The Animal Hour (20 page)

He nodded. “Yes. Yes, it can just happen. It does just happen. Unfortunately. Right around your age. Ordinary people—oh, shit.”
Burreeeep
, went the phone. He deflated. Sank back in his chair. Lifted the handset wearily. “Hello. I'm with a patient now. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. I can't deal with that now. I'm with a patient.” He hung up. “Sorry.”

She was silent a moment. Her mind was racing. Darting down every possible avenue, looking for a way out of this. “You mean, this is like … You mean there's no cure for this. Is there?” she whispered. “That's what you're telling me. I'm just going to be this way.”

He didn't look at her. He looked down at his desk. He gestured at the papers on the imitation wood desktop. “Well … Sometimes … Listen … sometimes there's only one attack. Sometimes it doesn't get any worse at all. There's an incident like this and then … nothing. It's very mysterious. You can't really predict …”

“Oh …” It was a little gasp from her parted lips. She shook her head at the cigarette burn on the floor, her old friend. “Oh … Oh …”
Sometimes it doesn't get any worse.
That's what he'd said. And that meant that usually it does get worse. Didn't it? Usually the voices became louder, that's what he was saying. The delusions became stronger. The good periods, the clear periods, got shorter and shorter. And then after a while …
She just couldn't take care of herself anymore.
That's what her mother would say, crying into her handkerchief. And her friends would shake their heads and say,
She was such a nice person. It's just so awful.
And she—she could see herself. She would scrape along the sidewalk beneath their windows. Her eyes on the middle distance. Her hair in tangles. Her clothes in rags. The handsome men in suits would swerve to avoid her. The women in dresses from Bergdorf's would shake their heads and look away. She would come out at midnight, live from midnight to midnight. Sleeping in doorways. Muttering in the dark,
to
the dark, or shouting suddenly: “The Animal Hour! Someone is going to die! At eight o'clock! At eight o'clock!”

“But it's true,” she whispered, clenching her fists, clenching her teeth. “I swear. It's all true. It's all going to happen.”

And Dr. Schoenfeld's pity—the way he cocked his head, pursed his lips—it scorched her to her marrow. It was a martyrdom.

“Come on, Nancy,” he said after a moment. She heard his chair squeak. She was dimly aware that he was standing over her. With his patched tweed jacket and his black knit tie. And his sanity. And his freedom. He reached down to her and touched her arm. She jerked away—what did he know about it? “It's all right,” he said softly. “We have to do some tests on you. It's going to take about three days. All right?”

He took her by the arm again. This time, she let him. He drew her out of the chair. Onto her feet. She stared up at him with pleading eyes.
It's all true. Really. I swear it. Please. Help me.

“We're gonna get in touch with your family,” Dr. Schoenfeld said. “Meantime, we'll get you a nice room. A view of the Empire State Building even. Pretty fancy stuff for a newcomer, but I've got some pull. All right?”

He smiled down at her and she gazed up at him, clinging to the kindness in that smile. She nodded her head.

“Good,” he said. He patted her arm. “Now come on. I'll introduce you to the gang.”

She nodded again. Then she drove her knee up into his testicles with all the strength she had.

She hadn't known she was going to do this until she did it. She hadn't had the slightest idea. And when she had done it, she could only stand there, waiting, as if she expected him to respond.

There was a long, queer moment when everything was just the same. The doctor continued to smile down at her, his hand on her arm, the kindly little crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Then, very slowly, the crinkles disappeared as his eyes widened. His whole face seemed to slowly expand. His mouth opened. His eyes blew up like balloons. He made sounds: “Uh … uh …” These little expulsions of air. And very, very slowly, his hands moved to his groin and his body bent forward. He turned—slowly—away from her. Groped for his desk with one hand, holding his groin with the other. He knocked papers off the desktop. They flapped and fluttered to the floor. His hand tipped over a pencil holder and the pencils spilled out with a clatter. “Uh … uh …” He kept making that soft little noise.

