Rhode Island Red (17 page)

And then, in one movement, I reached for the battered black case that Walt had been carrying. I ripped open the latches and threw back the top so that I could see the million dollar sax, the thing that so many people had died for.

The three cops rose as one.

I began to laugh wildly.

The case was filled with rusted tin cans.

Leman Sweet looked as if he'd been hit with a baseball bat. He reeled away from the case, looking sick.

The white male cop cursed despondently and sat down across the room.

“Charlie must have filled it up as a decoy and hid the sax somewhere else,” the woman cop said.

Brilliant deduction.

Leman didn't have much left after that. The three of them began a half hearted search of my place, which had already been torn apart. But they seemed to know it was futile.

I wanted to say good-bye to Walter before they called the station and the morgue and the technicians; before the whole surreal mess that had marked the night Sig died started all over again.

I made myself kneel down beside him and touch his brow. Next to him on the thrift shop rug lay his wallet, the one I'd given him for Christmas three years ago.

I could see the tip of his blue plastic Chemical Bank cash card. For some reason that started the flood of tears again. Walter had always said that if he died suddenly my only responsibility was to empty his bank account and send the money to his nieces in Bayshore.

Was Leman Sweet right? Was Walter Moore, my erstwhile fiancé, a heartless killer? Would he have calmly blown me away if I had walked in on him earlier today?

Maybe. Honey, your taste in men is so bad, anything at all is possible. But what difference does that make now?
asked Ernestine, my unbending conscience, my ceaseless voice, my guide, my tormentor, my nemesis.

I saw her point. As far as those two little girls in Bayshore were concerned, what difference did it make?

I slipped the card into the top of my boot.

After they had all cleared out, including Walt, I sat on the kitchen floor and rocked myself like a mother with a wakeful baby.

When I felt strong enough, I called Aubrey, who listened to the whole story without saying a word, and then ordered me to lock up the apartment and get into a cab. She'd be waiting for me at the bar of the Emporium.

It was dark when I left. I didn't hail a taxi right away. First I had to get to a cash machine.

The nearest one was at a funky-junkie corner of Third Avenue. It was not a safe place after dark, but I was beyond fright.

Two derelicts were lying on the floor of the ATM. I stepped over them and inserted the card in the machine.

Walter's PIN number was easy to remember the numbers translated into “KNICKS”.

I punched it in.

The machine asked me how it could help me. I punched the information key to find the balance.

I
am working on it
, read the display.

Current Balance: $21,415.42.

I stared at the figure for what seemed like hours. I knew that was the blind girl's money in Walter's account. It was like I'd told Henry that day: I got her killed. I gave her that money and I got her killed. Walter. Oh God, Walter. I broke down anew every time I said his name in my head. I was crying not only because he was dead but because he had murdered.

Walter must have been keeping tabs on me, watching me, all the time he and I were apart. Otherwise, how would he have known exactly when Sig was killed?

Internal Affairs had been watching Leman Sweet. Leman Sweet and the other cops had been watching me. Diego watching Inge. Sig watching Wild Bill. On and on it went.

I staggered out, as dazed as any of the lost causes sleeping it off nearby. Everything was crumbling. Sky. Pavement beneath my feet. Little square of plastic in my fist. Looked like it wouldn't be long before there was nothing left of my world.

I needed sanctuary, even if that meant a screaming neon palace of flesh. I needed to get to Aubrey.

CHAPTER 14

'Round midnight

Where the hell was I? All I knew was, I was wearing a fur.

Oh, right. The Emporium. Aubrey had put me to bed on the fold-out cot in the dressing room.

The clock near the small sink read three o'clock. In the morning or the afternoon?

In a few minutes Aubrey came in, naked from the waist up and wearing a spangled G-string: that casually perfect, taut, amber body glistening. She took a clean towel from the back of a chair and began daintily to blot away the sweat.

“You awake, Nan?”

“I'm awake. How long have I been sleeping?”

“About five hours. I gave you a pill and you went out like a light”

“Walter is dead, Aubrey. They shot him.”

