“He’ll ruin you.”
“There are concerns about his temperament, but the man does get things done. Can you get things done, Mr. Kubiak?”
“You’re sending me back to Philadelphia.”
“Mrs. Wister has another task. She asked for you specifically.”
“And if I succeed?”
“Congratulations.”
“You know, it’s me or him. We can’t work together.”
“There is only one partnership position available and we understand that it might be prickly for the person who doesn’t achieve it to remain with the organization. What to do about that will be decided once you have satisfied the dear Mrs. Wister.”
“Good,” I said. “I just hope the son of a bitch enjoys Belize.”
The mirth in Mr. Maambong’s laugh lodged like an unchewed piece of meat in my throat.
I flew up alone to Philadelphia. The driver was waiting for me at baggage claim even though I had no baggage. He took me directly to the Wister estate. The long drive leading to the mansion was dense with shadows from the sycamores. The cadaverous butler met me at the door and informed me that Mrs. Wister was waiting in the drawing room.
As I followed the walking corpse through the high-ceilinged center hall, the lines of Wisters on the wall stared down at me with encouraging expressions on their paint-daubed faces. At my first visit they had arrogantly welcomed me into their heartless little club. Then they had ignored me, their eyes searching for more interesting specimens to follow, like the overfed rodent running like an escaped convict along the painted baseboards. But now they peered down with parental pride. Look at our child all grown up, look at the man he has become. In their presence I became a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy.
“It is so good to see you again, Mr. Kubiak,” said the old lady when I finally stood before her. She was situated in her wheelchair, a blanket over her withered legs. Her lips, accordioned by age and painted a bright red, twitched into a suggestive smile. The butler stood behind her.
“Sit down, please,” she said.
“I’ll stand.”
“As you wish. I wasn’t happy with how our last meeting ended. I felt I came off ungrateful.”
“A tad.”
“It is a crime, I think, to be ungrateful for all God’s gifts, and the way you saved my grandson’s life was surely one. So I asked you here to apologize. I am sorry. And I thought it might cheer you to meet the darling boy.”
“That’s not necessary, Mrs. Wister. I hold no grudges and I need no cheering. It was all business.”
“Nonsense. This wasn’t business to us, it was much more . . . personal.” She lifted her chin and called out, “Oh, Edwin. Could you come in please for a moment?”
On cue a side door opened and a boy in a blazer stepped confidently into the room. He was about twelve, blond and whippet thin, with hollow eyes and a forehead that bulged out grotesquely. I remembered him from the photo she had shown me on a previous visit. When he smiled, it was the smile of a starving albino ape.
“Edwin,” said the old lady, “this is Mr. Kubiak. He wanted to meet you. He has been very helpful with your treatments. I brought him here so you could thank him.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kubiak.”
“You’re welcome, Edwin,” I said.
“I have a duty that won’t wait,” said the old lady. “I’ll be back in a moment. Why don’t you two get acquainted while I’m away.”
She snapped her fingers and the butler immediately started wheeling her. The boy and I watched as her chair slowly crossed and then exited the room, the door closing behind her. I looked at the boy, he looked at me.
“I’m supposed to charm you,” said Edwin.
“You probably weren’t supposed to say that.”
“Wasn’t it a charming thing to say?”
“It was, actually.”
“My grandmother said you helped me get my new kidney. Was it yours?”
“No.”
“Whose was it?”
“How is school, Edwin? I hear you’re on the water polo team.”
“I hate water polo. When they’re not looking I spit in the water bottles. You don’t want to tell me whose kidney it was?”
“The kidney was from someone who was happy to help.”
“Will he want it back?”
“No.”
“Good. He can’t have it. I like it. I like not having yellow skin. I like not having to be hooked up to that machine.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up, Edwin?”
“I want to be a baseball player but I’m not very good. I’m not even good enough to play at school. Which is why I’m on the water polo team. We are required to do some sort of athletics.”
“So if not baseball, then what?”
“My grandmother wants me to be president.”
“That’s something to strive for.”
“It is not as much fun as being a baseball player.”
“No.”
“But at least you can order people to drop bombs when you get angry.”
“There is that.”
“Maybe I could bomb my prep school.”
“That a boy,” I said.
“What did you want to be when you grew up?”
“Rich.”
“Are you?”
“I’m getting there.”
“I already am there. Or I will be when my daddy dies. He has cancer. He stays outside and paints and hopes it will go away. I don’t think it will. When he dies, I think I’ll use my money and buy a bank. I’m already rich but it would be fun to be richer. Then I could really tell everyone else to suck it.”
“By giving lollipops to all the little children, I suppose.”
“Why would I do that?”
