Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  She accused me in front of Faraday, Lundin, Hoone, Kinkaid, some of the dancers. Said I assaulted her back there in the dressing room. (I was never back there once, it’s not my domain.)

  Showed them all the bruises I didn’t give her: upper arms, neck, one breast. Seemed to me, later, because I was as shocked as everyone else, these bruises were equal to the size of Kink’s hands, not mine.

  She left to go work at another club, I went to jail, sentenced to three years.

  Faraday had a new XO: Kinkaid.

  I didn’t have any chances to argue with Faraday, he never came to visit me. Writing defenses in a letter to him seemed too desperate.

  Saffron’s still at her new club, Private Eyes. I plan on seeing her when they let me out. Complicit or coerced, doesn’t matter much to me. Just like I planned my first fresh encounter with Kinkaid. In three hundred variations, a new torture coming into my head all the time.

  Why didn’t I fight it? Fish, that’s a very good point.

  At first I was as shocked as everybody there. It wasn’t like me, going into the dressing room, trying to rape someone. For a couple days I was convinced, like everyone else, I was guilty. Just that I couldn’t remember, I’d put it out of my memory.

  When I realized that wasn’t so, it was way too late. Everyone had heard, even Tamm who wasn’t there for the accusation. And I was in custody.

  I couldn’t go into Hoone, Lundin, Kinkaid, Faraday. Not all at once like I would’ve needed. Then the dancers. I would never be able to get into Faraday anyhow, and if not him, why bother?

  Sure, the lawyers, the judge, the guards. But if not Faraday, what’s the point? This is going back a year. Back then, I still considered Faraday family.

  It all came to me too late. When I had fight in me, the fight was over. Faraday really thought I’d try and rape one of his dancers. Stings to this day.

  TWENTY-NINE

  You’re much better than the groaner was my bunkmate before you, Fish. Dysinger. They transferred him out so you could come join me. Groaned himself hoarse every night like he’d been gutshot. I thought it was funny so I didn’t stop him, you know. It bothered everybody else. Someone had asked me to help, maybe I would’ve, but didn’t anyone ask me.

  You’ll get used to the bouquet in here. Not everyone’s as clean as you and me. Stay that way, clean, if only for me. Some of these slobs don’t flush because they want something solid to throw at the guards. Don’t do that. I can’t stand that.

  The guards, they didn’t know how to handle me at first. I became a notorious personality. It was a new one brought me my food every day cause no one wanted to do it twice. I confess, I had some fun with them my first few weeks.

  New York’s Finest. Policemen.

  New York’s Bravest. Firemen.

  New York’s Strongest. Sanitation workers.

  New York’s Boldest. Corrections officers.

  Not so bold with me. They ran out of guards in short time. Then they drew straws, or I’d have starved. They could’ve hired more guards, or allowed me in the mess hall.

  New York’s Boldest. Chickenshits.

  I stopped doing that. It was juvenile.

  You think I’m making all this, everything, all this up. I’ve got proof it’s true. I’ll read you a letter. Came a few weeks before Calder arrived in the city, before Faraday heard about my parole hearing.

  “I’d come to visit, but you know how I am with prisons. Never been, and never want to see the inside of one, not even on TV. I change the channel. Do miss you though. I know you’re lonely, too, but not lonelier than me.

  “My Dad is worse. I doubt he’ll last the end of summer. This’ll be his last season. Say a prayer for him. Look in on him maybe, see how he is. I’ll tell him you’ll be looking, he’ll like that. Hoone’s searching for censored (blacked out with a Sharpie) can censored, but I’m not so sure anyone’s out there left. We been through so many of them. Censored censored.

  “Got a new censored I could’ve used you censored, being so special as you are. Unique, let’s be honest.

  “Emmie’s fine, always beautiful. She misses coffee with you. We all miss something with you. Me, our after-hours drunken Scrabble. Lundin, the walks you took. Kinkaid, well, Kinkaid I don’t know what censored he censored, if he even censored.

