The 8th Circle (3 page)

D
anny stood in the Cohens’ circular driveway and stared up at the massive stone turrets of their Gothic mansion. It dwarfed Michael’s carriage house apartment, which crouched almost out of sight in the back.

The first time Conor had seen this place, he’d looked around in wonder and asked, “Is this Disney World?”

The Cohens’ home had been a magic kingdom for Conor. He’d always loved that indoor pool with its turquoise-and-coral tiles, and Linda Cohen had treated him like a favorite grandson. She’d loved slipping him whatever candy she could—the more tooth rotting, the better.

Danny wasn’t sure whether it was because Linda longed for that elusive grandchild or because that first time, Conor had looked her up and down and said, “Hiya, cutie!”

Beth had been horrified, but Linda had seemed charmed.

Michael had been there that night too. He had swilled tequila nonstop and watched his mother shepherd Conor around like he was the guest of honor.

Now Michael was just another ghost.

Danny walked through the front door and wandered among the people who’d come to sit Shiva and suck up to their hosts under the guise of paying their last respects to Michael. He saw
Alex Burton, the city’s political reporter, across the room and waved. Her eyes widened, a look of surprise and anxiety tightening her face as she held up her cell phone.

“Daniel! Thank you for coming.” Linda Cohen came up to him. From a distance, she looked fortyish, her face perfectly made up, her blonde hair styled in a sleek bob, and her black suit straight from some designer’s runway. Up close, soft lines had begun to form. Linda called them her battle trophies. She’d earned them.

Linda was elegant, compassionate, and sharply intelligent, but she didn’t possess mile-long legs, silicone-enlarged boobs, and the IQ of a toaster. Andy wanted to come home to Linda, but he liked screwing younger women and had the cash to ensure that those women would be appropriately beautiful.

“I’m so sorry.” Danny held out his hands to Linda, and she grasped them.

“Michael always thought the world of you.” Her eyes filled. “This is such a shock. No parent should bury a child.” She squeezed his hands. “My God. I’m saying that to you. It’s awful.”

He pulled her against him, and she clung to his neck, seeming so fragile for one who had been his rock in the gray days following Beth and Conor’s accident.

“It feels like a party, doesn’t it?” Her voice shook. “No one even misses him. If he were here, he’d put a damper on things, wouldn’t he?”

“Don’t do this to yourself.” He hugged her closer. Had people laughed and talked at Conor and Beth’s funeral? Danny couldn’t remember anything but the two white coffins sitting side by side and the endless receiving line. He’d mouthed words of gratitude while his father-in-law had taken center stage as the chief greeter.

Linda took a breath, and Danny knew she would pull herself together. That’s what you did: teetered toward the edge and pulled back. When she looked up at him, she gave him a weak smile.

“Did Michael speak to you?”

Danny shook his head. “What was he working on?”

“Just writing about restaurants. What harm was in that?”

“I don’t know.”

What was he going to tell her? Michael’s last words? The only
Inferno
he knew was Dante’s.
Hey, traveler! Welcome to hell. Abandon all hope and join the party
. He didn’t think Linda wanted to hear that.

“I’ve been a terrible mother. Michael called me Medea.” She held up her hand when he started to protest. “No, don’t. My poor Michael. He tried his best. Unfortunately, his best was never good enough, was it?”

Words had always been Danny’s refuge. They seemed so inadequate now. Nothing he could say would relieve her grief. He touched her cheek.

“Michael always said you were his only real friend.”

Danny didn’t answer. He pitied Michael. He couldn’t say he loved him. Danny added it to his list of sins.

Linda tucked her arm through his. “Andy wants to know when you’re coming back to the paper.” She tightened her grip when he started to pull away. “It’s time. You have to go on with your life. You’re still young.”

He knew there was no point arguing. Linda had become his mother in many ways. She always said she felt compelled to protect the needy because she was a doctor, and Danny believed she took on people as projects to relieve the boredom of her marriage. It probably relieved the loneliness as well.

She led him down the hall and opened a door.

Andy’s office had the hushed feel of a chapel, possibly because of the arched, stained-glass casement windows that opened onto the courtyard. They cast odd patterns of deep crimson, emerald, and gold light into the room.

