The Man in the White Linen Suit

by David Handler

  “On behalf of Lulu, who is rather fond of her creature comforts, I accept your generous invitation.”

  “Good. Then it’s settled.”

  After I’d paid the check we strolled arm in arm over to Hudson, Lulu ambling happily along ahead of us, and caught a cab. As we sped our way uptown, Hudson became Eighth Avenue, and when it hit 42nd Street, blazed its way through the middle of the Great White Way. The fall season’s new shows would be opening soon, but most of the Broadway theaters were still showcasing the same splashy, stupid tourist musicals that they’d been showcasing for the past several seasons. Phantom of the Opera anchored the Majestic, Miss Saigon the Broadway. And the stupidest of them all, Cats, was still selling out at the Winter Garden same as it had been since Merilee and I attended the gala opening-night performance way back in 1982. I had found it so boring that I fell asleep ten minutes into Act 1. Merilee had to elbow me awake. I managed to rally during intermission only to sleep my way through most of Act 2. As the curtain mercifully came down, I can still recall betting her a shiny quarter that Cats would be posting its closing notice by the time we walked in the door of our apartment. And yet here it was, still packing ’em in eleven years later.

  It’s a good thing I never became a drama critic.

  “Tell me, Merilee,” I said as we rode along. “After you’ve done your location shooting in Budapest, will you film the interiors in London or L.A. or—?”

  She kissed me. It had always been that way with her. She would just suddenly kiss me right in the middle of a sentence. It was a tender kiss at first, but turned into something quite a bit more than that by the time our cab pulled up in front of her building on Central Park West and West 82nd Street.

  “I’ve installed a new washer-dryer combo in the kitchen,” she said softly, her eyes glittering at me.

  “Is this some arcane form of Miss Porter’s School dirty talk?”

  “No, silly man, it’s for real. I ought to show you how to use it. The washer’s a special low-flow model made in Sweden and the controls are hard to understand. It took me weeks to figure them out.”

  “You’re inviting me up, in other words.”

  Lulu let out a low moan of protest.

  “Both of us up.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, we don’t mind.”

  The night doorman, Frank, who’d always hated me, gave me the evil eye after he greeted Merilee with a great big smile. I’d never understood what his problem was. Patrick, the day doorman, loved me. Lulu scampered across the lobby, pawed at the elevator and whooped excitedly. The elevator doors opened and up we went to the sixteenth floor to inspect Merilee’s new Swedish washer-dryer.

  She’d furnished the place in mission oak after she’d given me the boot, but not just any mission oak—signed Gustav Stickley Craftsman originals, each piece spare, elegant and flawlessly proportioned. There was an umbrella stand and a tall-case clock in the marble-floored entry hall. Also a pair of Il Bisonte suitcases and a matching carry-on bag, all packed and ready for her early morning flight.

  I started for the kitchen to examine her new laundry appliances.

  “Darling, where are you going?”

  “The kitchen.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “You wanted me to look at your new washer-dryer, remember?”

  She tore open all of the snaps on her denim shirt with a flourish, whipped it off and tossed it aside. She wore nothing underneath it. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but for an incredibly smart man, you can be awfully stupid sometimes.”

  And that was how we ended up in bed together having crazy monkey sex for the first time in so long that I’d forgotten how many years it was.

  I’d also forgotten how much I enjoyed being a crazy monkey.

  WHEN I AWOKE, it was a few minutes after six o’clock in the morning and she was gone. It had been the sound of the front door closing behind her that awakened me.

  That and Lulu whimpering mournfully from the entry hall.

  She’d left a scrawled note on her indented pillow next to mine: Mad about the Boy, which was Norma Desmond’s inscription in the gold cigarette case that she gave Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard. There was no gold cigarette case for me. Just the note and the hollow feeling that I always got when I knew she was going to be out of the country for a long time.

  I felt a tremendous need for orange juice and coffee. Padded toward the kitchen in my boxer shorts, pausing to gaze out the living room windows at Central Park sixteen floors below, and discovered that a tropical summer rain was falling in torrents. As I stood there gazing down at the street in air-conditioned, dehumidifed comfort, I recalled how easy it is to get used to the sweet life.