  “Emmie, I never met a woman took such care of her skin, like one day it’s gonna hang in a censored censored as an example of what skin should be. Guess, as a dancer, she ought to. We have a lot of silences.

  “I hope it’s normal. Maybe there comes a point, you’ve said everything censored. Are these letters censored? We been together so long, much longer than what’s normal for most. It’s because she knows full censored not while she’s so damn censored.

  “I need you home, but the censored says not possible. And to get you out another censored censored censored censored censored censored censored free and censored.

  “Your Unit Warden still censored me the first of every month, so I know you’re behaving. Stay behaved. Censored censored or censored.

  “And stay well. Don’t count the days, it has to go by faster that way. What the hell do I know. Keep yourself busy. Sorry I haven’t written in so long.”

  The end. See, I told you the letter was real. You hear me folding it back up. I got others. I could read you more later. You let me know. There’s a recent letter where Faraday gives me directions pertaining to you. I won’t be reading that one out loud, it’s got your name in it.

  Should be asking yourself right about now, I saw, see, everything from every angle, why didn’t I get a warning to Faraday.

  Firstly, I told him not to hire Kinkaid. That’s first and that’s foremost. He should’ve listened. Let him deal with Kink, my advice isn’t good enough for him.

  Then the bastard never comes see me. Not even once for five minutes. Even 300 seconds Faraday can’t spare. Five minutes would be nice. Not decent, but a gesture. Granted, the drive up here would be twenty-five times longer than those five minutes, but so fucking what?

  Never a phone call. The occasional letter’s a gesture, an obscene gesture. My opinion. Talks to the Unit Warden more than with me.

  The incident with Saffron, Emmie didn’t believe it, bless her sad heart.

  Not that Faraday was mad at me. Let me use his lawyer, but also he didn’t come to my defense. What I got from him is he thought what “happened” with Saffron was, it was a misunderstanding on my part, and she wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  He was never totally behind my innocence. That was more painful to me than kidney stones, and I’ve had those.

  I never write him back, Faraday. I’m a spiteful motherfucker.

  back to top

  THIRTY

  MONDAY, early Terce

  Rook and Calder headed down to Wall Street on the R train. It was Monday morning, the stock markets had just opened, all the professionals were at their desks, it was hot out. One of those mornings you can feel it’ll be a scorcher later.

  When they’d gotten back from the Honda dealership yesterday, Calder had spent some time walking around alone, let the city rub up against him. Then he went to his room in the afternoon and slept all night. Slept alone, no tossing, like a fucking corpse he was. I know cause I watched him. It’s amusing watching people sleep. They do funny things, make funny noises.

  There were tourists on the sidewalk and in the street, them being tourists and it being hot. Being a true New Yorker, Rook hated tourists because they don’t know how to walk in crowds or cross the street and always have their necks up looking at this or that. But we love them because we’re really quite friendly despite what you hear and we like the money they spend. This might be a lie.

  Calder, no better than a tourist himself, could feel the direction of Rook’s growing anger and tried to stay in step behind him.

  “This is Staten Island?” he said.

  “We need a ferry for that,” Rook said. “See Adelard’s other son, a ferry. That’s la
ter.” He was slicing through the crowd like a hatchet. “First we gotta do something else that’s a whole ’nother part of this life you haven’t seen yet.”

  “Look, I may not be City like you but I’ve done my share of things before I got here. I didn’t waltz in new-minted.”

  Rook would’ve stopped to face Calder dramatically but he hated people who did that, and besides there was no room. “People owe Sotto money,” he said over his shoulder. “This takes up half my week, collecting. It’s not like we give itemized receipts, send bills in the mail. Some folks don’t like paying. So I make them. And I don’t think you’re newly minted, I just don’t see where, just, can’t tell if you’re tarnished.”

  “Why doesn’t Sotto get the money up front?”

  “Why don’t we put the money in escrow? This is a business of results. Technically it’s a business that don’t exist. Try getting the money up front. Try that.”

