Sometimes at Night

by Ben Sanders

  They shook hands. The kid had a teenage awkwardness that had him touching his hair and studying the floor a lot. But he looked Marshall in the eye and summoned up a decent grip. Then Jordan was on her feet and showing him to the door. Marshall followed in that nice blended scent of perfume with a smoky edge, watching her legs move in the jeans, and he had the sudden feeling that in a moment he would be gone, and he was running out of time. And now here he was out in the hallway, and all she had to do was close the door on him.

  But she hadn’t. She was standing there, still holding it open, looking at him pleasantly, as if waiting for him to get to something. Except Marshall had a dilemma. If he was going to go for it, he wanted to keep it simple and direct, ask her straight up if she was interested in a drink sometime. But trying the line out in his mind, it didn’t fit the situation. He didn’t know how to go from dead Vialoux to asking her out. Maybe he was better to leave it, and just call her sometime. Or maybe he was overthinking it.

  In the end, Jordan gave up on waiting for him. She said, ‘I don’t know if I can get time off at short notice, but I have some days owing. If you need a side-kick, I might be free for a while.’

  His tongue and his brain got things figured out between them. ‘Yeah, great. That’d be great. Let me know.’

  ‘He was a good guy, in his own way. A really good guy, actually. Anything I can do, let me know. Do you have a card or …?’

  He smiled. ‘No. I don’t have anything. I have a burner phone with about twenty minutes left on it.’

  She smiled back, relaxed, looking him in the eye. ‘All right. You call me, then.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll call you.’

  Good: he’d got there eventually. He could hear Eric Clapton coming through faint – Lay-la! – and he couldn’t help but stand there enjoying the anticipation, thinking maybe as soon as tomorrow he was going to see her again.

  She still hadn’t closed the door. ‘Don’t go looking for hitmen on your own.’

  ‘No. I thought I’d talk to this guy D’Anton first.’

  ‘He might be just as dangerous, in his own way. I’m serious. Take care, Marshall.’

  TEN

  He headed down to the subway station at 82nd. He liked this part of town, the tracks up on girders above the street, everything hemmed in and vibrant, the old brick storefronts all wanting him to buy something. It had a casino feel, like walking down an aisle of two-story slot machines, except the bright lights said T-Mobile and Starbucks and Citibank, and every so often a train would come smashing down the line on the bridge above the street, and for ten seconds straight, that was all you could hear. He remembered this part of town fifteen years ago, before the corporate branding and the neon started to proliferate, and the drug trade was a more dominant aspect of the economy. He’d been out here a few times with Vialoux when they worked together, following up a lead, Vialoux living at some kind of peak, or at the very least on a longish plateau of competence and certainty. Marshall could picture him with that steady and relaxed manner he always had, amused and skeptical. Like he knew that the world was built on deceit and subterfuge, but with patience he would get a chance to look behind the curtain. And then at some point, he lost his way. Marshall wondered how it happened. He remembered that Hemingway line about going bankrupt: gradually, and then all at once. Maybe Vialoux just woke up one morning and realized it was over.

  He caught an F train over to Manhattan. A guy standing in the aisle was freestyle rapping the whole way, forty minutes without seeming to take a breath, throwing in hand flicks and shoulder dips like a boxer working a heavy bag. His face was dripping sweat and the floor around him was pretty damp too by the time Marshall got off at Fifty-seventh, just south of the park.

  Rain was pounding down, gray as nails. He made it up to Fifty-ninth and took shelter in the little Strand Books kiosk. A crowd of protestors, maybe a hundred or so, had gathered outside the Trump building and were spilling into the east lane of Fifth Avenue. Police officers were putting out barricades, trying to divert traffic, the whole scene this crazy street disco with car horns blaring and placards in the crowd going up and down at random in the gray rain. Marshall had never been a close follower of politics. He always felt like he lived in a stratum that was essentially unaffected by who was in charge. He’d grown up in Gary, Indiana with a mother who made ends meet with drug sales. Then he came to New York and worked in an organized crime unit before going undercover for NYPD. As far as he could tell, a left or right twitch of the political dial didn’t affect the uphill gradient of the day-to-day. But it was different now. There was a burgeoning sense of civic breakdown. It felt like in another six months, it might all come down on his head. He watched a guy wearing some kind of Halloween mask climb on the roof of a parked cab and then shout something through a bullhorn. Too hard to comprehend him. All Marshall heard was shout-echo, harsh and digital, an electronic crackle at the edge, like some government broadcast in a future dystopia.

