“Meaning he could have paid cash for it.”
“Uh-huh. I also spent some face time with the kid who worked with Diane in the store. Malik Washington, age seventeen. According to Malik, Diane worked late on Monday. Said she had some orders to place. He offered to stick around but she told him to go on home. He left at a few minutes after six. Was home in Brooklyn by seven, according to his grandmother. He don’t remember any gee stopping by just before closing time to buy kibble. Or any particular gee coming in that morning either, although he was down in the basement a lot stacking stuff. As for your next question, why didn’t he report her missing, he claims Diane kept talking for weeks about taking a ski trip with her sister. When she didn’t show for work on Tuesday he figured that’s where she was, and either she forgot to tell him or she did tell him and he forgot.”
“Any chance Malik’s the answer man?”
“Doubtful. He’s a high school dropout, below average language skills. Plus he doesn’t know how to type. Which is the same shit my computer keeps telling me. Like, I turned up a gee just got paroled in Pennsylvania after pulling seven years for stalking a chick, okay? Under occupation they list ‘dishwasher.’ I’m thinking, okay, maybe he’s worth looking up: Trouble is, he can only read and write at a fourth-grade level. Our man’s way smarter than that. He ain’t no mumbling crackhead lives out of garbage cans. He’s someone you’d go home with. She did.”
“This being your so-called information age, I’m assuming that if a similar unsolved crime had taken place somewhere else in the country—”
“We’d be on it in a flash, dude. I didn’t turn up a thing. The answer man is all ours.”
“Lovely.”
“Check this out,” Very went on. “There’s no Greek coffeeshop around the corner from the pet food store. Nearest one’s way over on First and Thirtieth. Man behind the counter don’t remember anybody camped out there drinking coffee with twelve sugars any time recently.”
“How about the Yushie bar?”
“Several in the area, but so far he’s ringing no bells. You ask me, he made a lot of that shit up. Which just makes our job harder.”
“That may have been the whole idea, Lieutenant.”
“You got that right, dude.” He sighed grimly.
“So what now?”
“We canvas the people who ride the numero uno train same time she did every morning. Maybe somebody saw something. We check the welfare hotels for recent arrivals. We check the psychiatric hospitals for recent departures—addicts, sex offenders, gees who write kook letters, gees with a history of violence, gees with mommy hang-ups. We talk to social workers who work with young fathers. We talk to drug counselors. We work the restaurants, ’specially places that routinely take on parolees or mental outpatients. We dog the details, dude, every single goddamned one of ’em, no matter how many man hours that takes. Because, dig, that girl was found in the park. And that fucks with the people’s heads. Scares ’em shitless.” Romaine Very sounded serious. More serious than I’d ever heard him. “Now listen up—no one, but no one knows how you hook up to this thing. Just me and my immediate superior, and he’s sworn to secrecy. So the press should not be on to you. They get on to you, let me know, okay?”
“Okay, Lieutenant.”
“Everything cool?”
“I think I can safely report that everything is not cool.”
“Are you cool?”
“I’m fine.”
“Stay with me, dude,” he said, and then he hung up.
But I wasn’t fine. Merilee knew it as soon as she joined me in bed after supper, which had been late. Rehearsal had run long. Her director, a hot young filmmaker, had never done a play. In fact, Merilee was starting to think he had never seen a play.
“You look awfully pale, darling,” she observed fretfully. She had on her red flannel nightshirt. She always wears that when work is going poorly. Comfort food for the limbs, she calls it. “Your feet are positively gelid. And you barely touched your dinner.”
“I’ve never liked lamb shanks. Ask anyone.”
She glanced down at Lulu, who was curled up between us. “Why, even Lulu looks glum.”
“Lulu always looks glum. It’s one of her charms.”
Merilee was silent a moment. We both were. My mind was elsewhere. My mind was on that typewriter, an Olivetti Studio 44.
“They’re always out there, darling,” she said quietly. “The loons and freaks and oddballs. The stalkers with their AK-47s. The mad bombers with their fertilizer and diesel fuel. But we mustn’t give in to them. We mustn’t let them rule our world. That’s how they win.”
“I know that, Merilee.” I reached over and took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“Of course it is, darling.”
But of course it wasn’t. And I knew it. I knew it as soon as the phone woke me and I picked it up and I heard Romaine Very’s voice on the other end. This was early on Monday morning.
“Put your pants on, dude,” the lieutenant said heavily. “We got us another one.”
Three
DEAR HOAGY,
I’ve taken the liberty of enclosing the second chapter of my work in progress. I don’t dare call it a novel yet, but it really does seem to be taking shape. More importantly, I think I’m starting to hear my character’s voice. And that is very exciting. But you are the expert, of course, and your opinion means much more than mine does.
