“Eyelash.” It was Ernie. He released himself from the group and came toward me, the others following closely.
“You promised to behave, Ernie,” I heard Keenes hiss.
“Had my fingers crossed, you little Nazi,” Ernie replied savagely.
Ernie wobbled dangerously. “Managed a whole minute with the Shysters, Fin. Awholesixty seconds of polite piffle.” His bottom lip bulged in a guilty pout. “Then exception was taken to my thrilling parodies of Hollywood stars.”
He grabbed me by the breast pocket of my suit jacket. “Come up and see me sometime. I need you. Sometime soon,” he slurred, in a ghastly impression of Mae West. Keenes pulled him off me and I thought Ernie was going to take a swing at him. But he just rocked on his heels and looked sullen.
Beyond them, McIntyre shot me a deadly glance and then turned to a furious Mendip. He said, “This guy needs a bed, Charles.” I assumed he was talking about Ernie, but the hostility seemed directed at me.
Charles put his arm around Ernie. “I think there’s been enough excitement for one evening.” His tone was surprisingly gentle. “You’re an old fool and your own worst enemy.” Charles patted his back and Ernie nodded humbly. It seemed that all the fight had gone out of him, as if his now crumpled and sweat-stained cream suit merely housed a large balloon filled with tepid water, gin, and scotch. Ernie allowed Charles to escort him away without any further physical or verbal resistance.
Keenes was standing next me. “I’ve got Ernie’s wallet,” I told him. “He left it in the car.”
“We’ll talk about your part in all this in a minute,” said Keenes coldly. “I’ll return it. Meantime, wait here.” He snatched the wallet from me and went over to the car where Ernie had now been stowed and tossed it carelessly onto the backseat before muttering something at the driver. Mendip leaned against the car, deep in discussion with McIntyre, and without pausing, straightened himself, slammed the door shut, and allowed the car to speed off down Wall Street.
From down the sidewalk, Keenes crooked a finger at me.
“What in the blazes do you think you’re playing at,” he said.
McIntrye gave Mendip a friendly tap on the chest. “I’m going back to the party, Charles,” he said. “I think you’ve got an internal issue to resolve here. Don’t be too long. You and I’ve got to say a few words to the folks and then let them hang loose and relax.”
Mendip nodded. McIntyre went back into the hotel without looking at me.
“Well?” Keenes glared.
“Ernie asked me to accompany him here from the office,” I explained evenly. “He left his wallet in the car and I came back to hand it in to reception. That’s it.”
“You’re a menace,” Keenes said.
“What the hell was I supposed to do?” I replied. “You know Ernie, you know how he can be. It’s not my problem, not my fault. Ernie’s your management issue not mine. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is.”
“That’ll do, Fin,” said Mendip quietly. “Let’s put a line under this. Stay away from Ernie from here on. He always seems to be drunker than usual when you’re around. But he’s very much part of the Clay & Westminster family and we must make allowances. You are part of that family too; but you’re making it difficult for us to help you.”
Some family.
“Shouldn’t you be in the office preparing documents for Bombay?” Mendip said.
“That’s precisely what I was trying to do when Ernie whisked me away,” I said.
“Good.” He reached out and straightened my tie. “And don’t youever ever use my name to try and gain access to people. I know what you said to get the meeting with Tochera brought forward.”
His face spoke of censure; if so, what were his hands saying?
Mendip turned around and strode toward the hotel entrance. “Come on, Sheldon,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve got a speech to make and you’ve got to listen, not heckle, and show extravagant appreciation.”
Keenes poked his finger in my ribs. “You may be part of the family,” he whispered, “but you’re the bloody black sheep. Just like your father.”
I went back to the car and told the driver to head for SoHo.
My call to Carol’s cell phone was greeted by the answering service. I left a message to say I’d be late.
I got the number for Cellar Americana from information and called them.
“Miss Amen has left a message for you,” a waiter told me. “Hold on a second.” In the background I could hear the sound of people enjoying themselves. “Here it is. She couldn’t wait, she’s sorry, something came up, will call tomorrow.”
