Against Nature

by Casey Barrett

  “To what do I owe this generous display?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, a smile in her eyes. She wore black leather pants and a Clash t-shirt with Simonon smashing his guitar. Dark eyeliner circled her wide eyes. Crimson lipstick was painted across her mouth. It hadn’t taken her long to assimilate back to her city look. I watched her scramble the eggs and turn the bacon, resisted the urge to grab a slice from the skillet. I poured some coffee, then reached into the fridge and grabbed a Beck’s. It would have felt rude not to.

  “I was thinking, last night in bed,” she said. “You don’t have to keep doing this, for me, I mean. It’s not like you’re getting paid. And now I’ve put that boy in danger too.”

  “No, you didn’t,” I said. “I did. I was warned and I ignored it. That’s why Stevie was threatened.”

  “But I set it in motion. I asked for your help, and now Carl is dead and someone put a knife to your throat, and they’re threatening to hurt a young boy.”

  “Who are ‘they,’ Cass? Who’s this Oliver working for? He can’t be acting on his own. Who was that older man with him?”

  “I don’t know. Someone associated with Dr. Lipke and his clinic? Victor mentioned that he needed to go down there and investigate. We were going to go together, make it a little getaway from the upstate winter. But we never made it. . . .”

  “So, you knew about BioVida?” I asked. “Before your friend helped you hack into those emails?”

  She paused as she turned the bacon, seeming to consider the question. “No,” she said. “I told you, I didn’t ask Victor about his work. He made it clear that he didn’t want to discuss it while he was immersed. I respected that. He told me a little, just what I’ve told you, and said that the story was taking him down to Miami. He asked me to come. I was going to lay by the pool.”

  Cass turned off the burners and scooped the eggs and the bacon on a spatula and served them on a plate. She handed it to me. “Bon appétit.”

  “What are you having?”

  “Already ate,” she said.

  In all our time together I’d still never seen her take a bite off a fork. She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and followed me to the living room. While I devoured her breakfast, she lit a Parliament and watched me.

  “So, when are we headed down there?” I asked between bites.

  “Where, to Miami?”

  “Of course. We need to pick up where Victor left off.”

  “Duck, are you sure you want to do this? I think maybe you should stop. Why put that boy at further risk? It’s clear that you care about him. Both the boy and his mother, what’s her name again?”

  “Juliette.”

  “Juliette.” She let the name linger between us. I remembered Cass’s late-night text, the way it had shattered our domestic play, the way Juliette saw it in my face. A woman recognized where there was competition, despite any man’s best efforts.

  “You know I have no choice,” I said. “What am I supposed to do, pretend like nothing’s happened and stop searching? Just because someone puts a knife to my throat and sends a threatening letter?”

  She laughed. “Actually, yes. That’s what a normal person would do. Someone with any sense of mortality.”

  “Yeah, well.” I took a swig of the Beck’s, rinsed it with a gulp of coffee. The pairing had always been my favorite way to wake.

  “All right, listen,” she said. “Before we go down there, I need to talk to Carl’s wife, Uli. She’s a sweetheart. I know she was worried about what our men were working on. For good reason it turns out. She and Carl, they were the sweetest couple you’ve ever seen. They’d been through hell together, and they made it out.”

  “He should have kept quiet,” I said.

  “Some people can’t help themselves.”

  * * *

  The bar was no longer a crime scene. The yellow tape was balled in a trash can in the corner. Uli was sweeping when we entered a little before noon. She glanced up, and seeing Cass, stopped and leaned against the broom for support. Her eyes began to well, but she blinked away the tears with a shake of the head. A silence stretched between the two women.

  “Our stupid men,” said Uli.

  “Dumb bastards,” said Cass.

  They went to each other and embraced in the center of the room. They held the hug while I lingered in the doorway. Uli whispered something in Cass’s ear and she nodded, then released her and stepped back and looked over her shoulder at me.

  “Uli Kruger, Duck Darley,” said Cass.

  “We’ve met,” said Uli.

