Shadow of a Thief

by Norman Green

  So now the cops were looking for me again. Could that have been simple paranoia talking, could the cops have had a perfectly rational reason to be in the lobby of my hotel, one that did not necessarily involve further pain on my part?

  Yeah, no. Not this time.

  If Edwards had just wanted to talk to me, he had my phone number. In fact, he’d had physical possession of my phone for the whole time I’d been in custody, so yeah, he had my number, but he also had names and contact information for everyone I’d talked to, and that included Annabel, Mac, Klaudia and Reiman. I fished the phone out of my pocket and looked at it. I thought about losing it, but I had gotten used to it. Would the cops bother tracking my cell? I turned it off. From now on, I told myself, you wanna make a call, you can turn it back on, and then shut it back off when you’re done.

  It bothered me that the Worm had known that I was a thief, right from the beginning. Why had it taken me so long to pick up on that? “Vale,” I could still hear that word rolling off the Worm’s Creole tongue. It’s not like I advertise or anything. He’d been on to me so quickly . . .

  And finally, the criminal enterprise known by some as the Green Pang Tribe had known Melanie Wing while she was alive but didn’t seem to demonstrate a lot of interest in catching her killer. Li Fat had wished me good luck, and had volunteered to introduce me to Peter Kwok, but not a lot more.

  I still hadn’t talked to Kwok, though.

  Also, I’d studiously ignored the guys on Mac’s list, the ones that Klaudia thought merited further attention. I’d been too focused on Los Paraíso. At that rate, it was looking like my chances for making the Flatfoot All-Star Team were pretty dim.

  There was a resale shop on Avenue B with a sign in the window that promised you they specialized in “gently used clothing,” which was a lie. I spent about thirty bucks in the joint, came out the proud owner of an old trench coat, which from the look of it was also pre-urinated-on, also a wrinkled fedora with a nice wide brim, a pair of shades, and a ratty, snarled grayish wig, which was more comfortable than it looked once you got the hair out behind you in a ponytail, secured by a bunch of rubber bands supplied at no extra cost by the proprietor of said establishment. The worst thing about my new get-up was the smell of mothballs, which I think came from the coat, but I figured that wouldn’t last forever. I didn’t need the shopping bag the lady gave me because I wore all the stuff out of the store, but I kept it anyhow. When I hit the sidewalk I affected a homeless guy’s pace and I stopped at the first few trash cans I came to for some newspapers to fill out my shopping bag. Hey, who says I don’t have my shit together? Got it right here in this bag. Wanna see? Funny, though, I would have been appalled to go digging through the garbage on any other occasion, but hidden as I was inside my hat and trench coat it didn’t seem like a big deal, and no one paid me the slightest attention. Good practice, I told myself. If things turn bad enough, I could just, you know, go with it . . .

  I stopped in a dollar store and picked up that most basic of B&E tools, a screwdriver. Mine would suffice to get me past the front door of the building where Klaudia lived, mostly because that lock had been jimmied about a thousand times before I ever got to it. And the locks on her apartment door were hardware store specials, they were the sort of locks that only kept honest people honest. I stowed the screwdriver in an inner pocket of my trench coat.

  People avoided me as I walked south. They wouldn’t look me in the eye, they gave me a little more room on the sidewalk because now I was a bum, a homeless crank, a threat. They pretended I was invisible, that I wasn’t there at all, I could feel them doing it. I thought about talking loudly to my imaginary stockbroker on my pretend Bluetooth but I wound up shuffling along more or less in silence, perversely uncomfortable. It’s one thing to fly under the radar but it’s another thing to be in a city like New York and be deemed untouchable by nearly everyone. It was a crawling, itching sort of unease. It’s a bit like the feeling you get when you think you might throw up at any moment. I knew that a hit or a toke or a snort would make it all go away, that I wouldn’t care, after that, what anyone thought, which made that stuff pretty effective medicine. The side effects suck ass, though, like dying and everything.

  I got through it. I felt it, but I thought about my friend Tommy from Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, I thought about how lousy it would feel to have to admit to him that I was starting all over again, again, so I swallowed the urges and kept moving. It’s a stupid thing, really, I imagine a normal person might write it off as a sort of emotional hangover that would disappear in an hour or two, or a day at worst. And a trigger is nothing more than a simple mechanical device, harmless in and of itself.

  It’s the bang afterward that kills you.

  I popped the front door to Klaudia’s building; it would have taken longer to open it with a key. Once inside I climbed up to her floor, but when I got to her door I hesitated. For the record, it’s never a good idea to pause for soul searching right out in front of the place you’re planning to break into. You should already have your doubts safely anesthetized by then, no good can come from hanging around outside someone’s front door with your shims in one hand and your conscience in the other. It was a first for me, though, and it caught me by surprise. I was about to invade another person’s private space, which was something I’d done more times than I could count, but this would be the first time it was someone I cared about. A lot. But you can’t call her, I told myself, because that might mean inviting the cops to the party, but you can’t wait for her in the hall, but you can’t not see her, either, not when you’re this close . . .

  I went in.

