No. Barry slowed, then slowed further. Something was wrong with Barry. I stopped to watch. His head lolled forward, back, but since he had no neck, it couldn’t loll far. I thought I saw his eyes roll as well. He seemed now to be walking in quicksand on crutches. Each step came with comedic deliberateness, just putting one foot in front of…the other foot, move the crutches. Then Barry stopped altogether. He flopped onto the nearest bench. He propped the crutches against the seat, but they clattered to the concrete. Barry couldn’t seem to pick them up again. Eyes open, he sagged sideways on the bench. His head thunked against the wood. He didn’t move again. Nobody looked twice. Tennis players, Lycra-clad joggers, blade skaters, mothers pushing baby carriages—they saw people sleeping on benches every day.
Jellyroll sat at my heels. That’s what he does when he gets frightened. Me, I melt into a puddle, flooding my sneakers. My hand started trembling first, like a bongo player’s at the crescendo. Something had happened to this Barry. He hadn’t merely gotten tired chasing me up the river on crutches and decided to catch forty winks before he got on with it.
My head darted around, but my eyes didn’t see anything in the watery blur. I stopped it darting, clenched my eyes into focus—
Calabash! He stood on the walkway near the front gate to the tennis courts. I could have blubbered with relief. Calabash was built like a subcompact automobile and weighed only slightly less. He was my friend and bodyguard. Apparently, he had seen what had just happened to Barry. Calabash looked at me and nodded minutely. Then he looked at Barry there on the bench. Calabash’s face was tense.
I sat down about six benches from Barry, mainly because my knees had melted. Calabash sat on Barry’s bench and nonchalantly crossed his legs, a giant Bahamian taking in the sunset over New Jersey. Several passersby glanced at him, but that was only because he was too big to go anywhere without people glancing to him. No one glanced at Barry.
After a time, Calabash reached out—about five feet out—grasped Barry by the back of his neck, and drew him effortlessly up into something like a sitting position. He held Barry like that for a couple of seconds, then he abruptly stood up and walked toward me. He didn’t look at me as he passed. I didn’t look at him either as I stood up and fell into step behind him. We both had similar ideas: get the fuck away from Barry and whatever had happened to him before it happened to us. Jellyroll sniff ed the air in Calabash’s wake.
“Good to see you,” he said without moving his mouth.
“That’s putting it mildly,” I said.
“Dot guy was dead.”
“Dead?”
“Dead.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I only know he’s dead.”
I stopped, placed my elbows on the rail, and watched New Jersey. Calabash stopped a short way on. Here was a dead guy with at least one ice-pick hole in his person, and here was me—a special kind of guy—with an ice pick in my pocket…
Now Jellyroll recognized Calabash, gave out a little snort of joy, and jumped on him. Never seen each other before. Slick. I reached in and covertly extracted the ice pick, flipped it in the river, and watched anxiously to see if it would sink. It did.
A Hispanic guy appeared beside me, but he was too short to lean his arms on the rail. He was built like a fire hydrant. Naw, couldn’t be—the Hispanic guy had beautiful long black hair brilliantined straight back from his high forehead. He had a little black pencil mustache. The Hispanic guy had powder-blue eyes, which twinkled at me.
Calabash was circling around behind him, but the Hispanic guy saw him doing it. He offered Calabash his hand. “Norm Armbrister—” he said.
“Calabash.”
“Calabash?”
“Dot’s a fruit.”
“Don’t I know it. Where you from, Calabash?”
“De Bahamas.”
“I thought so. Like whereabouts specifically?”
“De Exhumas.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve been all around down in there, the wife and I. Poor Joe Cay—”
“You been to Poor Joe?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Did you kill dot guy on de bench?”
“No other way to reason with men like him. I’m trying to convince your friend Artie to take me along when he goes after his girlfriend. That’s probably why you’re in town.”
Calabash looked at me.
Norm Armbrister was a silent killer, a spook who killed, how, by sheer force of will? That was just the sort of man I needed.
“How can I get in touch with you?”
Norm handed me a card with a phone number penned on it.
