CHAPTER 14
WOMAN WITH THE KNIFE
BRICK KNOCKED A COUPLE of times and pushed open the door. The smell of mildew filled the air. A single light bulb illuminated most of the room. The place was loaded with memorabilia from Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera, and the show’s music poured out of speakers mounted on the ceiling.
Alas, the longest-running show ever on Broadway had shuttered like every other show in central Manhattan, victim of the GD. Sadness coursed through me. Even the loss of bad theater was lamentable.
“Welcome,” boomed a voice from the dark.
Out of the gloom emerged a thin figure carrying a stool. Wearing a tie, tails, and a top hat, somewhere in his forties, he resembled a young Fred Astaire, except for the mass of curly salt-and-pepper hair spilling out from his top hat.
“Hiya, Brick,” this fellow said, hugging him. “How’s Mortar doing?”
“Just fine. Working hard. He served this guy here a coffee not thirty minutes ago,” Brick replied. Looking at me, he added, “Mortar’s my partner, the barista at the Outtaluck.”
“Figured that one out,” I said.
“Who is this guy?” asked Shelley.
“Ever heard of Nick Bones?”
Shelley thought a moment. “Isn’t he that guy found that dehydrated bag of bones in the City not all that long ago? What a fucking riot. A skeleton hanging like a salami in the back of his closet. Poor bastard. What about him?”
Placing his hand on my shoulder, Brick said, “Mr. Bones in the flesh.”
“No shit?”
“He’s down here on a case. He’s looking for information on Shmulie Shimmer.”
Shelley looked me up and down, something indistinguishable playing in his eye.
“Well,” he said to me, “a real pleasure for sure. Have a seat.”
He pointed to a couch that exploded with a cloud of dust as I plopped down on it. He sat down on his stool and faced me.
“I’ll be off then,” said Brick. “You should be able to find your way back, Nick. Turn right and go on straight till morning. Just look for the giant banana and you’re there. The staircase up will be awaiting. Ta-ta.”
I thanked Brick, who pulled the door shut on his way out.
***
I sat with Shelley alone in this darkened room surrounded by memories of Phantom. He looked uncomfortable, shifting from side to side like the kid in the principal’s office awaiting a serious reprimand. He rubbed his cheek, pulled at his hair, and looked everywhere but at me.
“So, you’re Nick Bones?” he said, eyes on a photo of female lead Christine Daaé when played by Emmy Rossum.
I acknowledged my identity and we exchanged pleasantries. He asked if I’d ever seen Phantom. “Three times,” I told him, which was true, but only the first time did I go willingly. He bemoaned the great tragedy of its loss to the world as if the show were the dramatization of holy writ.
“Broadway’s coming back,” he said. “When it does, Phantom’ll return in all its glory. I’m making sure it’s going to happen,” he declared with certainty.
We chitchatted a few minutes more, Shelley visibly relaxing. But the time came to attend to my reason for descending the ladder to this curious subterranean kingdom.
“Esther Lacey suggested I pay you a visit,” I said.
Shelley’s face lit up like the eighth day of Hanukkah. “Oh, yeah, Esther,” he said with pleasure. “How’s the ole girl, anyway? She can’t be happy up there in Westchester County, can she?”
“She did not seem in particularly good spirits.”
“I imagine not. How could she? She’s in solitary up there I heard, right?”
“Yes. Just her, her diary, and a guard who’s got it in for her.”
“Gotta be tough, a big gal like her in a tiny cell all to her lonesome.”
“It’s no picnic,” I said, “The Music of the Night” now playing over the speakers. Shelley picked up a remote and raised the volume.
“My favorite song in the whole world,” he shouted, mouthing the words, eyes closed, swaying to its rhythm.
“Esther whispered your name in my ear just as our visit was up. She seemed to think you’d have some information about Shmulie.”
“You want to find that bastid?” Shelley said, bile in his voice. “He’s gone. I heard he was dead, even. And good riddance to that mothafucka.”