  “We have. It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Not nice at all,” she said. Then, to Cass, she asked, “Would you like a drink?”

  We took the stools next to the taps while Uli went around the bar. I watched her wide, elegant frame move with that same unhurried grace. Uli wore a long peasant’s dress washed almost colorless, with a brown leather string wrapped around her ample waist. The neck was open and untied and her full chest breathed braless. She placed both hands on the bar top before us. “What can I get you?” she asked.

  “Just an orange juice,” said Cass. “Thank you, Uli.”

  “A Hofbräu for me, please,” I said.

  She poured our drinks and pushed them in front of us and then crossed her arms and looked at Cass. “So, how do you know this one?” she asked.

  “He’s my partner. I asked him for help. I hope that’s okay, Uli.”

  “You should have told me first.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” said Cass. “After Victor died, I was so messed up. I knew he didn’t jump. I called Duck the next night and he came upstate and I told him what happened. I mentioned Victor’s project with Carl, and—”

  “So that’s why you were here,” said Uli.

  “That’s why,” I said.

  “I should have told you,” said Cass. “I think he can help us.”

  “How?” asked Uli. “They’re both dead. What is there to do now?”

  “Don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want to catch whoever did this?”

  Uli shrugged. “Why?” she asked. “It will not bring them back.”

  “No, it won’t,” said Cass. “But I need to know. I need to find out who killed them.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Uli.

  “You really don’t want to know?”

  Uli turned her back to us and began straightening rows of glasses that did not need straightening. Looking at us through the bar mirror, she said, “If you grew up the way we did, the way Carl and I did, you would have learned that asking too many questions never helps. It only brings more trouble. I reminded Carl of this. I told him to keep quiet, but he wouldn’t listen. Victor got him too excited. He convinced him they were crusaders. It was so stupid.”

  “It’s an important story,” said Cass. “It should be exposed.”

  “‘Exposed’?” Uli snorted. “Who cares? The doping, it is everywhere, why does it matter anymore? Why do you care?”

  “I care about finding out who killed the man I loved,” said Cass. “You should too.”

  The women made eye contact through the mirror. Uli gave a pained smile and nodded and turned around. “So, what do you want to know?” she asked. “How do you expect me to help you?”

  “How did Carl know these things?” asked Cass. “How did he hear about Dr. Lipke’s clinic in Miami? How did he know about the athletes he’s treated?”

  Uli removed a wineglass from the shelf. She opened a fridge beneath the liquor and brought out a bottle of cold white wine. She uncorked it and filled her glass, then topped it off with a splash of soda. She took a sip and gave me a withering once-over.

  “That night, did you talk to my husband?”

  “A bit,” I said. “Not about any of this though. We mostly talked about music.”

  “Oh?”

  “Carl was cranking the Motörhead,” I said. “We bonded over Lemmy.”

  “God, he had such shit tas
te in music.”

  “Uli,” said Cass. “How did Carl know about the things he told Victor?”

  She ignored her friend. “And then you got up to go to the bathroom, and when you came out . . .”

  “Someone hit me on the back of the head. I was out cold.”

  “And then he went to Carl,” she said.

  “Who do you think it could have been?” I asked.

  Now she turned back to Cass. “My husband was rather famous in certain circles,” she said. “In anti-doping circles he was a case study. You can Google him and see. I told Carl that, but he would not see it that way. I think he liked the attention.”

  “Do you think he was exploited?” asked Cass.

  “Of course he was. I told him that. But he did not care. My husband was easily seduced by the media. Many are, I suppose.”

  “So, because of his stature, in those circles . . .”

  “People told him things, yeah? He became someone others would reach out to. He was like the face of a movement. People sent him things—information, gossip. He never did anything about it, until Victor came.”

  “How did they meet?” I asked.

  “I told you,” said Cass. “Through his friend, that restaurateur, Mickey Knight. He introduced him.”

  “Oh, yes, Cokey Mick,” said Uli. “I remember. He used to come late, after his restaurants closed, and do cocaine in the bathroom. Then he would come out and hit on everything that moved.”

