The Extinction Club (9 page)

There was no phone in any of the upstairs rooms, but in the kitchen was a black wall phone. I didn’t expect it to have a dial tone and it didn’t: it had a stutter-tone. I punched in the long-distance number of Brook’s cellphone, in violation of a court order, and left a message so long it was cut off. I then called J. Leon Volpe, my attorney.

“Do you realize, Nightingale, you are in
serious
shit?” was his greeting. He was my father’s attorney, to be precise, a chronically exasperated man with expletive-salted sentences and Italian suits who disliked everyone, especially me. He had a throaty, interrogatory voice that sounded less lawyerly than gangsterly.

“Yes.”

In the background I could hear his favourite radio station, an AM channel trapped in the fifties, which he never turned off. “For the love of Christ, Nile, I’ve been trying to reach you
for the last three weeks. Do you ever retrieve your goddamn messages? Does anyone even
send
you messages?”

He disliked me, in part, for my lawyer jokes. “What did you want?”

“What did I
want
? What the hell do you think I wanted? I wanted to know why I’m in the middle of a
shit parade
. Affidavits, warrants, restraining orders, complaints for damages. Phone calls and e-mails from Katz, Carp & Ferret. I’m drowning in this stuff. Am I representing you?”

How do you stop a lawyer from drowning? Answer one: shoot him before he hits the water. Answer two: take your foot off his head. “If you agree.”

A loud theatrical sigh. “Can I just say, at this preliminary point, that I wish you had done me the courtesy of
consulting me beforehand
? And that I find your actions
grossly irresponsible
?”

His job, for the most part, seemed to consist of putting people in their place. “Yes, feel free.”

Count to five. “And where are you now, your Highness?”

This was a reference to my drug use. Former drug use. “In a cemetery.”

“Where? Colombia? Afghanistan?”

Through a frost-covered window at the end of the hall, I glimpsed what looked like a snowplow. It was heading toward the church, which was odd because the lane had already been cleared. It stopped halfway.

“Just tell me one thing, off the record, no bullshit. Did you, or did you not, abduct and assault Brooklyn Jessica Martin?”

I took the phone up the hall, stretching its gnarled black coil until it was no longer a coil, but before I could get a better look the plow had backed up and roared off.

“Is this a dialogue we’re having, Nile? Or an interior fucking monologue?”

An interior monologue, pretend you’re Hamlet. “I’m listening.”

“Did you, or did you not, abduct and assault Brooklyn Jennifer Martin?”

He was said to be brilliant, although I never once heard him say a brilliant thing; my father, on the other hand, said brilliant things all the time. “Her middle name is not Jennifer.”

“Nile, for Christ’s sake—”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Then what the
hell
were you doing with her?”

“I took her to a zoo. As requested.”

“As
who
requested?
Which
zoo?”

“Brook. Cape May.”

“Without your ex-wife’s permission.”

“She’s not my ex-wife.”

“But you lived together.”

In the background I could hear the faint strains of “Earth Angel” by the Penguins. Along with keyboard clicks, as if he were double-tasking. Even when you spoke to him face to face, you got the impression he was double-tasking.

“Yes,” I replied.

“At the funeral you guys seemed like such a great couple. And your father just loved her—and was ecstatic about having a grandchild. What killed it, Nile? You and your … problems?”

I’m getting an abortion so get used it:
my ex’s words. “No, it was just … you know, one of those things.”

“Your
Wehmut
or
Weltschmerz
or whatever the Germans call it?”

“No.”

“You still hearing things, seeing things? Prehistoric beasts, fairy-tale monsters, that kind of stuff? What’s it called again?”

My father, who could no more keep his mouth shut than a catfish, must have told him about this, about my visit with a neuropsychologist in Frankfurt. “Pareidolia,” was Doktor Neefe’s conclusion. “A condition,” he explained in accented English, “in which the brain interprets random patterns as recognizable images. We all have it to some extent,
ja
? When we see faces or animal shapes in clouds or flames, or the Virgin Mary’s face in a piece of bratwurst, or a sex organ in a fig. Or
Steckrübe
… turnip. Or a rat in toilet bowl stool. Or when we hear hidden messages on a Beatles record played backwards. Many artists have had it—Bosch, Blake, Munch and Magritte come to mind. Munch painted
The Cry
after watching a sunset whose clouds looked to him like ‘coagulated blood.’ Hamlet and Scrooge had it. Lewis Carroll. Many scientists too, especially Hermann Rorschach. But you, Herr Nightingale, you have a rather interesting form of it. A psychotomimetic form. Your visions would seem to be neurological reverbs, after-sensations, from the barrage of psychedelic chemicals you’ve been subjecting your brain to.” A bit like pro football players, I thought at the time, the shocks and hits that come back to haunt them, debilitate them, years after they’ve retired.