“That all?”
“That’s it, sir.”
“Take me to Battery Park, please,” I told the driver.
I walked into the lobby of my apartment block and nearly made it to the elevator.
“A special delivery for you, Mr. Border.” The jolly doorman. “You guys lead your lives at one hell of a pace.” He handed me a FedEx bag.
He touched my arm, like he wanted to get my attention. “I was thinking maybe I would try the banking game. You got any advice, I could sure use it.”
I stared at him for a moment. Early twenties, sharp-looking, probably make a good banker. “My advice, just fucking forget it,” I said.
I tore the FedEx bag open in the elevator. I didn’t want to read it in my apartment, my domain.
It was from a firm of attorneys, but not Marshall, Forrester, Kellerman, and Hirsch. A small Manhattan outfit, a one-man band: Jack Kempinski. A tough name, rugged, gritty, seen action on the legal eastern front, ate tank traps for breakfast, Brit attorneys for lunch. He said his client was Miranda Carlson. JJ’s death had left her and the children destitute. He had advised her that JJ’s death was entirely my fault, that I was a dope peddler, had gotten JJ high, and put him behind the wheel of a death machine. I was a pusher, a wrecker, a dangerous desperado who deserved to be deleted. Financially and professionally ruined first, then deleted. And he was just the guy to do it.
My chart needed amending, another plaintiff to be added, one that I hadn’t planned on.
I paused at my front door.
Miranda destitute? Why? JJ was rich. Sure, everyone would be after a slice of the estate, but that could take years. For now Miranda was rich. But if that were the case, why was she running to an ambulance chaser like Kempinski?
Inside the apartment, I went straight to the refrigerator and took out a can of beer. Out of the kitchen, my footsteps clacked mockingly on the wooden floor.
I checked the voicemail.
“You’ll have the letter by now.” At the cemetery, Miranda’s voice had seemed weak, enfeebled by the rain, dissipated by the vast terrain. Now it was almost flat, barely making it through the little plastic mouthpiece on the phone.
“You must have known all along. You were his attorney, you must have known. He had nothing, left us nothing. He wasn’t even an employee of Jefferson Trust. He was hired through some kind of consultancy arrangement—I don’t know, I don’t understand these things. Some offshore thing. Jefferson Trust doesn’t, won’t, say he even existed for them.” She stopped talking, but she hadn’t hung up, I could hear the short ragged breaths, a little mouse cornered by the cat. “And you knew all along, didn’t you? Well, you’re the lawyer, Mr. Border, and I’m going to use your precious law to destroy you.” It went quiet until the answering machine told me I had no new messages.
I took the chart out of my pocket, looked at it for a moment, screwed it up into a ball, and threw it on the floor.
JJ’s vortex raged in my head, roaring, spinning, sucking, sucking me into its void.
I went to the bedroom, took off my suit coat, and chucked it carelessly over the back of the chair. There was a light tap—something had fallen to the floor. I switched on the light and saw a small cardboard folder lying by the bureau, little bigger than a credit card. At first I thought it was an old receipt holder from a fancy restaurant, but when I picke
d it up I saw it contained a brass key. It was for a room at the Plaza.567was scribbled untidily on the inside flap. I looked at it for a while, trying to figure out some logical reason for its presence in one of my jacket pockets.
Ernie had grabbed at my suit. He had asked me to come up and see him sometime. Sometime soon. It was Ernie’s room key; he’d slipped it into my breast pocket before he had allowed himself to be driven away.
He’d said he needed me. Drunk as he was, perhaps I needed him even more.
NINETEEN
It was around eleven-thirty when I walked into the lobby of the Plaza, dodging and weaving through the tide of people making their way out after functions or dinner. For the most part they were well-dressed, some in tuxedos, whereas I was in Levi’s and a burgundy, cotton Barneys short-sleeve. But there were still some tourists in their dreary travel-wear milling around gawking at the gaudy splendor of the Plaza public areas.