  I went into the black-and-white-tiled kitchen—which genuinely did feature a brand-new bright red Swedish washer-dryer—and filled Merilee’s schmancy espresso machine. Poured myself some orange juice and drank it down, examining the contents of the refrigerator. I wouldn’t starve. She’d brought two dozen fresh eggs home from the farm, vine-ripened tomatoes galore and plastic bags filled with three different kinds of lettuce, fresh basil and Italian parsley. She’d also picked up a ball of fresh mozzarella and a loaf of crusty bread at the Italian market on Columbus. As Lulu began following me closely now, her nails clacking on the tile floor, I poked around in the walk-in pantry closet for the reserves of 9Lives mackerel for cats and very weird dogs that Merilee kept there in case she was called upon for babysitting duties. I found three cans. Opened one, dumped it into a cereal bowl and put it down for her next to the water bowl I’d put down last night. Lulu, that noted Nose Bowl champ, went right to work.

  When the espresso was ready, I poured myself a cup and took a grateful gulp, then wandered down the hall to check out what she’d done to the office. She hadn’t gone to very much trouble. Merely parked a breathtaking Stickley library table and leather-backed swivel desk chair in front of the windows overlooking Central Park, installed floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a leather Morris armchair and a stereo outfitted with a Dual turntable for the vintage vinyl Ramones albums that I’d been listening to all summer long at the farm while I wrote. An amazing depiction of the rugged Maine coastline by my favorite painter, Edward Hopper, was hanging in a frame on the wall over the armchair. Not a print—the actual oil painting. I couldn’t even imagine how much it had set her back. But that was Merilee. When she was in, she was all in, I reflected, running a hand over my face. I needed a shower and a shave, but I didn’t have my razor or a change of clothes. I decided to dash home in the rumpled clothes I’d been wearing last night, pack a few essentials, and come right back. I would make a more thorough wardrobe run in a day or two.

  I’d flung my lavender shirt and featherweight glen plaid suit onto the bedroom floor last night when I’d followed Merilee in there. Likewise my shoes and socks. My bow tie was nowhere to be found. No matter. After I got dressed, I grabbed an oversize Channel 13 umbrella from the Stickley umbrella stand and locked the front door. Lulu and I rode the elevator down to the lobby. Patrick was delighted to see me and implored me to stay good and dry under the awning while he whistled me a cab.

  Like I said, it’s really easy to get used to the sweet life.

  It’s also really not a good thing for Lulu to get wet, because nothing smells quite as nasty as a soaked basset hound’s oily coat. If Lulu gets caught in the rain you do not, repeat not, want her on any of your furniture. For damned sure, not anywhere near your bed.

  The cab delivered us directly to the front door of my crummy fifth-floor walk-up on West 93rd. We darted inside and climbed the five flights to my door, feeling it get warmer and stickier as we reached each landing. It was a steamy 90 degrees in my nonspacious living room as the rain pelted hard against the big glass skylight over the kitchen. I turned on the box fans in the bedroom and living room, stripped off my suit and put on a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt. Made sure Lulu was good and dry by rubbing her from head to tail with her de
signated wet dog towel, which I kept stored inside of a sealed plastic bag in the narrow entry closet. She was of the opinion that this indignity qualified her for a second breakfast. I’m not that big a softy, though she did get an anchovy fresh out of the fridge. Anchovies are her favorite treat. She likes them cold because the oil clings better.

  Then I got busy. Packed Lulu’s travel bag, an old black leather doctor’s bag in which I stowed her cans of 9Lives and her bowls. I fastened my solid steel 1958 Olympia manual portable tightly shut inside its carrying case. Grabbed my battered Ghurka bag from the top shelf of my bedroom closet and fetched the one and only copy of the manuscript of my novel from the vegetable bin of my refrigerator. I always store it there. You would, too, if you ever got an up close and personal view of the ancient wiring and furnace in my building. I tucked my Ramones albums in the Ghurka bag along with the manuscript and a collection of Irwin Shaw short stories that I reread every few years just to remind myself what good writing is. Added a small supply of socks, underwear, neckties and pressed shirts. Also the water-resistant Gore-Tex street bluchers that I’d had custom made for me by a stooped little Greek man who’d been making shoes on West 32nd Street since the early 1950s. Those I tucked in their chamois travel bags. My navy blue blazer and two pairs of cream-colored pleated gabardine slacks went in a plastic weekend garment bag.