Nancy stood through all this, gaping.
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I have to, I have to be there
, she thought. The doctor groped across the surface of his desk, clutching his groin, doubled over.

And she realized he was reaching for the phone.

Oh, don't …
Quickly, she stepped around behind him. Took up a position just at his back with her feet planted firmly. She clasped her two hands together. Pulled them back—as if she were raising an axe over her head. And then she swung down at him as hard as she could.

She grunted as her clasped hands connected with the back of his head. Dr. Schoenfeld's face was driven down into the desktop. His nose was crushed against the imitation wood. Blood burst from either side of his face, little red sprays on the white papers around him. His body went limp. He slumped onto his desk. He slid backward, hitting the chair as he fell. He dropped to the floor at her feet. The chair tipped over on top of him.

“Shit!” Nancy said. She looked up suddenly.

Bureeep. Burreeep.

It was the goddamned phone again.

“F
ernando Woodlawn. You never heard that name.”

Detective Mulligan was sitting now, tilted back in a swivel chair. His feet were propped on the edge of the desk in front of him, his trench coat hanging down around his seat. His profile was to Perkins, and it seemed to the poet that the cop was suddenly weary. His eyes blinked lethargically, the batteries running down.

Well, the sparring is over anyway, Perkins thought, looking at him. He's made his decision about me.

The thought was not a soothing one.

“I've heard the name,” he said after a moment. “I can't place it, but I have heard it somewhere.”

Mulligan blinked slowly at the cinderblocks in the far wall. The empty coffee maker there. The skewed, wilted pages tacked to their strip of brown cork. Even the high monotone of his voice seemed to have grown heavier somehow.

“You probably read about him in
Downtowner
magazine. They did a feature on him a while back. Your brother took the photographs.”

“Yeah? So Zach took his picture. So what? That's his job. Who is the guy?”

“Woodlawn? Oh, he's … a lawyer. A big shot lawyer. A big hoo-ha in the city. Into a lot of real estate deals. The navy port. Times Square development. A lot of deals with a lot of pols. Big, big hoo-ha; one of the back room boys.” He seemed to need to gather his strength for a moment before continuing. “He's also the man that Nancy Kincaid worked for. The dead girl; he was her boss. And … he's also the man with his Johnson up the masked girl's ass. The one …” He gestured toward the photographs.

“I know which masked girl's ass we're talking about,” Perkins said glumly. “What does this have to do with my brother?”

Mulligan spared him a tired glance. Showed his profile again. “The people who run this city are Democrats,” he said in that flat, mousy voice of his. “Even the Republicans are Democrats; there are no Republicans. If you want to build a building, or win a city contract, or pass a law, or lower your assessment, or park your car in the middle of Fifth Avenue at rush hour, you go to Someone who knows the Democrats. Right? This Someone then tells you what to do: You hire lawyer A because he is the council leader's brother-in-law; you hire accounting firm B because your local rep used to work there. You don't need a PR man? Tough shit: The PR man sucks the borough president's dick so you gotta hire him too. Right? And you make a campaign contribution here and there and finally you get to supply the city with widgets until Jesus comes. Understand?”

Perkins gave a slow nod. Thinking:
Hanh?
He had definitely lost the thread here somewhere. It was a little hard for him to focus on a civics lesson when he couldn't stop obsessing about Zach and the girl in the toilet and what the hell were they asking about Zach for anyway and where was he and was Nana going to have a coronary when she heard about all this and those glassy, china blue eyes staring up at him from the blood-streaked porcelain …

Still, he gave his vague nod. Gestured Mulligan on.

And Mulligan wasn't looking at him anyway. He stretched a little. Ran his hand over his receding tide of springy curls.

“Right,” he said mildly, always mildly. “Fernando Wood-lawn. He's the Someone you go to, the Someone who knows the Democrats. All right?”

“Yeah …” said Perkins uncertainly.

