“Okay… I’m thinking, give me a second.”
He felt impelled to fill the silence with explanation. “For various reasons, I don’t have the money myself. I can’t get it until next week.”
There would be few papers on her desk, a desk made of chrome tubing and glass, perhaps. Cigarette in hand, breath smelling like death, masked by the smells of soap, shampoo, cologne. Something made of hammered gold around the ever-tanned skin of her neck. Oh, he had fucked her and she had tightened and squeezed herself around him at the right moment, fucking back at him—these were the things he wanted never to remember, these were the things he would forget when he was back with Janice.
“Ten thousand?” Cassandra’s deep, velvety voice mused, having found the answer. “I can lend it to you.”
“You can?” Again, as in their first meeting, he felt she had been waiting for him to lunge forward, into her grasp.
“I’ll bring it over tonight. You make some dinner in that kitchen I like so much, and I’ll bring you ten thousand bucks. Okay? I have to get back to my meeting.”
He hung up and stared through the phone booth glass. Down the hall, a silhouetted mass of jurors herded out from one of the courtrooms. Hours passed in this terminal dead zone, punctuated by the occasional crowded explosion of TV camera lights, a moving, yelling serpent with wild bright eyes and boom microphone antennas that squeezed from courtroom to elevator. He stood up and started to move, feeling suddenly that he had walked hundreds of miles down these halls, worn out too many shoes carrying the file folders of Philadelphia lives that fed the machinery.
“Mr. Scattergood!”
A figure hurried through the shadows toward him. It was Miss Donnell, the Inquirer reporter. She stopped and moved close to him. They stood in a dark corner, almost conspiratorially.
“I can’t—” he began tiredly.
“One question,” she said in a low voice. “Just one.”
He stared exhaustedly at her, his silence an assent.
“After the first nine-one-one call, the police took over an hour to get to Whitlock’s apartment, right?” She whispered her words.
His mind was too numb to consider exactly how he should answer. He admired her resourcefulness. She was a few days behind him, no more, and maybe they were on the same side.
“They were late. They didn’t respond to the first call when Johnetta Henry was in trouble. I’m not saying it was purposeful, I’m just saying it happened,” she said. “Right?”
Outside the courtyard windows, snow danced madly in all directions, confused by the drafts caught within the four walls. Flakes of white adhered to the crevices and ledged surfaces. Down the hall, policemen rocked on their heels, passing duty, chopping the time down until they were free of this dark, large place. He looked into the reporter’s eyes and nodded, just perceptibly.
THE MEN OUTSIDE A CHURCH soup kitchen shook their arms and stomped their feet, all lost in a blizzard tonight, with the new skyscrapers disappearing within the low white pall. The temperature was dropping, with snow expected to fall most of the night. The Mayor, eager to prove his compassion, had ordered the police and social service organizations to sweep the streets and put the homeless in the municipal services building for the night. There, amid desks and filing cabinets and protected by a duty of cops, they could sleep in warmth. And tonight Janice would light the kerosene heater next to her bed and the soft color would flicker across her face as she slept. He could imagine this quite clearly, having seen her sleep in front of the fireplace in their house. That kerosene heater worried him. It could fall over and spill fire across the floor.
Tonight, too, in search of warmth, he would take the subway. He descended the stairs, the cold following him, invading him. He moved more quickly and dropped the change in the slot, pushed through the turnstile, boarded. A group of gangly black youths got on, biker caps and big sneakers, ghetto boxes, pulsing rap music coming from a Walkman—maybe young Carotherses in the making, maybe harmless kids. Thank God for the SEPTA transit police. The subway car flashed through the tunnel with a rackety, tubular velocity. The other commuters seemed mesmerized by the jarring roar; some folded their newspapers, some smoked illegally, tapping the ashes to the floor, while others simply stared into space, lids half-shut, mouths open, oblivious to the recurrent rumbling wind-whipped roar. Peter, doing his best not to think about anything, especially his wife, turned his head in time to see a train pass on the other side; it was identical in every detail to his own, and the blurred gallery of faces could well have included his own.
