Ghostheart

by R.J. Ellory

Harry looked at me with the face of an honest man. There ain’t no money Johnnie, and that’s the truth … and you made the decision not to have a family Johnnie. That was your decision and your decision alone.

  I was quiet for a time. In my mind I was killing him, killing him like I’d killed a guy for seventeen bucks and change a thousand years before.

  So if there’s no money Harry I reckon you can pay me back in kind, I said.

  I could tell that Harry Rose went cold and loose inside. I watched his eyes, and they were the eyes of a guilty man. Seven years in Rikers, all those years in Mexico seeing men hiding from the law had taught me the difference between innocence and guilt.

  I have an idea, I said, but this isn’t an idea that could be carried by a man alone. Would take two, you know? And you’re the best number two a man could ever have wished for. So what I think is that you’re gonna help me out with this thing, and then I’m gonna walk away and disappear, and you come home and be dad and Mister Joe Public and whatever the hell else you got going here, and we’re done. That’s gonna be okay with you, isn’t it Harry?

  Depends on the alternative, Harry said.

  The alternative, my dear friend, is that you might not have a home and family to come home to.

  Don’t see as there’s much of a choice then, Harry said.

  No, I replied, I don’t see that there is.

  In that moment Harry Rose could have tried to kill me, and in killing me he would have killed his past. Murdered it. Vanished it from existence. But he did not, and could not have done, for whatever he may have been faced with at that moment he could never forget that I – Johnnie Redbird – had taken the fall for him twice. He owed me something, owed me all my years of freedom, owed me a fortune in greenbacks and Lincolns, and had we both disappeared to Mexico or Vegas after the King Mike Royale fiasco then Harry would never have met Maggie Erickson, and he would never have been a father. So Harry Rose believed that he was fighting for his family, as well as fighting for himself, and had there been a question about priorities there would have been no question. Despite the agreement we made he believed I could kill a woman and a child just as easily as I could have killed a cop. There was no choice. No choice at all. And I could have killed Harry, could have shot him through the head as he sat there at his kitchen table, but I did not, and would not have done. Harry owed me as much money as I could have carried, and I was not going to walk away without it.

  June of 1979, a night that would otherwise have promised an hour in the garden playing catch or freeze-tag, a pot roast in the kitchen, later his feet on the coffee table, a can of beer in his hand and the Movie Of The Week on the tube, Harry told Maggie that he had some business to attend to. He would not be long. He promised her that. And then he kissed her, kissed his child also, and left the house in Englewood near Allison Park and went out to meet the past.

  And I – as much a part of that past as Harry had ever been – was waiting for him. Waiting patiently, like a man owed his dues.

  The security truck collected from seven all-night stores and gas stations between Coytesville and Palisades Park. The guy who drove the truck was maybe five-four and two hundred and eighty pounds. A fat useless fuck, a truck-fuck, I said. The guy who carried the money from the gas stations and stores to the back of the truck was maybe twenty-two or three, looked like a college quarterback on a summer job. They both carried handguns, and inside the cab up front they had a three-inch Mossburgh Magnum pump action that was padlocked into its retainer. A fuck of a lot of use that’ll do them when the shit hits the fan, I said, and then I pulled away from the curb and took a route down Edgewood onto Nordhoff, past The Cemetery of the Madonna towards the Fletcher Avenue overpass.

  There was no way for me to know how Harry was feeling, but the fear was in his eyes. Good enough, I thought. Payback time. Now he gets to feel a little of how I lived for seven years in Rikers. Now he gets to smell his own sweat, to feel the pressure in his chest, the dumbstruck sense of terror when you think this might very well be your last living breath. Feel these things Harry Rose … feel them and know what it’s like to be truly on your own.

