by Adam Connell
“They’re fine as they are. So am I.”
“Could you move closer to the door?” Briggs said. “I can still barely hear you.”
“I need the sink, sorry.”
“What are you doing in there? I been to other clubs. They’ve got much fancier rigs. Faraday could change the lights. High-tech, ones that blink to the beat of your songs. You’d like them.”
“I don’t see other clubs much.”
“I don’t go often.”
“On the third stage, there’s a loose floorboard,” Tamm said. “I have to watch for it when I’m up there or I’ll trip.”
“I’ll fix it, you should’ve told me. That your only problem with the place?”
“I’m not a complainer,” Tamm said.
“I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count my grievances.”
He heard the clicking of an electric razor.
“I’ve got you prisoner here,” she said. “Wouldn’t you rather go?”
“Best thing about working at Tattletail is watching you.”
A long pause. “Thanks.”
“You don’t have to be so shy taking a compliment,” he said. “Are you happy there?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
His voice grew louder, like it was revving up for a race. “This is a fantastic city. I can get any kind of ethnic food, but what I usually have is Italian at a dive by where I live. World’s best museums I never go see. Famous shopping which doesn’t interest me. Landmarks I never been to, never will. Great doctors, people fly in from all over, I don’t get sick. I ask myself all the time, why do I stay. What’s keeping me here? All these perks I don’t need? Someone like you — this is the other reason I came today — they’d be agreeable to another place, fresh start, right?”
“Because I’m a stripper?”
“You don’t have to be. I always thought, when I started at being a priest, I’d save so many souls. It’d be easy, there’d be so many opportunities.”
“But you haven’t. You’ve told me this.”
“You’re the only one at the club worth saving, Tamm.”
“You’ve told me that, too. A thousand times already.”
“It’s not me, it’s God talking through me.”
“Please,” Tamm said, scoffing.
“Don’t mock me. If I only get the chance to save one soul, it would be yours, Tamm. You aren’t entirely sinful.”
“Doesn’t it get tiring, telling me all this, what is it, once a month? Like my period.”
“I need to save someone. Gosh, it’s like, maybe it’s similar to some middle-aged woman feels she just has to have a child, give birth.”
“That hardly seems a good analogy,” Tamm said.
There was a long silence as Briggs controlled his anger. He’d thought it a perfect comparison.
“I’d leave the priesthood for you. If it would benefit you.”
“Briggs.”
“I would.”
“This is new.”
“A lot’s been happening,” he said. “Dangerous things. If it meant saving you, I’d put my collar aside for good. It’d be worth that. I know I’m twice your age but think about it?”
“This is a little unlike what you’ve preached before.”
“Because you never seemed to listen. I’ve decided it would take something drastic for you to listen seriously. I’d disavow my calling if it meant saving your soul. Sounds contradictory, but it’s not. My last act as a priest, freeing you from all this, could be God’s plan. Move away with me, let’s go away, right now.”
The bathroom door opened all the way. Briggs stood. He’d been expecting she’d be dressed in something erotic but she was wearing the leggings, Goth skirt, and sweater from her last date with Calder. It had been lying on the bathroom floor since she’d gotten home. Her red hair was pinned up with glitter on it.
“Where’s your — ”
“Underneath this,” she said. “You ready?”
“No I’m not ready.” He moved near her. She was prepared to make a retreat into the bathroom. She was shaking but Briggs didn’t notice. The Mace was in her purse but her purse was on the stand near the door, and that was too far.
“You’d be helping me, too,” Briggs said. “Show you, show God, who I really am.”
“I know who you are.”
“A villain? A cur not worth your precious time?”
“Why now?” she said.
“The way Faraday’s been acting, the job I’m working with him and Lundin. Some reason, you’ve been in my head more.”
“I thought you liked them younger.”
“I’d do away with that.” He smiled. “Be only you and me. Two souls saved with one leap of faith. Go away with me, leave the city.”
“With you.”
“That’s right. We both need saving.”
“Briggs, you’re strong and, times, typically, nice when you wanna be. But annoying with all this shit. I don’t wanna have these talks anymore. Find another girl at the club, subject this to.”
“The other girls are garbage.”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“The reedy blond came that night, picked you up from the club.”
“Reedy?”
“You’re not still seeing him,” Briggs said.
“Ask him when he shows up.”
“How long’s it been between you two?” Briggs said.
“Not long.”
“Then it can’t be serious. We’d be better off without him.”
“It was serious from the start. Committed.”
“I don’t believe that, nothing’s committed from the start. Not when it comes to people. I know people. Me and Lundin have to know people.”
“He’s on his way over to take me to the club.”
“You told me the club’s not for a couple hours, you could sleep, it’s early for you.”
“For lunch, then the club,” she said.
Lie.
“I wouldn’t mind meeting him again,” Briggs said. “We’ll give him five minutes, then I’ll walk you to work.”
“Go without me.”
“Why should you walk alone?”
They waited for Calder but Tamm hadn’t told him to come and he never showed.
