The Day I Died

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Now what about Joey Bader?”

  “You feeling better now?”

  “I feel fine.” Coyle belched sourly. “Just peachy.”

  “Another cup for him,” said Willis to the waiter. “He needs plenty.”

  The waiter seemed to rise out of the floor boards. Coyle watched him glide into the shadows near the end of the bar.

  “What about Joey Bader?” Coyle asked again.

  “Like I said, Coyle—Joey and I were good friends. That’s why I let you sit around here every night. Any friend of Joey’s is a friend of mine. So when you come in here telling me Joey wants you to see Masterson, why, I go along with the gag all the way. I also don’t mind you loading up every night for the past couple of weeks. That’s none of my business.” Willis paused and put a sympathetic hand on Coyle’s shoulder. “But you want to cut out the alky, Coyle. It’s making you look greener every night.”

  “Never mind the lecture, Willis. What happened? Is Masterson over at Florian?”

  “Drink the other cup.”

  Coyle blew on the fresh coffee and forced it down. It was bitter and overcooked and it made him belch again.

  “Masterson is over there, ” Willis said.

  “When did he arrive?”

  “Just now.” Willis put out his hand again, to keep Coyle anchored on his stool. “Sit still. You’ve got time yet. I sent Manny over to see if Masterson will let you in. That’s the way. Joey told you to work it, right? Nobody on God’s earth walks in on Masterson cold. But nobody. So just sit quiet and we’ll wait for Manny to come back with the news.”

  Coyle sat and waited.

  “Good old Joey,” Coyle said. He was talking to himself, really, thinking his way back to Joey and the bloody rock, the cloud behind the bleeding head and the whispering sadness. It was all about to happen, exactly the way Joey said it would. “Mention my name to Willis, in the Rebus bar, Tom. Just step inside and open your yap and say Joey Bader and watch what happens. Willis will see you get in across the street to the boss. After that, you’re on your own. You want to work with him, he’ll give you a break because he owes me plenty. Mention my name, Tom, you’ll see.” The voice of Joey Bader faded and swelled against the gray wall of Coyle’s memory, “Tell them all off, Tom, and think of Joey Bader when you’re doing it.”

  “How about some more coffee, Coyle?”

  “Thanks. I’ve had enough.”

  “Manny’ll be back any minute now.”

  The minute was a long, long time, and then Manny came through the door and called out to Coyle and he got up, still feeling weak and jittery in the bad leg, trembling again and dry-throated, for this was the minute of all minutes, because only a few steps across the street separated him from Masterson …

  CHAPTER 9

  Through the plaster, beyond the heavy draperies, a thin thread of sound hammered in the silence, drumbeats in the rumba rhythm from Florian’s dance floor downstairs. Coyle sat in the deep leather chair on the right side of Masterson’s desk, feeling stupid and uncomfortable on the soft cushion, down too low. To make things worse, Masterson’s seat behind the desk seemed to loom high and mighty above eye level. A Napoleon? A little man who wanted to be bigger than everybody on earth?

  But Coyle changed his mind when Masterson rose stiffly from his perch and crossed the room to get a bottle from the fancy liquor cabinet. Masterson was a giant of a man, tall and broad and as straight as a military hero. And from that moment on, Coyle thought of him as the Rock. The big characters, the people who made contact with Coyle’s imagination, all of them became symbols. It was something he could not help. He watched Masterson bend for a liquor bottle across the room, and the stiffness and the formality of the gesture, the almost contrived ease in the way he held the glass, the gentle and mocking smile, all these things branded him forever as the Rock.

  Coyle refused a drink. The black coffee had sickened him and he preferred to smoke away his discomfort. Masterson held out a box of cork-tipped cigarettes, but Coyle lit his Chesterfield and waited for the first word from his host.

  “Manny told me you were a friend of Joey Bader’s,” Masterson said.

  “One of his oldest friends.”

  “You knew him in Camberton?”

