by R.J. Ellory
‘Secondary vehicles will be elsewhere.’
‘We’re going to use the parade as cover, right?’
Beck nodded.
Freiberg didn’t speak for a moment. He and Beck watched as a flyweight black kid caught a roundhouse and staggered against the corner.
‘Gut feeling?’ Freiberg asked. ‘You think it was Marcus who put the hit on Lenny?’
Beck turned. ‘I do Walt. I think he had Lenny hit because he didn’t want to see the deal through.’
‘And now he’s cornered . . . now he has to see it through because he doesn’t want Sonny Bernstein to bring some dangerous friends up from Miami.’
‘Fucking irony, eh?’
‘More than a fucking irony . . . thing’s a piece of theater.’
‘Fuck ’em all, eh?’
Freiberg nodded. ‘Good as it gets, Charlie . . . fuck ’em all.’
THIRTY-NINE
It was a quarter after eleven when Cathy Hollander put her hand on his arm. She was saying something, something that Harper later could not easily recall; something about trust, about the way in which people were no longer able to trust one another, and it was then, as she said those things, that she put her hand on his arm.
Later he would remember the smell of her.
Later he would remember the way her hair looked, the way she sort of half-turned her face, and half-smiled, and then there was a sound from his own lips that was like someone laughing. Perhaps half a someone.
It was an awkward moment. A moment of tension. A moment Harper had read about, written about in a book called Depth Of Fingerprints, something that was now part of an earlier life.
She had been near the wall, the window behind her, and her hair had been several shades of some indistinct color, a color like gold perhaps, or copper; perhaps sun-bleached mahogany.
He had slept soundly. Slept from dusk ’til dawn really. Slept ten, eleven hours, even longer. He could not remember the moment he lay down and closed his eyes, just as he could not remember the time when they opened again, seemingly without thought or intention, seemingly without any real purpose. His mind – stretched beyond the limits of natural flexibility – was now quiet and numb.
He knew he was awake when she knocked at the door. He’d been dressed – pants, a tee-shirt, even one shoe – and when he opened the door she’d looked down at his feet and smiled. Like she’d known. Or someone had told her.
‘You have on one shoe,’ she’d said.
‘Come in,’ Harper had replied.
And then she had. Walked right past him; sort of breezed in as if it was her own suite of rooms, and the smell of her had haunted the space around him like a ghost. Harper believed that when she left he would still be able to smell her on his clothes.
‘You don’t look well,’ she’d said. It was here that Harper’s memory failed him. He remembered taking off the one shoe as opposed to putting on the second. He remembered that. He remembered standing there with the shoe in his hand, being suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps he’d slept like that – his suit pants, his tee-shirt, his one shoe.
He’d smiled absent-mindedly, shook his head, nodded then. ‘Don’t look well?’ he echoed. ‘No . . . of course not . . . don’t feel well either.’
There was a child somewhere. Laughing. Running. Sound of a child laughing and running. Happy child.
Frank Duchaunak lay there for a long time, remembering the sound of the happy child. Child running down the hallway outside his apartment.
He lay there trying to remember his name, but all he could think of was Norma Jean Baker, and how Death had come to visit. August fifth, 1962, and Death had come like the mailman.
After a while, a handful of minutes, maybe an hour, Duchaunak turned on his side. He tugged the pillow from beneath his head, folded it in half and used it to support his neck. From where he lay he could see the beige and ochre monotony of his room. It is the vista one would be comfortably accustomed to if one were a psychiatric patient, he thought, and smiled to himself, like such a thought mattered, like there was anything that really mattered.
He stayed there for a while longer, absent of thought, of movement, and then he glanced at the small green-faced, threedollar digital clock that flashed on the nightstand. Nine minutes past eleven the green digits flashed, and he knew it was morning because the clock evaluated everything with a twenty-four-hour perspective.
Eleven-o-nine, Duchaunak thought. Eleven-o-nine and I’m still in bed.
