by R.J. Ellory
Me and Frank.
Me and Frank.
His eyes swell with tears.
Fuck it, he whispers to himself, and those words, almost inaudible, come back at him in echo.
Fuck it.
The Gordian knot unravelled.
Tie undone, hanging loose from his collar, his eyes bloodshot. Like the ghost of some Atlantic City poker player still haunting the tables, a player found dead in his chair, his heart collapsed from the pressure, his liver like a small, polished stone.
Feels like someone has gathered up every part of his life and then set them on fire, and he – in his desperation to extinguish the flames – has stamped everything to pieces.
The damage is broad, indiscriminate, irreversible. The damage, whichever way he looks at it, is done.
John Harper shed his jacket, let it drop to the floor. Walked like an automaton to the chair under the window and collapsed into it. He felt the chill breeze from the inched-open window beside him but lacked the motivation or will to lean out and close it.
Stayed there for a good thirty minutes, and then moved slightly to ease the pressure in the small of his back. Leaned his head to one side, closed his eyes, tried to imagine himself aboard the Mary McGregor, the breeze cutting out of Joe Bay or Blackwater Sound, tried to recall the Dry Tortugas, the footprints of turtles, the reefs, the clear water, the citrus, the coconut . . .
Remembered nothing but the tense claustrophobia of Evelyn’s kitchen on Carmine Street; how the sound of her breathing had changed as she spoke of her sister, Harper’s mother, the mother who never died of pneumonia, the mother who styled herself after Marilyn and took the shortest road away from the longest disappointment . . .
Harper made a sound. It was nothing more than a breathless sense of anguish rising from his chest, but in the solitude of that room on the tenth floor of the American Regent it was not a human sound. It scared him.
He opened his eyes. A sudden surge of energy filled his body and he rose awkwardly from the chair. He paced back and forth for a handful of seconds, then made his way urgently to the bathroom. No sooner had he flung open the door than the rush of nausea almost doubled him over. He made it to the sink before he heaved with such force that he felt something tear in his trachea. Nothing came but intense pain; the pain of emptiness, of nervous hysteria, of a man teetering on the brink of something altogether deeper than his own capacity to understand.
He believed, as he kneeled there on the floor – head down, hands gripping the edge of the sink above him – that every emotion and feeling, every fear and doubt, every hope and broken promise that he’d heard and experienced in the previous days, had finally located him.
John Harper, he of the wasted life, he of the futile gestures towards nothing of significance, had finally been discovered. This was a judgement for his life. This was the penalty for his laxity and procrastination. There was a lesson to be learned here: that life moved whether you moved with it or not. This other life, a life he’d been unaware of, had grown without him, become something that owned him, despite his absence. He was paying the price for his own shallow ignorance.
For thirty-something years the truth had been here. He had never asked. He had not wished to know. Had he been so blind as to think that it would never find him? If nothing else, Garrett’s suicide should have raised sufficient questions for him to . . .
To what? To interrogate Evelyn further? To insist the police reopen the inquest into his death?
Harper let go of the sink and sat down on his haunches. He did not know what to think. He did not want to think.
He closed his eyes tight, and for a time there was just silence and darkness. He prayed it would stay that way, at least for a while.
Dry heaving now. Duchaunak leans back and opens his mouth as if to scream, but nothing comes out. Not a sound.
Heart like a trip-hammer. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk. Head hurts. Hard to focus. Needs a drink but doesn’t dare. Long, lonely, interminable road; nothing at the end; nothing but further longing and loneliness.
He grips the cool edge of the bathroom sink. Grips it hard. Leans his full weight back and feels the thing straining at the wall. Stays like that for some time, a minute, perhaps more, and then he stands straight, looks at his reflection, wonders what it would be like to put a gun in his mouth and blow the back of his head off.
Like someone did to Garrett Sawyer at 66 Carmine.
Duchaunak turns on the cold faucet, cups his hands beneath and sluices water onto his face. His eyes sting. He keeps them closed until the sensation subsides.