Five minutes exactly, Briggs headed for the door, and Tamm had no choice but to follow.
THIRTY-THREE
Monday, Sext
Getting out of the taxi, Rook warned the driver to wait for them.
“I’ve got other fares to find.” He was American-born, white, not like the cabbies in the city.
“You’ll stay here till we come out,” Calder said. Sternly.
The driver put the car in park, reclined the seat, closed his eyes. “The meter’s running, though.”
“Turn it off,” Calder said. Sternly.
The driver obliged.
Calder and Rook went side by side up the walk to the house. It was a neighborhood here, like in the residential parts of Queens. Except on Staten Island their streets are shorter, there’s more traffic signs and smaller lawns. And almost all Italian, the whole fucking island, it’s like the New World’s Sicily, it’s so uniform that way. So much hairspray it’s a wonder the ones who smoke don’t set the island on fire. There’s a bridge, it’s called the Outerbridge Crossing. Named after the first chairman of the Port Authority, his real name was Outerbridge. That makes no sense, it’s like an urban myth, but that’s the guy’s last name, Outerbridge. Staten Island. A borough renowned for a garbage dump called Fresh Kills. These names.
Here I am, off point again.
“You talk to the son,” Rook said. “It’s not my job to be here. You have to start doing more of the heavy lifting.”
“I’m fine with that.”
“Some great neighborhood here. You’d take it for granted, Adelard’s son, he’d be living somewhere that respected itself.”
“All Staten Island’s like this?” Calder said.
“I wouldn�
�t know.”
Calder rang the doorbell. No one came to answer. He tried looking through the window on the side of the door but it was heavily curtained. He rang the bell again.
“This is not a good omen,” Rook said. “People with nothing to hide answer their doors.”
“Or aren’t home.”
“I can hear children. And it’s near dinnertime for young kids.” Rook pounded on the door with, Calder thought, his predictable lack of propriety.
A woman answered after parting the side curtain for a peek. She had young features but the bearing of an older woman weighed down by drugs or poverty. Wearing clothes that would fit someone larger, an older and heavier sister. Calder saw something pretty in the way she wore her hair.
“You with TransCredit?” she said.
“We could use your husband for a few minutes,” Calder said.
“And when you find the lowlife use him all you want and after remind him he’s got a wife and a family on Holdridge Avenue. That’s after you use him. Use him first.”
She was closing the door when Calder stopped it with a stiff arm.
“He’s not here,” Calder said.
“That’s what I told you,” she said, still trying to force the door.
“The woman’s not lying,” Rook said.
“I know that, I was talking to you,” Calder said. To the wife: “Invite us in.”
“Why invite you in?” she said. The sound of two kids laughing came past the door, but she wasn’t listening to them. “He’s not home. It’s been weeks now. What do you want him for if you’re not TransCredit?”
“We’ve got money for him,” Calder said.
Rook turned so she couldn’t see him, and he smiled.
It was clear she could do with some money; to Calder it was even more obvious that money was her foremost thought all the time. “We’re not collecting, we’re paying.”
She stepped aside like some palace eunuch.
“We start upstairs,” Calder said. “We can’t trust her in total.”
“You are learning,” Rook said. “There’s those that lie and have faith in the lie, makes our job harder. There’s no truth with them.”
The master bedroom was welcome and neat. No one under the bed, in the bathroom. Her closet was full and organized, his was missing half its clothes.
Both children’s rooms were awry, with neglected clothing on bedposts and forgotten toys on the floor. They had the fragrance of all children’s rooms: air deodorizer and worn underwear.
“He wouldn’t dare hide in here,” Rook said, laughing.
The wife was tailing them. “Someone owes him money? I’d tell you, he, he was here I’d, definitely I’d say so. I’ll tell you where he’s probably hidden himself from all five of us.”
“Let us finish looking,” Calder said to her.
The children’s bathroom was also empty. Adelard’s second son wasn’t on the ground floor or in the garage. All Calder and Rook found was that this woman kept an orderly home and that her children did not.
Two girls (preteens, tweens, whatever the hell we’re supposed to label them nowadays) were eating macaroni and cheese at the kitchen table.
Rook sat next to them. “Is Dad here?”
They looked to their Mom, who nodded.
“Is he home?” Calder said.
“Not since he helped me write my Vasco de Gama report,” the older one said. “Last month.”
“At least a month,” the wife said. “She’s on to Magellan now and he came later, didn’t he? How much money?” She crossed her arms. Calder noticed a tight grouping of faded scars on one wrist.
“We can’t divulge that, but enough to send two men out looking,” Calder said. “Where would he be?”
“Is there a check? You could leave it with me, I could cash it.”
“It’s more a payment has to be served to him personally,” Rook said. “He has to sign for it, we have to sign it over. Do you have an idea where he might be?”
“With that sk — ” She halted and glanced at her kids. “A friend of his, a woman. She lives in the city. A Realtor. Was our Realtor before she moved up into the skyscraper high-rises. I had no idea they’d been friends since then. I have her card. Home number’s probably outta date, but I’m sure the cell’s the same.”
