Skin Trade (34 page)

“What about the roller-coaster?” I said.

“What roller-coaster?” He laughed. “We could have settled it all in New York, here at home, over dinner. I
told you when we met in Paris. You wouldn't let me help. You didn't believe me. I didn't attack your Lily,” he said. “It was an accident. The Serb prick who did it is bottom of that pond.”

“You knew.”

He laughed. “More than that.”

“You wanted him dead.”

“I let you have him. You did me a favor. Zhaba was getting crazy. He was selling the dolls on the side.”

“Dolls?”

“The Natashas. The whores.”

I could feel the other gun in my waistband under my sweater.

“You wanted me to kill him.”

“It was only fair. You got your revenge. I let you have it. So now it's over.”

“Tell me something.”

“What?”

“How did you connect me and Lily? I didn't tell you about her until we met at the bookstore.”

Joe Fallon got up and went to the desk. I followed him.

“Take it easy. I'm just going to show you something.” He pulled open a drawer, took out a picture and tossed it on the desk. “Go on, take a look.”

I picked it up. On New Year's Eve, before we got on the London wheel, we had had our picture taken along with everyone else. In the chaos afterwards, I forgot about it. In the picture were Lily and me and, behind us, another couple. At the edge of the frame, wearing a wig and a New Year's party hat, was Zhaba.

*

I couldn't tell what time it was when Sonny arrived; my watch had stopped. When I heard the car pull up outside Fallon's place, I was ready to turn Fallon over, let the system take him, make it hard for him. Let his kids see him for what he was.

Fallon heard the car too. He was watching me, his eye on the gun. I didn't move.
People Time
played on the stereo.

Fallon said, “I think it's the most sublime album, you know, and Getz was dead a few months later. What would you trade to make a sound like that, Artie?”

I didn't answer.

“Another drink?”

I looked at Fallon and saw the pale handsome kid I once knew. He would always get off easy. If I turned him over to the system, there would be the lawyers, the friends, the appeals. And all the time he'd be in New York, near me, watching; he would be a few blocks away from me and Lily.

There was no hard evidence; the only person who could put Fallon in the picture was Lily, who couldn't remember. But I knew it was Fallon she'd met at the Ritz that night she was attacked, I knew.

Maybe he called her in Paris and said he was a friend of Martha's. Shall we have a drink? I'd like to help. And Lily, in love with the idea that you could help other people, would have said, sure. He was charming. Maybe they had a couple of martinis and he said, there's a woman I'd like you to meet, one of the women who got hurt. She doesn't like going out in public. Lily, already
obsessed with the cause, would have agreed. I'll meet you, he might have said. Lily would have gone to the empty apartment near the rue de Rivoli where Zhaba was waiting for her. He beat her up. Raped her. Hacked off her hair. Fallon made it happen. He did that to her.

“Been to the Ritz Hotel in Paris recently, Joe?”

Distracted, he looked at me and, without thinking, said, “Sure. All the time. Why?”

Fallon was dead when Sonny Lippert came through the door. Enveloped in his camel-hair coat, his face withered from fatigue, Sonny hurried in, looked at Fallon, then me, went over to the stereo and turned off the music.

“So he went for you. The son-of-a-bitch came after you. Art? Isn't that right? Look at me, man, look at me.”

He shook me, put his hand on my shoulder where I was sitting on the floor, back to Fallon, head down. “Come on,” he said and helped me up. “Isn't that right?”

I nodded.

“Say it. He pulled a gun and he was going to fire, he threatened you, and you had to do it. It was self-defense, no question. Isn't that right?”

Already Sonny was rummaging in Fallon's desk drawer, shuffling papers, looking for a weapon. He found a gun and tossed it on top of the table.

“Say it.” He poured out a big drink, shoved it in my hand, watched me drink it.

“Yes. Self-defense. He pulled a gun on me,” I said.

Without missing a beat, Sonny said “son-of-a-bitch” again, then told me he had the information I wanted.

One of his cronies had traced the Paris apartment where Lily was attacked to a real-estate agent who, when the cops finally got to him and leaned on him hard, revealed he managed it for Eric Levesque.

Sonny picked up the phone on Fallon's desk now and called 911, called his office, talked to guys he knew, guys which, as he said, owed him plenty. His voice was hard and certain; he cut through the bureaucratic bullshit. I sat on the edge of Fallon's green silk sofa which seemed like the edge of the world, and waited for the cops to come.

They took Fallon's body away. Sonny went down to his office in the Special Prosecutor's division to fix the paperwork, I went home, slept a few hours and got cleaned up. Then I went back to Lily's clinic and waited in the hallway until she woke up.

I sat on the side of her bed and told her everything as best I could. London, Paris, the Czech border, Vienna, Bosnia. I told her all of it: how I started on the Levesque case and it caught her up, and how they hurt her because of it. I told her about the women.

I told her nobody was pushed from the glass pod on the big wheel in London on New Year's Eve. As gently as I could, I told her it was a hallucination. Not knowing if she was taking it all in, I held her hand. She kept her eyes shut and listened to me.

When I was done, she opened her eyes, raised a hand to her head and felt her hair where it stuck out around the bandages.

“It's too short,” she said.

“I'm so sorry, sweetheart.”

Slowly, she said, “It's OK, you can stop now Artie.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Artie?”

“What's that, sweetheart?”

“You smell nice.”

“Good.”

“I think I know who you are.”

So I shut up. I wasn't sure if she was faking it or someone had told her or she really knew who I was, but I wasn't in this for the philosophy, I didn't care so long as I was with her. I put my arms around Lily and said, “I know you do.”