Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  “We can be delicate when we need to,” Rook said.

  “Her family was easiest,” Beryl said. She used the compact again to check her face but made no further additions. “Three sisters, the oldest is sixteen, they’d be eating breakfast before school. With the parents. Went over, ingratiated myself and then I spent two hours convincing them. It’s hard to make a person believe someone never existed, especially if it’s a child or sibling.”

  “So she made them think she was dead,” Rook said, “the Juliet.”

  “Because that was easier,” Beryl said.

  “It’s certainly meaner,” Calder said.

  “The time frame they gave me had no width to it. Plus who has the energy to be going through albums, home movies, taking everything with this girl’s picture in it. She’s got a big goddam house and I’m no good with snooping.”

  “The extended family? Friends?” Calder said.

  “They were immigrants, Greek,” Beryl said.

  “And not in Astoria, figure that out. Greeks in Brooklyn,” Rook said.

  “They definitely weren’t socialites, the galas weren’t gonna miss her. Anyway, whatever, fallout, I was only doing this so the kids would have a window. People might come searching eventually — ”

  “John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter,” Rook said.

  “And I’d promised them that wouldn’t happen, but who can promise anything? But I did right by them.”

  “Making their family and friends think they were dead,” Calder said.

  “Not friends, that woulda been impossible,” Beryl said.

  “It was genius,” Rook said.

  “Boy’s family was harder. Two parents that worked, one in Midtown and one Uptown. Contradictory hours, also. A brother at C. W. Post on Long Island, the other at the University of Rochester.”

  “Impossible in one day,” Rook said.

  “You’re an inveterate clarifier,” Beryl said.

  Calder smiled at this.

  “Tracking down and getting to these people in one day,” Rook said.

  “Cars, trains,” Beryl said, smiling with Calder. “An airplane.”

  “So your lovers, they got away,” Calder said.

  “I get a postcard once in awhile, usually Christmas. They’ve got a baby. I thought they’d name it after me, but, so it would seem, whatever. People are grateful to a point.”

  The hamburgers came, and they talked while they ate. Disgusting habit, that. I was taught to chew with my mouth closed. They were like Piker that way.

  “The ex-boyfriend? The stalker?” Calder said.

  “I took care of him after. The day after, actually,” Beryl said. “He was more difficult.”

  “The one part of this ordeal, this masterpiece, she won’t talk about,” Rook said.

  “Cause with him, it’s something I’ll never do again.”

  “Was hoping you’d slip, tell that part of it to Cal here.”

  “I don’t intend to be rude,” Calder said, “but how did two college kids pay?”

  “They didn’t have money. I got it from the parents. Which is only righteous, you ask me. I didn’t take more than I should have. I don’t ever. It’s good policy.”

  “You can be delicate when it’s needed, where it’s needed,” Rook told Calder. “But it’s often you gotta get mean to get things accomplished. Cruel with a motive for it. How could Beryl have finished things any other way? Those kids, Beryl didn’t get cruel with the families, the lovers wouldn’t have that baby they didn’t name after her.”

  “It’s a job I wouldn’t have taken, I’d have let you have it,” was Calder’s response.

  “Someone comes to you for help,” Rook said.

  “Like that fella today wanted his promotion? We rough him up in the office latrine?”

  “I roughed him up. Folks they need all kinds of assistance. You’ve got it in you to be nasty. I seen sparks of it, Cal.”

  “I don’t ever call it mean, nasty, cruel,” Beryl said. “Any callous toad can be cruel, what’s it take? We gotta be sly. That’s selfishly clever. This can involve pain to others. We’re doing it for money. This is a service. Okay, maybe it can be cruel. A service, though. If that’s a problem for you, might want to consider The Salvation Army. What they do is help people for free.”

  “Red Cross,” Rook said.

  “I got no problem getting paid,” Calder said.

  “Rook’s right,” Beryl said. “I see it in you, too. Edges, saws. Use those.”

  “That’s the last time I’m having this conversation with you, Cal,” Rook said.

