Boring.
Rooting through the stacks, I searched for the list of stocks Romanov owned. The printout showed a date two weeks prior to Charlie’s death. It seemed strange that my friend possessed anything so current. Hedge funds buried their secrets. Given Romanov’s success, he could do what he wanted and tell investors what he chose.
The Mad Russian’s investment strategy dominated my thoughts for the moment. Now I possessed a laundry list of the companies he owned. I could generate similar eye-popping returns for my clients’ portfolios. Plagiarism, after all, was no sin on Wall Street. It was a requisite for success.
None of Romanov’s holdings looked familiar, not one name. I generally bought blue-chip shares for my clients and stayed away from the micro caps.
Charlie had circled one name with a red pen, Rugged Computers. Just outside the circles, he had also scrawled “31.12” and “30.11.”
Charlie’s interest, his scribbles, struck me as curious. He never spoke about individual holdings. He picked fund managers, not stocks. Even with his Midas touch, he often joked, “Don’t ever buy my hot tips.”
What do the numbers mean, Charlie? Why’d you care about Rugged Computers?
CHAPTER THIRTY
I grabbed a late lunch with Zola, the newbie with the bright mind and bandaged ear. She ate eggplant, couscous, and assorted vegetarian roughage best left to the rabbits. Béarnaise sauce topped my bacon burger, no tomatoes, cheesy waffle fries, and Lipitor on the side.
“We have the Series 7 on Monday,” Zola announced.
“Don’t screw up,” I advised, only half tongue in cheek. Every so often, some newbie blew the exam and washed out of SKC’s training program. Proper licensing was the lifeblood of advisers, the Series 7 our equivalent to the bar.
After lunch the phones heated up. It was not until 4:45 P.M. when I came up for air. Gershon left early to attend her daughter’s play, her empty chair a relief. I considered how to ask Crunch whether our friend had stepped out on Sam.
Lila Priouleau’s words still haunted me: “Pregnancy doubles the urgency, Grove. You tell her about Charlie.”
Outside, the hacks were changing shifts. Their roof lights all read “off duty.” I managed to snag a yellow cab, but my sense of good fortune was premature. The cabbie from Where-the-Fuckistan ran a red light at the corner of
Fifth and Fifty-second and almost clipped a messenger cyclist in the process. We got the bird.
He stopped short at the corner of Madison Avenue, turned left from the right-hand lane of our one-way street, and cut off a Lincoln Town Car. His multicultural disregard for New York’s traffic laws provoked angry honks and furious shouts. We got the bird.
Heading up Madison, there were no further turns to make, and it appeared the tricky part was behind us. No such luck. The cabbie weaved in and out of traffic far too fast. He never bothered to signal and never alerted other drivers whether we were bearing right or pulling left. Not once, not twice, but a total of three times we got the bird.
Where-the-Fuckistan finally deposited me at Crunch’s salon on Seventy-sixth, and I encouraged him to visit San Francisco. “They pay cabbies top dollar out there.”
Like all beauty parlors, Crunch’s place reeked, the combo-stench of Starbucks and hair goop. He should have piped oxygen onto the premises. Air-quality controls worked on the space station. Surely they would deliver equal results inside a salon on the Upper East Side. Instead, Crunch tolerated the toxic fumes.
His patrons reminded me of Charleston’s swamps. Thick gelatinous masks covered their faces. The black goop looked like pluff mud from the banks of the Ashley, where predatory crustaceans trolled for sea refuse in their daily quest to survive. Several of the customers wore thick white bathrobes and wrapped towels around their heads turban-style. When I squinted just right, the assortment of terry cloth resembled chitinous exoskeletons.
For the briefest of moments I returned to the lowcountry. Only now I inhaled cappuccino and carcinogenic shit for hair instead of noxious fumes from the paper mill west of the Ashley. And blue peeked through ringlets, not the body armor of little crabs waggling their fearless claws against overwhelming odds.
