The House That Jack Built (23 page)

    

    

    Zaghlul Fuad drove up the ramp of the 51st Street garage and out through a cloud of steam into the street, turning right towards Lexington. He had hardly driven thirty feet before he was hailed from the front of Loew's New York Hotel by a tall, well-built man in a dark double-breasted suit and a poloneck. He pulled over to the kerb and the man climbed in.

    'Think I'm okay for Perossian?' he asked.

    'Perossian, what's that?' asked Zaghlul, drawing away from the kerb and stopping at the traffic signals.

    'Don't you remember? It's a restaurant.'

    'Okay, so it's a restaurant. Where's it at?'

    '182 West 58th, close to Seventh Avenue. You don't remember that either?'

    'Why should I remember? I never went there before.' The man sat back. 'No, you didn't, you're right. You never went there. You're absolutely right.'

    Zaghlul was about to turn around in his seat to see who the man was, but at that moment the signals changed and the car behind him was blaring its horn.

    'At least it's not raining,' the man remarked.

    'Raining?' Zaghlul laughed, shaking his head. 'It hasn't rained in two weeks. Not likely to, neither.'

    'That's good. Maybe I can get there safely this time.' Zaghlul spun the wheel flat-handed and the taxi swerved around a lumbering tractor-trailer and bounced across Park Avenue while the signals were changing. 'What are you talking about, safely?' he said. 'I always get everywhere safely.'

    'You're quite an optimist, Zaghlul.'

    Zaghlul frowned into his rear-view mirror, trying to see what his passenger looked like, but all he could see in the back seat was darkness, and the shape of a head.

    'Have I picked you up before?' he asked the shape of a head.

    'Sure, Zaghlul, you've picked me up before.'

    'You remember names that much?'

    'No-o-o, not particularly. Not genuine people. Not friends. But I do remember people who screw me: or put me down; or try to take advantage.'

    'But you remember my name?'

    The passenger leaned forward so that Zaghlul could smell alcohol and bittermints on his breath. 'I always remember a good name. Zaghlul Fuad, that's quite a name. How's your father, Zaghlul?'

    'My father died.'

    'Oh, that's right,' Craig whispered. 'I remember now. Your father died. Your father, who was not perfect, the same as you.'

    They reached a red signal on Madison, and Zaghlul braked the taxi hard and turned around. 'Do I know you?' he demanded. His flower-pot hat was tilted at an angle. 'Who are you to say my father was anything at all?'

    The man's face was craggy and handsome, but unnaturally handsome, like a dead Kennedy. 'You said it, Zaghlul. You were the one who said that your father wasn't perfect. He tried his best, like most of us do. But you - you never tried your best, did you, Zaghlul? You never tried to be helpful, when people needed you. You were always so goddamned right and everybody else was so goddamned wrong; and apologising didn't help, even when you were right, because you never accepted apologies, did you? You never understood stress. You never understood need. You never thought that you and this fucking cab could make all the difference between success and failure, between life and death, between a man being a man and a man being a eunuch. You never thought that, did you?'

    'Hey, you wait a minute-' Zaghlul began, but the signals changed and the man said, 'Better get moving, Zaghlul. And better look the way you're going, don't you think?' Zaghlul's fender collided with a trash-container at the side of the street, and he swerved and almost hit a stretch limo that was wallowing down the street right next to them, gleaming mysteriously with opera-lights and black-tinted windows.

    'Shit!' he said. Then, 'Sorry; I apologise.'

    The man shifted forward in his seat. 'Too late for apologies now, Zaghlul. The damage is done.'

    Zaghlul pulled over to the kerb, and stopped. 'Listen, friend, I don't know what I ever did to you to make you feel this way, but whatever it is, it's all in the past, okay, and I just want you to exit my taxi.'

    The man paused for a moment, his head tilted to one side, giving Zaghlul a slanted and provocative smile. 'This is a habit of yours, isn't it? You don't like one of your fares, you pull over and throw him out. Or her, too. I guess you throw out women as well, don't you, any woman you don't like, regardless of where you leave them?'