He unfolded the pillow, lay it flat, allowed his head to sink into it, and closed his eyes. He went back to sleep, not because he was tired, but because there was nothing left to get up for.
*
‘There aren’t any answers,’ Albert Reiff said.
The man facing him opened his mouth to speak. There was a lot of blood around his mouth, beneath his nose also. He had a tooth missing in front, though he could have lost that some while before. One of his eyes was kind of puffed-out, like it was getting ready to swell up, to turn purple, sickly yellow, and black maybe.
‘Don’t say anything else, okay?’ Reiff raised his hand. He had big hands, long fingers, but they weren’t the kind of fingers you’d play piano with. Albert Reiff wasn’t a piano-playing kind of guy. ‘You say anything else you’re just going to insult me further. I’m not stupid. I look like a stupid person to you? Eh? Do I? Tell me the fucking truth Mouse . . . do I look like a stupid person to you?’
The bloody-faced guy, Mouse by all accounts, shook his head vigorously. ‘No Al—’ he started, but Albert Reiff raised his hand and slapped Mouse.
‘Did I say to fucking talk, Mouse? Hey, did anyone hear me say you should start talking now?’ Albert shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t fucking think so.’
Mouse blinked furiously, like he was trying to communicate something in morse. He had the wide eyes of a frightened man, a cornered man, and the way he shifted in the chair, shifted without really moving, he looked like maybe he’d pissed himself and it was real uncomfortable.
‘So tell me what he said,’ Reiff said. ‘Tell me exactly what he said, Mouse.’
Reiff was silent for a moment, and then: ‘It’s okay . . . I’m giving you permission to speak now.’
Mouse shook his head.
‘Aah fuck, you have to make this all melodramatic and personal. You have to make an issue about this when it really wasn’t fucking necessary.’ Reiff shook his head, sort of turned and looked over his shoulder. ‘Ray?’ he called out. ‘Ray . . . come here and listen to what Mouse has got to say for himself.’
Mouse made a sound; a sound like he was all full of air and was deflating rapidly. Sounded like everything inside him sort of collapsed.
Raymond Dietz appeared in the doorway behind Albert Reiff. He carried something in his hand.
‘What?’ he said.
Reiff smiled. ‘Mouse doesn’t seem to have a great deal to say for himself.’
‘Isn’t it always the way . . . always the way with these guys. And what the fuck kind of name is Mouse . . . more like fucking Rat!’ Dietz laughed coarsely and came up behind Albert Reiff. He was over Reiff’s left shoulder, looking down at Mouse who sat shivering, both his hands nailed to the arms of the chair, torn duct tape around the lower half of his face and throat, his ankles tied tight, one shoe removed and much of his right foot hammered to a pulp inside his sock.
‘So what’s the deal, Mouse?’ Reiff asked. ‘What is the deal with the man’s son, eh? What is the deal with this Sonny Bernstein?’
Mouse shook his head. He closed his eyes tight and lowered his chin to his chest.
‘Nothing to say then?’ Dietz asked.
Mouse was silent, motionless but for the muscular twitches caused by so much pain.
‘Fuck you,’ Albert Reiff said, and with that he stood up and moved to the right.
Dietz was fast, faster than even Reiff expected. He stepped to the left, snatched Mouse around the throat, and with one swift arc he drove a screwdriver through the ma
n’s temple.
Mouse’s eyes opened wide and stared back at the pair of them. He blinked once, his hands tugging furiously at the nails that pinned them to the chair, but all of it was involuntary, a simple muscular reaction, for Mouse had been dead the moment the screwdriver punctured his frontal lobe.
‘Get someone to fix up this shit would you?’ Reiff said. He glanced at his watch. ‘I have to drive over the other side of town and pick my kid up for lunch.’
‘Sure thing,’ Dietz replied. ‘I’ll get some cleaners down here.’
Reiff nodded. ‘See you at the thing tonight.’
‘Sure, see ya tonight.’
Reiff made his way out of the room through a narrow doorway at the end of an unlit corridor.
Ray Dietz stood for a moment, hands on his hips, looking down at the dead body in the chair.