  How it went down was later a blur, a maelstrom of shouting and struggling, the fat guy fighting to get the shotgun out of its retainer and open the door of the cab at the same time, all the while aware of the fact that he didn’t really want to come out. The cab was bulletproof, and there we were, me and Harry dragging his young colleague across the forecourt of the Brinkerhoff Avenue Texaco station, looking crazy and violent and beyond compunction, and there was no way he wanted to get his ass blown off. But hell, this was what he was paid for, and so he did release the shotgun, and he did get out of the cab, and once he’d emptied the gun in our general direction he did get his ass blown off.

  But even as the fat guy was lying on the stone-cold gravel forecourt, his life ebbing away slowly towards the storm-drain, he managed to get his handgun from its holster and fire three shots. The third – though he would never know this – found its target. In the confusion and melee that followed – as police sirens racketed through the night, as the gas station attendants hurried out to see to the younger security guard who lay dying on the sidewalk – I started away from the back of the truck and hightailed it towards the car. Harry Rose, the bone in his right thigh shattered by a .38 slug, did his best to catch up, but when I saw the flashing red-and-blue cherry bars in a procession down Glen Avenue I floored the accelerator and took off. Behind me, growing ever smaller in the distance, was the sight of four heavy money bags, bags that contained something in the region of three hundred and fifty grand, and beside them, his arm outstretched, as if reaching towards them with one last desperate hope, the security guard.

  Harry Rose – knowing that destiny had finally found him – stood in the street, his pants leg soaked with his own blood, in his hand the sweat-drenched balaclava he had worn, and he thought of his child, a few months short of eight years old, and how Maggie would explain where daddy had gone.

  He dropped to his knees. The cops encircled him, hollered at him, pointed their guns and made it clear they would shoot him if he didn’t comply, but Harry Rose possessed neither the strength nor the will to get up. His life was over, what life he had managed to claw back from the horrors of Dachau, and he knew it. There was no coming back from this one. This was three strikes good, the end of the line, and the fat lady had not only completed the aria but the echo of her voice was nothing more than a memory.

  In the second that I looked back I saw a broken and defeated man. His life had been smashed with all the force of a juggernaut. Gone was his wife, his child, everything he had worked to provide for them. Gone was his future, his past also, and yet also, in amongst all those things, I knew he felt that the debt he owed me had still yet to be paid. Gone was any hope he might redeem his score with Johnnie Redbird. Perhaps that, of all things, was the hardest thing of all. He knew me well enough to know I would never quit. He knew I wanted the money that was mine, and he knew I would never cease until I got it.

  There was no plea bargaining, no second degree, no manslaughter, no justifiable homicide. This was plain and simple murder. The sole extenuating circumstance was that witnesses concurred there were two men. There was no way of telling who had fired the shots that had killed the security guards, and thus the death sentence could not be levied against Honest Harry Rose.

  But they could give him life, two terms consecutive, and they sent him down to Rikers like the bad boy that he was.

  It was the end of an era, the end of a dream perhaps, and I – looking over my shoulder as I fled – believed that in some small way, in some perverse and circuitous fashion – justice had been seen to be done. Gone was his money, his family, all the things he had worked for.

  Same things I had lost. Same things I had never been given a chance to possess.

  But I figured that while Harry Rose still carried sufficient strength in his body to breathe there would be a way – there would always
be a way – to make him pay his dues.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Annie could not sleep.

  It didn’t help that Sullivan was out until the very early hours of Thursday morning, and by the time he did arrive she felt that it would be too much for him to carry her burdens.

  She thought of David. A great deal. The need to know where he was became a preoccupation, an intensity that almost consumed her. A little after one in the morning she even considered taking a cab out to where he lived. She guessed she could have found it, but the idea of trawling the streets around St Nicholas and 129th in the early hours of the morning frightened her. She was alone, at least for the time being, and she would have to bear it without support.

  Eventually, as the sun rose and filled the room with a vague sodium-yellow ghost, she slept, and when Sullivan knocked on her door some hours later it was already past eleven and there was no way she could face The Reader’s Rest.

