Ladies and Gentlemen

by Adam Ross

  But that evening, Mike knocked on Thane’s door.

  “Professor?” He stood there, slightly abashed, with a newspaper tucked under his arm.

  “Come in,” Thane said, trying to look even busier than he was.

  Donato remained at the door, shifting his weight back and forth between his feet. He’d arrived in a pressed shirt and pants, as if they were now on a formal basis, and Thane flushed with shame. Donato pointed at the chair across from Thane’s desk with the rolled-up newspaper. “Is this a bad time?”

  “I have a seminar in an hour.”

  Donato sat down. “This won’t take long.”

  Thane looked up from his papers.

  Donato stuck his chin out, waiting. “Do you want to take notes or something?”

  Thane tapped his temple with his pen. “It’s all up here.”

  “All right.” He cleared his throat. “I ever tell you about my friend Mick the Knife?”

  Mick the Knife, Thane thought. Unbelievable. He considered his book idea and was hit with another wave of mortification. He shuffled papers on his desk. “I’m all ears.”

  “He’s actually a cousin of mine. Second twice-removed or something. But in the family.”

  “Cosa Nostra,” Thane said, pointing at him.

  “That’s right. He’s been all over the country the past few years. He was in Miami for a while. Dallas. He did time in Missouri. We’ve run into each other a few times but never really got together, and then on Friday he up and calls me.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a hit man.”

  Thane looked at him, folded his hands on his desk, and smiled. “I hope he called long distance.” He decided he had to keep his composure. To be impressed, of course, but not to react too strongly to anything he said.

  “Unfortunately,” Donato said, “he called from across town.”

  Thane leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. Mafia hit men, gun running, death in the tropics. No, he thought, it would be foolish not to act on this, not to use Donato for these stories. Thane would have to schedule their first official meeting as soon as he had a clear stretch of time. He looked at his watch again.

  “You’ll like this story,” Donato insisted, catching Thane’s eyes coming up from his wrist. “Like I said, I hadn’t spoken to Mick in a while, but then he calls me up—right here, on Friday, when I was in your office. So anyway, on the phone he’s hysterical. He says, ‘Mike, you gotta come quick.’ I’m like, ‘Slow down already.’ He’s like, ‘Mike, life or fucking death.’ He tells me he’s at his house. I’ve got to come over now. What do I know, right? I tell him I’ll be there ASAP. So I drive to the cross street and pull up, but I don’t see anybody. I’m about to honk when Mick comes tearing out of the bushes with a shotgun. Then he dives into the car and lies down on the floor in the back.”

  Someone entered the hallway. It was Gerry, the department secretary. Thane saw her leave earlier, but she’d come back, probably having forgotten something. She greeted them both as she walked past, and after Donato said hello he got up and closed the door.

  “And he says to me, ‘Drive.’ ”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What did I do? The guy’s got a loaded gun. And he’s loaded on top of that—I can smell it on him—so I drive. He’s got scratch marks on his face, five deep grooves on his cheek, the top of his eyelid’s torn too, split down the middle, so even when he closes it I can still see his eye. So obviously this is a situation. I say, ‘Mick, what the fuck happened to you?’ And he says, ‘Just keep driving.’ And I say, ‘Mick, unless you tell me what’s going on, I’m pulling over.’ And he says, ‘I just shot my old lady.’ ”

  “Jesus.”

  “That’s what I said. So I’m like, ‘What the hell do you want me to do about it?’ He says, ‘Get me to Frank’s.’ This Frank’s a bookie, a local guy. ‘Frank’ll get me to a safe house.’ ” Donato shook his head sadly.

  “So what happened at Frank’s?”

  “Fuck Frank. Guy’s a piece of shit. I wouldn’t take anybody in real trouble to Frank’s.”

  “Did you turn him in?”

  Donato looked around the room at his audience, then back at Thane in amazement. “Mick? No chance I’m turning him in.”

  “Well, how’d you handle it?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “I am handling it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  With a snort, Donato tossed the newspaper on the desk. “He’s at my house right now.”

  An interval of time passed—certainly no more than five seconds—but it was unlike anything Thane had ever experienced in his life. He imagined it was something a hummingbird must feel: an awareness of moving with great rapidity while the surrounding world remains stuck in slow motion.

  Donato flipped the Roanoke paper open and tapped the cover story. EX-CON KILLS WIFE IN BRUTAL SHOOTING. SUSPECT STILL AT LARGE. There was a police hotline to call if you had information and an inset mug shot of Mick “The Knife” Mancuso. He was a thin man with a long nose, black tousled hair, and a keloid scar on his chin in the shape of a Y—a face, Thane realized through his panic, he’d seen on television three nights ago.

  “You seem upset,” Donato said.

  “No,” Thane said, looking at him. Adrenaline thudded from his chest, making his fingertips tingle. “I’m okay.”

  Donato sat there smiling expectantly. “We’ve got a hell of a story here, don’t we?”

