“Yes,” I said cautiously. “What do you want?”
He opened the envelope and pulled out a letter. “You should leave Carol alone.”
“And why is that any of your goddamned business?”
“You are the source of everything bad in her life,” Harley continued.
“Dr. Trent has confirmed that, has he?”
“You’re the signature on her death warrant.” Harley handed over the letter. “Read this,” he said.
I had learned to fear pieces of paper handed over by strangers.
A short letter. No header or footer, just one paragraph of italic type.
Kill yourself, Carol Amen. Kill yourself. I don’t care how you do it, violently or silently, quick or slow. Just please do it, I implore you. You’re trash, surely you must see that. You’ve read the rollcall of dead on the wall of your apartment. Now look in the mirror and kill yourself.
Harley snatched the letter from me and stuffed it deep into his pocket.
My hand shot out and grabbed the cord of the bathrobe, pulling his bulk toward me. “Where did you get that?” I hissed. “Has she seen it?”
Harley sagged against me and let out a groan. An orderly across the room turned and eyed us suspiciously before starting to move toward us.
“I have her best interests at heart,” Harley said. “You wouldn’t want her to do something stupid, would you?”
“Why should that letter make any difference?” I said hotly. “She has already seen her apartment ransacked, dead names on her wall. Her response hasn’t been to make an attempt on her own life.”
“But she’s thought of it,” Harley said.
“How the fuck do you know? Or have you been steaming open her brain as well?”
“I don’t have to, Fin Border. She does that for me in group therapy. We all open our brains in there.”
The orderly was on us now.
“Everything okay, Harley?” he asked.
Harley jabbed a finger into my chest. “This guy’s been opening my mail. He’s got a listening device, he’s wired. You said I’d be safe in here.”
The orderly sighed and gave Harley a compassionate smile. “Don’t worry, Harley, he’s going now.” The orderly glared at me. “Aren’t you, sir?”
“But . . .” I started. But what? This wasn’t the place for a rational argument.
“Yes, I’m going now,” I said.
FORTY-THREE
Get out of there.”
I heard the voice before I realized I’d picked up the phone and put it next to my ear. It felt like only a couple of minutes since I’d gotten back from St. Cecilia’s and found the door to Terry’s apartment wide open. Oh Christ, I’d thought, expecting to find the place turned over, red names splashed on the wall. But no, two surly moving men heaving furniture informed me that they were clearing out the place, shipping the contents to storage, they’d be back later for the futon, pillow, and telephone, which Mr. Wardman wanted them to leave there. I had nodded vacantly, lurched into the spare room, and collapsed onto the futon, not even bothering to wonder if these guys were for real or just cool-headed thieves.
“Who is this?” I mumbled.
“Terry.” The voice was clipped, like a computer voice.
“What’s happening? Why are you moving out?”
“Shut up. The police will be around very soon to arrest you. You’ve been placed inside the Plaza on the night of Ernie’s death. The
Indians are up in arms too; they’ve found a pile of corpses and a burnt-out law firm. They want you back.”
I tried to sit up and my body reacted with fury, behaving like a network of irritable tectonic plates. I was now awake, though.
“How do you know the police are coming?” I asked.
“Hey, no questions. Keep my cell phone and look under the pillow.”
My hand swept the cool underside of the pillow, stopping at what felt like an envelope. Jesus, another envelope.
“Open it later,” Terry snapped. “Just get out.”
“Wait a minute. What’s going on? I can understand why I should clear out, but why you?”
“I’m the paradigm of knowing something but not enough to be of any use to anybody.”
“Riddles, Terry.”
“The contents of the envelope might help. Ernie’s letter. Although, I expect it will merely add to the riddle.”
“What’s it say?”
“I have no idea,” Terry said. “I don’t know the code, nor want to.”
“Whatdoyou know?”
Terry paused. “That Ernie was broken on the workbench of McIntyre and Mendip.”