‘Mouse,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re a fucking prick.’
*
There was silence between them for quite some time. Harper sat on the edge of the bed, his head turned to the window. The curtains were half-drawn, and the light that filtered through cast much of the room in shadow. The impression was one of late afternoon.
Cathy Hollander sat on a chair near the door, beside her a small circular table upon which sat an ashtray. She’d lit a cigarette, set it in the tray, and then seemed to have forgotten it. It burned regardless, arabesques of smoke ghosting upward, each subsequent arc of grey following the next as if playing catch-as-catch-can to the ceiling.
‘What happened, John?’ she eventually asked.
Harper did not respond, neither moved nor spoke.
‘John. Tell me what happened.’
Cathy leaned forward for a moment, and then leaned back once more. She seemed effortlessly assured, confident in everything she did and said.
Harper looked at her for some little while before speaking. A faint smile played around the corners of his mouth. ‘I was wondering about something,’ he eventually said. Strange, but his voice did not sound the same. Sounded like some part of him had been left behind somewhere. He figured sometime, soon perhaps, he would have to retrace his steps and find it.
‘Wondering?’ Cathy asked. ‘Wondering what?’
‘Whether everything that Frank Duchaunak has been telling me is true, or if he’s one half-crazy motherfucker.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘That my father is involved in New York’s criminal underworld. That Walt Freiberg is his right-hand man. That there’s a guy called Ben Marcus who seems to control some part of New York’s territories, and there’s going to be a war between him and Walt.’ Harper paused for a moment, turned and looked towards the window, turned slowly back and looked at Cathy. ‘And,’ he added quietly, ‘I have been wondering about you.’
‘About me?’ Cathy asked, a flicker of curiosity in her eyes. ‘I’ve told you about me.’
‘I wouldn’t say that you’ve told me about you at all.’
She laughed briefly. ‘Sure I have . . . about what happened with Ben Marcus and your father—’
Harper shook his head. ‘You didn’t tell me about Diane Sheridan or Margaret Miller—’
‘Oh, come on!’ Cathy exclaimed. ‘Who the fuck told you about that? The cop? Did he tell you about Diane Sheridan and Margaret Miller?’
Harper nodded. ‘He did yes. He told me they were aliases you used.’
Cathy smiled, nodded her head. ‘He was right.’
Harper frowned. ‘He was right? You used those names?’
‘Sure I did . . . and I seem to remember using the name Lauren Briley. I think I even used the name Veronica Lane one time, like a play on Veronica Lake.’
Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. Why would you have reason to use different names?’
Cathy shook her head. ‘You really are straight out of the woods aren’t you? You really don’t have a clue about the kind of life I’ve led.’
Harper said nothing.
‘I’ve been a hustler of one kind or another my whole life, John. I’ve danced in sleazy bars, I’ve escorted Japanese businessman in Vegas. I’ve served cocktails to society widows, ferried trays of warm beer to slot-machine junkies in Atlantic City. I’ve seen every corner of life from the bottom up and the top down. People like me live four or five lives simultaneously. You lose a job in some place, you disappear for three months, you go back with different make-up and a different name and no-one asks any questions, you get my drift?’
‘And you’ve been arrested?’
‘Sure have sweetheart . . . arrested, charged, arraigned, bound over, spent three or four nights in the holding tank more times than I care to recall. Even been driven to the state line of Texas and politely asked not to come back.’
Harper was smiling. ‘You’re shitting me.’
Cathy shook her head. ‘Do I look like I’m shitting you?’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Right. What possible reason could I have for telling you anything but the truth. I don’t have anything to prove to you, and I sure as hell don’t feel there’s any need to have you think of me as something other than I am. I’ve pretty much done everything you can do apart from hook for a living—’
‘Hook?’ Harper asked, even as it dawned on him what Cathy was saying.
‘Hook, right . . . like be a hooker. Jesus, you really are a little naïve aren’t you?’