  ‘I need to find him,’ she told Sullivan once she’d made coffee for them both and they were seated in the kitchen.

  ‘Need?’ Sullivan asked. ‘Or want?’

  ‘Need,’ Annie stated emphatically. ‘I need to find out what happened with him.’

  ‘I can tell you that,’ Sullivan started, but Annie was shaking her head.

  ‘I got what you said about fear of commitment and all that, and I’m sure that’s part of it, but I want to hear it from him, from David you know?’

  ‘And what about your Mr Forrester? He came last night?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And he brought you the rest of the story?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘So tell me … what happened with these guys?’

  ‘I want to talk about David,’ Annie said. ‘I want to go over there, over to his apartment and talk to him.’

  ‘I don’t think you should do that Annie,’ Sullivan said.

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  Sullivan smiled, but beneath that smile there was a flicker of concern. ‘What the hell happened to the shy and retiring Annie O’Neill that moved in with me all those years ago?’

  ‘She got pissed off Jack … pissed off with being stepped over and walked past and ignored, that’s what. I’m going to go over to his apartment and speak to him, and to tell you the truth there’s nothing that you can say or do to stop me.’

  Sullivan raised his hands. ‘Hell Annie, you got fire in your belly today. I’m not going to stop you, not even gonna suggest it, but I think you better be prepared for the worst.’

  ‘The worst? What could be worse than not knowing Jack?’

  ‘Sometimes the truth is worse than not knowing.’

  Annie shook her head. ‘Not in this case. If it’s me I want to know it, and if it’s David then fair enough, but I’m not giving up without a fight … you said that yourself, right?’

  ‘Suit yourself Annie O’Neill,’ Sullivan said. ‘Don’t let it ever be said that I interfered in matters of the heart.’

  Annie rose and walked through to her bedroom.

  Sullivan sat quietly while she dressed, called through one time to ask her where the manuscript was but Annie didn’t hear him, and when she appeared in the doorway, grabbed her coat from the chair and put it on, he asked her if she wanted him to go with her.

  She shook her head. ‘Big girl now,’ she said. ‘I can handle this Jack.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  She nodded, reached out and touched his arm as she passed him. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.

  ‘The chapter?’ Sullivan asked as she reached the door.

  ‘Kitchen counter,’ she said. ‘Brown envelope. Stay here and read it if you want … make yourself at home.’

  Sullivan rose from the chair and watched her as she left, even walked to the window and waited for her to appear in the street. She walked without hesitation, her manner purposeful and direct, and he found himself thanking this David Quinn for whatever he had done. Annie seemed so much more certain about what she wanted, and this – however things turned out with David – had to be a good thing.

  Sullivan shook his head, sighed deeply, and walked back to the kitchen to find the envelope.

  From the junction Annie took a cab, directing the driver towards St Nicholas and 129th. From the back seat she watched the world through the window, watched the people on the sidewalk, people entering and leaving the stores and malls and coffee shops. She watched their faces when the cab pulled to a halt at the lights, watched how they crossed the road, each of them seemingly lost within their own private world, each in some small way a reflection of herself. Here were the lost and confused, the haunted and broken, the loveless, the pained, the angry and exhausted. Here were the black and the white and every shade of grey between. The beginnings and the ends of humanity; the circle. Life was so often a lie, and yet sometimes so true it hurt, and each and every one of these people was perhaps looking for the same thing as herself. It possessed no name, no face, no voice and no identity. It just was. It was too heavy to carry, and yet too light to grasp. It could not be defined and yet we knew so well when we possessed it, and so bitterly when we didn’t.

  The cab slowed against the curb. Annie paid the driver and let herself out. She walked three blocks before she reached a delicatessen on the corner, and turning left she felt sure she was headed in the right direction.