Then he was home. He checked the basement door and all the first-floor windows, running on the adrenaline of fatigue. Maybe he should have the locks changed, upgraded to Medeco, maybe install a security system. Motion detectors on all the floors. Cassandra was coming over; what did that mean? He inspected the backyard for footprints with the flashlight, finding only the tiny forked marks of some hungry bird. But somebody could have gotten in, somebody could be watching him, maybe even the police. Though they made mistakes sometimes, the police were actually pretty sophisticated at undercover work. Cassandra was coming, he’d get the money. He needed to tell somebody why he was fearful, test reality with somebody he trusted. Nobody at the office. Needed to call his mother, find out how she was. But he was angry at her, both of them, too angry to call. Why had he left his files out at the office? No, that was okay, that showed people he was not suspicious, did not fear that they would be tampered with, inspected. He pictured Hoskins waiting until everyone had gone home and then quietly looking in Peter’s desk. Would he find Vinnie’s phone number in the Rolodex? Hoskins was smart enough to realize that if Peter meant to conceal something, then he would leave the files out. The awareness of another’s awareness of you. No, he thought, that was silly, Hoskins had a million other things to think about. Like Berger, who acted stranger every day, picking and scratching at his nose even. Could he talk with his father about this? Perhaps, but that would only confirm his parents’ conviction that helping Janice had been the right thing, just what he didn’t want. My God, the woman is having lunch with some well-heeled banker or executive. Who else would take her out to lunch there? Some old guy who smiled too much and endlessly flattered her—ah, that was okay, he wanted Janice to feel good, he really did. He wished he’d complimented her more. But she was susceptible to the charms of money. Not that he blamed her for it. Some old guy who would take his time, just move in inch by fucking inch. His chest hurt when he thought of that. An accepting father figure—some women were made helpless by it, craved it. Maybe more of a threat than a young stud like John Apple. Maybe John Apple somehow knew Robinson’s older brother, put him up to the breaking of the padlock in the basement. He was sure something was going to happen, that things were connected in some way, some pattern, that he was on the brink of understanding. Maybe Vinnie knew the Mayor. Unlikely. Vinnie was more likely to know Hoskins or somebody who knew Hoskins. Vinnie had police contacts all over the city. Everybody knew everybody, and somebody had broken into his house once—when were they coming back? Maybe he should have bought the gun that morning. There you are asleep and a man is in the room and he kills you while you are asleep and you never know. Then he drinks a beer from your refrigerator and leaves. It could happen. There was no food in the house. No way could he make dinner for Cassandra; he’d order out for Chinese instead. Perhaps the gun nuts knew something he didn’t. How was that possible? He was an Assistant District Attorney in the homicide unit in the D.A.’s office of the country’s fifth-largest city. Of course he knew the world was dangerous, but dangerous, he’d always thought, for other people. Not him—the world is not dangerous for a healthy, well-educated thirty-one-year-old white man who stands six-two. That was true, wasn’t it?