Harper raised his band. ‘I’ve had three or four conversations with Duchaunak, and each time I’ve come away with a very different viewpoint about everybody I know here in New York, even people I don’t know—’
‘What has he told you? What has he told you about the people here in New York?’
‘Christ, loads of things, all manner of stuff, and I really don’t know whether to believe any of it or not.’
‘Such as?’
‘He’s never said anything direct . . . he never does. He makes inferences. He implies something, and then when I try to pin him down to something precise he says he doesn’t know.’
‘Which doesn’t seem a very substantial way of going about things, if you don’t mind me saying.’
Harper nodded. ‘It’s like trying to catch a smoke ring. He said something a while back, something about my mother having committed suicide. I was told she died of pneumonia, have always believed that, and Duchaunak implied that she committed suicide.’
‘And did she?’
Harper shrugged. ‘I went to see Evelyn and asked her about it.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She confirmed it. She told me that my mother committed suicide because it was the only way she could escape from my father.’
Cathy Hollander looked at Harper for quite some time. Thirty seconds, perhaps a minute, and then she rose from the chair and walked towards him. She sat down on the bed beside him.
‘What else did he say?’ she asked. Her voice was gentle, sympathetic almost.
‘He said that my Uncle Garrett, Evelyn’s husband, the one I found dead, the one who shot himself in the head—’ Harper turned and looked at Cathy. He was very aware of her closeness. ‘Duchaunak said that such a suicide could very easily have been murder.’
Cathy was nodding slowly. She placed her hand on Harper’s arm; he was intensely aware of the pressure it created.
‘What else?’ she asked.
Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t remember. So many things . . . so many different things. Some of them he said like they were facts, other things like they were possibilities. I got confused . . . so confused.’
Harper felt Cathy pulling at his arm. He felt himself losing his balance as he sat there on the edge of the bed. He went sideways, just a few inches, but he came to rest with his head against her shoulder. He could smell her perfume, feel the sensation of her hair against his cheek, and for a moment he believed that he’d not been so close to a woman for as long as he could recall. He opened his mouth to speak again, to say something, anything, as if he felt
he should continue talking to justify her gesture of empathy and consolation.
‘Ssshhh,’ she whispered.
Harper fell silent. He could hear her breathing, feel the beat of her heart. He felt her hand in his hair then, her fingertips grazing his cheek, and for a moment he closed his eyes.
‘You need to come and see Walt,’ she said. ‘You need to come and speak to Walt . . . Walt will tell you the truth about all of this, John. Walt knows everything that happened, and what Frank Duchaunak and Evelyn have told you is only the half of it.’
Harper turned slightly, once again felt her very real warmth and closeness.
Cathy moved her shoulder slightly and Harper eased back. Their faces were almost touching.
‘I don’t want—’ Harper started.
Cathy reached up her right hand and pressed her finger to his lips. She shook her head slowly. ‘Don’t think,’ she said. ‘Don’t talk . . . no more questions, okay? You’re going to get dressed and we’re going to go see Walt, and then things will start to make sense.’
Harper nodded, closed his eyes for a moment.
Cathy Hollander kissed his forehead. ‘It’s going to be alright,’ she said. ‘Trust me, John, it’s going to be alright.’
Harper looked up at her. He felt her nose graze his cheek. He moved his head slightly. He felt her tense up, just a fraction, something almost imperceptible, but she did not withdraw. John Harper swallowed. His throat was tight. It was difficult to breathe. He raised his hand, felt it travel in slow-motion, and then he held his palm against her face. He moved forwards, felt her lips against his, and for a heartbeat they were connected. Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, he sensed her inhale and flinch. Just like that. She pulled back and his hand was no longer touching her face.
‘No,’ she said. ‘John . . . no . . .’
‘Yes,’ he whispered, and leaned forward once again. Their lips met, this time with greater pressure, and when he opened his mouth slightly he felt her yield in return. He reached behind her, held her against him, and then she started to struggle, raised her hand and pushed against his shoulder.
‘No, John!’ she snapped, and moved backwards. She stood up suddenly, and it seemed she would lose her balance.
