. Coming over, M had imagined he’d bust in on the man midcoitus maybe, Thom’s new Alice languishing on his twin-size bed, and M could save her from the same fate as her predecessor. But he was alone, and behind him his apartment was quiet and dark, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed to have been drinking.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“What did you do to Alice?” M asked, the words slurring into one another, coming like a pressure boxer, punches in bunches, and Thom flinching from each one. And the funny thing is that M didn’t even need to lean on him, as he had the bartender and Christine, didn’t need to use up any of the Management’s favor in breaking him down. Thom had somehow been waiting for this, like a child awaits the strap, waiting for someone to show up at his door, maybe not M necessarily, maybe he didn’t have the particulars in mind, but someone, some agent of order, to call him to account, to offer punishment, and after punishment, redemption.
“I killed her, man,” Thom said, his head hanging as from the noose. “I killed her.”
And how much did M want this to be true, how much did he want to believe it. What joy it would have been to stand among the righteous for a moment, just for a moment, to lay a fierce and terrible reckoning upon the head of this boy who so clearly deserved it. But what if he didn’t deserve it, or what if he didn’t deserve it any more than everyone else did?
After a while, the light from M’s hand went out, and then M did the same, without another word, back down the steps and through the front door and four blocks north to the subway.
Some days, there seemed very little point in magic. Some days, there seemed very little point in anything, but M soldiered on just the same.
28
* * *
Brooklyn Murder Mystery
It was shaping into a pretty good party, until they stumbled over the corpse.
This would be the last outdoor gathering of the year. You could tell that without looking at a calendar or the mall decorations, turkeys grinning at their slaughter and Indians doing the same. Tell it by the kernel of real cold on the wind and the occasional scattered scent of wood smoke. But winter hadn’t come quite yet, and you could still make do in a flannel shirt and a leather jacket. At least that was what M was wearing when he and Flemel had met Boy and Andre in a bar in Carroll Gardens, en route to Ibis and Anais’s spacious two-bedroom condo in Park Slope, wooden floors and exposed brick and the last backyard garden left in central Brooklyn. Of course, in reality, there was barely enough space for a few rows of maize, but then what is reality after all? Ibis opened the door looking blue-eyed and handsome, Anais on one arm, almost smiling. Backs were slapped and goodwill was enunciated, and then they were led through a concrete corridor and out a wrought iron gate and into a miniature Versailles, bonfires illuminating a starlit sky, ancient elms bowed with autumn’s parti-colored bouquet. On a decayed Roman ruin, beside a trickling spring clearer than any body of water New York had seen for a century, a handsome man did a credible cover of a Neil Young song. There was booze and music and girls and a hint of winter in the air, of mortality, and between all of that, M was starting to feel some of the last few months’ nastiness slough off him. They found Stockdale at the bar, his burns healing better than the most optimistic dermatologist could have predicted, and he greeted M and Flemel enthusiastically. Boy passed some cocaine around to those who were interested. M had rolled a few joints before coming, because one never knows, of course, because one just can’t say for certain. They were stepping out to find a quiet place to light up when Boy gasped and Flemel pointed and Stockdale said, “Shit.”
M reached down and put two fingers on Ibis’s still-warm neck, though he couldn’t have held out much hope, simply by virtue of the yawning aperture that offered a clear view of his internal organs. There was a moment, kneeling over the corpse, when he looked old, our M, very old indeed, perhaps almost as old as he actually was.
Then he was standing and scowling and crossing swiftly to the exit.
“Shit,” Stockdale said a second time.
“Those motherfuckers,” Boy said, her face had gone from cream to rose to summer tomato. “This is the White Queen’s doing, sure as stone.”
“You don’t know that.” Stockdale said.
“Who the fuck else would it be?” Boy asked, standing furiously. “Celise has been trying to get her grubby little claws on this section of Brooklyn for years. This was the opening salvo, and I’ll be damned if it passes without a response.”
“Celise, like Celise the White Queen?” Flemel asked.
“Sweet Christ, boy,” Boy said, face hard, “doesn’t M tell you anything?”
“Not really.”
