Ten Little New Yorkers (6 page)

T
he next few days on the ranch were filled with activity. The boys and girls who thronged the little green valley of summertime were gone, of course. So were the hummingbirds. But the three donkeys, Roy, Gabby, and Little Jewford, came by the lodge to visit rather often, always provoking an explosion of barking and excitement on the part of the Friedmans. I kept the fire in the old fireplace burning twenty-four hours a day. To paraphrase Earl Buck-elew, I burned wood like a widow woman. I had a good reason for doing so. In my soul I could feel the warmth of the world slipping away.

How could people live, I wondered, without a fire burning brightly in the fireplace? How could they live in an empty loft without a cat dumping vindictively about the floor, or a lesbian dance class pounding relentlessly on the ceiling? How could people live anywhere in this world without Cuban cigars or Kona coffee? How, indeed, could they live at all? I didn't have any answers, but then I didn't have all that many questions either. Most of the time I seemed to just watch the fire, as men had done for thousands of years, all in the twinkle of an eye.

The days passed. Two of them to be exact. I was sitting in the comfortable chair by the fire that Perky and I fought over constantly, half-dreaming of climbing Ayers Rock in Australia with Miss Texas. It doesn't matter. Very little does, actually, once it starts to get smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror of your late-model, four-wheeled penis. It's only later, in your dreams, when it starts to get bigger and bigger and the wheels fall off of your four-wheeled penis, and then your penis gets bigger and bigger, and soon you need a big chair by the fire just for your penis, and you and your penis and Perky are all constantly fighting over that chair. At any rate, it was into this bucolic idyll that a note of modern-day reality intruded by way of the blower.

“Rear Admiral Rumphumper,” I said. “How can I hump you? I mean, how can I
help
you?”

“You can help me by never answering the phone that way for the rest of your life.”

It was a familiar-sounding male voice with a New York accent. The voice carried with it a strong sense of authority. In fact, if I wasn't mistaken, it was the voice of authority itself. It was my old sometimes friend, sometimes nemesis, Detective Sergeant Mort Cooperman of the NYPD. Now why in the hell would he be calling me in Texas? I wondered.

“Have you seen the papers, Tex?”

“I've seen the
Times.
The
Kerrville Times,
that is. I've seen the
Mountain Sun.
I've seen the
Bandera Bulletin.
I've seen the papers Willie Nelson uses to roll his dope with. They're bigger than the menu at the Carnegie Deli. Of course everything's bigger in Texas.”

I don't know why I always derived such unbridled joy out of irritating Cooperman. He was, after all, just a public servant doing his job. A trifle overzealously sometimes, but what the hell. Anyway, my remarks appeared to have hit home. There was a longer than usual silence on the line. Then Cooperman's growl started once again to chew on my ear.

“Tex, I don't have a lot of time for this horseshit, so pull your lips together a minute, will you? Don't start with me, Tex, or I may have to finish with you and you ain't gonna like it. The paper I'm talkin' about is the
Daily News,
which I realize you don't get down there in Texas but I thought maybe your pal McGovern would've told you.”

“Told me what?” I said, playing dumb. It achieved no good purpose to get Cooperman really agitated. I just liked to tweak him a little like Tweety Bird used to do to Puddy Tat in those cartoons that kids used to watch before video games came along to suck, fuck, and cajole the innocence out of everybody's childhood. More than anything else, Cooperman, I suppose, reminded me of Yosemite Sam.

“Quite a party you guys had, according to McGovern's story. Guy comes to your place, twenty-four hours later he's dead and you've bolted town for Texas.”

“Is that how you found me? McGovern gave you the number?”

“I've always had your number, Tex. But, now that you asked, no, we didn't get your number from McGovern. We went to your loft, just like this murder victim number four did. We thought about getting a search warrant, but then we thought maybe we'd try to talk to you first. We were just getting tired of waiting when we ran into a friendly neighbor who lives upstairs and said she was looking after things for you. She gave us your phone number down there in Texas.”

“All my little helpers.”

“That's right. Now we need you to help us, Tex. She told us how she found the dead guy's wallet in your loft. What gives?”

“Look, Sergeant. I wouldn't know a Robert Scalopini if I stepped on one.”

“You seem to know his name pretty well. I never mentioned the victim's name to you.”

“Of course I know his name,” I said, taking my turn at becoming irritable. “McGovern told me his name and so did Winnie.”

“Winnie Katz, isn't it? That your girlfriend?”

Sometimes in life you just had to take a few deep breaths and pretend you were a Buddhist or a dead teenager or something. When you banter with a cop you've got to be very careful you don't cross that police line.

“She's one of New York's finest lesbians,” I said at last.

“Yeah, I thought I picked up something about her. So she finds the stiff's wallet on the floor of your loft. That doesn't look good. So I feel compelled to ask you again, Tex. How'd it get there?”

“How the hell do I know? Look, Sergeant, I didn't kill the guy. I didn't know the guy. As near as I can recall, I never met the guy. Maybe McGovern remembers more than he told me.”