  “We went to school together.”

  “Poor Joey,” Masterson sighed. “He certainly didn’t want to go into the army.”

  “Who does?” Coyle said.

  Masterson chuckled. Coyle’s brain sharpened to the sound of his laughter, almost like the sound of the smooth, calm flow that Doctor Linden had, but not as sympathetic, somehow. Masterson was a gentleman Rock, trim and smart looking. Fifty? Sixty? The Rock was hard and unwrinkled, a sculptured head out of an amber clay, all but the eyes because they had the cold and impenetrable mystery of a cloudless sky, gray-green and wintry. Coyle found it difficult to stare into those eyes. The wall on the left was a solid mirror and Coyle’s chair seemed purposely placed so that its occupant could view his own discomfort with startling clarity. He looked like a wilted and helpless bum, all the way down from the bags under his eyes. And Masterson was studying him quietly, adding him up and filing him away. Coyle got out of the deep chair and sat on the other side of the room, angry with himself for giving way to his nervousness.

  “Change your mind about a drink?” Masterson asked.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Coyle poured, conscious of every movement because he could see Masterson in the mirror, watching and waiting and wondering, the edges of his hard mouth curled slightly. The Scotch was good, better than the rotgut Willis had been feeding him for so long. But it was hard work to quiet his trembling hand. Some of the liquor spilled over the edge of the glass and dripped and splattered on the Rock’s desk. The big man slid open a drawer and produced a blotter and sopped it up, saying nothing. The silence built and no sound came but the tick of a wall clock, behind the Rock’s head.

  “We were talking about Joey,” Masterson said.

  “He told me a lot about you,” Coyle said. He gulped his drink and quickly poured another. “He thought you were terrific.”

  “That feeling was mutual,” Masterson said. “Joey was one of my favorite people. Did he tell you that?”

  The Rock was changing, subtly, adding an almost fatherly air to his slow and skillful delivery. Probing? Coyle’s gut burned with a comfortable glow. There was a fresh edge now. He was able to think back to Joey with no slobbering emotion, feeling for the odd bits of information Joey had fed him.

  “Yes,” Coyle said. “Joey told me how much you liked him. I know quite a bit about Joey Bader. I’ll bet I could write a book about him.”

  “It would make interesting reading… Joey told you what he did for me is that it?”

  “Sure he did.”

  “And how about you, Coyle? Are you interested in that type of career?”

  “I’m no Joey Bader.”

  “Obviously.” Masterson smiled. “You’re much too nervous.”

  The first needle. It pricked Coyle, irritated him, stuck him into restlessness. And the Rock was sitting back and studying him now, in the same way he had been studied in the hospital at Camberton. Coyle felt the burning electric eyes, aimed deep into his soul. How deep had they probed already? Coyle got up again, his fingers tight on the liquor glass, struggling to forget that last crack about his nerves. His hand was jittery as he lifted the glass and the Scotch was spilling over again, splatting and dripping in almost the same spot on the Rock’s desk.

  And Masterson reached out for the stain with another blotter and mopped up the mess.

  “That’s the last one, Coyle,” he said. “You’re loaded.”

  Coyle swallowed the liquor. He was limp and weak now. The phone rang. The Rock began to talk into it, all in a cultured, well-modulated, smooth, sure flow of rhetor
ic, the words falling like pebbles in a quiet pool, but striking no part of Coyle’s inner ear because he was back alone in the small dark and locked room. He would sit there and wait for the Rock to fit the key into the lock and open the door and bring him back into the office above Florian’s, to remind him that he was seated across the desk from the big man he had dreamed about for so long. Coyle had locked himself here before, during the long days at the hospital. He had thought of dying in this dry and breathless closet.

  And then the door opened, suddenly.