A pair of partygoers, stumbling through the evening in hopes of finding a comfortable spot to copulate, saw the four of them, and then saw the thing they were looking at. The male squealed loudly.
The crowd was swift to gather. There was a brief and pointless period during which some of the more optimistic imagined they might render Ibis medical assistance, and then things turned quickly to recrimination.
“Son of a fucking bitch,” Cavill said. Cavill was wearing jeans that would need to be removed with a razor, and would have been difficult to take seriously were he pointing a gun at the skull of your firstborn child. “In his own home!”
“Don’t get to doing nothing foolish, junior,” Salome answered, standing tall to meet him, a cocktail dress riding up her shapely thighs. “We were invited with full promise of safety.”
“Did you notice the man who pledged it has his rib cage visible?”
“An unfortunate tragedy,” Salome said, her tone flippant but her eyes very dark. “But that doesn’t mean you get to scapegoat any of us into a tomb.” Behind her you might have seen M performing a series of complicated passes beside the exit, though you probably wouldn’t have, there being more compelling things to look at just then.
“Who the fuck else would have done it?” Cavill said. “Did the White Queen plan this outright, or did you just see an opportunity and take it?”
“Yes, it’s been a long-standing plot of mine to kill an old friend at his party while surrounded by the enemy.”
“Why don’t we all just go back to using our indoor voices,” M said, having finished his business by the door and returned to the main stage.
“The fuck are you?” Cavill asked.
M started to roll a cigarette. “You know who I am.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So, me being who I am, and you being who you are, I just told you to lower your voice.”
“Fuck this,” Cavill said, though Flemel noticed he didn’t yell it. “The Red Queen will hear of this atrocity. By God, she will.”
“In good time,” M said. “Though not quite yet.” He struck a match and brought it to his cigarette, and the night went bright with a corresponding series of trailed explosions flickering from the exit, firecracker pops and swirls of illuminations, strange patterns of flame writhing across the length and breadth of the metal gate before disappearing as suddenly as they came.
Everyone stared. Except for M. M smoked his cigarette.
“What the hell was that?” Cavill asked.
“You’re such a tough guy,” M said. “Why don’t you go find out?”
Cavill sneered and began walking toward the exit, purposefully and with swift steps—but somehow he ended his journey a dozen feet from the promised egress, looking round bewilderedly.
“Just can’t pull yourself away from me, can you?” M asked.
“This is nonsense,” Salome said, trying to outdo her rival. A second failure, though she managed to get her hand nearly within clutching distance of the door handle before finding herself, dazed and flustered, back where she had started, smoking a cigarette seriously.
“It’s called the Rite of the Exterminating Angel,” M explained. “And it means you won’t find yourself able to leave. No one will. Of course, if you keep trying, maybe you’ll force yourself through. Or maybe it’ll shatter your mind like a mirror. Seven years bad luck, you know. Have fun either way. While you’re dicking around, I’m going to go ahead and figure out who killed my friend.”
That managed to turn the crowd’s attention, for the moment at least, away from the gate and back toward the corpse growing cold on the lawn.
“Ibis?” Cavill asked.
“Whoever done him is still at the party. As of now, it’s a simple process of elimination.”
“How do we know it wasn’t you?” asked a member of the crowd, one of the Red Queen’s people, guessing by his white-boy dreadlocks.
“You don’t, which is why it’s in everyone’s interest to stick around until we’ve got this thing wrapped up.”
“And once we do,” Cavill said, “once we’ve found whatever piece of shit did Ibis at his own party, what happens then?”
“I’m a cross-one-bridge-at-a-time kind of person,” M said, turning to stare full bore at Cavill, “but nothing very good, I suppose. Now how about you go grab a drink and leave the adults to do some thinking.”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“You don’t have to drink—you just need to stand where I can see you and keep your mouth shut.”
One of Salome’s people, a cynical sort or just a glutton for punishment, made a motion for the door. But then she found herself, as M had suggested, over at the counter, pouring a glass of champagne, and the rest of the party decided it was easier to skip the middleman and go straight to the booze. Unbidden, the two factions separated, the tight core of Celise’s contingent, fashionable bordering up on severe, taking up one end of the counter, leaving Abilene’s crunchy conglomerate to hold down the other.