“I know, baby. You told me.”

“He was doing some terrible things … terrible things, Aubrey. I didn't know.”

I lay the coat aside then, and noticed that I was wearing a clean, starched shirt. I stared down at the whiteness of it, not able to remember changing my clothes.

“Here, Nan, take this.” Aubrey had opened a cabinet next to her dressing table. She handed me a glass and half filled it with brandy. She lit a cigarette for me as I drank.

We sat without speaking for a while.

“He asked me to marry him, Aubrey. I didn't even get a chance to tell you.”

“Well,” she sighed, “that's Walter. You know one way or another he was gonna leave your ass at the altar.”

I laughed once, bitterly. Then I broke down. She let me sob, periodically feeding me Newports and Courvoisier.

And at last the tears stopped. I felt oddly clear headed, light. I got up and washed my face carefully.

“Is that bartender who used to deal still here?” I asked. “The one who used to get you the Demerol?”

“You mean Larry? Yeah. He's on till four. Why you asking?”

“Does he still buy and sell things?”

“What things?”

“Pills. Stuff. Just about anything you can name.”

“Yeah, I guess so. But I asked you why you wanna know.”

“Because. Like Walter said, I've come to a few decisions. Could you ask him to come in here for a minute? Tell him I need to talk to him.”

“Don't do nothing stupid, Nan.”

“Please get him.”

“Don't do nothing stupid,” Aubrey repeated when she walked in again with the brown eyed bartender. “Larry, you remember my friend Nanette, don't you?”

He nodded.

“Hey, Larry, I need a gun,” I said.

“No shit?”

“No shit. Can you get it for me?”

He looked over at Aubrey, who rolled her eyes and walked into the toilet.

“Can you get it?”

“What do you mean—tonight?”

“Why not?”

“What do you need?”

“I just said, Larry, a gun.”

“I mean
what kind
, angel.”

“It makes no fucking difference whatever.”

He scratched his head, looking me up and down.

“Larry, let me be honest with you. You're dealing with a novice here. I just need a shooting device that works. Something that will make an impression, something that will threaten and persuade. Something capable of killing a rat, for instance.”

“There's a nice .22 long I can lay my hands on right away. Comes with a full clip.”

“What's a .22 long?”

“Well, it certainly could take out any rat who tried to fuck with you.”

“Can you show me what to do with it?”

“Sure.”

“Is there a cash machine near?”

“On Chambers Street.”

“I'll meet you out front at four.”

The white shirt felt good against my skin. I wriggled into a pair of Aubrey's snakeskin leotards, stretching them over the mass that is my butt. I put my boots back on and, at her insistence, threw on Aubrey's fur coat. I got a glance at myself in the mirror. My God, I could have been looking at Tookie Smith! Or I might have been a downtown money bunny off for a long day's shoe buying and gallery hopping.

“Why don't you wait for Jeremy?” Aubrey offered just as I was leaving. “Come home with us. He gonna be here in a minute.”

I shook my head. “Tell him about Walter, would you? Just tell him—just say hello from me.”

I withdrew five hundred dollars and gave Larry four hundred of it.

Larry lived in a nice loft building on Nineteenth. He came out of the kitchen carrying a mid-sized Dean and De Luca shopping bag. He placed the bag on the floor and removed my gun.

A gun is a singular thing, isn't it? Nothing else in the world even remotely resembles it.

“Long” was right. I was surprised at the size and heft of it. I got a five minute lesson on how to operate my new purchase. Clip. Safety. Barrel. Muzzle. Ammo. Push this up. Pull that back. “This looks like the foreskin on a very angry penis,” I remarked.

“Uh … right,” said Larry.

“Thanks for everything, Larry. I never met you before in my life.”

He nodded. “Looks like you dropped a few pounds since the last time I saw you, didn't you?”

“I guess.”

“Looks good on you.”

“I've got to be running along now, Larry.”

“Well, just a second.”

“What?”

“You're really not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“Do I look stupid?”