He wonders what will happen. Wonders if McLuhan will call. Wonders if they’ll leave him out here on his own, forget his name, and someday he’ll be part of that great history of New York deaths: three weeks and the neighbors call someone because the smell is so bad.
Duchaunak smiles at his own wet reflection; believes that somewhere he lost it, and then – as a second thought, close behind, heel-to-toe – he wonders if whatever he lost was never really his in the first place.
‘It is what it is,’ he whispers, and then he tugs on the light cord and closes the door as he leaves.
Harper gone, Cathy Hollander and Walt Freiberg finished their lunch. As the waiter walked away, the bill paid, Freiberg leaned forward. ‘I never trusted her,’ he said.
‘Not trusting her and killing her are two very different things,’ Cathy Hollander replied.
‘That’s as may be, but if I’m leaving when this thing is done . . . if I’m leaving New York, never to come back, then I don’t want to spend the rest of my life knowing that Evelyn Sawyer is still breathing.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Cathy asked.
‘Do?’ Walt Freiberg asked. ‘What am I going to do? I’m going to wait until the dust has settled on this thing, wait until things quieten down, and then I’m going to go over to Carmine Street and shoot the bitch in the fucking head.’
‘Simple as that,’ Cathy Hollander replied.
Walt Freiberg rose from his chair and buttoned his jacket. ‘Sure it is,’ he said quietly, his voice almost a whisper. ‘It really is as simple as that.’
FORTY-SEVEN
Evelyn Sawyer had slept little since her last discussion with John Harper.
She was not a woman to introspect, to turn inward and view her motives or reasons for the decisions she’d made. What was done was done; there was little that could be changed about it now, and John Harper had in some small way chosen to walk back into this life. He could have left. He could have turned around and taken the next flight back to Miami. But no, Walt Freiberg and Edward’s hooker girlfriend had been there to seduce him with their money, their lies, the faces they wore for the world.
The truth? That truth, pure and simple, was that no-one knew the whole truth. No-one but Evelyn. And she could never have told Harper. Such a thing would have broken him.
That Sunday morning she turned from where she stood at the window near the kitchen sink. Time had moved so fast. There had been no time for anything, not for herself, not for consideration of her position, nor for any kind of resolution regarding what Anne would have wished.
What Anne would have wished. Not what Evelyn would have wished, but what Anne would have wished.
Anne was dead. Anne had killed herself, October twelfth, 1975; maybe someone had been there . . . hell, Evelyn thought, someone had been there, but Anne had brought it on herself. Everyone brings their own destiny to pass.
Even she: Evelyn Sawyer, widow of Garrett Sawyer, a widow of the war.
And now another war would come, and people would die, and the old would make way for the new, and she would more than likely be left to survey the walking wounded, the dead, the damaged. Perhaps John Harper would make it through the other side. Somehow Evelyn doubted it. John Harper had left this life. You could not leave it, and then later return and expect yourself to be prepared. You had to grow inside it, grow as part of it, and its nature had to grow within you.<
br />
This was a different world: fast, brutal, unrelenting.
This was the world Edward Bernstein had created, and though Harper was his son, would never be anything other, he was no more a part of this than his mother had been.
And look – Evelyn thought to herself – just look what happened to her. Had it not been for Anne Harper, had it not been for her weakness, then Garrett would still be alive.
‘Burn in hell,’ Evelyn Sawyer said, and her voice, there in the silence of 66 Carmine, was like the hiss of a branding iron.
She lowered her head, felt the muscles tighten in her throat, and started to cry.
‘His precise words, sir . . . no calls, no visitors.’
‘But I’m—’
‘I’m sorry sir. I cannot ignore the wishes of a guest in the hotel. The privacy of our guests becomes our responsibility from the moment they check in. I cannot put a call through to Mr Harper’s room. I hope you understand sir, but such a thing becomes a matter of the hotel’s credibility and reputation—’
‘It really is nothing more than a few words—’
‘Once again, I’m sorry sir. I don’t wish to be unhelpful, but unless there is some specific aspect of the law that has been violated I cannot override a guest’s request for privacy. Mr Harper called down this morning and stated emphatically his wish not to be disturbed. Now, if you wish to leave a message?’
