Harmony In Flesh and Black (25 page)

It took an hour to reach last Friday night.

The TV screen showed Sheila in the studio, on the white bed, in front of the vague roses on the wallpaper, naked, curled on her side, reading a magazine. Beyond her, in the same frame, the studio door opened on the view across Henry Smykal's living room, to the inside of the front door. The sound on the tape was of a phone ringing, which Smykal did not answer.

Smykal, wearing that suit, entered the room, Pentax around his neck.

“I don't want to miss this guy,” the dead man said, his voice clear on the microphone. “You lying here, him coming into the apartment, first thing we see is him seeing the first thing he sees, which is your crotch, right?”

“Lie here with my legs open,” Sheila said. “I'm not brilliant, but I can understand that, I guess. What else is new?”

“Not much,” Smykal said. “Let's not drown the guy. There. Just enough so he thinks, Hey, I got an idea.”

“When is he coming?”

“He'll be here,” Smykal said. He walked out of the room, and shortly afterward the tape went blank, then started again to show—across Sheila, now striking a pose of lascivious welcome on the bed—Smykal going to the apartment's front door, opening it a crack.

Hot lights burned, and the telephone was ringing.

Smykal said, “You're not him,” and the camera showed his back as he tried to force the door closed. There was a voice on the other side of the door that Fred couldn't hear precisely. Sheila lolled.

Smykal said, “I'm filming,” as he pushed against the door. “What letter?”

A foot in Fred's shoe was stuck in the crack of the door. Fred heard the sound of the name Arthurian, spoken in a voice he recognized.

Smykal said, “You can't come in. It's art film. I guarantee privacy.”

There was a murmur from the far side of the door.

Smykal said, “You can't come in, not now.”

Sheila posed, increasing the welcome, lifting her legs.

Smykal pushed at the door, saying, “Just get out.” Then, softer, “It's not here.”

Fred got the reprise, the Smykal's-eye view of his first visit of Saturday morning, until he pulled out his foot and Smykal, in his shiny suit, closed the door again.

“Forget it, Sheila,” Smykal said, walking out of the picture. “Knock it off.”

The screen went blank. Fred put it on pause.

Sheila had said, “The guy came back.”

That was the part that interested Fred. He started the film forward, the picture focusing on Sheila tossing her magazine to one side and assuming her position again. Smykal came into the picture, going to the door, listening a moment, taking off the chain.

“Now,” Fred said.

Smykal's door was pushed in. Buddy Mangan, in the man-of-the-soil outfit, shoving Smykal backward past the studio, gave the naked woman a glance, said, “Get lost,” and pushed Smykal off camera.

Sheila rolled over, scratched her backside, picked up her magazine, and said, “Shit.”

She stepped out of the camera's frame, and there was nothing to see but empty rooms. Mangan's voice, hard to make out, came from somewhere else: “What do you mean telling my guy the deal's off? Where's the fucking picture? What's wrong with my fucking money, Smykal?”

Sheila, now in jeans and sandals and a pink sweatshirt, carrying the black bag, walked into camera range and out of the studio. A loud slap sounded, and Mangan's voice again: “What's wrong with my fucking money?”

The picture stopped. It was over.

Fred stared at the machine.

He looked at his watch. He could afford to sleep for an hour, in Teddy's bed.

29

There's heat and pain and solitude. Their first aim is to assault the spirit, which, in each of us, can finally be broken: don't fail to believe it. Afterward they start gnawing on the soul.

Curious moral quandary when they say, speculatively, “We'll shoot one and ask the other questions. Which shall we shoot, the big one or the fat one?”

Fred lay in Teddy's dusky room, smelling the discomfort of distressed male and recalling the cramped agony of weeks of confinement in their bamboo cage, hearing again the drone of his insistent envy for the fat one, whom they had selected as the one to shoot, believing Fred's size would promote a heavier fall when he gave in. While they rested between sessions with him, they failed to provide him with a copy of Proust—which, in any case, he could not have read in the total darkness underground.

