Pinball (39 page)

“You’re Chick Mercurio, aren’t you?” said Osten, taking off his jacket and throwing it at Andrea’s feet. “What is it you want?” he asked Andrea. His chest was frozen with the dread of losing her.

Still training her gun on him, she bent down and with her left hand felt the pockets of his jacket. Then she reached into an open attaché case on the floor and pulled out the tape recorder he had left in her apartment. “Surprise, surprise!” she said, holding it up. “We won’t need this anymore, will we?” She smashed the recorder against a table, and reaching into the attache case again, she pulled out a writing pad.

She threw it to Osten, and he caught it. “There’s a pen inside the cover,” she said, and when he had found it, she continued. “Sit down and write the following.”

Puzzled by the scorn he heard in her voice, Osten became resentful.

“What if I won’t?” he asked her. “Will you kill me?”

“Don’t tempt her” said Mercurio. “Just do what she says.”

When Osten still did not move, Andrea gripped her gun with both hands, spread her feet wide, and aimed at his groin.

“Write!” Mercurio screamed.

“Write, Jimmy,” Andrea seconded in a quiet voice, “or I’ll shoot you right in the gut.”

“What do you want me to write?” asked Osten, picking up the pen and sitting at the nearest table, searching his mind for some reason that could bring Andrea and Mercurio together.

“‘Dear Andrea’” she dictated as Osten began to write. “‘I was here around four o’clock, but you weren’t home, so I’m leaving this under the door. Patrick Domostroy has asked me to see him tonight. He says that if I don t come’ “—she waited for Osten to catch up with her—“‘he will tell others who I really am, and I can’t let that happen.’ “She paused once more, then continued.

“‘Ever since he smoked me out with those clever White House letters he wrote to me care of Nokturn, he has been blackmailing me for money, which I have always paid him. Now he wants more, and if I don’t deliver, he threatens me with exposure. I can’t refuse to talk to him, but the man is insane and I would feel safer with someone at my side when I see him.’ “Andrea stopped again, and in the silence of the ballroom, Osten could hear only the sound of his pen.

“‘For that reason’”—she resumed dictation—“‘I hope that you and Chick can come to the Old Glory in the South Bronx, where Domostroy lives. I’ll be there around eleven o’clock tonight. It’s urgent. Love, Goddard.’ “When Osten finished writing and started to put down the pen, she said, “That’s not all!” She reflected for a moment, then went on. “‘P.S. Please keep the papers I gave you well hidden. I don’t trust Domostroy!’ “

Osten finished and looked up at her. “Is that all?” he asked.

“No!” Andrea snapped back. “Toss me the notebook.”

He threw it on the floor next to her, and she picked it
up and put it in the attache case, from which she took some legal-size sheets covered with dense typing. Pointing her gun directly at his head, she walked over and lined up the folded-over pages in front of him, then quickly backed away. He smelled her perfume. It reminded him of the last time he had smelled it on her body; that seemed long ago now.

“Sign them—the original and each copy—as both James Norbert Osten and as Goddard,” she commanded. “Every place there’s a cross. And no tricks with the signatures!”

Osten signed the documents, dropped them on the floor, and kicked them over to Andrea, who picked them up, examined the signatures, and replaced them in the attache case, a jubilant smile on her lips.

“May I ask what I’ve just signed?” Osten asked Andrea angrily.

“Your last will and testament, that’s what, dated three months ago,” said Chick Mercurio. “All drawn up by a legit lawyer and stamped by a notary public.”

“Thank you, Jimmy,” Andrea said. “I see you signed them properly and in good faith.”

Osten stared at her blankly, stunned. “Meaning?” he asked with contempt.

“You idiot! Don’t you remember signing your name for me at my place when I told you all that stuff about automatic writing?”

“I was stoned,” said Osten.

“I should hope so,” Mercurio snorted. “That pot was a lot stronger than any regular grass. You had to have been a zombie!”

“He was,” said Andrea, laughing disdainfully. “He was like a sleepwalker. He didn’t even know where he was! Twice he called me ‘Leila’ and did everything I told him to do, including singing ‘Volver, Volver, Volver’ for me in Goddard’s voice!”

Osten noticed Domostroy staring at him.

“I’m amazed, Jimmy,” Domostroy interjected, “at how you can change your voice. I would never have guessed you were Goddard.”

