“It’s not exactly like that, either.”
We stood there, my wife and I, she in her pretty dress and sensible heels.
“I’m going to take the kids to Mom’s,” she announced. “Tonight. I’ll get tickets at the airport. I have a car that’ll be here in maybe ten minutes.”
Her mother lived in the hills outside San Francisco and made birdhouses from pine boards and old California license plates.
“What about your practice?” I asked.
“I feel pretty damn shitty about that, Porter—a lot of patients are waiting for surgery. Luckily it’s elective for the next week or so.” She was disheartened that she might be failing them. “As for on-call coverage, I’ve worked that out, but I don’t like to do it. It doesn’t make me look very good to suddenly run off. Everybody at the hospital will hear about this, too. But these are my children.”
“Yes.”
“I have a lot to say to you, but I’m too furious and upset about Tommy.” She glared at me, then let out a breath. “Damn it, Porter, this really sucks, it’s really shitty.”
“Yes.”
She left then, holding Tommy, with a nurse carrying Sally for her. I kissed both children good-bye and was glad they were asleep, that I didn’t have to say why I wasn’t going with them. I could follow Lisa and try to explain all of it. I didn’t.
Upstairs, in Josephine’s room, I poked my head inside, expecting her family to be there. “Josephine?”
She was lying on her side watching a screen set into a large entertainment console. On it was a menu of hospital services. Next to the screen were some complimentary movies if she wanted to watch them.
“Oh, Porter!” She turned to me and I could see the tears in her eyes. “I was with Tommy and Sally, you know, I was starting to cook some noodles, and then I heard the buzzer from the gate, and you know I thought maybe Porter is coming home early, something like that, and then I look up and saw this man at the window—”
No doubt Hobbs’s man knew how to slip a lock. “What did he look like?”
“He was a white man, maybe, oh, I would say maybe fifty years old, in a heavy coat, and I was thinking, Oh, no, that’s not right, that’s not good, nobody say nothing to me about some man coming over to the house, you know, and then he smile and knocked on the door, and I called through the glass, ‘Who are you?’ And he didn’t say nothing, so I said, ‘Go away, I’m calling the police.’ And then he kicked in the door, just like that. The kids saw that. Sally, she was very scared by that. Then the man was inside the kitchen and I was thinking, Oh, no, that’s not right, that’s not a good man, you know, and he said, ‘Where is Porter’s office?’ and I said that wasn’t his business, and then he say, ‘Show me the office or I’ll hurt somebody,’ you know. So I show him the office, you know, because I think that—”
“No, no, you did the right thing,” I said. “Absolutely.”
“So then he starts messing around in the office, just pulling out stuff, and then I start to pick up the kids to get away, and then he says, ‘No, you all come in here.’ I was trying to pick up Tommy, you know, so I could run. But he came out of the office, and he had a gun and said, ‘All you get in the office,’ and so I took my bag and the kids and went in there, and he was pulling your papers and opening drawers and throwing your papers everywhere and saying, ‘Where is it, where is it?’ Then I said, ‘Mister, I don’t know what you mean,’ and then he said he was. going to have to take one of the kids away with him, and then—oh my—” Josephine pressed her hands to her neck and looked down, blinking. “I just—I know you tell me don’t bring the gun to work no more, but—”
“We’re past that now, Josephine,” I said.
“I just said, ‘No, you can’t do that, mister, you can’t take these kids,’ and I pulled my gun out and I pointed it and just pulled. He yelled and called me some names—you know how they do when they’re mad like that—and then he fired and that was the one that hit Tommy and me, and then we both screamed, you know, and I fell down with Tommy and I shot it again, and I think I hit him, maybe, and I fired again and that one missed him, that one hit the wall, and then he started to run outside. He went out the kitchen door right across the yard, and then he fall down, once, you know, and then he kept on going. I didn’t follow him. I just held on to the kids. They was so upset that I just held them and kissed them, you know, like that.”
