Agnes Among the Gargoyles (18 page)

    "Wasn't that great?" he says to Agnes.

    "I'm still shaking. Look—goose bumps."

    "That what people think being is cop is like but it never is. Nothing like that's ever happened to me," he says.

    He takes Agnes to another part of the precinct, where there are empty holding cells, where they can have a little privacy.

    "I actually cared about what happened in there. I really want to catch the Pinboy—for you," he tells her.

   "Every girl's dream," says Agnes.

   Her sarcasm hurts him. "What's the matter?"

   "I'm sorry. I wish we met under different circumstances, that's all."

   "These are the only circumstances I've got," he says.

   "I feel guilty," she says.

   "Don't be such a woman," he says. "We should go out—it's obvious."

   Agnes puts her foot up on the bars. "I feel disrespectful to Barbara."

   He looks irritated. "I'm selfish. I'm not thinking about anyone but me. And I want to fuck you."

   They stand silently for a moment. Someone walks with a heavy step on the floor above.

    "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm being a jerk. I'm forgetting that it's all real. Someone actually died. For cops, it's like a show. Special effects. I don't even notice the smells anymore. I forget your friend just died."

    Agnes wants him so much that she could cry.

    Detective Diaz pokes his head into the room. He coughs politely. "Tommy, Razumovsky needs to see you ASAP."

   Tommy actually sniffles a little. "He's probably heard about my new interrogation skills. From now on, I'm going to be the most single-minded cop on the force. I plan to have half this city confessing to me. Come along, Miss Travertine. The game is afoot. There are Pinboys at large."

The translator, an old professor of Irish Literature from Fordham University, listens to the tape from Barbara's answering machine. He lays a finger thoughtfully beside his scone of a nose.

   "It is Gaelic," he says. "Very poorly spoken."

   "What's he saying?" Tommy says.

   "Eader Caiseal agus Ur-choill a casadh domh an cuilin/'Si a' teacht go ciuin fa mo choinne sa rod," he sings in a quavering tenor. "It's the first two lines of a very old song called Donald O'Mullen."

   "What is it in English?"

   Enjoying the moment, he sings again. "Between Caiseal and Urshoill I came upon a maiden/Coming quietly and steadily towards me on the road...." Do you want to hear the rest?"

   "Yes."

   "And by the hair I caught her and upon the dew I laid her/ And left her there crying with her eyes full of tears."

   Agnes and Tommy exchange a knowing look.

   Later on, Tommy takes Agnes to the basement of the precinct. The officers have fashioned a makeshift staff lounge. Ancient file cabinets sit three-deep in a corner. Agnes sees office equipment in disrepair, a uniform rack held together with duct tape, a punching bag, some free weights and a card table. The pipes come to life every time someone upstairs flushes a toilet.

   Agnes wants to know as much about the investigation as Tommy can tell her. He goes through the reports with her. Blue woolen fibers, possibly from a rug of high quality, were found near both bodies, as well as traces of mud. The silica content and PH indicate that the soil is of a type found at or near the southernmost shore areas of the city: Coney Island, Manhattan and Brighton Beaches, the Rockaways. Fingerprints: Agnes's have turned up all over the place, including on the brick of puff pastry sitting in Barbara's freezer. There are several useless partials, which might belong to the Pinboy.

   Detective Diaz joins them. Agnes is relieved to see him. Tommy seems relieved, too. They are not comfortable alone together. When Diaz is around he is the show. He never stops spouting off. His good humor seems boundless. He is profoundly shallow, and happily so.

   Diaz carries a shopping bag. "You know, I still didn't believe you about the hole in the bedsheet. I had to find out for myself."

   "It's true," says Tommy. "What's the big deal? Is it any stranger than fish on Friday?"

   "Yes it is," says Diaz. "And I want to show you something."

   He goes behind the boiler and wheels over a human skeleton.

   "I know I shouldn't have done it," says Diaz, "but I lifted one of Rabbi Bloch's bedsheets."

   Tommy shakes his head. "What a dope."

