Taming a Sea Horse (6 page)

I said, "Robert, if you need to steady that thing two-handed to hit me from eleven inches away you better think about a strength program."

"I'll use it, you bastard."

"I'm sure you would if you needed to," I said. "But you won't need to."

I turned and walked into his apartment. It was one room with a stand-up kitchen and a bathroom. Most of the bed-sitting-room was occupied by an unfolded sofa bed unmade with dark maroon silk sheets and a pale gray puff comforter.

Rambeaux still stood against the wall by the door with the short gun held in front of him. He was in his underwear, stretch bikinis with gray and maroon stripes. He was wiry and looked in shape but he was no bigger than a tall middleweight. In addition to the black eye, his lower lip was swollen. There was a purple blotch on his rib cage on the right side and a reddish welt on his forehead above his right eye.

"What's going on?" I said. Rambeaux shook his head.

"I look for April, she's not around. I come here, you say you don't know where she is and you got nothing more to do with her. Day before yesterday you told me to stay away from your 'lady'-always one of my favorite expressions. Now you don't know where she is, don't want to know where she is, and you look like you were in a hatchet fight and didn't have a hatchet. There are inferences to be drawn."

Rambeaux let the gun drop to his side, holding it in his right hand. He walked into the room and sat on the bed and looked at me, the gun resting on his thigh. He shook his head, and it must have hurt, because he stopped in midshake and began to massage the back of his neck with his free hand.

"Listen, man. Two days ago I was doing fine. I had a nice little connection for myself. Had some ladies working for me. Then you show up and everything is fucked up. You keep hanging around and we both gonna get killed and I done shit to deserve it."

"I try to use this power wisely," I said. "Who's going to kill us?"

Rambeaux shook his head. "I won't tell you nothing," he said. "I don't know where April is. I ain't going to know tomorrow neither. You can keep coming around and fucking with me but I still ain't going to know."

"But if you're seen with me it'll cause trouble?"

Rambeaux looked straight at me. His eyes were dark and shiny. "Stay away from me, man. Honest to God, I don't know nothing about April and you just going to get me killed for nothing."

He had the gun pointed at me again. "Maybe not for nothing," I said.

"Jesus, man, she's just quiff, you know. I go out and in an hour I collect ten more just as good."

"So how come somebody punched your lights out over her and how come you're scared of dying over her, and how come I can't find her?"

"Ain't her, man, it's who…" He shook his head. "No, you get out of here or I swear to God I'll shoot. I will waste you right fucking here."

I stood with my hands in my hip pockets and my back to the windows, with the light from the windows brightening the rumpled silk sheets, on the unfolded bed. Rambeaux had the gun up now in both hands again, pointed at the middle of my stomach. He was shivering.

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to leave you my card, in case you need to talk with me."

I took my wallet out and pulled a card free and left it on the maroon lacquered coffee table that had been pushed against the wall to make room for the bed.

"I don't want no card," Rambeaux said. "I don't want to see you again ever."

"In case," I said. "Maybe even in case you need help."

Rambeaux shook his head and stood, the gun pointed at me now held straight out in front with both hands:

"She alive?" I said.

Rambeaux nodded. "She fine, man, forget her."

I nodded toward my card on the coffee table. "In case you need help," I said, and walked out carefully past him.

I went down to Times Square' then and looked for Ginger Buckey but couldn't find her. I had dinner and went back and looked some more and still couldn't find her, so I went back to the hotel and went to bed. It was my most significant accomplishment of the day.

My motto is if at first you don't succeed, the hell with it. So, in the morning I packed and checked out and took the 10:00 A.M. shuttle back from New York. The shuttle runs between Boston and New York every hour on the hour and guarantees a seat. It is very convenient, usually late, and has size 42 seats, which can be difficult if you are a size 48 passenger. In Boston I got my car out of the parking garage and drove to my office.

I got a cup of coffee to go and took it upstairs with me and sat at my desk. There were several days' worth of letters piled under the mail slot. Most of them spelled my name wrong, none of them mattered and I threw the batch into my wastebasket.

