Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery (4 page)

New Yorkers develop keen alertness to anomalous movement in the street. Anything jerky or sharp, anything faster or slower
than the daily pace leaps right out of the background. Heads turn, shoulders hunch, and like prey animals, no one relaxes until the anomaly can be identified, evasive action taken. Jellyroll and I hadn’t even made it the half block from the side exit of the studio to the corner of Sixty-eighth Street and Broadway before I spotted the stalker sprinting at us with a baseball bat in his hands.

From somewhere a woman screamed.

He was about fifty, bald on top, wearing an undershirt, snapping sandals, one of those misfit types at whom, from the time he was a tiny child, bullies threw lighted matches. I didn’t think it would happen like this.

But the stalker skidded to a stop ten feet away and began to beat the shit out of a parked car. Big overhand swings. The windshield exploded. Cords in his neck straining, the guy screamed, “You’ll never get away with it, never, never, never!” as he pounded deep dents in the hood. “I’ll always be there! Watching!”

I stood gasping for breath. My knees wouldn’t lock properly, but the muscles in my thighs couldn’t keep my legs straight. The adrenaline, subsiding now, had burned out all my muscles. Raggedy Andy. I leaned against a mailbox. Did Jellyroll think the bat was meant for him, or was it just me? He got behind the mailbox and peeked out to watch the guy beat the car.

Others watched, skittish, keeping their distance. That kind of wild, primitive rage has a terrible attraction. The rubberneckers didn’t notice me hugging the dome of the mailbox like a wino. They crouched to see who was in the car. But there was nobody in the car. Nobody at all.

The guy was tiring visibly. The frequency and severity of his blows diminished to slow motion, until finally he couldn’t lift his slugger off his shoulder anymore. Apparently spent but satisfied, he walked off.

After a while I let go of the mailbox. I’d left my handprints in its soot. My knees were suspect, but I directed us west across the avenues. We picked our way around Lincoln Center, avoided the
congestion at Seventy-second Street by cutting west on Seventy-first, a block north on West End Avenue and we were in the park. I had a plan to stroll north in Riverside Park to my place at 104th. Jellyroll would love that.

Riverside Park can soothe the ravaged nerves on its good days. This could have been a good one; the sun was still high, yet a cooling breeze ambled down the Hudson. The air seemed clean. Children and dogs frolicked and gamboled. People shot baskets. I passed a couple of refrigerator-crate shantytowns in the field north of the Henry Hudson on-ramp, but I could still dig the fantasy of urban civilization and the human impulse to preserve the greenery within it.

We passed the children’s playground and took a little side trip down to the promenade along the bank of the river toward the tennis courts. The temperature dropped five or ten degrees down here. A red Moran tug pushed a cement barge upriver against the current. White water boiled up from its struggling propeller, and I was reminded of the children’s story about Scuffy the Tugboat. That was kind of a melancholy, bittersweet recollection, but it felt a lot better than scared shitless.

I sat on a bench while Jellyroll rolled on his back in the cool grass. As I sat there watching Scuff y, the muscles in my neck began to soften their grip; but you can’t sit long on these benches, because as the wood slats rot in the damp air, they become homes for ants. The slats are infested. Probably prime real estate if you’re an ant. Ants crawl up your thighs. If you ignore them, they’ll marshal their forces to carry you back to their queen.

Jellyroll was circling and sniffing a young husky named Roger. But I didn’t recognize the walker. He was a big man in a small singlet and Yankees cap. Roger’s owner was named Phil. I didn’t need to be told. Phil had had AIDS.

“Yesterday,” said the man in the Yankees hat. He didn’t wait around to see my sadness at the news. He’d probably had enough of that. He leashed Roger and bolted. I didn’t blame him.

“Artie—”

“Haw!”

“Little tense these days? As you know, I can relate to that.”

“Hello, Seth.”