    Zaghlul opened his door. 'I'm telling you, friend, either you get out of this taxi or I'm calling a cop.'

    The man grunted in amusement. 'Oh… they'll come running soon enough. Once they know that you're dead.'

    Zaghlul said, 'Please, friend, why don't we forget it, okay? Just get out, and you can have the ride for free. Let bygones be bygones - sweep them under the rug.'

    'Forget it? How can I forget it? Don't you know what you did to me?'

    Zaghlul said, 'I'm sorry. I don't know who you are. I don't have any idea what you want. I don't know you and I don't want to know you. Whatever you do, whoever you screw, that's your business. So let's call it quits on the fare, and shake hands, and forget it.'

    The man thought for a while. Then he said, 'Okay… let's forget it. You don't remember one rainy night in March - March sixteenth, if we're going to be precise - when you told me to get out of your taxi because you didn't like the way I talked to you?'

    Zaghlul shook his head. 'I don't remember that. I take thousands of fares, friend. I can't remember one from another.'

    'You should remember me.'

    'I don't think so. But if I upset you, I apologise.'

    'You will remember me,' the man smiled; and with that he reached over the seat, yanked Zaghlul's head back, and drew his hand in front of Zaghlul's face like a cellist drawing his bow. The gesture was so effortless and elegant that Zaghlul himself didn't realise what had happened until blood cascaded wet and hot down the front of his Hawaiian shirt. He clutched his throat, and all he could feel was pumping arteries and sliced-open skin, like another mouth.

    'You will remember the night you threw me out of your cab when it was storming with rain; and I was mugged; and I was hurt; and I was hurt worse than you will ever be, Zaghlul. You fucking know-nothing, pock-faced Egyptian.'

    Zaghlul couldn't speak; he couldn't breathe; he couldn't think. As Craig climbed out of the taxi and quiedy closed the door, he dropped sideways onto the seat, and his flowerpot hat fell off, and blood ran in thin glutinous rivers onto the taxi's rubber mats. He had thought when he started out that the evening was sunny, when he first set out, but it seemed to be darkening all the time. Soon it was so dark that he thought that it must be time to go home.

    He was sure that he could hear his father talking. In fact, he was talking louder and louder, so loud that Zaghlul could scarcely bear it.

    'Zaghlul, didn't I tell you not to be so arrogant? You were always so arrogant! And now where are you?'

    A woman tapped on Zaghlul's window and asked him if he could take her to Columbus Circle. Then she backed away.

    He heard traffic; and hundreds of feet, pounding the sidewalks.

    

    

    They called him many different names. Some of the younger kids called him The Prince. His close friends called him Up, because he was always wired. His mother called him Samuel, which was his given name. His father called him Useless, because he was, but not to the Aktuz, the gang who dominated the theatre district, preying on theatregoers and tourists and anybody else who happened along.

    This evening he was preening his black mushroom-shaped coiffure in one of the dressing-rooms at the Lyceum, watched admiringly by his curly-haired girlfriend Scuzz (real name Susan) and his closest friend and bodyguard Tyce (named for Mike Tyson, with whom he shared the same collar size.) Up was a frequent visitor backstage, both on- and off-Broadway, because he knew all the doormen and the security guards, and they humoured him because he gave them very little trouble, apart from strutting around like a vain and self-opinionated actor-manager, and because he was capable of giving them a great deal of very serious trouble if they didn't. Vandalised hoardings, ransacked dressing-rooms, and intimidated staff.

    'Where we goin' tonight sweetheart?' Scuzz asked him.

    'Au Bar,' said Up. 'Then maybe on to The China Club. Depend on my mood.'

    'You're puttin' me on.'

    'Sure, I'm puttin' you on. We goin' to Tony Roma for some ribs.'

    Tyce said, 'Lookin' good tonight, man. You ought to audition.'

    Up swivelled this way and that way, turning up the collar of his coat and pouting at himself. 'I don't need no audition. One day they goin' to be lookin' for a new Othello, and they goin' to come beggin' on they hands and knees. "Be sure of it; give me the oracular proof." '

    Tyce applauded. 'You got it, man. You could hold that stage any time you want.'

