“I dig, but I still don’t get this.”
“Just walk outside. We’re right behind you.”
“Listen, I’m clean, man—”
“Keep going, Sylvester.”
And then they were outside, standing at the edge of the sidewalk. Nightingale looked at the young man’s face: it was always the same expression, it never changed, and it looked as if he’d never been able to feel easy with it somehow. The sudden tightening of skin, the draining of blood, the adrenalinized light of fear in the eyes.
“Okay, Sylvester. You probably think I’m going to ask you what you got in your pockets, right?”
“I told you, man, I am A-one clean. I am cleaner than a nun’s twat. I swear to God.”
Moody said, “The deal is, we ask you a question. You answer it. If you answer it right, we don’t look in your pockets. Think of it like a TV game show. The big prize for you is no hassle.”
“You don’t search me?” Sylvester looked perplexed. “Shit, I don’t know why you’d want to search me anyhow.”
“Don’t push your already feeble luck, Sylvester,” Moody said.
“Yeah. You said something about a question. So what is it?”
“We badly need to know about a guy called Chapman,” Nightingale said. “Billy Chapman.”
Sylvester was silent. You could see it just beneath his eyes, lurking just below his expression—the momentary confusion, the dilemma, the struggle inside himself that could only be resolved in one way: He’d sign Billy Chapman over and all the code of the street could go fuck itself and he’d go home and sleep easy. It was fragile, but Nightingale knew what the outcome of this would be.
The first predictable parry. Sylvester said, “I don’t know anybody with that name.”
Nightingale looked at Moody. “Okay, Doug. Frisk this fucker.”
“Frisk me?”
“Yeah, frisk,” Moody said. “This is the best part of my job, Sylvester. I go through guys’ pockets and I find all kinds of weird things, and sometimes what I find is enough to send some poor reprobate up the river for years and years and years.” Moody stuck his hand inside Sylvester’s coat pocket.
“Hey, hold it, hold it, man. I didn’t quite catch the guy’s name. What was it?”
Moody’s hand paused in the pocket for dramatic effect.
“Billy Chapman.”
“Yeah, I think something’s coming across, man. Billy Chapman, that’s what you said?”
“Frisk him, Doug—”
“Wait, I think I know where he lives. I think I remember. Yeah, it’s coming back to me.” Sylvester’s voice rose. He fell silent only when Moody took his hand out of his coat pocket.
“Is it far?” Nightingale asked.
“Uh-uh.”
“Why don’t you earn your good citizenship badge and walk us there, Sylvester?”
“Sure thing.”
“And relax, huh? Take it easy.”
Sylvester started to move, like he was very anxious to get the thing over with and even more concerned about being seen in the company of the heat.
Nightingale said, “You know, Doug, it’s good to see an upright young man like Sylvester going out of his way like this to help the police. It warms my heart.”
“Astounding,” Moody said. “You read so many bad things about the civic responsibility of today’s youth, and now somebody like Sylvester comes along and he’s only too happy to help.”
“My faith is uplifted,” Nightingale said. “I won’t forget you for this, Sylvester.”
Sylvester looked at Nightingale. “Do me a favor and try real hard, will you?”
4.
Billy Chapman was dreaming. In this dream he could see himself suspended inside a big vat of clear liquid, a preservative of some kind. At first the sensation was pleasant but then it dawned on him that he was there to be sold, like a piece of pickled meat. It wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that he wasn’t going to be sold in one chunk, but in little hacked-off pieces. Some guy in a white uniform was sharpening a knife. Billy forced himself awake at that point and sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes and looking around his room, trying to remember where the hooker had gone, trying to remember if there had ever been a hooker there in the first place.… Get it straight, Billy, he told himself. You remember a chick sitting on the bed, then you remember running out of blow, the little SnoSeal package being empty—then you had this urge to go find Sylvester, so you went out into the streets when it was still light but you couldn’t find your man at his usual haunt. You came back here and the chick was gone and something happened to you then: You just collapsed inwards, your eyelids became heavy, you went out like the proverbial light. He put his bare feet on the floor. He yawned and stretched his arms, then walked over to the refrigerator and pulled it open. There was one can of beer, which he took out and opened and slugged quickly. It tasted good, cold, clear. What time of day was it anyhow? What day was it, period? He went to the window and opened the drape a little way. It was dark outside. Dark and depressing. He searched his pockets. He found a couple of bucks but not enough for what he needed to pull him nicely through the night ahead. You got to go out there again, Billyboy. A dim prospect. He moved to the table and looked at the SnoSeal paper, which he picked up and licked, but then recalled he’d done that before, maybe even while the chick was still here.