“And you go to him and he spreads your money around—but he never does an illegal thing. That's important. He hires you lawyers you don't want, and PR men you don't need, and he contributes to causes you don't believe in; he helps you get a contract you shouldn't get or build a building that shouldn't be there—but not once in any way does he break the law or pass an illegal buck or sidle up to people in the dark or wear sunglasses or anything like that at all. Right? Only greedy people make those mistakes. Not Fernando. All right.”

But it was not all right with Perkins. It sounded serious and he wasn't following it and what the hell did it have to do with his brother? He blew a long breath out. Brushed back his long black hair. This was worse than Mulligan's silences. Where the hell was Zach?

“Now.” Mulligan just went mildly on. “For the last six months, Fernando Woodlawn has been spreading around an uncountable number of dollar bills. The idea is he and some other people want to build a complex of buildings called Ashley Towers over by the Hudson. So, if he takes all the necessary steps, which he has, and he wins permission for this complex, which he will, he will have enough jobs to hand out and enough money to pass around so that he will be made the Democratic nominee for governor next year, which means he will be automatically elected because there are no Republicans in sight who can run against him. So here's tomorrow's news today: Woodlawn is going to be your next governor. And that's what's with Fernando Woodlawn. Which brings us to the Republicans.”

Perkins bent over, held his head. He could just barely keep himself from saying “Argh!” “I thought there were no Republicans,” he said. He shook his head at the dirty white tiles of the floor.

“In New York,” said Mulligan. He lifted a finger, but not at Perkins. He waggled it at the wall. He continued, with excruciating patience. “There are no Republicans in New York. In Washington, there are lots and lots of Republicans. Passels of Republicans. Republicans everywhere. And some of these Republicans don't want Fernando Woodlawn to become governor because his dishonest plans to milk the state for gain might interfere with their dishonest plans to milk the state for gain. So these Republicans, see, have asked that the FBI investigate Fernando until they find something that will end his gubernatorial hopes and dreams. So for the past year or so, there have been idiot FBI agents sidling up to people in the dark and wearing sunglasses and finding out exactly nothing because Fernando never breaks the law—not the Laws of Man anyway.”

“Jesus, Mulligan,” Perkins said. He was still bent over, holding his head in his hands. “I mean, you're killing me here. I give up. I confess. For God's sake, would you get to the point?”

Mulligan dropped his feet to the floor with a clunk. Perkins looked up. Saw the detective standing, his hands slipping into his trench coat pockets again. The round face was blank as the cop walked toward him. Perkins straightened in his plastic chair. Mulligan blinked down at him from behind his wire rims.

“Last week, a young woman came to me,” he said. “That was Nancy Kincaid. She didn't want to come to the police, but she was scared and she didn't know where else to go. She was afraid her employer, Fernando Woodlawn, wanted to involve her in something illegal. Something strange anyway, maybe even dangerous. She couldn't tell her parents, because they idolized Woodlawn and wouldn't understand. And no one else could help her. So she came to me.”

“Okay. All right,” said Perkins. He was all ears now. More than a little wary of the impassive face above him, the slowly blinking eyes. Mulligan had come close, and he remembered how fast the detective had moved when he slammed the photo down on the desk. A dangerous guy, definitely. Not a fun, not a takin'-it-easy kind of guy at all.

“Woodlawn wanted her to pick up a package under mysterious circumstances,” Mulligan ploughed on. “At night. In a Chinatown alley. Carry the package straight back to the office without looking at it, he said. If anyone asks, tell 'em you're responding to an anonymous call. Don't involve Fernando … On and on. Understand? So it frightened her. It sounded dirty. She thought he might be using her for something dirty because no one would suspect her or follow her. Oh yeah—to add to the mystery, she was supposed to carry a book.” The detective nodded toward the table, and Perkins turned to it, his mouth opening.
“The Animal Hour.
She was supposed to carry
The Animal Hour
under her arm for identification.”