Lush Life (51 page)

"I know you can."

Looked at him like a rock in a raging sea.

"You just let me worry . .

"OK," she said as if drugged, then reached up and, cupping his face in her hands, put her tongue in his mouth, Matty having time only to tentatively rest his fingers on her shoulders before she was already backing away, shocked and done.

For a moment they just sat there, big-eyed with thought, each looking around the room as if having lost a separate item, until Minette got up and without a word headed for the door.

He understood that it was a Fuck God kiss, a onetime protest, he understood and accepted that; and so all he could be right now was relieved to see her go; but when, with one hand already on the door, she turned back to him, breathing like she was confused, like this wasn't what she had expected, took a half step towards him for more, then bore down on herself: No; that was the heart-stomper, Matty slumping as if punched.

She turned again and left, quietly closing the door behind her.

"Jesus," Matty said, wiping his mouth, then wishing he hadn't.

Restless, agitated, trying not to think about the thing that didn't happen, Matty found himself still in the empty office an hour after she left, going through 61s and 494 sheets, perusing that day's mayhem, sorting them into kickbacks to patrol and squad-worthy, felonies obviously but domestics too; always potential starter kits for something more serious; DOAs and Missing Persons for the same reason.

The day had been slow: a few harassment complaints, two weaponless muggings, a few petit larcencies, and an aggravated assault already closed by arrest.

Then a Missing Persons caught his eye, Olga Baker; Matty knowing the kid, a serial runaway, the mother, Rosaria, calling like clockwork once a month, the kid always coming home a day or two later, nothing to worry about, but the last time Rosaria had called in, maybe six weeks ago, he wound up going over there, a well-kept apartment in the Cuthbert Towers, a few steps up from the PJs and slightly off the beaten path. Rosaria, in her late thirties, early forties maybe, short and solid with high-piled black hair, had out of the blue asked him if he had kids, which led to Are you still with their mother, which led to Do you like dancing, which led to his, for some reason he couldn't fathom tonight, getting out of there fast.

He had known cops who had on occasion slept with witnesses, slept with suspected perps, confirmed perps, slept with the wives, sisters, and mothers of victims, and had even slept with the victims themselves if they recovered. You walk into lives abruptly turned inside out by the arbitrary malice of the world, and you, in your suit and tie, your heavy black shoes, your decent haircut, and your air of seriousness, you become the knight, the father, the protector ... All of which is to say that sometimes it fell right into your lap if you were that kind of individual. Which he was not, was not.

The phone number was on the report.

"Rosaria, how you doing, Detective Clark. Remember? . . . Yeah, that guy. I'm just following up here. Did Olga come home yet?" Doodling. "All right, well, we're out there beating the bushes . . . Just, how are you holding up though, you OK? . . . Oh yeah? . . . If you'd like, I could come by, see if there's any . . . No problem at all . . . Now's good."

Matty went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, tuck himself in, came back out, left the squad room, then came back in, ran Henry Baker through the computer, Rosaria's husband coming up as still in Green Haven, then left for the field.

Rosaria Baker, technically speaking, fell into none of the above categories.

Still cranked, Eric came home, working himself up for another death
-
propelled slamathon, and walked in on Alessandra in the middle of packing, or unpacking, it was hard to tell until he saw that the bookshelves were half-bare.

"You might want to sit for this," she said.

"What's with all the sitting. Just say"

"It's time for me to go."

"Yeah." Eric tried to look wounded.

"I'm so sorry."

'Yeah, no," he said.

"Maybe I'm making a . . ."

"No, you're not. You're not," he said tenderly, quickly

"Carlos is picking me up in an hour," she said, looking at the bed.

This was great; this ... he had to do this more often, Matty necking on the couch like a teenager, his hand inside Rosaria Baker's blouse, hers rubbing him across his thigh like she was rolling out pastry dough, making little noises and smelling like lipstick, like perfume, like hair -
spray, wearing stockings with garters and snaps, Matty thinking, whatever happened to that, why is that a fetish, that's normal, that's great, everything great, everything a slow-motion heart attack, and then they heard a key in the door and they both started fumbling and scrambling as fifteen-year-old Olga Baker, the missing person, waltzed in; the goddamn case solved.

King of Hell

Know him well

I walk right in

Don't ring the bell

Tristan closed his book, regarded the hamsters breathing all around him, the boy with a sleep hard-on like a little periscope every goddamn night now.

He slipped out of bed and stepped out into the hallway. Standing in front of the master bedroom, one hand on the doorknob, he became giddy with fear. He didn't, does not, understand-he stepped to him, him and his shortstop-quick hands, took it and then gave it right back to him and saw him back down and call the cops like a little fucking bitch; and still, he felt this; he could kill, was a mankiller, and still, he felt this; like he was going into a lion's den.

He opened the door a crack, then dropped to his belly and crawled inside the bedroom, the smell of openmouthed sleep in here giving him another dizzy rush until he was beneath his ex-stepfather's night table. Reaching up, he eased the top drawer open just enough to slip the Chinese paper Rolex inside, then slid it shut again.

From me to you.

"I did have, I do have my reasons." Eric was wall-eyed high as he intercepted Bree coming up the stairs from the locker room.

"I'm sorry?" Stepping back from him in a way that told him it didn't make a difference what he said right now.

"Last night you said to me, 'I guess you had your reasons.' I do." "OK." She was waiting, not to hear them but to get past him. He didn't care.

"Could you, look . . . Just come back down with me for a minute," nodding to the cellar, then adding, "No funny stuff, I swear."