“Hello? Nile? You still there?”

“Meine Halluzinationen betreffen Sie nicht.”

“Whoa. Slow down. What?”

“My visions are neither here nor there.”

“So you took the child a hundred miles away from home without the mother’s permission.”

“Brook phoned me, said she missed me, said her mom gave
us the green light, Girl Guide’s honour. She was waiting for me at the end of the driveway.” With a pink plastic suitcase.

“But you never made it to the zoo.”

“No.”

“But you made it to a motel.”

“Was it my fault the car broke down?”

“No, it wasn’t. An antique like that is bound to break down. But it was your fault you ended up in Atlantic City. Which isn’t exactly the closest town to Cape May now, is it.”

How does one say no to a young girl who’s crying? I’ve never been able to. “Brook asked me—pleaded with me—to take her there. Said she’d never been, said she wanted to go on the world’s biggest roller coaster.”

“Don’t say that in court.”

“Because …”

“Because it’s not in Atlantic City.”

“So we found out.”

“And so you took her to a casino instead.”

“Are you serious? How would she get in? She’s got braces, for Christ’s sake.”

“Your ex-wife claims that you applied makeup to her and entered a casino, where she won … let me see. Eighty-nine dollars and fifty cents. She found it in her … pink suitcase.”

“Nonsense. A pathetic lie. About the makeup, I mean. She did win some money.”

“And where did she win the money?”

“At the motel.”

“There was a casino at the motel?”

“No. I taught her how to play poker. After six riveting games of Fish.”

“In your room.”

“Correct.”

“Strip poker?”

Sigh. “No, not strip poker.”

“You were drunk, I presume? Or high?”

“Ish.”

“And was she?”

“High? Yes. Rushing on four Fudgsicles and a mountain of M&Ms.”

“And where did you play poker? On the bed?”

“Yes. A heart-shaped bed, in fact. With a pink chiffon bedspread.”

“Where she won eighty-nine dollars from you.”

“And fifty cents.”

“Be right back, got to piss like a heart attack …”

When Volpe put you on hold, his radio automatically kicked in, loud and clear. He was gone for the duration of “Chapel of Love” by the Dixie Cups. I set the receiver down and paged Céleste on the walkie-talkie, not expecting it to work, not expecting her to be awake. But she replied almost immediately with an all-clear. Smart kid.

“Nile? Nile? There’s another item here … Your wife’s lawyer mentions some morbid act, some sort of satanic ritual that went on. Something involving a dead man’s hand?”

Here I had to laugh. Her lawyer must have minored in comedy writing at law school.

“Glad you think it’s amusing, Nile. But how would you respond to that in a court of law?”

With a wail of laughter. “In our last game I held an Ace of Spades, Ace of Clubs, eight of Spades, eight of Clubs, Jack of Diamonds. It’s called the deadman’s hand.”

“Never heard of it.”

“There are lots of things you’ve never heard of,” I almost said, but I almost say things much more often than I say them.
“When Wild Bill Hickcock was shot in the back of the head, those were the cards that fell to the floor.”

Silence. “Did anything happen between you two? After the game of poker, on the heart-shaped bed?”

“No.”

“But you slept together.”

“In the literal sense, yes.”

“You got a room with one bed?”

“Two. But Brooklyn ended up on mine. As she often did with me and her mom. Whenever she had nightmares, or couldn’t sleep.” She couldn’t sleep unless the place was lit up like Christmas.

“And when you went into the Jacuzzi with her the next morning, what were each of you wearing?”

“Objection. Leading the witness. It has not been established that Mr. Nightingale ever went into the Jacuzzi with Miss Martin.”

