Lush Life (39 page)

"No excusals," Dargan said. "Sorry."

"This fucking sucks. Let me talk to him."

"Not a good idea. And Matty? Truly ... let it be."

As he slammed the phone down, Yolonda snapped off her cell. "They're pulling me and Iacone," she said. "You know something? I don't think I've ever been inside the Waldorf."

At eleven that morning, Berkmann's was once again a white dream, the sun coming in like a brass band through the large windows, bouncing off the artfully mottled mirrors, the eggy glazed tiles, the shimmering racked bistro glasses.

The only customer at this limbo hour, however, was a lone woman at a window deuce getting quietly plastered on Chocolatinis as she leafed through yesterday's New York Times.

"Last night there was a small dustup at the bar." Eric Cash's voice rang through the cavernous room as he addressed the assembled waitstaff at one of the back banquettes. "Eric the second, who is no longer with us, lifted someone's change, thinking it was a tip, and the customer, who was drunk, accused him of stealing and threw a punch. Then Cleveland here"-Eric gestured to the dreadlocked bartender-"came to the rescue, leaping over the bar like Zorro and bum-rushing the guy out the door himself, no one hurt and nothing broken."

There was a smattering of applause, Cleveland standing up and bowing at the waist.

"Now, the reason I've invited Cleveland to this meeting is to tell him the following. If you ever try anything like that again, you are gone."

The kid half smiled, not sure if Cash was joking.

"I wouldn't want security making the margaritas, and I certainly don't want you playing amateur hero. You like to read, Cleveland?"

"Sometimes." The kid still processing this, confused and humiliated.

"Then you know heroes are often tragic," Cash said, then dismissed him with a nod towards the bar, waiting for him to return to his post behind the stick before resuming the meeting.

"OK, and lastly," Cash said to the rest, "everybody here . . . when this room is hopping the way it has been recently and the busboys are overextended? You people need to start helping them out, none of this It's not my job.' When this place starts to look like some Soviet-style who-gives-a-shit cafeteria, which is exactly what it's been looking like come the peak hours, it damn well is your job.

"Everyone at this table is expendable, and this neighborhood is crawling with experienced waiters. So. You take the check but leave the dirty dishes? No. You have ketchup still on the table when the dessert comes out? No.

"The check comes, that table is clean. You want to serve? You have to bus."

Eric Cash flipped over the top sheet of his legal pad. "And that's it on my end. Anybody have anything else they want to bring up? Questions? Suggestions?"

Even in his disembodied state Eric was cognizant enough to sense that no one at the table would risk opening their mouth for fear of saying what they were probably thinking of this prick, this ball-breaking entity who had taken him over. It was if he was watching himself from the sidelines as he turned his own people against him.

"All right then." He raised and dropped his hands on the edge of the table. Tm still working on the envelopes, they should be ready at about three. Class dismissed."

They all rose in silence, not even daring to make eye contact with each other.

He remained at the table, though, staring straight ahead, the agitation in his features fading into a brooding slackness as he drifted off into tabulating how much he had pocketed from the tip pool so far this week: close to $500; way too much; not nearly enough.

Boulware's studio apartment, in the building next to 27 Eldridge, was a featureless two-year-old efficiency that bore no trace of the building's nineteenth-century exterior; walls, doors, fixtures; everything cheap and new; Matty thinking they must have gutted the whole thing and rebuilt it for the newbies, kids used to dorms.

"This memorial service?" Matty, seated across a coffee table from Boulware, inched forward in the sling chair. "I think it's a great thing you're doing for your friend and we're behind you a hundred percent. Just, it would be good for us to know in advance what you plan on talking about tomorrow."

"Talking about?" Boulware reached for one of the beers standing between them. "About Ike, what else?"

His cell rang. "Sorry," holding up a finger and calling out the name of the person on the other end. "You're coming, right?"

Matty got up and wandered to Boulware's lone window, which looked out on the rear Dumpsters of a Chinese restaurant on Forsyth Street.

The walls were bare save for three framed SUNY Buffalo theater posters-Mother Courage and Her Children, Equus, and Lost in Yonkers-Boulware's name getting either first or second billing on each.

The only other personal touch in here was the dozens of small plastic soldiers and Star Wars figures that marched across the back of the convertible sofa and along the kitchen counters or rappelled on shoelaces down the sides of the TV and the refrigerator.

After Dargan's call, Matty had spent the remainder of the morning on the phone, trying to set up his own little backdoor recanvass for tonight in defiance of Berkowitz's postponement; attempted to call in every marker he had in Warrants, Vice, Narcotics, and Borough Patrol and had gotten blown off by people who owed him hugely, which should have told him something, but he was too hot to take the hint.

"I swear to God, if you don't show tomorrow?" Boulware smiled at the response, then, "Peace," hanging up, his face electric with life. "I'm sorry, you were saying." His cell rang again. "Sorry, just . . . Yeah? Hey. I have to call you back ... I have to call you back ... I have to call you back . . . Yeah . . . Yeah . . . OK . . . OK." Hanging up. "I'm sorry, it's just this thing tomorrow, it's going to be like, boom."

"That's great, that's good. We just need to know if you're going to be saying anything about the investigation."

"Like what?"

"Like anything."

"I don't understand." And Matty believed him.

"Is there something you want me to say?"

"More like, don't say."

"Don't say."

"It's just, it's been difficult, this investigation, but any criticism of us at this point, any negativity to the press '. . ."

"Why would I do that?"

"Anything about Eric Cash . . ."

At first the name didn't even register, Matty thinking, Just drop it.

"What about him?"

