Downtown

12

“Are you sure she was blonde?” Connie asked.

She was asking about Helen Parrish.

“Yes, she was blonde,” Michael said.

“But Charlie’s daughter has dark hair.”

“She’s the same person, believe me.”

They were driving toward the address in Charlie Nichols’s book. Judy Jordan’s address. Judy Jordan who was also Helen Parrish whose dear dead daddy was Charlie Nichols. In the bar last night, Helen Parrish had told him she was thirty-two years old. Which was about right if the picture in Charlie’s study had been taken fifteen years ago and if she’d been seventeen at the time. It was very cold outside, driving alfresco this way. The dashboard clock wasn’t working, which came as no surprise in a convertible with a broken top-mechanism. Michael waited to look at his watch until they stopped for a traffic light on a corner under a street lamp. It was almost ten o’clock.

He was very eager to see Miss Helen Parrish again.

The fake Miss Parrish, who was in reality—

Well, that wasn’t necessarily true.

It was possible that Judy Jordan was now married, although in that bar last night Helen Parrish had told him she wasn’t married, wasn’t divorced, she was just single. Well, she’d told him a lot of things. But if she was married, and if Helen Parrish was indeed her real name now, which she’d have been crazy to have given him, then her maiden name could have been Judy Jordan, the girl with the long brown—

But no.

Charlie Nichols was her father.

Isn’t that what she’d written on the photo?

To My Dear Daddy.

Then why had she signed her name Judy Jordan?

“What I’d like to know,” Connie said, “is if Judy Jordan is Helen Parrish, then how come she’s not Judy Nichols if Charlie Nichols is or was her father?”

“I love you,” Michael said, and kissed her fiercely.

The Amalgamated Dwellings, Inc., were cooperative apartments at 504 Grand Street, but the entrance to the complex was around the corner on a street called Abraham Kazan, no relation. You went down a series of low brick steps and into an interior courtyard that might have been a castle keep in England, with arches and what looked like turrets and a snow-covered little park with shrubs and trees and a fountain frozen silent by the cold.

The lettered buildings—A, B, C, and so on —were clustered around this secret enclave. Judy Jordan lived in E. The name on the mailbox downstairs was J. Jordan.

“Women who do that are dumb,” Connie said.

“Using an initial instead of a name. You do that, and a rapist knows right off it’s a woman living alone. You can bet I don’t have C. Kee on my mailbox.”

“What do you have?”

“Charlie Kee.”

“That’s a very common name in this city,” Michael said. “Charlie.”

“Which is why I put it on my mailbox,” Connie said, and nodded.

“Why?”

“So a rapist would think it was a common man named Charlie Kee up there.”

“How about the postman?”

“Mr. Di Angelo? A rapist? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I mean, how will he know where to deliver mail addressed to Connie Kee?”

“That’s his worry,” Connie said.

Michael looked at the name on the mailbox again.

J. Jordan.

“I’ll go up alone,” he said. “You go back to the car.”

“If this blonde is as beautiful as you say she is …”

“She may also be dangerous.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Connie, please go wait in the car for me, okay?”

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” she said.

“If you’re not back by then, I’m coming up after you.”

“Okay. Good.”

He kissed her swiftly.

“I still think I ought to go with you,” she said. But she was already walking out of the courtyard. Michael pressed the button for Judy Jordan’s apartment.

“Yes?” a woman’s voice said.

He could not tell whether the voice was Helen Parrish’s or not. As a matter of fact, he’d completely forgotten what Helen Parrish had sounded like.

“Miss Jordan?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Charlie Nichols sent me,” he said.

“Look,” she said, “this is an inconvenient time. I was just dressing to …”

“I’d like to talk to you, Miss Jordan, if …”

“Oh, well, all right, come on up,” she said, and buzzed him in.

He climbed to the third floor, found her apartment just to the left of the stairwell, and was about to ring the bell set in the doorjamb when he hesitated.

If Judy Jordan did, in fact, turn out to be Helen Parrish, or vice versa, then the woman inside this apartment was the person who’d set the whole scheme in motion, the MacGuffin as she might be called in an Alfred Hitchcock film. Was he going to simply knock on the door and wait for the MacGuffin to answer it, perhaps to do him more harm than she’d already done? Michael did not think that was such a good idea. He reached into the right-hand pocket of his new bomber jacket, and took out the .32 he had appropriated from Arthur Crandall. He flipped the gun butt-side up, and rapped it against the door. Twice. Rap. Rap. And listened.