  Masterson put down the phone and stared hard at the tall and almost handsome kid who was biting his lip and frowning down at the rug. The air conditioner was on, yet Coyle’s forehead glistened with sweat and his eyes were seeing no part of the pattern of the carpet under his feet. Once, long ago, Masterson had used a man named Fox Rundon, a pale and bloodless heel who would look this way before an epileptic fit. Masterson could not enjoy this type of suffering. He had cased Coyle immediately as some sort of psycho. Yet Masterson preferred to take no chances.

  He tapped Coyle on the shoulder.

  “What’s the pitch, Coyle?” he asked. “You need some money, is that it?”

  “Money?” The big man was standing alongside him so that he blocked the view of the mirror. There was the rustle of a hand in a pocket and then a roll of bills, at eye level and close to Coyle’s face so that he could almost smell the money.

  “I can use money. But not that way, Masterson.”

  “Not that way?” The roll of bills lay in Masterson’s palm and he was removing a gold clip. There was twenties and fifties as the bills riffled through the big man’s fingers. “You came up here for a touch, didn’t you, Coyle?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You mean you want to go downstairs and gamble?”

  “Not that way, either,” Coyle said.

  “Then what the hell do you want?” Masterson’s voice was flat and measured and unemotional. “Ham and eggs?”

  “Caviar,” said Coyle.

  Masterson chuckled. He was amused by the arrogance of Coyle’s request. “Maybe it can be arranged—we serve it downstairs.”

  “So Joey Bader told me.”

  “He told you about my night clubs?”

  “He told me plenty.”

  “And about Florian’s?”

  “All about Florian’s.”

  “So you want to sample some of Florian’s caviar, is that it?” Masterson asked quietly.

  “If they serve caviar, I want it,” Coyle said. He did not look up at the Rock. “I want caviar every day, Masterson. I want it here, there and everywhere. I want it now and later, tomorrow and next week and next month. I want it on toast with my eggs, plain and fancy, with truffles and champagne, in all its endless variety.”

  “Poetic.” Masterson’s face froze in a smile. “You certainly seem to want it, Coyle.”

  The boy’s eyes were suddenly bright and alive and the way the words tripped out of him it almost seemed as though he might be mouthing lines he had rehearsed over and over again, like an actor preparing himself for a special role. And in that moment, Masterson knew that the kid on the chair under his eyes was some kind of psycho. He remembered the news story of the accident on Chicopee Hill; the description of the one surviving member of the gay party. This was the lad who had been pulled from under the car. And after that? What had happened to Coyle in the hospital?

  “I’m a poet with a purpose,” Coyle said.

  “Really? And when did you get your purpose? In the hospital at Camberton?”

  “You knew about that?” Coyle looked up sharply.

  “I read the papers,” Masterson said. “And I followed the story of Joey Bader’s death with special interest. You can understand why. That was how I came to recall your name and your part in the accident, Coyle. You were in the Camberton Hospital for a couple of months. And you got to thinking of Joey’s haunts; Florian’s and caviar, and things like that?”

  “For a long time,” Coyle said. “I’ve been dreaming about the finer things in life for exactly fifteen weeks.”

  “When did you leave the hospital at Camberton?”

  “A couple of weeks ago. I’ve been hanging around over at the Rebus, waiting to see you.”

  Masterson sat behind the desk again, conscious of the change of tone he had brought to the conversation. The kid was quiet now, in the calm state. His head was up and his eyes seemed clearer.

  “Just exactly what do you have in mind, Coyle?”

  “Joey told me you were a gambling man. Joey said you’d make book on almost any kind of bet.”

  “My reputation,” Masterson said in a humorless way. “Among other things, I’m considered an easy mark for a bet. You want to make one, Coyle? Is that why you came to see me?”

  “A kind of a bet.”

  “Like what?”

  “Me,” Coyle said.

  “You?” What was happening to the boy now? A fresh note of challenging belligerency rang in Coyle’s voice, his sallow face grim with purpose. “You want me to bet on you?”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “In what way? Maybe you’d better break it down for me, Coyle.”