He called the Chinese place, told them what to deliver. The Chinese in America were getting rich, they and the Koreans, leapfrogging over the blacks. Johnetta Henry and Darryl Whitlock had been moving out of the dangerous world, moving
up and out, toward money and education and professional work. Then Carothers came along, and whoever else had been in that apartment. It was time to get all the relationships straight. He sat in the kitchen, making notes. Where does the sad man fit in, he wondered, the one he’d seen outside the coffee shop? Who is he? One of two men who knew who Tyler was, knew how to dangle him before Mrs. Banks. He reminded himself to ask Cheryl Yeager the next day to look for Mrs. Banks in Tupelo, Mississippi. The sad man was crazy or confident enough to threaten Peter, if only with his eyes. Maybe the man was unrelated to the Mayor. Maybe Carothers was a slick liar and had a pile of cash somewhere and Stein was going for the money, setting him up, using an everyday prison rumble to sell a story. Carothers could even be fooling an experienced defense attorney like Stein. Yet, Peter had to admit, Carothers’s story held together and had the stink of truth. But why hadn’t the police told him that he was the father of Johnetta’s son? Such a fact would tie Carothers to the murders more concretely. Peter could have a detective look into that, find the hospital records, but then he would have telegraphed his knowledge of Carothers’s paternity. The cops who escorted Carothers might or might not be connected to the Mayor’s network, and this was true too of the prison officials. But he had to assume that the Mayor’s people would be right behind him. There were so many questions: Why had the relatives of Whitlock hated Johnetta Henry so much? Why did she represent such a danger to them? How did one penetrate the secrets of a family? Families, especially the damaged ones, adhered to a certain logic, which either kept them together or ensured their destruction. Peter couldn’t just go out to West Philadelphia and start asking around. A white guy in a suit standing under the elevated tracks at the corner of Fifty-second and Market was helpless in a situation like this, the fluke of Mrs. Banks’s appearance notwithstanding. As a prosecutor, he usually interviewed the witnesses the police developed, in his office. Why had Stein and Carothers come forward so quickly? Stein could be planting the seeds of doubt in Peter’s mind in order to undercut the whole prosecution. Maybe Carothers really had killed his old girlfriend—gone over to celebrate, taken her out to party, and she’d told him to leave. Maybe he had been jealous—there was no doubt that he was violent. Whitlock would have been confused or angry if he had come home and found Carothers standing in the doorway to the bedroom, with no sound from inside indicating that Johnetta was all right. They could have gotten into an argument. That could be it, that could be the truth. But he doubted it.
The bell rang, startling him, and he opened the front door an inch, feeling the air.
“I’m here!”
Cassandra, cloaked in an immense black mink, swept in, her heels clicking on the floors, and before he could shut the door, she gave him a long kiss on the mouth. He smelled perfume. Cold fur touched his skin.
“Hi,” she whispered. “Your private banker arrives.”
He pulled back into the warmth of the house. Cassandra’s lips were strangely red. She had probably changed from work; her dress was cut deep and tight. Tightly circling her waist was something made of brass and bone.
“I really appreciate this,” he apologized, already erasing the ashy taste of Cassandra’s tongue from inside of his mouth. “I happen to need cash for tomorrow and I don’t have it—”
“No need to explain, Peter.” Cassandra looked appreciatively at him. “I think we’re finished with these explanations, don’t you?”
She handed him her fur to hang up; it was thick and exceptionally heavy. How Janice would love such a coat, despite her protestations that she didn’t want one, didn’t believe in killing animals for warmth.
“Well—I do appreciate it. Were you able to draw on your account at work?”
“I keep a small safe at home.”
“Ahh,” he said, wishing he knew why.
During dinner he told her about the Carothers case and took satisfaction in her pleasure in hearing the inside account. Despite his eager audience, he remained careful, however, to omit any suggestion that he was circumventing Hoskins.
Then Cassandra presented dessert. “This is a complicated recipe,” she announced. “Each step is simple, but you have to do everything in the right order.”
Yes, he thought, half listening to her, he needed to complete a sequence of events from Carothers’s arrival at his apartment to the moment he was arrested. Compare the police events minute by minute with the Carothers version, find the holes.
“Hey,” he said as Cassandra spooned out some heated concoction of pudding and pie, “that looks good. But I should tell you that I need, in not too long, to get some work done.” “You’re forgetting one thing.” Cassandra smiled, brandishing the pie knife. It flashed in the light. She possessed a crumbling beauty. “You’re forgetting why I’m here.”
Her presence in his kitchen seemed absurd.
“No-oh, I’m not. You came over to lend me some money. Which reminds me, I’ll pay you back, with interest, of course. I’m selling some stock, and—”
She lit a cigarette. “You don’t have to pay me back.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
The room was quiet. Cassandra’s presence pushed at him, drove him toward another mood.
“But you do need to do something for me.”
The pie was on the plates, nobody looking at it.
“Name it,” he said. “You’re doing me a hell of a favor.”
