Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery (13 page)

Thinking hard, I made myself a mean cup of coffee and sat down at my desk in the tiny maid's quarters adjacent to the kitchen. Jellyroll joined me. He curled up at my feet under the desk as if things were routine. What was Billie involved in? What had she involved me in?

"Who's this asshole we been seein' in the Con Ed suit, etc.?"

"Name's Artie Deemer."

"Got any clout?"

"He's got a dog."

"Take him out."

"The Glacier?"

"Yeah, send in the Glacier. Might as well take out the dog, too."

The coffee was making me half bilious. I had an idea, but it was utterly baseless. The phone interrupted me. It was Shelly, Jellyroll's agent.

"What, Artie, what? You don't return your phone messages now days? I been talking to your machine since noon. What, you looking for a new agent behind my back?"

"I've been...busy."

"Busy?"

"Yeah, Shelly, sometimes I'm busy."

"Okay, okay, so you're busy. It's good to keep occupied. Listen, Artie, they
want
him!"

"Who?"

"Who? Those Dracula idiots. It's all set. You sitting down? I got twenty thousand for three weeks, ten thousand a week each week thereafter, plus all expenses in fucking Samoa! I told him you wouldn't allow Jellyroll in the baggage compartment, you know what he says? He says, hell, we'll charter a plane. Ha! We got them by the short hairs."

"When?"

"Your phone must be on the fritz. I tell you we're gonna make maybe forty grand in Samoa and you say
when
like I just said you got a court date on a bigamy rap.
When?
Saturday. Monday at the latest."

"Can we put them off awhile?"

"Are you
nuts?
Look, let me speak to Jellyroll. Get some rational response here."

"I can't leave just now, Shelly."

"Artie, this is a bad career move. Ba-ad. They're gonna start saying the dog's a genius, but the handler's unstable. Look, is it the woman?"

"Yeah. The woman."

"Okay. I can understand that. Grief. Grief's a terrible thing. But think of this: Samoa is the best place in the whole world to recover from emotional grief. Why do you think Gauguin went there? And Artie, do you know what they wear under those grass skirts?"

For a long time I sat and stared dully into what appeared to be an oil slick undulating over the surface of my coffee. Then the phone rang again. This time it was Sybel. I started to tell her about Leon, Stretch, and the Glacier, but she interrupted me before I could even say the word blackmail.

"Can you meet me? It's very important."

"Where are you? Why don't you come over here?"

"No, meet me. Please."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Can you meet me?"

"Where?"

"Columbus Circle. In front of the old Coliseum."

THIRTEEN

T
HAT, CLEARLY, WAS the voice of a woman in trouble, tight and husky, with panic in the upper register, as if a gun were pressed to her larynx. So what was I to do? Join her? Stand like a chump in the rain until whoever had her got me, too? Even if I wanted to go, which I did not, I couldn't stride blithely out the front door as if off to meet Billie for a Buster Keaton movie at the Metro, not while a glacier encroached on the neighborhood. Maybe this was the setup, force Sybel to call me out and let the Glacier pulverize us both at once, along with the Coliseum if it got in the way.

About a year ago, after an unusually sordid incident, the tenants kicked in to hire a night guard for the lobby. Knowing I had nothing else to do, they badgered me to head the hiring committee. I hired Blue. Blue wants to be black. He's a young white sax player who longs to have been raised in a New Orleans ghetto. "That would of enhanced my chops," as he'd put it.

"Hey, Blue," I called in a loud whisper from the first landing on the back stairs. Blue cautiously stuck his head around the corner.

"Whatchu doin' up there, Artie?" Blue wore a rumpled tan uniform with a cap several sizes too small, and he carried a nightstick that I occasionally caught him "playing" as if it were a soprano sax. "They pay me to nose out suspicious persons. You about the most suspicious person I seen since the pimp in 8E. Remember that dude?"

"Transitional neighborhood."

"Don't I know it, me bein' on the cutting edge of law enforcement."

I tossed him a tape cassette. "Julius Hemphill," I said.

"Thanks. Hey, this ain't a bribe? I'm clean. I'm Elliot Ness. I'm—"

"I'm expecting a cab. It should stop right in front. When it does, tap on the wall so I'll know, then go out and open the door for me."