How much did I pay her? he wondered.
Why did I pay her anyhow, when she hadn’t done anything?
He slumped into a chair at the table and lowered his head. There wasn’t even a hint of residue lying around. The package was empty, the mirror unclouded, the syringes all used up.
He rose, walked back to the window. He heard slight noises, but then he was always hearing them. He poked a finger inside his ear and jiggled it around. You’re always imagining someone outside the door, Billy. Always dreaming that somebody is going to be peering at you through slight cracks and openings and holes in the wood. He laughed.
There it was again.
It was a definite sound from the hall.
He couldn’t identify it, though. A kind of shuffling. In this pit, though, all kinds of creeps came and went at all kinds of hours.
He slipped his switchblade knife from his pocket just the same. He moved it from one hand to the other, then sat on the bed, crouching like he was ready to leap if anything should happen. He stared hard at the door. He heard something light brush against it from the outside. I’m ready, fucker, he thought. Come in here for the surprise of your life.
Then he thought maybe it was Sylvester come to do business. For a moment there was a warm glow inside his head like that created by a feeble light bulb. Wouldn’t that be just wonderful? Then he knew he was fooling himself. Sylvester knew he didn’t have any cash. Those fuckers could always smell money when you had it. He stared at the door. It wasn’t Sylvester, for sure.
The handle turned, then moved slowly back in place.
He got up from the bed. There was a clicking noise as the blade of his knife sprung from the handle. With this little knife, he thought, you could just disembowel anybody who happened in through the door. A drunken thief, or some guy getting his room confused.
The handle twisted again.
Then, before it could really register, before he could clear his senses, the door swung wildly back on its hinges and fell crashing into the room. It shouldn’t be doing that, he thought. It shouldn’t be toppling back like that and there shouldn’t be two guys coming inside the room and one of them shouldn’t be carrying no gun.
Billy Chapman turned and headed for the window, then remembered there was a killing drop to the street below. So he swung around and held his knife out and stared at the two guys. One was big and plump, the other—the one with the pistol—was young and pretty determined-looking.
“Billy, you ought to put the knife down,” the fat one said.
“Make me,” Billy Chapman said. He swung the knife in an arc and the guy with the gun backed u
p a little. Why doesn’t he shoot me?
“Give me the knife and keep cool, Billy. We only want to ask you some questions. No big deal.”
Billy Chapman lunged again. This time the blade sliced through the material of the fat guy’s coat and he clutched his arm, moaned, plopped down on the bed as if he couldn’t believe he’d been cut. There was a big patch of blood spreading through the coat.
Before Billy Chapman could think about what he’d done, the gun in the young guy’s hand went off. The roar filled the room like there was an electric storm slashing across the ceiling. At first there wasn’t any pain but then he felt a sharp twinge at a point in his body he couldn’t quite locate. He slumped to the floor, holding himself like he was trying to find the wound and seal it with the palms of his hands.
In a dreamy way he heard the fat guy say, “Holy fuck.”
Then he was sliding across the floor, crawling, leaving stains of blood in his trail. He felt like a fat snail suddenly. Now he knew the pain was located in his shoulder, someplace near his neck.
“You fucking shot me,” he said. “You fucking shot me, you bastard.”
The young guy was bending over him now, helping him to sit up. He was saying something about how it was only a flesh wound. A flesh wound didn’t have the goddamn right to hurt this bad.
