‘Hey,’ I say, setting my shopping down and offering him my hand. ‘Name’s Otto—’
He smiles. A pleasant smile. ‘Hey, Otto. I’m John. John Patrick Kavanagh.’ And he takes my hand and shakes it firmly. ‘What’ll you have?’
I note that he’s drinking a Coors Lite. A lager, by the look of it. I nod towards it.
‘I’ll have what you’re having.’
He looks past me. ‘Sure … Joe! Another Coors!’
And so our friendship begins. And within half an hour any doubts I had about the man are gone. He no more works with Kolya than I do. In fact, he’s a lawyer, and that accent in his voice that I couldn’t place is from Illinois, from downtown Chicago, to be precise, where he works in corporate law. When I ask what he’s doing in New York, he laughs and, drawing from his cigarette, tells me.
‘I’m attending subcommittee meetings of the NAIC. That’s the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. But in my spare time I’m visiting the Museum of Modern Art. Oh …’ And he leans towards me, lowering his voice confidentially, ‘… and cranking a woman named Patricia. She’s from Chicago too. Moved out here after her divorce.’
By ‘cranking’ I assume he means having sex. And for some reason I think of the woman in the apartment across from where I’m staying and a cloud falls over my face, which he sees.
‘Hey, buddy. What’s up?’
I tell him what I saw, and he takes a long draw on his cigarette while he mulls it over, then, nodding slowly to himself, meets my eyes.
‘You know what? I think you were right not to get involved. This is a hard town, Otto, and there’re some hard people out there. You cross them and you’ll end up dead.’
I can believe that. Only now that I’ve had a few beers, I feel like telling him more. Telling him all of it, in fact. Only then he’d think I was insane. That I’d escaped from some asylum. And then I’d be alone again. And I don’t want to be alone. I realise that now.
‘I’d better get back,’ I say. But I sound only half convinced. There’s part of me that wants to stay here and get drunk, and Kavanagh, realising that, buys me another drink. And another. And all the while he’s telling me all about what’s been going on – as he sees it – as if I’ve spent the last ten years on the dark side of the moon, which is near enough the truth – and I begin to get a picture of this time and place. And there’s yet another part of me – the part that is Reisende, time agent through and through – that takes all of that raw information and makes a pattern from it. A gestalt.
And then – and who knows how it came about? – I’m saying goodbye to Kavanagh in the snow outside the bar, shaking his hand with my one free hand, the other clinging on to my groceries, then watching him as he disappears into the night, like a spectre. Or like some figure from a dream. And I return to the building where I’m staying and unsteadily climb the stairs back up to the unlit apartment on the eighth floor where I have washed up, like a sea-sculpted spar from some shipwrecked vessel.
And DeSario?
Of DeSario there’s no sign. Not that I expected anything. Because I know now. There is no DeSario. That’s just a name. A peg for my imagination. And all of this is a construct, to keep me busy, guessing, running about like a hamster in a cage. Going nowhere fast. All for Kolya’s sick amusement.
And, locking the door behind me, not bothering with the lights, I throw myself down on the big double bed and weep once more. For my girls. And Katerina. And because, despite all of Kavanagh’s kindness, I am alone in this alien place.
321
I fell asleep, then woke, gasping, the apartment in darkness, the timer on the bedside alarm showing it was just after five.
The dream in my head was still fresh, still raw.
I had been watching them die, one by one. Bound hand and feet, my mouth gagged, I had been forced to witness it all, while beside me, gripping my arms, keeping me upright, even as my legs gave way, was him.
Kolya. My enemy.
A dream? It didn’t seem so. No. It had felt too real, too awful to be other than real. Not here, maybe, but somewhere in Time.
Barefoot, I went through to the kitchen, where I filled a kettle and placed it on the hob to heat. And, as I stood there, so the daylight leaked slowly back into the world.
I had stopped trembling. Only I knew this couldn’t go on. My fear for them was slowly sapping me. Destroying me. Another week of this and I would be fit for nothing. And maybe he knows that. Maybe that’s why he’s trapped me here.
