Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery (28 page)

“Okay. But you have it?”

“Oh, yes. Well, no, I mean, I don’t have it in my wallet or anything like that. It’s in Bermuda. But I have the papers. I have the papers right here.” Uncle Billy began searching himself, patting his pockets. He felt something inside his shirt and smiled at his success. He removed a green bankbook, much like a standard savings-account passbook. He handed it to Crystal.

Crystal opened it. Then she gasped. Her hand went to her mouth. Staring at Uncle Billy, she passed the little book to me.

I gasped, too. The book was stamped with twin rearing lions between which was printed “International Bank of the Bahamas” in fancy script. No transactions were noted, merely a balance in stark, naked figures: $34,888,000.27. I had to read it three times before I got it straight, before the
million
place became clear.

“That’s a lot of money, Billy,” Crystal squeaked.

“I know it. It’s all yours.” He was smiling now.

I flipped a page, and there it was:

Account: Crystal Spivey

Golden Hours Billards

254 Avenue X

Brooklyn, New York, USA

I handed the book back to Crystal. Absently, she passed it to Calabash. The sum knocked him back a half stride. Even Jellyroll didn’t pull down that kind of jack.

I began to feel deeply frightened at the size of this monster. Trammell had stolen nearly thirty-five million bucks, yet nobody seemed to care. They only wanted the tape. I already
knew those assholes were willing to kill. Mere money never impressed me as much as murder, but there was something about seeing that absurd figure next to Crystal’s name. It felt like her death warrant.

“See, it’s real easy,” said Billy. “You just call a man at the bank and tell him your number and the password. You can change the number and the password anytime you want. The password used to be Barraclough, but I don’t know why. So I changed it to Zuzu, like Arnie’s boat. And I put it in your name.”

Looking at the bankbook, Calabash said, “Dis is Nassau in de Bahamas. Dis ain’t any Bermuda. Dis my home. We can take care o’ t’ings in de Bahama Islands, me and Uncle Fergus and a bunch o’ de hardboys.” When Calabash speaks, people tend to listen. Was he taking over? I desperately hoped so. He put a hand the size of a welding glove on Uncle Billy’s shoulder. “Say, Mister Billy, it time for you to go on a trip to my island. Nobody bother you dere. You can sit on de patio and watch de sea roll in and out.”

“Bermuda?”

“No, not Bermuda. De Bahamas.”

“Nobody’ll bother me there?”

“Nobody. My own uncle take care o’ dot.”

Uncle Billy looked at Crystal. “Will you be coming?”

“…Yes.”

“You all be my guests.”

“Gee,” said Uncle Billy, “I always wanted to go to Bermuda.”

“No, not Bermuda. De Bahamas. You like de Bahamas even better.”

“How old is your uncle?”

“He about yer age.”

“Does he like to fish?”

“Sure. Uncle Fergus love to fish.”

“Gee, maybe we can fish together…Can I go home and pack?”

“No, Uncle Billy,” said Crystal, “I think the idea is you go right now. Can you do that?”

“Well, I didn’t know what to do when I came here. I saw what they did to my house. I can’t go there. So…yes. But I don’t have any money.”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Crystal with a quick glance at me.

It was all I could do not to giggle like a chucklehead.

So there it was, decided. Uncle Billy would leave for Poor Joe Cay. Calabash made a couple of phone calls to arrange for members of his family to meet Billy in Nassau, where they would catch a flight to the airport on Eleuthera. From there, they’d travel by boat to Poor Joe Cay.

Uncle Billy began to cry as the final arrangements fell into place. His Adam’s apple bounced pathetically.

“I go down first,” said Calabash. He stuff ed a howitzer into his belt and went down to scout things out. Five minutes later, Billy and I went down. I didn’t see Calabash on the street

I let the first cab go by just in case it was a setup. I let another go by and hailed the third. My street was nearly empty of pedestrians. A happy young couple strolled toward us, he carrying a bottle of wine in a bag, she a bouquet of flowers. I thought wanly about Crystal’s fuchsia top and the old days of a week or so ago. I opened the cab door for Uncle Billy.

He paused before he got in, looked at me through wet eyes, then hugged me tightly. I watched the back of the old man’s head disappear around the corner. It was dark now, ominous black clouds gathering to the southwest over the river.