  Why has he told me this? Thane wondered. Is this some kind of test, like him trying to find out if I can keep a secret? If I’ll believe the things he tells me? Or maybe it’s innocent and he’s just taking me up on my offer to listen, now that something’s happened, and he can’t process how bad it is. Or else it’s the perfect imitation of innocence.

  He scrutinized Donato’s face, but it revealed nothing. He seemed to be waiting for a reaction, glancing back and forth between Thane’s eyes and the newspaper.

  For a moment, Thane allowed himself to appreciate the move Donato had made, if in fact he’d made one. Then, slowly, he said, “What if instead of going home right now, you stayed here, and the police showed up at your place? From an anonymous tip, say.”

  Donato screwed up his face and sat back in the chair, hands turned inward on his legs so his elbows pointed out wide, like a samurai. There was a hint of rage in his expression.

  When someone knocked at the door, Thane and Donato looked at each other. After a pause, Donato got up, cracked it open, and peered out.

  It was Gerry.

  “Excuse me, Roddy,” she said. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Mike, I can’t get the steam heat to turn off in the main office. Can you fix things in there before I lock up?”

  Donato told her he’d come right away, then closed the door and leaned against it. He took off his glasses, held them to the light, and cleaned them with a handkerchief. “I’ll come back and tell you the rest of it,” he said.

  “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Christ, Mike, if I believe you—”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You’ve put me in a horrible position.”

  Donato looked around the room again, stunned. “You want me to tell you stories, so I’m telling you my fucking stories. Did you think this was gonna be Alice in Wonderland?” When Thane made no response, he dropped his chin to his chest, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “Look, give me a minute.” He pointed to the phone. “Just don’t get any ideas.”

  After he left, Thane sat there looking at the newspaper. He had to do something, like call the hotline. He picked up the phone and began to dial but then heard Donato down the hall, laughing with Gerry. He hung up the phone and walked quietly to the door to listen, thinking he should go straight to the police. He sat down at his desk again and read the article from start to finish. He imagined driving to the precinct and telling
an officer at the front desk, “I have information regarding the whereabouts of Mick Mancuso.” He could demand protection, but what would that mean? Witness protection? And what if they don’t offer anything? What might happen then? He was sure his life was over, that all normality had come to an end.

  But if I do nothing? He imagined the woman’s family members and friends waiting for news, grieving. He got up and paced the room. Shivering, he put on his blazer and crossed his arms.

  Suddenly, Donato was back, sitting down and exhaling loudly.

  Thane leaned against the windowsill. For a minute, they both stared silently at nothing.

  Before heading out again, Gerry peeked in the office. “I see you’ve made friends.”

  The two men regarded each other.

  “You boys have a pleasant evening,” she said, and left for good.

  “What now?” Thane asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are you going to do with Mick?”

  Donato looked tired, crestfallen, like he was the one who’d failed some kind of test. “I’m gonna take care of him,” he said. “Keep him safe.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as he wants.”

  Thane was baffled.

  “It’s his call,” Donato said. “That’s the rule.”

  “But think of the trouble you could get into, Mike. Why risk it?”

  Donato stared at him as if this observation was too outlandish to merit an answer. He sighed again. “Well, that’s the long-term plan.”

  “What about for now?”

  “Right this minute, he’s hungry, so I’ll get him something to eat.” With great effort, he pressed himself up. “I’ll let you know what happens.” He wouldn’t look Thane in the eye and seemed terribly disappointed.

  Then, without ceremony or threat, he was gone.

  As soon as Thane heard the building’s front door close, he picked up the phone and called his ex-wife. There seemed something inevitable about this, as if everything lately had been pushing him toward it—his restlessness, his inability to concentrate, now these outrageous events. He was sure she was home; he could feel it. He still knew her number by heart; it filled him with bitterness to call it. While he was in graduate school in St. Louis, Ashley had refused to consider living in Manhattan. She always said she was a Tennessee girl; she’d be miserable so far away from home, from the mountains, especially if that meant living in an apartment the size of a closet. Besides, she was a lawyer, and for her to afford living in Manhattan—Ashley never said for them—she’d have to become a corporate attorney working ninety-hour weeks. But after they divorced and she moved back to Tennessee, she met a man at her new firm, married him within a year, and promptly relocated to Manhattan. Two years later, she had fraternal twins, a boy and a girl.

  Of all the injustices Thane believed he’d suffered in their divorce, this was the worst. At times he dreamed of killing her: flying to New York, showing up at her door, and shooting her and her husband dead. Or else he’d fall to his knees and beg her to come back to him—something he always feared he’d do if he ever saw her in person again. Other times he fantasized about saving her life, a recurrent daydream that seized him almost weekly: she and her husband are being mugged, and Thane happens to come around the corner and interrupt it. There’s a fight, and he’s stabbed or shot, mortally wounded, bleeding to death on the street while he confesses his undying love. A boy’s romantic dream so clichéd yet so powerful that he sometimes found himself drifting off midlecture thinking about it. Even now, as the phone rang, he longed for such an opportunity to say something pure to her. Some unalterable thing that would redeem their failed past, but still recognize it. Because Ashley’s new life had wiped their old one out.