“I’m just preparing you for the hell-roasting you’re going to get from the prosecutor.”

Volpe should know, he used to be one himself. After Fordham Law he began as a defence attorney, but crossed the aisle because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life being lied to on a daily basis. He then worked for the FBI, according to my father, which had become something of a haven for lawyers trying to avoid military service. Now he’s a corporate lawyer, writing up steel-trap contracts for hedge fund firms owned by New Jersey crime families. So why was I asking him to defend me? A man who hasn’t won a defence case since disco? Because he’s the closest I have to blood: he was my father’s best, most loyal friend since kindergarten. He visited us in Europe, even China. Although he hated everyone else, the lawyer loved the doctor. “Brooklyn used the Jacuzzi,
not me. As far as I can recall, she wore a bathing suit. I was in the shower at the time.”

“Naked?”

I paused. Was this a real question? “Yes. A nutty quirk, I admit.”

“Don’t you think it would’ve been wiser had you gotten two rooms?”

“In hindsight, yes. But Brooklyn didn’t want to stay in a room by herself. She was afraid, she said. She was
ten
at the time—I would’ve been afraid at that age too.”

“Why didn’t you phone her mother?”

“I did, left two messages. Even though Brook said not to bother, that her mom was spending the weekend with her ‘smiley new boyfriend.’”

“And what about the charge of road rage on the way back?”

“What about it?”

“The police report says that you had a drunken argument with another driver on I-9, that you screamed out threats and profanities, cut him off repeatedly, and waved a gun at him through the window.”

Sometimes, after drink, I am prone to spontaneity. “He cut me off first, grinning at me with a sorry-ass moustache. After riding my bumper for twenty miles.”

“But the rest is true? You were a drunk and disorderly rageaholic?”

Alcohol is one of my tripwires, oversensitizing me to the bad behaviour of strangers.

“And exceeding the speed limit,” Volpe continued, “by over forty miles an hour?”

Velocity is the ultimate drug and rockets run on alcohol. “Possibly.”

“And the pistol?”

“Brooklyn’s.”

“Brooklyn carries a piece?”

“A Walther .38. The brand favoured by James Bond.”

“You’ve
got
to be kidding.”

“An anatomically correct plastic version.”

“The kind that can pass through metal detectors … Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nile, a water pistol? I wonder who gave her that.”

“She asked for one for her birthday. I got her top-of-the-line.”

“Did you know that killers get their early training with water pistols?”

“Oh, please. I must have had a dozen when I was a kid. Didn’t you?” I couldn’t imagine Volpe having a childhood.

“Did you ever
once
think of the repercussions? On an innocent, impressionable young girl who may never fully recover from this incident? Ever think of that?”

“She was in hysterics the entire time. Egging me on. Not just to catch the guy, to force him over, but to shoot him in the face. Which I did. When the cops pulled me over, she couldn’t answer their questions because of a laughing cramp. And when we arrived at her mother’s, she told me—and I quote—‘That was the best weekend of my whole life, Uncle Nile, can we do it again next weekend?’ Did she mention that to her mother? Perhaps her mother forgot that detail.”

Volpe heaved another sigh, long and loud. “Do they have Internet up there? Up in … central Quebec?”

“How’d you know …” I stopped because I knew. “No, they don’t have Internet up here, not yet. Or colour TV.”

“They don’t?”

Who was putting on who? “No, it’s prehistoric up here. You’ve never been?
The Flintstones
was shot up here.”

“What are you doing there anyway, smart-ass?”

Three things—nervousness, alcohol and Volpe—could turn me into a smart-ass. “Not a lot.”

“Why does that not surprise me? Why does that not surprise me one iota? You remember, Count Slackoff, what your father used to say about you?”

Let’s see, what would the old man have said about me? That I was an arrested adolescent who’d end up arrested? That all my classmates had passed through the gates of adulthood except me? “No. Refresh my memory.”

“‘He wants to have his bread and loaf too.’”

“Very amusing, that. Thanks for reminding me.”

“And that ‘childlessness will condemn you to—’”

“‘Childishness.’”

“Exactly. God, what a wit that man had. I could never keep up with him. Must have been lots of fun being around him.”

I nodded. “A riotocracy of merriment.”

“He had the energy of six men.”

And I the energy of a sloth.