The Havana Room

by Colin Harrison

  Allison slumped forward and fell against me. Despite myself I held her. "I kept looking at it," she said. "Then I ate it."

  She wept against my chest. Yes, Allison Sparks, hard and tough and rotten, sobbed against my chest. "Jay was dead, I thought you were dead, you had foam in your mouth, and there was that Lamont guy, he was dead, too, and I panicked, Bill. I was so upset about the girl and I understood why Jay did it, why he— I wasn't angry with him anymore, it was just so sad, so terribly sad, and I wanted to just die, to die there with him."

  "So you—?"

  "I took the fish and ate it and Ha yelled at me and he dragged me down and stuck his fingers down my throat and I fought him and hit him and he wouldn't let me do it, Bill, he took the spoon and shoved it down my throat and made me vomit."

  She collapsed against me again. I had eaten the fish of my own accord, but I had trusted that it was a benign portion. And it had not been, not quite— or just barely? But Jay's portion had been poisonous. Had Ha meant to kill him? Why? Because of his betrayal of Allison? For bringing trouble to the steakhouse? Or maybe a portion of the fish just right for a big man of Jay's size would have been lethal for Allison, and she'd realized this. I'd never know.

  I left Allison there, collapsed against the wall in the meat locker, and found my way back upstairs, through the kitchen and out of the restaurant. I could not resist one more peek into the Havana Room, which, I now saw, had been renamed the Flower Lounge, and when I came to the door, I conjured the room for myself— the mahogany wainscoting, the black-and-white tiles, the volumes on the shelves— and there I stopped. I could hear the clever voices of the Women in Dialogue group and I realized it'd be best for me never to go down the stairs again.

  I turned toward the exit, and it was at that moment that the elderly literary gentleman I'd seen twice before arrived, dressed in an excellent suit. Sober, he was quite the distinguished lion.

  "I'm giving a talk," he announced, assuming I'd recognized him. "I'm expected."

  I noted the haughty gray eyebrows, the lifelike teeth. "You're the guest speaker?" I asked.

  He was in a hurry. "Yes."

  I pointed at the Havana Room door. "You've been down there before."

  "Yes," he answered, "and I see they finally abandoned their silly little charade."

  I couldn't smile. My mood was not good. I pushed out through the heavy front door. If you live long enough in New York City, there are places you avoid, and now the entrance of that steakhouse is one of mine.

  * * *

  A week or two passed, and I was happy to be buried under paperwork at my new job. More than happy— relieved. Tuthill remained a stupendous rainmaker and the young men he'd hired thrived in the new business. He and I laughed a bit privately, older men knowing how younger men were going to make us rich. And we would be rich, or rather he already was and I would become so, because he told me that first I would be his partner and we'd build from there. It was a new cycle, a new season, a new chance— something that the city gives you from time to time. It was even better than that. Judith called to say she'd be coming to town with our son in the next month.

  Meanwhile, Jay Rainey's estate would go into escrow. He had no registered will, so the court asked me, as his last lawyer of record, if I would dispose of the estate. This would be a lengthy process, and when I called Martha Hallock to ask her who his nearest living relative was, she said, "I am."

  "What do you want me to do with the money?"

  "I want you to sell that building."

  "And the proceeds? How can I send them to you?"

  She coughed. "I don't need the money. Give it to the land trust out here. They buy open spaces and preserve them. Several million bucks will go a long way."

  I thought of Jay's boyhood out there, in those open spaces, and this seemed a kind of fitting memorial to him.

  "Also give some to the family," Martha Hallock told me. "Give half."

  "The family?"

  "Herschel's widow," she said. "Take out your fee and give them half of the rest."

  I called Mrs. Jones and explained that a very substantial sum was coming to her. She was gracious. "Our family lost one of our boys a little while back," she said.

  "I'm very sorry," I replied. And I was. I could have told her that the reason H.J. was dead was that she had enlisted him in her effort to get compensation for Herschel's death, that her judgment had been wrong, but then again, her cause had been just, as had H.J.'s, and neither of them had imagined that his fate would come down to a piece of fish served in a steakhouse by an illegal Chinese immigrant. No one could have imagined that, and so I repeated my condolences and gently hung up.

  * * *

  I waited for the police to call. Try as I might, of course, I could not escape the fact that I knew how certain crimes and murders had been committed. I told myself that clearing up these cases wouldn't bring back any of the dead, would only endanger me and others. Yes, I absolutely was thinking of myself. I can't deny it. But I knew too that if I went to the police, one question would elicit ten others and within a few days Sally Cowles would be drawn into the investigation, and if that happened, she would know that the man who had touched her ear in the limousine had been her father and now was dead. And David Cowles, the man who had clothed and fed and cared for her as his own, would be revealed to himself, to the world, and to Sally as not her father. A child would lose her father, and a father would lose his child.

  No, the police did not call, but I was not yet free. I felt infected by a splinter of dread, a nagging sense that one thing remained unresolved. And then, finally, I got it, I remembered.

  In the plastic bag of Jay Rainey's effects, which I now kept in my office safe, there was the HAVANA ROOM matchbook. To the best of my knowledge, Jay had been in the room only twice, once when he did the real estate deal and the last time. I did not remember seeing him pick up a matchbook during the first visit, and except when I briefly left the room to read the contract, I was there every minute that he was.

  Remembering all this, I opened my safe, the combination of which was Timothy's birth date, and retrieved the matchbook. It hadn't occurred to me before to open it, but now I did—

  — and what was there was not proof, not exactly, but it will have to do. One match had been torn out of the book. Jay had lit a match and dropped the matchbook into his pocket. You could surmise that he looked around the Havana Room and saw three dead men and his own seemingly loyal lawyer unconscious (foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling) and wondered what lay in store for him. After all, he had just said goodbye to his daughter, presumably forever, and he had not told her who he was. This was an enormous blow, but it was followed by the crude map Poppy had drawn, which showed where his mother had been interred all those years ago— which told him that she had, in all likelihood, died the very death he had narrowly missed himself.

