A Naked Singularity: A Novel (88 page)

“What was his name?”

“Detective ass? Andro? Something with an A I think.”

“D’Alessio?”

“Yes! No. It’s either that or it isn’t, I’m not sure. But if I was you I would definitely maybe be uhscared.”

“Thanks Herb.”

“Call me Jackie,” he said.

Fuck
I thought.

Inside my apartment, sitting on my couch, his feet on my stool, reading my newspaper, was Dane.

“What the?”

“You should lock your door,” he said.

“I did.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

“You implied it.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“I didn’t, now you’re putting some in mine.”

“Maybe.”

“I thought you were gone.”

“Gone? From where? How?”

“Gone. You know as in took the money and ran, as in haven’t heard from you in a couple of days when I would certainly have expected to.”

“
That
gone? You think that little of me? How beneath my dignity would such a move be? No, your well-gotten gains are safe. Come with me now and we’ll get it.”

“Get what exactly?”

“Eleven million dollars for now.”

“For now?”

“It changes every time I count, it goes up.”

“Eleven total.”

“Eleven each, but you can have mine if you wish. Let’s go.”

“No, there’s a problem.”

“A what? I’m sorry I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

“A problem.”

“There’s no problem. I told you, over and over I told you, that we would, at a minimum, get that money and if you come with me now I’ll show it to you, you can smell it then start spending it. The only question, not a problem, is what our next project should be.”

“Another question might be what to do about the NYPD detective currently looking for me.”

“Detective?”

“Yes.”

“Ha ha, that’s the problem? Please.”

“That’s the one.”

“Detective who?”

“Not sure but I’m thinking D’Alessio who was at the meeting.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t, I said I
think
it’s D’Alessio.”

“No, how do you know
any
detective is looking for you at all?”

“Some guy just told me downstairs.”

“Some guy? Downstairs? Fuck him, what does he know?”

“I trust him, he’s a good man.”

“How long you known him?”

“Seconds.”

“I see,” he said. He turned the newspaper he was reading so I could see the front. “You saving this for a reason?”

“Yeah that’s another problem.”

“What, the press? Now you’re worried about them? Law enforcement and the press. Could you pick more feeble entities to be spooked by?”

“I’m sorry I can’t share your confidence but things seem pretty messed up to me right now. The plan certainly wasn’t for what happened back there to happen. The plan wasn’t for that picture to be splashed, as they say, all over the front page of the next day’s paper and the plan most definitely didn’t involve a detective coming to my home,
my home
, where I do my most sacred breathing, to question me. None of that was part of the plan and none of that is good in any conceivable way.”

“You jest, surely, this is a time for exultation not concern. This newspaper and its relatives have the attention span of a six-month-old. Where’s my thanks for the blackout that effectively ended what little fascination the public would’ve had for our events? This detective? He sounds like he couldn’t detect a frog if it landed on his head and took a shit. He keeps nosing around and the only thing he’s going to detect is my foot up his ass.”

“What about that picture? What about what it depicts? Can you change that? Because that was fucked up and fucked up because of us.”

“
Because of us
? Did we tell those fuckers to come in there and start shooting up the place? Because I don’t remember doing that.”

“True. You’re right right? That was going to happen whether we were there or not.”

“Now you’re thinking.”

“Fuck Escalera for trying to avoid paying too. He’s the one fucked up the whole thing if you think about it.”

“Even if you don’t.”

“Fuck that, I’m the one that went back for the girl. She would’ve been killed right?”

“Who knows?”

“But she wasn’t. DeLeon just wasn’t supposed to be there, DeLeon.”

“Escalera.”

“That piece of . . .”

“He’ll get his, everyone does.”

“I can see it so vividly though. Whenever I want and at times I don’t.”

“And that, as they say, as you say, is that.”

“Except you in no way addressed this detective other than to disparage his abilities without any possible basis in fact and in contravention of the available evidence, which shows that he is at least competent enough to have appeared at my doorstep, a move you and I know is entirely warranted.”

“He knows what then?”

“I don’t know but he knows something, otherwise why look for me?”

