Ghostheart

by R.J. Ellory

  The sweater came off, she folded it neatly and set it on the floor, and then she looked down to straighten her shirt, to check that she looked presentable.

  ‘You want some more coffee?’ David asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine.’

  Again there was a moment of silence, a moment she broke when she asked, ‘So, I thought we were going to unpack your stuff. Is that what we’re going to do?’

  David smiled. ‘Is that what you want to do?’

  She smiled back. ‘Not particularly.’

  He leaned a little closer. ‘What do you want to do Annie O’Neill?’

  She felt her cheeks flush again. She shook her head.

  ‘Tell me,’ he prompted. ‘What would you really like to do, right now?’

  She looked back at him. ‘I want … I want you –’

  ‘To what? What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to kiss me David Quinn, that’s what I want.’

  He closed his eyes for a second, just a split second, but within that second every thought and feeling, every emotion and sensation and desire she could ever have experienced rushed through her body like a freight train.

  He came down off the chair and onto his knees, eyes open, and reaching with his right hand he touched the side of her face.

  Annie closed her eyes. She sighed. Human contact.

  She felt the warmth of his skin, the pressure of his fingers against her cheek, and then his hand was moving gently around the side of her face and over her ear. His fingers were in her hair, and then she felt the slightest pressure as he pulled her slowly forward. She kept her eyes closed, but she sensed his face approaching hers, and then the tip of his nose touched her cheek, and for a moment it seemed that he was breathing her in, inhaling her whole. She could smell him, something like leather and cigarette smoke, and beneath that something warm and pleasant and musky.

  His lips grazed hers and she shuddered. For some reason she wanted to cry, and then she felt the pressure of his mouth against hers, and at first somewhat resistant, tentative, and then slowly relaxing, she opened her mouth a fraction and felt the tip of his tongue trace a fine line across her lower lip. She opened her mouth a fraction further, and then she felt him close against her, could feel the pressure of her breasts against his chest, and then his left hand was touching the side of her waist, and she felt bound up in something so powerful she could so easily have forgotten to breathe.

  She kissed him. She kissed David Quinn, her tongue finding his, her mouth yielding, and the way he kissed her was so gentle and sensitive, and yet somehow so passionate that she felt she would lose her balance completely and come crashing to the hardwood floor. But he was there, there ahead of her and somehow beneath her, and she raised her hands and closed them around his face, pulled him tighter, tighter again, and when she slid from the chair to her knees it was as if everything was in slow-motion. The sounds, the smells, the colors behind her closed eyelids, and she couldn’t ever remember feeling so close to something.

  Eventually, and against her desire, he released her. He leaned back, and she imagined she was standing at the far end of the room watching these two people on their knees, their hands around each other’s faces, their eyes open, their mouths silent as they looked back at one another and didn’t know what to say.

  At last she did say something.

  Thank you.

  He smiled, pulled her tight, and for some eternity of silence he just held her.

  Annie O’Neill believed she’d never felt so safe in her life.

  ELEVEN

  Alone again later, she could not remember how the subsequent two or three hours had really disappeared so quickly. They had talked – that much she knew – but when she lay in the bath in her own apartment, the warm water enfolding her, giving her a feeling of security, she could recall neither the words used nor the subjects discussed, or how the minutes had passed. He did not press her further, he did not lead her quietly to his bedroom, and though she would have gone – willingly and without resistance – she also felt there was something so right in the fact that he had taken her request for a kiss and complied with that and that alone. He had granted her simple wish, and for that she was grateful.

  Perhaps, had Sullivan been home, she would have told him about her day, that she had gone to David Quinn’s apartment, that he had kissed her. But Sullivan was out, and she was faintly relieved. Some things, perhaps, should be reserved simply for one’s self.

  When it had been time to leave David, he had called a cab with his cellphone. He had walked her down to the street, paused for a moment facing her, never said a word, and then he’d opened the cab door and closed it behind her. Watching him in the cab’s wing mirror, standing there on the sidewalk, she had fought the temptation to look back, to watch him until he disappeared – he’d stood there patiently until the cab had turned the corner, and then she’d leaned back and sighed.

  By the time she arrived home it was dark, sometime after eight, and she ran a bath and undressed. She tied her hair back and stared at her face in the mirror above the sink for a while. She felt naked, not just unclothed but truly naked. Her features – her eyes, her nose, her mouth – all these things could be read. The details not only of the last few hours – her desires, her longings, her anxieties and the feeling that she had walked close to the edge of something, peered into a chasm and then slowly stepped back – but the entirety of her life, could be open to scrutiny. Is this what David had meant when he’d spoken of fear of discovery? He had discovered something within her, and truth be told she had discovered something within herself: she was lonely, she was wanting, and in the moment that he had reached out and made contact she had given more of herself than she could remember doing for a decade. She had surprised herself with her openness, her willingness to be led, but led only so far: to the edge, but back again. Temptation and passion had risen to the surface of her being, but she retained a quiet reserve that would have allowed her to walk only a certain number of steps before pausing, holding her breath, judging the moment, and then retreating. Was this love? Was she – after all – now rising into love?