“Who is it?” a woman said. Same voice that had come from the speaker downstairs.

“Me,” he said.

“Who’s me?”

“I told you. Charlie sent me.”

“If it’s about the money, I still haven’t got it,” the woman said from somewhere just inside the door now. There was a peephole set in the door at eye level. She was probably looking out at him. He still couldn’t tell whether the voice was Helen Parrish’s.

“I’d like to talk to you, if I may,” he said, ducking his chin, trying to hide his face so that if this was Helen Parrish looking out at him, she wouldn’t get such a good look.

“Just a minute,” she said. “I’m still half-naked.”

He wondered if this really was Helen Parrish, half-naked inside there. He thought back to the beginning of their relationship together, their gentle, easy conversation, the way they’d held hands, the way they’d looked deep into each other’s eyes. He thought what a shame it was that she’d turned out to be a MacGuffin but maybe all beautiful women turned into MacGuffins sooner or later. He certainly hoped that wouldn’t be the case with Connie.

He looked at his watch.

What the hell was taking her so long in there?

He rapped on the door with the gun butt again.

Three times.

Rap. Rap. Rap.

“Miss Jordan?” he called.

No answer.

“Miss …”

“Put your hands up, Mr. Barnes.”

A man’s voice.

Behind him.

“Up!” the man said. “Now!”

The thing in Michael’s back felt very much like the muzzle of a gun.

Michael raised his hands over his head, the .32 in his right hand. The bandaged left arm hurt when he raised it. He almost said Ouch.

“Just let the gun fall out of your hand,” the man said. “Just open your hand and drop the gun.”

He opened his hand. The gun fell out of it. Dropped to the floor. Hit the floor with a solid thwunk.

“Thank you,” the man said. “Now stand still, please.”

Kneeling to pick up the gun now, Michael supposed. There was a small scraping sound as it came up off the tile floor. A hand began patting him down. All his pants pockets. Then the right-hand pocket of the jacket, and then—

“Well, well, another one,” the man said.

Frankie Zeppelin’s .45 came out of Michael’s pocket.

“Mr. Barnes?” the man said.

And hit him on the back of the head with at least one of the guns.

He heard voices.

A man’s voice. A woman’s voice.

“… blow the whole thing,” the man said.

“… other choice, do you?”

He opened his eyes.

A tin ceiling.

The shrink he had gone to in Boston had an office with a tin ceiling. Michael used to lie on his couch and look up at all the curlicues in his tin ceiling. He was not on a couch now. He was on a bed. An unmade bed. The bed smelled as if someone had peed in it. He wondered if it was a child’s bed. The bed had a metal footboard, which he could see by lifting his head. Wrought iron painted white. He was spread-eagled on the bed with his ankles tied to the footboard and his arms up over his head and tied to the headboard, which was also wrought iron painted white.

He had never seen this room in his life. The room looked like the sort he imagined you’d find in any cheap hotel that catered to hookers and dope dealers. He figured this had to be a drug plot. Otherwise why would a man who’d known he was Michael Barnes—or at least Mr. Barnes—have hit him on the head with his own gun and then tied him to a bed in what was truly a very shitty room? A drug plot for sure. Paint peeling off the walls. A pile of dirty laundry in one corner of the room. No curtain or shade on the window leading to the fire escape. And—hanging crookedly on the wall beside the window —a framed and faded print of an Indian sitting on a spotted pony. Michael was really very surprised and disappointed by this totally shitty drug-plot room because the building itself had looked so nice from the street and the hallways had been so neat and clean, which proved you couldn’t always judge a book by its cover.

He lifted his head again.

A closed door. The voices beyond it.

“… in a garbage can someplace,” the woman said.

“… like behind a McDonald’s.”

“… drive the cops nuts.”

Three people in that other room. Two men and a woman. None of them sounded like anyone he’d ever met. All three of them were laughing now. They thought this would be comical. Driving the cops nuts.

“Or kill him and just leave him here,” one of the men said. “In Ju Ju’s bed.”

They all thought this would be even more comical. Killing him and leaving him here in Ju Ju’s bed. Was Ju Ju’s bed the one he was tied to? The one that stank of piss? Was Ju Ju a cutesy-poo name for Judy Jordan? Was this, in fact, Judy Jordan’s bedroom? Was Judy Jordan a bed-wetter? There was hysterical laughter in the other room now. It was contagious. Michael almost laughed himself. He had to stifle his laughter.

