Removing a wad of bloodstained Kleenex from his nose gingerly looking to see if the nosebleed’s stopped.
Corky calls Thalia at the Highland Avenue address and leaves a message on her answering machine, now operating, Honey this is just to say I’m not angry but I am worried, will you check back with me when you can? in so frank and neutral a voice, nobody’d ever guess he’d like to strangle the little bitch.
Fuck, fuck me, did you want to fuck me yes and that’s not all.
Next, Corky calls George Presson, Vic’s lawyer-friend from Georgetown, technically he’s a friend of Corky’s too except the men can’t stand each other, trying to track down Kiki whose last name Corky doesn’t know but the shrewd prick Presson insists he doesn’t know it either—“Isn’t the girl a friend of yours, Corky?” Coolly Corky says, “No, she was a friend of Marilee Plummer’s,” and this stops Presson dead so there’s a beat of a few seconds, just silence. Corky asks innocently what’s wrong, did I say the wrong thing, and Presson starts stammering, “No, I’m—just feeling what a tragedy it is, a young woman like Marilee, gone,” and Corky says, “Yeah, it’s shitty, if that’s what tragedy is—shit,” and again there’s an awkward pause, Corky’s tensed up wishing he could see Presson’s face, it’s a pinkish-rosy face a cross between a baby’s face and a football, something stitched and prim about the mouth, rich-boy Catholic schools outdistancing Corky Corcoran who may have gone to St. Thomas Aquinas but only out of Oscar Slattery’s charity, and not even a full year at Rensselaer Polytechnic, Irish Hill mick. If Corky could see Presson’s face he could read his cards, he’s played poker a few times with the guy and what a pushover Presson is, $300-an-hour lawyer but no match for Corky Corcoran. None of the rich boys are. Corky’s cocking his head grinning at the splotched glass roof of the solarium, decides to risk it, pushing a little, “—This Kiki, I don’t know how reliable she is but she’s been reported saying Vic and Marilee Plummer were involved somehow, you know anything about that, George?—I don’t,” and Presson says, in a voice neutral as Corky’s on Thalia’s tape, “Why ask me, Corky?—why not ask Vic?”
“Yeah,” says Corky, sneering like a kid, “—I’m going there for dinner tonight, maybe I will.”
Knowing Presson won’t tell Vic about this conversation, Presson isn’t the type. An upscale lawyer, Washington connections, doesn’t get his hands dirty.
Next, Corky calls Mike Rooney who’s the other guy in the snapshot he knows he can trust not to buzz things back to Vic, Rooney isn’t the type either, Vic’s press secretary and a speechwriter-researcher, a civilized man not like Red Pitts, say, whose connection to his boss and thus to his boss’s son is tight as if his heart’s ventricles are entwined with theirs, no fucking around with a pro like Pitts. And Corky has luck, too, first calling Rooney’s house then tracking him down at the golf club, that’s to say the Union City Golf Club, the old-money WASP club, and a Rooney in it, like a Corcoran in the U.C.A.C., shows how times have changed in America. Corky hooks up with Rooney on his cellular phone, he’s still out on the course and flushed-sounding with a good morning’s game and friendly enough to Corky if a little curious at the circumstances of the call, it’s an emergency? 11:55 A.M. Sunday? so Corky sets Rooney straight, a story that rolls off his tongue like he’s rehearsed it which he has not, he’s trying to find out the last name of that girl Kiki who’s a friend of Corky’s stepdaughter Thalia because Thalia is at Kiki’s and a mutual friend of the girls has just called hoping to get in touch with them, but Thalia didn’t leave any number with Corky and Corky can’t reach Charlotte, Corky just wants to be helpful, you know? Rooney says amiably, “Kiki!—I think her last name is Zaller, Zeiler, something like that, and her first name is Katherine, she’s in the directory,” laughing like a nudge in Corky’s ribs meaning the cunt’s wide open? meat on a rack? so Corky says, offended, “Hey I’m calling for my daughter,” and Rooney says, laughing louder, “O.K., Corky, tell ’em both hello for me.”
