Now I moved my hands through her hair, down her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her lips, running a finger across her top lip, right at the edge where the three different pieces of flesh met, each piece feeling two others, all slipping back and forth and across in wet confusion. I could feel the stretch in the skin of her cheek, the little ridge in the corner of her lips, the warmth of her breath through her nostrils. I understood that I, the man, was a mere instrument being played by her, the woman, and there was a great, strange freedom in this. Then she uttered a deep-throated cry, her mouth full of muffled sound, and I looked down to see her closed eyes fluttering. She arced and relaxed. Her eyes opened, unseeing, then closed.
Now she got on her hands and knees, as she likes, and after I moved around her she kept one hand on the bed and one on herself. The orgasms come easily to her—five, six, eight, nine—and I feel sometimes that I am incidental, though I do not mind. Whatever flashes through our heads—children, images of others, worries, money, memories—remains mercifully unspoken; and on this night I spent myself and then sat back on my knees, then collapsed next to her. This was that moment of falling away, when all should be safe and warm and true.
But it was not. In time I stood up and walked naked into my study, worrying whether Caroline had in fact been Lisa’s visitor that afternoon. If she was, then she was crazy and maybe dangerous. Who else would insist on an unnecessary three-hundred-dollar office consulation, then chat about Lisa’s husband and children? And who else was as beautiful as Lisa described? The idea made me sick with anxiety. I closed the door and sat down next to the phone. I might need to get Caroline off my back. I intended to tell the police about the tape but not to mention Caroline. If I did, however, she would be in a world of shit.
I called my old friend Hal Fitzgerald. As each new police commissioner is appointed, whole ranks of police department bosses suddenly advance while other ranks suddenly find themselves frozen in place. Hal had recently moved up to deputy commissioner, and at the time I had considered this a lucky thing. Now his suits were better and he had a driver and three lines into his house, one of them being the emergency line that I had dialed.
“What’s up, guy?” he said.
“Hal, I got something you want, and I suppose I actually want to give it to you, but I have to lay out some conditions.”
“Go,” he said, his tone changed.
I described the tape in very general terms, not mentioning that it showed the murder of a police officer nor that it had anything to do with a riot at Tompkins Square Park. I wanted him interested but not too excited. If I told him the exact nature of the tape, there would be a police car in front of the house within five minutes and I would have to hand the tape over or risk being arrested.
“Tell me your conditions,” Hal said, “even though I know what they’re going to be.”
“I’m not telling you where I got the tape.”
“Well, of course that could be a problem.”
“The person who had the tape didn’t know what was on it.”
“Pretty hard to believe that.”
“I’m not going to tell you. Take it or leave it.”
He was silent. He couldn’t actually negotiate, I knew. If it got argumentative, soon the newspaper’s lawyers and the police department’s lawyers would move in, discussing subpoenas and New York State’s shield laws, which are designed to protect the freedom of the press. Neither one of us wanted all that.
“My next condition is that I don’t end up testifying.”
“We might need to establish a chain of custody—”
“You guys can have experts testify that the tape isn’t doctored.”
“Maybe,” said Hal.
“The last thing is that this is my story.”
“Your story.”
“I’m asking you not to give it to anybody else.”
“Right.”
“Hal, you’re giving me that hedging tone.”
“I’m giving you that tone, yes.”
Every city official was afraid of Giuliani. Everything went up the line, maybe even this. Especially this, once they knew that a cop was the victim. “You’re going to need to check on it,” I said.
“I sure am.”
“You’ll call me?” I said.
“Soon as I can, but I got to get a few minutes with the commissioner.”
“Tonight?”
“He’s at a big Republican thing at the Waldorf.”
“Afterward?”
“Doubt it.”
“Tomorrow or so.” Fitzgerald sighed. “I’ll see how fast I can get back to you.”
“You got my beeper number?” I asked.
“I got every number on you.”
“Do me a favor, call my office or the desk.”
“Not at home?”
“I’ll just check my office. You can always call Bob Dealy.”