I make coffee, then I make plans.
The bag of groceries is where I left it last night, on the floor by the door. I pack them away, then, taking the notepad and a pen, sit on the sofa, meaning to sketch out a plan of action. Only what’s to be done? Unless Kolya takes pity on me, I’m here and here I’ll stay. Until the sun grows cold.
Even so, I open up the pad and begin to write, noting down everything that happened, looking to see whether I’ve overlooked something. Something obvious.
An hour later and all I have is a series of sketches of my girls, hand drawn from memory – Martha and Zarah, Natalya, Anna, Irina, and, of course, Katerina. And I wonder why I am tormenting myself. Why, when there’s nothing I can do, I am wasting my time making plans, because we are beyond plans, beyond all practical measures. No. There is nothing I can do. He doesn’t even have to watch me. Because there is no way out. No trapdoor exit for me to find. Why, he didn’t even have to kill me, just leave me to this torment, a member of the living dead.
I’m on my third coffee when I realise that there’s a question I haven’t answered yet. What does Kolya want? Having effectively ruled me out of the Game, what will he do next? Where will he strike? And why? Not that, if I had the answers, I could do anything about it. Yet I still need to know.
I make breakfast, the big Magnum on the worktop beside me. In reach. Just in case.
I’ve just finished and am clearing up when the phone rings, startling me. I go across and stare at it, then pick it up.
Nothing. Or rather, the sound of emptiness itself.
Kolya?
The line goes dead.
Today, I think. It’s going to happen today.
Only that’s my gut instinct, and I’ve ceased trusting my gut instinct. Look where it’s got me, after all!
I spend the day doing nothing. Watching the breaking news. Walking about the flat, like the lost soul that I am. Dozing, on and off.
And so the day passes, and the dark comes down again. And I venture out, to buy myself a six-pack and a microwave meal of some kind.
Only, passing Joe’s Bar, I realise that I don’t want to go back to that apartment. That I can’t face that sense of overwhelming futility I have when I’m there. And so I go inside, and there, at the far end of the bar, sitting there as if he’s been waiting for me, is my new friend Kavanagh.
And what if he has been? What if he is Kolya’s man?
I go across and sit beside him at the bar, and we share a beer or two and watch the baseball on the TV – the Boston White Sox, his team. And oddly enough, his simple kindness raises my spirits, and when I leave him, I feel a different man to the one I was barely two hours before.
Only they’re there again, the two men I’d seen before, harassing the woman on my landing. I halt on the landing below, listening, wondering what’s best to do, then press on, climbing the last two flights.
One of them turns to stare at me as I come to the top of the stairs, challenging me, his scowling face prodigiously ugly, his dark, Italianate eyes threatening me to make any kind of comment, and I know for a certainty that these are mob men – gangsters, as they call them here.
The other one’s busy, his face pressed up close to the woman’s face, and from what I hear he’s giving her two days to come up with what she owes them. Or else.
I skirt them, shaping my body language to make myself seem apologetic, when all I really want to do is knock their heads together and throw them down the stairs one a
t a time with my boot planted up their arses.
And the woman? Our eyes meet briefly, even as I unlock the door and slip inside, and I see, in that single glance, how desperate she is, how terrified. Only I can’t help her. Because her problems aren’t mine. And even if my own cause is quite hopeless, I don’t want to throw it away. Not for someone I don’t even know. Because I’d never forgive myself.
Only I feel like I’m the lowest of the low for not intervening. As if I’ve let her down badly, and I find myself watching her through the peephole even as the one I didn’t see, the one who had his back to me all the while, reaches out and, taking the skin of her cheek between thumb and finger, tweaks it hard, making her cry out.
‘Two days,’ he says for emphasis. And then they’re gone.
322
I sleep poorly and wake to find myself covered in a sheen of sweat. It’s not that the flat is too warm – it’s New York in November, after all, and I’ve not got the heating on – but I’m burning up anyway. I shower and then dig out some more of DeSario’s clothes, more convinced than ever that the guy simply doesn’t exist.