But before they hang up Rooney asks Corky, more serious, if he’s prepared his tribute to Vic for the fund-raiser yet, and Corky says not exactly, he’s working on it, and Rooney asks if he needs any help, any information, and Corky says hell no, he knows Vic and he knows Vic’s congressional record, and Rooney asks if he’d received the “Vic Slattery Profile” material the office sent him, and Corky says probably, sure, he’s got a file of material on Vic and probably it’s in with that, and Rooney says yes but if you need any more information give me a call, and Corky says sure, and he’s about to hang up but Rooney pushes it, how long’s Corky’s tribute going to be, remember there’ll be four tributes plus Andy van Buren’s intro then Vic’s speech slated for twenty-thirty minutes plus Q-and-A to follow, and Corky says, “You told me eight minutes maximum so it’s eight minutes maximum, what’s the problem?” and there’s a pause and Rooney says, in that way Corky’s heard him, frowning and running a hand through his little-boy fluffy-thinning hair, “Problem? Who’s got a problem? Corky, I’m just asking.”
So they don’t trust me, Corky thinks. And a chill comes over him—it’s the drinking, maybe? Corky Corcoran drunk and running at the mouth making an asshole of himself in front of the rich Democrat donors, Irish Hill mick never went to college probably leading off with a dirty joke to everybody’s embarrassment, who’s that guy? who chose him to give a tribute to Congressman Vic Slattery? and the Slattery staff headed by Mike Rooney wants it known not them, but Vic himself, loyal to an old Union City friend, Slattery’s weakness is his sentimental streak, you know how Vic is, so different from Oscar in this regard, a soft touch. And maybe too, sure, maybe there’s some political expediency here, the old Irish–Union City connection, big Democratic votes.
Like he’s worried by Corky’s silence Rooney says, “Corky? You still there? Is something—”
Corky breaks the connection with his thumb. Fuck you.
You can always blame the cellular phone for fucking up.
It’s twelve noon. A powerful thirst washes over Corky, God could he go for a beer!
A half dozen more quick calls before he leaves, Corky’s methodical, and philosophical, about his calls, can’t live without the telephone, Christ knows how many calls he makes a day, sometimes as many as fifty if there’s a deal going down, out of the house, out of his State Street office or his Pearl Street office, out of his car, out of a pay phone should he have the slightest worry about a phone being tapped, a number recorded. Like Ross Drummond when he had two-thirds of his gut surgically removed, ulcer-ridden, enough to kill a normal man, but there’s the old s.o.b. propped up in his hospital bed hooked to IV fluids and blood, an actual tube in his nose, and Corky walks in and hears him yelling at somebody over the phone and after he hangs up and Corky asks amazed how he is he says he feels great, as long as he’s on the phone doing business.
Also, Drummond told Corky, you feel great when everybody’s expecting you to croak and you don’t.
The final call Corky makes out of the Rolodex is to the residence hall at St. Thomas Aquinas, feeling a sudden need to know sharp as an ulcer in the gut and so calling, of all Catholic priests in Union City, Father Vincent O’Brien, having to wait maybe ten minutes for the Jesuit to come to the phone and when he does he’s brusque with Corky allowing his old student and big-deal donor to the school to know that Corky caught him on his way out to a luncheon at the Proxmires’, the Proxmires being wealthy Protestant philanthropists with a castellated manor house on an estate overlooking Lake Ontario, so Corky immediately apologizes, “Hey I’m sorry, Father—” speaking to any Jesuit it’s like you need to apologize for taking up their time not like a parish priest, the fuckers, “—I’m just needing to know what a Latin inscription means,” and Father Vincent says in a disbelieving voice, “You want to know what a Latin inscription means?” and Corky says, “Yeah, if I can remember it right, ‘De mortuis nil nisi—’” so mangling the pronounciation he can hear the Jesuit hiss before interrupting, “‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum’: �
��Of the dead say nothing but good.’”
5
A Romantic Interlude
I need a drink, and I need it right now.
Swallowing nervous and dry-mouthed running his finger down the telephone directory listings, why’s the print so small, why’s his vision so splotched and blurred he’s stone cold sober.
Forty-three years old, maybe you need bifocals.
Corky Corcoran with his perfect 20/20 vision!
Or, anyway, almost 20/20: he’s forgotten the exact numbers.
Like his height which is five feet, nine inches on his driver’s license and on other documents but it’s a height dependent upon shoes with a good solid sole and heel, fucking humiliating to be measured in just his socks on one of those scales at the doctor’s the more humiliating when the nurse pushes the metal ruler down against his scalp, ignoring his cock’s-comb hair. Like they’re measuring you for a coffin already.