   "I had to see for myself," says Diaz. From the shopping bag he takes out a blue striped bedsheet, which he drapes over the skeleton's skull. He adjusts the sheet and, sure enough, a circular hole lines up with the skeleton's crotch.

   "Isn't that amazing?" says Diaz. He rubs his chin thoughtfully. "But here's the most amazing part."

   He turns the skeleton around. There is a second hole, placed right where the anus would be.

   "I had no idea," says Diaz.

   He can't contain himself any longer. He roars with laughter at his elaborate joke. His pleasure is infectious. Agnes and Tommy laugh as well. Agnes can't stop herself. There is a strange, shrieking quality to her laughter.

   "I like her," Diaz tells Tommy.

   After Diaz leaves, Agnes feels cold and spent. She drapes someone's uniform jacket over her shoulders.

   Why did she feel she had the right to laugh? Diaz is just stupid, and she's every bit his equal.

   "I want to see the photographs," says Tommy.

   "Come on, Agnes."

   "I want to see them"

   He opens the envelope with the crime scene pictures. "They'll give you nightmares."

   "I don't care."

   He hands her the envelope, but doesn't release his grip.

   "It's too late to be good to Barbara, you know," he says. "You get no more points from the Friendship Police for torturing yourself now."

   "I'll take my chances," she says, pulling the envelope away.

   "One more thing," he says. "There's no such thing as the Friendship Police."

When the Greenpoint waterfront was flourishing, there was heavy trade with the Far East in coffee and spices. The street names reflect this: Java Street, India Street, Myrrh Lane. Constantinople Avenue exists for a mere block; the sign is nearly as long as the street.

   Bezel trudges through the snow. He hates it, but if he doesn't exercise his bad leg it starts to hurt. He moves slowly down Luther Street. He carries a quart of milk, six eggs, two cans of chili and an apple. The onion domes of the Greek Orthodox Church shine like rockets in the sun. Across the street are the abandoned Brooklyn-Pratt works of the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, and an old ironworks. They're demolishing the ironworks and building something on the site, but Bezel doesn't know what.

   On the corner of Greenpoint Avenue stands a pawnshop. The disagreeable old man who ran the place recently died, and the new owner is a darting little fellow from Columbia named Luis. Bezel has already pawned and reclaimed several items from him. Luis is very chatty, very enthusiastic. He has cleaned the place up so it looks like something. When he heard Bezel's accent he wanted to discuss London, where he once lived. Luis has a great fondness for London. He likes the clean subway and the allowances he received for having children.

   "Fifty pounds," he told Bezel. "Each!"

   Unfortunately, the topic of London has been exhausted, and now the only thing Luis will talk about is Columbia. He is always showing Bezel newspaper cuttings about the arrests of Columbian drug lords or the exploits of Columbian baseball players or, most often, the latest visit by the Pope. The fucking Pope is always in Columbia. Bezel wonders if they've moved the bleeding Vatican.

   Luis is outside the pawnshop. He hops from foot to foot in the cold. He watches the demolition of the ironworks. When he sees Bezel his face lights up.

   "What a thing!" he says to Bezel. He points to the construction activity, then ticks off the components of the project on his fingers. "Offices, shopping center, condominiums, four movie theaters—unbelievable!"

   Bezel takes in the tatty surroundings. "Here?"

   "You better believe it," says Luis. He vanishes into the shop and returns with a cutting from the
Times
that looks a hundred years old but is actually from yesterday's paper. He's probably shown it to half of Greenpoint. The article is all about something called the Upper Greenpoint Avenue Development Corporation.

   "They're giving tax breaks so companies will move here," Luis synopsizes. "Ron Wegeman, man—unbelievable! Look—this is one artist's conception of what it will look like. Beautiful, no?"

   He shows Bezel the drawing. Bezel looks at fountains and plazas and things that look like twenty-story ice trays.

   "They had to do something," says Luis ruefully, gesturing toward the ironworks. "All kinds of scum were living in there. But soon"—his eyes shine like Krugerrands as he rubs his palms together—"nice and clean."