“Dead? Where did you hear that?”
“You know. A guy hears things. Someone told me not more’n a month or two ago he heard Shmulie’d never made it to nowhere. Someone got him on his way to his new life as a lawn mower jockey in the burbs. Now he’s sleeping six foot under with that labor union guy, you know, Jimmy Hoffa, maybe somewhere in the swamps of Jersey.”
“You remember who told you?”
Shelley rubbed his forehead. “Nah,” he said. “You know how it is. Ya hear a lot of shit and then ya forget who told ya whichever. But someone told me the fucker was gone, and that’s for sure.” Shelley got caught up in the drama of the music. He raised his eyes toward the ceiling of his hovel in reverence and conducted the invisible orchestra. “So, you can stop looking for him,” he said. “He’s gone. Pretty sure he ain’t no more.”
Shmulie dead. Someone beat me to it?
“Did your source tell you who might have done him?”
“I mean, ya know, everyone who’s got someone in one a them hospitals’d be happy as a clam on linguini to take him out. But I din’t hear about no one in particular.”
An unsubstantiated rumor. Nothing more.
“Too bad, too, ya know?” Shelley said.
“What’s too bad?”
“He’s dead.”
“Why?”
“He never got to spend his money. He had a lot of it. A shitload. I mean a double shitload. I was his head accountant, you know.”
“So I heard from Esther.”
“Every penny come into the business I counted. Every single one. And hid it away real good all around the freaking world. Only Shmulie and me knew where it all went.”
“Not Esther?”
“Nah. She was never in that loop. She got a big salary, and I helped her sock it away, too. Fat lot of good it did for her. Anyway, she got millions. But Shmulie—he got billions. I invested so good for him that his billions is making more billions. Lerbs was the biggest drug ever on the face of the Earth, bigger’n cocaine back in the day, because it was cheaper and legal until it wasn’t. In the like five years I worked for him, that money come pouring down every day, a great big green tidal wave. I had a bunch of assistants help me bring it in and send it back out. But it was me done all the heavy thinking. He made me rich, too, that fat bastid.”
“So why do you keep calling him a bastard?”
“He wasn’t a nice guy, you know?”
I knew, but asked for Shelley’s reasons.
“He fucked with everybody, you know?”
I knew that, too, but asked for his take.
“Well, like Esther,” he said. “She was always good to me, a real lady in her way. I mean, she maybe didn’t look much like a lady, and she could be pretty rough doin’ business wit. But to me she was always nice. You know, we’d have coffee all the time and we’d talk business and whatnot. She liked me and I liked her. I think she had a thing for Shmulie, believe it or not.” He scratched an imaginary itch. “She brings all the business in, makes him one rich fuck, then Shmulie sells her up the East River, you know, like she’s so much garbage on the way to Fresh Kills.”
“It did seem she was settling in for a long winter’s nap,” I said.
Shelley stood suddenly as if he were a lawyer about to argue a case.
“See?” he said. “That’s what I mean. Without her the product woulda never sold anywhere. Shmulie woulda had to stand on the street hawking the stuff himself like hot dogs. But
with her in the house, that shit flew all over the world. Germans, Chinese, Japanese, Eskimos, everyone had a blast on Lerbs.” He shifted position on the stool. “Esther woulda taken it to the moon if there was anyone up there. Made him one rich cowboy. Then she’s in the hoosegow and he’s gone. It’s good news if he’s really gone, far as I’m concerned. Great news.”
“So, what about all of his money?” I asked. “Who’s minding that store?”
“I am,” he said, coyness written all over his face.
I looked around this dismal hole-in-the-wall and at the man sitting on the stool dressed like it was the 1940s. I wondered what skills enabled him to manage the possibly deceased Shmulie Shimmer’s vast fortune. But genius comes in all shapes, I knew. Still, it struck me as odd. Of all the accountants in all of the offices in all the cities of the world, Shmulie picked this peculiar guy. My skepticism must have shown.
