Lush Life (11 page)

"So . . ."

"So . . . We go over to the Congee on Allen." Eric hesitated, working his jaw again. "I mean that asshole was already half-wasted at the reading. And who the hell orders mojitos at a Chinese restaurant?"

"You're talking Ike?"

"No. Steve . . . Stevie." The fatigue starting to lead now, as it often did, to a sloppy, sullen candidness.

"What time was this?"

"Nine-thirty or so."

"What did you guys talk about?"

"Me? I didn't say much. But they're all irons in the fire, like, apparently Steve had just gotten a callback for a movie, right? His first callback, you know, like next stop the Oscars, then it's Ike's turn, gonna start up some online literary magazine, raise money for a documentary, we're all gonna collaborate on a screenplay, la-la, la-la, the usual bullshit." Matty and Yolonda solemnly nodding, neither of them wanting to stem the flow.

"Anybody have problems with anybody?" Matty asked.

"You mean between them?"

"Between them, you, anyone else . . ."

Eric hesitated. "No."

"What was that." Yolonda smiled.

"What was what," he said, then, "I just get so fucking tired of hearing all of that, you know? Everybody's big plans around here."

"Sure."

"I have mine too, you know. I just don't . . ."

"Don't . . ."

Eric held up a hand, turned profile to the table.

"So where'd you go next?"

"Next?" Eric's voice suddenly bright with anger. "Steve, because he wasn't quite hammered enough, took us to this top-secret bar on Chrystie. You're supposed to have a reservation, but if you have any kind of name down here, they just let you in. I didn't think either one of them would have even heard of it.""How'd that go?" Matty asked, thinking they had to have been there and gone before his own shift.

"Well, they both started drinking absinthe. And I got a little lecture about how it isn't real absinthe unless it's from Czechoslovakia, and how even if it was from Czechoslovakia, it had to have wormwood in it or tapeworms or whatever "You sound like you weren't having a very good time with these guys," Yolonda said.

"1 don't know. Sometimes it feels like everybody I know down here went to the same fucking art camp or something." Eyes brimming, he stared at his hands, then added as if ashamed, "Ike was OK."

"So the top-secret bar was from when to when?" she asked.

"We were out of there probably by eleven or so."

"Everybody still getting along?"

"Yeah, 1 guess. I think 1 told you they got their MFAs together something like three months ago, now Steve's all night, I'm not moving to L. A., man, L. A.'s ass. New York feeds me, feeds my soul. They want me, they gotta come here. And I'm not doing any studio bullshit.'

"And Ike's like, 'And I'm not writing any.'

"Then everybody, all together now, Til fuckin' starve first, man.'

"I mean, what are they, two years old? Christ, he got one fucking callback. Do you have any idea how many . . ."

The room was a silent for a beat, Yolonda nodding in sympathy.

"What's an MFA again?" Matty asked.

"Master of fine arts." "Right."

"So then where'd you go after that?" Yolonda asked.

"After that it was Ike's turn, he took us to some poetry bar on the Bowery, beatnik bar, or something."

"What's it called?"

"Zeno's Conscience."

"They can get that all on the sign?"

"He said they had a midnight puppet porno show we couldn't miss."

"A what?" Yolonda smiled.

The thing is? These guys, the both of them, they just moved downtown maybe what, a month ago? Two months? We walk in, they know everybody in the place. Ike, he's like the street mayor or something. Areal operator. I mean, shit, if a guys big enough a hustler, maybe he's got a future for himself, who knows."

"My sister was like that," Yolonda said. "My mothers all like, Yolonda! Would it kill you to smile? Why can't you be nice to people? Why can't you be more like Gloria?' Made me want to slaughter the both of them."

"So how was the puppet show?" Matty asked.

"The what?" Eric yawned, a spastic ripple streaking through his body. "He had the wrong night."

There was another knock at the door; Matty and Yolonda looking at each other.

"Excuse me," Matty said, and slipped out to see Deputy Inspector Berkowitz standing there, short, trim, and remarkably clear-skinned, like a teenager with gray hair.

"How's it going in there?" he asked.

"It's going," Matty said.

"Let me just ask, the other guy, Steven Boulware, is he shaping up as a perp in this at all?"

"Not, no, so far he's maybe a witness, if that. He was pretty intox."

"OK." Berkowitz slipped his hands in his suit pockets as if they had all the time in the world. "Just so you know, Boulware's dad was apparently in the same Ranger unit with the police commissioner in 'Nam."

"Like I said"-Matty stared-"he was mainly intox."

"All right." Berkowitz turned on his heel. "If something changes with that? Call me."

"Sorry," Matty said, retaking his seat, then jerking his fist under the table, Yolonda catching it without changing her expression.

"So the puppet bar, beatnik bar . . ." Matty faltered, looked to Yolonda, who looked at her notes.

"Zeno's Conscience," Eric said slowly.

"Right," Matty said.

"Anything happen there? Run into anybody memorable?" Yolonda asked.

"No. I don't know. I was probably smashed myself at that point. But, no, I don't think so.""All right, then . . ."

"Then were supposed to call it a night, should have called it a night"-his face abruptly graying-"obviously."

"What did I say to you about blaming yourself?" Yolonda warned.

"Right ... In any event, at that point Captain Callback had already gotten sick on the sidewalk ..."

"Steve."

". . . is talking at about a word an hour, but somehow we wind up at Cry."

"The bar on Grand?" "Right."

"What time are we talking?"

"I don't know, had to be one o'clock or so."

"How'd that go?"

"How'd it go? We're in there five minutes, Ike disappears with this girl at the bar."

