Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  Calder had to agree but didn’t out loud.

  “They’ve got no friends but each other, not even in that old bar of yours. Beryl, memories is her cash cow.”

  “Meaning how?” Calder said.

  “They’re like clay to her, that’s her specialty.”

  Lundin pulled on his cigarette; Calder could hear the paper burning.

  “This sound okay to you?” Lundin said, exhaling smoke. “And Rook? He’s a bit of them all.”

  “Here comes the punch line,” Calder said. “How Faraday and Briggs and you and whoever else I haven’t met, they’re a more decent crew.”

  “I don’t know I’d use the word decent,” Lundin said, “but they’re more fun. We don’t step on toes — or smash, break, pry open, I don’t know, when it can be helped. We make more money cause we get the better jobs. And I’m fairer than Sotto.”

  “You might be, but Fara — ”

  “Is looking to expand and I’m to have my own team. That I’ll be fair with. If you want, you don’t ever have to meet Faraday.”

  “That’s no incentive,” Calder said.

  “Cal, what I’m saying is, I’ll protect you,” Lundin said. “You’ll work hard for me. You’re a hard worker or Sotto wouldn’t have gotten in your way and taken you in.”

  “And I get?”

  “Tutored. Funded. Protected. Employed. Laughs. Laid, if you need help. Some guys, your good looks, they’re shy about it. You’re not shy, though. The Nicotine Queen. It’s shit like this is what I’m saying here. You’ll get all you need plus what the city has to give. I get my team. We’ll build it. We accrue.”

  “Briggs?” Calder said.

  “He’s my yin, I’m his yang,” Lundin said.

  “I’m not working with or for Briggs,” Calder said.

  “No one’s suggesting he marry you.”

  “What we’re talking about,” Calder said, “is the grass I know a little and the grass I don’t know at all.”

  “Hard to tell which is greener.”

  “How many has Faraday got?” Calder said.

  “Men? Like you and me men? Discounting Briggs, thirteen. Nine of them I never see. One’s currently in prison.”

  Me.

  Calder was beginning to recognize some of the buildings they passed. The bar wasn’t far.

  Lundin turned to Calder while driving. “Throw this Adelard case,” he said. “Do that, I’ll give you ten grand and a validated invitation. You’ll leave Sotto, you’ll call me Boss but I’ll treat you like we’re equals.”

  “I might finish with Adelard on my own, for personal reasons.”

  “That’s the condition,” Lundin said. “I’m set on that. Am I going to trample you if you don’t? Am I going to squeeze you out of town? No, you can stay either way. But I bared myself to you just a little bit. A gesture of brotherhood. Holding goodwill here in the palms of these black hands. If it’s not returned, you go against me on this, I’ll get that gesture back.”

  “You’re making a very vague threat,” Calder said.

  “From you or from someone close. One way or another and neither of them will be nice. It’s no death sentence. We’re here.”

  Lundin slowed the Coronet and popped the locks. Calder hadn’t realized he’d been locked in the whole ride.

  Lundin said, “I’ll let you out here so no one sees.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Calder said, opening the door onto the curb, “twins said they could smell you blocks away.”

  “Something they would say. You have to ask yourself, ask yourself if you want to live in a pub with peasants like them or do you want to work alongside me Uptown.”

  Calder thought it a poor choice either way. He shut the door.

  Lundin drove away, feeling confident. It was his first interview. He wasn’t certain which one of them had been interviewed, but it was a new experience nonetheless. The next interview, with whomever he decided on after Calder, he’d make it clear to them which end of the process they were on. He wouldn’t promise them equality, only that to Calder.

  He gave the finger to the bar as he passed. Nobody saw.

  There was a note on Calder’s bed. I read it with him: “Appreciate U staying w/ me last nite, and for letting me stay. I slept late and took off. U were gone, you’re busy, I get that. U didn’t take advantage. U were a gent. You’re rare, C. Don’t come see me today and I’m not working tonite. Thx.”

  Another afternoon and evening to amuse himself.