“They killed him?”
“They didn’t have to. Look, you must leave. I must leave; I’ve reached a watershed and it’s time for an unqualified attorney to start waiting tables on a beach somewhere.”
“What about Pablo Tochera? Where does he stand?”
Terry sighed. “He’s at a watershed of sorts himself. He has to choose between being the Puerto Rican figleaf on McIntyre’s letterhead and live with being the little shit in the big shit’s shadow. Or—he can keep his self-respect. Pablo’s big on integrity, Fin; so’s Julia, his wife. But it’s a life decision what with the payments he has to make on a fancy house on the Upper East Side.”
“When will I see you—to give back the cell phone.”
“Just get out, the cell phone’s yours until they cut it off.”
“Where shall I go?” I asked.
“Over to you, Fin. Think while you move.”
Move. That was a fucking joke. And think? Ha, bloody, ha.
“Do you know someone called Conrad Carlstein, JJ’s brother?” I wanted to know if Carlstein had touched Terry with the fear.
Terry caught his breath. “Just stay away from him,” he said and hung up.
It was hot and, even though a weekday, Central Park was teeming. I lay facedown, peering into the roots of the grass.
Nobody could see who I was. My hands shrouded my irregular scalp. I had slung my jacket over my suitcase and the garment bag was stuffed under it.
I was invisible.
Except to Paula, I hoped.
I’d told her I would be less than fifty yards from the Tavern on the Green. She’d be able to pull up and park. And find me. Assuming the police hadn’t found me first.
I hoped she’d gotten the wig. She hadn’t laughed when I’d asked her to get me one. She just asked what size and did I need anything else? No, just you, I’d said.
The envelope nestled in my pocket, next to the cell phone. I’d taken a brief peek: the same letter that Terry and I had studied in his office. The original. I wondered if Terry had taken a copy to carry with him into his new life. It depended upon what it said, I supposed, and Terry professed to be unaware of its meaning.
The sun felt good on my back, a healing influence. It had been too long since I’d allowed it direct access to me without the interruption of an office window. I thought about Carol. I didn’t believe for a moment that she was capable of doing anything to hurt herself. If there was a grain of truth in what Harley had said, then it was merely Carol experimenting out loud with a palette of possible feelings, not actual ones.
“Wake ya?”
I smiled into the grass.
“Hallelujah,” I said.
“You said it, counselor; with the wig I got you, there’s a front row seat in a seventies gospel choir with your name on it.”
I turned my head. Paula’s face was a silhouette, a partial eclipse of the sun.
“Is the car nearby?” I asked, shading my eyes, but liking the view too much to shield myself entirely from it.
The silhouette nodded. “Can you get up okay?”
I started to raise myself. My skin felt taut, like tight scuba gear about to split. “I’ll be fine once I get moving. It’s just a bitch to get mobile.”
“You’re talking to the prototype bitch on that score.” She handed me my jacket.
I started to p
ick up the suitcase and garment bag.
“Hold it, Mr. Schwarzenegger.” Paula’s hand beat me to it. “The garment bag is for me. You take the suitcase. Wouldn’t look natural if you weren’t carrying something. And keep your face to the floor. You’ve got top billing this morning.”
I studied Paula for a moment. The sleek brown face, the placid almond eyes. She was smiling, trying to look carefree, happy with her rendezvous in the park. But I could see her anxiety.
I then bowed my head and focused on Paula’s sneakers.
It was only fifty yards. Only fifty yards, I kept repeating to myself. But the eyes of the park were on us, plainclothed cops all around us, laughing at us. They would let us get near the car, let us think we’d made it. And then move in. “You didn’t think we’d miss you, did you?” they’d say as they clapped on the cuffs.
A soccer ball rolled into the sight line between my shoes and Paula’s sneakers.
I didn’t look up.
“Hey.” A teenage voice. A gimme-my-ball-back-mister voice.
