Death Will Help You Leave Him (14 page)

Luz climbed out of the car, still clutching her teddy bear. As she stood upright on the sidewalk, she tilted, wobbled, and clutched at the open door for support. Barbara slithered out past her. She too grabbed the door, but only to give herself a boost.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Dizzy? Hey, I don’t think you need the teddy bear.”

“Keep it,” Ishmael ordered. “Here. One for you.” He pulled a bear with a red bow from the backpack and pitched it underhand to Barbara, who caught it purely by reflex. “Follow me. And keep your mouths shut.”

They marched after him like a short string of boot camp recruits with a martinet of a sergeant— except for the teddy bears. A chain barred the revolving door of polished brass and glass. “Use door on left after business hours,” a sign advised. Ishmael pushed the left-hand door open. Reaching over Luz’s shoulder, Barbara caught it on her extended palm before it swung back.
He never was a Girl Scout
, she thought.
If you have to move the branch, you hold it for the next person so it won’t spring back in their face.
The image of Ishmael in a uniform of Girl Scout green made her smile, but not excessively. The marijuana really was wearing off now.
Where are we going
, she wondered,
and why on earth are we carrying bears?

The vast lobby was dimly lit. Slick marble walls rose to a distant ceiling with gilded plaster moldings. A uniformed guard was seated at a massive reception desk that looked like rosewood, topped with a marble counter big enough to skate on. As they reached the first of several elevator banks, he got up and came toward them.

“Paton, Schein, and Arrowhead,” Ishmael said as the guard’s lips parted. “Mr. Arrowhead is expecting us.” It sounded like a law firm and probably was. Barbara had a program friend who worked the night shift in a big corporate firm as a paralegal. As Ishmael spoke, she noticed that he had shed his caftan along the way. He must have bundled it under the car seat when he picked up the backpack. He was now dressed in a crisp white shirt, blue blazer, and chinos. The Mercedes was roomy enough to store an endless assortment of props, like a car for circus clowns. Ishmael, it occurred to her, was primarily a showman. His theatricality kept him prosperous and out of jail. Nor did it hurt the success of his special effects that his usual audience was high.

The guard, though not in an altered state, seemed to take them at face value.

“Please step over to the desk first,” he said.

In a movie, this was where Ishmael would have reached for a gun. Instead, he raised his arms obligingly as the guard wanded him.

“And your backpack?”

“Empty,” Ishmael said, opening it so the guard could see. The man was thorough, unzipping each of the many pockets and running his fingers inside.

“Now stand on that spot for ten seconds, please. State your name and who you got the apperntment with for the camera.”

Ishmael faced the small red eye, squared his shoulders, and enunciated clearly, “James Washington. To see Ronald Arrowhead.”

“Ladies?” the guard said.

Were they supposed to recite their real names? Barbara looked at Ishmael for guidance. He winked at her.

“Nancy Drew,” she said. “Mr. Arrowhead.”

Luz suppressed a giggle.

“Lola Montez,” she said.

“Fourteenth floor,” the guard said. “Second elevator bank. I’ll ring Mr. Arrowhead and tell him you’re coming.”

They were in. Barbara experienced a thrill of irrational satisfaction, as if she understood their agenda here and cared about furthering it. They rode the elevator in silence, the surface of its polished brass door reflecting their wavering images as if in a pool of water. When they reached the fourteenth floor, Ishmael said, “You stay right here. You don’t move. You don’t snoop.” As Barbara opened her mouth, he added, “You don’t ask no questions. And gimme those bears.”

The law firm, if that’s what it was, had the whole floor. Ishmael pressed the buzzer next to glass double doors behind the vast desk in the dimmed and deserted reception area. A long buzz responded. A lock snicked open. Ishmael disappeared into the corporate corridors, the teddy bears under his arm. Their flopping heads and the red and blue bows peeked out from the crook of his elbow.

“I don’t think I’m high any more,” Luz said.

“Me neither,” Barbara said. “I wish I hadn’t eaten that Snickers bar.”

“And that was it,” she told Bruce and Jimmy later. Conscience, her chronic difficulty with discretion, and love of a good story had combined to render her unable to resist confessing their adventure. “We never got to see Ronald Arrowhead or find out who he was.”

Jimmy’s dancing fingers on the keyboard were already far ahead of her.

