Dead Cat Bounce

by Norman Green

  “If that’s the way you feel about it.” In front of them, the lucky fisherman dragged an eighteen-inch carp out of the brown water, and it flapped spastically on the ground. “What about my wife. What can you tell me about her?”

  The kid shook his head. “You want my opinion, you’re wasting your time. I put this girl I know on your wife, and last I heard she was bored stiff.”

  “What do you mean, the last you heard? This girl, she work for you? She know you’re leaving?”

  “I left a message on her voice mail, okay? She didn’t get back to me.”

  “Yeah, great job, dude, way to go. You really know how to take care of your own.”

  The kid turned and shouted at him, red-faced. “Hey, man, she’s freelance, okay? I pay her off the books, if it’s any of your business. There’s nothing that ties her to me! And she didn’t have nothing to do with Prior, anyhow, just your old lady.” He turned away. “I told you, I left a message on her voice mail.”

  “What’s your girl’s name.”

  “Oh, now look, man, why can’t you just leave her out of this?”

  “What’s her name.”

  “Ain’t you got any fucking heart? Ain’t you got any soul? One dead body ain’t enough for you? Why can’t you just leave her alone?”

  “Yeah, like you give a fuck. Look at you, you’re shitting your pants, you’re running for the hills, and you spared this girl of yours one lousy phone call. Look, I need to talk to her. I promise I’ll give her a better heads-up than you did.”

  The fisherman had filleted his catch, and he stood up and tossed the entrails back into the water. Two of the other fishermen had started a fire, and a third was wrenching the metal sign, the one that detailed the contaminants in the fish, off its pole. When he got it off, he took it over and laid it on top of the fire. After the painted warning burned off, he took a half stick of butter out of his beer cooler and put it on the metal surface, and a minute later they were all gathered around the sign, drinking beer and watching their contaminated breakfast cooking.

  The kid exhaled heavily. “Tina Finbury,” he said. “I’m gonna call her again, when I get where I’m going. She decides to do something for you, it’s on her.”

  “What a guy,” Stoney said. “What’s her phone number?” Stoney entered the numbers into his phone’s memory.

  “All right,” the kid said. “I’ll drive you back.”

  “Great.”

  He sat in his car, watched the kid’s Toyota fade into the distance. He flipped his phone open, dialed Tina Finbury’s number, listened to the phone ring, then waited through the standard message. “Listen, Tina,” he said. “You were looking into something for me, but indirectly. Your, ahh, associate, the guy I hired, has taken off, and for just cause, I guess. I don’t know if you’re in harm’s way here or not, but we should talk.” He left her his number.

  There were a lot of mirrors in the Closter Diner, with a little luck you could watch a reflection of a reflection of just about anybody there and still appear to be minding your own business. Stoney sat in his booth over next to a window in the corner of the place and watched Charles David Prior order his lunch from his seat at the counter on the other side of the room. He was tall, on the thin side, silver hair, tan, carefully put together. Nothing about him was loud, his clothes, his haircut and his shoes all whispered “money,” instead of shouting it. A heavily muscled white guy wearing a gray suit and a black T-shirt sat at the end of the counter, sipping coffee. His eyes passed over Stoney twice, but the guy was watching everyone in the place.

  The waitress obviously knew Prior, she chatted with him for a few minutes before she departed with his order. Prior watched her as she walked away. She was a middle-aged woman, slightly overweight, but he watched her anyway, transfixed. One of the other waitresses passed by, stopped to say hello. She was a bit younger than the first one, and Prior brightened, smiled at her, engaged her in conversation. Stoney could not read lips, not in a mirror, anyway, but he really didn’t need to know what the man was saying to understand what was going on.

  The females in the place loved the guy. Rich guy, loves the broads, probably a great tipper.

  Prior was a creature of habit, he ate his lunch in this diner most weekdays, that was one of the tidbits the kid had come up with. The second waitress moved away, and Prior started talking to the guy sitting next to him.

  Stoney pretended to be interested in his copy of the Daily News. The freaking Mets had assembled another collection of overpriced veterans, mixed in a few young kids, and the general manager kept talking about his master plan, how he needed a few more pieces to put the team over the top. It looked like it was going to be another long season. Across town, the Yankees had an all-star at almost every position, and they were in the market for more. A little more proof, in case he needed it, that life was not fair. He’d said that to Benny once, who had looked at him disdainfully and told him that a man in his position ought to feel grateful that such was the case.

  Something to be said for that.

  Stoney’s waitress came by and refilled his coffee cup. She was the best-looking broad in the place, young, tall, nice rack, proud face. She walked back over to replace the coffeepot behind the counter. Prior followed her in the mirror, Stoney wondered if the guy was going to notice him watching, but Prior was completely focused on the woman. She walked past Prior, ignoring him, and he looked down at the counter in front of him as she passed.