  He rode the subway for the rest of the day, figuring out its protocols and its etiquette and which trains went where.

  It was hell keeping up with him.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THURSDAY, early Prime

  “If you had an appointment you could see him,” Majella was saying. “But you don’t have. And he’s not here.” The aide was accentuating his words with his hands, like swatting flies. Only the flies didn’t correspond to his words. Very confusing.

  “He’s not here,” Rook said.

  “No he is not.”

  Rook hadn’t gotten much past the front door when this gelded bulldog had squatted in his path.

  Rook saw cheap grey carpet. Rectangular fluorescent lighting. Eight cubicles, four on both sides of the walkway to Adelard’s door at the far end. An old big Xerox hidden but whirring. Rook had been expecting more. This office wielded power but had the aura of a failing small business.

  The staff wandering the cubicles weren’t well dressed. Not poor, but certainly not the wardrobe Adelard would want flanking him at a press conference. The only one could afford a suit was Majella. He even had a floweresque handkerchief overflowing from his jacket’s breast pocket. Rook had never understood that affectation and had an automatic dislike for men who wore them.

  “You’re absolutely sure he isn’t in?”

  “I’m not going to double-check for you,” Majella said.

  “You haven’t even single-checked, my friend.”

  “State your business,” Majella said. “Sir.” He let out a deep breath. “I coordinate his schedule. I’ll prioritize and get you some time with the Council Speaker. But he’s very busy and to promise you something would be erroneous on my part.”

  “Erroneous,” Rook said.

  “It means — ”

  “I know what it means, I never heard anyone actually say it out loud. You were in academia before this. Hunter College, am I right?”

  “I taught at Hunter. How the hell could you know?” Majella said.

  “You have that accent comes from no country but Academia.”

  Rook realized the man wasn’t effete, but affected.

  Majella said, “In point of fact, I can positively promise you nothing soon. I am sorry.”

  “A half-hour ago,” Rook said, planting his legs as if he were in the ring, “I saw him get out of a car with you and come inside. With you. I’ve been waiting since seven this morning for him to arrive. Seven. Thirty minutes is time enough to get settled, I don’t care what kind of council he’s on. The fucking Pope could get squared away in thirty minutes.”

  “Should I call the police? Is that what you’re asking now? Thirty minutes, would that be considered stalking?”

  Rook wanted to get violent. He wanted to feed the man his kerchief. But heads were popping up and turning this way. There were too many phones. Calder was outside somewhere watching and there was a plan.

  Rook wished Calder were here instead but Adelard had already seen Calder once.

  Majella held his tablet closer to his chest. Rook saw the wedding ring. Silver or platinum. It was scratched up, hadn’t been polished in years.

  “You should really leave.”

  “I’m going to stay,” Rook said, softly but with emphasis. “You’re going to find a chair and call your wife and keep her on the phone till I leave. You haven’t made up since your argument this morning.”

  “Our fight? You’ve been watching this office and my home?”

  “Should I go
on?” Rook said. “I could tell you what each person in their cubicle looking at us thinks of you. Want to hear that? Nobody ever wants to really know. Want I should go on?”

  “No, you, we should, I’ll listen. To you.”

  “Then you’ll hang up with her,” Rook said. Savagely. “When I’ve left. And you’ll cry to yourself a little,” Rook said. Savagely.

  Majella, shaking, went to his cubicle without a word good-bye.

  Rook trudged down the walkway and opened Adelard’s door. Adelard glanced up and the two people in his cheap stack chairs glared over their shoulders. A man and woman in matching business suits. On the desk were two separate piles, boxes, of Almond Joys, Hershey’s Bars, Mounds, and more. The boxes had a circular foil seal and were striped healthy green. Between the boxes was a pile of folded white-on-brown shirts saying Hershey’s Now With Half The Fat! For Our Schools!

  “Did Majella send you in here?” Adelard said, masking his anger in political stride. “Kindly wait till we’re done here or come back tomorrow.”

  “I’m not coming back tomorrow,” Rook said with his hand on the open door’s knob.