“He knows you’re DeLeon’s attorney and he knows DeLeon was one of the bodies, that’s all he knows. He knows how to read a notice of appearance, hooray for him.”

“I don’t think so. Are you slipping, is that the problem?”

“More like I find this scenario wholly uninteresting but go ahead. What makes you think it’s more than that?”

“Two things. First, it’s only been a little over two days since the investigation presumably began and already this detective has found his way to interview me? That would seem to belie your claim that interviewing the attorney of one of the victims is just a pro forma charade without any specific basis. Second, as I believe I’ve mentioned, this prick came to my home! He didn’t seek me out at the office or at court or through the DA. This was an act of aggression. He wants to unsettle me, show me he knows things about me and there’s no safe haven. And so I’m unsettled.”

“You surprise me. You allow this maggoty louse to do that? This lousy maggot? If you’re right and this
was
an act of aggression, then there’s only one response to things of that nature. You meet even the slightest aggression with a disproportionately evil response. Look at you. A double-digit millionaire cowering at the implied sight of a civil servant. How tacky, and worse, how boring. Who cares what this cop thinks or even knows? And it’s not a failure of empathy on my part either. I wouldn’t care if I found that fuck sitting on my couch when I got home. The whole thing simply holds no interest for me, intellectual or otherwise.”

“The prospect of a new involuntary address in upstate New York doesn’t get your attention?”

“Please, now you’re invoking the truly impossible but fine I’ll humor you. Let’s go through the situation. Who saw us at 410 or better yet to save time who saw us that is still alive?”

“Saw us?”

“Yeah
saw
, as in with their own two eyes.”

“Still alive I guess just The Whale since the paper says Landro was shot dead.”

“And who, if anyone, knows we were there through other means, again, limiting ourselves to the living.”

“Just Escalera I guess, who DeLeon could have told of my presence before being shot.”

“And who was probably shot for that very reason in fact.”

“No. What? No.”

“You don’t see that happening?”

“I don’t—”

“DeLeon says, in that chaos, something like
I just saw my lawyer
and Escalera takes his frustration out on him because he consequently blames him for things getting fucked up.”

“I don’t . . . who cares? Does it matter? The point is Escalera could know I was there.”

“So Escalera and The Whale. You think they’ll be visiting their local precinct any time soon or offering to pick us out of a lineup? Of course not. All the factors that made the involvement of law enforcement so unlikely before Wednesday still exist as far as I can see.”

“Except we now know a detective
is
involved. A fact that seems to strongly suggest that somewhere, somehow, things got fucked up with respect to avoiding detection.”

“Nonsense, no way. You got the mask right.”

“What do you mean I got the mask? You burned it didn’t you?”

“I burned everything you gave me.”

“So you burned the mask.”

“And we certainly left no prints.”

“No but the struggle with Whale. What if I left blood or hair?”

“Now who’s not thinking? Analysis of something like that would take weeks, it’s been hours.”

“True. So what then? Give me a plausible explanation for the detective at my door.”

“Could be a PBA fund raiser for all you know. You’ll know soon enough I suppose, so what’s the point in expending any more mental activity on it?”

“That’s a reach.”

“Anyway I’ve been thinking about what we should do next and it occurs to me that true perfection—”

“Next? Are you mental? I have a detective up my ass and you want me to plan the next insanity?”

“Relax will you? Besides if you want to worry about something shouldn’t you worry about the two individuals who we
are
certain, without speculation,
do know
we were involved. Especially when one of those two individuals saw our faces quite well and appears to be the sort of entity that has no regard for life or limb, its own or others, and respects no laws, natural or otherwise?”

“At least those two can’t put me in prison.”

“Which brings me to a question. Why are you still working? Did you not hear what I said about the eleven million, twenty-two if you accept my share?”

“I heard you but it’s not that easy. I have certain responsibilities, as do you, which I cannot just drop like a hat.”

“Like what?”

“Like a hat.”

“No like what responsibilities?”