  I folded my hat and gray wig up inside my trench coat and stuck the whole mess inside my shopping bag, and then I turned her lights on. I moved one of her chairs to where she’d see it as soon as she opened the door, and then I sat in it and waited. There have been many times in my life when I wished I could silence those inner voices, but never more than right then. Several times I thought of leaving. Write her a note and walk away, I told myself, but that felt like the coward’s way out. It mattered, what this girl thought of me. She mattered, and that was another new experience. I began to wish fervently that I had never set foot on this road, that I was still up on the Maine coast standing knee-deep in the Atlantic, still cut off, still alone, still lost. I could hear the goonas laughing at me again because they’d given me pretty much exactly what I wanted and now I couldn’t deal with it. They’d given me a connection, and all I could think about was running away. You hear all this shit about love and you wonder if any of it is real . . . I found out that day that love does not cure you of the disease of you, that it is made of both ecstasy and pain, and that the pain will be at least the equal of anything else you have ever felt.

  Her door eased open, some blond hair and one blue eye peered inside, then she flipped the door open wide and walked through. She had her keys clenched in a fist, and the metal bits poked out between her fingers.

  Yeah, city girl.

  “I don’t know whether to be pissed off,” she said, “or happy to see you.”

  For the second time in a single afternoon I thought about a joint and about the release it would give me, and then I thought about everything it would cost me in the days that followed, because there’s no such thing as one, not with me. And the shit’s gonna come to mind, there’s nothing you can do about that. The question is, do you play with the thought? Do you starve the idea or do you feed it? That’s the part that’s on you.

  She walked around behind me. “How do you know I’m not one of those crazy women? How do you know I don’t keep an ice pick in my pants?”

  I didn’t see one, last time I was in there . . . I wanted to say it, but I didn’t dare. “Go on,” I told her. “Do what you gotta do. I made my decision.”

  She came around front again, restless, feral as ever. She kicked her door shut, turned and glanced down into my shopping bag. “The cops came to see me again,” she said. “Loo
king for you. Detective Edwards and some other guy. Is that why you didn’t call?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it’s true, what he said about you.”

  “What did he . . .”

  “He said you are a thief. And a drug addict.”

  “I never touch anything stronger than aspirin.”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  Honesty does not come easy, not at first. But if I really wanted to get anywhere with this girl . . . “Well, okay yeah, I guess, technically, I’m an addict.”

  “How long you been clean,” she said.

  “Two years.” Hey, I rounded up. Sue me.

  “You got a sponsor?”

  Oh-oh. The girl had done her homework. “Yeah. Guy name of Tommy.”

  “Will he talk to me?”

  “Probably.”

  She walked over to her table, dragged the other chair across the floor to face mine and threw herself into it. And even then she couldn’t keep completely still, her foot was going the whole time. “So what do we do now?” She leaned the chair back on its rear legs like it was a recliner.

  “I’m not running away, I’m staying with this. I’m in too far, and now I really wanna know what happened to Melanie. The cops are not gonna scare me off. And neither are you.”

  She chewed on that for a moment. “What about the rest of it? Are you really a thief?”

  I sighed. “I suppose that would be one way to put it. I like to tell people that I’m a contractor. I’m sort of like the guy who repos your car if you quit making the payments.”

  “Does that mean it isn’t stealing? Edwards said if my mother was stuck in a South American prison, that you’d be the guy to go and get her out.”

  “That might be stretching it.”

  Her foot quit tapping. “I figured you weren’t a choirboy, but Jesus. Are they right about you, Saul? What are you?”

  “You ever hear of Bill Parcells?”

  “Yeah. Football coach.”

  “He used to say that you are what your record says you are.” I shook my head. “I keep hoping that there’s more to it. I keep hoping that I’ll do better. Or that I’ll find the operating manual, the one everybody else got when they were born.” I stared into her face but I couldn’t read a thing in it. “I can’t answer this for you, because I don’t have the answer. You’re gonna have to make the call. I’m throwing myself on the mercy of the court. You tell me to walk, I’ll walk, and I won’t bother you again.”

  “Laying it all on me, huh?” She dropped the chair back down, leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees. “I used to be so contained,” she said. “My whole life woulda fit in five or six of those little plastic boxes from the dollar store, all neat and clean. I coulda carried ’em all in that shopping bag.” She nudged it with her foot. “This new getup of yours means you’re going native, doesn’t it.”

  “I need to stay out of sight for a while. And I don’t want anyone trying to get to me through you.”

  “God, why does everything have to be such a mess? Ever since I laid eyes on you I feel like my head is on backward.”

  “I’m sorry if I complicated things for you. It wasn’t what I intended.” I started to get up.

  She sat back up and her foot started tapping again, like a relief valve blowing off excess pressure. “I didn’t hear anybody tell you that you could go yet,” she said. “Sit.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I came up out of the subway in Brooklyn I powered up my phone and saw that I had a voice mail. My first thought was that it was from Klaudia but it turned out to be from Francis O’Neill, of Shield Investments. Took me a minute, then I remembered that he was the guy who held the lease on the bottom floor of the building the Hotel Los Paraíso was in. I was walking up Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn in the direction of the NA meeting wearing my new raincoat, wig, and hat, must have looked funny as shit, some homeless wino walking up the block talking on his phone. I called the number O’Neill left me, and he picked up. “Francis O’Neill,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “Mr. O’Neill,” I said. “My name is Saul Fowler, and I’m trying to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared from the Hotel Los Paraíso about six months ago.”