  He watched for another minute, and then as the rain eased he headed uptown on Fifth, the air cold and park-scented. D’Anton Lewis’s place on East Seventy-third Street was on the block adjoining Fifth Avenue, right across from Central Park. Prime real estate. Marshall imagined he’d need ten or fifteen million bucks to move up here and live in something larger than a mailbox. D’Anton’s place was French Renaissance style, he was pretty sure. White stone façade, little wrought-iron Juliet balconies on the upper-level windows, a wooden front door like something from a medieval castle, big enough to admit horses. The door was set back a few feet in a little alcove, and on one alcove wall were the initials DL, in brass letters. D’Anton Lewis. Recessed in the stonework nearby was an intercom panel with a miniature video screen. Marshall tried the TALK button and waited.

  Nothing. The screen stayed black.

  He tried again, and then thumped on the door. Still no answer. He waited with his back against the alcove wall by the DL monogram. The house was probably two hundred years old. The stone step had cupped slightly through the center, worn down by use. He wondered what sort of foot-count was required to do that. He gave it another ten minutes, and then popped his collar up and walked back along the block to the corner with Fifth Avenue. The rain was strengthening again. He sat on the edge of a low concrete wall, and waited. Fourteen minutes past twelve in the afternoon.

  Nothing happened for over an hour. The rain kept falling. A light drizzle, persistent enough to soak his hair and collar. He watched tour buses go by on Fifth Avenue, passengers on the top deck shrink-wrapped in their soaking rain slickers. At 1:25, a black Lincoln Navigator SUV turned in off Madison Avenue onto Seventy-third and double-parked outside D’Anton’s. A guy got out of the passenger seat and opened the curbside rear door and stood waiting.

  Marshall got to his feet and headed back along the block, not dawdling, but trying not to look too purposeful. He saw two guys step out of the alcove and take up positions on the sidewalk, back-to-back but with six feet between them, one guy facing east toward Madison, and the other guy looking this way, west, toward Marshall. Big guys in their mid-forties, tall and heavy under knee-length dark coats, the kind of stern vigilance that comes natural to ex-police.

  Marshall kept walking. They didn’t seem to have clocked him as anything other than a regular pedestrian. A westbound truck had pulled up now, blocked behind the SUV. The driver blew his horn, and the east-facing guy on the sidewalk gave him the finger: blasé, a good long dose with the hand raised.

  Marshall was thirty feet away when a young woman maybe twenty years old exited the house and crossed the sidewalk toward the waiting car. She pivoted neatly and backed into her seat as she collapsed the umbrella she carried – not an easy move in high heels and a tight skirt, Marshall imagined – and then a third man stepped out of the alcove. He was black, maybe fifty, tall and brisk of step, expensively dressed in a fitted coat and gleaming loafers.

  Marshall said, ‘D’Anton.’

  The guy paused in the middle o
f the sidewalk and seemed to consider him.

  Marshall said, ‘I need to talk to you about Ray Vialoux.’

  The guy stood there another second, and then he resumed walking.

  Marshall called his name again, trying to seem neutral and unthreatening despite the volume. He changed course slightly, veering right, toward the SUV, and the west-facing bodyguard moved to intercept him. He sidestepped into Marshall’s path, right hand outstretched to block him.

  Marshall said, ‘Don’t touch me. I just want to talk to him.’

  He called D’Anton’s name a third time, and didn’t break step. As he felt the contact on his chest with the security guy’s open palm, he laid his right hand across the top of the guy’s wrist and twisted clockwise, in the same motion yanking the arm down and stepping left, the man dropping to his knee and staying there, locked in place by the awkward inside-out rotation of his shoulder.

  And he saw now that he had D’Anton’s attention. He’d paused half-out of the car, watching the action on the sidewalk, the young woman in the far seat leaning across for a view, too.