"We're trying to work with him, but it's a very delicate situation. He kind of needs, feels he needs to lay low for a bit, so maybe you should include him out, if you know what I mean, let him grieve in his own way."

"I'm still not a hundred percent following."

"Don't worry about it."

"OK." Then, 'You're coming, right? You and your partner?"

"Most likely."

"This will be a good thing." Boulware nodded. "A very good thing."

Lightning frightening

Your gut tightning

Evidence inadmissible

Power indivisable

Touch me once ill touch you twice

Mess with me you'll be on ice

Tristan closed the notebook and headed off to make his delivery for Smoov, this one here his last of three and the easiest, the storefront law office on Hester, just a couple of blocks from the Lemlichs.

The place was long, wooden, and funky like an old-time saloon, and except for a photo of one old white dude with a guitar, the walls were hung with posters of mostly olden-days morenos and borinquenos with Jiffy Pop dos and dime shades, fists raised in front of microphones or crowds.

Usually he felt tight coming in here, couldn't find his voice, the whole trip barely worth the $25, although since the thing happened, he'd been feeling less jumpy about going into places like this or even the spots uptown. He still didn't feel like talking but . . .

He stepped to the receptionist, a Chinese lady with a tight platinum-dyed crop, who sat up straighter and smiled at the sight of him like he had just made her day, although his guess was that all he did to earn that smile was to be born PR and live in the PJs.

"Che!" Danny shouted from his desk halfway down the loft, waving him over.

Tristan saw that Danny was sitting with a customer, a white guy that looked familiar, but the thing was to deliver the boo, get the money, and go, not take pictures.

"What I'm saying is, I guess I could get a specific order of protection against that particular detective, but-" "I said I don't want to do that."

Coming up to Danny's desk, Tristan froze with recognition, couldn't even muster the muscles to turn away.

"Then I'm not sure what you want me-"

"Nothing, I don't even want ... I don't know, I don't know."

"Che!" Danny reared back as if to admire him, then did a naked double take on seeing his clean-shaven chin, the exposed lightning there. He'd been getting that a lot. Keeping his eyes down, Tristan dropped the wrinkled brown bag on the desk.

The other guy was too into his own misery to give him anything more than a distracted glance, but they were as close to each other right now as they were that night.

Danny leaned back farther in his chair to dig the money out of his front jeans pocket, smiled painfully at Tristan, like he didn't know whether to comment about his scars or keep pretending he wasn't staring at them.

"So how you been, brother man?" Danny beamed as he palm-ironed four wrinkled twenties in front of his client, the guy looking like he wanted to jump out of a window with unhappiness. "OK."

"How goes La Raza?"

"OK." Keeping his eyes on the money.

They were all looking at the money now.

"Jesus Christ, Danny, a twenty's worth twenty wrinkled or pressed," the guy snapped. "Just give it to the kid."

"It's disrespectful." Danny winking at Tristan. "Right . . ."

Tristan knew Danny was just about to call him Che again, then caught himself, that old tag finally out the door.

The other guy looked at him again, and for a second the recognition was in his eyes, Tristan's belly whooping, but just as quickly the light went out, the guy frowning back down at the desk.

On his way out past the receptionist, it was all Tristan could do not to bust out grinning. First that lady detective last night, now this dude. He had always thought of himself as invisible to others but had never thought it before as a superpower.

He was on his way from Boulware's apartment back to the Seventh, crossing Delancey to the west side of Pitt, when he turned to the calling of his name.

There was no one on the street.

"Matty."

They were double-parked on Pitt, Billy and his daughter.

"Hey." Matty stepped to the Toyota Sequoia, the girl in the open curbside window.

Billy leaned across her to make eye contact. "Matty, I don't think you've ever met my daughter."

"No, I haven't." Smiling at her, but blanking on her name, her name, Nina. "Nina, right?"

She nodded, and he offered her his hand. "I'm Matty. Detective Clark."

"Hi." She was strong-looking but small-voiced.

Shaking her long-fingered hand, he took in the bandaging around her biceps, thinking that it was a pretty high spot for a sandwich
-
cutting accident.

"We just came down," Billy said. "She wanted to meet you."

Nina turned to him, mortified.

"Sorry," he said, "J wanted her to meet you."

"Hey, listen." Matty rested his forearm on her open window. "I can't tell you how sorry I am but we're doing everything we can."

She nodded mutely, her eyes quickly pooling.

"Hey, sweetie?" Billy opened his door. "Can I talk . . ." then stepped out into the street. "Just a sec."

Taking Matty by the elbow, Billy led him a few feet away from the car and then just stood there, squinting into the sun coming over the bridge. He was dressed in jeans and a sweat-darkened hoodie like a kid or a Quality of Lifer, but it was one of those days when his face looked puckered and ancient.

Matty waited.

"We played some ball this morning."

"Yeah?"

"I played some as a kid in the Bronx and I wasn't too bad, JV at Evander Childs, but her?" Billy chucked a thumb back to the car. "Oh, man, she's, she's better than I ever was."

"Really." Matty still waiting.

"You know, I would watch the two of them play one-on-one sometimes? Ike was something else, but she could give him a run for his money"

"Wow."

"Give him a few scares."

"Yeah?"

A silence came down, Billy's face working.

"I'm trying," he whispered tearily. "I am trying."

"I can see that," Matty said gently, hating to be anybody's father. "I can see that."

"Thank you," Billy said, shaking his hand, then turning back for the car. Matty waved to the sorrow-faced kid, who returned a small glissando of fingers. Then Billy did an about-face, marching back to him.