  “What other parts of this don’t I know about?” Calder said. He was sounding petulant, and he was aware of it. Not proudly.

  “You started too late,” Rook said.

  “My whole life’s en — ”

  “Sotto found you too late,” Rook said. They stood on a corner together, waiting for the light to change. “What you think of as advanced we did in our teens.”

  “Big bad New York.”

  “There’s undercurrents here. Riptides.”

  “That’s starting to get stale. There’s nothing here I’m afraid of.”

  “That may be true.”

  The light changed, and they crossed.

  “Please, it’s not a monster,” Calder said. “Just because you’ve lived here — Eight million other people live here. What makes them special?”

  “You know what makes me special,” Rook said. “You’re the one asked me for help.”

  “Because there’s no one at the bar — ”

  “All right, I’ll quit trying to scare you.” He grinned. “It’s not taking anyway, making you scared. But you did start here too old and I don’t want you surprised at what we’re gonna do.”

  “I can follow your lead,” Calder said.

  “I think you can,” Rook said. “Believe it or not, most of the big brokerage houses, they’re not on Wall Street anymore, they’re in Jersey. The ones didn’t go under.”

  They went through the glass doors of 14 Wall and walked across the tiled floor to the security desk.

  “IDs and sign in,” said the guard from his chair. His name tag was on backwards. “Then I’ll call, see if you have someone wants to meet you.”

  “Martz, let us in,” Rook said. “We’re visiting an acquaintance to close a deal.”

  “I know you?” the man said. He looked at his name tag, knew it was reversed.

  “Used to live near each other on, what was it, it was at 44th and Ninth. You moved out to The Bronx with the family. I was down the hall.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Buzz us in,” Rook said.

  “Why would I let you in? A neighbor I don’t remember because you were never my neighbor? Would I buzz you in? Lose my job?”

  “Cause you don’t,” Rook said, “I’ll start screaming about how you knock your wife around.”

  “I never laid a hand on my wife.”

  “It was never a hand, was it, Martz? Bottles, belts, that lamp you broke across her leg. The wedding-present lamp. Never a hand, I didn’t say hands.”

  “She talked ba — The hell is this? You from her parents?”

  “She give you sass?” Rook said. “Still married?”

  “I remarried, two kids.”

  “Two kids, two more targets to hit?” Rook said. “That why you had them? How’s the new wife, she butch? Can take a punch?”

  “This, the lobby, this — A punch? Why are you here?”

  “She can take a punch,” Rook said. “I know this, in the same way that I can tell you’re frightened now, everything you’ve been listening to me say is gospel. I could call Social Services or I could make an announcement right here where I’m standing.”

  “Buzz us in,” Calder said. “My friend’s yelling voice is like a bullhorn.”

  “Through to — Around the side,” Martz said, his arm angled backwards, “the first turnstile.”

  There were three banks of elevators.

  “We need the twenty-seventh floor,” Rook said.

  The twenty-seventh was serviced by the middle bank. As they waited for the next elevator to labor downwards Rook wrote something in the small pad he kept in his pocket, ripped the sheet out, put it up his sleeve.

  “Who are we coming for?” Calder said.

  “Jaeckels? I don’t know, something with a J, I forget his last name because it doesn’t matter, I know what he looks like. Call him Jay.”

  “And he knows what you look like,” Calder said.

  “Damn right, he won’t be happy to see this face,” Rook said. “An international trader. London or Tokyo, whichever’s open when we’re open.”

  “What did Sotto do for him?”

  “I’m the one did it, Sotto’s owed three-quarters the money, me, the last quarter.”

  The elevator arrived, regurgitated thirteen people in brown and grey suits. They didn’t speak to each other, went off in different directions like a handful of ball bearings.

  The elevator had a high ceiling with recessed lights, wood veneer panels that were nicked from briefcases and packages and shoes. I hate that. A monitor above the floor buttons forced on you snippets of current events and business happenings.

