The Disappearing Body

by David Grand

  “Quit the routine and get to the point, will you?”

  “Tell me,” Benny said more seriously, “what would you do if I could prove to you that Victor Ribe didn’t kill your brother? But that it was Harry Shortz who was behind the whole thing?”

  “Shortz?” Sid said. He fingered the book he had in his hand. “What makes you think that?”

  “You mean you never had that feeling over the years? Knowing what you know about Shortz?” The man nodded his chin at the book and took a bite of his doughnut.

  “The thought hadn’t really crossed my mind. I mean, I always figured he had something to do with it, but not like that.”

  “Then what makes you so interested in him? What makes it so I should bring it up and there you are walking in here with that book in your hands?”

  “Coincidence?” Sid said. “Because I got an interest?”

  “Yeah,” Benny said with a grunt, “if that’s the way you want it.”

  Sid dunked his doughnut into his coffee and took a soft spongy bite. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”

  “Let’s say you don’t.”

  “All right,” Sid said hesitantly, “let’s say.”

  “What would you do, is the question, if I could make you believe it? Given that you don’t know me from Adam.”

  “I don’t know,” Sid said, after thinking about it for a few seconds. “At this point it’s all hypothetical.”

  “You’d be interested in justice, right?”

  “If you can prove it to me, sure.”

  “You think you got the gall to do what’s right when it comes time?”

  “You bet I do.”

  Benny smiled a toothy grin. “That’s what I wanted to hear from you, Sid.”

  “All right, so let’s see you do your part.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, where will you be?”

  “In my shoe repair shop, in the lobby of the Prescot.”

  “All right, just be sure to be there.”

  “Who are you? You a cop?”

  Benny Rudolph laughed. “That’s a good one.”

  “What do you really want from me?” Sid asked. “If it’s money you’re looking for, I don’t have any to give.”

  “Like I was saying, I’m just interested in setting things straight.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing: I ain’t no pushover.”

  “Far be it from me to think that, my friend. . . . Just be in your shop tomorrow afternoon. You’ll have everything you need to know and then some.”

  Sid looked Benny Rudolph over one more time. “I’ll be there,” Sid said. “I’ll be there all day.”

  “And if you’re not? Don’t you worry,” Benny said, “I’ll find you.” It sounded almost like a threat.

  Benny Rudolph put on his hat and pushed his large heft up off the edge of the counter. He tucked his envelope under his arm, and then with a wink shot at Sidney, he stuffed the rest of his doughnut in his mouth and made his exit.

  Sid collected himself and paid for the check. He ambled back down the quiet empty street to the candy store, where he stood in front of a heart-shaped display of red hots. He stared up to Gloria’s still lace curtains, hoping to see her silhouette, and wondered what harm would be done if he rang for her. He wanted to spend some more time with her. He wanted to just sit in the same room with her, watch her lounge on her couch in her robe, and get her mad at him all over again. If a rose wasn’t a rose anymore, Sidney couldn’t even start to count the ways he loved Gloria Lime.

  Chapter 15

  You want me to take you to the hospital?” Freddy asked Victor when he found him on the street outside Jack’s, beside the trash cans. The two men who had dragged Victor out of the tavern had driven his face into a brick wall and busted his nose. His nostrils, his cheeks, his lips, his hair, the collar of his coat, his scarf steamed with blood; the soft flesh under his eyes was beginning to swell and turn black.

  “No,” Victor said to Freddy as he tried to sit up, “I’ll be all right.”

  “If you say so.” Freddy lifted Victor up by his shoulders, leaned him up against the wall, and while crouching down beside him delicately dabbed at Victor’s face with the wet rag Jack had thrown at him on his way out. When Freddy had sopped up as much of the blood as he could off Victor’s neck, cheeks, and mouth, he wrung out the rag and handed it to Victor. Victor tilted his head back and pressed the bloody rag to his nose.