Which is when I get the phone call, asking for him. Leaving him a cryptic message, which I write down there and then.
‘Tell Lersch that Chinese is fine. Will meet as scheduled.’
For all I know this could be perfectly innocent, only I don’t think so, and, sitting down in front of the muted TV, I begin to sketch out everything that’s happened to me that doesn’t make sense. I head the page up ‘Loose Ends’, but after a while I realise I need a bigger piece of paper, so that I can make some kind of chart, and I go out to get some – and some more groceries.
And come back to find the front door open, and no sign of it having been forced.
Nothing seems to have been disturbed, but someone has definitely been there. DeSario? If so, then why didn’t he stay? And why leave the door open? Unless it’s to let me know that I’m being watched.
I go through the yellow pages and find a locksmith. He’s there in half an hour to change the locks. I pay him off and pocket the keys, and as I do, so I note that the door to the woman’s apartment is open several inches, though as soon as I look across, it eases shut again.
I wait for the man to leave, then go across and knock.
She doesn’t answer at first. I knock again, and, after a moment, the door opens just a crack, just enough to let me see one of her eyes.
‘Yes?’
The tone’s suspicious, the accent vaguely Russian with a New York twist.
‘You okay?’ I ask. But I already know she isn’t. I saw it in her eyes the other night. She’s terrified.
The door opens a little wider. She’s a fairly ordinary-looking woman, and I wonder what kind of trouble she’s in with the mob. Has she borrowed money and can’t now pay it back?
‘I …’ She hesitates, then clearly changes tack, her eyes looking away from mine. ‘Look … there’s nothing you can do, okay?’
But her eyes say otherwise. She wants me to rescue her somehow.
‘Those guys …’ I begin, but she shakes her head.
‘Don’t get involved.’
It’s then that I see them. Two kids. A boy and a girl, the eldest ten at most, behind her in the doorway to the bedroom. They too look terrified.
Hostages to love, I think, and experience a moment of pure dread, thinking of my own and wondering where they are and what was happening to them right then; seeing them as I’d seen them in my dreams, bound and bloodied, slaves to that cunt Kolya.
‘Look, I …’
Only I don’t get a chance to say anything more. The door slams shut.
I stand there a moment, wondering whether I should knock again, then turn away. None of my business, I tell myself. Only I don’t believe that. In other circumstances I’d teach those bastards a lesson. In other circumstances.
323
‘Hey, Otto … how’s tricks?’
I put my carrier bag down on the floor by the bar and reached out to take Kavanagh’s hand, realising, as I do, that I’ve rarely seen him off that bar stool, not even to go to the ‘can’, as he calls it. It’s like he’s glued there, just as his wallet is glued to the bar itself. Only there is a difference this time.
‘I’m fine.’ I indicate the glass in front of him. ‘What’s that you’re drinking?
Kavanagh smiles. ‘That? That’s a kir on the rocks with a twist.’
I raise an eyebrow and he explains. ‘Basically, it’s a glass of white wine with a splash of Chambord – a blackberry liqueur – and a twist of lemon peel. With ice, of course.’ He sits back and takes a small sip. ‘It’s all the rage.’
I turn, looking to the barman. ‘Two more of those, thanks, Joe.’
And while he sets to making them, I plant my butt on the bar stool and smile at my only friend in this corner of the multiverse.
‘Busy day?’
Kavanagh’s smile broadens. He’s clearly been cranking his friend Pat all afternoon. ‘Thing is,’ he says, seeing that I’m following him, ‘it’s a bit like fucking an inflatable love doll.’
We both laugh at that, but I can’t entirely hide my awkwardness. It’s not that I’m prudish, it’s just that I can’t make light of the subject. That would be a grave disservice to Katerina and what I have with her. Fucking? No. We never just fuck. It’s more like some passionate ritual, a losing of ourselves. And talking about that isn’t for bars like this.