“I’ll call you at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell you where we’ll pick you up.”
“Security?” He giggled.
He went south, we went north, leaving Barry on the bench. I wondered if Barry had friends or loved ones who’d miss him. Probably not.
FIFTEEN
SHORTLY AFTER FIRST light, I took jellyroll for a walk in the park. The homeless still slept on the hillside in cardboard boxes and refrigerator crates. Some stirred, peeked out of their crates for a glimpse at the new day that held nothing new for them. Others would probably never wake up. Due to the cutbacks, the city didn’t collect the dead with regularity. I picked up Jellyroll’s shit—healthy—with a Chinese-restaurant menu, and as I dropped it in the basket, I felt intense melancholy for those in the crates, for the city, for myself, and for Jellyroll. This might be the last shit I’d be around to shovel. Who could predict what would happen out there in the wilds of New Canaan? Back at the apartment, I kissed him good-bye, and I could tell he was wondering, What’s the big deal about today? Dogs love routine, but today was decidedly different.
I phoned Norman Armbrister at precisely nine. I told him to meet us—on foot—at the Riverdale side of the toll bridge across the Harlem River. He giggled at my security measures and said, “Okay, Captain, I’ll be there.”
I was acting by rote, paying the man behind the bulletproof glass for the overnight garaging, starting Crystal’s car in the gloomy garage recesses, and driving it toward the light. Like my dog, I’ve always been fond of normalcy. There could be no more normalcy. Here I was, an eccentric hermit who habitually thought through even the simplest of day-to-day actions from all possible perspectives before deciding to do nothing; any other decision seemed too complicated. Now I was leading a covert incursion against a racketeer’s suburban mansion to rescue my lover who may or may not be there. I didn’t hold out much hope of success. Hopelessness—yes, that was the feeling I was trying to repress by living in the moment—step on the gas, step on the brake, as needed, don’t wreck the car driving around to Broadway to pick up Calabash. At least stave off the ludicrous.
It had taken most of last night, a bottle of rum, and more than one gasper to explain the events of the past several days to Calabash. I told him about Trammell’s disappearance, Bruce’s beating, Crystal’s kidnapping, my own kidnapping, about Chet Bream and the tape. Then we began to talk about the plan.
“Hmm,” said Calabash after I’d finished. I didn’t take that “hmm” as a sign of enthusiasm. He began to unpack lethal objects from his black gym bag, to clean and load them. Hmm…
Calabash was clutching that gym bag when I picked him up on Broadway. He scrunched into the Toyota, his head bent against its roof. We drove south on the Henry Hudson in light traffic. I almost missed the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance. Tunnel entrances require a degree of driving precision.
“You okay?” Calabash reasonably wanted to know.
“Oh, sure, fine, great.”
“We don’ want to get killed on de way.”
“Still a little tacky,” said Boo, his head cocked, touching his work with his index finger.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Yeah, it come out pretty good.” He nodded approvingly. “But that one palm tree there, it could be some better. Palm trees is tough. It’s the fronds, you know. Fronds is hard. Y
ou don’t have time I can do it over, do you?”
I tipped him fifty bucks.
The van rode like a stagecoach. It shimmied and shook and pulled to the left. Before we left Thumper’s place, we’d checked the brake lights and such, so we wouldn’t get stopped for minor infractions, but there was no time for a test drive. “I been in ten-foot seas calmer den dis,” commented Calabash. An ominous grinding sound from the stern made my teeth itch.
The shit-brown van got us to the Harlem River. I paid the toll with the exact change, and we crossed the bridge into the Bronx, looking for the murderous spook. Calabash had tactically removed himself to the backseat.
Norman Armbrister stood beside the road just beyond the bridge abutment. He wore his original getup—baggy shorts and the enormous beard that obliterated his features. He also wore an unseasonably heavy—in every sense—jacket. I pulled over and pushed open the passenger door for him. Norm clanked as he got in and buckled his seat belt. I heard an ominous metallic click from the backseat. A tight-knit commando unit on the move. I felt like opening my door and throwing up the lemon yogurt I’d forced down for breakfast.