“Take me to bed tonight.”
“Ha—come on.”
She said nothing, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe.
“You’re paying me ten thousand dollars to take you bed?”
She looked at him. He laughed too loudly. “Cassandra, there are ten thousand guys in this town getting drunk in bars now who would happily pay you.”
She shook her head ever so subtly. He sensed an unnatural determination in her, a potent, controlled rage. “I scare most men, Peter. That should be clear.”
The tendrils of smoke curled from her nose, lifting, spinning, weaving, above her head.
“Yes or no, Peter.”
“I need the money, but—Jesus, what does that say about me?”
This seemed of little consequence to Cassandra. She shrugged. “You’re the one who needs the money. Loans must be repaid. Here’s a chance to pay off your debt immediately.”
He pictured Vinnie’s fat, expectant paw open before him. “I’ve gotten very big, “ Vinnie had said.
“Why are you doing this? You don’t need to do this. Cassandra, I’d rather—assuming you’re not playing some joke on me—I’d rather we just forgot it. I can get the money some other way. I—” He stared at her. “You’re kidding. This is ridiculous. You’re pissed at me—”
“What is it that makes you resist me, anyway?” she asked bitterly. “I want to test that.”
“Why? Why be angry at me? Jesus, I’m just some guy with a lot of problems…”
She shook her head, unwilling to listen to his filibuster.
“Peter, I deal with men all day long. I know how they think. I saw right away that you’re a good man. I’m not so good a woman, not really. I’d like to be happy for a night.” Her voice remained abstracted, smoke around her head. “This is a nice house, you’re a good man. I find you very attractive, the kind of man who doesn’t want the kind of woman I am, understand?” Her voice held a zombie precision. “I know men like you—you live by a certain code and expect to be rewarded. You expect that your wife will be happy with you, because she’s the kind of woman who you want to be with. But there’s something else.” She exposed again a savage smile that glinted dental work. “I know there’s something about me, something that attracts you to me—otherwise we never would have met. There’s something in me you want. You don’t want the softness.” She was right. “It’s not sex, exactly, because I’m sure you had nice sex with your wife. It’s something else.”
“What?” he said, half knowing what she meant.
She smiled and tapped her purse. “Ten thousand dollars
is nothing, Peter, nothing.” She bit on this word as she said it, for that nothingness had cost her a great deal. He could stand up and give her one swat and she would be out the door. Maybe she saw this in his face, for she sat down, stubbed out her cigarette, and put her cool hand against his cheek.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I like it when I’m in bed with you. You’re a big man, you make me feel good.” She put her arms around his neck. He felt revulsion at his own desire, but this time he knew what he was doing was beyond stupid, palpably wrong. Yet if he could stall Vinnie off long enough to finish the case and get back with Janice, then he could blow town if he had to. Vinnie’s potential blackmail was a lot more powerful as long as he was in office. And he wanted the information on John Apple. He needed to figure out who he was dealing with, competing against. Essentially, he could fuck Cassandra while being fucked by Vinnie—he wished he could just slip out and let them do it to each other, especially since the money transfer was exactly the same. Yet trying to sort out these questions—trying to get an idea if it really was worth it—was difficult. Cassandra was pulling at him, cooing in his ear, suggesting they move upstairs to the bedroom. And he had been lonely lately. She pulled a fat white envelope from her purse and laid it softly on the kitchen table. They left the dishes. In the upstairs bathroom, looking into the same mirror where he and Janice had held each other, he brushed his teeth. Cassandra removed from her purse a pill that looked like an oversized aspirin and swallowed it.
“What is that?” he asked tightly.
“A pill.”
“No kidding.” He imagined punching her.
“I call them fun pills. Everything slows down, feels better, deeper.”
“Well, I’m tired, so don’t expect too much.”
She turned off the bedroom lights, whispered to herself.
“What?” he said irritably. “What did you say?”
Then, long minutes later, in the dark, Cassandra pulled him toward her, forcing him close to her.
Break and Enter Page 31