  “I’ll be glad not to hear it,” Calder said.

  “You are a bastard,” Rook said, his mouth framing bastard with a toothy grimace.

  “Off Calder for a moment,” Beryl said. “That okay with you?”

  “Rook said as much,” Calder said.

  “I need real help,” Beryl said. “This father I’ve got. Not my father, a client, has a daughter, she’s suicidal. She’s up at some hospital over in New Canaan. I been to see her a couple times. Not the sort of hospital you’re used to, Calder.”

  “Don’t ever take a case mental illness is involved,” Rook said.

  “Father doesn’t want his daughter to die,” Beryl said.

  “They’re too hard to convince,” Rook said. “They don’t hear us right. There’s wiring involved.”

  “And she’s on medications, a handful that makes her a handful. For me,” Beryl said.

  “Which tangles those wires worse,” Rook said.

  Beryl was the first to finish her burger. The compact, more lipstick, more gloss.

  “Has she tried,” Calder said, “or is she just thinking about it?”

  “Thinks about it all the time, even when you’re talking to her,” Beryl said. “It’s like this wrecking ball going around in her brain.”

  “Give the father his money back,” Rook said.

  “He hasn’t paid me yet. And I’ve not once had a job get away from me.”

  “Do what we’re doing,” Calder said. “Can’t get to her, branch out to those around her. I do know these kinds of hospitals. I know every kind of hospital despite your pompous condescension, Rook. Apparently I been around this country more.”

  “Probably true,” Beryl said.

  “Possibly,” Rook said.

  “Than you?” Calder said. “Hospitals I know. These places, doctors have five minutes a day for thirty patients, and then they go home, these doctors, leave for the night, weekends. The nurses and the techs, they’re more generous but also harried.”

  “Like any hospital,” Rook said.

  “Not like any hospital,” Calder said. “These patients are even more unwell and get less attention.”

  “Ask Sotto,” Rook said.

  “They do run around there,” Beryl said.

  “Emergencies, these doctors are scarce at night. ’Less it’s a slit wrist or an attempt at hanging. Like college dorms, most of these places. Unless it’s expensive. It expensive?”

  “No, it’s plebeian. Set up like a campus.”

  “Dorms, then. Health Insurance, they take them all, I’d guess. Your focus is on the nurses, techs, social workers, even the people bring in dogs from local kennels on Saturdays for pet therapy. Apply the staff. A doctor’s five minutes a day is not therapy, it’s a bandage.”

  “And bandages are for after a wound, right? That what you’re gonna say?” Beryl said.

  “Five minutes a day is a lot less than she needs.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Rook said. “You know this much?”

  “I know suicide. Cull the best nurses and you make them sick with getting her better.”

  “That’s not a finite solution,” Beryl said.

  “There’s no direct solution for suicide,” Calder said. “The father will know this. You could excise the notions from her head but you’d change her permanently. The wires Rook mentioned. Special attention short-term, get her past this right now, maybe she�
�ll last, get better treatment later.”

  “Maybe she will,” Beryl said. “All he asked me for was one month.”

  “Bridge that month and you’ll have earned the money you lectured me about.”

  “That’s a mite clever,” Rook said.

  “And cut your fee,” Calder said.

  He and Rook finished eating around the same time.

  “Seen the twins this morning,” Beryl said, looking at Calder. “I’m surprised you’re still around.”

  “Why should you be surprised?” Rook said.

  “They threatened him.”

  “They’re tired of greedy merchants and want to show their muscle,” Rook said. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I’ve handled bullies before,” Calder said. “I have my own particular ways of dealing with them.”

  “I could help, you need it,” Rook said.

  “I wouldn’t mind chopping them down a bit,” Beryl said.

  “I didn’t say anything cause I don’t want any help.”

  “Might have to get involved anyway,” Rook said. There was some hamburger grease on his chin that he wasn’t aware of or was too lazy to wipe. “No, you’re right. I’ll let you alone on this one. You’re gifted enough, handle it alone.”