“Seat belt,” Norm said to me. “It’s a law in this state. Always want to observe civil law when you’re operational. Posh Pools, huh? Great. I like it. We used to do Con Ed. We’d disappear down that manhole, leaving nothing but a puff of steam.”
Belted, I drove on north toward the Cross County Parkway, which would take us to the Merritt Parkway.
Norm was hanging on to the window post in the turns. “I hope we don’t get killed on the way. How would it look with all these arms? Calabash, I presume you’re armed.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, so I hear…Hell, what can one expect in the way of vehicles? It’s not like the old days, once you’re dead.” There was a lilt in his voice. This guy was having a ball. His eyes beamed. “In the old days, there was no end to the matériel. I just loved the Russians. They loved us, too. If it weren’t for us, they wouldn’t have gotten all their good shit. And vice versa. You needed a deuce and a half for your gear, an APC for your guys, you wanted some air support, Cobra gunships, you wanted some arty, just call it in. Never mind the expense to the taxpayers. The taxpayers loved it, too. We got to have all this gear or the Evil Empire will poison your daughters and fuck your bird dogs. But those times are gone forever, at least in this lifetime. Want an apple juice? I brought apple juice. Yes, times change after you die. That’s one of life’s inevitables. Juice?”
Calabash, I could see in the mirror, was looking at the back of Norm’s head as if it belonged to a spook from another planet.
“So what’s the plan?” Norm wanted to know, all grins.
I told him.
“Well, simple is good.”
Was there an edge of sarcasm in that? This psycho probably hated my plan. My plan probably failed to consider things every freshman spook knew by heart. My plan was probably suicidal. Anxiety scraped my nerves raw. I felt like I was bleeding internally. I began to obsess on Jellyroll. I had made no arrangements for him. What if I got…killed? What would happen to him, waiting endlessly for my return?…Would it be better for my associates’ morale for me to vomit all over my Posh Pools coveralls or to fall down sobbing like a colicky infant?
“We’ll be there in what, twenty minutes,” he said, “barring the freaky-fluky?”
“Yeah, barring that.”
“Okay. We have a chance to talk turkey. You’re probably still asking yourself, ‘Why’s this fellow Norm want to help us free Crystal, anyhow? What’s in it for Norm?’ Am I right?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, Norm, we don’t really give a shit as long as you don’t betray us. We just want Crystal back. If we can get her out and if they’ll leave us alone after we get her, then you and the rest of them can do whatever you want to each other.”
“I hear you. Apathy. Apathy is not an unreasonable response to the events of the late twentieth century. But as for your first if, we can get Crystal out. If he’s got her at his place, we’ll break her out. If he’s got her somewhere else, we’ll take Tiny and make a trade, even steven. Frankly, I don’t think he’s harmed her. Murder is not Tiny’s métier, but then you never know. The second if, however, is a bit more dicey. Tiny’s not going to be happy if we snatch Crystal back. He’s going to feel stupid. How do we keep him off your ass? That’s where Norm Armbrister comes in. I can help you there. Tiny likes to live. He loves the seven deadliest, particularly gluttony and avarice. It’ll frighten Tiny to learn I’m alive and angry with him. But that leads back to the original question—namely, why does Norm Armbrister want to help? The answer is twofold. One: Trammell Weems. Two: the tape.”
As he said “the tape,” he looked at me for a reaction. I watched the road without any. “What tape?”
“A videotape. One or another of these treacherous banking bastards made a tape of a meeting held at Tiny Archibald’s place in late July 1990. In the wrong hands, that tape would be embarrassing at best, incriminating at worst. That tape is the reason I died. As it says in my obit, I had a proud career. I don’t want it sullied.”
“Do you think Trammell made the tape?”
“Maybe. Maybe Tiny. Maybe Trammell. You see, I suspect that Trammell didn’t drown. I suspect that it was a put-up death.”
“Sort of like yours?”
“Right. Does Calabash know about my death?”
“Yes, I told him.”