From the hospital I traveled directly to the newspaper’s offices and bought a couple of liter bottles of Coke. I’d drink them and be able to stay up all night, which was the idea. Hal Fitzgerald had left two messages on my machine and sounded worried on his own behalf. But I couldn’t think about him now. I had the guard open up the newspaper’s information services office. Mrs. Wood was gone, but I knew my way around. Campbell. I needed to know where Campbell was. What was his first name? I couldn’t remember. You could line up ten thousand men and I could identify him that moment, but for the life of me I could not remember his first name. I could look up “Campbell” on the CD phone directory, a very accurate one provided by a private company and updated every three months, but that would give me too many names. Instead I did a Nexis search with Campbell and Hobbs. A recent story in The New York Times on the paper might give Campbell’s first name. Nothing. Perhaps Campbell had been promoted while stationed in New York; the newspaper’s PR office would have cranked out a release. How about “Campbell” and “London”? “Campbell” and “England”? Here it was, a tiny item: Walter Campbell promoted to the position of executive vice-president … A native of London, Campbell will head up the …
With “Walter Campbell” I could begin. Where did he live? New York? New Jersey? Connecticut? An expensive neighborhood. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey? Very nice place. Darien, Connecticut? Also a nice spot. A tough call. Maybe not. Presumably he flew to London on business pretty frequently. He would be flying out of JFK. Not as many international flights used LaGuardia. A man who uses JFK frequently, who needs to take early-morning flights and so on, will not live in New Jersey or Connecticut. Even with a limo driver, it was simply too far in the morning, too much wasted time. He’d be in New York, either in Long Island or in the city proper. I looked up Walter Campbell in area codes 212, 718, and 516. Eight of them. I threw out the six that were in middle-class or poor neighborhoods. Two remained, both in Bridgehampton. Three hours on the Long Island Expressway every morning—forget it. Campbell had an unlisted number. I remembered that he did not have a wedding ring. He was either gay or divorced; that could put him in Manhattan, which for a wealthy middle-aged man was where the action was. Was he a registered voter? Only if he was a naturalized citizen. Not likely. Retirement benefits are better in the U.K. I had nothing. He was Walter Campbell. I didn’t have a birth-date or a Social Security number. How do you find a British citizen in Manhattan without a phone number, an address, or a Social Security number? The man drives a car. I popped in the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles disc. Eighty-four people named Walter Campbell. No address listed. Real estate. I entered a search for Manhattan only. There was a W. Campbell at East 148th Street. Spanish Harlem. No chance. The man did not own property in the city. If he did, then I would have all kinds of ways of finding him. But it made sense that he had not bought property; Hobbs probably moved his key people around every few years. I flipped through the list of possible ways to search for people: Bankruptcy; Mechanics Liens; Sidewalk Violations; Environmental Control Board Judgments; HPD Emergency Repair Liens; Uniform Commercial Code Filings; Inactive Hazardous Waste Sites. Here was one: Parking Violation Judgments.
The computer took a few seconds and then informed me:
PVD JUDGMENTS- Walter K. Campbell
ADDRESS: 107A EAST 35th #2
# JDMTS- 14 AMOUNT- $1090 INT- $102.16
PLATE- JD0876
Here was a British executive scofflaw who rented an apartment within walking distance of his office. Now I could learn something about him; I flipped one CD after another into
the machine. He was fifty-one years old. He drove a ’95 Lexus. He did not have a gun registration. He was not currently being sued. He had never been given a summons for smoking in the subway. His apartment was owned by a Lucy Delano, purchased in 1967, no amount given. Campbell’s neighbor in #3 was Mr. Tim Westerbeck, age thirty-six, who had paid $345,000 for his apartment in 1994. Campbell’s neighbor in #1 was Mrs. Lucy Delano, age eighty-two, who bought her apartment in 1964, no amount listed. I needed Campbell’s phone number. I looked up Westerbeck’s number: the message said that he was on his honeymoon in Baja and “whatever is left of me” would be back later. Screw him. I looked up Mrs. Delano’s number and called her.
A tentative, old voice: “Hello?”
“Mrs. Lucy Delano?”
“Yes?”
I told her my name and that I was a reporter at the paper.
“What do you want?”