“I use a modified microphone for singing and my
gruff voice for talking” said Osten, changing to his normal voice, and in answer to Domostroy’s puzzled frown, he said, “though, honestly, I doubt that anyone listening to even my normal tone would think of Goddard!”

“Fascinating,” said Domostroy. “And I even suggested to Andrea once that Jimmy Osten was nothing but a ‘cuckoo … a wandering voice … an invisible thing … a mystery!’ Now I feel like a fool!” He laughed.

“You shouldn’t,” said Osten. “Here I was ready to call my next record ‘Andrea’!”

“Enough of this,” said Chick Mercurio, prodding Domostroy with the gun. “Andrea, you watch this one here while our Iron Mask music man and I retire to the kitchen for a talk.”

As Andrea trained her gun on Domostroy, Mercurio stepped over to Osten. “Come on,” he said with a sweep of his gun. “To the left and through that door over there! Move!” he screamed, jabbing Osten roughly with the gun.

“Chick, do you have to?” asked Andrea.

“Yes, I do!” Mercurio called back as he pushed Osten into the kitchen.

“What is your friend going to do?” Domostroy asked Andrea in a falsely genial tone. “Eat Jimmy alive? Or cook him first?”

“Since when have you been so concerned about Jimmy? You were never afraid that Donna would eat him, were you?” she asked. “How is our Sepia Snatch by the way?”

“You know she’s in Warsaw.” Domostroy was suddenly concerned about Donna’s safety. “And she knows nothing about us, believe me, Andrea,” he pleaded.

She nudged him with her gun. “I hope not—for her sake!”

He suppressed his anger. “Tell me, how did you find out that Osten was Goddard?”

“I suspected him the minute he showed up with Donna at the piano literature class where we’d been studying Chopin’s letters. You and I quoted one in the last letter to Goddard, remember? That tipped me off, especially when he looked over everyone in the class and began to zero in on me. He obviously suspected I might
be the girl in the pictures. That’s when Chick and I went to work making up a will for Jimmy to sign, just in case. And then Jimmy told me that he first noticed me three months ago. He lied: when Donna introduced us, she said he’d been in town only for a month or so. The night he came to my apartment I felt something in his pocket—and when he was asleep I checked his jacket again and it wasn’t there anymore—so I knew he had hidden something in the room. Then I found the tape recorder. Now why would Jimmy Osten want to spy on poor little me? And during the night, high as the sky on my special brand of pot, he wondered aloud if my tits would get bigger and their nipples larger if he were to make me pregnant, and made a big thing out of my shaved cunt. And finally, humming that Mexican song in his real voice! That was the giveaway! I knew it was time to check his signature and handwriting in preparation for this event!” She paused, then added as an afterthought, “That’s all I ever wanted in the first place!”

“And thanks to me, your ‘Godot finally come and well be saved,’ “he quoted, hoping to soften her.

“Not ‘all’. Just I and Chick.”

“Tell me,’ Domostroy went on, “do you and your friend intend to kill Jimmy and me—and arrange it to look as if we killed each other? Or—in keeping with my supposedly uncurbed snake-charming nature—will I kill myself after I’ve killed him?”

“You’ll see,” said Andrea. “After all, I’m the drama student here!”

“And now you have graduated to crime. That’s a cruel Endgame!”

“‘Cruelty is an idea put in practice.’ That’s from Artaud,” she laughed. “In practice, then, as you and Jimmy leave the stage, by Goddard’s last will and testament I become the sole legal heir to his entire current estate—including, of course, all future royalties from his music. How many millions did you say our invisible boy was worth? Fifteen? Seventeen?”

“I didn’t say,” said Domostroy. “You must have gotten that information from one of your other sources. Tell
me something—why did you pick me in the first place?” he asked her, not certain whether he wanted to know her answer.

She looked at him with an expression of disdain and pity.

“You probably think I picked you because you’ve seen a lot and been to a lot of places and met a lot of people. But you’re wrong,” she said. “You weren’t even the first. Before you, I hired, one after another, three other men in the music business, each one better informed and more accomplished than you, and a better fuck too. But they all failed to find Goddard. So I zeroed in on you, Domostroy, because—for all of your music and experience—you were always a loser, and I knew I could get you cheap. Furthermore, you’re such a selfish, calculating, obscene son of a bitch that I somehow sensed you’d be mean enough to flush Goddard out!’”