“Major philanthropist,” he said. “On the boards of two orchestras and three museums. And here’s the firm. Just what it looked like, corporate law. Fortune 500 clients only.”

“I’m surprised it was deserted,” Bruce said out of a vast experience of temping. “New associates in those firms bring their sleeping bags. And the paralegals and support staff work shifts. You must have gotten out at the executive floor.”

“So Mr. Arrowhead could get his drugs delivered,” Jimmy said. “It makes sense.”

“He must be a good customer,” Bruce said.

“I think the painting behind the reception desk was a real Chagall,” Barbara said. “At least Ishmael kept his word. When he drove us home, before he let us out of the car, he told us he hadn’t heard a single whisper on the street about Frankie being in trouble over drugs or any rumors about his death. As far as he knows, it wasn’t a drug hit, and he told us he would know. So all’s well that ends well.”

“You’re damn lucky it did, Ms. Nancy Drew,” Jimmy grumbled. “If you ever do it again, I swear I won’t bail you out when you get caught carrying drugs inside of teddy bears or anything else. That would put the kibosh on your counseling career. And no more dope. Promise.”

“I promise,” Barbara said. “Honestly, Jimmy, I do. But I must admit it was fun.”

I lived in two worlds these days. Three, if the brokerage houses and law firms where I temped counted. I spent a lot of time at Jimmy and Barbara’s, lolling on their couch and trying to figure out who stabbed Frankie to death. Not for justice. I could have stuck a knife in him myself, if I was that kind of guy, for what he’d done to Luz. She was so little and cute. On her lips, even a word like “fingerprints” made music. Feengerpreenss. If she’d only let herself go. Frankie had turned her into a hermit crab. She’d peep out and then scuttle back inside her shell. She even missed the brute. I wished I’d been there when she and Barbara got stoned. Maybe not, if I couldn’t have some too. But still.

Whatever Barbara thought, it wasn’t fear I’d die of sober boredom that drove me either. Sleuthing was addictive. Once you asked the question, not knowing the answer felt like a chronic itch between the shoulder blades. You couldn’t help twisting and stretching to try and scratch it.

So Frankie hadn’t been on the run from his suppliers. His customers might be another story. It was easy to cheat a druggie. Add oregano to the dope. Baking soda to the coke. Those were benign compared to what some dealers cut it with. Users could die from doctored product they bought on the street. On the other hand, if you wanted to stay in business, it didn’t help your reputation if your customers started dying.

The police already knew about Frankie’s dealing. That meant at least one prior conviction. The Rockefeller laws meant mandatory sentencing. Even if the judge was your mother’s boyfriend— or your mother— you got no leniency. If Frankie had to choose between being a three-time loser and getting clean, he might have turned crab himself. Pulled a nice safe rehab over his head. Was the law closing in on him? The homicide cops must know, even though, like any TV watcher, I knew narcotics was another branch. It was all on the computer nowadays. But Frankie had come out of rehab. Gone to his AA and NA meetings. Knocked Luz around, the bastard. Had he gone on dealing? If so, the law hadn’t caught him at it. Some dealers prided themselves on not doing drugs. Most thought alcohol didn’t count. It counted. So did pot and your Aunt Violet’s Valium.

Frankie might have meant it when he checked into rehab. We all meant it for about fifteen seconds. But good intentions could slide away fast. He had managed to make Luz believe he went straight for love of her. I didn’t buy Frankie as a screwed-up nice guy. Maybe he thought he did love Luz. It didn’t stop the violence or keep him from blaming her. She said the wrong thing. She didn’t jump high or fast enough. It made me sick.

So what about the wife? Stuck in Brooklyn, spewing up in the morning and making the kids do their homework, she’d have been pissed off if she found out that Frankie played away from home. The guy Vinnie, the cousin, had warned us off her brothers. Was this a Godfather type family? We knew nothing about those guys. I tried to imagine what I’d do if I was the vengeful kind of brother. Say, if someone treated Barbara the way Frankie treated Luz. Not stabbing. I’d have wanted the guy to hurt, not die. I’d have beaten the shit out of him and thrown his goddamn cell phone out the window so he couldn’t call for help. I’d have stomped on his fingers and taken that iron security bar to his ribs. And laughed all the way back to my apartment.