  “Sir,” the visiting man said, turning all the way around, “we’ve come here from Pennsylvania.”

  “I live in the city, I’m a constituent. The two of you, leave but wait outside,” Rook said. Gratingly.

  “No, stay,” Adelard said, but they left.

  Rook closed the door and took one of the chairs.

  “You’re no constituent, you don’t have a New York accent,” Adelard said. He was on his feet, leaning forwards, palms on the desk like he was about to shove it down through the floor.

  “People move around, take their accents with them. Like your aide,” Rook said.

  “He’s from Queens.”

  “Not his accent isn’t.” He was tempted to raid the Almond Joys but the box was too pretty, what with the foil seal and all.

  “In thirty seconds I will call the police,” Adelard said. “You have that long to talk.”

  “Council Member Gualbert sent me over,” Rook said.

  “She’s never sent me anyone before.” Adelard picked up the phone.

  “And she’s not gonna admit to it now,” Rook said. “Call her, it’s okay, call her now, she’ll say I’m not here. Not on her behalf, at least. She might deny knowing me. But call her, you want. And I’ll go, and you’ll never know why I was here.”

  Adelard racked the phone so hard it bounced off its cradle and he had to put it back a second time.

  “Heard you had a home invasion.”

  “It was terrifying,” Adelard said with the same sudden anguish he showed anyone who asked him about it. He sat. “Two men, out of nowhere from another dimension like. Read about it in the paper?”

  “Papers,” Rook said, adding extra sibilance the s. “TV.”

  Adelard’s fingertips went to his cheeks to touch the fading bruises. “I hope whoever got paid for the scoop got paid well. Everyone reading about it was like its happening twice. Must’ve been one of the responding cops. They make half their money from reporters.”

  “Me and my wife,” Rook said, “her family has a house on the North Shore, but it’s ours now.”

  Lie.

  “We stay there weekends.” Rook crossed his legs as he built this imaginary bridge to Adelard’s sympathy. “One Friday we get there, there’s a light on in the kitchen. It’s the furthest room back but you can see it through the widows in the top half of the front door.”

  Adelard’s head was cocked, his eyes wide.

  “I keep a gun in a hall closet,” Rook said. “In a shoebox. We have no children.”

  “How was your wife through all this?” Adelard said. “Mine was horrified, fainted. She’s still horrified. We may have to move.”

  “Don’t do that. My wife wasn’t in the house yet so she wasn’t too scared. I asked her, ‘Stay in the car.’ Asked, cause I’m liberated and if she wanted to come follow me in, that’s her choice.”

  “I’d have done exactly that,” Adelard said.

  “Got my handgun, searched around but I knew where he was.”

  “How could you possibly know?”

  “Where he was? We have a safe in the basement. I don’t have to share what’s in there, that’s not pertinent, but valuable enough to be in a safe. So I open the basement door.”

  Adelard’s eyes narrowed.

  “I’m sorry, this part of it’s hard for me,” Rook said. He paused for an uncomfortable amount of time, uncomfortable for Adelard. “Had a backpack on, turns out he did get the safe open.” Rook paused again. “I shot him.”

  “How many times? Is that too vulgar to ask?”

  “Four times in the chest. A few other shots went wild, you can imagine I was shaking. Plus guns are always heavier than they look. Shaking like I had Parkinson’s.”

  “Who wouldn’t be but a psychopath?” Adelard said. “You killed a man. He did die?”

  “On my basement floor,” Rook said.

  “No one died at my house. It was just a, it was strange is what it was. Later? At your house? What did you do about it?”

  “Emptied the basement, put the items from our safe in a bank vault where they shoulda been. Sealed the basement door and obliterated its very memory with wainscoting all around the kitchen.”

  “Your wife, she didn’t want to move?”

  “Loves the house too much. For her, moving was defeat. The man was dead and she was glad I’d killed him. I wasn’t, she was.”

  “Living in a house with a body in the basement, that doesn’t sound morbid to you?”

  “She really didn’t want to move. The man was unarmed. The police … We put in a high, new fence, an alarm, outside floodlights. The cost of peace of mind.”