A bellboy eyed me suspiciously as I got in the elevator. I pressed five and he disappeared from view as the big brass doors clunked shut in front of me.
The heavy-duty doorknob of 567 had a Do Not Disturb card dangling from it. I pressed the buzzer firmly. I knew I’d have to give several buzzes and allow a fair amount of time for Ernie to make it across the room.
I buzzed again and waited a little before putting my ear to the door. I was sure I could hear some music; classical—choral, perhaps. But I could hear nothing that signified a stirring Ernie.
There was the sound of conversation coming from around a corner about thirty feet along the hall. I lifted the Do Not Disturb card and slid the room key into the slot, turned it, and entered the room, immediately shutting the door behind me.
Before even appreciating that I was in total darkness, I gagged. The smell was terrible. Violently organic. I fumbled for a light switch, located it, and found myself standing in a small hallway that led into the main suite. I went into the next room and switched on the light.
A large drawing room. Its sumptuous furnishings appeared undisturbed, the cushions still well-plumped. Elaborate ashtrays were unsoiled and, apart from a dirty glass and a half-full bottle of caskstrength malt whiskey standing on a sideboard, there was little evidence of occupation. But the music was louder and the smell was stronger.
There was a pair of double doors that I guessed led into the bedroom. I opened one gingerly and found myself in another unlit room, whose darkness was filled with a choir only a few decibels short of deafening. I found the light switch.
The bedroom. A suitcase unopened on a stand; passport and wallet on the bedside table, the bed itself turned back for the night, its good-night chocolate resting unopened on the pillow, its sheets crisp and undented. The doors to the entertainment unit were open and I could see that there was a CD player on a shelf below the TV. I turned down the volume; some strange sense of decorum prevented me from switching it off altogether.
A strip of light ran along the bottom of what I imagined to be the bathroom door. Turning the handle gently, I let the door swing open. I staggered back; here the smell was overwhelming. This time I couldn’t control myself. I sank to my knees and retched. Nothing came; I hadn’t eaten since God knew when.
Beyond the entrance to the bathroom, a lake of filthy liquid slicked the floor. It was punctuated by islands of solid matter, anonymous, disgusting. I could also see a foot and the shin of a hairless leg.
I forced myself to walk into the bathroom.
The mess was everywhere. And in the middle of it was Ernie Monks. He was slumped against the sink, his head just below the lipof its rim, a cheap wig of long black hair tilted bizarrely over his temples.
He couldn’t slide all the way to the floor because there was a leather belt around his neck that had been lassoed over one of the big chrome faucets.
Ernie stared at me, his eyes vacant and bulging. His mouth was open, and filled with a tongue the size and color of a small eggplant. The rest of his face was stretched in a macabre facelift, thanks to the contorting effects of the leather belt straining around his throat and up behind his ears.
He was naked, and I couldn’t help being struck by the fact that he was completely hairless—apart from the dumb wig—not a tuft, not a strand, anywhere on his marble-hued body. I touched his left hand. His skin felt like cold tire rubber. And then I glanced at his pelvic region: His penis and scrotum were bloated and purple, a knot of twine poking out from their base. Jesus. Like a tourniquet on the end of a sausage.
I wanted to release him, to cover him. This wasn’t the real Ernie. This wasn’t real at all. This was the Madness of Queen Ernie the Third, as he had once termed one of his own lapses of good taste.
But I knew I wouldn’t go near him again as I edged back toward the door. The price of his dignity was too high for me. I felt guilty as I nudged the light switch off, to at least afford Ernie’s corpse some temporary privacy. It was a small gesture, and not nearly enough.
In the bedroom I tried to think. My first inclination was to call the police or at least hotel security, but then I started to see the future and imagine myself once again in the center of events. The police, Mendip. I had done nothing wrong, except be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again.
Ernie was dead; there was nothing I could do for him.
In a short while, he’d be found. My interference would add nothing to the process except more additions to my now discarded chart.