Michael wondered who Ju Ju was.

He hated movies with casts of thousands.

“We’d better wait till Mama gets here,” the woman said.

Mama again.

The woman’s mother?

Or did everybody call her Mama?

Maybe Connie was right. Maybe Mama was a big, fat lady who everyone—

Connie!

She’d told him if he wasn’t back in ten minutes she’d come up and get him. How much time had gone by since he’d left her down there on the ground floor? Five minutes to climb to the third floor, another three minutes while he’d waited in the hallway for the naked woman to put on her—

The doorbell rang.

Oh, Jesus, he thought. Connie!

Or maybe Mama.

Either way, that ringing doorbell could only mean more trouble.

Because if the person doing the ringing was Connie, they would hit her on the head and then tie her up alongside him on the bed.

And then when Mama finally arrived, it would be so long to both of them. Shoot them both and leave them in Ju Ju’s bed, ha ha. Or else shoot them and drop them in a garbage can behind McDonald’s, which would be almost as amusing. Michael found neither choice acceptable. So he hoped against hope that it was not Connie ringing that doorbell. Because if they were going to shoot anyone at all, he much preferred it to be himself alone, leave Connie out of this entirely. The doorbell kept ringing. He began actively wishing that one of them would go answer the door and it would be big, fat Mama standing there, Hi, kids, it’s me.

“Who is it?” one of the men yelled.

“Abruzzi Pizzeria,” someone yelled back.

Michael listened.

Someone was coming into the apartment.

“You order a large pizza?”

A delivery boy.

“That’s right.”

The woman. Obviously the one who’d placed the order.

“Half anchovies, half pepperoni?”

“Right.”

“Three Cokes?”

“Three Cokes, right.”

“Here’s the napkins, that comes to thirteen dollars and twenty-one cents.”

“That sounds like a lot,” one of the men said.

“How do you figure it’s a lot?” the delivery boy asked.

“For a pizza and three lousy Cokes? Thirteen bucks and change?”

“Yeah, but it’s a large with anchovies and pepperoni.”

“Only half anchovies and half pepperoni.”

“Which costs nine dollars and ninety-five cents. For the large with the anchovies and pepperoni.”

“So how much are the Cokes?”

“Seventy-five cents each.”

“That sounds high, too.”

Cheap bastard, Michael thought.

“How do you figure that’s high?” the delivery boy asked.

“For a lousy Coke? Seventy-five cents?”

“Yeah, but these are twelve-ounce Cokes.”

“That’s still high. That’s six cents and change for an ounce!”

“Yeah, but that’s what it costs an ounce,” the delivery boy said.

“That’s very high for an ounce of Coke.”

“Yeah, but that’s what it costs. Seventy-five cents for twelve ounces.”

“So how do you get thirteen dollars and twenty-one cents?”

“There’s an eight and a quarter percent tax. See it here on the bill? A dollar is the tax. So if you add a dollar to the nine ninety-five for the pizza and the two and a quarter for the Cokes, you get thirteen twenty-one. See it here?”

“Who added this?”

“The cashier.”

“What’s her name?”

“Marie. Why?”

“She’s a penny off.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see this here? Add it yourself. Nine ninety-five for the pizza, two twenty-five for the Cokes, and a dollar for the tax is thirteen dollars and twenty cents, not thirteen dollars and twenty-one cents.”

“Gee,” the delivery boy said.

“Tell Marie.”

“I will.”

Cheap bastard, Michael thought again.

“Here’s fifty bucks,” the man said.

“Keep the change.”

Michael heard the door opening and closing again. The sudden aroma of cheese and garlic and tomatoes and pepperoni and anchovies wafted into the room where he was tied to the bed.

In that moment, he wanted nothing more from life than a slice of pizza.

If they told him they would kill him the moment Mama got here, his last request would be a slice of pizza.

“This is very good pizza,” the woman said.

A rap sounded at the window.

He turned his head sharply.

A man wearing a black silk handkerchief over his nose and down to his chin was standing on the fire escape. He put his forefinger to where his lips would have been under the handkerchief, signaling Michael to keep quiet.

Michael looked at him.

The man was wearing a black cap to match the black handkerchief. And a black jacket bristling with little chrome studs. In keeping with his attire, the man himself was black, or at least what was nowadays called black even though his exposed hands were certainly not the color of his clothing. His hands were, in fact, the color of Colombian coffee.