  “Lights,” Adelard said. “Faraday mentioned floodlights. Maybe they are worthwhile.”

  “Faraday?” Rook said.

  “No one. Now we have common footing. I thank you for sharing but you didn’t come here to confess you’ve killed a man.”

  “Why Gualbert sent me is to let you know you’re not the first it’s happened to.”

  “But I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “And then to ask how you’re going to vote on Int 3001.”

  Adelard laughed, sat back shaking his head. “Direct and sloppy. You had me transfixed I’ll admit, with your tale, but now you’ve lost me altogether.”

  “Gualbert’s made her decision but wants the cushion of knowing there’ll be company on this or if she’ll be run up the flagpole alone.”

  “And her decision is?” Adelard said.

  “People should do what’s best for the environment even if it costs them more. Technology’s expensive, yes, it takes time,” Rook said, making it up while he talked as Calder had before him, days and days ago. “But we can’t wait thirty years for fifth-generation machines that are finally, then, less expensive than what we have today. The environment, it can’t wait that long.”

  “No it can’t,” Adelard said. “It’s deteriorating as we sit here. I notice it every time I’m at Rockaway Beach. I surf.”

  “So you see.”

  “I see there’s some in the city, vocal, they don’t want municipal funds subsidizing the upgrade. We could negotiate long-term leases for that land to wealthy developers. The Zeckendorfs, the Trumps. Use that money for schools, firemen, the police, antiterror, all that.”

  “Some decisions,” Rook said, “are so difficult they have to be taken out of the masses’ hands.”

  “Don’t they have a right,” Adelard said, “to choose between the more profitable of alternatives? Fiscally.”

  This was the first Stone that Rook had ever encountered. Besides Iommi, who was as dumb as his title. The first one Rook had ever been confronted with on a job. He’d thought Calder was lying, or exaggerating from lack of experience. Yet Adelard had unknowingly deflected all of Rook’s entrances. Forty years of tricks and Adelard was immobile.

  A decade a
go Rook thought he’d found a Stone. It was an assignment to convince a neighbor to move. In this apartment were a single mom, her daughter, and a new live-in boyfriend — bald, big, unemployed with a torn ear and a loud way of talking. He was verbally abusive — to the mother and daughter only — but so flagrant about it that everyone on the floor wanted him gone.

  He wouldn’t go. Rook went to see him three times. The third time the man tried to slam the door in Rook’s face but Rook caught it by the edge with both hands and broke the man’s nose with it. Tied him to a chair in the bedroom and shouted orders into the man’s good ear. Rook shouted so hard for so long he earned a sore throat and the bully some permanent auditory damage.

  Rook didn’t care about the sore throat or the man’s hearing loss, and if anyone was listening through the walls they didn’t complain. By the time Rook finished, the man’s ears were both bad.

  It did work. He did move out and Rook was paid by every apartment on the floor but one.

  He was aware the same tactic wouldn’t work on Adelard, and he hadn’t come here to scream. That was fine, he only wanted to know how the man would vote, if using the sons had helped.

  “You can’t take both sides,” Rook said.

  “That is precisely what I’ve taken,” Adelard said. “If my sons couldn’t get me to commit what makes you think Gualbert can?”

  “Sons?” Rook said.

  “They’ve gotten involved. Everyone’s gotten involved. It’s a lasting Int.”

  “You haven’t made a decision.”

  “And there’s nothing you could say to change my mind,” Adelard said.

  “I see that now,” Rook said.

  “There is no way to get through to me, sir. No way for Gualbert to divine my response, my vote.”

  “That is all of a sudden very obvious,” Rook said.

  “Tell that to Gualbert.”

  “I will.”

  “Now, Gualbert’s messenger, you’ve had ten minutes past the thirty seconds that I’d made a present of. Next time an appointment would be courteous. And have Gualbert send me a face I recognize. Send in the Hersheys on your way out.”

  Rook took a folded shirt. The white-on-black. “Low-fat bars, these are gonna taste fantastic.”