  Freddy Stillman lived a few blocks down Eighty-third Street on the corner of Gravesend Avenue in the first floor apartment of Celeste Martin’s mother’s home. As Freddy and Victor approached 319 West Eighty-third a soft shaft of yellow haze flooded out of the attic’s dormer window onto the darkest part of the street. When they reached the gate bordering the property, the light was suddenly extinguished and Victor stood standing in the dark. “Jack said they were Narcotics, the ones who did this to you,” Freddy said as he stood against the outside gate.

  “I’m not certain, but I think they might have been the ones who arrested me.”

  “How’d they know where to find you?”

  “I don’t know.” Victor looked over Freddy’s head as he spoke, to the end of the block, across the darkened river. The icy water reflected the lights of the Long Meadow Palisades on the opposite shore. As Victor continued to look out onto the embankment of his old home, Freddy walked up the stairs and was nearly knocked back down as the door swung open and Celeste Martin stepped out, her back landing squarely against Freddy’s chest. When she turned around, she greeted Freddy with a startled smile.

  “Oh my! You took me by surprise, Freddy.” Celeste fluttered her eyelashes. “I was just up in the attic, lost, yes, quite lost.” Clutched in her arms was a stack of letters bound by twine. “I only meant to be there for a moment to put something away in one of Mommy’s old footlockers when I came across these old letters Daddy had written to Richard while he was away traveling.” Celeste smiled again into Freddy’s face, which in the flickering light of the porch’s lamp looked rubbery and tired. Celeste spoke in the manner one would expect from a grand princess. Her voice lilted and her pronunciation and elocution were exact. Although she was a woman of sixty-three, her voice was eerily sweet and youthful as a schoolgirl’s.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Martin,” Freddy said, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “I’ll be all right, Freddy. Really.” Celeste, recomposed, looked down the darkened stoop to Victor. “And who have we there?” she asked. “You haven’t had anyone over for ages, Freddy.” Before Freddy could answer, Celeste walked down the stoop and stood in front of Victor. She briefly looked at his shadow, reached out for the cuff of his coat, and dragged him into the light. As Celeste pulled Victor up, Freddy could hear in the distance the heavy engine-thrum of a passing barge and through it her exclamation. “Oh my!” Celeste cried out again, with the same startled manner with which she had greeted Freddy.

  “You remember Victor Ribe, don’t you, Miss Martin?” Freddy said, trying to put her at ease.

  “Victor?”

  “Victor Ribe. He used to spend time with me and Evelyn some years ago.”

  “Oh yes. Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” Celeste turned back to Victor. “Hello, Victor.”

  “Hello, Miss Martin.”

  “What happened to you, if you don’t mind my asking?” Celeste held on to Victor’s cuff, looking intently at the large bump that had formed on the bridge of his nose, at the frozen encrusted blood layered on the collar of his coat, on the rims of his ears.

  “It’s nothing,” Victor said. “I had a bad fall on a patch of ice.” He good-naturedly allowed his arm to rest in Celeste’s soft grip.

  “Please, Miss Martin,” Freddy said, “if you’ll allow me, I’ll take him to my apartment and clean him up.”

  “No,” Celeste said immediately. “No.” Celeste’s eyes were emphatically lit. “Why don’t we let Steven have a look at him. He’s very good at tending to such things.” She stood up as straight as s
he could to look into Victor’s swollen eyes. “Will you agree to that, dear?”

  Victor turned his head to Freddy. Freddy didn’t indicate one way or the other how he felt. He knew that it was Celeste’s nature to intervene and that if she weren’t allowed to, she would be insulted. It was with this same generosity of spirit, in fact, that she had offered Freddy, at that time a stranger on a park bench, newly married, without a job, just back from war, the bottom-floor apartment in her mother’s old home.

  “Come then.” Celeste took Victor’s hand, tucked it under her arm, and walked him into the street. Freddy followed them to the entrance of Celeste’s home.

  When Celeste opened the front door, a cacophony of bickering voices and the heavy smell of chicken soup came from a room beyond a mahogany stairwell. Celeste led Victor around the stairs and off to the kitchen, where Aleksandr, the handyman already mentioned, Nicol, another handyman of Haitian origin with a thick graying mustache, and Steven, the cook from Hong Kong, sat around the kitchen table in front of empty plates speaking a pidgin English so unique in the English-speaking world it could be presumed only those participating at that table understood it. The men abruptly ceased their conversation and sat dumbfounded by the sight of the broken man, bloodstained and swollen, arm in arm with Miss Martin.