Whatever he did afterward, forever while he lived, he owed a life. He'd never even learned the fat one's name.

Relentless malice and the drip of blood through jungle splashed with rain made Southeast Asia in this corner of Charlestown—a pocket of horror unresolved that had so many fellows throughout the country, Fred knew, that the character of the country itself had been permanently altered.

He wondered what form they had chosen for the boy's torment. Fred had a chance to pull him out if he was rested. He stared at the black windows and forced himself to sleep.

*   *   *

Fred woke at around seven. He telephoned Molly from the kitchen extension.

“Where have you been?” Molly asked. “For God's sake, are you all right?”

She sounded frantic. God, he hadn't told her anything since yesterday afternoon.

“Sorry,” Fred said. “I'm okay. I'm working it out. I couldn't go back to the hotel till I took care of something.”

“You're all right, then.” Now Molly could replace mortal worry with what sounded like close to mortal mad.

“I should have called,” Fred said.

“Tell me about it.”

Fred said, “I talked to the guy in Providence, and it sounds like it's going to work. Listen, I called to wake you up.”

“Who was asleep?” Molly asked.

“I'm sorry,” Fred said. “Thank you for worrying. I'm stupid. I didn't think. I'm not used to thinking.…”

“No sob stuff,” Molly said.

“I wanted to catch the kids before they go to school.”

Terry was bright and able first thing in the morning. Sam was grumpy, grumbling, waking up. Fred said hello, he missed them, have a good day, work hard in school.

There was no sign of movement from his roommates. Dirty light came in through the windows. Sam hung up the phone as Fred was saying, “Okay, then, see you, Sam. Can you put your mom back on?”

Fred had to call back and tell Molly, “I should be back this evening.”

“See you then,” said Molly. She was still pissed.

The cassette in his pocket, Fred told Teddy he was leaving some things in the room for a day or two.

“If you want to wait until eight,” Teddy said, “and if you want backup—so people see you got friends—you want me to ride with you? People see me, bein' big and black, it might give you a better edge.”

Fred thought about it a moment.

“Thanks, Teddy,” he said. “I better say no this time. The people I have to see, it's better if I don't scare them. I appreciate it.”

Terry nodded and watched the door as Fred closed it behind him.

*   *   *

Fred drove back to Cambridge. It was brisk in the early morning. It would be a bright day: spring. He cut across the bridge and took the long route, skirting the river on the Cambridge side, watching the trees, dogs, joggers, and students on the river in their sculls.

He grabbed a muffin and coffee and carried them with him to the hotel. He picked up his messages at the desk: four calls from Molly, at 1:30
A.M
., 3:30, 5:00, and 6:45. She'd been worried, and he was a shit.

A message from Clayton: “Go ahead.” Good, Clay was his partner again.

He had the coffee and the muffin in his room, took a shower, and put on the clean shirt Mclly had brought yesterday with lunch. He called Clayton at eight-thirty. Clay was an early riser. He'd be in his room, completely dressed or in that dressing gown, mixing his Perrier and his fresh orange juice, his
New York Times
finished, ready to start the day's Proust.

“I got your message,” Fred said. “It was too late to call back.”

“It's highway robbery,” Clay said. “But it is the only way to get it done. How do you want the money?”

“Why don't you have a cashier's check made out to me, and I'll endorse it after I'm sure everything's copacetic.”

“Nothing's been copacetic for years,” Clay said. “Not since nineteen twenty-five.” He was feeling better. He agreed to have the check drawn up and sent by messenger.

“I'll tell you when I think it's safe for you to go back home,” Fred said.

“I'm not here for my safety,” Clay exploded. “Have you completely lost your sense of priorities? You insist on going off on tangents while you leave me to concentrate alone on our main effort?”

The Heade. Yes.

“Finn wants to rope me into some slimy maneuver,” Clay said. “It's the only reason he'd have sent me that note. He thinks he can knock me off the Heade. I've talked to my bank. Maybe it means I don't buy another picture for five years, but we're going to bid on that thing until we buy it.”