  The east-facing man was still in position, looking back across his shoulder at Marshall, but the man on rear-door duty was coming over.

  Eyes on D’Anton, Marshall said, ‘Vialoux’s dead. I need to talk to you.’

  He adjusted his wrist-lock, flipping his grip to give himself more range, free up his stance. He thought if he had to, he’d feign an open-palm jab on the rear-door man and then just kick him in the balls left-footed, and now with the guy only six feet away, D’Anton Lewis shouted, ‘Stop.’

  The rear-door man halted like he’d been caught by a leash. The truck behind the SUV blew its horn again, the driver shouting mutely behind his windshield, gesturing with one arm – obviously more concerned about being on time than anything else: New Yorker, all the way to the core.

  D’Anton ignored him.

  He stepped up on the curb and took a second buttoning his coat: that small motion his way of broadcasting grand status. He came over, almost seeming to glide, paused at the rear-door man and said, ‘What the fuck are you idiots doing?’

  His soft tone making the line seem reasonable. An almost lush pedigree to the whisper.

  No one answered.

  Marshall still had his man in the wrist-lock, the guy down on one knee, flushed and goggle-eyed, breathing through clenched teeth.

  D’Anton said to the rear-door man, ‘You see something resembling a threat, why would you do anything except close the door? And yet, you’re over here.’

  Marshall said, ‘It’s a good point.’

  D’Anton looked at him, came a step closer. He must’ve been six-four, two-twenty at least. Bigger than Marshall by an inch and twenty pounds. Short hair crystal-specked with rain. Almost vampiric in his dark coat, collar up and the points aiming forward.

  He said, ‘Let him go.’

  Marshall said, ‘He’s learning a good lesson about keeping his hands to himself.’

  D’Anton shrugged, bored, no life in his face. ‘All right.’ And then smiling a little, keeping his eyes flat and distant. He said, ‘Harass me in the street, you think I’m going to sit down with you, listen to what you have to say?’

  Marshall said, ‘You already heard what I have to say. Ray Vialoux’s dead. Most people I’ve told, they found that pretty concerning.’

  D’Anton kept looking at him, didn’t move.

  Marshall said, ‘So now I have to wonder, are you going for the Guinness World Record in not giving a shit, or are you trying to hide something?’

  Across D’Anton’s shoulder, he could see the young woman in the SUV still leaning across to watch them. She called, ‘Dad, c’mon. Forget about it. C’mon.’

  The truck driver leaned on his horn again: a solid five-second blast like a ship coming into port.

  No one looked.

  D’Anton unbuttoned his coat with one hand, opened it slow, let Marshall see the dagger he was carrying. It hung by the crossguard from a loop in the satin lining. Maybe ten inches tip to tip, bone-handled and some kind of delicate pattern textured in the stainless blade.

  Marshall said, ‘I tell you a man’s dead, you show me that? What am I meant to think, you’re a gentleman?’

  D’Anton swallowed carefully. ‘I don’t care what you think, and I don’t care what you want to say to me. You step up on me like that again, I’m going to open you up, cock to throat. Get off my street.’

  He closed the coat, and the motion of his arm seemed to propel him in a half-turn and then onward toward the car. The man on door duty followed close, shut D’Anton in quietly with the girl and then got in up front.

  Marshall looked at the guy kneeling beside him. ‘You going to be civilized now?’

  He let go of the wrist and then stepped back as the guy came to his feet, flushed and angry, swinging at him with a left hook. It was a loopy, awkward shot with his wrong arm, and Marshall ducked it and skipped backward with his hands raised and ready. The guy followed for a few paces, and then somewhere in his head the judgement came through that it wasn’t worth it. He gave Marshall the finger and spat at him, lip curled and vicious, showing teeth. Then he cursed indecipherably and headed back toward D’Anton’s place, walking with his arms a little wider now, trying to exaggerate his size.

  Marshall turned and walked west toward the park. D’Anton’s SUV kept pace with him for a few yards, the quiet dark shape gliding along in his periphery. When the truck behind blew its horn again, the SUV accelerated in a hurricane of groundwater. It paused at the corner, waiting for a gap, and then swung out into traffic through a red light.