I looked around for Calabash. But he was lurking somewhere in the darkness. Calabash can disappear behind a parking meter.

“Ach, Artie!”

I nearly jumped off the sidewalk. My heart pounded as I turned to face Mrs. Fishbein.

“I t’ought you vas a mugger. Waiting to pounce. Boof, boof on za brain—you’re a turnip.” Then she went into the building.

But if Mrs. Fishbein could sneak up on me, who else—? I spun around twice. There was a little old man, like the ghost of Mrs. Fishbein’s husband, waddling up the street. As he got closer, I saw that he was a Hasidic Jew, in black coat, pants, hat, and earlocks.

I gave Mrs. Fishbein time to get into the elevator before I returned to the lobby. I had barely unlocked the street door when I heard a muffled squeal behind me—

It was the Hasidic man. His feet hung twelve inches off the pavement. He dangled from Calabash’s enormous arms. They were wrapped around the Hasid’s head. His hat fell off. I saw that the earlocks were attached to his hat, as opposed to his head. In the streetlight, I could see the top of the man’s head. The hairless crown was ringed by a jagged, purple scar. I opened the door.

Calabash carried him past me toward the elevator and walked his face right into the wall beside the call button. “I gonna break your sneaky neck like a twig in a hurricane.”

“Talk!” said Norm, muffled. “Talk first!”

Calabash dropped him, spun him around, and pinned his throat to the wall with one hand.

“Invite me up?” sputtered Norm.

Mercifully, the elevator arrived empty. Calabash heaved him in hard.

“If you keep doing that, I’m going to report you to B’nai B’rith.”

That’s what we needed, spook wit.

“So where’s Uncle Billy off to in such haste?”

“The Klondike. There’s been a big strike. He’s a prospector at heart.”

“Cold in the Klondike. Me, I prefer the lower latitudes. Say the Bahamas.”

The elevator arrived at my floor. Calabash peeked out, found the hallway empty, and led us to my door.

“Evening, Crystal,” said Norm congenially.

“Who are you supposed to be?” she said, looking him up and down.

“I’m Rebbe Armbrister. Calabash knocked off my hat. Without it, my disguise is incomplete.”

“When are you going to get out of our lives?”

“Chet Bream is dead,” said Norm. You could tell he threw it out to test our reaction.

“Did you kill him?” I said.

“No.”

“Then your friends did it?”

“They’re no friends of mine. Sure, we were associates in wartime. The Cold War. A great war, but it’s over now, we just have to live with that. The police stopped two guys in a moving van. Turned out the van contained Chet Bream’s body. Shots were exchanged. A policeman was critically wounded, and the two guys were killed. During this time, Chet remained in the van. Chances are the van was stolen and can’t be traced to Concom, but the Concom folks are very nervous, and they’re doing stupid things as a result.”

“They killed Chet? Concom?”

“Sure. It’s not Tiny’s style. He’s a businessman. Maybe Trammell, but I doubt it. I doubt the hoods did it. Germ warfare isn’t their style, either. They did Danny Barcelona the way hoods do people—an honest bullet in the brain. That leaves Concom, in my opinion.”

“How do you know about the germ warfare? How do you know they didn’t shoot Chet in the brain?”

“I told you, I survive by knowing.”

“Do you know that I have the tape?”

“Do you? Really?”

I repeated Chet’s words to me about the details of the nonexistent tape. I didn’t mention God or Joseph, George Bailey or Clarence. Norm seemed to believe me.

“Where is it now?”

“Bedford Falls.”

“Upstate?”

“Bedford Falls, Pottersville. The fact is, it’s everywhere.” I tried to sound absolutely confident. I knew exactly what I was doing. I could pull this off. Hell, I had no doubts. I was up to this intrigue. Streams of sweat ran down the insides of my thighs.

“You mean, you’ve made arrangements?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’ve taken precautions?”

“Of course. I’ve made copies. I won’t say how many. I put one in my safe-deposit box. Safe-deposit boxes, as you probably know, are routinely opened in the event of the depositor’s death. I’ve placed the other copies with friends. I told them that if anything happened to Crystal, Calabash, Jellyroll, or myself—even if one of us died from natural causes—then they are to take it directly to the cops and the
Times
. Oh, I’ve also included an essay telling the story and naming names, including yours.”

Norm was thinking. He removed his Hasidic coat and dropped it over the back of a chair. “Mind if I sit?”