“Lisa doesn’t know about the tape?”
“Office.”
Where does one hide a videotape in one’s house? How about with all the other videotapes. Sally had a stack of Barney and Thomas the Tank Engine and a dozen of the Disney tapes, and I slipped The Little Mermaid out of its box and replaced it with the Fellows tape. Then I stole back to bed.
Out of the darkness came Lisa’s soft, anxious voice: “Will you tell me what it is?”
That was the question. Would I tell her? And here I rip open my shirt and show my blackened heart. No, I would not, I did not tell her; instead I muttered the lies that husbands mutter and listened to Lisa fall back toward sleep. She was tired; she had woken at five, then gone to the hospital and sewn a toe onto a hand, then seen half a dozen patients in her office, including one who was her husband’s lover, then confronted Josephine and made dinner and washed the kids, then called the dictation service, and then had sex with her husband; my wife was plentiful and knew it and exhausted herself every day. I loved this about her. But I also knew that if I waited, not long, with the winter wind outside brushing the apple tree against the window, soon she would be asleep.
And she was.
And I was not. I was awake with my secret. It was terrifying yet thrilling. A secret is the hoard inside the maze of lies. A secret paints your face into a mask, and makes you watch those who are fooled by your performance. To have a secret is slyly to learn anew the mannerisms of regular conversation, the shuffling chitchat that brilliantly conceals the screamer. A secret organizes your life. Mundane irritations become desirable; by bearing them silently you pay homage to the secret; eyes open, you feed it in the dark.
When does disaster become inevitable? Only in retrospect, of course, is the moment apparent. For me the bloom of revelation began late the next afternoon, when, with the Fellows tape in my coat pocket, I turned the corner at Sixty-sixth and Madison and saw the green-and-white-striped awning outside Caroline’s apartment building and, soaring above it, the sooted limestone confection of crenellations and balconies and fenestrated prewar delights. Ah, the magnificence of decadence. The city runs on decadence, if you think about it. I lingered on the green outdoor carpeting beneath the awning, taxis rushing at my back, and peered through the leaded-glass doors into the tiled lobby, where a cloud of pink lilies floated above a cut-glass vase centered on a Georgian end table. There sat Napoleon on a stool, frowning into a paperback mystery. I could not help but think of Caroline walking across those slick little squares, her heels clicking coolly, the pink lilies shuddering as she passed, the image of her torso reflected and distorted a hundredfold in the pineappled facets of the vase. Napoleon looked up and I gave him a nod. He buzzed Caroline’s apartment, muttered something, gave me a hateful smile. We had the quick, silent male conversation: Love ya, pal. Eat shit. I fucked her, you didn’t.
But I was not on an erotic mission, I told myself, I was here to do three potentially unpleasant things. The first was to ask Caroline if it was she who had visited Lisa in her office the previous day. If so, then we had a big problem; I would have to tell
her that I wasn’t going to tolerate any further intrusion into the rest of my life. If she continued to trespass, I might have to advise the police as to where I had found the Fellows tape. The second item involved the Fellows tape itself. If Caroline had not been the strange patient in Lisa’s office, or had been but agreed not to intrude again, then it was only fair that I inform her that I had told Hal Fitzgerald about the tape. And that I had insisted to him that I would not reveal where I found it. Without this information, it would be difficult for the police to identify the tape’s source; that same morning, before knocking out the next day’s column on Richard Lancaster’s insane diary, I’d made a point of reviewing the Fellows tape in its entirety; not only did nothing further of note happen—only a few lines of interaction—but, I noticed, Simon was never identified by name. Nor did his or Billy’s face ever appear. Billy was addressed once by his first name, but how many Williams could there be in New York? When I wrote about the tape, it was possible the police could subpoena the newspaper, but in that instance the newspaper would protect Caroline’s identity. Newspapers, even prurient tabloids owned by foreigners, still hold the line on the rights of the press. In fact, in respect to the newspaper’s management, theoretically it was I who was in trouble, because I had informed the cops about the tape before I had discussed it with the managing editor. But morally, that was an easy one; a man had been murdered in cold blood—that’s where I drew the