The Monkey Rope

by Stephen Lewis

  “I think I’ll just have a cup of coffee. And then I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Oh, that sounds serious, counselor. What should we discuss? The weather? The virtues of breast-feeding? You know that’s overrated. In fact, it’s a real pain in the ass.” She shifted the baby to her other breast. “It’s about time for Jenny to switch to bottles, don’t you think?”

  He struggled for a response, and then gave it up.

  “Lois, I mean, how can you just sit there and talk to me about breast-feeding versus bottles?”

  She offered a brilliantly cold smile.

  “So, what the hell, what’s the big deal? We got it on last night. Does that mean I should have a glow in my eyes this morning? What are you complaining about? You got paid, you passed Go and spent the night on Park Place. Don’t be such an asshole!”

  Seymour poured himself a cup of coffee and sat back down at the table.

  “You’re right. I guess it doesn’t matter, after all. You were just my client’s way of making my fee. Let’s say,” he looked for an amount that would hurt, “a fifty dollar retainer. It’s not much, but probably all the poor bastard can afford.”

  She raised her hand from the baby for a second, and then brought it back behind her head before she let it relax to her side.

  “Is that what the son-of-a-bitch said this morning, that he had sent me to you?”

  Seymour nodded.

  “Don’t believe everything he says, you should know that by now. And don’t underestimate either of us, especially me.”

  “Little danger of that.”

  He finished his coffee and sat across the table from her. She looked at him as though he were a female friend who had just dropped by for a morning visit, two housewives ready to talk about babies and grocery bills.

  She shifted in her seat, and reached for a pack of cigarettes from the table. He fished in his pocket for a light, but she indicated she didn’t need one. While still cradling the baby, now asleep, in one arm, she turned the pack over with her free hand and slid out a cigarette. Picking up a book of matches, she bent one stalk down, and lit it herself.

  “You never know when you’re gonna need a light and not have a man handy. You know what I mean?” she laughed.

  He studied her face, waiting for another change in the shifting surface: the seductive temptress who aroused him, the street hard hustler whose brittle smile repelled all contact, the nursing mother absorbed in her baby, the old friend with only his best interests at heart. None of them were real, but like a wanderer in a carnival hall of mirrors, he continued to look for the source of the illusions.

  “Let me ask you a question,” he said. “One that goes back to the old days.”

  She frowned, but he needed to try to elicit an answer, or failing that, a response that would bring her out.

  “Do you remember telling me about a ring?”

  She narrowed her eyes as though concentrating, but then she shook her head.

  “A pearl ring?” he prodded. “One that you had seen in a jewelry store window?”

  “I don’t think so.” She smiled brightly. “Were we going to get engaged? With a pearl ring?”

  “You were intrigued by its color.”

  Recognition flashed in her eyes.

  “Oh, that. Funny how I remember telling you I wanted it. But I said a lot of things in those days. For a certain effect. What of it?”

  “Only this.” He recognized that she would not offer him the response he wanted, but if he couldn’t pierce her surface, perhaps he could peel it back a little. “Whatever effect you intended, I took your request, pardon the phrase, to heart.”

  “You always were the romantic.” Her lips curved between a smile and a sneer.

  “Right. But here’s the point. I mentioned it to Junior.”

  She beamed.

  “Of course. You two were such buddies, kind of blood kin, your blood anyway.” She paused. “Now let me guess. He said that if you had the balls you’d get it for me, steal it if you had to. Right?”

  Seymour nodded. Maybe she knew after all.

  “I’m guessing, of course,” she said. “Junior has always been shy about talking about you and him. But I do know him. And you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Let me, see. He laid a macho trip on you and you rose to the bait.”

  He permitted himself a half smile, sensing that he almost had her trapped—the arrogant mouse nosing at the cheese, confident that it will beat the steel trigger.

  “Yes,” he said. “And what else do you guess?”

  She furrowed her brows, and looked at him through half opened eyes.

  “I don’t know. That’s as far as I can go. I don’t remember getting the ring. So your better sense must have won out.”

  He shook his head.

  “No. My better sense was out to lunch. We went after the ring.”

  Her face darkened.

  “You mean that time.”

  He nodded.

  “Jesus,” she said, her voice soft in disbelief, “I never took you for such a fool. Or him. I always thought he just hit some bad luck. But this does make more sense. That you were involved.”

  “Right,” he said. “Now you’re beginning to get it. It was almost like he knew we’d get caught, like he wanted us to.”

  She jumped.

  “So he could save your ass. Even the score. For the cherry bomb.”

  “Exactly. And here I sit.”

  She recovered and turned sultry.

  “And is that all?”

  He considered leaving it like that, for payback, but he relented.

  “No, not only that. Of course, for you too.”

  She tried to hide her relief behind a hard smile.

  “More that than the other, if I’m any judge.” She nudged his foot under the table. “Junior blew it away, and I made love to it. What could be simpler than that?”

  “Nothing at all,” he said. The door opened, and Lois turned to Junior.

  “Our counselor, here, was just saying that all he had to do was get you a job, and that’ll be that.”