‘Yes, a message . . . I’ll leave a message.’
‘Very good sir. First of all your name?’
‘Er . . . my name . . . ’
‘Yes sir, your name.’
A moment’s hesitation, and then: ‘Actually, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Sir?’
‘It doesn’t matter . . . I’m sorry to trouble you.’
‘You’re not going to leave a message?’
‘No, I’ve decided against it. Thank you anyway . . . thanks for your help.’
‘Very good sir. You have a nice day now.’
‘Yes, okay . . . yes . . . have a nice day yourself.’
The line went dead.
Duchaunak set the receiver back in the cradle. He stood motionless. Didn’t even appear to be breathing.
He thought to go there, go right over to the American Regent and demand to see John Harper. What could he say? Couldn’t say a goddamned thing. Security would throw him out. McLuhan would find out what he’d done and have him charged with harassment; either that or fire him. Could McLuhan fire him for something like that? Duchaunak believed not, but then McLuhan wouldn’t be firing him for that alone.
Duchaunak took three steps to the right and sat down in his armchair. Hadn’t slept, nothing to speak of. Had wrestled with the sheets for an hour or so and then got up, padded back and forth across the room for a while and then sat in the kitchen eating Cheerios from the box. If he’d had any sleeping tablets he would have taken some. Maybe too many.
Duchaunak smiled; wry smile, almost accepting of his own paranoia and perverse sense of irony.
Everything was fucked. That was the truth. That was as good a place as any to start.
He closed his eyes, leaned back his head, and starting to halfsing, half-speak something in a slow and mournful voice:
‘I want to be loved by you . . . just you . . . nobody else but you . . .’
After a while the light through his eyelids seemed to fade. Sleep took him silently, and he went without protest.
‘What’d they say?’
‘No visitors, no calls.’
‘No question he’s there?’
‘No, he’s there alright. Got back soon after he left us and hasn’t come out since.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘Walt—’
‘Okay, Cathy, okay. Just tell whoever you’ve got over there to let you know if he makes a move anyplace, alright?’
‘Walt, I’ve got it covered. Charlie Beck’s keeping an eye on the place. Trust me, okay?’
‘Good enough. Leave him be. Least we know where he is, right? Come on back here and we’ll go over this stuff once more.’
‘Half an hour.’
‘No problem, see you then.’
‘Right.’ Cathy Hollander hung up the phone and stepped out of the callbox. She tugged her coat tight around her throat and started walking.
Twenty yards down the sidewalk and it started to snow. Christmas was everywhere – peoples’ faces, the bright eyes of children, storefronts, grubby-faced Santas ringing bells and collecting nickels and dimes at street corners and junctions, the vari-colored lights strung from doorways and fire escapes – but Cathy Hollander saw none of it.
Christmas, right now, was the least of her concerns.
Harper did not surface again until gone three p.m.
He could not remember when he had called the desk, when he’d requested no calls or visitors. Perhaps seven, maybe eight that morning. He lay there for a further fifteen or twenty minutes before he gathered sufficient will to rise and use the john. He dared not look at his own reflection in the mirror. He felt he’d confronted a little too much reality for one week.
He returned to the bed, sat on the edge of the mattress, thought to call down for cigarettes but didn’t.
Already far beyond the point of trying to determine the truth, he felt that perhaps there was no real or specific truth. There was merely the truth of individuals. Freiberg, Duchaunak, Evelyn Sawyer, and then the truth of his father, Edward ‘Lenny’ Bernstein: the conductor, the orchestrator, the criminal.
Harper smiled to himself. It was all so much crazy bullshit. Who were these people? What the hell had happened during this past week?