  “Don’t know that I’d be much use to you,” he said. “I hardly go near the place.”

  “I won’t take much of your time, Mr. O’Neill . . .”

  “I understand,” he said. “You want to cross all the Ts, I know. You busy tomorrow?”

  “Where and when?”

  “I’m supposed to look at a building first thing in the morning. In Corona.” He gave me the address. “I don’t think I’ll be there long. Why don’t you meet me there.”

  I shut the phone off, stuck it in my pocket.

  I got to the church, and as I went through the parking lot I got basically the same reception I’d gotten the last time, handshakes and first-name introductions. Inside, a young kid stood by the door greeting people on the way in. He held my hand a heartbeat or so longer than he needed to. “You’re welcome to come in and listen,” he said. “Have a cup of coffee, eat some cookies. And you can share, if it comes around to you.” He dropped my hand. “But don’t disrupt the meeting. Okay? Disrupt the meeting and we gotta put you out.”

  I was finding it hard to stay in character, I wanted to tell him that putting me out might be tougher than he thought, but I stared at the floor instead and mumbled my okays. Once I got past him I looked around for Tommy, but like the last time, he showed up a few minutes after I did. I saw his eyes go around the room; they stopped when he got to me. He made his way back over to the door and put a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “William,” he said. “What’d I tell you about letting all these goddamn winos up in here?”

  William bristled. “He’s got a right,” he said, and he stuck his chin out. “ ’Cause if he can’t come in here, why we here? Huh? What are we doing?”

  Tommy grinned and leaned in to whisper something in William’s ear, I’m pretty sure I saw the phrase “sober horse thief” but I didn’t actually hear it. William’s eyes went wide once as he looked over at me, and then he shook his head and glanced up at the ceiling. Tommy laughed, slapped him on the back, and then he came over and sat next to me.

  “Seems like a nice kid,” I told him.

  “He gets it,” Tommy said. “You shoulda seen him six months ago. I think he’s got a shot.” He glanced up at my hat. “What’s with the big disguise, chief?”

  “Cops.”

  “Ah,” he said. “You done anything to merit their attentions?”

  “Not yet. But they probably think I have.”

  A girl in her twenties stood up at the front of the room and cleared her throat. The room went silent and she began the usual litany. “My name is Melanie and I am cross-addicted.” The editorial voice started up in the back of my head. Did she mean she was addicted to crosses? But the voice was so faint that I could barely hear it. I think it was because Melanie had my sister’s name. She asked someone to read a passage out of a book, my editorial voice had always gone up a notch when they did that but this time I couldn’t really hear it, I just sat there and stared at Melanie. She wore a bit of a fro-hawk and she had tattoos on the side of her neck, but she also had a Madonna’s face and I sat there thinking, You go, Melanie, I hope to fucking Christ you make it. Tommy took a cookie out of my hand and ate it, I saw a raised eyebrow or two when he did that because, you know, who knew where them hands had been? I ate the rest of them as I drank my coffee. Good stuff, too, I never knew if it was because of those big urns they made it in or maybe they just took extra care putting it together. When the reading was finished Melanie introduced the speaker, some woman whose career as a pharmacist had crashed and burned, and for predictable reasons. She was funny as hell and easy to listen to. The discussion afterward never got around to me, which was just as well. It occurred to me then that when it came to getting fucked up, everybody in that room was already pr
etty well up to speed and probably didn’t need to hear my take on it. It’s what you do without the shit that’s the real trick.

  “I like this look on you,” Tommy said, after. We were the last two out of the meeting except for William, the kid who’d met me at the door. He was washing out the coffeepots with an addict’s single-minded intensity. “I mean, you don’t have the smell exactly right, but you could pass for a homeless guy in my neighborhood.”

  “How about I piss my pants once or twice? Will that help?”

  “Probably,” Tommy said. “But don’t start up on that just yet. The men in blue, are they really looking to pick you up?”

  “Yeah. Two of them showed up at my hotel.”

  “You sure they were looking for you? They got cops everywhere, you know.”

  “Yeah, but I recognized one of them. He was the guy that came to see me while I was locked up. And they stopped to talk to this lady friend I been seeing.”

  “Jesus Christ, Saul, you’re barely in town five minutes, already you been locked up, shacked up, and now the cops are looking for you. A second time? You even pause for breath?”

  “I guess there’s a few things I could catch you up on.”

  “Yeah? You think? We oughta go get a cup of coffee someplace. Yo, William, you finished with that damn thing yet?”

  The kid looked up, scowling. “This pot is all black inside.”

  “Perfectionism is a flaw, William, not an asset. You gotta reckanize the value of adequacy. Rinse that mother out so’s we can get the hell out of here.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  I told Tommy about the Hotel Los Paraíso while we watched William finish up. Tommy seemed intrigued. “Let’s go have a look at it,” he said.