  “Against one, but two?” Beryl said.

  “We’ll see what happens,” Rook said. He kicked Calder under the table. “You’ve got gall, not saying anything.”

  “Gall I’ve got,” Calder said. “And wipe that grease off your chin, man.”

  “Calder, you came to the city about twenty years too late,” Beryl said.

  “What would you do besides this?” Rook asked her.

  “Not this game again,” she said. “Although I am thinking about Montford in Hamburg, and Zekiel in Marseilles.”

  “You don’t speak either of those languages,” Rook said.

  “Europeans always had more faith in us, were always more aware of us.”

  “Je parle a little rusty Francais,” Rook said.

  “You won’t know I’m missing till I’m gone,” Beryl said. “This won’t be a group tour. I’m not taking any seniors with me.”

  “Asshole,” Rook said. “I’ll figure out where to look.”

  “But you won’t slow me down getting there.”

  “Seven years of Monday dinners and no solidarity,” Rook said to Calder.

  Calder enjoyed the bickering. Part of the reason he’d come to New York was to see if he needed this kind of attachment.

  “Rooks, I forgot, Sotto’s been looking for you since afternoon,” Beryl said. “Wants to talk to you.”

  “Ominous?”

  “Didn’t sound it.”

  “How much do I owe for the burger?” Calder said.

  “We don’t pay here, fool,” Rook said. “You can leave now.”

  Calder left, went upstairs, and fell asleep. He’d never slept so much since he’d come to this city that supposedly never sleeps.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  TUESDAY, Matins: 1st Nocturne

  “Faraday might hate you,” Lundin said.

  “Hate?” Briggs said. “That’s the strongest word there is. Hate me?”

  “Okay, maybe not hate, but he wasn’t recommending for you any medals. He called you Amazing Grace.”

  “Amazing Grace? How sweet the sound?”

  “The hymn or whatever, the one with the wretch.”

  “Call someone that, even in jest, it’s negative, isn’t it?”

  “The fuck would I know? Is it?”

  “I have no idea. Seems like it,” Briggs said.

  They were sitting at one of the club’s tables like any of the regulars. Lundin reclining, one arm over the chair’s back. Briggs all the way forwards, elbows on the tabletop, stomach pressed to the table’s edge.

  The lights were going, the music was going, the dancers were going. It was late and it was busy.

  “And a play-priest,” Lundin said.

  Briggs felt like he’d been cryogenically frozen, except for his head, which was on fire. “You’re a jerk if this is a joke.”

  “I’m a jerk either way, joke or not.”

  “He doesn’t love me, I know that. I work hard for him, he knows this.”

  “You work hard for me. I told him.”

  “What’d he tell you?” Briggs said.

  “Nothing, he was asking questions.” Lundin was watching Kitten as she was the only dancer who generated in him the slightest iota of interest. This conversation with Briggs, he didn’t want to be having it but it was necessary.

  “Well what the fuck did he ask, Lundin? Goddam it, why are you making — ”

  “He wanted to know do you more than just terrorize, are you more than muscle.”

  “Hell yes I am.”

  “Are you smart, how much do I value you. Are you similar enough, given what we do.”

  “What you and Hoone and Big Sir do,” Briggs said.

  “A report card is what he wanted,” Lundin said.

  “You better’ve given me an A across the board.”

  “Maybe I threw in two Bs, make it believable. Face it, you’re not a straight A. I doubt you ever got an A your whole life.”

  “A few. You get a report card yourself?”

  “I told him you were almost pregnant,” Lundin said.

  “And that makes less fucking sense than the rest of this.”

  “It was a compliment. At the time, given what he was asking.”

  “You stood up for me, I know you stood up for me, Lundin.”

  “That was the almost pregnant part.”

  Lundin drank some coffee through a sugar cube clenched in his front teeth.

  “This is a surprise,” Briggs said. “A little upsetting.” He waved a waitress over, asked for some water.

  Lundin said, “I’m telling you because, if, time comes, might come a time. I’m telling you because.”