Seth was a depressive playwright. Seth’s dog, a black Lab cross named Buchner, was also depressed—by association, most of us dog walkers figured. Buchner hadn’t always been like that. He and Jellyroll used to wrestle and chase as puppies. Jellyroll still tries to get up a game, but Buchner is distracted, morose.

“You want to hear some ironic shit?” asked Seth, sitting with us on the bench.

“Not really.”

“I got this showcase production in the East Village, right? New piece. Well, an old piece, but I fixed the ending. This is mean, biting drama, this has undercurrent and edge, the kind of shit nobody wants. But guess who shows up out of the blue on opening night. Margaret Seagraves! I can’t believe my eyes, it’s her. At a showcase! So I’m shitting hot bricks through the whole thing. Margaret Fucking Seagraves! It went well. I’m lurking out front trying to overhear something, but she comes right up to me on the sidewalk. She shakes my hand and says, ‘It’s a rare thing these days to see mean, biting drama.’ ”

“That’s great,” I said without energy.

He began to scratch at his crotch. Ants. “She walks away, I feel like shouting with delight, right? Margaret Seagraves, loves my play. Her review is going to put my young ass on easy street. I’m thinking stardom, right? Ten seconds later a shot rings out.”

“A shot—?”

“Pow! The slug hits the Greek deli six feet above her head. Blew a hole you could stick your fist in!”

“So she didn’t write the review?”

“I call over there today and pretend like I’m concerned about her, but she’s not even in. So I ask her lackey, is she going to write my rave, or what? ‘Oh, I doubt it. Ms. Seagraves is very upset by
the experience.’ Upset? What kind of thing is that? That’s totally unprofessional behavior! I mean, take Bosnia. The theater critics in Sarajevo, they never stopped reviewing despite constant bombardment. What is this upset bullshit? It killed a deli!”

I sighed.

“Goddamn ants! You want to walk?”

“Sure.”

When we got to the grassy spot just north of the tennis courts, somebody shouted, “Hey, you want to call your dog before I break his legs?”

What?

It was a solitary picnicker/sunbather in a little black nylon bathing suit reading the paper. He was about thirty, with long flaxen hair, a Gap model’s face, and tight abdominals. He’d established his place with a blanket and laid out his lunch from Zabar’s. He had half a roasted chicken, several bottles of designer water, a container of macaroni salad, a couple of kaiser rolls, and some unopened condiments. Languidly slathering lotion on his shoulders, he wrinkled his ruggedly handsome face in revulsion apparently at the very existence of my dog—Jellyroll was passing fifteen feet away, not even slowing down.

“What did you say?”

“You want to get him away from my lunch or do you want to lose him?”

I remember distinctly hearing that. I didn’t make it up. Okay, he made no threatening gestures, but there was the quality of threat inherent in his words—

Without further ado, I strode into his foodstuffs like a field-goal kicker. The macaroni salad was my first intended target, but not my last. It exploded under the impact. The handsome young man, up on all fours, tried to shield his face behind his hands, but it was too late. Macaroni and mayonnaise hit him like shrapnel from incoming artillery fire. I made snarling noises as I kicked the shit out of his lunch.

I leapt up and down on his waters until the containers belched out their contents. That done, I backed up to get into chicken-kicking position. Splat. The carcass pirouetted over the guy’s head, shedding limbs. I knew this was insane behavior, but I simply didn’t want to stop. The guy’s terror at my insane rage filled my heart with delight. I was a dangerous man at that moment north of the tennis courts on the banks of the Hudson River.

Wait, one translucent bucket of something remained intact. I booted it. Pickles. The juice soaked me. Having pretty much completed my work, I walked off panting.

Jellyroll followed, but he kept his distance.

On the balls of their feet, a skittish group of witnesses watched us go. A few were dog-walking acquaintances of mine. I avoided eye contact. Tennis couples clutched their rackets to their chests as if to deflect psycho rage. The Latino eel fishermen discussed the event. I heard the word
loco
more than once. The picnicker was screaming at me high in his clenched throat. He was hysterical. I didn’t look back.