  “It’s cut and dried. How would you like to make ninety thousand bucks on me?”

  Click. Click. Click. Something in the mechanism of the Rock’s chair sounded off in the silence, the metallic reaction to the shifting of his ponderous frame. Nothing in Masterson’s face had moved. But Coyle had heard the little signal of Masterson’s surprise and now the click sounded again as the Rock let himself ease forward to lean on his elbows. Was he interested? The reflex stirring of the big man’s curiosity was enough to make Coyle’s heart hammer. This was the moment he had dreamed about.

  Masterson was saying: “Sounds like a silly idea. Ninety grand is a hell of a lot of money. How do I make it?”

  “On me. It’s really quite simple.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Can you?” Coyle asked. “Can you imagine insuring my life for one hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Why?”

  “For a profit, of course.”

  It was out now and this time the Rock did not move at all. Did something flicker under his heavy brows? A light? A spark? A sign of interest?

  “Insure my life for a hundred thousand,” Coyle said. “The rest is easy, Masterson. All I want is an advance of ten thousand—and a chance to spend it the way I’ve always dreamed of spending it. I want four months of real living. I want the caviar and the champagne until it comes out of my ears. Crazy? Maybe I am. But I know what I want, and you’re the one man on earth to make the deal with me.”

  Click.

  The Rock was sinking back again and he was fingering his jaw and pursing his mouth and letting the thought sink in.

  Click.

  The Rock frowned and when his brows came down there was no way of determining what lay in his eyes. The bait was out. Was he skirting it, toying with it, nibbling it? He was not smiling at it. Coyle sat and waited, watching the small hard line of the Rock’s mouth. And then the slit opened and words came slowly.

  “An interesting proposition, Coyle, but it’s highly impractical from your point of view.”

  “I’ve thought of that.”

  “And you don’t mind dying?” The word was spoken with the correct modulation, a gentle whisper, so low that Coyle felt a new respect for Masterson’s great polish and poise. “Dying,” he whispered again, “is a rather permanent arrangement, Coyle.”

  “It doesn’t frighten me,” Coyle said crisply. “I’ve toyed with the idea for no profit at all. Quite a few times, in the recent past, I’ve been on the brink of suicide, Masterson. Oh, don’t look so surprised. I know what my trouble is. I’ve studied it and I understand it. People like me always build up to the great moment. We
cherish the idea of dying, and we die a thousand times before actually knocking ourselves off. You see, I’ve become more or less of an expert on my own mania. I was an expert when Joey Bader came up to Camberton, and that was why I developed the idea I’m selling you. It became a simple proposition, after what Joey told me about you. He built you up as quite a wagering man, Masterson.”

  “And did Joey tell you how I feel about welchers?”

  “He did,” Coyle said. “But I don’t intend to run out on you.”

  “Your intentions are strictly honorable,” Masterson said.

  “You can always check me.”

  “Of course. You wouldn’t dream of making a break for it?”

  “How could I?” Coyle asked. “You’ll know where I am.”

  “And where will you be?”

  “Living it up. At the best and fanciest hotel at Miami Beach,” Coyle said, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned the resort before.

  “Why Miami Beach?”

  Click.

  The Rock was alerted again. The name of the resort had done something to the Rock.

  “I’ve always wanted to go down there,” Coyle said.

  Why had he burbled the name so glibly? When was the first moment he had decided to go there? He thought at once of the big city outside and the freshness of it during the quick hours after his arrival, finding himself making the trip out to Charlie Burkett’s house. Slowly, on the dim borders of his memory, the picture of Ellen Gardiner brightened and shone before him. Most of the aftereffects of his drinking had died away and Coyle was sharp and keen now, aware of the ramblings of his mind and the pattern of his purpose. Of course Ellen Gardiner was part of his reason for going to Miami. The thought of Ellen fortified him in some strange way. And he was able to lift his eyes again and study the Rock with a deliberate boldness.