  She smiled at the thought, watched the small crow’s-feet and laughter lines around her eyes and mouth as her expression changed, and wished that her father were there.

  How goes it Annie?

  It’s okay Dad … how goes you?

  Oh, you know? Can’t complain. But let’s talk about you … how was your day?

  I met a man, Dad, a man I think I could fall for.

  Is that so? Tell me about him.

  What’s there to tell … he’s passionate about things, intelligent, sensitive I think, but there is something about his eyes that tells me you wouldn’t want to cross him.

  I knew people like that.

  Tell me Daddy … tell me about your life, about what you did, who you were, why you went away so suddenly.

  I can’t sweetheart … I would if I could, but I can’t.

  Why not?

  There are rules honey, there are rules.

  Rules? What rules?

  The dead never tell on the dead … that’s the simplest rule there is.

  Annie O’Neill saw her smile fade. She turned and stopped the faucets on the bath. She slipped off her robe and sank into the water. She leaned back and closed her eyes, but try as she might she couldn’t blank out the image of David Quinn’s face. He looked back at her from behind her eyelids. His smile. The way he massaged his neck. And then she could smell him as he came nearer – the musk, the coffee, the tobacco, together in some warm cloud of masculinity. And something else: a quiet ghost of anxiety perhaps; a question about his motives, his intentions towards her. What did he want?

  Annie sighed. The water was deep. She wanted to stay where she was. She shrugged her thoughts away, thoughts without substance. She was not going to talk herself backwards this time. This time she was going to walk forward, and if David Quinn chose to walk with her the
n so be it. She felt safe, secure. She was wanted.

  She lay there until hunger called her from the bath to the kitchen. She dried her body and wrapped a towel around her hair. She slipped on a pair of panties and, naked but for these, went through to the kitchen and set about preparing some salad, lit the oven to warm a baguette, took cheese and smoked ham from the refrigerator.

  Standing there beside the counter, the window to her right, she caught something in the corner of her eye. Looking through the glass she noticed lights on the floor facing hers in the building opposite. There had been no lights there for weeks. The apartments had been emptied out for renovations by some city property developer who had bought the entire block and was set to upgrade the floors one by one. Perhaps they had started. But this late?

  Curious, she looked more closely, and noticed someone, barely visible across the distance – a man. He did not look her way, his attention was focused on what he was doing, and for a moment Annie stood there, her naked upper body fully visible in the window. Her attention momentarily distracted – a thought perhaps – she glanced away, and then looked back at the upper windows of the block facing her.

  The man had stopped.

  He was there at the window.

  Looking at her.

  Looking right at her.

  He moved a little to the left, and with the back of his hand he wiped his brow. Annie could sense him squinting towards her, perhaps disbelieving what he saw. There was a naked woman at the window no more than thirty yards from where he stood, and she wasn’t moving.

  Annie – suddenly aware of her nakedness, the rush of color that flooded her cheeks, her acute sense of embarrassment – stepped to the left, took three steps backwards and switched off the light. Hurrying to the bedroom, barely able to contain her humiliation, she pulled on a sweatshirt and some pants, tugged the towel from her hair and sort of hugged it to her chest as she stood there. She was breathing heavily, the hot flush of embarrassment only now beginning to subside. What had she been thinking of? What had she done? Fearfully she made her way back into the kitchen and stood to the right of the window. Looking carefully, sure the man would not be able to see her, she peered through the window. He was still there. Did he shake his head just then? Was he incredulous about his luck, or was he even now thinking that he must have hallucinated?

  Annie stepped back, inwardly cringing once more, and then she stopped. Did she really feel so humiliated? Was she really a closet exhibitionist? She smiled to herself, and thought of telling Sullivan everything, of her rendezvous with David, that she had stood naked before the kitchen window and given some guy a cheap thrill. And what would Sullivan have said?

  Go for it sweetheart … always told you you should loosen up a little.

  And then he would have laughed coarsely and suggested he apply for a job with whoever was working across the street.

  Annie opened the refrigerator door, left it ajar, made the rest of her meal in the pale glow from the refrigerator’s light, and carried her food through to the front room.

  She sat at the table, a table she only ever remembered sharing with Jack Sullivan, and wondered if she should invite David Quinn here to her apartment. Did she want this man in her life? Was he the one?

  Could he really be the one?

  And what would he have thought if she’d told him about flashing her breasts at the guy across the street?

  She laughed to herself, ate her salad and, to be honest, found she didn’t care.

  An hour later, perhaps a little more, she heard the faintest knock on her door. She rose and walked to open it, but before she reached it the handle was turning. Sullivan appeared, his face ruddy, and he stood silent for a moment.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure I am,’ Annie said, and thought for a moment to tell him about how she’d stood naked in the window for some guy across the street.

  ‘You want some company?’

  Annie nodded. ‘Sure Jack … come on in.’