“Oh my God.” Crunch’s voice boomed through the salon. He scooted up from behind and whisked me into a stylist’s chair. In his black barber’s smock, cropped at the shoulders, Crunch looked beefy and severe. His biceps bulged, and I feared they might tear the fading 101st tattoo. His long
hair shone with the most brilliant shade of black. The black was almost blue, a hair color that I had seen among Filipinos but never on a white guy from New Jersey.
The crustaceans studied Crunch under the cover of their black goop. None waved their claws in our direction or scuttled defiantly from side to side. There would be no fight to the finish this time, and the peace in the salon pleased me no end.
“Crunch, I—”
“I nothing. You look like a fucking rag bag,” he whispered.
“What’s that?”
“Army for ‘mess.’ Now sit still.” Crunch’s eyes blazed with concentration. One hand explored the nape of my neck, the other the crown of my head. He moved methodically, but roughly indifferent to my growing consternation. He clipped from above, from behind, from everywhere, it seemed.
“I don’t need a haircut. I just had one.”
Crunch changed in that moment. He transformed into a gay version of Lloyd Bentsen, the late senator from Texas. Solemn and grave, Crunch replied, “I know haircuts, Grove. It’s what I do. That’s no haircut.”
“You think?” I asked, at a loss for words, understanding how Dan Quayle felt during the 1988 vice presidential debate.
“Word,” Crunch affirmed with papal conviction.
“What the hell does ‘word’ mean?”
“It means I’ll fix everything, sweetie.”
I ignored the “sweetie” and focused on the reason for my visit. “I need to ask about Charlie. Things I’m not comfortable asking.”
Crunch said nothing at first. He focused on my locks, tugging and pulling them. He snipped errant strands with casual abandon. After an interminable pause, three hours in dog time, Crunch asked, “Are you a real redhead?” He rubbed my shoulder suggestively. “You know what I’m saying?”
“Knock it off, Crunch. I need you to focus.”
“I can’t talk about Charlie yet,” he sniffed, more of a queen with his mannerisms now. “I’m still in mourning, you know.” He fiddled with the collar of his black smock as though pinching back the grief.
“What about my hair?” I asked, backing off, giving Crunch room to collect his thoughts. “I never said what I want.”
“Would you tell Picasso how to paint?”
“Well, yes, if he painted my hair. It might come out blue.”
“Trust me, sweetie.” Crunch squirted shaving cream onto his hands and began lathering my face. The heated barber’s foam warmed my cheeks and made my face glow.
Yet I was far from comfortable. Crunch’s razor gave me the willies, his previous career the source of my angst. As he scraped the blade against a sharpening strap, the steel-against-leather strokes hissed,
Watch what you say. Watch what you say.
“What do you want to know about Charlie?” he finally asked.
Crunch’s timing sucked. I had never discussed homosexuality with a gay ex-killer from the Delta Force, one brandishing a razor so near my neck. Now seemed the wrong time to start. “Was—”
“Don’t gulp,” Crunch interrupted, “unless you want your Adam’s apple around your ankles.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice, sweetie. You know what I’m saying?”
That practice is what bothers me.
Deep down I knew better than to worry. Crunch had parked his fearsome skills in the Middle East long ago. I closed my eyes and hoped for the best. “Was Charlie gay?”
“He was married.”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” I replied, opening my eyes.
There was a long, awkward pause. The crab look-alikes chattered in the background. I waited.
“He had his experiences,” Crunch said evasively.
“What does that mean?”
“A boy has to pledge, before we accept him into the club. You know what I’m saying?”
“Maybe.” The truth was I had no clue what Crunch meant. “Did Sam know?”
“They had issues.”
“Will you stop all the cryptic shit? You sound like Dr. Phil.”
My angry voice cut through the salon’s vapors. The crustaceans eyed us suspiciously. The other stylists stopped clipping and stared in our direction.
I tried to ease the palpable tension in the small room, “Sorry, folks.”
Crunch put down the razor and walked to the front of the stylist’s chair. Locking onto my eyes, he pushed his face into mine. Too close. It was the same violation of body space, the same kind of intimidation, that had worked so well on Scully. “She knew,” Crunch whispered tersely.