“We’re terribly eager to reach your neighbor, Mr. Campbell.”
“How do you know he’s my neighbor?”
“It’s a matter of public record, ma’am. Would you happen to have his number?”
“Yes, but I can’t give it to you.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry.”
I made a sound of discouragement. “I very much need to speak with him, you see.”
“I’ll go knock on his door, if you like.”
This was risky. “Okay,” I said.
I heard the phone being put down. Coughing. Indistinct noises. Nothing. Nothing and nothing. Nothing and then nothing. Perhaps she had died in the hallway. Nothing. Indistinct noises and coughing. Then: “I’m afraid he is not there.”
“Mrs. Delano?”
“Yes?”
“I really need that number.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve lived in this city a very long time.”
“Mrs. Del—”
“The first time they mugged me was in nineteen sixty-five.”
I said nothing.
“So you see.”
Yes.
Thirty-fifth Street, eleven P.M., a January night. The apartment was part of a four-story brownstone, which was good; there was no doorman. The building was about twenty-five feet wide, a standard Manhattan brownstone width, with bay windows on the first and second floors. The stoop had been removed, and the main entrance was now three steps down from the street into the ground floor. The buzzer had three bells, which meant that there were three apartments in the four floors: one of them was a duplex—probably the ground and first floors. Mrs. Delano, thinking ahead the way old women do, would have taken the ground floor to avoid the stairs; that meant that Campbell lived on top of her and that the goofball Westerbeck lived above him. I buzzed Campbell’s apartment; no answer; he was not yet home. Or perhaps he would not be coming home; he could have a lover somewhere in the city. Some chick in red boots who kept a poodle.
The lights were out in #1; Mrs. Delano was asleep. I looked for a way to break into the building. I saw nothing but alarm-service stickers and iron bars on the windows. I stood across the street, found a shadow, folded my arms into my coat. While waiting, I noticed that the lid of the garbage can next to me was attached to a fence with a short, cheap wire.
An hour later Campbell arrived, walking alone, carrying a bag of groceries. I watched him stop in front of the brownstone, get his key out. And then, light as blowing trash, I was across the street in ten steps. “Hey!” he said, but I already had the wire around his neck. He dropped the groceries and I kicked them through the open door and shoved him in, taking the key out of the door.
“I’ll give you money,” he barked. “My wallet—”
“Up the stairs.”
“My wallet—”
“Shut up.” I yanked on the wire and he coughed.
“Pick up the groceries.”
He did. This would keep his hands occupied. At the door of #2, I had him identify the right key.
“Don’t kill me. Please.”
“Turn on the light.”
He did. A nice apartment, rugs, lamps, Victorian decor—all in all, perhaps a bit sad for its neatness. The loneliness of an aging bachelor.
“Sex?” he coughed.
“What?”
“You want sex?”
“What?”
“I’ll do you. I’m good. It’ll be good.”
I laughed and yanked on the wire. I was a lot stronger; it wasn’t even close. I dragged him into the kitchen.
“Point to the drawer that has the biggest, sharpest knife.”
He froze.
“Do it!”
“No. You’ll kill me.”
“Do it, Campbell.” I yanked brutally on the wire and he went weak in the knees. When he went down I could see that he dyed his hair.
“Get up, you fucker.”
“Uh. I’m. Dying.”
“No you’re not, not just yet.”
“Uh.” He stumbled to his feet.
“Show me the drawer.”
He didn’t. I dragged him backward toward the drawers, pulled open a few, grabbed a huge carving knife, and then a little one, which I slipped into my back pocket. Then I pushed Campbell toward the phone.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No,” he coughed. “I can’t see you.”
“Wren. Porter Wren. I work for you.”
“Uh.”
“Your goons shot my little. boy this afternoon. Did you know that?” But I pulled on the wire before he could answer. His hands fumbled on the edge of the phone table. “I should kill you, Campbell.”
“No, please.”
“Call Hobbs.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“He’s. In Brazil.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I swear!”
I took the little knife out of my pocket and I stabbed Campbell in the ass with it, once, maybe an inch deep. He screamed. It hurt but it wasn’t serious.