  ‘I was gonna go in and watch some TV, but then I thought maybe we could read that thing that the old guy brought; you know, the second bit.’

  Annie hesitated. The time she had spent with David had taken her mind off the book and now, as soon as she thought of it she felt as though a dark cloud was nudging up against the edge of her consciousness. She wanted to tell Sullivan No, that she’d had a good day, one of the best days she’d had for a very long time and she did not wish to ruin it by walking back into something that now seemed so dark and horrifying.

  But there was some fascination there also, something almost mesmerizing about reading of such terrible things, and though she thought No she found herself saying ‘Yes, okay … come sit down with me and we’ll read it.’

  Another thought struck her then: that this was her way of making sure that Sullivan did not feel excluded. Was this how it would feel if her father had come, if he’d wanted to talk to her of something serious when she was in no mood for such things? Was this what you did for people you really cared for? You made time for them, you made allowances for them?

  Yes, she thought. This is something my mother would have done. Give just as much as you take, she would have said, and she would have been right. Right enough to love my dad. Right enough to make time for those she cared for even if it meant disrupting her own life.

  Sullivan came in. He offered to make tea and Annie let him. He carried it through, and together they sat side by side on the sofa, Annie leaning against his broad shoulder as if it were an anchor back to reality.

  She had carried the pages from the edge of the table and set them next to where she sat, and once Sullivan was settled she reached for them, turned them over one by one, glancing through them as if to remind herself of how it had all been.

  ‘You ready for this?’ she asked Sullivan.

  ‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said quietly, and as one they turned their eyes towards the page and started to read.

  TWELVE

  It was in early 1955 that I met Harry Rose. At that time I went by the name of Johnnie Redbird, and though I was from Staten Island, a foreigner by all accounts, there was something about me that stopped Harry Rose in his tracks. I was down at the stoop ahead of a backstreet gambling joint, minding my own business; seem to remember I was counting a handful of dollars I had taken on a race. This kid comes by, and though he was a good head shorter than me there was something about him that made him big. Can’t say I know of any other way to describe it. He had on a tailored suit, hand-stitched collar an’ all that, hair cut short in the back and kind of hanging forward at the front down to his eyebrows. He looked at me, kind of nodded his unspoken acknowledgement as he passed and went up the steps to the house, and there was something in his eyes, something silent and brooding and almost melancholy that made me think he carried some weight of pain beyond his years.

  When he came back down again, couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes, he nodded once more. He paused at the bottom of the well, stood right there beside me, and then he said: ‘Easy come, easy go, eh?’

  I had my cigarettes in my hand, was just gonna light one up, and so I offered this kid a smoke and he took it. Remember the way he didn’t look away when I lit it for him. Eye contact, all the while there was eye contact, and there was something in the way he looked that made me – Johnnie Redbird – a little unsettled. I came with a reputation, I had set a few to sleep in their cold-meat boxes, didn’t turn a hair when I took the fingers off a gambler who owed me thirty-five bucks. Took them off with a box-cutter: seven fingers, five dollars a piece. But standing there in my dark suit, white shirt, silk tie, packing a .38 in the waist of my pants, face like someone had chiselled me out of Arizona sandstone … me, Johnnie Redbird, whose picture you’d keep to scare up your kids and make them eat their greens and get to bed on time, well, hell if I didn’t feel that there was someone here who would give me a run for my money.

  Watch the little ones, an old friend of mine used
to say. Watch the little guys who look like a streak of piss wrapped in a suit. They’re fast. They got stamina. They’re all wired up inside like you could flick a switch and they’d go off like a roman candle. Watch those guys, ’cause the little ones have had to fight all the harder for folks to take them serious.

  ‘Lost some bucks?’ I asked the kid.

  The kid laughed. ‘Lost some, won some, all the same shit to me.’

  ‘You placin’ or runnin’?’

  ‘Little of both,’ he said, and then he smoked some of his cigarette and looked up and down the street.

  ‘You keep to your own turf or you cross the lines?’

  ‘Flexibility,’ the kid said, and then he turned and smiled at me, a weird kind of smile that moved his mouth but didn’t reflect in his eyes. ‘Secret of success is flexibility.’

  I nodded. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Sure is,’ he said, and then he smoked his cigarette again.

  ‘You a lone operator, or you got a crew?’

  The kid turned. He looked at me askance with his sixty-five-year I-seen-it-all-go-to-hell-and-back eyes. ‘You gotta whole suitcase of questions there mister, or you just short of folks to talk to?’

  I took a step sideways. I could feel the pressure of the .38 in the waist of my pants. ‘I got a mind to be conversing,’ I said, ‘and there ain’t nothing more to it than that.’ I figured I could pop the kid right where he stood before he even knew which way the wind was blowing.

  The kid shrugged. ‘Seems to me people spend an awful great deal o’ time talking these days, time they could be spending doin’ things a great deal more useful.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as making the dollars, you know?’

  I nodded. Couldn’t disagree with him.

  ‘So you makin’ enough dollars?’ he asked.

  I laughed. ‘Is there such a thing as enough?’