  I was just about to fill my shaving kit when I suddenly heard the sound that no one who lives on the top floor of a New York City brownstone ever wants to hear: footsteps on the roof over my head.

  I tensed immediately. Lulu let out a low growl.

  “HOAGY . . . ?” A voice called to me through the skylight. “IT’S ME, TOMMY! LET ME IN, WILL YA?”

  I opened my door, climbed the stairs to the steel door to the roof, unlatched it and let him in as the rain continued to pelt down. I slammed it shut behind us, latching it, and took a look at him. He was ashen-faced, exhausted and soaked to the skin. “Jesus, Tommy, what are you doing on my roof?”

  “Hiding out, whattaya think?” he answered in that Jackson Heights accent of his. “I been up there all night waiting for you to come home. Nobody in your building would buzz me in but a kid delivering a pizza a few buildings down let me in there so I made it from their roof to yours.”

  Tommy was in his late forties, short and stocky, with pale blue eyes, thinning sandy hair and graying stubble. His nose was red and rough. A drinker’s nose. He wore a drenched polyester double-knit suit in a murky brown color that I couldn’t imagine looked good wet or dry, a blue button-down shirt and a pair of heavy, steel-toed work shoes. He was a tabloid reporter through and through. None of them dressed well. It was a point of working-class pride. A way of setting themselves apart from the high-toned New York Times crowd.

  I ushered him in, gave him a bath towel, another pair of my gym shorts and a T-shirt. When he came padding barefoot out of the bathroom a few minutes later, he was still toweling his hair dry. The shorts fit him okay. The T-shirt was so big on him he looked like a little kid wearing his big brother’s clothes.

  “Hiding out from whom, Tommy?”

  He slumped onto my loveseat with a weary sigh as Lulu nosed at him, sniffing and snuffling. He was so wiped out he didn’t even notice her there. “I’m in a real jam, man. The worst kind.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  His pale blue eyes studied me warily. “What have you heard?”

  I told him about the drink I’d had yesterday with Sylvia. How she’d revealed to me that he’d secretly authored Addison James’s last two bestsellers and had just finished his third. How he’d taken the only copy of Tulsa to a copier shop on Broadway last Friday. How both he and Tulsa had vanished without a trace and that she’d hired me on the quiet to find him. “She thinks you’re trying to leverage a better deal out of her,” I said. “That you figure you’ve got the upper hand because there’s no way Guilford House wants the world to know that Addison James can’t write his own books anymore.”

  “Don’t trust Sylvia,” Tommy warned me, his voice rising.

  “Not to worry, I don’t. Neither does the Silver Fox.”

  He puffed out his cheeks. “God, I wish I’d had an agent like her looking out for me. I wouldn’t have gotten suckered the way I did. Sylvia lied to me, Hoagy. Looked me right in the eye and lied. She promised me if I wrote the books I’d get my name on the cover as Addison’s coauthor and a one-third share of the royalties, which is huge. That crazy old bastard sells in, like, thirty-eight different countries. But she never meant a word of it. Not one. Me, I’m just a guy from the old neighborhood, you know?” Every New Yorker I’d ever met who grew up in Brooklyn or Queens called himself “just a guy from the old neighborhood.” “If someone makes you a promise, their word is gold. Not Sylvia. She’s a lying bitch.”

  “No offense, Tommy, but it was pretty naive for a streetwise guy like you to believe her. No one in the publishing business trusts Sylvia.”

  He scratched his stubbly chin ruefully. “She played me for a fool, that’s for damned sure. But I found out too late.”

  “Is that why you took the Tulsa manuscript?”

  “I didn’t take it, Hoagy, I swear. That’s why they want to kill me!” His eyes had suddenly taken on the look of a wild, desperate animal.