Belatedly, very belatedly, it occurred to M to check on Anais, who stood a short way out in the greenery, silent and pale as a wraith. “Why don’t you head inside, honey,” he said.
But she remained where she was, seemed not even to have heard him speak.
M set one hand on her shoulder, “Go inside. I’ll take care of whoever did this, I swear.”
And though his words carried with them a weight of gravity which was unusual for a man as generally feckless as M, they did no good. Anais remained where she was, immobile from grief, and after another moment M sighed and went back to join Boy, Stockdale, Andre, and Flemel over the body of her murdered lover.
“What’s your plan?” Flemel asked quietly.
“This was about as far as I’d gotten,” M admitted. Below his left wrist was a tattoo of a magnifying glass.
“Shit.”
“Somebody has to do something, or they’ll be dating the start of the next war from tonight. At the moment we’ve still got a shot at heading off any more bloodshed.”
“And why would we want that?” Boy asked nastily. “I think a little blood is what we need right now, balance the scales. Remind the White Queen’s people who they fucking with.”
“You’ll forgive me if I take your judgment with a grain of blow.”
“Ibis has been my friend for a generation, and Abilene my patron since long before that.” Boy said. “Any attack on her is an attack on me.”
“Don’t you fall neatly into lockstep. I see that haircut is just for show.”
“This is my borough, and I’d rather not see it become Tribeca. I’ve known Abilene for as long as you have, and I’m not so quick to forget the things she’s done for me, or for the city.”
“Ingratitude is one of my stronger qualities,” M admitted. “Andre, you’re a coward. Stick up for me.”
“I am brave as the Maid of Orléans,” Andre said. “And I live in Manhattan and work in high finance. I acknowledge the White Queen, as a fisherman does the tide.”
“That extends to dying in her service?”
“I’m afraid that weekend I have a wedding in the provinces. But it extends at least to saluting the flag when my fellow comrades in arms are looking.”
“Surely you’re not buying any of this nonsense,” M said, turning to Stockdale.
“What can I say? I’ll take Abilene over her opposite. Didn’t you ever want to be a crusader, fight for something bigger than yourself?”
“I more saw myself as one of those guys who follow behind the army, finishing off the wounded and stealing rings from corpses.”
“That is how I think of you,” Boy said, grinding a cigarette beneath a platform heel and stamping off to take her place among the ranks of Abilene’s other willing killers. “That’s always been exactly h
ow I’ve thought of you.”
Andre shrugged regretfully, then went to stand near Salome.
“And where are you standing, Stockdale?” M asked.
“Ibis was my friend.”
“Mine too. That’s why I’m trying to find who killed him.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Or are you just trying to head off trouble?”
“Yes, peacemaking, how ignoble an activity.”
“Not every peace is an honorable one,” Stockdale said. “Ask Neville Chamberlain.”
“Zero to Hitler in ten sentences flat, very impressive. I’m shocked you aren’t running Question Time with the Prime Minister.” M picked a cigarette from a sneer. “I don’t have time to argue. Are you with me, or are you going over to help Boy sharpen her claws?”
“What does being with you entail, exactly?”
“Dunno yet. But make sure to play along once I do.”
“There can’t be many people here strong enough to have put down Ibis,” Stockdale said. “Fair enough he wasn’t quite elite, but . . . he was close.”
M thought about this for a moment, then he went to find Salome at the bar.
“Hello again, M.”
“Salome,” M said, thinking that she had gotten prettier since he had last kissed her, just before setting her into a cab on a wintery December morning some ten months earlier.
“It wasn’t one of our people,” she said. “I can say that for a fact.”
“How could you possibly be certain of that? Were you all walking around together in a group? Does Celise implant tracking cameras? The only thing you can say with any confidence is that you didn’t do it.” M poured himself a few fingers from the nearest bottle, realized it was bourbon, looked unhappy about the discovery, but drank it anyway. “Well? Did you?”
“No.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
“It’s the truth regardless. The White Queen doesn’t give a fig about Ibis, didn’t even know his name. If she wanted to start a war, I can assure you, she wouldn’t have scrupled to something so small.”
A City Dreaming Page 29