  Her husband answered the phone.

  “George?” Thane said, over the racket of children’s voices in New York.

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Roddy.”

  Nothing.

  “Roddy Thane.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Right.”

  Now hearing Ashley in the background, he turned up the volume on the receiver and asked, “How are you?”

  But George had already dropped the phone with a clatter. In spite of everything old and new alike, Thane was excited to speak with Ashley. It had been several years, and there was much to say.

  “Who is it?” he heard her ask.

  “It’s Roddy,” George said.

  “What does he want?”

  “I don’t know,” George said.

  She took the phone and said, “Roddy,” cooly, as her little girl screamed in the background.

  “Is this a bad time?”

  Ashley quieted the daughter down. “What does it sound like?”

  He now heard the son screaming back at his sister. “How are the kids?” he asked, insanely thinking of them as his children, the ones he should’ve had with Ashley.

  “You know, they’re kids. Joy and work, work and joy.” She covered the receiver and said something to the boy, then announced that she’d come back on by clearing her throat.

  “I can imagine,” Thane said.

  Ashley waited. Thane waited back. He needed to tell her something, today or maybe later, no matter how hard she tried to avoid it. He could feel her considering this.

  “What is it, Roddy?”

  They still knew each other, after all. “Something happened to me,” he said, “something serious. I need legal advice.”

  But she again covered the receiver and spoke sternly to the boy, who was complaining about something his sister had made him eat. Thane envisioned what Ashley would look like at this moment, still in her suit, just home from work, balancing it all.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “It concerns something I’ve heard. Actually, that I’ve been told. But I’m afraid to tell you because I don’t want to involve you.”

  “Then don’t tell me.”

  This tone had been only a budding threat when they were together, but now it had matured. Here he was, emotional, on the edge, while she chose to stay above it, all calm and stoic. He didn’t say a word.

  “One second,” she said, the strain palpable in her voice as the boy’s complaints grew louder. She’d lifted him into her arms. “There,” she said. “Go on.”

  Thane whispered now, cupping the receiver. “I’ve been told about a murder. A murderer, I mean. His whereabouts. It’s all over the papers here. But the man who did it is still at large. But he’s being helped.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  He took a deep breath. “A man I’ve become acquainted with claims to be giving shelter to this criminal. A suspected murderer. At his house, right now.”

  Ashley cleared her throat again. “This isn’t some kind of joke, is it?”

  “Do I sound like it?”

  “Do you believe this guy?”

  “Given his background, I think he might be telling the truth.”

  “But do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The little girl’s screams made Thane jump.

  “Jason!” Ashley yelled. “Never throw things at your sister!”

  “I hate salt,” the boy blurted.

  “What are you asking me, Roddy?”

  “What I want to know …” He took a deep breath. “What I need to figure out before I do anything …” He looked up at the ceiling and draped his arm over his eyes. This reminded him of all the long conversations they had after she’d first left, when he felt his grip on her slipping, their time together ending, but he wanted to hold her attention for as long as possible, no matter how bitter the discussion. “Is this aiding and abetting?” he asked. “I mean legally, what’s my responsibility here? Do I have to call the police, or turn this guy in? Ashley, I don’t know what to do.”

  She was silent for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, no,” she said. “Jesus, Roddy, you actually had me worried for a second.” She let out a loud gu
ffaw. “No, it’s hardly aiding and abetting. There’s not a court in the country that would convict you for doing nothing.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Think about it. You’ve got secondhand knowledge you’d never believe in the first place about a crime that’s been committed. And this man you’re talking about could just as well be some psycho you passed on the street. Are you sure this friend of yours isn’t crazy?”

  Thane let her suggestion pass without comment.

  “No,” she said. “You have no responsibility at all.”

  “But what if this person commits another act of violence?”

  “Who? This figment fugitive this other character’s hiding? What if he does?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s a moral question. And it’s not really what you’re asking, is it?”

  Thane listened to himself breathe.

  “Trust me, Roddy, you’re safe.”

  They were quiet again.

  “Tell me something, though. Why did you get involved with a guy like this in the first place?”

  He thought about his book idea, then closed his eyes. “It just happened. Why?”

  “Because it’s surprising.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It just isn’t your speed.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “It’s kind of dangerous.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She sighed, and he thought he could detect a hint of fondness in it.

  “Remember, Roddy, when we lived in St. Louis? In that little apartment of yours. Where was it? Dogtown, right?”

  “On Clayton.”

  “We used to hear gunfire at night, that clap-clap sound. The DA I was working for and I both told you that sooner or later the person firing that gun would eventually find his way to my desk. And you said you never could do what I do. You’d never go there.”

  “Yes,” he said, and heard the little girl say, “Pick me up too.”

  “Hold the phone for me then, up to my ear,” Ashley told her.

  He could hear Ashley breathing hard as she lifted the second child—a sound from deep within her he’d heard so many times he was shocked by how familiar it was.