And Sometimes I Wonder About You (23 page)

“Anything?”

M
elbourne Westmount Ericson and I talked for eight minutes more. I timed it on a wall clock over Johnny Nightly’s shoulder. It was the most productive eight minutes I had ever spent. When it was over, two-thirds of my work problems had been, tentatively, solved.

On the 3:00 p.m. train back to Manhattan, Johnny and I continued the game. We were averaging fifteen minutes a move so when I placed my knight in a position that might lead to check I went down to the exit area near the toilet and made a call.

“Hey, LT,” Hush said. He almost sounded happy, human.

“How’s it goin’ with the houseguests?”

“The boy said that he went out for cigarettes but I think mainly he wanted to buy some weed in the park.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I told him that I’d kick him and the girl out if he does it again, but it was already too late. Somebody saw him and by the next morning they were walking back and forth in front of my place.”

“I’m on a train right now but I can get there in two hours.”

“No need, brother.” There he was calling me brother again. “I took care of it for the time being.”

“Are you going to move to a different location?” I asked. “I could get Twill to take the kids.”

“No. I got Tam and Thackery out through an underground tunnel I had built. They went to Baltimore but me and the kids gonna stay.”

“You sure you don’t need me to come by?”

“I’ll call you if I do.”

Johnny hadn’t moved yet. He was staring at the board, circling the end of his nose with the tip of the index finger of his right hand. His handsome head was tilting to the side. There was a modicum of joy in this pose.

“You look like you havin’ a good time, Johnny.”

“It feels good playin’ against somebody can play back.”

“I like the game,” I said. “It calms me.”

“It’s not just the game.”

“What do you mean?”

“My father told me that you got to know where every piece is and where they all might go if you just wanna stay in the game. That’s you, LT.”

“Did you ever ask your father what you can do if your opponent was better than you?”

“Yes I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“You be better too.”

I left Johnny at Penn Station at around 6:00. We had made eight moves on the ride back. There was no talk of money because I knew he expected me to wire five thousand dollars into his checking account for “services rendered.” I’d send him a W-9 and alert the government. Even killers had to pay taxes.

Katrina was weeping.

When I had worked all the locks and opened the door she looked up but didn’t have the strength to come to me. She was sitting in a hickory chair from our dining room that she’d dragged down the hall to the foyer. So I knelt down beside her chair, embracing her as best I could.

“Leonid, Leonid,” she cried, “what have I done with my life?”

“Three beautiful children just for starters, babe.”

“You were always there even though I was so angry, even though I had lovers.”

“I wasn’t no rose all that time.”

“But you gave me this apartment and paid all our bills. You didn’t have to stay but you did.”

I had. There was no denying that I had stayed. But whenever she left I didn’t go after her. Our connection was both absolute and static. I wondered how to say that without hurting her.

I didn’t have to try because the doorbell rang.

“Oh,” Katrina said, and I knew the story that had led to our vestibule encounter.

“Don’t worry,” I said, and then I kissed her before standing.

I didn’t look through the peephole nor did I ask who it was. Katrina had called him and dragged the chair to the door to wait for him.

I opened the door and said, “Hey, Clarence.”

“Trot.”

An hour later Katrina was asleep in our bed. I had carried her down and tucked her in. Ten minutes after my father got there her mood had lightened.

“You didn’t call me,” my father said. We were sitting in the little front TV room drinking port and eyeing each other.

“I thought that there was a man in DC who had put out a contract on me. I went down there to face him.”

“Was he really trying to kill you?”

“Probably not.”

“Why were you worried that he was?”

“The same reason you might be.”

“I just came over because she was so sad and you weren’t here.”

“She didn’t call me.”

“You were out of town.”

I couldn’t argue there.

“I don’t want to argue with you, son.”

“But, Clarence, we skipped the whole Oedipal thing. How can I ever be a man if I don’t kill my father? Metaphorically speaking, that is.”

“Even when you were a kid,” my father said, shaking his head, “I found it hard to understand you. It’s not so much the way you think, Trot, but it’s how you treat emotions. It’s like they were, I don’t know, like they were optional. But you’re my son. That means something, in the heart.”

I put down my glass and stood up.