  “Sounds about right,” said Cass. “He came to visit us once on the mountaintop. He never stopped sniffing and wiping his nose. He made a pass at me when Victor left the room. Some friend.”

  “A prince,” said Uli. “But he spent a lot of money here, and he was very generous, so we tolerated him. Sometimes Carl would share his drugs, which I hated.”

  “So, one night on coke Carl must have started talking,” I said. For some, I knew, blow could be a sloppy truth serum. An evening of key bumps in the bathroom and the late-night secrets and buried desires would start spilling forth.

  “I suppose,” said Uli. “I would leave whenever I noticed Carl doing that. I didn’t want to be around it. It led to many fights.”

  “Did Victor ever join them?”

  Cass shook her head. “No, he wasn’t into that. But when Mickey came to visit, he told Victor about his new friend Carl. He told him about his past, the abuse, how those responsible were never punished. He even suggested that Victor write about it.”

  “We might want to talk to Mickey,” I said to Cass. “How close was he to Victor?”

  “They grew up together,” said Cass. “Victor said he was like a brother when they were city kids in the seventies, before his family moved upstate. Victor’s parents were typical unreliable artists, high half the time, and Mickey’s father was a cop. I think they wanted each other’s lives. Mickey was a wild kid who wished he had the freedom that Victor had, while Victor longed for more structure and the comfort of rules. They were two sides of the same coin.”

  “A fine analysis, Ms. Freud,” said Uli.

  Cass raised her glass of juice, gave her friend a nod. “My area of expertise,” she said. “Analyzing the needs of men.”

  Both women looked to me. I drank, avoiding their eyes. They let me squirm a moment, before Uli said, “The police, they think it was a robbery gone wrong.”

  “Did the killer take anything?” asked Cass.

  “Yeah, smashed open the register and took all the cash. A few hundred dollars.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Also a bottle of vodka,” she said. “Grey Goose. That is all.”

  “But the way your husband was killed,” I said. “There’s no way a panicking junkie does that.”

  Uli took a drink of her wine. I watched her chest rise and fall as it rinsed through her body. She sighed. “It could be. You don’t know. It could have been a meth-head, out of control. Maybe he saw the javelin and wanted to play with it. Carl was very protective of it. No one was allowed to touch it.”

  “But there was no sign of a struggle, right?” I asked. “Your husband was a big man. I saw him upset. If he wanted to stop the killer from touching that thing, the place would have been a wreck.”

  “Not if there was a gun pointed at him,” said Cass.

  Uli refilled her wine and set it on the shelf next to the register. She leaned back against it and crossed her arms. “Why was he upset?” she asked.

  “That night? You saw him when he came in, he was a mess.”

  “Yeah, and then I left, and you stayed, just you and my husband. Why was he upset . . . with you?”

  “He wasn’t, I mean not really, or not for long. I said something that set him off. I brought up Victor’s death in a clumsy way.”

  “The police said there was broken glass at the front of the bar,” said Uli. “A few glasses were gone from the shelf.”

  “Thrown in my direction,” I said. “But he calmed down.”

  “Jesus, Duck,” muttered Cass.

  “Listen,” I said. “I only spent a short time with your husband, but I liked him. He seemed like an honorable, good man. I never met Victor, but I’m sure I would have liked him too. If he liked my partner here, he must have been okay. I want to help. I want to find whoever killed them. I know the cops are looking too, but with access to their emails, we have a head start. Let me help, okay?”

  Neither woman spoke. They looked at each other in silence, until Uli shook her head and smiled. “Where did you find this one?” she asked. “So earnest, like an eager hunting dog.”