I looked at my answering machine. The red message light glowed unblinking. No calls. I got up and opened both windows and looked out the window. I was still at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston streets, over a bank. Across the street the ad agency was still there, but Linda Thomas didn't work there anymore. They had a male art director now and I didn't know where Linda was. I drank some coffee. Spring air drifted into my office. Some exhaust fumes, too, but mostly spring air.

I sat down and made out a bill to Patricia Utley for my time and put it in an envelope and addressed it. I peeled a stamp out of the little plastic dispenser that holds one hundred that the post office will sell you for a nickel, except they almost never have them in stock. I put the stamp on the envelope. There. Took care of business for today. Except for actually mailing. Maybe I should save mailing it to give me something to do after lunch. I got up and looked out the window some more. I hadn't worked out since the day before I went to New York. I felt tired and heavy. It was six hours until Susan got off work. I could leave the office, mail my letter, have lunch and take a nap until supper time. Or maybe put my laundry through and watch it dry. Time never weighs heavy on the active mind.

There was some mail accumulated at my apartment on Marlborough Street, but except for a letter from Paul Giacomin, it was of less significance than the stuff at my office.

I read Paul's letter, and unpacked my bag, and changed into some sweats and went out to run along the river. I didn't want to and as I started I felt like there was sand in the gears, but as I kept moving things began to loosen in the vernal warmth along the esplanade. A lot of Frisbee was being played. Some of it with dogs. I had previously observed that dogs who catch Frisbees wear red handkerchiefs instead of dog collars; the accuracy of that observation was once again confirmed. Nothing like investigative training. I ran up to the Mass. Ave. Bridge and across it and down along Memorial Drive and across the old Charles River Dam and back across to Boston. By the time I had run a mile I was loosened up and able to pick up the pace and by the time I got to Leverett Circle I was pounding hard and steady and my shirt was soaking wet. I worked my way through traffic down along the waterfront and went into the Harbor Health Club. I didn't feel like pumping iron, either, but if I didn't rescue what was left after laying off in New York, I would feel even less like it tomorrow. And soon it would be too late.

Henry Cimoli, who ran the place, was taking a young woman through the Nautilus equipment. He had a chart on a clipboard. He wore blue warm-up pants and a white sleeveless T-shirt and white basketball sneakers with padded high tops. There was scar tissue around his eyes and his nose was thickened, and there was a little gray in his short dark hair. But his waist was as narrow and his biceps as thick as when he'd been a featherweight boxer and gone a ten-round draw once with Sandy Saddler.

"Slow," he said to the woman. "It's not how much you do, it's how right you do it."

The woman had on dark blue shiny leotards and pale blue leg warmers and dark blue sneakers with a light blue stripe and a bright blue shiny ribbon tying her hair in a ponytail. She pressed up what appeared to be about forty pounds. I said hello to Henry as I went past. He nodded.

"Now let it back down slow," he said. "Slow, Slow."

I started at one end of the Nautilus setup and did three sets of everything. There weren't many people there in mid-afternoon and I could move from one machine to the next without waiting. I was halfway through when the young lady in the shiny leotard finished working out and headed for the juice bar. Henry stopped to talk.

"Women are good," he said. "They'll do what you tell them and they'll do it strict, get more out of it than the guys. Guys want to pile on too much weight and heave it up, case somebody's watching. So they cheat all the time."

I was doing curls, and it took most of my concentration.

"But women don't know how to try as hard," Henry said. "They do the exercise right but they never learn to strain, you know. The guys do it wrong but will bust their ass doing it."

I finished the fifteenth curl out of the third set. I was breathing hard, getting oxygen in. "You're not bad," Henry said.

I nodded, getting more air. "Everyone says that," I said.

"Not everybody," Henry said.

I walked back home and showered and changed and had a beer. The first beer after a big workout makes the workout worthwhile. It was a little after four. I called Susan's number and left a message on her machine proposing dinner and talk. She called me back in twenty minutes.