“I’m dying,” Billy said.
“You can’t die before we’ve asked you some simple questions, Billy,” the young guy said. “Linger awhile.”
5.
The city went past in an unreal way, a light show suspended in darkness, a display of laser beams cutting through the night, electrified castles vanishing into the sky. Harrison shut his eyes but that didn’t help dispel his sense of unreality—what he saw trapped under his lids was Reuben Levy lying in the hallway, Reuben’s blood making spiraling stains on chipped tiles. He held Madeleine’s hand; she’d gone into silence, retreated, shocked. He stroked her knuckles, touched her hair back from her face, put his arm around her shoulder. There were tears on her cheeks and her lips trembled; all the blood had gone from her face. He felt helpless, guilty, feeble. Levy is dead, that poor sad bastard is dead, and because of what? Because of my stupid endeavor, my absurd notions? For something so senseless he walked down a flight of stairs and took his last drunken steps towards a door, a street, the idea of a cab, a trip to safety. He laid his head against Madeleine’s shoulder. She might have been carved out of clay—there was no response, nothing. A trip to safety.
Harrison turned his face and watched the street go past in its own blurry slipstream from the window of the cab. I can’t tell her, he thought. I can’t tell her I looked back when we got inside this cab and I saw someone moving along the sidewalk towards us quickly, a man, perhaps the man who killed Levy, perhaps the same one. A thin figure in a windbreaker and jeans and a cropped hairstyle. I can’t tell her anything now. He unfolded his hands and looked into the palms as if he expected to see blood there. Levy’s blood. The blood of all the others. Okay—maybe there had been times when Rube had been ridiculous and somehow sad, as if despite his wealth he couldn’t ever erect a barrier against his own basic sense of futility, but nobody deserved to die like that. He’d been your oldest friend, Harry. Your oldest, most loyal friend.
He glanced through the window again; his heart was beating rapidly. The night was filled with a sense of loss. It hung out there in the lights, lay in the dark hollows, muffled, shadowy, but always present.
40th Street went past.
“Where is the police station, Maddy?” he asked.
Maddy stared through the window. When she spoke she did so quickly, as if her words were forming faster than her brain could dictate. “I don’t remember.… It was 40th Street and Sixth Avenue.… No, it was Forty-second Street.… Christ, I don’t remember, Harry.”
Harrison leaned forward and touched the cabbie on the shoulder. His ID card said his name was Salvatore Jimenez. “Say, where’s the police station? There’s one pretty close to here, but I don’t remember the exact street.” It seemed the obvious place to go now, the only place, the only possible sanctuary.
The cabbie stopped the vehicle, drawing onto the sidewalk. He turned around and looked puzzled. “Please stay-shun?”
Oh, Christ, terrific—a guy who can hardly talk English. Harrison repeated himself slowly. “Po-lice station.”
“Ah,” the cabbie said. He was a small man with a thick moustache that overhung his upper lip like the fringe of some old-fashioned lampshade. Pancho Villa on four wheels. He slipped the cab away from the sidewalk and turned it down a side street. Harrison tried to read the street numbers. Where were they going now? 39th Street. 38th.
He turned to Madeleine. “Does any of this look familiar?”
“I … I’m not sure.… I can’t remember except it was Fortieth Street.… Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I’m mistaken. It might have been Fiftieth.… Harry, I don’t remember now.”
Harrison tapped the cabbie again. “Listen, I think you need to head uptown. Savvy? You turn around and go back. Okay?” He made a gesture with his hand. Salvatore Jimenez stopped the cab again and all around there was the noise of traffic slamming to sudden halts, then the air was filled with the hysteria of horns.
“Go back?” the cabbie asked. But it was clear he wasn’t sure what Harrison intended.
“Yeah. See how I point my finger? That way. Okay? You get it?”
“Ahhhh. Sure zing.” Oblivious of traffic, the cabbie swung the vehicle in an arc. 40th Street went past again. 42nd. 44th.
“Maddy, look, does any of this seem familiar?”