  “We been together a long while, the two of us,” Briggs said.

  Lundin put a hand up. “I don’t want that speech. You’re a jackass but I owe you plenty. However, don’t go reminding me our history. That’s groveling. You’ve never groveled. Don’t start.”

  “We owe each other is right,” Briggs said. “That’s what happens, people have history. This isn’t groveling, it’s factating. When’d this smear happen?”

  “Afternoon Sunday.”

  “And you waited till now?”

  “I had to approach this a certain way, I was deciding which,” Lundin said.

  “And a blindside you figured was the best approach.”

  “That was my conclusion,” Lundin said, sipping more coffee through the sugar cube. “I realize I’m no good indirect. I told you, didn’t I? I could’ve not.”

  “Blindsided me?”

  “Told you,” Lundin said. “Me and Faraday went to see one of the politicians.”

  “And Faraday said not to bring me,” Briggs said.

  “He said to come alone.”

  “Where’s the fucking difference? It’s the same fucking thing.”

  “Keep it down and quit cursing. We’ll get thrown out our own club. Iommi’s looking in our direction.”

  “I could take him, I terrorize.”

  “Now you’re acting a child.”

  “Faraday, he doesn’t fire people.” The waitress came back with his water. Briggs downed half the glass in a few gulps.

  Lundin said, “Anise? Last year. She’s at the Hustler Club today. Worked up to rotating headliner. And Opal. Where’d she go again?”

  “That’s dancers,” Briggs said.

  “What are you worried, he’s gonna kill you?” Lundin said.

  “Oxford and Ula.”

  “Ula, I miss her,” Lundin said.

  “I’m thinking of those two.”

  “Ula was beginning to show, she had her baby in Los Angeles. Oxford went to, I don’t know, South America somewhere. His Dad’s in cocaine. Talents like his, Oxford’d be useful, no?”


  “No. I found Ula’s cell in the dressing room couple weeks after she left,” Briggs said. “Who leaves without their cell phone? And to L.A.? The place is spread out like a blanket. Can’t get anywhere without a car and a cell.”

  “So Faraday killed them?” Lundin said. “Kinkaid told me where they went and why.”

  “Let’s please don’t bring Kink into this discussion. Could be it was his baby Ula was having.”

  “So Kink killed them,” Lundin said.

  “They were mediocre. I guess I’m mediocre, too,” Briggs said, “if Faraday was asking.”

  “That’s not what I told him.”

  “Intimidation, that’s all I’m good for? Threats? What about that engineer working the Holland Tunnel that time? I didn’t threaten him and I got that job accomplished, didn’t I? Without needing you. You were there, that’s all, an accomplice. I did the job myself.”

  “He’s not gonna kill you, Briggs.”

  “Wish I were sure. You’ll find something of mine a week from now. My dentures in the tray by my bed. Something I wouldn’t leave behind.”

  “You’re that scared,” Lundin said, “two things you can do.”

  “Run or run,” Briggs said. “Put my meager life in a duffel and grab a bus.”

  “Run is one of them. Fucking cowardly but go ahead, and you are no coward.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Second thing is to stay here and prove your value.”

  “You said I’m not like the rest of what we do. Hoone, Kink. The Nine.”

  “Who brought up The Nine?”

  “This is in no way fucking fair.”

  “Quit cursing so loud, I warned you. Iommi.”

  “It’s not possible you could, him, influence him. Faraday. My behalf,” Briggs said. He finished the water.

  “Influence Faraday,” Lundin said. “Any influence with Faraday goes in the opposite direction. I wouldn’t be able to touch the motherfucker. Second thing is, I was saying to him, you could help me finish this job.”

  “That Faraday wants me no part of. That you fucked up the beginning of.”

  “Just do what you can do,” Lundin said, “and do it right on the first try. Then Faraday will see. And he’s more likely to see because he’ll be there. Most of the time. You’ll have the right audience. Tone down the religious stuff, though. Don’t want him thinking you’re the fanatic you are.”