“Like a yellow-eyed pregnant woman, a rhyming fool, and a guy who thinks the devil is the detail keeping him in jail. Not to mention my kid on death row. Should I twirl tiny umbrellas between thumb and forefinger while watching the sun sink into the ocean and forget these people?”

“Precisely, are you the only attorney left in New York? If you leave will those people get plumbers assigned to represent them?”

“So put my faith in the competence of unknown others? I do that about as often as you express doubt.”

“Well-put perhaps, and probably justified. You’re staying you’re saying.”

“Yes, until that stuff ’s done I’m staying.”

“And in the meantime you’ll be picking up more stuff.”

“I’m not in arraignments for a while as fate would have it.”

“So you don’t want to come get your money? Don’t want to at least see it? It’s truly beautiful when completely laid out before you.”

“No I’m too busy, I’m writing. I’m a writer now.”

“Writing what?”

“A brief.”

“Writing? Told you I tried that when I first failed at perfection didn’t I? It doesn’t work, but find out for yourself if you must.”

“My writing has nothing to do with a failed attempt at perfection because remember that I never made one.”

“Fine but what’s the harm in coming with me now to look at your money? What’s the most you’ve ever eyeballed at once?”

“Not until this detective thing is settled.”

“As you wish, I’m leaving now. If you change your mind about seeing it let me know. I’ll be hanging around a bit longer, truth is I’m rather enjoying the idleness. Also get that detective’s name when you can and we’ll take care of that. Escalera and Whale? We’ll just see what happens, goodbye Casi.”

“Yes, good.”

He closed the door behind him and I sat on the floor. I had this hand-me-down (multiple times) area rug covering the hardwood floors and I picked and pulled at its stray threads. It was so quiet. I lived alone. I wondered how I could have come to live alone. I thought how if I stayed in that space a full week, for example, and didn’t press any buttons I could conceivably go that entire time without hearing another human voice. That in a city with more people than many countries. I tried, concentrating, to
hear
something, anything, but there was no sound anywhere. The walls that normally felt like they were so close to themselves they might kiss now seemed to recede from me and each other. The place felt immense, in both size and spirit, and I was alone and adrift in it, searching in vain for any sound that might reassure me, betrayed by a silent emptiness that grew out into the stillness. I started talking:

“It’s true,” I said. “I should be exulting.”

I said it was certainly the case that many things I had to worry about before 410 were no longer concerns. I have a lot of money I said.

“Of course, now I have a whole new set of worries,” I said. “Like what do I do with that money? Where do I keep it? How do I convert it into a spendable resource?
Laundering
the money is the term you’re looking for,” I added.

I stood and walked to the mirror.

“Launder as in to make clean what was once dirty. But what if there are things that once sullied cannot be fully cleansed? That notion may be true. True as it is indisputably true that you have done things that cannot be erased or taken back.”

I looked away.

“Then there’s the matter of possibly getting caught with all that entails,” I concluded and silently decided that this last worry was the greatest of all and rendered the others meaningless. I resolved not to think about the future and what it might bring.

Instead I would enjoy that moment, a moment when someone not overly concerned with accuracy could say I was contentedly sitting on top of the world.

The same place Benitez sat after beating Duran in January of 1982.

The natural next move for Benitez was a rematch against Sugar Ray Leonard but barring that—and Leonard showed no inclination to grant Wilfred that rematch—another logical move was a fight with either of the two remaining members of The Quintet (Benitez, Duran, Hagler, Hearns, Leonard) Benitez had yet to face. Rather than move up another weight class to fight Hagler, Benitez decided to make the first defense of his WBC junior-middleweight title against Thomas Hearns. The fight was scheduled for December 3, 1982, marking the longest stretch between fights for Benitez to that point. Hearns was moving up in weight but at over six feet he had always been exceedingly tall for a welterweight and the move was expected to only benefit him. Coming off his loss to Leonard he promised to be highly motivated for the critical championship fight and his two knockouts of admittedly nondescript opponents leading into the fight with Benitez seemed to indicate that the devastating defeat to Leonard had not caused him any irreparable damage or robbed him of his crippling power. The fight would feature these two brilliant fighters at their peak and predictions were pretty much split down the middle.