Which is why I’ve not spoken of it to Kavanagh. As far as he’s concerned, Katerina does not exist. Nor does a single one of my daughters. No. to him I’m a single man, a divorcee, and I work for one of the big corporations. I’ve kept it vague, and he’s not pushed for more. Which is good. We stay within our comfort zones, and that’s fine for both of us.
Joe brings the drinks and I slip a ten-dollar note onto the bar in front of me, following the local custom. We clink glasses, then drink.
It’s good. I can see why it’s so popular.
‘How’s that woman on your landing?’ Kavanagh asks.
I consider that a moment, then shrug. ‘It’s a tough one. By the look of them, they’re gangsters. Mafia, I’d say. The other night, after I’d left here, I had to squeeze past them on the landing. They were threatening her again and she looked terrified. I spoke to her this morning but she didn’t want to know. She’s got two young kids, however, and they look terrified too. The mobsters … they warned her she’s got two days.’
‘Two days?’
‘My thinking is that she owes them money.’
‘Ahhh …’ And from the sound of it, I’d say our friend Kavanagh has had similar problems in the past.
‘The thing is, I don’t know quite what to do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Whether to get involved …’
‘With the Mob? Get serious, my friend. They’re unforgiving. Besides, violence isn’t the answer to this. Why? Because they’re better at it than us.’
It’s hard to argue with that. Violence probably isn’t the answer. It’ll simply draw attention to me. Like that time with Katerina on the river. But I’m out of patience. Just three days trapped here in this cul-de-sac of Time and I’m already climbing the walls.
‘You ever killed a man?’ Kavanagh asks, his whole being suddenly serious.
And I want to say yes. Hundreds of them, in dozens of different fashions, and that it’s what I do and what I’m best at. Only I can’t tell him that, so I shake my head and lie.
‘I’ve got a gun,’ I say and make to show him it. Only, seeing what I’m pulling out of my jacket pocket, he leans across and pushes it back down again.
‘Not here,’ he says, his eyes registering an element of shock. He leans closer, lowering his voice. ‘Is that loaded?’ And when I nod, he whistles.
‘Look,’ he says, after a moment’s thought. ‘This is not something I’m comfortable talking about in public. You say your apartment’s nearby?’
‘A hundred
yards.’
‘Then let’s go there. You got some beers?’
‘A six-pack of Coors.’
‘Then we’re set. And Otto …’
‘Yes, John?’
‘Keep that thing in your pocket, will you? Till we’re safe indoors.’
324
Back at the apartment building, there’s no sign of our Mob friends. So we go inside, into DeSario’s, where, emptying the chamber, he examines the Magnum, nodding his approval. Only then, to my astonishment, he presents one of his own, setting it down beside mine on the tabletop. They’re like twins. Two wonderful examples of Smith & Wesson’s finest craftsmanship.
‘Courtesy of Bell’s Guns, Franklin Park, Illinois,’ he says and laughs. ‘I don’t often carry it. But I had a hunch that I might need it today. Guess I was right, huh?’
I don’t know what to say. And then I do.
‘I thought you were the one who said violence would solve nothing?’
‘You ever found that to be true?’ he asks, and we both laugh, a relaxed laughter this time. The laughter of friends.
‘Look,’ he says, after a moment. ‘I’m going back to Chicago in two days’ time. My woman’s phoned and all’s well. But in the meantime …’
I’m not precisely sure what he means, nor how he proposes to go about helping the woman across the landing, but we’ve at least evened-up the odds a bit. Two guns against what? Thirty? Forty?
Anyway, they’ll not be back for another day, so we can relax a little, and formulate our plans.
‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he says, walking from room to room.
‘It’s not mine. I’m borrowing it. Belongs to a guy named DeSario.
At that, his eyes fly open. ‘You’re kidding! Joe DeSario?’
I’m shocked. ‘You know him?’
‘If it’s the same guy. I don’t see him often, but … well, he’s a lawyer, too. Works from an office on Fifteenth Street. He wants to write thrillers. That is, if it’s the same guy.’
The Master of Time Page 3