After Edwin shook my hand with great seriousness and then excused himself, I was left alone in the drawing room. I walked around, looking at the vases, at the old leather-bound books with their uncut pages, at the gilded furniture and paintings of horses on the walls. On the leather-topped desk was an ornate silver desk set, ink pot, blotter, and letter opener. The letter opener was a dagger with the figure of a young bare-breasted woman cast into the handle. I hefted it in my hand, it was heavier then it looked. I placed it in my breast pocket in case I needed to fight my way out of that house of zombies. Through the window I saw the man in the straw-hat painting. Poor cancerous sot, caught between his mother’s murderous ambitions and his son’s hollow eyes.
“What did you think of my grandson?” said Mrs. Wister after she was wheeled back into the room. The butler had creaked when he bowed before leaving us alone.
“Adorable,” I said.
“He is quite special. His mother died young and his father dabbles, so much of his upbringing was left to me.”
“You’ve done quite a job on him.”
“Thank you. His future is unlimited.”
“I got that sense.”
“I wanted you to meet him. I wanted you to know just how special he is so you could feel good about what you had done.”
“I feel terrific.”
“I’m gratified, Mr. Kubiak. Because I’ve been thinking of what you said about how someday our donor would learn she only had one kidney. I was upset about the money at the time we talked, but later, I found myself dwelling on the inevitable moment when she discovers what has been done to her. And how easy it would be to trace her condition back to Edwin and threaten the legacy of our entire family. I find myself now to be haunted by this inevitability. The thought of it rises in me like a great wave of concern, ruining my sleep. I wasn’t born a Wister, my husband married beneath him. I was a twice-married waitress when he met me, from a common family.”
“My family was uncommonly common, too,” I said.
“So you understand. But I would do things to Mr. Wister the precious debutantes who swarmed about him dared not dream of. Things that cut so deep he couldn’t resist me. It was a scandal when we married, and my son was shun
ned by polite society. But know this, Mr. Kubiak, time gentrifies. Now I am an arbiter of polite society, imagine that, and the protector of all that the Wisters were and can become again. With my son’s illness, that hope now resides within Edwin. And I won’t have it jeopardized. I won’t sleep easy until the threat is taken care of. Do you understand what I am getting at or must I be grossly specific?”
“No,” I said. “I see it quite clearly.”
“I knew you would. I talked to your Mr. Maambong. I told him money was no object and that got his attention. He suggested another of his employees, a Mr. Preston, take over the job, but I specifically asked for you, Mr. Kubiak. I didn’t want to expose my family to another operative. And you best understand the situation, you already know the woman, and, if I may be so bold, you have almost as much to lose as we do if the truth gets out.”
“You can count on me, Mrs. Wister.”
“That is good to hear. The sooner this thing is done, the better. Every day has become torture with this expectation of discovery hanging like a sword over our heads. When do you think you could alleviate the threat?”
“Give me a week,” I said.
“And there will be nothing left leading back to Edwin?”
“That goes without saying.”
“Still, it’s better to be said, don’t you think?”
“I’ll take care of everything.”
“Splendid. And once it is taken care of, there will be a bonus for you over and above what I negotiated with Mr. Maambong. I am willing to pay for loyalty.”
“Nothing breeds loyalty like a healthy bonus.”
“I knew we would come to an understanding. Now that business is taken care of, would you like some tea, Mr. Kubiak? I could have some brought in. And cake. How about some cake? I always say in happy times all of us should eat a little cake.”
31. Room 242
Picture a motel room with a sagging bed, an old television with a greenish tint, walls covered in fake wood, the bedspread and curtain a matching pattern of vomited-up color to hide whatever stains were left by previous residents. A stray splatter on the bathroom floor, crusty streaks on the walls, a carpet moist to the touch: room 242 of the lovely GrandView Motel in New Orleans, well west of the French Quarter, the grand view being of the beauteous Tulane Avenue, with its whores and passing trucks and whores giving road head in the passing trucks. There are cigarette butts in the ashtray—some of them mine—and crap floating in the john that barely flushes—some of it mine—and syringes in the drawer—none of them mine, although the night is still young. It is dark out, and thumping rhythms pour out of passing cars, and there is a hubbub about the motel as hustler and whore start going about their businesses.
Picture me naked and sweating in that room, with a spotted water glass, a bottle of Old Overholt, and a bucket of ice from the machine. I am holding the glass and bottle both, and ignoring the television that blathers on as I go through the karate moves I once learned in college after a drunken brawl at a frat house broke my jaw.
Stomp, wave, “Hah!”
Wave, stomp, “Hah!”
Why am I going full Apocalypse Now? Because it feels like the thing to do. Every now and then the light in my room and the drone from the television draw a neighborly knock on the door. “What you doing in there alone?”
Stomp, wave, wave, “Hah!”
“Listen up, I got just what you need.”
Wave, stomp, stomp, wave, “Hah!”
“Open up the door, man, and let’s party.”
“Hah!”
“Hah!”
“Hah!”
I spill the rye on the carpet as I punch and kick and battle my singular demon, who stands before me with blood pouring down his face and dripping onto his hands, the ghost of Jesse Duchamp.