  Steven, Aleksandr, and Nicol eventually rose to their feet, took Victor by the arms, and sat him down at the head of the table. Steven cautiously removed the bloody rag from Victor’s hand and threw it in the garbage can beside a countertop covered with chicken fat and greens. Nicol and Aleksandr, in turn, gently removed Victor’s coat and set it off to the side.

  “Steven, will you be so kind as to get some ice from the service porch and see if you can’t clean this man up a little. He’s had a very bad fall.”

  “Yes, all right,” Steven said in his choppy accent. Steven, who was only a year younger than Celeste, and who was thin and blotchy, had large sagging cheeks and a pious frown. As he waved in recognition of Celeste’s request, his cheeks jiggled a little with understanding. Then he was off to the service porch with an ice pick in hand.

  “And Steven?”

  “Yes, Miss Martin.” Steven turned back to Celeste.

  “When you’re through with him, make sure he and Freddy here get a nice hot plate of food.”

  “Yes, all right.” He turned away.

  “And Steven?” she said, this time saying “Steven” as though his name were an idea suddenly occurring to her.

  “What is it?” he said with his back to her.

  “Give Victor one of Mr. Tersi’s old suits. And an old coat and hat.” Celeste turned to Victor. “I have a very good eye for these things. I can tell any one will do. Do you hear that, Steven? Any one will do.”

  Steven just nodded his head this time and waved his free hand over his ear as he walked to the service porch.

  Freddy, who had been standing in the doorway during all this, was now waved into the kitchen by Celeste, to an empty chair between Nicol and Aleksandr, who welcomed Freddy with clear familiarity, moving their chairs off to either side to make room. Both these men were his upstairs neighbors across the street. Nicol and his family occupied the second floor and Aleksandr and his family occupied the third. They were both looking at Victor in stony silence, heads cocked slightly, not exactly sure what to make of him. Victor stared back down the table through the swollen narrow slits of his eyes.

  “Are you two boys free on Saturday?” Celeste asked rhetorically. “If you’re free on Saturday, you’re invited to the country estate for a party. Would you like to come? If you’d like to come, I think you two would be a fine addition to the guest list.”

  “I’m not . . .” Freddy began.

  “No need to make up your mind now, dears. If you’d like to come, just come up with Nicol and Aleksandr. They’ll be leaving sometime tomorrow evening. You come with them and spend the night.”

  “Thank you, Miss Martin,” Freddy said. “We’ll do our best to make it.”

  “I do hope so.”

  Victor smiled at Celeste as she stepped away with her letters and left the men to themselves and the kitchen’s sounds of simmering soup and hissing gas.

  After Steven returned from the service porch with the ice, everyone in Celeste Martin’s kitchen remained perfectly quiet while he swabbed away the flecks of dry blood that stubbornly clung to Victor’s lips and stubbled chin. He twisted two fistfuls of ice into thin white dish towels and dropped them into Victor’s hands. Victor gripped the ice and leaned his head toward Steven. “Thank you,” he said, nodding a little, his pupils slowly tracing his thick lids. “It’s nothing,” Steven said quickly, waving the rust-colored swabs in Victor’s face, lifting his chin with quick thrusts. Victor pressed the two cold bundles to his narrowed eyes, resting them on either side of his nose, with his eyes covered and his head leaning back. Nicol and Aleksandr each let out a long, audible breath and relaxed their faces. Although they were otherwise irrepressible in each other’s company, they had been noticeably, silently nervous and apprehensive in front of Victor. Now that his eyes were hidden, however, the two appeared more relaxed. Steven, meanwhile, threw the bloody swabs into the trash can, then lathered up at the tap. “Chicken soup coming,” he said, scrubbing with strong and orderly strokes. “Chicken soup,” he said again, giving the words some song.

  “What is this party Miss Martin has planned out at the estate?” Freddy asked.

  “It’s not a party, really,” Nicol said.