    'I told you. They'll come beggin' on they hands and knees.'

    He took out a cigarette and Tyce instandy reached out to light it. At that moment, however, there was a sharp knock at the dressing-room door.

    'What you want?' Tyce demanded. 'Private party goin' on here.'

    'Looking for somebody name of Up.'

    'What for?' asked Tyce. He glanced at Up, and then reached into his black leather coat and took out a switchblade knife.

    'Special delivery.'

    Tyce said, 'Special delivery of what?'

    'Don't ask me. I only deliver.'

    Up stepped cautiously towards the door. The Aktuz had recently suffered some vicious run-ins with a neighbouring gang of Puerto Ricans, the Red Scorpions, who hung around the Port Authority Bus Terminal snatching purses and luggage. Two Aktuz had been stabbed last week, one seriously, and it was well known that the Red Scorpions had put a price on Up. Any Scorpion who brought back Up's scalp back to the lair would be rewarded with all the crack he could carry.

    'That ain't no greaseball,' Tyce whispered.

    'So what? They could have paid a ghost.'

    Up drew back his long black coat and lifted out the hammer that hung in a loop from the lining.

    'Okay you can come in now. But take it slow.'

    Tyce opened the door with his left hand, holding up the switchblade in his right. There was a moment's pause, and then a tall white man stepped in, with one arm held behind his back. He didn't look like the kind of man who delivered packages for a living. He was dressed in a dark expensive suit and a charcoal-grey cotton poloneck.

    'Are you Up?' he asked, still keeping his arm behind his back.

    'Maybe I is and maybe I ain't. Who want to know?'

    'I do. I've been looking for you. You're a difficult man to find.'

    'What you holdin' in back of yourself, man.'

    'I told you. Special delivery.'

    The tension in the dressing-room was quickly rising. Scuzz moved back towards the corner, and her chair made a teeth-edging squeak on the floor. Tyce sprang his knife and the double-edged blade winked and sparkled in the intense light from the dressing-room mirror.

    'You better lay that special delivery down on the floor,' said Up.

    The man shook his head. 'I'm sorry, I can't do that. I have to lay this on you personally.'

    Up rhythmically slapped his hammer-head in the palm of his hand. 'You tired of being conscious, man? I said to lay it on the floor.'

    Tyce gave a toothy, exaggerated grin. 'You ever see what a hammer like that can do to a person?'

    The man turned and stared at him seriously. 'Yes, I have, as a matter of fact. But I never saw what a hammer like this could do to a person.'

    Without warning, he twisted his arm out from behind his back, and before Tyce could raise his hand to defend himself, he had whirled a long-handled sledgehammer round in the air, and knocked Tyce straight in the face with it.

    Tyce's nose burst apart, and his upper jawbone broke in half with an audible crack. He fell backward, toppled over his chair, and collapsed in the corner, one leg twitching, his eyes rolled up into his head.

    Up crouched down, and swung his hammer in a vicious criss-cross pattern, almost as if he were sword-fighting. 'You want me, man. You better say you prayers.'

    The man remained completely expressionless. He lifted the sledgehammer and brought it down so hard on Up's right wrist that his hammer flew across the room. Up screamed out in pain, and staggered back towards the dressing-table. The man swung the sledgehammer again, and hit him on the shoulder, a blow that broke his collarbone. Up lifted his hand, trying to protect himself, but the man hit him in the chest - once, twice, three times, and each time they could hear his ribs cracking.

    Up fell back against the mirror. The man hit him on the forehead. The mirror smashed into hundreds of brightly-lit fragments, and the front of Up's skull caved in.

    The man beat him and beat him, again and again, destroying both him and the mirror. He went on beating him long after he was dead - long after his bombastic pompadour had been reduced to a mash of blood and hair and bone-fragments and jellyish brain. One eye looked accusingly out of his squashed face, but apart from that it was almost impossible to tell that he was human.

    Scuzz cowered in the corner and her face was as white as the wall.

    'Don't hurt me,' she begged him.

    The man stood over her, hefting the sledgehammer in both hands. 'You don't remember me, do you?' he asked her.