“Not at all. Listen—How about staying for a drink?”

“It's almost light,” I said. “I have to go.”

I pushed through the prison grey lobby doors and stepped out onto the deserted street.

It had begun to rain.

CHAPTER 15

Reflections

I made myself a lovely breakfast: poached eggs, sliced oranges and wafer-thin toast without the crusts. Next to my plate lay my big black gun, just north of my coffee cup.

I'd been in the house alone for a couple of days. Aubrey and Jeremy had been wonderfully supportive and loving but I hadn't wanted to see them. Or anybody.

I felt better today though. It was almost noon. I had slept well. The apartment no longer terrified me. It simply was no longer such a big deal that both Sig and Walter had been slaughtered in close proximity to this cute little vintage enamel table, a genuine piece of 1930s Americana, that I'd always loved decorating with my West African dolls and beeswax candles and ecru damask placemats.

Besides, something told me that once the management office got wind of the goings on of the last few weeks, I wasn't going to have the opportunity to grow old here, savoring the memories of the good times had by all in this place. The super hadn't even
looked
at me while he replaced the window, wordless, lips tight.

I did the dishes and cleaned up the last of the mess from the shoot-out and subsequent ravaging of my home.

Question for the day: Where was Henry Valokus? Not near his old place, was my guess. In other words, nowhere close to where I lived and did my street music number. No, the chances would be too great that he and I would meet in the neighborhood.

He had been nosing around a seedy bar at Ninth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street—hardly the street of dreams, more like rue de Wino—looking for Wild Bill. Looking for that golden sax. Rhode Island Red. It sounded like enough money to take the sting out of tramping around Hell's Kitchen. Henry might have dedicated his days, and even his nights, to combing the neighborhood in search of Wild Bill, might have hung out in bars no self-respecting Hell's Angel would have taken a leak in. But I knew that Henry would not live in Hell's Kitchen. Even if they were auctioning off Bird's jockstrap in the Italian bakery on Fifty-first Street.

Actually, the thought of Henry picking his way up and down the ragged steps of a Tenth Avenue tenement was almost funny. Goodness, where would he have his caffe latte in the morning? Where would he find that Russian leather soap he was so fond of? Where would he get his yellow roses?

So where was Henry living? Assuming he was living.

He had said once that as much as he liked the Village, he thought it was too precious. The Upper West Side drove him crazy, he said; everyone was either eighteen or eighty or insane, and the streets were always clogged with people. He got a kick out of prowling Fifty-second Street because it had been the site of so much astonishing, wonderful music, the old Birdland having grown in his imagination to high temple status. But every trace of that era had vanished. At present, the neighborhood was nothing but black glass corporate high-rises and overpriced eateries and luxe hotels.

Where was he right now? Where was he living while he went on searching for Rhode Island Red? And how much time did I have to find him before he either located the saxophone or gave up and left town?

I got out my New York City map, unfolded it on the table and suspended my hands, palms down, above its surface, as if it were a Ouya board, as if it might suck my finger down to the exact spot where he lived. Of course, he might be in Chinatown, or Morningside Heights, or Queens or Jersey City. But I was banking on his having remained in central Manhattan.

“Henry, you are right …
here
.” I zoomed in on a section of the map, grabbed a pencil and circled the area.

There wasn't a lot of mystery involved in my selection. I knew he had to be somewhere between Thirty-fourth Street and Seventy-second Street—where he was comfortable, in the heart of the city—shops, food, music, wine, gifts to impress a lady—all within easy reach—transient hotels galore, anonymity.

I put on some Erik Satie, for a change of pace from the Billie songs to commit suicide by, a change from the junk-sick Parker ballads and the post desolation Bill Evans stuff. It's funny how heartbreaking Satie can be, and at the same time soothing, focusing. And then he'll go off on one of those surrealist tangents, where he sounds like a spoiled brat having a tantrum, or the inside of a mad trolley conductor's head. He was one weird looking man, Satie. I think I probably would have had a lot of fun with him.