Fuck off, I’m busy being a fugitive.
“Dude. How about it?” The voice was nearer.
I still didn’t look up.
“Jerk.”
I started to move my leg to get a foot around the ball, but beforecontact could be made, I saw Paula’s sneaker scoop it up and send it out of sight.
“Arrright.” A teenager’s whoop of forgiveness.
Paula kept walking and I kept following. In a moment we’d reached her car.
It was a Ford, basic but new. I tried to act casual getting in the front passenger seat, but it hurt like hell.
Paula pointed to the radio. “You want to hear the news?”
“No.”
She drove out of the Tavern on the Green parking lot and past two police cars. I ducked my head.
Paula jabbed the “on” button. “You better hear it once,” she said. “Then forget it.”
It didn’t take long for me to recognize my name. At first it didn’t seem like the name belonged to me, it was in the possession of an intense, ten-words-a-second reporter who confirmed I was a fugitive, that I might be dangerous, that I was implicated in the suspicious death of a senior UK attorney at the Plaza, that I was wanted in connection with the murders of two men in India. And there was more: a fire in India and another body. And, most infamously, I was the star of Slaughter on the FDR. With my leading lady, Carol Amen.
Paula jerked her head toward the backseat. “There’s a selection of newspapers under the blanket.”
I punched at the radio to clear my name from the airwaves.
“They can stay there,” I said tersely.
“Thanks, buddy. They cost me three bucks.”
I smiled. “Put it on the account.”
Looking out of the window, I could see that we were headed east. “Where are we going?”
“East Rockaway.”
I’d heard of it, but even after five years in New York, it was still just a blob on a railroad map.
“I thought you lived in Brooklyn,” I said. Paula was always going on about the commute: Every day almost, there’d be a new episode with which to hound me before we could get to the mail.
“That’s what I wanted people to think.” We made our way down Fifth. Past Saks, past Rockefeller Center. I wondered when, if ever, I’d be free to roam down here again. And, even if I could, whether I would have any dollars in my pocketbook to spend.
“Why did you want them to think that?” I asked.
Paula’s face hardened. “Jim McIntyre, that’s why. The more you keep secret, the less you can be violated. At least that’s the way I’ve figured it for the last seven years.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have guessed.”
“The house in Rockaway is all mine, no loan,” she continued. “I paid for it out of the seventy thousand from Schuster and with a life policy of Doug’s. I rent a small place in Brooklyn. For appearances. I just go there to pick up mail. My calls are rerouted to Rockaway.”
Very elaborate. McIntyre must have scared the shit out of her.
“Christ, the wig.” I’d forgotten all about it, listening to her talk.
“Under the blanket with the newspapers,” Paula said.
I fished around in a plastic bag and withdrew a brown clump of hair. It felt weird. Smelled too.
It took me a while to figure out the front of the thing, and when I did, I flicked it forward and, starting from its fringe, teased it onto my head.
“What do you think?” I asked, turning to Paula.
She stared at the road, said nothing.
Darker and longer than my original hair, but somehow in keeping with my face, I thought it looked okay.
“At least you don’t look like a guy who’s just been napalmed,” Paula said.
We were silent until we got through the Midtown Tunnel and started into Queens.
“You got a plan?” Paula asked.
“I found Carol,” I said. “Now I want to visit Conrad Carlstein.” It sounded good, decisive.
“Who’s he?”
Who indeed. The bravura ebbed quickly.
We came off 495 and headed east on the Grand Central Parkway. Sign after sign pointed to JFK. Getting a flight to anywhere would beimpossible now, but my eyes still rested on each and every green invitation we passed.
“Don’t think about it, honey,” Paula said. “You wouldn’t make it out of the parking lot.”
“I know.”
“And what about all these Indian folks I hear you’ve been shooting and burning? Jesus, Fin, what you get up to out there? Is a girl safe alone with you?”
I outlined some of what had happened in the last few days.