Sad, scary: how the old shrink, get shorter. Sean Corcoran once looming over Corky as a kid, of a height with him when Corky grew up, now he’s inches shorter, not just his rounded slumping shoulders but his actual spine, shrinking. At least, Tim Corcoran hasn’t had to suffer this ignominy.
(Corky thinks guiltily: I have got to see Uncle Sean, today or tomorrow. I have got to take him to Sister Mary Megan before they both croak.)
(Thinking too, for expediency’s sake if he’s in the Irish Hill neighborhood maybe he should pick up another gun. That ribs joint down by the docks, used to be The Shamrock, Corky knows from his cop friends that you can pick up guns, rifles, automatic assault weapons there, all you need is cash. But maybe a white face will fuck things up?)
Need a drink, and need it right now but Corky’s located Kiki in the directory, name’s Zaller, the only plausible listing: K. Zaller, 588 Schoharie. Single women living alone listing themselves in the directory with only initials, who the hell are they fooling except themselves? Thalia got an unlisted number after that creep what’s-his-name started following her around. It takes a real scare to make them wise up. No playground out there, and you’re Little Miss Muffet nobody’s going to touch.
K. Zaller. 588 Schoharie. Meaning five blocks east of State. Corky tries to envision what that might look like but there’s been so much urban renewal in that part of the city, also he’s getting interference like from a rival radio station I need a drink, and I need it right now.
Which is shit, Corky thinks furiously. Shit! It’s only 12:20 P.M. and he often goes this long without taking the first drink of the day, no problem at all, for instance the other day getting to the U.C.A.C. late for his lunch with Greenbaum and he hadn’t the shakes then, had he.
The problem is, now he’s quit and he knows he’s quit so it’s a different metaphysical proposition.
The way the Jesuits would toss around the word “metaphysical” talking of theology and nobody knew what the fuck they were talking about but it’s an impressive word.
But yes he has quit, cold turkey and he’s stone cold sober and it’s going to stay that way. They teach you at AA once an alcoholic always an alcoholic whether you ever take another drink again in your life, Corky sees the grim logic of that. Sure. Anything else is bullshit, kidding yourself you’re Jesus Christ when, the first time you walk on water, you drown.
The ashy taste in his mouth’s so bad Corky has to stop at a 7-Eleven for a quart of grapefruit juice, sourest juice they have and no sugar in it and he’s drinking from the container as he drives, no appetite for anything solid nor for thinking about it right now. Say he finds Thalia at Kiki’s—a long shot, but maybe—and it all goes down O.K., he’ll buy both the girls lunch, a swanky Sunday lunch at The Top of the Flame, fortieth floor of the Hyatt that revolves, one full revolution every hour. Overpriced tourist place but nice. Corky, Thalia, and Kiki. Nice.
Poor fuckhead, planning to take Thalia to the Italian Villa the night before. He’d already chosen the wine: 1988 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, fruity, full-bodied, terrific.
Driving toward Schoharie and the glittery high-rises of down-town. Fast-blown clouds like wisps of thought and the sky opening up always a surprise opening like a big, big blue eye, Corky’s squinting his eyes at it, the brightness painful. Almost there’s a sensation of being drawn into it, sucked. Suction. The way, who was it, Corky’s cousin Lois who’s got such a grudge against him, told him she could feel poor Aunt Frances sucking at the spoon being spoon-fed by Lois in the hospital in the last stages of the cancer that killed her, it’s not like a baby’s sucking Lois said, when the baby pushes forward nursing, it’s like something inside Mother is trying to suck me in.
Death she was saying but nobody wanted to name it.
Corky sure as hell didn’t want to name it.
Nervous and dry-mouthed though he’s been guzzling the grapefruit juice. Maybe it’s too late, he is an alcoholic and can’t quit, he’ll have D.T.’s and start to convulse like an epileptic. That time a few years ago during the divorce he’d gone on such a bender mixing night and day and awake and asleep and what was going on in the world and what was going on in his head, passing out at his desk and next morning Miriam white-faced and terrified shaking his shoulder Mr. Corcoran? Oh Mr. Corcoran please wake up! thinking he’d had a brain hemorrhage. Scaring himself too fantasizing killing Charlotte and her lawyer Donaldson, the way he’d lead them into a trap and shoot them both actually getting a hard-on the fantasy was so powerful, so sick Corky went cold turkey and it was like he’d lost God without having known he’d had God. After forty-eight hours of sheer hell Corky gave up and started drinking again but kept it under control pretty well.