  He must have made a play for her, Stoney thought, and whatever happened, she had nothing to say to the guy now, and he didn’t want to look her in the face. He still had it bad, though, he couldn’t resist eyeballing her as she went off into the kitchen. Some guys are like that, Stoney thought, they live to chase pussy, and even though some of them develop amazing social skills, they learn how to smile and engage and ask the right questions, they really have only a peripheral interest in the woman in question, and that simply because she is attached to what they really want. Fat Tommy had a touch of that, but the thing that kept it from being sick, at least in his case, was that Tommy really was interested in almost anyone who had a story to tell.

  God, he thought, Donna must be a real mess. She’s got to be fucked up in the head to be giving this guy the time of day…. He turned back to his newspaper, stared at the pages for a while. The guy was so transparent, how could she not see through him? One of the things he’d always admired about her was her ability to face up to the truth, to refrain from pretending to herself that things were better than they really were. It doesn’t fit, he told himself, I can’t picture Donna staying in the same room with this asshole for more than five minutes. Could she really have become so unhinged by the changes the two of them had gone through in the past year? It was almost flattering, in a way, to think that she needed him that way, but after toying with that thought for a few minutes, he discarded it. Please, he said to himself. Get serious.

  He drank coffee and read the paper while Prior finished his lunch. He silently cursed whoever was calling the shots over at Shea, why they kept chasing over-the-hill ballplayers was beyond him, particularly when it was obvious what they needed. Stick Michael was the guy they needed to go after, and they could get him, too, all they had to do was wait until the next time Steinbrenner took a piss on the guy’s shoes, then call him up and make his day.

  Prior stood up to go, said good-bye to the two waitresses who were still talking to him, left some money on the counter. Stoney could see why they’d be attracted to him, some women wouldn’t be able to see through the act. This guy could model clothes for Brooks Brothers, Stoney thought, or play a rich doctor in one of the daytime soaps. Prior took a heavy leather biker jacket off the rack and put it on, fished a thin pair of driving gloves out of a pocket, and walked out the back door as he put them on. The guy in the gray suit got up and followed him out.

  There was an old Italian motorcycle parked next to a stretch Lincoln Town Car in the lot behind the diner. The bike was a
vintage Ducati 750SS, it was beautiful, and just like the man who owned it, rich, easy on the eyes, and probably had a few good moves. The thing was a classic, a piece of mechanical jewelry, exceedingly rare and positively gorgeous. It really belonged in a museum. Prior nosed it out of the parking lot, took off, the bike bellowing that unmistakable Ducati roar. The Town Car, piloted by the man in the gray suit, followed close behind.

  Stoney waved to his waitress for the bill. Who is this guy, he wondered, and why should I care? Why not just smoke the bastard and be done with it? But he had promised Marisa…Got to be a way to find out who you are, he thought, looking out the window, in the general direction Prior had taken. Got to be.

  You open the door to the place, you’re looking down the length of the bar, dark paneling, brass rail, big mirror, rows of bottles, tall beer taps, TV down at the end where the fat bartender and a couple of waiters were watching a baseball game. It was preseason, the grapefruit league was playing, and a lot of kids with names nobody knew were out there taking their shots. It was long odds that any of them were going to make the bigs, but they were doing the best they could. They were in the game.

  Stoney could feel his heart trying to crawl up into his throat. Nice, quiet place to sit and get a load on. It would have felt just like home to him, once, this place and a thousand others just like it. Heaven on earth, and he had never intended to leave, never aspired to anything better, never thought he could find any greater happiness. That familiar barroom smell filled his head as he stood in the inner doorway. It was the perfume of a beautiful woman who had once loved him, and a hint of that scent started the images rolling, what she had looked like, how she had taken him in her arms, the way she had been able to blow all that shit out of his mind, open his cage door and set him free….

  Yeah, never mind the way she’d tried to cut your throat, last time out. Nostalgia for the gutter, that’s what Benny called it.

  “Help you, sir?” Stoney was standing in the doorway to The Landing, a steakhouse in Piermont, New York, and the maître d’ was looking at him quizzically.

  “Yeah.” The dining area was to the right, in a different room. Away from the bar. “Yeah, I’m meeting someone here.” Two steps took him to the threshold of the dining room. She was sitting all alone, over by a window on the far side of the room. Their eyes met and he was sixteen again, getting ready to ask her out for the first time, his stomach sinking because he knew she was out of his class, she would never go out with a guy like him. He’d been so sure she’d say no, laugh at him with her friends later on. She hadn’t, though. He felt a little unsteady, put a hand on the door frame. How am I gonna do this? he wondered. God, can I go through this again? “I’m with her,” he said.

  “Right this way, sir.” The maître d’ had a large leather-bound menu under his arm, and he headed across the room. Stoney would have preferred to stand where he was for another minute, to wait for his heart to go back down where it belonged, maybe catch his breath, but he did not, he followed the guy over to her table.

  She looked tired, but he knew better than to tell her that. The maître d’ laid the menu on the table and departed. Stoney stood there looking at her, she sat there looking at him. Neither of them was exactly young anymore. Stoney never thought much about time’s erosion of his own face, but looking down at Donna, he could see faint lines and shadows where once there had been none. It didn’t matter to him, didn’t affect the way he felt about her. She was the only woman he had ever loved, and the first human being who had ever really loved him. “Hello, beautiful. Mind if I sit down?” He smiled as he said it, trying to project a confidence he did not feel.