line. The sooner the cops figured out what they could offer me by way of assurances, which would, I figured, be that day or the next, the sooner they could have the tape and start busting down doors all over the city. They would be looking for a blond guy in his thirties—God help you if you knew who he was. As for the newspaper, all we really wanted was exclusivity—to break the story, try to get a newsstand bounce, maybe ride it a few days. And that would be my argument with the newspaper’s brass; several of them may have been newspapermen once, but for the most part they were old guys who no longer had any hair on their shins or young guys with MBAs who knew more about Monday-night football than about finding a newspaper story. I’d had my discussions with all of them over one problem or another; with the old guys, you said, Hey, you remember what the street is like, and then they got a soft look in their eyes, which, as a remembrance of time past, was a measurement of time remaining—pure contemplation of death. If they didn’t remember what the street was like, then what were they doing in the corporate offices? They were paid to make the judgment calls, to massage problems away. So those guys were easy. It was the ones under forty-five who saw my salary and thought that they could hire three young general-assignment reporters for that sum, which was true. Usually I just listened to their rant and when they were done I’d ask them if they’d checked with the old-timers. Or I told them that they were in the entertainment business, and that to entertain they needed talent, and that it was my talent to feel along the margins of the city, finding stories. To do that I needed to stay tight with the cops, and if I showed my respect by telling them about the tape, then hey, there’re only about five guys in the city who hit the front page on a regular basis, including yours truly, and Jimmy Breslin is an old man. I might even have done it that morning, using the Lancaster diary that Ralph Benson had sold me. I had thrown in all of Lancaster’s language as he devolved from a jealous paranoid into a murderer. The thing had written itself, and I’d filed the column by three. Nobody else in the city would have this story. The editors loved it and were thinking about a page-one headline; something like DIARY OF DEATH. No, if there was going to be difficulty, then it would be with Caroline. I didn’t expect her to protest the fact that I had called Fitzgerald, for, like Officer Fellows’s widow, she knew what it was to suddenly lose one’s husband. On the other hand, I had done so without telling her, which was inconsiderate, any way you cut it.
The third item was the disturbing matter of Hobbs. I’d resolved to ask Caroline about the tape he wanted. Did she know where it was? If she said no, then I would repeat that answer to Hobbs. If she did know, then I would ask her to give it to Hobbs and make my life less worrisome.
All of this seemed quite logical. And why not? How easy are the lies we tell ourselves! How merry and unimpeded by the friction of truth! But if I was a fool, I was a willing fool. After all, here was a woman whose husband might have been murdered, who seemed to have antagonized a powerful global businessman, and who possessed a videotape of a New York City policeman being killed. I was sure she had seen the Fellows tape, but I wanted to show it to her anyway, and in the apartment building elevator, after an older woman got off on the second floor, I removed the tape from my coat pocket, checking again to be sure I hadn’t accidentally grabbed one of Sally’s Disney videos. It was the right one. The label, TAPE 15, was lettered in the kind of purposeful block printing that is impossible to write quickly; however impulsive and passionate Simon Crowley may have been, he had taken the labeling of his collection seriously. I slipped the tape back into my coat pocket.
Caroline opened the door. She was holding a glass and had an ice cube in her teeth. “I’m making you a little drink,” she announced. She dropped the cube into the glass. “You don’t mind a little of my spit polluting your vital organs?” Her eyes watched mine, moved down to my mouth, then back up.
“Call nine-one-one,” I told her. “Now.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m going to have a heart attack. I’m going to die right here before I get any of your beautiful spit on—”
“Oh stop!” She grabbed my hand and dragged me into her apartment. It was the same as before: expensive, spotless, without humanity. Caroline saw me inspecting it.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking.” She handed me the drink and took my coat and put it in her closet.
“You do?” I called from the living room, looking out the window toward Central Park.
“Yes.”
“You’re wrong.”
She came into the room. And right up to me. “No, I’m not.”