Andy sat behind a massive ebony desk and stared out into the courtyard, but he swung around when they entered. He matched the decor with his lion’s mane of unruly white hair and his severe black suit. Drinkers were supposed to have florid faces webbed with broken blood vessels and purple veins, faces like the
great Tommy Ryan. But Andy was sallow with dark eyes sunk in shadow.

The door clicked shut. Linda had left them alone.

“No words of condolence.” Andy held up his hand. “I don’t think I can stand any more, especially from you.” He waved to the black leather chair in front of the desk. “Sit down. Do you want a drink? I’ve got scotch and scotch.”

Danny shook his head.

“For a Mick, you never were much of a drinker.”

“And for a Jew, you were.”

Andy pulled a bottle of Glenfiddich from his desk drawer and poured two fingers into a tumbler. “Do you think the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, Daniel?”

“I don’t know.”

Andy downed the scotch and poured another. “It’s a shitty thing to be disappointed in your son and have him know it.”

Danny stared down at his lap. He could hear Michael’s voice in his ear.
My father hates me
. “Michael did his best.”

“He was strictly second string.” Andy swallowed his drink. Lines of scarlet-and-gold light slashed across his face, and he pointed his glass at the cell phone on his desk. “That’s all we have now. Goddamn Internet. We don’t even have a police reporter anymore. We have citizens with cell phones. Papers are dying. We should be saying Kaddish for journalists.” Andy poured himself another drink. “I want you to come back, Daniel. I miss you. I can see it now. Just like before. Your face on the side of a bus. ‘Get your Dan Ryan fix only at the
Philadelphia Sentinel
.’”

Danny didn’t want to hear it today. “That’s a pretty lame slogan.”

“You’re pretty lame right now. You’ve worn black for a year. Life goes on.”

“When did you move Michael off the celebrity news?”

“Who says I did?”

“Linda said he was writing about Philly restaurants.”

“He wanted to expand his repertoire. Do restaurant reviews. I figured what the hell. We lost our food critic.”

“Did he mention the Inferno?”

“Is it a restaurant?”

“I doubt it. It is a book.”

“Touché. I’m a bit rusty on my Dante. A little too steeped in Christian ethos for my taste, I’m afraid. Why do you ask?”

“It’s something Michael said. Right before he died.”

Andy considered his empty glass. “Oh?”

“It has to mean something. Michael was dying. He knew it. Why would he say that?”

Andy set down the glass and looked at him. “Maybe he had a vision. Maybe he’d just read Dante, though Michael never was big on reading. How’s that for irony?”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t it? Then maybe you aren’t worth hiring back.”

Danny’s stomach twisted into a cold knot. “Jesus Christ. Maybe he found a story.”

Andy shrugged. “Ah, there is life in there. Peculiar as it seems, Michael may have stumbled upon something, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and do your job. That suits you.”

“Does it suit you?” Just once Danny wanted Andy to say that he was sorry about Michael, to act like a goddamn father. Christ, he was gripping the arms of his chair. He forced his fingers to relax.

Andy bared his teeth in something between a smirk and a grimace. He poured himself more scotch. “My son is dead. You should respect that.”

“Why do you think he came to see me?”

“You don’t have to do three columns a week. Just Sunday. Maybe Wednesday.”

Danny leaned forward. “Why wouldn’t he go to the hospital?”

“And a blog, of course.”

“I guess I could finish Michael’s article.”

For a moment, Andy’s face seemed to turn to stone, and then he downed his scotch. “You want to hit the clubs and pick up girls? Fine. Go find someone to suck your dick. You could use it.”

“I thought Michael was doing restaurant reviews.”

Andy waved his hand. “I want you to come back to work. Just like the old days. Period.”

“Just like the old days.” Danny didn’t feel it wise to mention his case of writer’s block. The words would come. Eventually.

Andy poured another and turned back to the window. Danny recognized he had been dismissed.

*

Danny slipped down the twisting path to the carriage house Michael had called home. He’d made this trip many times when Michael’s pleas for company had stung his conscience. It had bothered him that Michael felt compelled to shop for food for those visits—caviar and crackers, smoked salmon, imported wine and beer—that he would leave rotting around the apartment until the cleaning service disposed of it.