Suddenly he thought of Harry Ivens, the fact that he hadn’t called the man for . . . for how many days? Yesterday, the day before? He couldn’t remember. Harper reached for the telephone and dialled the number. He sat there patiently, the phone ringing four or five times before the answer service kicked in.
‘Miami Herald . . . how can I help you?’
‘Hi there . . . er, yes . . . I wanted to speak to Harry Ivens.’
‘I’m sorry sir, Mr Ivens cannot be reached today.’
Harper frowned. ‘Cannot be reached? But I need to speak with him . . . can you not get a message through to the service desk and let him know that John Harper is on the phone?’
‘I’m sorry sir, I can’t do that.’
‘Can’t? What d’you mean you can’t? I don’t understand . . . is there a problem with him? Is something wrong?’
‘No sir, there’s nothing wrong.’ The voice at the other end smiled sympathetically. ‘It’s Sunday sir. Mr Ivens does not come in on a Sunday. I can take a message and he’ll pick it up first thing tomorrow.’
‘It’s Sunday . . .’
A pause at the other end. ‘Yes sir. Sunday. All day. Right to the very end.’
‘Yes . . . right . . . of course.’ Harper laughed nervously. ‘Okay . . . thank you.’ He withdrew the receiver from his ear, looked at it quizzically. He frowned once again, shook his head, and then set the phone down.
‘Sunday,’ he said to himself. ‘Jesus. I’ve been here a week.’
FORTY-EIGHT
Eleven minutes after nine, darkness shrouding the city.
An hour earlier Frank Duchaunak had been asked to leave by the lobby staff. He’d argued with them for a good fifteen minutes, argued with them to the point of losing his temper. He hadn’t lost it, hadn’t really created a scene. The threads that held everything together were fragile enough as it was. He knew he was close to the edge, knew also that no-one was really certain of the precise location of that edge until they went over it. Everything was catch-as-catch-can until someone was caught. No way was it going to be him.
John Harper called down for coffee, a ham and mustard sandwich, a pack of Luckies.
Hotel staff wondered who he was; why the mystery; why the cop had come late in the evening and demanded to see Harper, and yet when challenged, when asked for a warrant, some authority to go ri
ght on up to the tenth floor and disturb a hotel guest, he had backed down, been almost too polite, and then refused to say which precinct he was from.
This was New York; this was the American Regent, a hotel that retained a box of possessions left by guests that bore no description or comprehension of their use. A microcosm of all that was good and bad with the world. Such things came as no surprise, and yet still raised eyebrows, begged questions; questions that would remain unanswered because no-one really wished to know. The man on the tenth floor was Edward Bernstein’s son: enough said.
And Harper – his life broken up in pieces and scattered across New York – sat at the window and ate his sandwich. He watched the snow come down and thought of Christmas. Christmas, he figured, belonged to some other world, a world he’d once been part of, a world that continued to revolve somewhere like a carousel. He’d stepped off. How, he didn’t know, but he had, and now he could not even find where he’d alighted, let alone reverse his footsteps. What was done was done. He knew that.
Later, lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, he wondered if he would ever see Miami again. He considered it for quite some time; came to the conclusion that he didn’t care.
A week had passed, seven days; everything had changed; nothing could ever be the same. Harper wondered if he, perhaps out of desperation, out of loneliness, had not brought all of this into being. He smiled to himself. Perhaps if I sleep, he thought . . . perhaps if I sleep and dream, and wake tomorrow, I will find it has all been a nightmare.
The man he’d become was not the man who’d left Florida.
The thing that unsettled him was that such a thought brought nothing but relief.
John Harper closed his eyes, and he knew, with as much certainty as was possible, that tomorrow he would have to make a decision.
Sol Neumann stepped back from the edge of the table and glanced to his left.
‘He’s dead?’ Ray Dietz asked.
‘Deader than Elvis,’ Neumann said.
‘What was his name?’
Neumann frowned and shook his head. ‘How the fuck would I know his name? What d’you think we got here? You think me an’ this schmucko were dating or something?’