Norm Armbrister pulled his obituary from his shirt pocket and handed it to Calabash, who was watching Norm with one eyebrow arched. Calabash read while Norm went on: “Here we have Crystal, who used to be married to Trammell; we have Crystal’s uncle’s boat; and we have you, his old friend. You seem to be in a position to answer the question, ‘Is Trammell dead or is Trammell alive?’ That’s why I’m helping you—to get that question answered.”
“Trammell’s alive.”
Norm nodded. “What makes you think so? Have you seen him?”
“No.”
“Bruce Munger?”
“Yes.”
“So Trammell paid this Bruce Munger person to witness his drowning?”
“Apparently.”
“Tell me this,” Norm said with a note of skepticism. “How did Munger think he’d get away with it?”
“You’d have to know Bruce.”
“An asshole?”
“Yes.”
“Well, asshole-ishness explains a lot of things these days.”
I told him about Bruce’s whipping and about the wad of bills taped in his mouth. “I had assumed that was Tiny’s work.”
“But you don’t now?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you had Barry spying for you. If Tiny did it, wouldn’t Barry know about it and tell you?”
Calabash passed Norm’s obituary back to him. “You was in de navy?”
“No, that’s bullshit. Barry was setting up your kidnapping. Your sticking him with the pick rendered him useless to me. So Tiny could have gotten to Munger without me knowing about it.”
“Who else might have done it?” I risked losing control of the vehicle by taking my eyes off the road to look into Norm’s eyes. “Concom?”
He snapped his head around to look into mine. “What do you know about Concom?”
“Nothing, except that Tiny Archibald and the phony detective both gave me phone numbers belonging to Concom.”
“I was hoping we could keep it out of Concom’s hands. I’m sure that’s what Tiny was hoping, too.”
“Why?”
“Trust me when I say it would be best for you and Crystal and Calabash to pretend Concom doesn’t exist.”
“Gladly.” I swerved off the highway at the New Canaan exit. Everybody held on.
“Artie, one last item. Do you know where Trammell is?”
“No.”
“Does Crystal?”
“No.”
“Okay, I believe you. But let’s sa
y we’re successful here. Let’s say we get Crystal out safe and sound. Will you tell me if you find out?”
“I won’t be looking, Norm.”
“I hear you, but suppose it just comes to pass that you learn his whereabouts. Will you tell me?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, Norm—?” said Calabash.
Norm pivoted, looked over the headrest.
“I gonna be watchin’ you close.”
“I hear you, big guy.” Norm was actually grinning.
I had recently read a book about Horatio Nelson, who, during a short peace in those wars with France, watched the Danish fleet assemble in Copenhagen Harbor and assumed that when the peace inevitably failed, the Danish navy would go in on the French side. So Nelson attacked—and destroyed the Danish fleet at its moorings. For a time in the early nineteenth century, “Copenhagen” became a verb in the English language. It meant to strike first, to destroy your potential enemy before he has a chance to become your actual enemy. That’s what I should do to this crazy spook—Copenhagen his ass after he helped us rescue Crystal. Could I do that? Copenhagen him in cold blood?
SIXTEEN
THE FRUGAL YANKEE inn was one of those darkly oaken restaurants decorated with Colonial furnishings, agrarian gewgaws, creaky floors, and help who say, “Hello, my name is Darrell, and I’ll be your waiter today.” I had picked the Frugal Yankee because it was located on a corner lot at the intersection of Cherry Grove Lane and Sylvan Brook Road, within sight of Tiny Archibald’s driveway.
Thumper’s uniforms must have been tailored for wear in the pituitary-case ward. Calabash’s fit him fine. I could have gotten a couple of close friends in there with me and still had room to squat. Norman had nearly disappeared in his. “Hell, this isn’t a disguise,” he said, “this is a hideout.”
Since our hosts at Tiny’s place had seen me before, my disguise was a tad more elaborate than I would have liked. I wore silver-mirrored sunglasses and a hot-pink baseball cap backwards, with a phony blond ponytail stapled under the brim. My disguise was modeled on the Long Island Sound—surfer motif. I felt more ridiculous than anonymous stumbling over my uniform cuff s into the lobby of the Frugal Yankee.
Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery Page 14