  I assert that this is quite enough to kill a man, yank all hope from his heart, especially one who knows himself to be already doomed. Jay's long chase was over; there was only now the waiting for death, the slow sink toward asphyxiation. So he made a symbolic gesture, a grand one, even— except that no one saw it.

  In the Havana Room, one could choose a Cuban cigar, and if the tobacco was excellent, the smoke thick and sweet and beguiling as it drifted past the mahogany wainscoting and oil paintings up to the pressed-tin ceiling, then it was also true that this particular act could kill a man such as Jay Rainey, especially if one brought the smoke in deep and held it, bit shut the mouth and squeezed tight the nose until the long-tormented and fragile bronchial tissue spasmed and swelled, so much that within thirty seconds or so it did not matter if Jay fell over, gasping freely, eyes bulging, throat ribboned in strain, face a red rictus of depletion. No, it did not matter by then. He dropped heavily to the floor; the cigar fell away to be unknowingly swept up later by Ha; he rolled, he gasped, and suffered there on the black-and-white tiles of the Havana Room. A human being with a very low FEV can drop int
o acute respiratory distress quite rapidly. Unconsciousness occurs as the oxygen content of the blood plummets, the heart pumps rapidly, trying to save itself, thereby consuming what oxygen is left, and all the bodily functions collapse. The linings of the lungs fall into what is termed "enzymatic cascade." Within five or six minutes the brain is saturated with waste chemicals and profoundly damaged; death ensues soon thereafter.

  Yes, knowing what I know about my former client Jay Rainey, and considering that matchbook with one torn match stub, which I still possess, it is my opinion here and now and forever that he quickly took his own life before it was taken from him slowly, and I would be very hard pressed not to see his gesture as paradoxically self-affirmative, a certain gift to himself even, but no small tragedy for those few of us who knew the man, however briefly.

  * * *

  Judith had said she'd be staying in a midtown hotel, and would call when she and Timothy arrived. I tried not to expect anything but the worst. "It'd be nice to feel the city around me," she added, and I thought I heard a wistfulness in her voice. "Timothy wants to see you, so much."

  When she got in, I waited for her call. I knew she'd be nervous, as would I. Finally, the phone rang in the evening.

  "I want to see you," I told her.

  Judith didn't respond to this directly. "So much has happened," she finally said.

  I had to agree with that.

  "So you're working these days?"

  "I recently took a job with a new firm," I told her, making it appear more substantial than it was, and Judith made a sound of surprised appreciation.

  "But it's not a situation where you end up with $852 million," I added.

  "Yeah, well," she sighed. But she didn't elaborate.

  I tried to think of something to say.

  "You know, Bill," she began again, "basically I freaked out."

  "Right."

  "Are you seeing anyone?" she ventured.

  I waited to answer this. "Yes," I finally said.

  "Oh," she responded, a little flustered. "Do you mind— I mean, it's not my business, Bill— but do you mind telling me who you're seeing?"

  "I don't mind."

  "Well… who?"

  "You," I said. "I'm seeing you. Tomorrow, at 3 p.m., in the tearoom of the Plaza Hotel."

  Judith was pleased to hear this, I could tell. I still knew her, still heard everything in each breath. "Good… that's good," she answered, and I thought to myself that it might be very nice to see her, to look her in the eyes, to find her in the bustle and hurry of the city, to pick her out of the crowd and to stop in front of her— and embrace.

  And I was right. There they were the next day, coming toward me. Judith walked resolutely, I could tell, and Timothy had a baseball glove on his hand, the one I'd sent him, and was tossing and catching a ball. I stood to greet them. Judith's body felt familiar. So did Timothy's, though he was much taller. I crushed him to my chest, as Judith watched. It'd be a matter of forgiveness, on all sides. Maybe it wasn't likely. Maybe it was beyond us. But maybe it also wasn't unthinkable. Things stranger than that have happened, after all, things much stranger than that.

  Acknowledgments

  Each book brings me greater awareness that I have been helped by many people along the way. Their gifts vary— from time to thought to encouragement to unalloyed faith to rhubarb cake— and each gift, in its way, was crucial to the slow making of this book. I wish to thank: Lynn Buckley; Charles Church; Mark Costello; Jill Cross; Kris Dahl; Brian DeCubellis; Jim Dillon; Janet and Don Doughty; Jeremy Epstein; NanGraham; Sloan Harris; Kathryn, Sarah, Walker, and Julia Harrison; Dan Healy; Mike Jones; Larry Joseph; Abby Kagan; Christopher Kent; Naomi Kristen; Sarah Knight; Al Kulik, M.D.; Jud Laghi; Susan Moldow; Spencer Nadler, M.D.; Aodaoin O'Floinn; Rich and Nancy Olsen-Harbich; Vince Passaro; Joyce and Rose Ravid; Tom Schindler; Lynn Schwartz; Earl Shorris; Charles Spicer; and Scott Wolven.

  How an editor helps to bring forth a novel from a writer is intimate and mysterious. I am fortunate to work with one of the great editors in all of publishing, John Glusman. His questions were catalytic, his suggestions perfect, his reservations wise. John's gifts are in this book, too.

  A Note About the Author

  Colin Harrison's previous novels are Afterburn, Manhattan Nocturne, Bodies Electric, and Break and Enter, which have been published in a dozen countries. He and his wife, the writer Kathryn Harrison, live with their three children in Brooklyn, New York.

  Table of Contents

  Lynn Buckley