What had happened here? The finale to a dark struggle. It was too near to the event to get a grip on the steps that might have led to this scene. A gone-wrong sex game? I didn’t think so: Ernie wouldn’t die from something so banal. A pickup that had turned on him? No: Erniehad invited me to his room—he wouldn’t want me to find trade in his boudoir. None of it made sense: the wig, the twine, the shaved body. Maybe when I hadn’t showed up quickly, Ernie had started on a fatal ritual, perhaps hoping that I’d appear to stop it in its tracks before it was too late. No, no, not that either.
My brain registered the music, a coping mechanism maybe. A Palestrina Mass, one of Ernie’s favorites.“Sicut lilium inter spinas,”sang the sublime alto voice. “Like a lily among thorns.”
The CD player was set to repeat. I switched it off but left the CD in its tray. To the left was another small shelf with a few books stacked neatly on it: the Zagat restaurant guide, Henry James’sWashington Square,leather-bound with an EM monogram embossed on the spine, an anthology of T. S. Eliot poems. And the latest Jackie Collins. There was another book tucked behind his little library. I lifted out the slim paperback carefully. It wasIn Black and White,by Rudyard Kipling. Inside the flyleaf was a white envelope with the nameTerrywritten on it, in Ernie’s appalling script.
I’d been in the suite for too long. I slid the book back behind the others, but kept the envelope, thought for a moment, and then folded it and stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. I jerked a tissue from a box on the dressing table and made a quick sweep of the room to remove at least the most obvious prints. It was futile, I knew. My dabs were sure to be somewhere and would be found, if the police decided to treat the place as a murder scene. And, anyway, nothing would get me back in the bathroom. I hadn’t touched anything in there, had I? Only Ernie.
I switched out the light in the bedroom and moved quickly through the drawing room before hesitating at the suite entrance. I turned out the last light, wiped it, opened the door an inch or two, and peered one way down the corridor. It was clear. I opened the door a little farther and poked my head around the other. That was clear too. I shut the door quietly and walked toward the elevator.
TWENTY
Dots. I’d tried stepping sideways—two steps—like Ernie suggested. Still blasted dots. Not bearings, not coordinates. Atoms of chaos.
On the desk in front of me, lay a newspaper with my name in it.
“You okay?” It was Paula.
No. Ernie’s dead, he died in a Bosch-inspired hell. And my own life is a small, vulnerable, expendable box in an overc
rowded PowerPoint presentation. My chart has become more sprawling than the Kennedy family tree and won’t fit on a single sheet of letter-size paper anymore.
I turned the newspaper around for Paula to read. “I don’t get a headline yet,” I said. “But they place me at the scene.” There was a quote from the dog walker, a picture of him even. “They ask the obvious questions and, by tomorrow, they’ll have learned that it’s my name on the McLaren registration documents. Tomorrow, I will be the devil.”
Paula didn’t read the piece. “I’ve already seen it.”
I folded up the paper and dropped it in the wastebasket.
“Pablo Tochera called,” Paula said. “Your phone was off so I thought I’d leave you in peace for a while.”
“That was nice of you.”
“This isn’t,” she said, handing me an envelope.
I didn’t take it. I kept my hands flat on the desk.
“Your resignation?” I whispered.
“Uh-huh.”
“Does it contain an explanation, Paula?”
Tears were leaking down her cheeks. “Leave it, Fin.”
She was too important, too pivotal. To me. But what aboutherlife? What was pivotal in her life? Or rather, why was it so important that Schuster Mannheim play no part in it?
“Please, Paula . . .”
She threw the letter on my lap and left the room, barging into Charles Mendip on the way.
“Oh my God,” she muttered through her tears. “Not you. Jesus, not you.”
Mendip shut the door and sat down, impervious to the chill welcome.
I put Paula’s envelope in my pocket along with the one I’d taken from the Plaza.
Mendip glanced briefly at the newspaper in the wastebasket and frowned.
“Ernie was found dead this morning in his hotel room,” he said flatly.
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