   Luis takes back the article. He looks at it admiringly, even though he must have the thing memorized. He folds it carefully. "Four movie theaters. And a ho tel with a sky lobby. Things are really going to change around here. You better believe it."

   A scene from his recent binge returns to Bezel: the Frenchman warming himself over a trash barrel fire, looking like the devil as the flames cast crazy shadows on him. He was saying something that made no sense: that in Einstein's universe, there is no such thing as quiescence; motion, if not forward, is retrograde. What? What? thought Bezel, but now he thinks he may have a glimmer of what the Frenchman was talking about.

   Bezel looks at Luis and laughs. It is a great cleansing torrent of laughter. It tumbles forth like siphoned gasoline.

   Luis smiles uncertainly. "What is so funny, my friend?"

   "Nothing at all, my friend," says Bezel, clapping Luis on the back. "Nothing at all. I'm delighted at your good fortune. I'm thinking of all the money you'll make.
Mucho Dinero.
I would expand the business immediately. Four movie theaters? A hotel? Why, business at Greenpoint Avenue Pawn & Loan will boom, my friend. Profits will soar. Your pawnshop will complement the condominiums perfectly. Have those three balls shined up, my friend. You'll make a fortune from the convention business alone...."

Madelaine Wegeman's suite at the Plaza is filled with state-of-the-art German exercise equipment that defies figuring out how one would insert one's body into any of it. Madelaine lies on a slantboard, covered from the neck down with dark brown mud. She shields her eyes with two felt pads. Rolf starts to trowel mud onto her face, then stops. He throws the trowel into the empty bucket.

   "More mud," he explains, and leaves the suite with the bucket.

   "Did Chris Prawl call you?" Madelaine asks Sarah casually.

   "Yes. Somehow he got Agnes's number."

   "I'm in the book," says Agnes.

   "I'm sure he didn't have to go to all that trouble," says Sarah sharply.

   "I gave it to him, of course," says Madelaine. "So what happened when he called?"

   "I told him he had the wrong number."

   "Seriously, now. He told me he wanted to ask you for a date."

   "A date!" says Sarah contemptuously. She flops down into a leather armchair. "I guess that's what he was doing."

   Madelaine is growing impatient. "What do you mean?"

   "He never actually got around to it. He told me all about his fascinating life, and he got so wrapped up in it I think he forgot why he called."

   Madelaine shifts position on the slantboard and groans. "He graduated tenth in his class at Harvard Law."

   "A complete mediocrity," is Sarah's verdict.

   "Maybe
I
should have answered the phone," says Agnes. "Tenth?"

   Sarah is horrified. "Oh, no. He's such an asshole. And he's an alcoholic."

   "I like self-destruction in a rich man," says Agnes. "A fat insurance settlement would get me through the trauma of widowhood."

   "At twenty-four, every man worth knowing is an alcoholic," Madelaine pronounces.

   "And many still are at thirty," says Sarah. She tells Agnes, "My mother wants to set me up with every moneyed nonentity who comes strolling down the fairway."

   "Chris Prawl is very nice."

   "Mommy, why don't you just write my telephone number on the J. Press bathroom wall?"

   "I suggest that you strike while the iron is hot," says Madelaine, weary of her daughter's stubborn attitude. "Before you know it, your looks will be history, and you'll be like your poor broken-down old mother, encasing yourself in a sarcophagus of Louisiana Bayou Clay at seventy-five dollars a pound."

   Rolf returns, empty-handed.

   "No more mud," he says.

   "What do you mean, no more mud?"

   Rolf thinks it over. "There's no more mud."

   "We just had some delivered," says Madelaine.

   "You use a lot," says Rolf.

   "I do not," says Madelaine coldly. "It's downstairs in the kitchen."

   Rolf is reluctant. "All the way down there?"

   "You do an hour on the Stairmaster every morning," Madelaine observes, "but you're unwilling to get on an elevator to do your job."

   "How is Ron doing?" says Agnes. To be so familiar with the Great Man affords her a private, bitter sort of amusement.

   "He's still in the wheelchair, I'm afraid," says Madelaine. "I think he's losing the will to walk."