  “The way this society makes you pay attention,” Calder said, “I hate it.”

  See? Him and me.

  I lost them in the elevator but I knew what floor they were getting off and found them there.

  The doors chimed open. There was a blue Art Deco desk ahead. Behind it an old secretary, his legs so frail you could see how thin they were by the way his pants lay. He was old enough that he should have been shriveling somewhere else, in a home with his peers.

  He gave them a fake smile. “Morning, welcome to Herzug, Heine, Gedold. Did you have an appointment? Maybe we got off on the wrong floor?”

  Rook stroked his stubble (his, not the old man’s) and smiled. He pointed at the glass doors on the left. “First you’re going to apologize to us, then you’re going to get up and open those doors for me.”

  “I’m going to what?” His drooping wrinkles jumped up towards his thin hair.

  Rook calmed himself, stared a little past him, and said, “First you’re going to apologize. Then open those fucking doors.”

  The man’s hand moved towards a black phone but Rook was there first, his hand on the old man’s wrist. The old man squinted at him with his right eye. Wide-open fear was on the left. Fear that was, I’m pretty sure, beyond the pain in his wrist.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “we get so many attitudes come out that elevator.”

  “You’re sorry,” Rook said. Gravely.

  “I am.”

  Rook released the man’s wrist. “Go get the doors.”

  The old man was slow about it and Rook didn’t rush him; it was age, not contempt.

  As Calder and Rook went through, Rook said to the old man, “Be nicer. And call anyone, I’ll snap your brittle bones for you.”

  They navigated the cubicles towards the trading area. Rook knew the way. The cubicles opened onto a square room with white clocks spanning the walls all the way around. Every major city in their time zones. One long table on both sides festooned with busy screens and rectangular, wireless keyboards with silver buttons. There were no phones, only headsets. Bottom of each screen was lined with squares labeled with the names of securities, of other trading firms.

  It was a crap operation, not like you’d see on the nightly news or in movies. Quieter than Calder expected. Everyone was talking into their headsets. No one was standing, energetic, with a black receiver in their hand asking colleagues to hit this stock or take that o
ne. “Who’s up? News out on Cranswick! Who’s up?”

  Their fingers were constantly touching the screens, moving big floating boxes up and down, minimizing, maximizing, reducing.

  Rook went over to a tall chubby man and grabbed him by the back of his crap shirt and lifted him halfway out of his chair, tipping it over.

  Jay reached behind for Rook’s fingers. Rook leaned in and whispered, “Rook,” then swatted the headset off and shoved Jay forwards down the open aisle. Calder caught up to Jay and bent one of the man’s arms behind his back.

  Everyone was watching.

  “Get back to your calls,” Rook said. Vehemently.

  Rook led the way to the Men’s Room. Calder threw the man inside and Rook pushed Jay up to the far wall, held him there with a forearm on his neck.

  “Jay,” Rook said. He was grinning. Jay was not.

  “Someone’s gonna call Security,” Jay croaked.

  Calder said, “No one’s calling Security. They hate you in there.”

  “Cal, make sure the room’s empty,” Rook said.

  No one was at the urinals, which were spotless, with those discs in the bottom look like big mints. Only one stall door was closed.

  Calder knocked. “Best you come out now.”

  “There’s four other shitters as good as this one,” a man said.

  Calder rapped on the door again. “Pull up your pants and finish later.”

  The occupant ruffled his newspaper in answer.

  Calder kicked in the door, took the man by the shoulders and tossed him onto the floor. “Pull up your pants,” Calder said, “and if you need to, wash your hands in the Ladies’ Room. Tell anyone we’re here, well, don’t tell anyone we’re here. It’ll make for an embarrassing story.”

  The man buckled his pants on the way out, looking no one in the face.

  Rook took a few steps back from Jay. “Sotto’s waiting on his fee.”

  “Sotto didn’t do anything to earn it.” Jay was making chubby fists.