“Michael,” Danny had said more than once. “Why don’t we go out? I’ll pay.” Michael had always refused. He’d hoarded those visits, maybe because he was so starved for friendship he needed to savor them in private.

Danny fitted the key Michael had given him into the lock, pushed open the door, and flicked on the lights. The place reeked of orange furniture polish, bleach, and fresh paint.

Michael’s furniture had been a hodgepodge of remnants from his college days, spotted and soiled with black substances that made Danny’s skin itch. It had been Michael’s feeble rebellion against his father’s wealth, like his battered BMW, his badge of honor, the way he’d proved he was just a regular guy, albeit with a thirty-million-dollar trust fund.

Now only a black leather couch and matching lounge chair took up the living room. Some small jade sculptures and a few decorative plates Michael had never owned lined the built-in shelves. A red carpet with bold geometric shapes covered the floor.

It looked as if a house tour was scheduled to go through the place.

It took the Cohens less than two days to clear Michael’s apartment, and he wondered where Michael’s memories were. Could you take thirty-eight years, shove them in a box, and pretend they weren’t there? Or maybe, like Andy, you drowned them in bottles of Glenfiddich.

What the hell was the rush?

Danny went upstairs. One bedroom and bath, both cleared, save for a double bed, a chest of drawers, and a bookcase. He went to the bookcase and perused the titles. He doubted Michael had read Dickens or Twain, but
Elements of Game Theory
and
Elements of Calculus
had a well-worn look.

Michael’s computer manuals sat in a neat pile. Christ, Michael had loved his computers. Online he had the personality he had lacked in person, and he had spent hours roaming the Internet looking for other lonely beings. Danny found two homemade DVDs with carefully produced labels stuck into the plastic sleeves of one of the manuals. They’d be easy to overlook among the stack of operating discs. He slipped them into his pocket. No computers. He supposed the police had confiscated them.

He went to the closet, crouched down on the floor, and groped for the loose floorboard he knew was there. It was where Michael had kept his stash.

“You should get high, Danny,” Michael used to say. “This is great shit.”

But Danny had watched his sister Theresa slide down that black hole. In any case, Michael had plenty of friends when he had dope.

Danny pulled the board free and groped underneath until his fingers closed over a small tin box. Inside sat a baggie about one-third filled with white powder and a plastic card. Black and white with a red teardrop in the center, it looked like a credit card but had no writing to identify it.

Danny shoved the box into his jacket pocket and was pushing the board back in place when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He spun around to face a woman who scowled at him from the doorway. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a braid, though
wisps had escaped to curl around her pale face, and her deep-green eyes reminded him of a forest pool.

She leaned against the doorjamb. “What are you doing here?”

He flashed her a smile and realized he was way out of practice. “Are you a cop?”

“I can call a cop. Who are you?”

“A friend of Michael’s.”

“Funny. I’m a friend of Michael’s, and I never met you.”

He took a step toward her and held out his hand. “Danny Ryan. Michael and I worked together.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re Danny Ryan?”

Normally, he would have had some kind of snappy comeback, but his repertoire was limited these days. He dropped his hand.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean that quite the way it came out. Kate Reid. You just look so different from the paper.”

“I’ve lost some weight.” He forced a laugh and thought he sounded a little insane.
Why yes, I’ve had a fucking mental collapse
. He tried to picture her with Michael but couldn’t. “You dated Michael?”

She gave him a tentative smile. “No. We were friends.”

“Are you a writer?”

“I’m a legislative aide. In fact, I believe you know my boss.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Senator Robert Harlan. He’s here today. You should come say hello.”

Jesus, she just got better and better. Danny didn’t know how much of his loathing showed. He was good at keeping a poker face under normal circumstances, but his former father-in-law stretched his limits.

Big Bob Harlan. He’d gotten miles of column inches out of the senator. A mutual hate society.

When they’d first married, Beth had taken great delight in the fact that someone finally stood up to her father. By the end, she would read Danny’s column, hurl the Sunday paper at him, and say, “Danny, please. Give it a rest just once, would you? He’s my father, for God’s sake. I have to deal with him.”