When I went downtown to Laura’s, I entered a different world. When Laura and I were married, we lived in a warm bath of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And you could hold the rock and roll. Her mood swings were my roller coaster, and I lay back and enjoyed the ride. Sure I screamed, but with pleasure, like a kid at Great Adventure. I don’t know why we got divorced. Well, I do. One day Laura said, “I’m bored. Let’s get a divorce.” And I went along with it the same way I did with everything else she proposed. Drinking and drugging every day didn’t leave me much energy to buck the tide.

So what the hell was I doing, clean and sober but still getting out of the train at Spring Street and walking over to West Broadway on a Saturday afternoon? She called. I came running. Not as fast as in the old days, especially when she cried suicidal wolf. I couldn’t pack up the whole tent and stay away. But I tried to set some limits. I could call Jimmy or my sponsor or go to a meeting if the Laura song rang too loud in my ears. In high school we’d had to read the
Odyssey
, the one about the poor schmuck who made them tie him to the mast with cotton in his ears so he wouldn’t go overboard when he heard the Sirens. The original ones, the gals who got you dashed on the rocks. Or were they the ones who turned you into pigs? I had no intention of turning into a pig. Been there. Done that.

It wasn’t like the old days. I didn’t want to get inside her skin any more. I wouldn’t have cared about her sleeping with Mac if the guy had been good to her. Maybe. And when I caught her keys and took the elevator up to the loft, I knew it wasn’t my real life. Just a short vacation.

“What have you been doing with yourself all week?” she asked. We lay in the water bed, spent and lazy. She ran a finger down the left side of my chest. Right where an Aztec priest would make the incision to cut out my heart.

Thinking about murder. Eating too many miniature cannoli from Bensonhurst. I had qualified at a meeting on the East Side. All those Park Avenue snobs Jimmy and I used to pretend to despise nodded at my stories and laughed at my jokes because they understood. They’d been there too. One woman, maybe fifty, wearing a diamond and emerald pin and bracelet from Tiffany’s or somewhere like it like they were nothing, came over and gave me a hug afterward.
You made me cry
, she said. Nope, never met her before. Might not see her again unless I go to that meeting. I know her name, though.
Hi, I’m Amanda, I’m an alcoholic.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Let’s go out,” she said. She jumped out of bed and started fluffing up her hair. It was bright neon green this week. Chartreuse. All the way down.

“I don’t want to go Mac-chasing again,” I said. “You do that on your own time.”

I knew what she thought. I was no fun any more.

In the street, she hailed a cab. I climbed in after her.

“Go down to Chinatown,” she commanded, “and cruise around. There’s a place that has the best dim sum, but I don’t remember the name, and I don’t know where it is.”

The driver shrugged and complied. He was a Sikh with a turban. Rajiv Singh, according to his photo ID. Through the bullet-proof partition, we could hear him talking on his hands-free cell phone in his own language. Here I was, struggling to stay in the here and now. Working on my spiritual recovery. Thanks to cell phones, everybody else was anywhere but here at any given moment.

Canal Street, the border between SoHo and Chinatown, was teeming. Tourists jostled tiny Chinese matriarchs shopping for fish and bok choy. You could buy a lacquered duck or, farther west, a soldering iron or a set of wrenches. Storefronts opened onto the street, their wares spilling out into the crowd: brocade flip-flops and paper lanterns, red snapper and silvery bass, heavy-duty orange electrical cord and industrial-strength paint stripper.

“Why don’t we get out and walk?” I suggested. “If you really want dim sum, there are plenty of places.”

“I want the place I know about,” she insisted. “Chinatown isn’t that big. Heavenly Delight? Imperial Palace? Some name like that.”

Chinatown got bigger every year. It had almost completely displaced Little Italy. But the streets were narrow. The taxi had to breast the crowd as if they were a flock of sheep on a country lane in a country that had sheep. England, maybe.

“I could let you off on Mott Street, lady,” the cabbie said. “Or Chatham Square.”

“No!” Laura said. “Go around the block again.”

Traffic stood still on Canal Street, probably backed up all the way to the Manhattan Bridge at one end and the Holland Tunnel at the other. The taxi inched along. The meter ticked. I hoped Laura had brought cash. Before, I had hailed many a cab for a woman who thought I was taking her for a ride until she found out that I was. But Laura could always beat me at the empty pockets game. I did have a twenty for emergencies. I kept it in my shoe. My sponsor’s suggestion. Hard to slap it down on the bar that way.