Just then a piercing cry of pain echoed in the ballroom, and Domostroy shuddered. Without a word Andrea jammed her gun into his back and prodded him to walk toward the kitchen. Without a word he obeyed.

There they found Jimmy Osten standing with his head partially inside the walk-in freezer, his mouth open and his tongue, extended to its full length, stuck to the frozen metal wall. A frightful moan came from his chest. Behind him stood Chick Mercurio, dangling his gun and laughing at Andrea’s look of astonishment.

“Chick! What are you doing?” she yelled.

“All I have to do is give one hard pull, Andrea,” he said, “and we can get a good look at the most hidden tongue in America!” He reached for Osten and was about to pull him away from the freezer when the door behind Andrea burst open and two of the Born Free gang ran in, pistols in hand, training them from close range on Andrea and Mercurio.

“Drop the gun!” one of them shouted, and in that instant Mercurio turned to the voice that had called out and fired point-blank. As the Born Free tough collapsed on the floor, blood gushing from his belly, he returned
Mercurio’s fire with deadly accuracy, striking him in the throat.

Almost simultaneously, Andrea fired at the other Born Free and blew his chin off. A second before he sank to the floor his finger squeezed the trigger of his gun and sent a bullet ripping through her chest. In a moment Mercurio was in a spasm, with blood pouring out of his mouth; Andrea lay motionless on her back, her eyes dimming and a widening circle of blood seeping out from under her sweater. Then, all became still and quiet.

Too shaken to move, Domostroy stood there numbly, watching the blood from the bodies begin to form a pool: they were all dead. The collapse of his and Andrea’s plot came so suddenly, so fast, and so furiously, that it left him blurred, cheated and betrayed, an overly irrational or naively contrived ending in an otherwise niftily designed adventure story. But then a fear stirred him: if Andrea had lived, he could have been tried as her accomplice in the Goddard extortion scheme. He wondered if any jury on earth could possibly have found him innocent. He imagined day after day of sensational headlines and neverending press and television accounts of all the lurid aspects of the deal he had struck with Andrea to unmask Goddard. The past brouhaha of his alleged secret musical collaborators was comical by comparison with what the media could do with this hideously bloody drama. He thought, too, of Donna, an innocent bystander, dragged into all this simply because she had responded to his love. A judge could well have sent him to jail for years, ending his life as he had lived it till now.

Domostroy forced himself to step closer and bend over Andrea. With his thumbs he closed her eyelids. Then he touched her neck. She was warm, as if resisting surrender to the void. He thought of her when she had been his, filling the space and time around him with vibrant beauty, her flesh—so doomed now—a source of joyous surprise each time she let him touch it. If it were in his power, he wondered, would he want to bring her back to life? To embark with her on yet another adventure?

A stern inner voice told him the question was an idle
one. She was dead. The kitchen’s fluorescent lighting gave her loosened hair a bright sheen; her lips, parted by her last breath, were pale, her face white. He turned to Chick Mercurio. Faithful to his pose in life, even in death the singer had kept his eyes covered by the dark glasses, and his hand was still holding on to his gun. Nearby the two dead toughs lay grotesquely still.

Osten’s strangled moan brought Domostroy back to full awareness. Gagging, swallowing sour bile that suddenly filled his throat, Domostroy found the switch to the freezer, turned it off, and began soaking towels in warm water and applying them to Osten’s tongue, gradually freeing the delicate tissue from the metal surface.

Shaking, Osten turned and looked at the four bodies, his face as pale as theirs; then, without a word, he skirted the pool of blood and walked out of the kitchen.

Domostroy followed.

In his room, Domostroy helped Osten, his body still racked by shivers, to apply an antiseptic to his tongue and his burned lips.

“I have to call the police,’” said Domostroy, trying in vain to control his own trembling. “You’d better take off—fast.”

“Won’t you need me as a witness?” mumbled Osten, barely able to speak with his swollen tongue and torn lips.

“One witness should be enough,” said Domostroy.

“What will you tell the police?”

“I’ll tell them,” said Domostroy, “that my old friend Chick Mercurio and his girl friend, Andrea Gwynplaine, came to visit me. And that some Born Free members, friends of mine who keep an eye on the place for me because I live alone, arrived unexpectedly. Each side thought the others were intruders, and before I managed to intercede, they panicked, pulled out guns, and opened fire. The police can see the rest. That’s all.”