“Where you goin’?” he asked me.

“I got a few more showdowns before the end of the week,” I said. “Why don’t you spend the night? Maybe you can keep Katrina from trying to kill herself again.”

I showed up at Marella’s door a little past 10:00. She was wearing a pink kimono over a short burgundy slip.

She kissed me when I walked in. I wanted that kiss. I wanted to feel it and to stay with it—but something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked, leaning away.

“Let’s sit.”

We went to the brown sofa, sitting at opposite ends.

“Tell me,” she said.

“I didn’t go down to Philly,” I said. “I mean…I did go
through
Philly on my way to DC.”

From the look in her eye I hoped that Marella’s holster-purse wasn’t within reach.

“What did he offer you?” she asked.

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

“That’s exactly what I said. He offered me money, access, connections.” I counted out these wages on three blunt fingers.

“And what did you say?”

“At first I said that that would probably be a conflict of interest because I work for you.”

“At first.”

“Yeah. But then when he told me what he wanted I realized that anything I got from him was dependent on you.”

“Did you betray me, Lee?”

“No, no, but I remembered something.”

“What’s that?”

“You said that Melbourne wouldn’t have sent Lett after you or me with a gun. Do you still believe that?”

“Yes,” she said, “as far as it goes. You know people can surprise you.”

“When you say things like that it makes me want to throw you over my shoulder and take you someplace where they’d never find us.”

“I’m ready,” she said.

“But first you have to know your options.”

“Okay. What are they?”

“Melbourne said that he doesn’t want the ring back, that he wants to give you another one. He says that he feels heartbroken that he got so angry and now he wants to marry you with no prenup or stipulations.”

“No prenup?” I don’t think she meant those words to make it to her lips. That might have been the most honest thing she said in my presence.

“He wants to meet with you,” I said, “to make his case.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Obviously.”

“Why obviously?”

“Because if I didn’t he’d be a dead man by now.”

Marella’s nostrils actually flared. Her pupils opened wide.

“You’re never going to throw me over that shoulder and carry me off, are you, Lee?”

“Probably not.”

“You’ll protect me at the meeting?”

“Like a dog with his bone.”

“If I say yes will that dog share his bone with me tonight?”

T
he first order of business the next morning was a taxi ride to Hush’s house. I called him on the way downtown.

“It’s six a.m.,” he complained.

“What time you usually wake up?”

“Four thirty,” he said, “but this is still early.”

“I’m leaving a case and I got a lotta stops to make. Can you make me some coffee?”

“Sure. Come on by.”

He opened the front door of his Washington Square Park mansion before I pressed the bell. He handed me a ceramic mug of French roast and shook my hand. Then he did an about-face and led me through a doorway on the left side of his entrance hall. We went maybe fifteen feet and came to a dead end that was also a door. This opened upon a staircase that went up one flight, ending at a second door that looked like it belonged on a bank vault. It was made from burnished black metal and had an old-fashioned combination lock. Hush twisted the dial back and forth seven times, pressed the chrome handle down, and pulled. He ushered me in and followed.

It was a small room; nine by nine by nine. The walls were no doubt reinforced and there was no window.

They were laid out neatly, side by side on the floor—three dark plastic bundles that used to breathe and laugh. Hush slammed the vault door, which plunged us into darkness, then he flipped a light switch summoning at least a thousand watts of radiance from the ceiling.

“Two men and one woman,” Hush told me. “All of them young. They were after my houseguests.”

“How the hell did they get in?”

“I left the front door open,” he said casually. “I got every inch of this house wired for sight and sound. The observation room is just off the kitchen.”

I remembered the door. I was in the kitchen with Tamara once and asked her what was in there. She said it was just her husband being
overprotective.

“I waited for them to separate and I took
’
em out. They all had guns. They could have killed me. They’re packed with limestone powder. I’ll get rid of the bodies tonight after everyone else is asleep.”

The limestone retarded rotting. There was no odor in the room.

“They have homing devices on them,” I said.

“Not in this room they don’t. These walls stop any wave, pulse, or radiation.”

“Like a high-end coffin,” I commented.

“Amen,” my godless friend said.

“Where did you have Liza and Fortune while all this was going on?”

