by A. E. Roman
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“If it doesn’t work, it’s not the Project. It’s you.”
“What do I have to do to speed this process along?”
“All you must do is,” she said, taking my hand, “is follow the calling. Follow Father Ravi’s guidance.”
She placed my hand against her breast. “Do you feel my heart beating?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s biology. That’s science. TSP is not a religion; it’s science like the beat of my heart. Father Ravi teaches that no matter can be created, therefore no matter can be destroyed; that’s the first principle of The Superman theory. You are eternal. Isn’t that great news?”
“Wonderful,” I said, my hand against her chest. “With that much time on my hands, maybe I can finally learn how to play the accordion.”
“Aw, sweetie,” said Kirsten and brushed my face with her pale hand. “In TSP, we believe that anyone with the right attitude, the right support, and perhaps most importantly a sense of hope for the future of mankind can learn and succeed at anything. We see it every day.”
“Well,” I said, taking my hand back, “I will try not to let you down.”
“How does working again with joy and having a healthy and happy social life and successful career sound like to you?”
“Not too shabby. I could use some of that.”
“You’ll get some of that,” Kirsten said and batted her blue eyes and played with her long blond locks. “And more. You’ll sing and dance and fall in love and make more money and buy an apartment and meet some financially secure friends and do whatever you please.”
“Whatever I please?”
“Well,” she cooed, “as long as it ain’t . . . isn’t Kryptonic. But anything goes in a committed relationship.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” she said and leaned into me again.
“Maybe we can work on that.”
“You remind me of a boy I fell in love with once,” she said. “I like your face.”
She pinched my cheek again.
“Yours ain’t too shabby, either,” I said and pinched her back.
“So,” Kirsten said. We were alone. At the desk. Breathing. Heavy.
“So,” I whispered. “What’s next?”
She leaned a long way over the reception desk, her lips open and beckoning, and that’s when I kissed her.
I stared into Kirsten’s pale blue eyes. I kissed her again a long time.
It’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.
“Kryptonic,” she said, and pulled back. “But nice. I wish I could take you home to Queens with me.”
“Me, too,” I said as she came from behind the desk and pushed me gently toward the door.
“Maybe we could go upstairs?” I whispered. “Maybe we could find some room?”
“For brokenhearted lovers?” She smiled.
“To cry away our gloom,” I whispered. “I get so lonely, baby.”
“Mmm,” she moaned.
She went in for another kiss, eyes closed, lips puckered.
“No!” she said, pushing me away. “Not here, bad boy. I’ll call you tomorrow. Good night, bubba.”
Improvise, Santana!
She shoved me toward the closed green entrance door and forced herself to turn and walk away from me. I did not exit. I watched her back as she went past the cuckoo clock and I tiptoed, sneaking quickly up the red-carpeted spiral staircase.
I waited on the second floor for the elevator.
Within minutes somebody was in it and heading down to the basement.
I took the stairs.
I opened the door to the basement and as I got into the hall, from behind me, I heard: “Hola, pal.”
I turned and couldn’t believe my eyes, though I knew it was true and had almost been expecting him. He wore blue jeans and his upper torso was so muscled that his pectorals bulged through his blue button-down shirt. His jet-black hair was long but perfectly cut, not in a barbershop way but expertly manicured by a hairstylist.
“Hello, Joey.”
“You’ve met my associates,” Joey said, grinning. “Kirsten, Solange, and Larry.”
S of the African accent.
Solange.
I nodded at Solange the African, Kirsten of Arkansas, and her brother Larry of the interminable “man,” who stood beside Joey. The whole gang was there. Kirsten looked at me apologetically.
“Why the hide-and-seek?” I asked him.
“It’s more like a game of tag,” said Joey. “I tagged you and Pablo and a few other friends to go places and see people I couldn’t get near but I don’t always know who’s on my side so I have to be careful who I tag and when.”
“You can’t put all your tags in one basket, man,” said Larry Smith.
“Until you know for sure who can be trusted, brother,” said Solange.
Kirsten Smith just nodded.
“Sorry about the lack of confidence,” Joey said. “We had to know for sure that you were on our side and staying on our side.”
“What makes you think I’m staying on your side?” I said.
“I’ll take it from here,” Joey said and pulled me down a white corridor.
Larry Smith smiled and jumped clumsily onto the elevator with the others. Solange nodded. Kirsten pressed the close door button and blew me a silent kiss and said, as the elevator door closed, “Sorry.”
I nodded. Kirsten of Arkansas and her brother Larry and their friend Solange the African were helping Joey, just like Pablo. They all were, I thought, friends, true friends, as me and Joey walked through an endless maze of pipes and wires and vents to a small office marked JANITOR, and in smaller letters, Pablo Sanchez.
Joey opened the door and flicked on the light switch. The room was full of comic-book posters.
Joey threw down the keys. “Somebody’s trying to frame me.”
“You think?”
“It feels like I’m not getting any closer.”
“Where’s your wife?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who killed Esther Sanchez?”
“Some kid named Yayo, right?”
“That night with Esther. You were scheduled to hide out in Pablo’s apartment. You called. I answered the phone. That was you, but before that, play it back for me.”