“That's the problem I have, Tex. Your pal McGovern doesn't remember meeting the guy either. He says he thinks he brought a few people over to your place, but he doesn't know if this bird was one of them.”

“If McGovern's the one who in all likelihood brought this guy over to my loft, why don't you try to refresh
his
memory? Why don't you ask
him
these questions?”

“Because the stiff's wallet didn't turn up on the floor of
his
apartment. It turned up on the floor of
your
apartment. Capisce?”

There exists a certain thing called “cop logic” that never fails to boggle the rational mind. Sure, there were cases that had boggled Cooperman's mind, that were eventually, sometimes with great media fanfare, resolved by the Kinkster. Yet there were also times when Cooperman and I had worked together with good results. Why then would he waste both of our time grilling me as if I were his main suspect, making me not eager to want to help him, making me crazy? So they found a dead guy's wallet in my loft. Big fucking deal.

“Look, Sergeant,” I said, “I've already told you I never met this guy. I never met his wallet—”

“Understand me, Tex. If you don't refresh your memory about this guy being in your loft, as McGovern's story claims he was, things could get even worse for you. Tex, I want you up here tomorrow at the precinct.”

“Sergeant, be reasonable. I'm down here in Texas and Texas is a very big state. If I left for the airport now I couldn't be sure I'd get there tomorrow.”

“Okay, pal. You have forty-eight hours. If you're not here by then—”

“You don't really believe I croaked this guy?”

“If you're not here by then, I'll issue a material witness warrant to your local sheriff. He's probably the guy from
Gunsmoke,
but you can bet your ass, Tex, he'll bring you in.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“If he had a wallet, I'd bring him in, too.”

I
was mad at McGovern, mad at Winnie, mad at the whole damn world. I was just starting to relax and unwind my catfish here in Texas and now the horse manure had really hit the fan. I didn't know for sure how the wallet had gotten into the loft, but, if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on McGovern bringing over the flotsam and jetsam of the Corner Bistro without even knowing the identities of the individuals. McGovern, who'd once combed his hair before meeting a racehorse, was a trusting soul. This time, he'd gone too far. Compounding his error in judgment, he'd then seen fit to write up the whole
megilla
in the
Daily News.
Why couldn't he just have left it alone? I didn't know the stiff. I couldn't have picked him out of a lineup. What could I possibly bring to Cooperman's table by hustling my buttocks back to New York? I hadn't, of course, read McGovern's article, but I could just imagine how much he must have embellished the situation to have Cooperman so hot on my trail. And Winnie'd been some help, as well. Making it possible for her local law enforcement officer to easily get in touch with me. Telling him she'd found the stiff's wallet in my loft. Hell yes, it sounded bad. And here I was, not knowing the victim, not knowing how his fucking wallet had gotten into my loft, innocent as the Baby Jesus, just trying to sit by the fire and watch the Fox News Network twenty-four hours a day. That's what happens when you mind your own business. In a growing rage, I called McGovern's number.

“MIT! MIT! MIT! You fuckhead!” I shouted.

“Who's calling, please?”

“McGovern, what the hell did you
say
in that story you wrote?”

“You mean ‘Twenty-four Hours to Die'?”

“In twenty-four hours I'm going to kill
your
ass.”

“What are you so upset about? I just told the truth. The piece has gotten great response.”

“I'm aware of that. Sergeant Cooperman just called me.”

“Cooperman called you? At the ranch?”

“That's right. And he wasn't looking for Gabby Hayes. I think my good friend Winnie Katz aided and abetted him in locating me. And, of course, the catalyst for the whole thing was your ridiculous story.”

“I just wrote the truth!”

“You know what the Turks say? They say, ‘When you tell the truth, have one foot in the stirrup.' ”

“You
had
one foot in the stirrup, Kink. You just didn't ride far enough. Cooperman just probably wants to ask you a few questions. That's all. There's no reason to get so excited.”

“Look, Cooperman doesn't just want to ask questions. Cooperman wants answers. Answers I ain't got. If you listen to Cooperman, it sounds like he thinks I croaked the guy. Now where would he get an idea like that?”

There was a long silence on the line. I knew McGovern wouldn't deliberately put me in a bad situation. But that appeared to be exactly what he'd done and we both knew it. The truth was the truth, of course. But what the hell was the truth? I wanted the answer to that one as much as McGovern.

“Let's look at this rationally,” said McGovern. “Let's apply a little deductive reasoning, like your imaginary childhood friend Sherlock would do if he were here.”

“He is here.”

“Okay. Neither of us put the wallet of a murder victim in your loft, so the guy himself must've dropped it there just before he got himself croaked.”

“Considerate of him.”

“The point is, I think I know which one he was. There were only three guys that followed me to your place, and I think the tall, skinny one was Scalopini. It had to be him or else how'd the wallet get dropped there? So it was accurate to say that the victim, not realizing he had twenty-four hours to die, attended a party at Kinky Friedman's loft.”