I recoiled.
He pressed closer. “Showdown at the OK Corral.” No longer effeminate but tense and conspiratorial, Crunch behaved like he was laying bare some deep, dark secret.
He was. The information troubled me. After our dinner at Live Bait, I had asked Sam if Charlie was having an affair. She responded by flirting:
Where would Charlie find a better piece of ass?
Suddenly, her answer angered me.
Just as suddenly, I relaxed. Charlie’s betrayal, it occurred to me, had embarrassed Sam. I assumed “experiences” constituted some form of betrayal. The thought made me sad. I wanted to believe in Charlie. I wanted to believe in Sam. They had done so much for me, for each other.
“You didn’t hear it from me,” Crunch said, looking for stray strands to snip. He trimmed my eyebrows, attention to detail that would have made Evelyn so happy. “You know what I’m saying?”
“Don’t worry. I’m Schultz.”
“Who?”
“The fat guy on
Hogan’s Heroes
. ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing.’ ”
“Oh, sweetie, you need to get out more often.” Crunch held up a mirror for me to assess my haircut. “Do you like?” he asked.
“Damn, Crunch. It looks good,” I admitted genuinely. “I need to visit more often.”
He clasped his hands together by his neck, cocked a hip, and immodestly congratulated himself, “I know.”
“There’s one more thing.”
Crunch leaned forward and violated my airspace for the second time. “Yes?” he said flirtatiously.
Instead of backing away again, I inched even closer and grabbed each of his hands, one in my left and one in my right. The gesture rattled Crunch, particularly the way I riveted onto his eyes. Proximity was his game. He was the one who used drama as a social weapon. He was the one who flinched,
though. “Crunch, would you please stop calling me ‘sweetie.’ You know what I’m saying?” It was one of my more assoholic moments, no doubt.
“That’s it?” he asked, genuinely surprised. “That’s the one thing?”
“No. I may need your help with Sam. I’m just not sure how.”
Crunch pulled back, and I sensed indifference. His reaction seemed odd, more confusing than effeminate. Crunch had been so kind to Sam at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Is that hostility?
“Are you still visiting Sam this week?” I asked.
“Maybe. And don’t you dare get me in trouble with her.”
The crustaceans would shed their shells soon. I was tempted to wait and see what emerged. Instead, I paid $175, reminisced about the days of $5 haircuts, and exited into the fresh air of New York City.
Back in the open, taxi fumes and humidity now flushing the glue from my lungs and brain, I regretted my jerky comment to Crunch. It made no sense to alienate a resource. Crunch had told me something. I just couldn’t figure out what.
You know what I’m saying?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Thursday morning I called Halek first thing. We could always talk, and I needed his input on several fronts. “Don’t say a word to Sam,” he advised. “Charlie’s bedroom choices don’t affect anyone now.”
Hmm. Lila says tell. Halek says don’t.
“That’s not the issue, Cliff. Sam joked when I asked if Charlie was having an affair.”
“Give her a break,” Halek urged. “She just watched three sharks eat her husband.”
“She lied.”
“Forget it. There’s only one way to help Sam and your other friend.” Cliff meant Betty Masters. “Wind down the Kelemen Group.”
Lady Goldfish was next on my agenda. When I briefed Halek about Patty’s power play, he grew agitated. “Fucking harpy,” he growled.
It was the perfect metaphor. In Greek mythology harpies were the death spirits that constantly stole food from Phineas’s plate. Thinking about Patty’s grab for my client, I understood the old boy’s frustration.
“You got that right.”
“I’m going to Kurtz,” Cliff thundered.
“On what basis?”
“We ran numbers and spent forty-five minutes discussing the borrow.”
“So.”
“I have better things to do than shoot the shit with some gasbag who’s lying about a trade.”
“She’ll eat your lunch, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sutherling’s in her corner, and there’s a twenty-million prize. That’s not a fight you want.”