“The night Esther was killed, I was supposed to show up there, like you said. Pablo was going to hide me. I never showed up because I got word that Doyle and his boys were asking questions in Washington Heights. Pablo’s a good friend. I’m only sorry the confusion caused by my plan on going there might have gotten his mother’s killer off and that poor sap Elvis doing some other guy’s time. Do you think I wanted to start this whole mess? Send Pablo to you? Gotten you and Kirsten and Larry and Solange involved?”
“Why me?”
“I saw your ad in the paper, months ago. Just a coincidence. I clipped and kept it. Then when everything went down, I had a hunch.”
“Which was?”
“That you were still the kid I knew growing up at St. Mary’s with Nicky and the other boys. And if you were, you would help me.”
“How have you stayed free so long?”
“I call friends I trust. I meet them at a designated place sometimes. Sometimes. They let me crash or give me money for a flop or some food. I never stay too long. I try not to call on anybody more than twice. I keep moving.”
“How long did you think you could keep that up?”
“Until I ran out of friends. As long as it took.” He smiled that brilliant smile. “I have a lot of friends.”
Something wasn’t right. Something was missing.
“Did you do anything to harm your wife?”
“What do you think I am, Chico? It’s me, bro. It’s Joey.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders, looked sincerely and hopefully into my eyes, and shook me a bit and whispered, “ ’Member?” I remembered, all the way back to St. Mary’s. Bronx rooft
ops and junkyards and water balloons and comic books and movies and stickball games and soda pop, skelsies and basketball and football on concrete, and playing the dozens-your mama so poor-your mama so dumb-your mama so-karate and boxing and telling jokes until we almost pissed ourselves, and I knew he was innocent. I just knew it.
Didn’t I?
“Help me out a little bit, Joe,” I said. “Ever since this started, my brain’s been getting banged around like a white heavyweight. Where is your wife?”
“I don’t know,” Joey repeated.
He stopped talking, and he seemed genuinely shook up.
“Tell me all of it, Joey,” I said.
“Gabby and I fought about another woman that I was seeing,” Joey said. “The day she ran away, Gabby slapped me. She had never slapped me before. We never hit each other. We destroyed things, we cried, we screamed, we meditated, we prayed but we were never physically violent, never. I slapped her back.”
“You slapped her?”
“I slapped Gabby back,” said Joey. “It was a reflex. I didn’t mean to. I’ve never hit a woman a day in my life before that. I shouldn’t have. But I did. Don’t you think I regret it?”
“What happened then?”
“Gabby went berserk. Started throwing things at me, breaking things against my back, kicked me, kicked me so hard I thought she broke my leg. I didn’t fight back. I went down. Can you imagine what she would’ve done if she wasn’t a vegetarian and a pacifist?”
“Then what happened?”
“By the time I got up off the floor she was gone. She just ran out of the apartment and I haven’t seen her since.”
I nodded skeptically.
“You’ve got to believe me, Chico. The cops took me down for questioning. Forty-eight hours later, I’m in my office, surrounded by Mara Gupta and some board members with hatchet faces. Asking what I’ve done with Gabby. I get told that I’ve been suspended from TSP. Hari suggests that I should cooperate with authorities. I’m no bobo. I get up slow, calm, say I just want to go home to Williamsburg early and make art and relax. I go home and I run out of there. I pack stuff together and get my ass out of Williamsburg before anybody can blink. By the time I got to Brook Avenue, heading for St. Mary’s, I don’t know why, but I realized that I couldn’t go back.”
“Why did you run?”
“If you had seen the way Mara and Hari looked at me. I thought these were my people, my family and friends, but they had me guilty. What would you do?”
I shrugged.
“Gabby was missing, and I was being blamed.”
“So why didn’t you stay missing?”
“I got to thinking about it,” said Joey. “I got to thinking about spending the rest of my life on the run for something I didn’t do. I believed in Father Ravi because he believed in me, as an artist and as a human being. He was like a real father to me. He was smart, an artist himself, a writer, a spiritual leader, older, wiser. I thought that the fact that I could help Father Ravi grow TSP and have new people actually believe and follow us was something special, something powerfully spiritual. I sincerely believed that the creation of The Superman Project was going to save the world.”
“What went wrong?”
“Father Ravi and I finally wrote down the Twelve Steps to Power and the Twelve Personality Defects. Before I got here no steps or principles were written down; everything was in Father Ravi’s head. It was all based on some German philosophy and some Hinduism and some Buddhism with a splash of Christianity and Islam, and I added a bit of comic-book mythology and created the Artist’s League of TSP with Gabby and Giovanni Vaninni. Then everything snowballed; we recruited fresh, new, young, energetic, and artistic members, then came generous donations and members and fellow travelers with money and more money. Then we inherited the mansion and the farm from a wealthy old couple, members who had no children, and we moved out of our dilapidated building across the street from the mansion.”
“How did you meet Gabby Gupta?”
“Gabby and I met in the Peace Corps but only started a relationship and married after I joined TSP.”
“Mara Gupta and Hari Lachan,” I said.