I didn't know whether to kill myself or get a haircut. It was like somebody had hit me on the head with a hammer. I could've shit standing. My thoughts were swirling around like a Texas blue norther. For one of the few times in my life, I was totally at a loss for words.

“Kink. Kink? Are you there?”

I was there, all right. I was here and I was there and I was everywhere I didn't want to be. The whole scenario, I reflected, was positively Kafkaesque. By leaving New York when I did, I'd given the appearance of being more involved than if I'd stayed. Guilt was a funny thing. It had a peculiar nasty little habit of attaching itself to you, of washing all over you, even when you knew in your heart you were blameless as you were the day you were born.

Being Jewish, of course, never cuts you much slack in the guilt department. It didn't help that half the city of New York was reading with interest and raising a collective eyebrow at the news that its latest murder victim had been hanging out socially at the Kinkster's loft just hours before his unfortunate demise. Certainly, Cooperman was curious. As for myself? The great detective didn't have a clue. I was, however, rapidly running out of charm. So I hustled the still-protesting McGovern off the blower and rounded up Rambam.

“Secret bat phone.”

“Yeah. I think I've got a problem.”

“Problems R Us. What happened? You get stuck fucking a cow?”

“Rambam, this is serious. Did you see McGovern's piece in the
Daily News?
”

“Who hasn't? Remind me never to go to a party at your loft.”

“It
wasn't
a party. I was the host, supposedly, and I hardly remember being there myself.”

“Those are the best kind. When people say you had a good time.”

“Well, I'm not having a good time now. Cooperman just called me.”

“He called you at the ranch?”

“No, Rambam. He called me at my chalet in Gstaad and the call was then beamed by satellite over to me here at the ranch.”

“Cooperman actually called you at the ranch. How'd he get the number?”

“He came prowling around Vandam Street, apparently, after he'd read McGovern's wonderful story. He ran into Winnie Katz, apparently, grilled her, and she, like any good citizen, gave him the wallet and, apparently, my number.”

“Lot of apparentlys. Bottom line is, never trust a lesbian.”

“Now you tell me.”

“Never trust anybody else either. Okay, Cooperman's already got the wallet. What else does he want?”

“That's what's worrying me a bit. He wants my ass back in New York yesterday. To be more precise, he gave me forty-eight hours.”

“Wow. Twenty-four hours to die. Forty-eight hours to get back to New York. Working with a lot of time lines here. What did Cooperman say would happen if you decide not to come back?”

“He'll call the local sheriff, he says. Have me brought back.”

“A material witness warrant probably. Well, don't ever say you're not wanted. Reading between the lines, I'd say somebody's just cut in on your little Texas two-step.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning your vacation's over before it started. You've heard about the long arm of the law? This one is reaching out to grab you by the balls, brother. You don't mess around with a material witness warrant. They'll find you and bring you back, believe me. And don't forget, right now you're just a material witness. Cooperman could easily upgrade you at any time.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you could go from a material witness to a target of the investigation at any time. You could, depending on circumstances, even be upgraded to a suspect. The nomenclature's fairly meaningless to the world in general, of course, but in the eyes of a cop, it can be very finely nuanced. This probably won't happen, but the other thing you could be is ‘a person of interest.' That's the one you
really
don't want any part of. Cooperman didn't mention a search warrant, did he?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Then you can assume he got one and they've already been through the place. There's nothing terribly incriminating there probably. They could've found some long-forgotten stashes of dope left behind by one of your halfwit friends like Chinga or McGovern. Maybe there's an overdue library book from 1957.”

“In 1957 I was attending Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School in Houston, Texas.”

“Okay. So it was planted.”

Still talking to Rambam, I got up from the cozy chair by the fire and walked into the kitchen and poured myself another cup of Kona coffee. I opened the cabinet and looked at a bottle of Jameson's for a moment, then closed the cabinet door. Funny how I didn't seem to be drinking as much these days. Dealing with the NYPD, of course, could drive you to drink.

“Look,” I said finally to Rambam, “I didn't kill anybody. I didn't conceal any evidence of a crime. So why do I feel just a weensy bit guilty?”

“Two reasons,” said Rambam. “One is all the pressure you're feeling from Cooperman, and two is because you're a fucking Jew. Quite normal, under the circumstances.”

“So I guess I just come back and face the music.”

“There's no other option. And believe me, the music you'll probably face is going to sound like it's coming from a jukebox in hell. It'll make you wish you were listening to Barry Manilow.”

I hung up with Rambam and went back into the living room and looked at the fire. For some reason the words of an old cowboy song came into my head. “I'm Going to Leave Ol' Texas Now / They've got no use for the longhorned cow / They've plowed and fenced my cattle range / And the people there are all so strange.”

I walked closer to the fire and thought I might just relax a moment before I began the tedium of making last-minute plane reservations. I started to sit down, but then I realized that would not be possible. Perky was already curled up comfortably in my chair.