“I agree with you,” said Seth, coming along. “Fucking picnickers, a bad element, they need to be driven from our public places, same with tourists.”

By the time I got to Riverside Drive, Seth and I had parted company. I was spent. The walk home was grueling.

“What’s
that?
” said Crystal when I got there.

“What?”

“
Th at
—” She pointed to my throat.

I scooped it away, examined it. “A noodle.”

She looked me up and down. “Why?”

I told her. Her brow furrowed with concern for my sanity. And then I told her about how they had summoned me up to thirty-five and fired Jellyroll.

She was flabbergasted. Tears came to her eyes. “Why?”

“They heard you were a pool player, so they figured you must be a man. Christopher.”

“You mean—?”

“Yep.”

“They can’t do that! That’s not even legal!” She was outraged, but only momentarily. She looked down at Jellyroll, who watched her with his mouth clamped shut, a sign of worry. He worries when his people seem to be upset. She giggled. “Well, at least you don’t need the money. I’ll kind of miss his face on all those boxes, though.”

Then I told her about Clayton Kempshall’s offer of his island.

“His own island? It sounds wonderful. Why don’t you accept?”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“Well, I could go with you.”

“You could? But what about that tournament, the Southern Belle?”

She sniffed me. “Pickles?”

“Could be.”

“You need to get away.”

The phone rang. It was Shelly.

“I just heard they fired him. I knew they were stupid, but who would have imagined? What do you want to do about it?”

“Do whatever you want, Shelly.”

“I was thinking about enveloping them in litigation. I haven’t enveloped anyone in a long time.”

“Have fun. I’ll be in touch.”

FOUR

C
an you tell us how it feels to own the R-r-ruff Dog and know that at any time a stalker may strike?” the handsome, sandy-haired media person shouted after us. He and his crew of two were catching up. I could feel their hot lights on the back of my neck as Jellyroll and I accelerated down the concourse ramp at La Guardia.

Travelers’ heads turned all around us. Suddenly I was looking down a dozen different gaping mouths. Jellyroll attracts attention anyway, but here he was in a major transportation center pursued by about twelve million candlepower of stark white TV light and three straining assholes.

There was no refuge for us, nowhere they wouldn’t follow. Running would only encourage them. The breathless reporter in hot pursuit of the truth. If he’d been eating lunch, I’d have kicked it in his face. But of course you can’t do that on TV. TV demands deadpan; you can’t ever be real on TV or it will eat you alive. I would have to deal with him. I stopped. We turned to face the light.

He had this thirty-million-dollar smile. His teeth fairly sparkled. He was an all-American boy. I hate that kind of fucker. I’d seen him somewhere before, but I couldn’t place where. His camera operator was a woman, but the camera covered her identity. All I could see beside the fish-eye she jammed in my face were enormous tits erupting under a black sweater. The sound man, tall and gangly, in tight jeans and lizard cowboy boots, proud of himself, smirked at me.

“I’m Rand Dewy from
Celebrity Tonight
. We hear that there’s a stalker situation with respect to the R-r-Ruff Dog. Would you care to comment?”

“Weren’t you a figure skater?”

“Why, yes, I was, Olympic bronze, actually.”

Jellyroll sniffed his shoes.

Rand knelt down to pet him—

“Don’t!” I said.

“What?”

“He’ll take your hand off.”

Jellyroll thumped the floor with his tail, peered sweetly up into Rand’s face.

“The R-r-ruff Dog?” Rand looked devastated.

“Vicious. He’s always been vicious. He was born vicious. Two weeks old, he killed his littermates.”

“No—”

“Rand, could we step over here and talk in private? It’s very important.” I didn’t wait for an answer; I took the microphone from his hand and handed it to the sound man, who seemed to have something stuck down the front of his jeans, a rope or something. I led Rand to a seat in the back of a vacant departure gate area. As I seated us in the plastic chairs, I made a big thing out of positioning myself between Jellyroll and Rand. “Now, Rand,” I said, jaw clenched, “where did you get the idea that Jellyroll is being stalked?”