  All of that warranted some thought. He didn’t want to walk back past D’Anton’s, in case the security guys felt there was a point to be made. He went a block north on Fifth and then over to Lexington, headed up to a deli he knew at Seventy-fifth Street. He bought coffee and a six-inch pastrami on rye, and took the last available stool at the window: Marshall a relatively youthful addition to a six-strong line-up of elderly male contemplation.

  Open you up, cock to throat.

  Pretty unequivocal. Maybe that was his standard attitude on any given morning, but Marshall couldn’t help wonder if fear was a motivator for the line. Fear, deep behind a mask of ice-cool. He’d got no reaction, telling the man Vialoux was dead, which implied he’d heard the news already. But was that because he was complicit, or because he’d been keeping tabs for his own sake, his own self-preservation? Maybe he thought his name was on the same list as Ray’s. But if that was the case, why had he not viewed Marshall as a greater threat? He remembered D’Anton emerging from the alcove and crossing the sidewalk, pausing to assess him and then continuing, apparently unconcerned.

  He finished the sandwich and worked on the coffee. The deli’s front window faced Lexington Avenue, with a view eastward along Seventy-fifth Street. The southeast corner had a Bank of America, and the northeast corner had a line-up of the kind of fashion stores people shopped in if they owned a ten-million-dollar town house on the Upper East Side. He watched a Ford Fusion sedan pull up on a fireplug outside the Bank of America. Dark paint, dark tinted windows. Unmarked NYPD cars had improved since Marshall’s day. No telltale antennas on the rear lid. Consummate anonymity was the only giveaway.

  The old guy on his left eased off his stool and departed with a complex rhythm of wheeze and wince and hobble. He’d left the Times sport section behind. Marshall flipped through it, just to kill time. Pointless photos and information. Sport had never interested him, particularly. He thought the loyalties involved were the most curious aspect of it. The fact people felt such affinity to teams they had no plausible connection to, other than some nominal commonality of region.

  As he finished his coffee, he saw a second Ford pull up on the far curb of Lexington Avenue, this time on the north corner outside one of the fashion stores. Maybe they were pursuing an unrelated matter, but he didn’t like the feeling of triangulation: a car left and right of him, now. He
placed tip money under his mug and stood up. The most difficult decision was how to handle the paper sandwich wrapper. By its very nature, it was pre-creased in an extensive and erratic fashion. It was hard to understand and quantify the prevailing geometry, and therefore he couldn’t say what would be most rational in terms of an imposed fold. Best not to get involved. He left the wrapper in its quasi-natural state, somewhat creased and concave on the bench below the window, and he stayed close to a trio of other customers as they exited. It was probably a false sense of camouflage. The diner’s front window wasn’t one-way glass.

  He walked west on Seventy-fifth Street. It was the best exit strategy available: contraflow to traffic, Lexington and the two unmarked cars behind him. But it was raining, and he had his chin ducked against the weather, so he didn’t see the third car until he was twenty feet from it. He sensed motion ahead of him, glanced up and saw a guy in a suit climb out from behind the wheel of a dark Ford Fusion. The suit was the same color as the car. He raised a badge wallet with a gold shield clipped inside it, and with his other hand he gestured at the rear door of the Fusion.

  ‘Sir? We’d appreciate a moment of your time.’

  Marshall stopped. ‘For what?’

  ‘If you could get in the car please, sir.’

  Which was not the same thing as saying, You’re under arrest.

  He could keep walking, if he wanted to. Marshall turned and looked behind him. The second car had moved off the curb and was idling in the middle of the intersection. Watching, in the event backup was required. It was a fairly elaborate prelude to a conversation, if that’s all it was going to be.

  ‘Sir?’

  Marshall glanced back at the guy. The badge was gone, but he was still gesturing at the rear door of the car. Grimly formal in his dark suit with his arm aslant, outstretched hand gently cupped, almost deferent. Like a waiter who would break your neck if you forgot your manners.

  Marshall said, ‘Five minutes.’

  He stepped to the rear door of the car and opened it and climbed in.