  “Wait, who wants to kill you? Slow down and lay it out for me, okay? Everything that’s happened since you left Addison James’s apartment on Friday.”

  Tommy took a deep breath and let it out raggedly. “Okay, sure. I went over to Broadway and had that Xerox of Tulsa made, like you said. Put the original and the copy in my briefcase, paid them and left. When I was two, three doors down from the copier shop, two black guys mugged me. They were young, in their late teens, early twenties, but so slick they’ve probably been snatching purses since they were twelve. One was a big dude, the other small. They came walking toward me on the sidewalk, rapping, cool as can be. As they got closer to me, they eased away from each other to create a space for me to walk in between them. As soon as the big one went by me he grabbed me from behind and threw his arm around my throat. The little one yanked the briefcase out of my hand, and bam, they took off with it. I let out a yell but it was no use. They sprinted down the block and tossed the briefcase into the open window of a cab that was idling at the curb maybe a hundred yards away. Whoever was sitting in the back seat passed the little one some money and they kept right on running. Me, I started toward the cab when suddenly this voice on the sidewalk next me says, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Tommy. We know where you live.’ I turned and there’s this huge, flabby guy, maybe fifty, with curly red hair turning to gray, standing there acting real calm. He was wearing a dark blue Ban-Lon shirt, tan slacks, and a light blue windbreaker, which he unzipped to show me he was packing heat,” Tommy recalled. “I was a police beat reporter for five years. I can smell an ex-cop from a mile away.”

  “Did he say anything else to you?”

  “He said, ‘We’ll be watching you. Say one word about this and you’re a dead man.’”

  “Which you took to be a threat.”

  “Hell, yeah. Wouldn’t you? Then he sauntered down the block to the cab, got in next to the other passenger, and they took off.”

  “Did you get a look at the other passenger?”

  Tommy shook his head.

  “Could you at least tell whether it was a man or a woman?”

  Tommy shook his head.

  “How about the cab? Did you get a license or medallion number?”

  “No, it all happened so fast. I was in a state of shock.”

  I mulled it over. “So they hired a couple of street kids to mug you. Probably paid them a hundred bucks apiece. Probably paid the cabbie another hundred to forget he ever saw a thing. He dropped them somewhere and then they took off for wherever.” I studied him as he sat there, forlorn and miserable. “Did you call the police?”

  Tommy shook his head. “I didn’t do shit. Didn’t call the police. Didn’t go
back to Addison’s apartment to tell him what had happened. I just started walking. Must have walked for three hours.”

  “Stupid question. Was there anything else of value in your briefcase?”

  “Not a thing. Just my old tape recorder, some notepads and pens. They were strictly after Tulsa. Didn’t even bother with my wallet or wristwatch. I was afraid to go back to my apartment. ‘We know where you live,’ the guy said. So I used an ATM machine to get some cash and spent Labor Day weekend in a cheap hotel over by the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Hardly ever came out of my room.”

  “Sylvia told me that you’ve left Kathleen.”

  He nodded glumly. “We’re not together anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  “I met someone else, is what happened.” He puffed out his cheeks again. “You don’t have something to eat, do you? I haven’t had anything that didn’t come out of a vending machine for two days.”

  I made us some scrambled eggs, toast and coffee as the rain continued to pelt down on the skylight, my mind racing.

  “I took a chance and rode the subway up here last night,” Tommy told me as he wolfed down his eggs, Lulu dozing on the loveseat next to him. “I figured you were the one person I could trust. You weren’t home, but your mailbox was empty so I figured you were in town and that I’d just wait around for you. Except you didn’t come home. And then it started to rain.”

  “Real deal, Tommy. Who would want to steal Tulsa?”

  “Hoagy, I’ve been asking myself that question over and over again for the past five days. You want my best guess?”

  “That would be a help.”

  “Addison’s greedy little sexpot wife, Yvette. She has herself a boyfriend who she met in the Hamptons this summer, okay? A lawyer who’s hooked up with a small firm on the South Shore.” Long Island’s South Shore is famously unsavory when it comes to its lawyers and its political leaders, much like the entire state of Rhode Island. “I figure he hired that flabby ex-cop to steal the manuscript for Yvette.”