She turned her face and looked out. “I don’t know.”
Harrison sat back a moment. The cab driver was muttering in Spanish. What the hell was the guy going on about? He sounded like he was irritated by the fact that neither of his passengers could give him directions. Harrison looked through the window. 50th Street. 51st. 52nd.
“Maddy, is it around here somewhere?”
She didn’t even look this time. It was as if she were resigned to being lost, directionless. He took her hand in his own, rubbed the knuckles gently; her flesh was ice. Then he gazed back into the streets. Storefronts, the lights of restaurants, bars, art galleries. The cab turned now, headed right. Far ahead, beyond the glare of lights, was a vast pitch of black sky over Central Park. It looked dismal.
And then suddenly Maddy was animated, leaning forward, telling the driver to stop. Harrison wondered why, wondered where they were—then when he looked out he realized where she’d wanted the cab to stop.
“Maddy, why here?”
“Because we’ll be safe! We’ll be safe here. And there’s a telephone.”
It made sense, Harrison thought. The cab driver was still talking rapidly to himself, like a man whose demons always presented themselves in the form of ignorant Caucasians. Harrison looked at the meter, found some crumpled bills, shoved them into the cabbie’s hand, and then he opened the door and helped Madeleine onto the sidewalk. He stared at the overhead sign, the oval with the letters BRYANT BERGER GALLERY. Sure, why not? They could call the cops from here. Madeleine was rushing ahead of him, afraid of the streets and the dark, fumbling in her pockets for a keychain. He looked at the black windows, the shapes beyond which were mere shadowy outlines. Then he heard Madeleine turn the key in the lock and there was the sound of a small bell ringing overhead. They stepped inside and Harrison shut the door, seeing the cab slip away.
“Nobody’s going to look for us here,” Maddy said. “There’s a telephone in the office.”
He heard her stumble against something and she cursed quietly. The office, where was the office, how could you find it without switching on lights? He followed her footsteps across the gallery; there was the sound of a door squeaking open and then he saw her switch on a pale lamp, which illuminated a desk, a tiny room. A telephone gleamed beneath the lamp. There were a few prints on the walls, mostly the work of the Dutch masters. He stepped towards the desk, picked up
the receiver, and was about to dial when he noticed something in the rug—something that was incongruous in this place: a single black leather shoe with laces. An expensive lightweight shoe. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand.
“It’s Berger’s,” she said. “I recognize it.”
“You suppose he was dressing in a hurry or something?” One shoe. When things came in pairs it was always odd to see them singly—as if they had shed their purpose or assumed a new and surreal one.
Madeleine ignored the question. “Make the call, Harry.”
He dropped the shoe back on the rug, dialed the operator, asked to be connected to the police. There were clicks and buzzes, mysterious sounds like electronic birds panicked inside an electronic jungle; he wondered if he could ever feel the same way about telephones, if he could ever come to think of them again as simple utilitarian objects. A man’s voice came on the line. Harry asked to talk with Lieutenant Nightingale. He was told—after a lengthy pause—that the lieutenant was out. Out again, he thought. Was the guy ever in his office?
“My name is Harrison,” he said. “It’s very important he get in touch with me. I’m at the Bryant Berger Gallery at Forty-nine West Fifty-seventh Street with Madeleine Demarest. Have you got that? Tell him I want to report a murder, okay? It’s urgent.” He put the receiver down, drew a hand across his face, then looked at Madeleine who was leaning against the wall, her body limp, arms hanging.
He said, “It shouldn’t take long. They should get here pretty soon.” He looked past her a moment at the small window set in the wall. A shadow moved there, then swung out of sight as if it were the limb of a tree or a passing cat or maybe a bum scrounging through trash. It didn’t matter. He moved towards Madeleine and embraced her, tried to relax her tight muscles with his fingertips. She seemed to be made out of marble, cold stone. He looked beyond her shoulder at the shoe lying on the rug. Why did it bother him? You just don’t kick off one shoe if you’re changing your clothes, do you? It didn’t make any sense. What the hell.
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