But now it’s out of control again. You know it is.
Why kill Charlotte, the poor dumb cunt, he’d wanted to be free of the marriage. His wild emotions in those days Corky’d never been able to figure out.
Wanting to hurt Christina, too. Deep in her body, that she’ll remember. So she’ll never fuck another man again.
Yes but he loves her! He wants her.
The God-damned Meuller billboard passes by overhead, next is the Nott Street exit, Corky’s swallowing compulsively missing Christina so much it hurts. She never did call him and he isn’t going to call her. He can’t. I love him, I share my life with him, he’s my husband. Why had Corky been thinking she wanted to marry him?
“Asshole.”
Why lay yourself open to hurt, why invite it, fuck it you’ve had enough. The shrapnel wound in the small of Corky’s father’s back, plum-sized, discolored like dead skin, an ugly-puckered mouth. After so many years Tim said it didn’t hurt, it’s nothing, numb. What Corky feels is more like an exposed heart, one of those lurid moist full-color photos of open-heart surgery enough to make you sick if you don’t look away quickly enough. The eight-foot statue of Jesus Christ in Our Lady of Mercy drawing Corky’s eye as a kid shuffling up to the communion rail, His bleeding thorn-crowned heart exposed for everybody to gape at like it’s an inflamed prick.
A man’s got to have his pride.
Christ, Corky can’t believe it: breaking down sobbing on the phone with Sandra Slattery! Him!
The last thing you want from your friends is pity.
Off the exit ramp at State Corky parks and guzzles down the rest of the grapefruit juice feeling his gut bloat like he’s swallowed a balloon. Twelve-thirty P.M. and he’s excited taking up the phone receiver and punching out Kiki Zaller’s number, not that he’ll identify himself if she answers, that isn’t Corky’s strategy, just wants to establish if she’s home. He’d called back at the house twice and no answer and this time too the phone just rings, rings . . . Which makes him the more determined to connect.
Can’t remember the last time he saw Kiki except it was a crowded party scene, maybe a reception in one of the downtown hotels. She’s a PR girl, or somebody’s “assistant.” Maybe a photographer. Or one of Howie Norwick’s junior staff at WWUC-TV. Lent by her boss to work for Vic Slattery’s congressional campaign. Or did she volunteer to wo
rk for the campaign? Corky can’t recall if she’s, like Thalia, a rich girl, or a poor girl mingling with the rich. In Union City politics, there’s practically nothing in between. What Corky does remember is that God-damned gold clamp of an earring, his ear’s permanently damaged from the ordeal, poor ol’ Frecklehead! Corky remembers Kiki poking her sharp little chin against his shoulder and murmuring suggestively, Well, Corky, maybe I like hurt.
No answer at Kiki’s number, and no answering machine. Corky gives up, hangs up. His sense is that this mission is doomed but what’s the alternative, he drives on. From State to Schoharie along the river it’s a no-man’s-land of scrubby vacant lots and disused abandoned docks and acres of cracked and weedy asphalt bordered by twelve-foot wire fences with WARNING: NO TRESPASSING signs weatherworn to near-invisibility. Warehouses burnt out in the fires and looting following Martin Luther King’s assassination almost a quarter-century ago are still here, boarded up, unsold. One of the downtown banks owns most of this riverfront property, it’s worthless but for sure City Hall has worked out a tax deal. You can’t get insurers to underwrite anything in this part of the city.
Two blocks away, the notorious State Street Project, built in 1973, where hundreds, or is it thousands, of black welfare recipients live dense as insects in vertical hives. In the mid-1980s Corcoran, Inc., invested in a residential-rental property down here, twenty units, a brick-and-stucco building so ugly to the eye and so offensive to the nose Corky couldn’t bring himself to visit it even to check up on his super who he had reason to believe was a pimp, along with cheating Corky at every turn—demanding kickbacks from plumbers, for instance, who then inflated their bills passing along the increase to Corcoran, Inc. In time, the tenants trashed the dump so badly Corky couldn’t collect any more insurance and sold the property at what was filed with IRS as a capital loss, which in truth it was. Corky’d been hoping somebody would set fire to the place but nobody did and he hadn’t felt he dared risk having it burned down himself (hiring a pro arsonist you’re opening yourself up to blackmail, also what if somebody dies in the fire?—that’s serious), to this day the place is still standing, Corky’s driving by now, after a quick glance he averts his eyes.
What I Lived For Page 41