“I'll keep in touch,” Fred said.

He couldn't expect a call from Providence until the end of the morning. He called Video Shak and arranged to rent what he could, buy the few components he couldn't rent, and have everything delivered to his room.

The boys who brought the stuff, who should have been in high school, took his credit-card imprint, made him sign papers, and left him the two VCRs, the jack to connect them to the room's TV, and cassettes and connector inserts. They took five bucks each for a tip.

Fred had decided before he slept that his object would be for the complete tape never to be seen or used. His second object, if the first did not apply, was for the majority of the tape never to be seen. He didn't relish the idea of testifying in court to what he had been saying behind the door Smykal pushed against while the camera played across the reaching legs of Sheila.

However, the tape—or at least the last part of it, the entrance of jolly Buddy Mangan, complete with the recorded time of that entrance, 1:17
A.M
.—was evidence of murder. Fred made two copies of the last six minutes, then he rewound the tape and started to copy the whole thing from the beginning. Evidence that important, given the unpredictability of life, you couldn't have just one copy of, not if you wanted to be sure you could produce it later.

*   *   *

Providence called at about noon. It was the same voice as yesterday.

“Fred?”

“Yes,” said Fred.

“We think you are Arthur Arthurian.”

“I know that,” Fred said.

There was a pause.

He waited.

“You have the money?”

“Twenty-five thousand, as agreed,” Fred said.

“Why don't you come down and we'll work this thing out,” the voice said. “You seem like a guy knows how to do business without fucking around.”

“So do you,” Fred said.

Another pause.

“You know what I want,” Fred said.

“We'll make it work.”

The voice described the location of a gas station off Route 95, south of Providence. “I'll be here two-thirty, three. After three I won't be here. I said I'd get your car fixed, but the guys couldn't find it.”

“I moved it. Two-thirty, three, then,” Fred said.

“After three it's too late,” the voice repeated, and the hand behind the voice hung up the phone at that end.

Fred called Clay and told him he was heading for Providence with the payment, which had arrived safely. He thought of calling Molly and telling her, warning her. There was a distant chance he might not come back. But if he didn't, that would be time enough for her to know. Instead he called and told her he hoped to be back for supper, he was sorry she'd worried, he felt terrible that she'd been calling all night, and, he reaffirmed, he'd been a shit.

“See you tonight, then,” Molly said.

Fred wrapped one of the complete tapes and addressed it to himself; he'd leave it at the desk of the Charles to be picked up later. He put one of the two six-minute segments in his jacket pocket, packed his meager belongings, and checked out of the hotel.

The other complete tape, and the other segment, he'd take to Charlestown and stash. Fred put the tapes he wanted to keep safe in his lock box and told Bill Radford that if he didn't call or come back for them by, say, Monday at the latest, Bill should turn them over to the police in Cambridge.

It was a nice day for a drive. Fred took the expressway south, then 95.

30

The Gulf station off 95 was small and seedy, set back on a desolate lot half a mile down an empty road through scrubby fields. There was nothing around but roads and green vacancy. An old mechanic in brown coveralls was working on a tire in the garage, and nobody was in the office. Fred drove into the lot and parked his car next to the building. The mechanic came out, looked at Fred's car, and checked it against what he was expecting.

“He'll be here shortly,” the mechanic said. He smelled like a cigar butt. “Why don't you wait in the car?”

Fred went back and sat in the car while the mechanic strolled into the office and made a phone call. He went back into the garage without saying anything else to Fred. Fred put his gun under the front seat and waited.

In twenty minutes a Silver Spur Rolls Royce swept in. The redhead and the weasel climbed out of the backseat, looked the terrain over, and nodded toward the driver. The weasel's face was bruised and puffy, and he had a bandage on his nose. Fred opened his car door. The redhead walked toward him. Fred got out. The weasel—he'd washed his hair, had to, to get the blood out—had on a clean white windbreaker today, and black pants. The redhead was dressed the same. It was a uniform. The redhead said, “Let's have your piece.”