"I have one more patient," she said. "Shall I come there?"

"Yes," I said. "I'll chill the wine."

"Good."

She hung up. I checked my watch. Time to provision. I had a couple of bottles of champagne. I put one in the refrigerator to chill and went to the market.

By six o'clock I was ready. The champagne chilled in a crystal bucket. The boneless chicken was marinating in the juice of one lemon and one orange with a little ginger. The endive and avocado salad was ready to be tossed with dressing and the cornmeal and onion fritters were formed and ready for the skillet. I had on a new starched pink shirt and freshly ironed jeans, and cordovan loafers gleaming with polish. I smelled of cologne. My teeth were brushed and I was more scrumptious than the Dukes of Hazzard.

I was making the salad dressing out of lemon juice and olive oil and honey and mustard and raspberry vinegar when Susan unlocked my front door and came into the apartment. She was wearing a black skirt and a lemon-yellow blouse with black polka dots and a pearl-gray jacket. Her necklace was crystal and pearl, large beads. She wore clunky black earrings and a big bracelet of black and gray chunks of something. Her stockings were pale gray and had a small random floral pattern. Her shoes were black and white. She had her large black purse and a lavender overnight bag.

I watched her come in and take the key out of the lock and store it back in her purse and close the door behind her. I watched while reality rearranged itself so that she formed its center, and I felt my breath go in and out more clearly, as if the air had turned to oxygen.

"You're like a breath of spring," I said. "A whole new thing has happened."

She put her purse down and her overnight bag, and smiled at me and said, "Shall I undress right here, or would you like to sip champagne and talk of the Big Apple, first?"

"Undressing is good," I said.

"Fine," she said, and began to unbutton her jacket. "Feel free to whistle `Night Train."'

"Whistling is a little beyond me right now," I said. "Maybe I should just undress."

"Race you," she said.

Then she was naked, wearing only the ankle chain that she always wore because I'd given it to her when we came back from Idaho last year. And we were hugging one another and then we were on the couch.

"How was New York," she said very softly, her lips moving against mine.

"Helluva town," I murmured. "The Bronx is up and the Battery's down."

"You seem very like The Bronx," she said, and pressed her mouth against mine and we didn't talk much for a while.

"So," Susan said, "what progress with April?"

We were still undressed, but we were sitting upright on the sofa now, drinking Chandon Blanc de Noirs from fluted glasses, our feet on the coffee table.

"Around none," I said. "There's something I don't like going on, but I don't know what it is."

"You must be used to that, by now," Susan said. She had her head resting against my shoulder. My left arm was around her.

"I've never learned to like it," I said. "I go see April and then when I go back she's gone, so I go see her pimp and somebody has obviously cleaned his clock and he won't say anything and he's scared to death and says I'm going to get us both killed. So I leave him and go see Ginger Buckey and she's not on the streets."

"Maybe the women are simply busy at their work."

"Maybe. But who beat up Rambeaux and why and what have I got to do with it?"

"You're sure it was because of you?"

"Yeah. Rambeaux was clear on that. His biggest sweat was to get me out of there and not be seen with me. He was so scared he couldn't sit straight."

Susan was tracing the mark on my chest where Sherry Spellman had shot me. Low down there was another mark and below that a mark where there had been a drain.

"God," Susan said, "you look like a scuffed shoe."

"But sinewy and desirable," I said.

"Of course." She sipped some champagne and leaned forward and got the bottle out of the ice bucket and poured some in her glass and poured some in my glass.

"What are you going to do now?" she said.

"I'll call Ginger Buckey," I said. "See if she knows anything about where April went."

"Why should she know?"

"It's not that she should," I said. "It's simply that she's all I have."

"And if she doesn't know?"

I shrugged and drank some champagne and my doorbell rang.

"We could ignore it," Susan said. I shook my head. Susan smiled.

"Of course we can't," she said. "It might be an orphan of the storm seeking shelter."

I got my pants on and took my gun off the counter and buzzed the caller in and looked through the peephole in the door. In a moment Frank Belson appeared on the other side.