"Disappeared where?" Yolonda asked.

Eric looked at her again. "That's why they call it 'disappeared.'"

"For how long?"

"Just long enough. Fifteen, twenty minutes, left me with Steve, the guy is squinting at me like, 'Who the fuck are you?'"

"Did you know the girl?"

"Actually? Yeah. She works at Grouchie's on Ludlow. Been around here forever. A real old-timer."

"Just curious," Matty asked. "How old's an old-timer?"

"Well, her, she's got to be in her thirties by now, mid-thirties. I think at first she was some kind of performance-artist-slash-barmaid. Now she's just a barmaid. It's like . . ." Eric cut himself off again.

"Like . . ."

"I don't know, people say they're one thing or another? Then at some point, they just are what they are."

"I hear you," Matty said.

'You hear me?"

'You OK, Eric?" Yolonda said. "Anytime you want to take five, just say so."

Eric didn't respond."So what was her name?" Matty asked.

"Whose?"

"The girl."

"I'm not sure. Sarah something. Sarah ... I don't know."

Matty didn't know her last name either. Grouchie's was a cop bar, one of the few places on the Lower East Side that made you feel like you were drinking in Queens.

"She has a tattoo," Eric added grudgingly. "A cartoon character. One of the seven dwarfs maybe? I'm not sure."

"Tattoo where?" Yolonda asked.

He hesitated. "On her leg, the inside of her leg."

"Inside of her leg. You mean like her thigh?"

"In that neighborhood . . ." Looking away from them.

"Eric," Yolonda said, "you know she has Sneezy or Grumpy or whoever 'in that neighborhood' but you're not sure of her name?"

"I said, Sarah something."

"Eric." Yolonda throwing a sad smirk.

"What."

"What," she gently aped him.

"It was one time." He shrugged. "Over a year ago."

'You sound like my husband."

"What do you want me say." The guy suddenly looking pounded.

Matty remembered her now; she actually had all seven dwarfs, like himself that night, whistling while they worked their way up her leg.

"Afterwards, when you all regrouped, did anything come up about him being with her?" Matty asked.

"Come up between who, me and Ike? No. He doesn't know me. And why would I ever volunteer information about myself like that? To be humiliated?"

"So he didn't comment on it at all. Maybe to his asshole buddy Steve. You know, just to brag, make a crack, not realizing that you and her ..."

"No, but even if he did, what would that have to do with anything?"

They gave it another beat of silence, a little test run to see if he knew where this was ultimately heading.

"So what time did you leave Cry?" she finally asked."I don't know if you heard me," Eric said, some of the first go
-
rounds anxious alertness returning to his eyes. "What would that have to do with anything?"

Matty casually looked to Yolonda, who, staring at the table, briefly shook her head no; too early to risk him asking for a lawyer.

"We1 re just trying to get a handle on his personality," Matty said. "See if maybe he was the type of guy who tended to rub people the wrong way."

"So what time did you leave Cry?"

"What do you think, I just kept checking my watch after every drink?" Eric said in a sulky but retreating tone, as if not quite ready to pursue his suspicions about what was going on in here.

"Well, how long do you think you stayed there?" Matty asked.

"All I can tell you is we got to Berkmann's right at last call. So it had to be two, two-thirty."

"What's that, about a three-block walk?"

"Three-block stagger. Well, no," palming his face. "Actually, 1 was all the way around to sober again. I think Ike was too. And I didn't have anything to drink at Berkmann's. I don't like socializing where I work. And I certainly didn't want to show up at my own place of business with some shitface already dragging his toes, but Ike sort of braced him up, it was right on the way, they had a nightcap, and that was it. When we left there, we were just going to carry him back to his apartment on Eldridge, then go our separate ways, but obviously ..."

They waited.

"You know," Eric finally said, his eyes suddenly shining as if jelled, "I'm probably an alcoholic? But I don't get incapacitated in front of other people. I don't make a spectacle or, or a burden of myself. People like that . . . they wreak such havoc and then they go home. Then somebody takes them home. Fucker." Eric went off somewhere behind his teeth, then came back, his voice a passionate burble. "He's the one should have caught that bullet."

Matty and Yolonda straightened in their seats.

There was another knock at the door, the cops tensing, Eric oblivious.

"And you know what?" offering them a livid, teary grimace.

Yolonda and Matty waited, the blood whistling in their veins, until the knocking became so persistent that Eric finally became distracted and the moment passed.

"What, Eric," Yolonda pushed nonetheless.

"When he wakes up today?" addressing the table. "He won't even know what happened. No memories, no pictures . . . Not one funking clue.

Matty almost tore the door off the hinges, Lieutenant Carmody on the other side reflexively stepping back.

"I just got in," he said. "So hows it going in there?"

"Eric," Yolonda said, when Matty came back in. "We need to do some more legwork. I know you're beat six ways to Sunday, but do you think you could possibly hang around a little while longer? Money in the bank, we're going to need to come back to you a half-dozen more times today."

"For what?"

"For anything, look at more photo arrays, view a lineup if we get lucky, or maybe just to clarify a few things here and there. It's hard to say right now."

"Clarify what?"

"Whatever," Matty said, rising. "We just need to see where the day takes us."

"Can't I just go home?" Looking from one to the other.

"Sure, but . . ."

"I mean, if I were to get up and walk out the door, it's not like you can keep me here against my will, right?"

"Is that what you really want to do?" Yolonda said softly, she and Matty staring at him, the guy somewhere knowing what was going on, but still afraid to let it into the forefront of his brain.