  “Please do,” she said. She waited until he was seated. “You’ve lost weight,” she said. “I can see it in your face. You look nice. Did Tommy buy you that suit?” She looked down at herself. She was wearing a plain white blouse, khaki pants, and a blue blazer hung from the back of her chair. She probably came straight here from work, he thought. Better stay away from that….

  “I missed you,” he said.

  She had to think about it for a minute. “I missed you, too,” she said. “Sort of.”

  He wondered what that meant, but the waiter came just then, rattled on about his specials, a fish from here and a filet from there, prices to go with them, all of that. Stoney didn’t listen, he watched Donna stare at the menu. She seemed reluctant to order, as though she had no appetite, or maybe she didn’t want to be beholden to him. She did, though, finally, and so did he, and the waiter took their menus and went away.

  “Oh,” she said, in sudden alarm, turning to look at the waiter’s departing back. “I ordered a wine spritzer….” She turned back to face him. “I’m sorry, I forgot. I didn’t think.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It won’t bother me, just as long as you don’t get all sloppy.”

  She glared at him. “I should,” she said. “I should get loaded, just so you’ll have to drive me home. Maybe I could throw up in the backseat of your car.”

  Try to make a little joke, he thought. Mistake. “I’d have to have Tuco clean it out for me.”

  “Sounds like you,” she said, still angry. “Pass your problems along for someone else to take care of.”

  He just nodded.

  “That was mean,” she said after a minute. “I apologize.” She didn’t look at him when she said it, she just stared out the window.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “It’s just that—” She stopped, shaking her head, and then went on in a quieter tone. “I keep getting this urge. This impulse to pay you back. I just don’t know what I could do to hurt you. Nothing ever touches you. You never feel anything.”

  If you only knew, he thought. “Stay away.”

  She stared at him. “That’s it? That’s all it takes?”

  “Yeah.”

  They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Donna looked around, finally, at the other tables. The place did most of its business on the weekend. At that moment it was almost empty. “You know,” she said, “all of the years we’ve been married, I never knew how much money we had. I didn’t know how much you made, or anything.” She paused. “I sort of know what you do. You and Tommy.”

  “You were never—”

  “Hush. Please. Let me get this out before you start poking holes in it, okay?”

  “All right.” I wasn’t going to poke any holes, he wanted to say, wanted to defend himself, but he kept silent.

  “All this time,” she said, a little bit louder. “All these years, if I wanted something, I had to ask you first. ‘Stoney, can we afford this? Stoney, can I have one of those?’ Just like a little kid…I thought the children were my job. That was the deal we made, you and I, even though we never talked about it. But then, we never talked about anything, did we? I needed you for everything. I needed you to check the oil in my car, to tell me what color to paint the kitchen, to figure out what schools the kids should go to…I was, I was like a toy, you kept me in the house next to your fishing rods. I always needed you for everything, and you never needed me at all.”

  He couldn’t remember owning any fishing rods. “That isn’t true,” he said. “I always needed you. I need you now.”

  “Yeah, to keep your house clean,” she snapped. “To wash your underwear. And for sex.”

  Every time I open my mouth, he thought, I make this worse.

  “Were you drunk at our wedding?” she asked. “Were you drunk when you married me?”

  The few other patrons in the place were starting to pay the two of them a bit more attention. Stoney inhaled. “No,” he lied. “Not at the wedding. Afterward, maybe.”

  “Oh, I remember that,” she said. “And all during the honeymoon.”

  “Well…”

  “And when Marisa was born? You really wanted to be there, that’s what you said, but you had some cockamamie story, what was that all about?”

  He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t been there for Dennis’s b
irth, either. She’d had to take a cab to the hospital, both times. “What do you want me to tell you?”

  “Well, let’s start with an easy one. You’ve been under the influence of one thing or another the whole time I’ve known you. Is that fair to say?”

  He hadn’t been fucked up the whole time, that was ridiculous…But it had been there all along. His best friend, his crutch, as omnipresent as the air he breathed. He sighed. “Fair enough.”

  “I feel like my whole life with you has been a lie,” she said. “You and I never had a real relationship. We were more like roommates than lovers. You had your life, and I never knew very much about it. I had my life, and you never cared much about that.” She saw the waiter headed for their table bearing plates of food, so she fell silent while he served them.

  “When did you talk to Marisa?” she said, when he was gone.

  “She came to see me last week.”

  Donna pursed her lips. “She went in to see you? In the city?”

  “Yeah. I met her at the train station.”

  “That girl,” she said, shaking her head. “She looks so innocent, but she never tells me anything.”

  She told me plenty, Stoney thought. She told me about this guy you’re seeing. He almost said it, but then he bit it back, swallowed the words and the bile. Not now, he told himself. Not here. He felt it, though, the anger of it coming up, and the pain of forcing it back down. Was this all me, he wondered, is this all my fault? He remembered asking Benny if it was his fault he was an addict. “Fault is a word for school yards,” Benny had told him. ‘Doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It’s your responsibility. You gotta deal with it.’