“No, I suppose you’re not.”
She took my wrist and examined my watch. “Five o’clock,” she said. “You’re supposedly working on your column now?”
“The column is done.” I looked at the mascara on her lashes. Sexy stuff, mascara.
“You told your wife when you’re coming home?”
“No.”
“Did you make up an excuse for being out late?”
“I haven’t spoken with her since this morning.”
She put her finger on my tie, running it up and down the pattern. “When do you have to be home?”
“Later.”
“No certain hour?”
“No certain hour.”
“But the deadline for the column is five-thirty.” I nodded.
“So you’re due home soon after that?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Why?”
I touched her chin with my hand. “There could be a reason.”
“What?”
“Developments in the story.”
Her blue eyes liked this. “And your column is already done?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it about?”
“The guy who killed that poor girl a week ago who was holding her wedding dress.”
Caroline seemed unmoved. “Got to be able to spot the psychos.”
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“They’re crazy.” She laughed. “Believe me.”
I nodded. “I see.”
Her eyes played. “Maybe you see.” She pressed my hand to her breast.
“I better tell you, I have an agenda here.”
“I do, too,” she said.
“Which first?”
“If you guess mine, we’ll do yours first”
“And vice versa.”
“Yours,” she said, “goes something like this—you found a very interesting videotape at the bank and now you want to talk about it.”
I looked at her, amazed, a li
ttle scared. Then: “You felt it in my pocket when you hung up the coat.”
“I did. Which one is it?”
“The riot in Tompkins Square Park. The cop gets killed.”
“That one.”
I nodded.
“Let’s talk about it later,” she said.
“Later soon, though.”
“Fine.”
I couldn’t stop myself. “Caroline, the cop was murdered.”
She looked away. “I didn’t know that, not exactly.”
“No?”
She frowned. “We seem to be talking about this now, not later.”
“I can’t help it, Caroline.”
“I saw it once. A few years ago.”
“I’ve told the cops about it,” I blurted.
“Fine.” She seemed strangely calm.
“Fine?”
“Give it to them.”
“I’m going to.” This was easy. “I expected more of a reaction.”
She shrugged. “From me? Why?”
“I—” The look in her eyes stopped me.
“You’re a reporter—I expected you to find things.”
“You did?”
“Yes. If you didn’t, I would have been disappointed.”
Caroline walked into the kitchen, where she pulled papers and tobacco from her purse and rolled a cigarette. I was still thinking about the Fellows tape. Caroline lit her cigarette and smiled into the smoke. Now I needed to ask her whether she had visited my wife. Maybe the question would anger her. Maybe I would ask it later.
A man and woman, in a room at dusk. Some kind of marvelous fast Latin music comes through the ceiling. Drums and guitars and castanets and great shouting. What’s that? he asks. Afro-Peruvian, the woman says, pretty great, they play it all the time. The man whispers to her about her perfect teeth and her perfect mouth and her perfect neck, and she asks with vulnerable self-indulgence Where is it the most perfect? and so he tells her the most perfect is in the symmetrical smoothness of the delicate inward curve of flesh at the base of her neck, centered perfectly there, a variation on a curve outward, and she smiles to herself, and then he moves her sideways, so as to appreciate her breasts, which, unlike his wife’s, have not known children sucking upon them ruinously, or an extra ten years of gravity. The nipples seem chaste in their smallness. What a mysterious thing it is to touch a woman not your wife, he thinks. He has had sex with his wife just the evening before, and remembers enjoying it, but now that pleasure seems distant and theoretical. He moves his hands along the woman’s belly, around her back, over her breasts, then under them, cupping them, amazed at their weight, feeling that slight knotted ripple of the glands under the skin and fat. Outside the window, the sky to the west is a blackish blue, salmon at the far edge. He looks back down at the woman. She is breathing deeply, her eyes closed. Their romance is all carnal, and this is how he prefers it. “If you’re going to kill me,” the woman whispers, “you might as well get started.”
Manhattan Nocturne Page 20