  He followed her eyes to the doorway where Junior had appeared. He was carrying a bag of groceries, from which he pulled out a six-pack of Michelob.

  “Better than my usual brew, but I thought I should get something special. In honor of the occasion.”

  “What occasion?” Seymour asked.

  “Well, fuck it, it’s not every day a boy gets a new daddy.” He turned to Lois, “Right, momma?”

  Lois forced a laugh. “Sure, Junior, whatever you say.”

  Junior twisted the cap off a bottle and handed it to Seymour. The bottle was cold, and vapor rose from the open neck. He threw down a mouthful, and it felt good.

  “That’s right, drink up, my man. We all got to take good care of each other now.”

  Seymour finished the beer and got up. The room was warm, and a dizzying blend of traffic noise and children shouting came in from the street through the open door. He felt the blood drain from his face for a moment.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “Daddy’s got to go to work. He’s got to see what he can do to get junior a job.”

  Junior’s laugh spilled out in a spray of beer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Don’t make it anything too tough,” he said, “because I’ve been out of the job market for a very long time.”

  Seymour smiled and turned to the door, but Lois caught up with him before he could leave.

  “Thanks for everything,” she said loudly, and then she brushed his ear with her lips. “I just want you to know that I really am grateful. Not for him, for me,” she whispered.

  * * * *

  The house was surprisingly unpretentious, the smallest on a block that backed the ocean beach. When Seymour had found a listing for Schotelheim in the phone directory giving a street address in this private community, he had imagined the old lawyer’s house to be grand, something in keeping with his
estimation of the man. But the house he now approached through a tangle of weeds and marshy grass that had overgrown the front walk was little more than a summer cottage. A mosquito buzzed around his head, and he swiped at it. To his surprise, he felt his palm graze the insect, and the buzzing stopped. He stood quietly for a moment, but he heard nothing.

  “Very good,” a deep voice offered from the doorway. “But I’m afraid if we sit out back to enjoy the breeze off the water, you’ll have more of that kind of work than you bargained for.”

  They settled for the back room of the house, and sat across from each other in worn but comfortable easy chairs that flanked a fireplace. The other walls in the room were lined with shelves that sagged beneath hundreds of musty looking books, and that part, at least, coincided with Seymour’s imaginings. The surf roared in at them through the windows on either side of the fireplace, and when it receded it was replaced by the pinging of insects against the screens.

  “I like this room best in the winter,” Schotelheim said, “because then I can get a good fire crackling, while above it I can still hear the ocean.” He glanced toward the window. “When Marta was alive, we’d walk that beach just about every morning, all year round, and the winter was always the best.” His eyes drifted for a moment, and then focused on Seymour.

  “Well, my boy, you haven’t sought me out here to listen to me reminisce about my wife or to share impressions of nature. And I have to be careful, you know. Like all old people living alone I tend to make every guest compensate for all those who haven’t visited by listening to a monologue that is not of the slightest interest to him. You had better keep me on the track.” He laughed, his bass voice filling the room. “How are you getting on?”

  Seymour took a deep breath. “I’ve decided to strike out on my own.”

  He waited as Schotelheim processed the news, recognizing that the old man saw the iceberg beneath the tip he had revealed.

  “In fact, I already have my first client. You might say he was kind of imposed on me. I think you’ll understand after I tell you the circumstances.”

  * * * *

  A moth had made its way into the room and banged against the inside of a lamp shade, fluttering from side to side but unable to find the way out.

  “I feel something like that moth,” Seymour said. “Trapped, and about to be fried on the bulb. I know that this arrangement with Junior was not established correctly. But I also sense that my hands are tied, that O’Riley has me in a box”

  “Not only the prosecutor, if I have understood you correctly. In fact, he is the least of the your problems.” Schotelheim had listened silently to Seymour’s story, and encouraged by his concern, Seymour had told him more than he had intended, more than just the immediate problem, something of his past relationship with Junior as well. He had almost said more, but stopped short of recreating the scenes of the past night.

  “You know,” Schotelheim said, “that there is nothing I can suggest that will help you. You already have stated the legal situation, quite accurately. You have asked me whether you should undertake an arrangement that places you in a rather bizarre guardianship role.” He paused, and then spoke very distinctly. “Your legal exposure is nil. There is no way you can be held responsible for Junior’s actions, even were he to assassinate the Pope while you were walking together down Fifth Avenue past St. Patrick’s. Your moral exposure, on the other hand, is very grave indeed. But that is a matter for you to decide. As you knew, before you came here.”

  “I guess I did, but I needed to hear somebody else say it.”

  “Yes, and now I have. I can only wish you wisdom in your choice. And, such as it is, my help if you should feel you need it again.”

  Before he said good-bye, Seymour walked onto the beach with the old man. They stood for a few minutes, just listening to the roar of the ocean.

  “I don’t know if it will help,” Schotelheim said, “but I can tell you that once I was in a box as you describe.”

  “And?”

  The old man shrugged, as though a weight from a long time ago still pressed down on him.