"Gracious living, huh?"

"Right."

Blue went off to watch the door. My stomach snarled belligerently. I had forgotten to eat. Nothing but coffee and the rum from Dibbs. I was beginning to feel dizzy, but when Blue tapped on the wall, I walked briskly out the door and straight into the cab. "Thanks, Blue." If I never come back, please walk Jellyroll every now and then. I told the driver south on Eleventh, then east on Fifty-eighth. I would approach from the rear, where I'd have a decent view of the sidewalk in front of the Coliseum. If things looked nasty, I could then retreat the same way I came. As we pulled away, I looked for the Glacier, but he was either well concealed behind a building—anything smaller would have left elbows sticking out—or he was waiting for me at Columbus Circle.

Though the big marquee still stood, the Coliseum was dark and doomed. Soon it would come down, and another smoked-glass tower, a giant oil filter, would ascend over Columbus Circle, further enriching Donald Trump. I got out a block west of the Circle as a loose crowd emerged from the subway. I melted into it, fooling killers in the jam-up way I fooled them in my Con Ed suit. The International Bath & Hot Tub Expo had been the Coliseum's swan song. Big red letters on the marquee claimed it would run through January 15. I hung back, searching for a killer in a black leather raincoat, a silenced .22 in his gloved hand. A bag lady sang the national anthem with her hand over her heart.
Another explored the rubbish for returnables, the trickle-down theory at work.

Looking under umbrellas for Sybel, I walked across the front of the hulking building under the Bath & Hot Tub sign and looked under other umbrellas. Just keep going north, I told myself, to Vermont. I started back the other way.

"You Deemer?"

I spun.

"Deemer or not?" He was a chesty man, mid-forties, with a round face and stiff, curly hair. He wore a sharp leather cowboy jacket and pointed snakeskin boots.

"Who's asking?"

"Just get in the car. It's raining. I don't wanna ruin the jacket." He pointed at a big black limo with deeply tinted windows, the kind of car hoods and stars travel in, the same kind of car Billie photographed from her studio window. Before she was murdered.

"Forget it. I'm not getting in any cars." I backed away. Pedestrians, happy couples, flowed around us. "I'm here to meet Sybel, and if I don't start seeing her, I'm gonna start yelling cop."

"Artie—"

I spun toward the voice and took a couple of side steps to keep Tex in view. The back window of the car was down, Sybel's face was framed in it. Her expression was grim. "Please, Artie. Get in."

The back door opened. No light came on. Sybel slid over, and I got in. Something was wrong with her, something in the way she moved.

"Have they hurt you?" I asked.

She shook her head. Then I saw what caused her awkwardness. Her ankles were chained together. A length of chain was wrapped tightly twice around her ankles, cinched in between and padlocked.

"Hey," I demanded, "take these chains off her."

Tex got in the front, shut the door, and didn't even turn to look at his cargo in the back. The driver merged with the Columbus Circle traffic and headed east on Central Park South. The windows were so dark I could barely see the lights outside.

I shoved the brown leather shoulder in front and said, "Hey, why have you got her chained?"

"Just sit back, shut up, and enjoy the ride. This is a Lincoln Town Car." He still didn't turn around.

I shoved his shoulder again and repeated my question.

"She's chained so she can't run away, at least not real fast. You can run away, but if you do, she winds up in a lotta different cans of cat food." The driver giggled at that line.

Sybel took my hand and squeezed it. To say shut up? Her hand burned, and there were tears, or the traces of them, on her cheeks. She seemed to be breathing heavily. I was having some trouble breathing myself.

Was this it? Was this the last ride you learn about from gangster movies? It had all the earmarks of the genre. Then why was I going quietly? Sybel, too; she sat there. Because we didn't believe it? Maybe the bogs of North Jersey were fertilized by moldering disbelievers. Well, damn it, I would fight like a wounded wolverine. Tinted hotels and dressy tourists passed on the right. I had an ice pick in my jacket pocket, a Zinfandel cork guarding the point. I put my hand in there with it, and for future reference I picked a spot two inches up from Tex's collar.

"They made me call you," Sybel whispered hoarsely.