“I got a panic room in the subbasement,” he said.

“Of course you do. What did you tell them?”

“I told them the truth. I said that a couple of people were nosing around and that they might try and break in. I told
’
em to go down there until I was sure it was safe. Then, when it was over, I brought
’
em out and said that there wasn’t anything to worry about anyhow.”

“Where are they now?”

“Asleep of course.”

“I’m sorry about this, man,” I said.

“You don’t have to be. I knew it was serious when you asked for my help. Thanks for telling me about the homing devices.”

“They insert them under the skin at the back of a thigh.”

“I’ll dig
’
em out.”

There were many things that most citizens could say and feel at a moment like that. Those three Jones kids had come to kill my clients and anyone else they encountered but they never had a chance. I could have felt outraged, sick, or maybe guilty. But it was like my father said: in a business like mine, feelings are optional.

Two blocks away from Hush’s house I called the police.

“Twenty-sixth Precinct,” a woman answered on the eighteenth ring. “How can I help you?”

“Captain Carson Kitteridge.”

“What about him?”

“I’d like to speak to him.”

“On what business?”

“My name is Leonid McGill—”

“Oh. Here you go.”

The phone went mute for some seconds and then, “Kitteridge here.”

“Hey, Kit.”

“What’s up, LT?”

“You say that like we’re almost friends, man.”

“I like you,” the perfect cop admitted. “But I’d like you better in a prison cell, that’s all.”

“Can you meet me at Gordo’s boxing gym in an hour or so?”

“This is about that information you promised me?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’m on my way.”

I picked up my pace walking north on Fifth Avenue. I’d been so concentrated on Hush that I didn’t pay proper attention to the fact that I had lost every woman I loved or lusted after. Katrina, Aura, and Marella were all off the table for me. I didn’t feel crushed or heartbroken. My losses didn’t elicit a harsh feeling, no. For a block or two I wondered what was going on inside and then, somewhere around Seventeenth Street, it struck me: it felt, once again, like I was an orphan on the streets of New York.

I had all kinds of family but I did not, and in some cases never did, belong to them. A man of my age losing love, or some adjacent emotion, was somewhere beyond grief. I imagined that my state of mind was like an innocent bystander being killed by a powerful explosion; one moment you’re standing there and the next you never were.

Gordo had shut down the gym to make preparations for the wedding. It was a crazy scene, all contradictions and outrageous
juxtapositions.
There were the heavy bags and speed bags wrapped in ribbons of bright colored silk; young boxers helping with organizing the flowers and placing the rented folding chairs all around the central ring.

In the ring itself Sophie, Mardi, her little sister Marlene, Tatyana, Katrina, and Aura were all futzing around. They were tying roses of all colors with ribbons of silk to the ropes, and wrapping the posts with bright-colored cloth.

Dimitri and a couple of other guys were stapling white silk sheets to the ring and arranging them so they flowed down from the raised platform.

I was amazed by the crazy
transformation,
but that didn’t stop me from having mild trepidation at seeing my sometime girlfriend and sometime wife working side by side. Just the fact that Katrina was there was a surprise. That made me look around the gym a little closer.

My father was there in Gordo’s office having what seemed like a very serious conversation with my mentor. I was about to go over to them when I felt the hand on my shoulder.

“Where you been, LT?” Carson Kitteridge asked.

“Stopped by the Tesla Building to pick this up,” I said, handing him a thick manila envelope filled with data and detail compiled by Bug. “In here you have all the information about everyone who does or ever did belong to the Jones Gang. There’s even information on how he has surveillance devices on every member and how to access the system. With the proper study from your tech guys you could bring down his whole operation in six hours—less. And I’m supposing you’re going to want to do just that because there’s over two hundred crimes planned over the next week.”

I don’t remember ever having seen Kit shocked. He held the hefty packet in one hand and stared.

“Are you kidding me?” he said at last.

“That’s my August of Sundays right there.”

Even though he was stunned, even though this would probably get him another promotion, even though this promised to be the greatest achievement in his career—I still saw a moment of regret for the promise he’d made me. And I have to admit I experienced a little pride that the cop felt that I was almost as dangerous as the phantom Jones.