  “I did what I had to do, as you have.” He turned toward the shore.

  Seymour gave voice to a thought that had been forming during the whole conversation.

  “You might not understand this, sir, and I mean it as a compliment, but I feel as though I’ve been speaking to a figure in an old print I have hanging on my wall.”

  Schotelheim raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s a print of ancient rabbis, arguing the Talmud,” Seymour added.

  The old man seized Seymour’s shoulders and squeezed with unexpected strength.

  “Would that I had their wisdom,” he said softly. “I would die a happy man.”

  Chapter Three

  The ring of the phone broke into Seymour’s thoughts and he waited impatiently for Dorothy to pick it up. With a start, he realized that he was sitting behind the huge, scarred oak desk he had just bought for his new office in a converted warehouse on Smith Street, just a short walk from the court building on Schermerhorn, and that if he didn’t pick up the phone, nobody would.

  O’Riley’s voice snaked through the receiver.

  “How’s our boy doing?” he asked.

  “Our boy is just fine. He’s working here in this building. As a custodian.”

  “What!” O’Riley’s voice rose. “Perfect. Couldn’t be better. I was afraid you’d get him something too cushy.”

  Seymour picked up a newly sharpened pencil, held it between his fingers, and snapped it in half.

  “Look,” he said. “It was my understanding that you’re out of our lives now. You’ve got what you wanted. You’re ahead in the polls.”

  “Never far enough.” O’Riley chuckled. “Anyway, I’d like to ask you a favor.” He paused, but Seymour did not reply. “After all, we are on the same side of the law, aren’t we? I would like, since we are dependent on electronic media, to send over my media crew, at your convenience, of course, for a follow-up. You know, our chap pushing a broom, looking earnestly into the camera, earning an honest dollar, and as happy as he can be to be able to make a living by the sweat of his brow.”

  Seymour rolled the two pieces of the pencil across his desk top and lined them up so that the break was scarcely visible.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said slowly. “If they show up, I’ll make sure they hear and see things that will cause this whole affair to blow up in your face. Maybe Lois in her hooker’s clothes with a screaming and dirty baby on her hip. You’ll have to manage without us.”

  Seymour imagined the prosecutor’s expression, perhaps just a pull on his ascot before he continued.

  “You may be making a mistake, a very big mistake, my lad,” he said. “Somebody in my position can be of great assistance to you or, more to the point, an even greater hindrance.”

  “Thanks for the advice, but I guess I’ll have to take my chances.”

  “Just think about it. You know where to reach me.” O’Riley’s voice disappeared in the click of the receiver.

  It was less than a month since his conversation with O’Riley in the restaurant on Mott Street. In that time, he had accepted guardianship of Junior, resigned his job, borrowed five thousand dollars from his brother Sammy as start-up money for his own practice, and found this office, and along with it, a job for Junior, who now filled the doorway, leaning over his broom, a pile of dust and scraps of paper at his feet.

  “I thought you would have been gone by now,” Seymour said.

  “Overtime,” Junior smiled. “You know these honest wages don’t stretch too far.”

  “Yes, but they’ll keep us both out of trouble.”

  “Right you are,” Junior smiled. “But say, you don’t mind if I skip your office this time, seeing how you’re still working, and besides there hasn’t been much traffic in here.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but instead pushed his broom up the hall. He stopped every few steps t
o make sure that he was leaving the floor clean behind him. He was doing this all for Seymour’s benefit, as though they shared a private and ridiculous joke.

  A few moments after Junior disappeared, an attractive woman, tall and elegant, knocked on the open door. She was wearing a white linen dress that set off her deeply tanned skin, and a bright blue scarf that picked up the color of her eyes.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for a Mr. Seymour Lipp.”

  “You’ve found him,” Seymour said. He noticed that the scarf was held in place by a diamond ring through which the ends had been drawn.

  “Thank goodness,” she sighed. “I’ve been looking all through this building. I passed by this office before, but there was no name on the door, and it was closed, so I went upstairs, downstairs, everywhere. I was just about to give up when I met that,” she paused, “custodian, I guess, although he doesn’t look like one.”

  She spoke with the ease of a prep school education, just a hint of a lisp, but each word distinct.

  “Nor work much like one,” Seymour said.

  She seemed to consider for a moment.

  “A man like that,” she said, “should have no trouble finding more suitable employment.”

  “Maybe so,” Seymour replied quickly, as he pictured Junior stuffed into a chauffeur’s uniform holding a limousine door open for this young woman, “but he’s going to have to stay where he is for a while.”

  The woman’s face registered a question and Seymour covered the awkward pause.

  “Well, why don’t you come in, and tell me what I can do for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  Seymour started to object, fearing that he had insulted his first walk-in client, but she smiled.

  “I mean, all I want is the key to the warehouse space upstairs. The landlord said you had it.”

  “Of course,” Seymour said. He took the key out of the top drawer of his desk. “He left it with me for Mrs. Levine. That must be you.”

  “Mrs. Levine,” she corrected, “with a long i, like in wine, we like to say.”