“You don’t believe me? Let me tell you a story.”
Shelley straightened up and removed his hat, his hair falling onto his shoulders. A hint of sadness settled unexpectedly upon his face.
“Okay, so he was a bastid, that guy. In more ways than one. No doubt. But still somewhere buried in those pounds of flesh beat a bigass heart. Sometimes, anyway. He knew he was going up the creek without a paddle. The anti-Lerbs law just got passed and he knew the cops was coming for him. He calls me into his office. God, what a office that guy had. Peter Max paintings all over. That guy loved Peter Max. Had like a million Peter Max paintings hanging every which way. Had a picture of the Statue of Liberty by the guy. Blinded you you look straight at it.”
“Makes sense,” I said. Peter Max would be the perfect artist for the king of Lerbs.
“Chagall, too,” Shelley said. “Especially the pictures with flying people and animals. Chagall was a trippy guy, trippier than Peter Max, if you ask me.”
Floating Jews and flying animals. I got it.
“What did he tell you when you went into his office?”
“So, he has this look on his face like he knows the good life ain’t going to be much longer. ‘Shelley,’ he tells me. ‘A favor. I need a favor.’ So, I tell him, ‘Anything you want, Shmulie.’”
“Even though he was a bastard?” I said.
“Even though,” Shelley said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, you know? He give me a job for one thing. Made me filthy rich. Another thing, I just felt kind of bad for the guy. You don’t want to feel too happy for someone’s about to go off to prison for a very long time. It could always be me, I think. So, he’s sitting there looking bad, bags under his eyes. Maybe even been crying. Looks at me like I’m his last hope in the world, and tells me the cops is coming, though he had a lawyer managing and maybe delaying things for a little, but not for long. ‘It’s over,’ he says, and ‘I’m going to jail, probably forever.’ He knew that, he says, ’cause the Lerbs law was written exactly for him.
“So, I ask him, ‘What do you need?’ And he says, ‘Your skills. I need your skills.’”
“Your accounting and investment skills?” I asked.
“The only skills I got, but they’re pretty damned good. He says he needs me to sequester, that was his word, sequester, as much of his money as possible before they grab it.”
Why did Shmulie trust this guy?
“Tea?”
I said yes, and Shelley got up and turned on an electric kettle.
“So, I agree, of course,” he continued. “Not without failing to mention I expect a sizeable fee for this service. ‘So what do you want me to do with the money?’ I ask him. So, he says, ‘I want you to see that some things get taken care of. Like what, I say. He told me and I agreed.’”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“That would be telling, now wouldn’t it? A lotta stuff, that much I can say. A lotta people got taken care of good.”
A loud knock on the door interrupted our discussion. Before Shelley could walk the six steps to open it, the door swung open and two sinister-looking men holding pistols barged in. One was tall, the other short. They were dressed identically in black baseball caps and belted black raincoats.
“What do you bastids want?” Shelley asked.
“You know. Give us the key,” said one.
“Don’t have it, asshole. You know I don’t.”
The speaker took the few steps required to reach Shelley. He pressed his gun hard against his left arm and, without ceremony, fired. Shelley screamed.
“You fucking shot me,” he shouted.
“The goddamned key,” the man said.
I stood and walked toward Shelley. The other guy said to me, “Stay put. We’ve got no squabble with you.”
I stopped.
Both of them began tearing the room apart. Shelley collapsed onto the couch, grasping the arm screaming in pain, and I stood frozen.
Then I remembered the Zap in my pocket. With little internal debate, I turned my back to them and pulled the weapon from my pocket, rediscovering how feeble it felt. I breathed hard and turned around. I took aim at the shooter, who, seeing me with the pistol in hand, ceased his labors.
“What are you looking for?” I demanded.
“None of your fucking business,” he said. He lifted the gun as if to shoot me.
“Put it down,” I said, holding the Zap steady.