It occurs to me you don’t know how to reach me. If you want, you can take out one of those little personal ads at the bottom of the front page of The New York Times. Just address it to me. I’ll keep my eyes open, like any good writer should. And I’ll be sure to get back to you. By the way, do you think I’ll need an agent? Can you recommend one? Or will you be my agent? Please advise. Anyway, I hope you like this. And thanks again for your time.
Yours truly,
the answer man
p.s. Did I mention the movie rights? Make sure you hold on to them. We’re talking millions here!
p.p.s. Glad to see you’re a fan of Barney Greengrass. It’s always been one of my favorites. Those people at Zabar’s are so incredibly rude. Who was that short, muscular guy in the leather coat, a fellow author?
2. the answer man goes to school
New York City, December 4
Friend E—Thanks for that fifty dollars, man. Knew I could count on you. You are a true friend, not like all of these front artists out here who call you their friend but are strictly looking out for themselves. I’ll pay you back soon as I can, not that you’re asking. I’m needing to get back to work anyway. Not just because of the bucks, but because work is what holds you together when you’re out. Your work is who you are. Take a man’s work away from him and it’s like you’ve stripped him naked in the middle of Times Square.
That was one of the cool things about being inside. Didn’t matter who or what you were before you got there. All that mattered was HERE and TODAY. Because EVERYONE has been stripped naked. As I’m riding the subway I find myself eyeballing some sharp, together guy and wondering how he would do in there. Not too goddamned well, I think. Because all he knows about is his own unreal little universe. He doesn’t know about being in the cage with us. He doesn’t know about REAL.
It was her legs I noticed first, E.
I was standing there on the platform waiting for the downtown train, which not many people do at six in the evening. Most of them are heading back uptown for home. Suddenly she came striding on through the turnstile toward me, her and those legs of hers. They were long. They were bare. They were tanned, which is unusual in December. None of those big fat hiking boots neither. She wore a pair of low-cut moccasins that showed off her ankles to full advantage. Her stride was a man’s stride, long and athletic and self-assured. A tall girl, at least five-feet-ten, with short black hair that she parted on the side like a boy. She had on a short leather skirt and a torn denim jacket. Mostly it was her walk I got off on. Man, coul
d that honey walk.
Where she was going, I was going.
I sat halfway down the car so she wouldn’t notice me. She was reading Backstage, which is some kind of show business newspaper. An actress, maybe a dancer. She was certainly hot enough. I figured she’d get off at Times Square. Maybe was in some show that was running there. But she didn’t. Kept right on going all the way down to 14th Street. We both got off.
I followed her up the stairs and due east toward Sixth Avenue, staying a safe twenty feet back. She moved with great purpose. This has always excited me in a honey, E. I don’t like the ones who can’t make up their minds. I like the ones who are going somewhere. And this one was going somewhere. I had to pick up my pace just to keep up with her. No way I was going to lose her though. She had a Band-Aid on her left heel. Following that was like tailing a car with a broken headlamp, which you and I both got pretty good at in our younger days. But enough about that sorry subject. I’d much rather talk about these here legs. They were something, E. I mean you could go three, four years and not see a pair of legs like hers, except maybe in a magazine. I just kept beaming on them, wondering how anyone on the street could so much as think about anything else. But they paid her no notice. Locked into their own empty little lives, just like always.
Turns out she was heading to this place called The New School on West 12th Street. You know the place, E? They teach all of these bullshit classes there on how to write poetry and paint still lifes, like anybody who’s teaching a class there has a fucking idea about how to do anything except scam people out of their money and their time. No way I was going inside, so before she went in the door I stopped her and said I just wanted to say thank you. She said For what? And I said It was just such an incredible pleasure following you down the street. You light up the whole neighborhood. She thanked me, E. And she smiled. She had a great big smile. You know the kind I mean. Then she went on inside.
I waited outside, smoking cigarettes. Waited a couple of hours. It was getting windy and cold, but I didn’t care. She was with a small group when she finally came back out, all of them talking excitedly. When she saw me she stopped, frowning at me, and said What do you want? I said I thought we could get a cup of coffee. She didn’t say yes. She didn’t say no.
She just started walking with me.