  She tried three buildings before she recognized the frontage, the way the steps ran up through a small covered entranceway, and walking up those steps she felt the tension, the unbearable tension of wanting David to be there at the same time as hoping that she had the wrong building, or that he was out. She hesitated in the lower hallway, looking up the stairwell towards the first floor, and just as she placed her foot on the first riser she turned, startled, as a door opened behind her.

  ‘I can help you?’

  A man faced her, an old man, his skin sallow and dry like parchment, his hands bunches of knuckles twisted together.

  ‘Hello,’ Annie said. ‘I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘Someone who has a name?’ the old man asked.

  ‘Quinn, David Quinn.’

  The old man shook his head. ‘No Quinn here miss. You have the wrong address perhaps?’

  Annie frowned. ‘I’m sure this is the right building.’

  ‘No David Quinn here,’ the old man repeated. ‘Had someone here but he gone now … up there, first floor.’

  Annie turned and looked up the stairs. An indescribable sensation invaded her chest.

  ‘You want to rent apartment?’ the old man asked. ‘You wanna see apartment … good apartment, nice light, big windows eh?’

  Annie was nodding in the affirmative. She wanted to see, wanted to know that this was the wrong building, that somehow she’d lost her bearings and was two blocks east or west, or David’s building was on a street that ran parallel to this one. That had to be it. It had to be.

  The old man went up first, painfully slow, one foot on the riser, the other joining it, and then the second riser, the third, the fourth, all the while Annie walking behind him like a funeral procession of two.

  Reaching the first floor the old man turned right and started down the corridor. From his belt he took a large bunch of keys, and without asking, without even turning to check that Annie was behind him, he opened the door, threw it wide and stepped back.

  ‘See?’ he said, smiling wide. ‘Big windows, great light.’

  Annie went through the doorway in slow-motion, the light from the room beating against her skin, the air thick, unbreathable almost, and after two or three steps, her eyes scanning the interior, she knew. She just knew.

  ‘When did he leave?’ she asked the old man.

  The old man smiled, shrugged his shoulders. ‘I think two, three days maybe … I wasn’t here. My son you know, he takes care of everything. He went to the market, left me the keys. Good light huh?’

  Annie nodded. ‘Good light, yes.’

  Had there been any question in
her mind it would have been swept clean away by the sight of the polythene bag lying on the bare hardwood floor beneath the window.

  A bag with books inside. Three books. Thirteen dollars and keep the change.

  Sixty lives will connect with what’s in this bag … makes you think huh?

  She walked towards it, leaned down to look inside. There, wrapped in the same paper in which she’d given it to him, was Breathing Space. David hadn’t even bothered to look inside, hadn’t even bothered to open the wrapping.

  Annie snatched the book from the polythene bag and stuffed it into her purse. From the moment she’d stood at the door of her apartment that morning and given it to David, except for a fleeting moment in the hospital, she hadn’t thought about it. The most important thing her father had left for her and she’d forgotten about it. Despite its importance, finding it seemed now her consolation prize.

  She turned abruptly, stared for a moment at the old man, and then she opened her mouth. ‘Your son? Where is he?’

  ‘At the market.’

  ‘The man who was here … did he say where he was going?’

  ‘Aaach, he’s a crazy man. Left like he was headed for a fire. Supposed to give a month’s notice or he lose a thousand dollars … well, he lost his thousand dollars. Stayed here two, maybe three weeks and he lost a thousand dollars. Crazy people in this world eh?’

  ‘Two or three weeks?’ Annie asked. ‘He was here two or three weeks?’

  The old man nodded, grinned, showed Annie the spaces between his small, child-size teeth. ‘So you want this apartment with the good light?’

  Annie heard the question but it didn’t register. She was across the room and out the door before the old man had a chance to say another word. He raised his hand as if to catch her attention, but Annie was running down the stairs two steps at a time, her heart going faster than she could, and when she reached the front door and burst out into the street she felt as if something dreadful had been chasing her.

  ‘Aaach, crazy people in this world,’ the old man called after her, but his voice was like something from someone else’s life.