Play It Again (5 page)

The waitress, Doreen, came over and stood between them. Rex snaked an arm around her and grabbed Hookshot by the jacket front. “I asked you a question, Spook.”

Hookshot looked at him. “Let go my jacket.” It was a black silk jacket. Hookshot loved it and was never without it.

“Let him go,” Doreen said. Rex looked at her, smiled, and let go of the jacket.

“Maybe this boy wants to make me,” he said.

Hookshot shook his head and stepped around them.

R.J. pushed aside his glass and stood up. He glared at Rex, who was grinning, looking proudly at his “date.” Doreen stayed between R.J. and Rex until R.J. moved away to the bar to pay his tab. Hookshot stood waiting by the exit.

R.J. walked over to his friend.

“You go ahead, Hookshot. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“R.J., man, let it go. I already have. Look, the jacket’s not even wrinkled. Come on with me now.”

“Go on,” he insisted.

Hookshot gave him a long look, then sighed and left, shaking his head. R.J. stood at the bar, waiting. Pirate served him a double soda on the rocks, and Doreen caressed his shoulder each time she passed.

When Sexy Rex finally went to the can, R.J. was right behind him. When R.J. flushed the toilet, Rex’s head was in the bowl and the voice of Lee Greenwood was affirming how great it was to be an American.

CHAPTER 5

The reflection in the big mirror behind the bar is perfect. A dark-haired, ruddy-faced, middle-aged man in British tweeds is sitting rigidly at the bar, sipping his second brandy and soda in front of the beveled mirror. The same stool. Same one-eyed bartender. Same waitress.

And they don’t know him.

His blood churns like river rapids. Belle’s son had been so deflated. It is always thrilling to see their faces afterwards. Hear their voices. The survivors. The ones left behind.

It is a mystical process, the way he makes his way into their orbits, before and after. He comes and goes in their lives and they never know he is there. Until it is too late.

But this had been the best, the absolute best. A payoff he had never dared hope for, falling right into his lap. Something so perfect
—
it was clearly more than coincidence. Had to be. It was meant to be, from the beginning. The long wait had only made the payoff more perfect.

The son had roused himself, sufficient to deal with the fool in the
bathroom. But it wouldn’t last. He would lash out in pain and confusion, then subside into that wonderful dead apathy, crushed by the weight of his loss.

He finishes his drink and nudges the glass across the bar.

He feels godlike. He likes the feeling.

He has always liked the feeling.

* * *

On Third Avenue R.J. paused to clear his head and hail a taxi. His blood was still toxic but he was coming around. A little brisk exercise after drinking always cleared his head better than coffee.

Hookshot was right. Enough to drink; things to do now, and he needed a clear head to do them. His desire for any more to drink had shrunk, dwindled away to a small kitten next to the raging lion that had been inside him earlier.

He could handle it now. He was that kind of boozer: drink when he wanted and stop when he was ready. It was hard, but he was no goddamn alky, no matter what anybody said.

He took a deep breath of city air and coughed it right back up. It was cold, and he smelled rain around the corner. He didn’t mind rain or cold, especially when he was working. And R.J. Brooks was working.

He’d known he had to do something, even when he was saying he wouldn’t. After all, it was his mother. It didn’t matter whether she was a great mother or what he thought of her. She was his mother, for Christ’s sake. And if your mother was murdered, you had to do something about it.

A taxi pulled up to the curb beside him. He waved it off. He could think better on his feet. He was sure he could make it home before the rain.

R.J. turned up his collar and began to walk. He got into a good steady rhythm, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind.

He was in the mid-Sixties when he forgot all about the weather.

The dark Mercedes screeched in off the street and nearly pinned him against the side of a restaurant. “Jesus!” he shouted, cracking his elbow against the stone wall as he jumped for safety.

The two men in black leather who jumped out of the car were on him so fast he could only try to cover up, not fight back. He felt the first couple of blows, then nothing much at all until an old wino poked at his face with a greasy handkerchief. “What the hell…?”

“Easy, fella.” The old man looked like a worn rake handle. Rags hung off his bones like tattered wrapping paper, and his fingers worked with the crackle of oilskin. “Better take it easy, you don’t wanna spend the rest of the night up to Bellevue.”

His head was pounding, and he could see his blood on the crusty rag when the wino took it away from his face.

“Those guys—who were they?”

“What guys?”

“The guys who just kicked the shit out of me.”

The wino shook his head, or maybe it always shook like that. “You got it bad, kid?”

R.J. stumbled to the sidewalk. The mist thickened. His jacket was ripped, a hole in the knee of his pants. His whole body throbbed dully. “What time is it?” The air frosted in front of his face as he spoke.

“Don’t know anything about time,” the wino said. “It’s dark.”

“And here comes the rain,” said R.J.

“You wanna come with me, I got a place down by the river.”

R.J. took a step and staggered against a lightpost, bracing his arm for support. “I’m okay. I got a place. Thanks.”

He took a deep breath, then tried a few steps. His knee was
stiff and a couple of ribs were bruised. He could feel clotted blood on his cheekbone. His ears throbbed from a dozen punches.

At first he’d thought it might be Rex and one of his asshole buddies. But it was Burkette’s bodyguard, with a pal riding shotgun.

R.J. had walked right into it, eyes blurred by whiskey and self-pity. He was lucky it wasn’t a whole lot worse.

He dug a pair of tens out of his pocket. “You’re good people, pops. I won’t forget it.”

The old man looked at the money and nearly fainted.

CHAPTER 6

For three days he stayed in the apartment with his tabby cat, Ilsa. He didn’t go out, didn’t see or talk to anyone. He read the newspapers and watched TV. He taped everything about his mother’s death on his VCR. Over and over, he watched the news reports and Casey Wingate’s biographical portrait.