We sat around the table. Jellyroll circled several times and flopped under it. Silence.

Norm was thinking…“I like it. Yes sir, I like it.”

“What do you mean you like it?”

“I mean I
like
it. The intrinsic trouble with tapes is that tapes can be duplicated, just as you’ve done. Hell, say I took measures to acquire the tape from you—I won’t, but just say—what would I have? A tape, not the tape. How could I ever know I had all the copies? I couldn’t. No, the disposition of the tape is much more
important than the actual possession of it. And I like that you have the tape, as opposed to another.”

“Why?”

“Well, because I don’t trust them any more than they trust me. I don’t say I trust you, either, but your motives are simpler. You just don’t want to end up like Chet Bream. That makes me feel secure, same way I felt back during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The tape won’t come back to haunt me, because you can’t do anything with it. You have to leave it in Pottersville. If you did anything with it, then its value as a life-insurance policy would plummet to nil, right? Is that how you’re seeing it?”

“Of course.”

“There’s just one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“The others need to know you have it.”

“Why don’t you just tell them?”

“I know you’ll find this hard to understand, but they don’t entirely trust me.”

“Imagine that.”

“Yes. So it would be best if you sent them a copy of the tape. Show them the policy as it were.”

“I don’t have one here, and I’m not about to go get a copy after all the trouble I went to hiding them.”

“You’d never know who was following you?”

“Right.”

“How do you feel about telling them you have it?”

“By phone?”

“It would be much better if you told them in person.”

“Why?

“These are suspicious men.”

“You can tell them I’ve seen the tape. How else would I know about its contents?”

“I’ll be right there with you. I like it. I told you. So don’t worry, they’ll have to like it too. Look, this is the best way to get me—and them—out of your lives. I promise.”

“Crystal stays here,” I said. “Just me.”

“And me,” said Calabash, staring holes in Norm’s forehead.

“Bullshit,” said Crystal. “I’m in this, too. Don’t try to be some Saturday morning TV hero. I hate that.”

“God, don’t you love strong women?” said Norm. “My wife Tran is like that, a strong woman. Defy her wishes on a thing, and she’ll mortar your position. In fact, she did a couple times. It was in Quang Tri Province up near—Oh well, that’s old soup, I guess. Nobody cares about the Nam now. Want me to set it up? A face-to-face? What say?”

“I say de same t’ing I said to you in de Posh van.”

“What’s that, Calabash?”

“Anything goes wrong—even if nothin’ go wrong, if I don’t like de look on any mon’s face—you de first one I kill.” He lift ed his big gun out from under the table. He reached across the table and pressed the muzzle against Norm’s forehead. When he pulled the gun away, a red ring remained.

TWENTY-FOUR

I
T WAS RAINING hard, the first rain in weeks, as we crossed Central Park on the Ninety-sixth Street transverse…Was this the stupidest trip I’d ever embarked upon? What were we going to do, exactly? Were we going to walk into that nest of snakes and say, “We got the tape, neh-neh-neh”? Norm was all for the idea, which made it even more dangerously stupid, but we were doing it. We were on the way.

He sat in the front seat with the cab driver, a Sikh in a purple turban. Crystal, Calabash, and I were crammed into the backseat, and though we didn’t speak, it was clear they were as tense as I was. We were traveling at high speed. The windshield wipers were having no effect at all. Sheets of water seemed to be flowing under them. We were traveling blind at high speed. It began to dawn on me that we had as much to fear from the trip across town as from the Concom crazies at our destination.

Basically a roofless tunnel, the transverse cuts through the park deep below its surface. Black rock walls climb twenty feet on either side of the roadbed. There are no streetlights down here. There used to be, but not now, because of the cutbacks. It felt like we were speeding along the abyssal plain beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The Sikh accelerated.

I glanced sideways at Crystal’s face. I missed her. We’d been in constant close proximity of late but not together in the sense of carefree lovers who only have eyes for each other. But that, I supposed, blasting through deep water, was romantic twaddle. Bank fraud, illegal weapons deals, generalized corruption in
high places, murder—that was the stuff of reality. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her elegant profile and felt deeply in love with it. She noticed me looking and took my hand in hers, but she didn’t look back. She continued to peer straight ahead at the onrushing blackness broken only by hurtling headlights passing us like tracer bullets.