He did. But this didn’t stop the other guy from lifting his gun toward my face. With speed I didn’t know I possessed, I shifted my aim and pulled the trigger. A single line of shimmering orange blasted out, lighting up the place like fireworks. The line of orange hit the man in the stomach and filled most of his body. He doubled over, cried out, and fell silent.
The other guy came over to me waving his gun in my face. “The fuck you pull that thing for? I said we didn’t give a shit about you.”
I stuck the Zap in his chest and pulled the trigger, only then remembering these things had but one blast in them.
“Shit,” I said, and punched him hard in the gut before he could get a shot off. As he bent over, I shoved my knee into his face. He fell over.
My action amazed me, but I had no time to contemplate what I had just done. From his uncomfortable place on the floor, he raised the gun toward my head. At that moment, I understood implicitly Chairman Mao’s great wisdom. Very real power does grow inexorably out of the barrel of a gun.
“What the hell’s going on?” a female voice barked from the entrance.
My would-be assailant rolled over. A dark-skinned woman wearing the familiar green uniform and beret stood in the doorway, wielding a large knife.
“Drop the gun,” she said in a menacing tone.
The man holding the gun seemed to debate whether to hoist the thing her way and fire, or surrender. He raised the gun and took quick aim. But before he could pull the trigger, with an astonishing, deft motion, the police officer lifted the knife to her shoulder and threw it at him. It struck him in the heart. The gun fell from his hand.
The officer went over to him and bent down. “He gave me no choice,” she said. She looked at me. “That poor bastard brought a gun to a knife fight,” she said. Then looking at the other corpse, she said, “Looks like they’re zero for two.”
Speaking into a walkie-talkie, she called for a gondola, which quickly arrived on the railroad tracks. Shelley was placed on the flat cart, holding his arm, moaning in pain. Beside him lay the two dead men. It sped away, the two drivers bobbing up and down like a seesaw.
“Where they going?” I asked.
“The hospital,” the cop said. “You, I’m going to have to take to the station.”
“Station? Hospital? You have them down here?”
“Only one of each, and they’re small.”
***
She ordered another gondola and looked at me closely. A light of recognition
came to her eyes. “Professor Friedman, is that you?” she asked.
I had wondered vaguely if the cop with the knife was my former student Simone Hartwig. This striking woman still wore her hair in an Afro, still pointed her head slightly upward, still bore the trace of an enigmatic smile on her lips. One of my very best. I had no idea she was down here. And why would I? Yet, there she was, a little older, still beautiful, now possessing the confident demeanor and voice of a cop.
“Simone,” I said.
“Yes, Professor, it’s me,” she said, the deep smile I remembered from a decade ago on her face. “My senior project,” she said. “Remember?”
“Of course. An odd topic for a college senior.”
Simone came to me requesting we study philosophers who’d written on death. She told me she had personal reasons to engage in this study—a father who’d died in his late twenties, a policeman killed by a burglar, and a sister dead from AIDS.
This was heady territory. We worked through the writings of several philosophers beginning with Plato. We were especially taken by As I Lay Dying, a short book written by the Catholic philosopher Richard John Neuhaus, a brief meditation on death and dying occasioned by the author’s experience with cancer.
“Now you’re down here. You saved my life,” I said.
Our gondola arrived, and she ushered me aboard. Two burly police began pumping up and down, propelling us through the dark tunnel toward the station. I felt unsteady as it began moving but caught my balance as it picked up speed.
I looked at my traveling companion, and the obvious question beckoned. “Mind telling me what brought you down here?”
“I could ask you the same,” she responded.
“You go first. You’re the one in olive green.”
“Okay. Dr. Friedman, my presence here is entirely your responsibility.”
“What?”
“All of your teaching in the end was about ethics, about doing the right thing, taking care of the other.”
“Maybe,” I said. “So what?”
“When the GD happened, I’d had it Upstairs. The world had finally abandoned all caring for each other. It became everyone for themselves. Mind you, it was long getting there. But the GD was the dramatic end.”
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