"Yeah, about that recanvass this weekend," Deputy Inspector Berkowitz in Matty's ear.

"Boss, I'm not even asking." "With that bullshit minister's kid . . ." "I hear you."

"What a waste of time and men." "Right."

"You know where she got that devil-cult kidnapping story from?"

"The movies?"

'Yeah, but which one?"

"I don't know." Matty tired of the runaround before it even got good and going. "Rosemary's Baby?"

"Eyes Wide Shut"

"Eyes what?"

"You know, where they have that orgy in the mansion?"

"I didn't see that."

"Everybody's in this mansion, naked and wearing like, owl masks."

"Didn't see it."

"I find it hard to believe that the director who gave us Spartacus gave us that crap."

Enough. "Look, I just got a call, the guy has decided to personally toss another twenty thousand into the reward kitty, which puts us at forty-two, so he'd like to have a presser, announce it."

"Whoa, what guy"

"Marcus."

"The father?"

"Of his own money," Matty said.

"A presser now?"

"Day after tomorrow, give him time to set up the escrow account."

"Day after tomorrow."

"Yeah."

"Let me get back to you on that."

"Boss, let me just say, he's not asking for permission, he's asking if we would join him for a stronger message."

"What are you, his press secretary now?"

"Are you kidding me? You got it ass backwards. I'm doing everything I can to corral this poor bastard, keep him out of everybody's hair. But, hey, if you prefer, I'll give him your number, let you be the point man, maybe this way I could put in some time trying to solve this fucking thing instead of getting my ear bent all day."

"When does he want to do this?"

"Day after tomorrow. At the crime scene. You don't take over, move it to 1PP or the Eighth, it'll be a zoo."

"Let me make some calls."

"Is that a yes?"

"I'll get back to you."

Matty hung up, looked to Billy, sitting hangdog yet eager in the chair opposite.

"So what's happening?" His mouth open like a hinge.

"The usual."

"Nothing?"

"You're a fast learner," Matty said. "All right, here's what I want you to do."

"OK ... I was scared," Eric began, the cellar air combined with the gram of garbage blow he had test-run purchased in front of Hamilton Fish Park this morning making him sneeze. "Some, some street animals came up on us, shot the guy standing next to me, and me? I just ran. I ran into the building. There was a gun, so you flee. Human nature, OK? But even in hiding, even with the shooter gone, I was so paralyzed that I didn't even think to call 911.1 said I did to the cops but I lied. And at first they thought I was lying to cover up something criminal. Like it was inconceivable to them that someone would be so frightened that they would have to lie about something like that simply out of shame. See, but they know how to tease apart lies, those people. They may not know what's behind the lie, they may think they do, but at first it doesn't make a difference to them, they just go after the lie, pick at it, pick at it, just watching me fall to pieces before their eyes, like rooting it on. And, I felt like my life was in danger all over again. And all I wanted was out. I just wanted out of that room.

"And right up to the end, they wouldn't grant me my cowardice, it just was too inconceivable. I mean, I guess they pretended they did, towards the end this one cop ripped into me for it in kind of this last
-
ditch ploy to make me lose it and confess to salvage my, my manhood or something, but you could tell he still thought I was playing them about it."

Bree stood there looking at him like there were other people in the cellar and he was monopolizing all her time, Eric thinking, How can people turn on you so fast?

"But worse than the humiliator?" Eric coked on. "Was the other one, the comforter-"

"It sounds awful," she said before he could get to the point, the measuredness of her tone just tearing him up. It was as if their lightning
-
fast sex tussles down here a few nights ago had been nothing more than a dream.

"And there's other stuff, stuff that's hard to find words for at the present time, so . . He trailed off.

"Jesus." She winced, her gaze darting right and left like the tail of a cat clock.

"Anyways," waving vaguely to the stairs behind her; prisoner released.

He waited until she disappeared above the line of the low ceiling before doing the last of the gram.

How could people change up on you so fast?

An hour after leaving Matty's office, Billy stood with Mayer Beck again, this time in front of 27 Eldridge, both of them staring at the trace remains of the shrine: nothing there now but some hangdog balloons down to the size of basting bulbs, the increasingly shredded newsphoto of Willie Bosket flapping against the building, and the last rays of sun sparkle coming off a few fragments of colored botanica glass that had been swept to the wall.

"So." Beck turned to him, easing a steno pad from his back pocket. "What's up?"

Eric waited for the anticrime taxi to roll off from in front of the Lemlich Houses, then walked past the small miniplaza directly across the street: four shabby shops-a pizzeria, a corner store, a Chinese takeout, and a Laundromat-all inset farther back from the curb than the buildings on either side of them, the few extra square yards of pavement a natural arena-lounge for the young men toddling in place there now, most sporting sideways baseball caps and billowing white T's down past their knees.

It would be nothing to walk by them later tonight into the pizzeria; it was the coming out with the slice and just standing there like a yuppie pinata that would be the sticky part.

"I told him," Billy said, worrying the fabric of his trousers as he faced Matty across the desk. "Thursday, one o'clock."

"And he knows the deal," Matty said, "that lPP's not on board."

"Yeah. He gets it. Totally."

"And you didn't go off?" "Off?"

"On a rant."

"No. I, no."

"OK. Good." Matty patted Billy's hand on the blotter. "You did good."

Billy bobbed his head in acknowledgment, continued to sit there.

"I'll call you." Matty made a show of doing something else. "As soon as something jells."

"Can I just stay here for a while?" Billy winced. "Not to get in your way."