It was really turning chilly. I kept wondering if her legs were cold, being bare. I finally asked her. She told me that the cold was no problem for her, since she was originally from Minnesota and it had to be something like thirty below zero for her to even feel it. I mentioned how confident and athletic her stride seemed, and she said Well, I was a real tomboy growing up. Played basketball and soccer and I still ski whenever I get a chance. I said Where did you get that tan? And she said I was just down in Miami with my boyfriend. He was down there on a photo shoot. Turned out her boyfriend was a model and so was she, but what she really wanted to do was act which was why she was taking this course at The New School on the history of the cinema from this guy who she said was brilliant. Mostly, she’d done a lot of modeling for the catalogs, although she had just landed a nonspeaking role in a Lipton Tea commercial which she was really pumped about. Laurie London was her name. I told her I was in the business myself, kind of. As a casting director for motion pictures. And if I could ever do anything to help her out it would be my pleasure.
She showed me her smile again.
It’s like I told you before, Friend E: Be who they want you to be. That’s my secret. Hey, I ought to write a book about it someday.
Hey, maybe I am.
Laurie said You know, I thought you looked familiar—I bet I’ve read for you. You probably have, I said. And she said Do you know Bonnie Timmerman? And I said Are you kidding? We’re having breakfast together tomorrow morning. Which Laurie seemed to think was way cool. Right away she wanted to know what I was working on. I told her the new De Niro movie, which seemed safe, right? Isn’t there always a new De Niro movie? And don’t they always suck? I said In fact, Laurie, there’s a part that would be perfect for you. She said Hey, I’d love to read for you. I said That might be difficult. I said I’m heading out to L.A. right after my breakfast with Bonnie. I said Too bad you don’t have any pictures I could take a look at. She said Would you like to look at my book? My apartment’s not far from here.
I said Well, okay. But I can only stay a minute.
Friend E, it flat out amazes me just how needy and desperate these New York women are. Even the beautiful ones. I mean, here I am walking along in Greenwich Village with this gorgeous honey and here she is all excited because she’s thinking I’m the answer to her prayers. And all I’m thinking is Oh, baby, sweet baby—I am.
By the way, E, if you have the slightest fucking idea who this Bonnie bitch is, please advise.
Laurie lived on the other side of Washington Square on Sullivan Street in a not very nice building. Looked like it had once been a tenement. One big room that had a loft bed built in, a ladder going up to it. There was another bed in front of the window. Place was filthy, E. Heaps of clothes everywhere, dirty dishes piled up in the sink. I cannot believe what pigs so many of them are. I mean, people have this belief that women are so neat and we are such slobs. Not true. Can’t live in a tiny cage if you’re messy, as you and me know only too well. I said Do you have a roommate? And she said Yes, I live with a girl from home who’s here in New York to get into modeling, like me, only right now she waits tables. I said Is that where she is now? And she said Yeah, until midnight. Laurie did apologize for the mess, E. Said lots of their girlfriends from wherever ended up crashing there on their way through New York and it could be a real zoo sometimes.
She got her photo album to show me. Cleared space on the sofa and we sat there together looking at them, our knees touching. There were pictures of her in all sorts of different poses. They were real professional-looking and she looked fine in them. Particularly the ones for panty hose. Man, those legs. Only she also looked, I don’t know … hungry. Like she really, really wanted to please you. Like she really, really needed a gig, any gig, and fast. I could see something in these photographs that I couldn’t see just from being with her, E. She wasn’t ever going to get there. She didn’t have it. I mean, no way. This honey was a loser. A born victim. Someone to be blewed and tattooed by every front artist in the business. Best she could ever hope for in life was to trade in those legs for some security—marry some nice guy with bucks who’d be good to her. And we both know how many of those there are in this world, E. I’ll tell you, it almost brought a tear to my eye when I realized just how right this all was, me showing up now in her life. Just think how much heartache and pain I’d be saving her from by performing my one little random act of kindness. Laurie would never have to deal with that shit ever again.
Laurie would be free.
The night was young, E. Lots of time until midnight. But all of that talk of girlfriends coming and going was making me edgy. You know me, I got to keep moving. I asked her would she mind if I undid my necktie. She said No, of course not. So I did. And then I went ahead and told her I wasn’t any casting agent. In fact, I wasn’t even entirely sure what a casting agent did. And she said I don’t understand—who are you, what are you? And I said Laurie, I am the answer to your prayers. And then she DID understand, because she gave me that look, the one where they KNOW. You know the one I mean. Only by now it was too late. I was doing my thing with my tie. She was a strong girl, no question. But I was too fast and strong for her. And too certain of my goal. And how right it was.
When it was over I helped myself to what I’d been wanting ever since I first laid eyes on her. I left my mark on her, too. Because she was mine now. All mine.
Thanks again for that fifty, E. I’ll get it back to you when I can.
Your pal, T
p.s. Just think how much fun I’d be having if I didn’t have to work
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copyright © 1996 by David Handler
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The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy Page 32