"I know," I said, thinking of other ways to kill Tex.

"Hey, shut up back there," he said.

"I don't think so, Tex."

He turned to face me over the seat back.

I said, "If you plan to kill us, it won't make any difference if we talk, and if you don't, you're not likely to change your mind because we do."

He grinned at me. "Yeah, you got a point there." He looked to the driver. "Four-eyes has a point there, don't he, Dickie?" The driver giggled. Tex faced front again. We passed the Plaza and continued eastward.

Sybel sat stiff and rigid in her seat. I wondered what kind of night she'd had. At the stoplight on Park, I came up with an idea. I decided to act on it, the ice pick being the only active alternative.

"Hey, Tex—" I poked his shoulder again. Glaring this time, he turned to me. His face was big and round, with mountainous jaw muscles that flexed rapidly. "I want to tell you about my arrangement with Ralph." I could feel Sybel looking at me.

"Oh, yeah? Who's Ralph?"

"Old friend of mine. We go back a long way. Our grandparents were pals. Ralph's a very dependable guy. He has a set of the photographs. See, our arrangement is this: if I don't call him every twelve hours and say in code that I'm fine, no problems, then he marches the photos straight to the cops. Detective Cobb. He'd like to meet you. He loves the rodeo."

"Well, now that's some arrangement you got with what's-his-name? Ralph? Ain't that a sharp arrangement, Dickie?" Dickie giggled again. "I tell you what, four-eyes. Nobody's gonna kill you, not unless you continue to poke me. Anyhow, I think it's great to have old pals like this guy Ralph. All my old pals are dead." He turned to the windshield and giggled. Dickie joined him. I decided if we left Manhattan, while on the bridge or in the tunnel, then that's when I'd do it, a short, sharp thrust into his medulla oblongata.

Dickie pulled up to the curb and stopped in front of a movie theater at Fifty-first on Second. Tex turned and showed me his clenched fist. I was impressed. Then I understood that he meant to give me something. Why didn't he just say so? I put my palm under his fist, and he dropped a key into it. I set about unlocking Sybel's ankles. She rubbed them when they were free.

Sybel slid across the seat and I helped her out. Dickie drove away. Tex said, "Come on," and led us toward the box office. From
a poster, Clint Eastwood pointed a .357 Magnum at our heads. Tex opened a glass door to the left of the ticket window and led us down a bright hallway to a bank of elevators. Only then did I begin to feel that this trip wasn't our last, at least not yet. We stepped out of the elevator on the twenty-third floor.

We approached a darkened office suite beyond glass doors with big teak handles and no company name. Tex unlocked the doors and lights came on automatically. He pointed at a wooden door marked private and said, "Wait in there."

It was one of those corner offices where the corporate heavies command panoramic views, this of the Queensboro Bridge. In the corner, where the two glass walls met, there was a sectional sofa that curved around a low-slung glass coffee table. Sybel and I sagged on the sofa. In the other corner was the seat of power, a sprawling teak desk about the size of a snooker table with a high-back leather chair behind it and two chairs in front where the supplicants could be made to feel appropriately dwarfed, but dwarfed was a hell of a lot better than dead.

"I think we're all right, Sybel. This is the kind of place you go to get your taxes done."

"I thought we were dead."

"How long have they had you?"

"Since about dark. That bastard leered at me for about five hours, told dirty jokes to that fool Dickie. Look, I'm about to fall apart. You're going to have to handle this."

"Don't worry." Sure, I'll handle it. No problem.

"Do you have any cigarettes?"

"No."

"I want one. Bad."

The door seemed to open automatically, and Harry Pine strode in with a big grin on his face, white teeth glistening. He looked younger in person than in the photos. "Evenin', folks. Good of you to stop by on such short notice. Who's for a drink?" We stared stupidly at our congenial host with the happy, white
grin. "No takers on the drinks?" He wore old chinos, scuffed Topsiders with no socks, a red knit shirt with an alligator on the tit, and an eight-thousand-dollar Rolex on his stout wrist. "Couple of light hitters, huh, Chucky?" I hadn't seen Tex come in, but there he stood with his back to the door. He agreed we were a couple of light hitters.