  “They’re having exhibit, an auction,” Aleksandr followed.

  “A Russian professor,” Nicol said. “He arrived in the port this afternoon with the paintings.”

  “We’ve just finished building gallery in country house for him—Tarkhov is his name, I think—to hang his paintings,” Aleksandr said proudly. “Not his paintings . . . I mean paintings he carries with him. Rodhinsky, a painter who died some years ago, these are his paintings.”

  “Yes, Tarkhov,” Nicol affirmed.

  “A Russian?” Freddy asked.

  “Yes, a Russian. And this Rodhinsky—famous Russian painter, he was.”

  “Aleksandr,” Nicol said, pointing his thumb at Aleksandr, “he once met him.”

  “Yes, when I was boy. He visited Split on his way back to Russia from Italy and stayed short time in church my father was working on, to learn a thing or two about masonry.”

  “And that’s not the half of it,” Nicol said, still gesturing with his thumb, prompting Aleksandr to continue.

  “Yes, well . . . he was very nice man, always pouring me glasses of wine. Several years after the revolution, on the eve he was to be arrested for some kind of inane remark he made to high communist official, he used pickax my father had given him as gift to kill himself.”

  “How?”

  “Believe it or not, by falling, with all his weight, onto point of ax.” Aleksandr spread his arms out and tilted his body forward. “He placed pickax between two floorboards and fell forward. The point of the ax, it went right through his chest, into his heart.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Freddy said, seeing the image of the man falling toward the tip of the tool, thinking of what kind of impulse would drive a man to do such a vicious thing to his body.

  “It’s true,” Nicol said.

  “Yes, it’s true,” Aleksandr said. A smile came over his face. “And today, they say they keep that very pickax in Kremlin vault in Moscow.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “To make a statement of some sort, I would guess. What it was, I don’t know. All I know is that my father—without shame, at the expense of this poor man—takes great pride in the fact that it was his ax.”

  Freddy pictured himself standing over the ax, looking down at it, thinking of the point piercing his sternum.

  “A very strange legacy for an old man to have, I know,” Aleksandr said, “but such are the yearnings of old men.” Aleksandr shrugged his shoulders.

  “Here we are,”
Steven said as he brought over the first two bowls of soup and placed them in front of Freddy and Victor. “Go ahead,” he said to Victor. “You sip on the soup. It take your mind off pain.” Victor tilted his head down and placed the packets of ice in his lap, then gripped the large spoon before him and delicately dipped it into the steam. As Steven continued serving, Freddy’s eyes followed the mist of his soup up to the wall before him. A picture of a single yellow pear and a greenish hand reaching for the pear reminded him of the morose painting of the man across the air shaft of his office, the one that had hung above Janice Gould’s bureau. As he was about to open his mouth and take his first spoonful of soup, he suddenly lost his appetite.

  Freddy and Victor walked into the light at the top of the brownstone steps and through the front door of 319 West Eighty-third. Victor was now wearing an old coat of Mr. Tersi’s, a thick wool herringbone with a fur lining, and he was carrying over his arm one of Mr. Tersi’s suits and hats. Freddy locked the door behind them and then led Victor through a narrow hallway to the back of the house, through another locked door, and into a large room furnished with Federal-era furniture.

  When Evelyn moved out and took the furniture to her new apartment, Celeste had taken pity on Freddy and ordered Nicol and Aleksandr to move a sofa, a table and chairs, a desk, a love seat, and a few end tables from the attic. The room looked like an old woman’s parlor. Included in Miss Martin’s charity was a gift of a teakettle, a tea cozy, a set of old teacups, and, on the walls, nearly indecipherable watercolors of the open land and stand of woods in Rainskill Falls on which now rested the Martins’ country estate.

  Off through a set of French doors with stained-glass panels was Freddy’s bedroom. Both the bedroom and the main room were tidy and looked hardly lived in. The only place in the entire apartment that did look lived in was a small area near the back window, where standing on a tripod was a sleek metal telescope. Beside it were a few dirty plates, a bottle of bourbon with a teacup slung over the bottle’s neck, and an ashtray mounded with the nubs of cigarettes.