Then the broad brush summary: “We’ll deal with the Stateside problems first,” I said. “After that, I’ll widen the net.”
“That isn’t a plan, it’s a letter to Santa Claus.”
She was quiet for a while. “You didn’t kill anyone, did you?” she finally asked.
I could hear Ketan’s head slamming against the flagstones. No, it was the heroin.
“Of course I didn’t,” I said.
“If they killed your mom, I wouldn’t blame you,” she added.
I keyed in Pablo’s number on the cell phone.
Hesitating a moment, I told the secretary who I was. I sensed the wince down the phone as she informed me that Mr. Tochera was at a meeting, but she’d check to see if he was back. My name was in the domain.
“Hi.” It was the lowesthiI’d ever heard.
“I’m not calling to screw up your partnership chances,” I said.
“You missed your appointment with Manelli this morning.” The thread of anger was there, but something else too, maybe the compassion Terry spoke of.
“Terry’s leaving, did you know that?” I said.
“Huh. He has plenty of reasons to vamoose, I guess. He doesn’t have a wife and big house to maintain and so can holler ‘wagons roll’ anytime.”
“There’s a club, Pablo, the Gemini Club. McIntyre, Mendip, Askari—that’s the Indian lawyer—and JJ’s brother, someone called Conrad Carlstein. They’re responsible for the deaths of my parents and an Indian lawyer. They’re laundering money for expatriate Indians on a huge scale. And, and, and.”
“Proof?”
Agreements I had no access to. WhatdidI have? A dog-eared book, an as yet meaningless letter, and corpses, two of which were being laid at my door.
“Not much,” I admitted. “Yet.”
“Listen, Fin, here’s something for which there’s already plenty of proof. Detective Manelli is squaring up to throw the book at you—not showing this morning put a hair up his ass and placing you at the Plaza has got his juices going even more. And then there’s McIntyre—my boss, in case you forgot—he wanted to chew the fat with me a little.”
“And?”
“He says that JJ Carlson had nothing when he died, hadn’t had anything for a while, he didn’t even own
a suit. So how the fuck did he buy a car for a million dollars?”
“You know perfectly well that access to funds is as good as ownership and he was a zillion times better placed to secure funds than me. I don’t see your point.”
Pablo exhaled what sounded like a dying breath. “Jesus, Fin,” he said finally. “Tomorrow night at around five, the big guys convene for a short meeting to put the wraps on the merger and sanction the press release. In that release the new partners will be announced and, in spite of everything, there’s a good chance my name will be included.”
“Congratulations, that makes everything worthwhile.”
“Fuck you.”
“Terry said you were big on ethics,” I said. “Julia too. How do you think she’d feel if she knew what your comfortable existence was built on?”
“Keep Julia out of this.”
“Let me ask you a simple question: Do you really believe that the car was mine?”
Pablo groaned a little. “No,” he muttered.
“Are you convinced that the car was not mine? This is a different question, I think you’ll appreciate.”
“I’m not a fucking idiot, I can see the difference.”
“Well?” I pressed. “What’s your position, Pablo: convinced or merely agnostic on the subject?”
“The car wasn’t yours,” Pablo said without hesitation. “I knowthat, but that’s not the point. McIntyre wants you fucked to Jupiter and back. The only advice I can sensibly give you is to find another attorney, outside Schuster, one who can do his best for you without his own organization pitching obstacles in his path. And before we go any further, let me say how sorry I am about your parents. I really am.”
This wasn’t the time for condolences. “You’ve already suggested that nobody worth their salt will act for me. And you said that before I was officially a fugitive. What hope have I now?”
“Hell. I don’t know what to tell you; except that if you want someone at Schuster to act for you then it will be a new attorney and one selected by McIntyre.”
Pablo was hurting; I could feel the pain. But I had to press his principles into action.
“I don’t think that McIntyre pulled you off my case,” I said. “I think you pulled yourself off.”
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