  Chapter 18

  Mickey Knight, aka the Neighborhood Maker, owned a half-dozen restaurants in Manhattan. For three decades his model had been both simple and self-fulfilling: Enter a questionable area where leases were still cheap, where crime still lingered, where the gay settlers were beginning to tidy up. Open one of his see-and-be-seen bistros and watch them flock. It had worked every time, in TriBeCa, the Meatpacking District, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, all areas where it was once inadvisable to walk alone at night. But now, thanks in part to the Knight touch, they were bright bazaars full of bright young things, blithely ignorant to the dangers of the past. In a New York magazine profile, I remembered Knight declaring that every neighborhood in Manhattan was now done. There was nowhere else to go. He spoke of taking his model on the road, to the inner cities of Baltimore or Detroit, perhaps, anywhere but Brooklyn, where his model had been plagiarized to the point of cliché.

  We spoke to three of his managers—at Musette, Allard, and Jadis—where we received various degrees of unhelpful snootery. No, they didn’t know where Mickey was; and no, we could not have his number. Maybe he would be stopping by later tonight, sometime between eight p.m. and midnight. We were welcome to come back then and wait to see if we could catch him. On our way out of Jadis, on Avenue C, a handsome young waiter came running out after Cass.

  “Excuse me!” he called. “You’re Cassandra, right?”

  Cass turned and eyed him, shoes to hair. He was tall and thin, with a face made for commercials. A shaggy mop of styled blond hair fell across his eyes. He pushed it aside and smiled at my partner. “Do I know you?” she asked.

  “No, I’m Tad, we haven’t met.” He stuck out a hand, which Cass did not take. “Mickey’s mentioned you. You were with that guy, his friend, who died?”

  Cass stiffened, said nothing.

  “He kept talking about you,” said Tad. “He said you two had some crazy connection. After his friend died, he was saying how he needed to see you again, but he didn’t know how to reach you.”

  “Victor,” said Cass. “His friend—my boyfriend—his name was Victor Wingate.”

  “Oh yeah, he was like a writer, right? Anyway, I thought I recognized you, based on how he described you, and I know Mickey would really like to hear from you.”

  “I’m sure he would,” said Cass.

  “So, listen, I don’t, like, have his number, but I know he’s going to be at Muset
te this afternoon, probably around four. He has this rotation, where he goes, and, well, I don’t really know what he does, but he stops by his places at different times based on his rotation. It’s supposed to seem like it’s random, so he surprises us, but we all know his pattern.”

  “Thanks, Tad,” I said. “Musette, that’s on Suffolk, right?”

  Tad turned to me for the first time. “Yeah, on the corner of Suffolk and Rivington. Why are you guys looking for him?”

  “We’ll check it out,” said Cass, already walking.

  “Cassandra, one more thing!” he called. “When you see Mickey, would you mind mentioning that I put you in touch? It’s Tad.”

  Cass didn’t answer. I felt bad for the pretty boy, so I said, “Sure, buddy. Tad, from Jadis, got it.”

  “Th-thanks, dude,” he stammered. “I really appreciate it.”

  * * *

  It was a clear, bright day on the Lower East Side and the hipsters were out in force. This was no longer the neighborhood where I spent my unhappy teenaged years—the one where I got into sidewalk fights and tried not to get jumped by local kids who smelled my rich-boy scent still lingering. Back then, it was a tough, untouched pocket of the city. We lived on Pitt Street—so far in spirit and style from the Upper East Side that it felt like we’d traveled back in time, to a town closer to Scorsese’s Gangs of New York than the gilded safe place I knew as a boy. But all that was gone now. At the bottom of every tenement there were bars and restaurants, galleries and coffee shops, all catering to the young and the clueless. Like the Meatpacking District before it, the Lower East Side came and went in a blur—it was rough and ugly one minute; hip and exciting the next; then over, having been invaded and ruined by douche bags and bag-ettes. I hated the threatening streets of my high school years, but this pillaged place was even worse.

  Mickey Knight, as much as anyone else, was responsible for it. When he arrived with one of his bistros, it was like waving a wand over a neighborhood. He brought the models and the musicians, and everyone else followed. Then the cool kids would leave as soon as others discovered it, but Mickey’s brand would remain, cashing in for years to come with the bankers and the wankers and the tourists in search of the “real” New York.