Something still bothered him. A man in the crowd of gawkers outside the hotel when his mother’s body was taken away. Very nondescript sort of guy, no reason to notice him—except R.J.
did
notice him, and couldn’t figure out why, except that he must have seen him somewhere before.

So what? What did it mean?

He didn’t know. But he intended to find out, as soon as he healed up a bit, at least to the point where he didn’t walk like an old man.

It took two days. The first morning when he woke up it took him half an hour to get out of bed. All his muscles hurt and his head felt like a bowling ball on a swivel. He took a lot of naps and sipped on some bouillon.

The second day was worse. All the aches, pains, and bruises had gotten stiff. Trying to make his body do something was like operating strange machinery with worn controls. He spent much of the day in bed again, or in the easy chair with the television on. He took three long, hot baths, hoping the heat would loosen up the aches. More bouillon, two slices of toast.

For breakfast on the third day he had hot tea and honey with dry toast. Lunch was a cup of yogurt. For dinner he managed a small broiled steak, tossed salad, and baked potato. He drank bottled water. Ilsa stayed out of his way.

That night a friend on the nursing staff at Lenox Hill Hospital came in to look at his wounds, patch him up, and give him a rain check for carnal intimacies when he was back on his feet.

He didn’t go to the office or even phone in. But Wanda called and left random messages on the answering machine. They got a little meaner each time.

“And if I didn’t feel so sorry for you because you’re obviously stupid from a blow on the head, I’d walk out of this office for good, and let you find some other idiot to take your abuse. As if you could. As if anybody else
would.

“Lieutenant Kates has called seven times. Second place to Mrs. Burkette, with three calls. She wants to know if you’re all right, and do you need another meeting to discuss details.” Wanda cleared her throat, or maybe it was a laugh.

“Henry Portillo called, but he didn’t leave a message. Only one collection agency called, so business is good. You should drop by and see for yourself.” And she hung up abruptly.

On the fourth day, R.J. ate scrambled eggs and bacon and started exercising. Situps, pushups, crunches, leg lifts—the whole regimen. It hurt like hell but he forced himself to keep moving the muscles, working through the soreness until he finally felt a little bit of his old supple strength coming back.

Afterwards he jogged a mile downtown and walked back. He took a cold shower, standing under the icy water as long as
he could stand it. He toweled off. Before he got dressed he examined his body and face in the mirror.

Bruised ear, short hairline cut in the eyebrow. A jagged abrasion on his right cheekbone counterpointed the scar-dimple in his chin. A couple of dull purple spots along the rib cage, knee still slightly swollen. Nothing permanent, nothing so awful he couldn’t live with it.

He shaved and brushed his teeth, ran his fingers through his damp hair. Time for a haircut, but that would keep, too.

He dressed in stone-washed jeans and a crew-necked sweater, then filled Ilsa’s bowl with Friskies. He clipped the Big E onto his belt at the base of his spine, threw on a jacket and went out.

* * *

At the corner of Columbus and 72nd Street he called the office.

“Where’ve you been, boss?” Wanda demanded. “Everybody’s looking for you.”

“Just so they don’t all find me at the same time,” he said. A fierce looking Rastafarian appeared outside the booth and glared at him through the glass.

“Hookshot said he saw you the other night. We were worried.”

“Not to worry, kid. Any hot messages?”

He watched the Rasta’s antics as Wanda worked the list. He wasn’t really paying attention; the Rasta was more interesting. But then he heard Wanda read off a name that caught his interest.

“Jackson Yates?” R.J. had never done any business with the society lawyer and didn’t know him. He was too high-class for R.J.’s kind of work, and they didn’t exactly socialize in the same places. “What’s he want with me?”

“Ask him, if you ever get around to doing any business ever again. And Lieutenant Kates wants you to call him, like now.”

The Rasta tapped on the glass with a ring the size of a golf ball, pointing at the telephone. He wore a pearl earring in one nostril, and three strands of bright beads around his neck. His hair was braided into dreadlocks, and freckles spotted his orange complexion, making him look like a speckled perch out of water.

“Okay, here’s what you do,” R.J. said, ignoring the pest. “Call Ms. Burkette and tell her the job’s finished, that she’ll be okay. I’ll send my final artwork and a bill to her lawyer in a couple of days.”

The Rasta walked off a few steps, muttering to himself, then charged back and kicked the door.

“And call Kates. I want to see him too, later this morning. Tell him it’s about the Fontaine case.”

“Belle Fontaine? Are you mixed up in that?”

“Just tell him.”

The Rasta got a running start and rammed a shoulder into the folding door so hard it jammed R.J. against the phone box. Sharp pain flashed through his bruised ribs.

“Boss, you been seeing something of that Fontaine woman I don’t know about?”

R.J. looked at the wild-eyed specimen in the now-open doorway of the booth. He was breathing hard, filled with righteous indignation. He raised a finger to speak, and R.J. cracked him on the forehead with the handpiece of the phone. The Rasta folded to the ground like a bag of psychedelic laundry.

“See you later, kid,” he said and hung up.

He stepped over the soiled heap on the sidewalk and headed downtown.

* * *

At 66th Street he hailed a cab. The incident at the phone booth had got his adrenaline pumping. When he climbed out at Gramercy Park he left the door open and leaned back in to the driver.

“Wait for me.”

“Your money, Mac.”

R.J. was not fond of taxi drivers. He also disliked politicians, theatrical bigshots, corporate giants, racists, and militant feminists. But even more than that, he disliked having somebody think they were one up on him. It was bad for business.

“Special delivery,” he told the uniformed doorman at the elegant brownstone. He stood aside as a young woman pushed a baby carriage to the sidewalk.

“I’ll have to see,” the doorman said, giving him a suspicious once-over.