“Why do you want to know about Jesse?” said my mother in the visiting room of the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in lovely Saint Gabriel, Louisiana. Saint Gabriel, the patron saint of postal workers, was the archangel who told Mary that she would conceive a son born of the Holy Spirit. The irony would have been lost on my mother. After my meeting with Mrs. Wister, I flew right back to Miami, but upon Ubering home, instead of driving the gray Porsche to the Hyena house, I packed a bag, turned off my phone, and headed straight north and then west, pushing the car through the night so I’d make the morning visitation with my mother. It was time to get some perspective on the man whose fate was so entangled with my own.
“I’ve just been thinking about him, Mom,” I said. “I seem linked to Jesse Duchamp somehow.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re nothing like him. He was so romantic. His long hair, the way the cigarette bobbed in his mouth when he sang to the car radio.”
“The way he killed those convenience-store clerks.”
“A man is more than the worst moments in his life. Jesse only wanted what all of us want.”
“And what was that, Mom?”
“Love.”
“He wanted love.”
“Oh yes he did. He craved it, that man. Needed it like a drug, because of his problem. That was what held us together in the dark times. He knew I loved him and I knew he needed my love. Your father may have loved me, Phil, but he never needed anything other than a bottle. There wasn’t much I could give in this world, but Jesse needed them both.”
“You said he had a problem.”
“I don’t want to speak about that. Did you get the job you were talking about last time you were here?”
“I did.”
“And it pays all right.”
“Yes, it pays all right.”
“That’s good, son, because I need some money for my account. I can’t keep begging off Lana. And you never got that two thousand dollars to the man in Winn Parish like you promised.”
“I never promised.”
“Louis Boudin.”
“Like the sausage.”
“You not paying that debt cost me some additional time in this rat hole.”
“How so?”
“Well, when the Boudin girl came at me I had to do something. I couldn’t just let her slice me like a Sunday ham.”
“I suppose you couldn’t.”
“There was blood on the floor. And some teeth, too, little Chiclet teeth, that’s what she had. The meal trays here are sturdy, that’s for sure. The men stamp them out up there in Cottonport.”
“Didn’t you tell the guards it was self-defense?”
“I did, in no uncertain terms, but somehow they don’t believe anything we say. You’d be surprised, but they treat us in here like we are common criminals.”
“What was Jesse Duchamp’s problem, Mom?”
“Oh, Phil, why do you even care?”
“I just do.”
“It was sad, the way he was. It was why he drank and whored and thieved, and why he could be so brutal to me at times. He did anything he could to get right up close to it, to try to feel its power, but it wasn’t any good. He could never get close enough.”
“Close to what?”
“To love. That was his flaw. He couldn’t love. He just couldn’t. And he wanted to, more than anything. That’s why he needed to be loved so much, why he chased any skirt that would lift for him. Being loved was the closest he could come to loving. But there was something in him that was wrong. Something in him that killed the emotions. And it killed him, too.”
“You killed him, Mom.”
“He begged me to. He had been out whoring, that motel you only had to step outside your door to find them hanging around the parking lot like a herd of cats, and when he came back he was so angry at himself, and hurt, that he up and let me have it. And then he fell at my feet and hugged my knees and said he wanted to be sorry but he couldn’t be sorry enough, he just couldn’t, and while his tears washed my bare legs he begged me to kill him, begged me to put him out of his misery. Then he stood and gave me the gun and hit me again right across the face. Oh, Phil, what’s the use of talking abo
ut it? I did him a kindness and I ended up in here.”
“He just wanted to love?”
“Can you imagine such a thing? It was all he ever wanted. Money didn’t matter to him, he just needed enough to keep looking for what he never found.”
“But he found you.”
“And I loved him, Phil. And he knew it. That’s why he asked. And when I loved him most of all, that’s when I killed him.”
“It’s funny how that works,” I said.
After visiting my mother I drove down to the GrandView Motel, paid my fifty-three bucks, and was both thrilled and horrified that room 242 was available, the very room in which my mother pierced with love the head of Jesse Duchamp. The Duchamp blood had long ago been mopped up and painted over, but I could see the geography of the event as if a white outline of the corpse was painted on the rug. My mother stood here. Jesse Duchamp stood there. The bullet entered here. The blood spattered there. The body collapsed there. The blood pooled there. Exhausted from my bad karate, I took a swig of the Old Overholt and let myself fall where his body had fallen. The light of a passing truck washed across the ceiling. The carpet was wet as tears on my back.
I had gotten it wrong, all of it. I had thought Jesse Duchamp was a cautionary tale, and he was, truly, but the caution I had gotten was all wrong. His problem was not that he expressed in the real world the eternal darkness within and suffered the consequences, it was merely that he wanted the wrong damn thing. He had watched the treacly TV movies, read the greeting cards, let the cigarette bob in his lips as he sang along to the sappy love songs on the car radio. He had been fed the story that love was the highest and brightest of human emotions and he had swallowed it all, like a fool. Of course it had killed him; downing that much crap would have killed an elephant.
A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion] Page 25