“That would be a help,” Calder said.
She opened a drawer, spread around some menus, came up with the card. Calder put it in his pocket. “When we track him down, I’ll send him home, too.”
“He won’t want to,” she said.
“What about you?” Calder said.
“Girls?” she said. “Would you like that, Daddy home?”
They nodded heartily.
“You close with your father-in-law?” Rook said.
“He’s never liked me much, I can’t say for sure why. His son certainly didn’t marry beneath them, his father’s not a senator.”
“So this here’s dead,” Rook said, getting to his feet. “Let’s go, Cal, we got dinner.”
Rook went outside first. Before Calder could make it past the threshold the wife grabbed his elbow. A gentle grab.
“If you don’t find him, and maybe you won’t, you could come back without him, your friend,” she said. Lower, as if the kids could hear all the way from the kitchen. “If you wanted. You seem like a very nice man. And adorable.” She smiled. It wasn’t a manipulative smile and it gave her heart-shaped face a warm nimbus. “See, when I smile I’m younger, I’m not too old.”
“I wouldn’t mind and I’d consider it but I’m married,” Calder said.
“So am I. Shit, you knew that of course. I would never have asked if you were wearing a ring but I saw there wasn’t one.”
“Don’t wear it to work,” Calder said. “You can do much better than me. I will send him home, miss. I have to go.”
Rook was waiting at the bottom of the steps. “C’mon, the car’s idling.”
“Did you do that?”
“Her clutching you? Didn’t have to, I saw the way her eyes were set. Why I left first, gave her the chance.”
“Cause you hate Tamm.”
“I don’t hate her.”
“So you had nothing to do with that.”
“I guess you’ll never know. Get in, I’m hungry.”
back to top
THIRTY-FOUR
Monday, early Vespers
Beryl was already in the booth, half-dozing. You remember her, she’s the one who wasn’t quite good-looking. Fond of makeup and the perfume. That day she was wearing too much eyeliner and not enough eye shadow to match. In my opinion. But just the right amount of lipstick.
“We’re late,” Rook said, getting into the booth beside her.
Calder had the opposite booth to himself.
“This way you can talk to each other,” Rook said. “I don’t need to be facing either one of you in particular.”
“This dinner you’ll talk when you eat,” Calder said. “Unlike at the diner. This is an exception.”
“Every Monday dinner with Beryl is an exception,” Rook said.
“Sweet of him,” Beryl said.
“You two know each other,” Rook said. He seemed eager for some reason.
“It was a brief hello,” Beryl said to Calder, put her hand out across the table. They shook. “Calder? It’s Calder,” she said. “How’s the city receiving you?”
“Indifferently.”
The Gossamer’s Veil was full with locals getting a late dinner.
“The city’s rarely indifferent,” Beryl said. “You’re lucky. It could go either way for you now, so tread lightly.”
“Hard to do with Rook being my guide.”
“We’ll get to that,” Rook said.
Pal came over and Rook ordered them hamburgers.
“It’s what we always have,” Rook said to Calder. “Pal seems to forget.”
Beryl removed a compact from her purse, examined her face in the round mirror. Deciding well enough n
eeded company, she used the applicator to add more foundation to her face.
“I hear you got the Adelard job,” she said.
“Calder’s got the assignment,” Rook said, “he asked for my help. Want to tell him about Juliet? You never tire telling that one to strangers.”
“Strangers like us, who’d understand,” Beryl said. “It’s a good story. It was a tough job.”
“Calder needs more background,” Rook said.
“Do I?”
“Yeah, in what we do, yes. Why I brought you along.”
Beryl settled into her seat, losing a few inches in height as she leaned forwards with her spangled bracelets clinking on the table. “You ever work with lovers?”
“With someone I loved?” Calder said.
“No, two clients in love with each other.”
“In a way,” Rook said. “He was hospitals and comas.”
“I had this couple,” Beryl said. “Interracial, but their mix doesn’t matter.”
“White and Indian,” Rook said. “India Indian.”
“They’d been dating in secret a while. At one of those colleges, most of the students live at home. City Tech, some outer borough, Brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Calder said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Beryl said. “Their families weren’t very tolerant. Bigots, even.”
“No arranged marriages planned for the boy,” Rook said. “But the parents knew who they didn’t want their kids to marry.”
Beryl said, “The kids, they hear about us, come to the bar. I’m the only one here. They want to disappear but don’t want anyone missing them, don’t want anybody coming after them. The boy’s name, Sanjiv. The girl I’ll call Juliet to make it more romantic.”
“Two families to take care of,” Rook said.
“And a maniacal ex-boyfriend,” Beryl said. “Borderline stalker. You know, the obtrusive ex.”
“This is a heavy package,” Calder said.
“More players than any job I had before,” Beryl said. “Brothers and sisters to deal with, too. Fucking heavy is right. I had to strike each family at once, otherwise you’ve got mom and dad and junior talking about sis and one of them wouldn’t know she’s gone and it all crumbles.”