“Start thinking, Campbell.”
Now I broke him at the knees and made him lie down on the carpet. I sat on his back. I weigh about two hundred and ten pounds. I pulled the phone down, as well as what looked like a rather well-organized international personal phone directory.
“Put your hands behind you.”
“No.”
I stabbed him again.
He put his hands back. I tied them tight with the wire. Then I put the directory on the carpet next to his face and pushed the speakerphone button so that I could hear the conversation.
“Who do we call?”
“It’s impossible,” he moaned.
I moved my lips close to his ear. “Campbell, pal. My son is eighteen months old, he is a perfect angel, he is innocent. You have damaged his body and perhaps his soul. I am not a violent man by nature, Campbell. But I swear I will torture you until you get Hobbs on the phone.”
“I’ll lose my job!” he screamed, kicking.
I stabbed him in the ass again. Pretty deep. But it didn’t bleed much. I did it again, twisting the knife. It was a weird yet familiar sensation, sort of like testing the readiness of a Christmas ham. I did it again. Campbell was starting to hyperventilate.
“Call him,” I said.
“You don’t understand,” Campbell said. “I can’t just—”
Politely stabbing him in the rear wasn’t working, I realized. Maybe he had a pain thing. I grabbed a lamp from the table, knocked off the shade, and waved the hot bulb in front of Campbell’s mouth.
“Open wide,” I said. “This will be a new feeling.”
“No!”
“What do you want next, the knife or the bulb?”
“All right, all right! Call London!” he breathed. “Wake up Mrs. Fox!”
We did this. It took a few minutes. Mrs. Fox was Hobbs’s housekeeper. Campbell explained to Mrs. Fox that he needed Mrs. Donnelly’s home number. Mrs. Donnelly was Hobbs’s personal secretary, went with him everywhere. Mr. Donnelly answered. It was early mornin
g in London. A sleepy fellow talking to a hysterical countryman in Manhattan. I need your wife’s number in Brazil, said Campbell. Why? Just give it to me! Bloody rude, aren’t you? And so on. A call to Brazil, with the correct country and city code. No answer. Ten rings. Then a voice in Portuguese. Mrs. Donnelly was summoned. She had been asleep. Yes, she remembered Mr. Campbell, what could she do for him? I need to talk with Mr. Hobbs. I’m very sorry, he’s out right now. And so on. Campbell was sweating heavily, wetting his lips. Please, he said, please, Mrs. Donnelly, I’m in a very difficult situation, an emergency situation. Give me the cellular number. He always has a cellular phone. I’m sorry, Mr. Campbell, he’s asked that there be no disturbances—Campbell groaned. I’m thinking! he breathed aloud. Is there a cellular, Mrs. Donnelly? Not that I know of. No cellular; that means the cellular service is bad. Mrs. Donnelly! Yes? The driver will have a satellite phone! What’s that? Direct phone to a satellite; it fits in the limousine trunk! I’m not familiar with this—Yes you are, it’s the car number, call the car number. Oh, the car number. Well, then. She gave it to him. I dialed. Five rings. Yes? came a British voice. Is this the driver? Yes. This is Campbell in New York. Give me Hobbs. I’m afraid—This is an emergency. He’s attending a dinner inside. There’re a lot of people inside. Get him out to the car. I can’t do that, sir. This is Campbell in New York. I don’t know who you are. Campbell in New York. I run the U.S. operations! I’m sorry, sir. Listen, go to the door and get the number of the house inside. You can do that. We’ll call them. There was a long pause. I’m fucking trying, can’t you see that? spat Campbell. My ass hurts. You stabbed me in the ass. Then the voice came back with the house number, which we dialed. A maid answered, speaking Portuguese. Much miscommunication. Then the teenaged daughter, who spoke perfect English. Yes? They are in the dining room. I will ask my father. English, Daddy. Yes? A deep voice. This is Arturo Montegre. This is Walter Campbell in New York. I must speak with one of your dinner guests, Mr. Sebastian Hobbs. This is irregular, no? Yes, sir, it very much is, but I’m in a very bad spot. A long pause.
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