“It was Gabby’s younger sister, Mara,” said Joey, “who finally contacted the police about Gabby’s disappearance, Hari who suspended me from TSP, and fearing that I was slowly being framed and fearing that I would shortly be jailed, I ran. Even without a body, I feared that the circumstantial evidence could send me to jail if something has happened to Gabby. But Gabby is still alive, I swear, Chico, and the scratches on my face and domestic violence calls were caused by attacks from Gabby when she found out I had been cheating.”
“Scratches?”
“I’m not proud of my cheating,” Joey said. “I was going to step away from TSP before Gabby disappeared and they suspended me, but I have no intention of spending any time, like my father before me, in a jail cell.”
“Mara Gupta and Hari Lachan,” I said, “are taking advantage of your wife running off to take over TSP. Father Ravi is old and sick. You’re out. Discredited. Accused. Suspended. Wanted by the law. TSP needs somebody.”
Joey nodded. “The next man in line. That’s Mara and Hari.”
“Mara’s not a man.”
“Says who?” said Joey.
“Maybe your wife Gabby is cooperating with Mara and/or Hari, with or without their knowledge, by staying out of sight. Out of revenge for your infidelity. And once Mara or Hari becomes president and your career and reputation and everything you’ve worked to help build are destroyed, Gabby appears again, or not, because she’s so angry with you.”
“How do you do it, pal?”
“That’s why they pay me the small bucks,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” asked Joey, calmly.
“Police station in Astoria eventually,” I said. “You’re gonna turn yourself in to a friend of mine. Her name’s Samantha Rodriguez.”
“You sound like you think I’m guilty of doing something to hurt my wife.”
“Nah,” I said. “I just think I can help you more if you stop with the Speedy Gonzalez routine.”
The truth?
Joey told a nice story.
Nice and neat.
But it had more holes in it than the socks I was wearing.
TWENTY
The Bronx. Joey and I played a final and quick game of one-on-one basketball on Sedgwick Avenue and quit just before I sprained an ankle. I wouldn’t say Joey Valentin slaughtered me in the game, but I wouldn’t advertise the score either. Let’s just say I put up a valiant fight. After the slaughter, the wanted fugitive, wearing a Yankee baseball cap, sat at a stool next to me, exhausted, bathed in the neon lights in Mimi’s Cuchifrito, for one last meal before I handed him over to Officer Samantha Rodriguez.
James Brown sang, “This is a man’s world . . .”
“Remember you wanted to be a priest?” said Joey.
“I did not.”
“You forgot.”
“I’m no priest.”
“Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”
“That’s cute,” I said. “Now tell me about the bunny rabbits.”
“Fedco is gone,” said Joey, glancing out at the Bronx. “Alexander’s. Gone. The old Yankee Stadium. Gone. Teatro Puerto Rico is a church now or something. Remember Reggie Jackson?”
“I think he’s still alive.”
“How is Nicky? You two still in touch?”
“Yeah. He’s in Atlanta.”
“Good old Nick!” said Joey, grabbing his coffee cup with a massive hand. “I wonder who benches more?”
“My money’s on Nicky,” I said. “No offense. Do you think that any of the Gupta sisters besides Mara Gupta could be behind your wife’s disappearance?”
“No,” Joey said.
“Chase Gupta?”
“No.”
“Zena?”
Joey gave me a look.
“What’s the look?” I asked.
�
��You said Mara Gupta and then you said Chase Gupta and then you just said Zena.”
I nodded real slow because he was right. But—
“I’ll be playing the part of the detective tonight,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Joey, not letting go, like Boo on a chicken bone. “You got something going with Zena?”
I ignored the question.
Joey nodded and looked at himself in the window glass.
“Look at what they’ve done to me, Chico. How long, how far I’ve come. I’ve suffered and survived. And now this. And my poor Gabby. I loved her, Chico. I really did.”
I noted that he said I loved her, not I love her.
Who’s the detective now?
Joey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Aw, Gabby. Ever since she disappeared my teeth hurt. My head hurts. Help me make it stop, Chico.”
“I’m trying, but you have to cooperate,” I said. “Stand still. No more running.”
“You trust me, right?” Joey asked and looked at me.
“Sure,” I said. “Sure. You trust me, right?”
“All night long, baby,” he said.
Mimi came in from the kitchen, hauling a large plate piled with white rice, yucca, and fat red beans (no meat because Joey was a vegetarian now) and set it down before Joey.
Joey looked at me and said, “Is it morning already?”
I looked out into the dark night. “What do you mean?”
Joey looked at Mimi and said, “I just saw the sun come up.”
Mimi giggled, leaned over the counter, and kissed Joey’s forehead. “El mismo, Joey.”
Same old Joey.
Yeah.
Mimi went into the pocket of her blue apron and handed me back my Yankee baseball. “Dolores says it’s not real.”
“Not real?”
“Fake,” said Mimi. Mimi told me that Dolores reported her sister Maria had asked her boss Ray, who did autograph authentication, and he said that my ball was not an official major league baseball and the signature was a fake. “One more café, Chico?”
“No, thanks,” I said, examining the phony Roberto Clemente autographed ball.