The man hefted something onto the windowsill.

A black satchel.

He opened the satchel and took out some kind of black tool.

Terrific, Michael thought. A burglar. In the other room, they began talking about pizza.

One of the men maintained that pizza with a thin crust was the best kind. The woman said she preferred her pizza with a thick crust. The other man said extra cheese was the secret. They all agreed that extra cheese was desirable on a pizza.

Michael was dying of hunger.

The black man was working on the window with the black tool, which Michael surmised was a jimmy.

“When we finish this pizza here,” one of the men said, “I think we ought to do him. Whether Mama’s here or not.”

Michael guessed they were talking about him.

About doing him.

“Anchovies I don’t find too terrific on a pizza,” the woman said.

“Me, neither, Alice,” the other man said. Alice.

The woman’s name was Alice.

“They’re too salty,” she said.

“They overpower all the other ingredients,” the man said, agreeing.

“Because the longer this man stays alive, the bigger the threat he is,” the first man said, making a reasonable case.

“I think we should wait for Mama,” Alice said.

“It was Mama sent you after him the first time,” the other man said.

“I know that, Larry.”

Larry. Another county heard from.

“So if Mama wanted him dead at eight o’clock tonight,” he said, “why should it be any different now?”

“Because now is ten-thirty and not eight o’clock,” Alice said.

“Which, by the way, you fucked up,” the first man said. “On the roof there.”

“No, by the way, I didn’t fuck up, I was ambushed, Silvio.”

So Alice was the blonde who’d been firing from the roof.

“Which it don’t matter,” Silvio said, “so long as we do the job right this time.”

“That’s still saying I did it wrong last time,” Alice said.

“All I know is what Mama told me. Barnes was down Benny’s asking questions about Arthur Crandall. So Barnes had to go. So you got sent to do him and you didn’t do him, which is why he’s tied to the bed in there now and you’re telling me we should wait for Mama, which I don’t know why.”

“Because I say so,” Alice said flatly.

“And I say we do him and leave him here in Ju Ju’s bed,” Silvio said, and they all burst out laughing again.

They were silent for the next few minutes or so.

Eating.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Alice said, “the best combination is sausage and peppers.”

“On a pizza, you mean?” Larry asked.

“No, on a piano,” Alice said.

“Certainly on a pizza. We’re talking about pizza, aren’t we?”

“I thought you were talking about a sandwich,” Larry said.

“If you don’t mind,” Silvio said,

“I’m talking about let’s finish the goddamn pizza here and do the man, okay?”

“A grinder, I thought you meant,” Larry said.

“A sausage and pepper grinder.”

“No, a pizza,” Alice said. “Half sausage, half pepper.”

Michael was hoping the burglar would hurry up and open the window. Then maybe he could talk the man into untying the ropes. Before they finished their pizza and came in here to do him. But the burglar seemed pretty new at the job. He had put the first tool back into the satchel and had taken out another one, but he didn’t seem to be having any better luck with the new one. Meanwhile, in the other room, the pizza seemed to be dwindling. Michael was happy it had been a large one to begin with.

“Who wants this last slice?” Alice asked.

“Go ahead, take it,” Larry said.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Silvio said, “don’t be so fucking generous with my pizza, if you don’t mind.”

“If you want it, take it,” Alice said.

“Go ahead, Silvio, take it,” Larry said.

“If Alice wants it, she can have it,” Silvio said.

“No, this slice is all anchovies,” Alice said.

“That’s why I don’t want it,” Silvio said.

“I thought you did want it,” Alice said.

“No, I only said he shouldn’t be giving it away so fast in case I wanted it.”

“Well, I don’t want it,” Alice said.

“It’s all anchovies.”

“I don’t want it, either,” Larry said.

“Then the hell with it,” Silvio said. “Throw it in the garbage, and let’s go do him.”

No, Michael thought. Somebody eat it. Please.

“Well, if nobody wants it,” Alice said, “I’ll take it.”

“In fact, let’s split it,” Larry said.

“Three ways,” Silvio said.

The window opened a crack. Cold air rushed into the room. And what smelled like fish. The black man all in black pushed the window up higher, letting in more cold air and the very definite stink of fish. He climbed over the sill and came into the room. Came directly to the bed. Pulled the handkerchief off his face, leaned in close to Michael’s ear, and whispered, “Connie sent me.”

“Untie me,” Michael whispered.

In the other room, Silvio said, “It’s a sin to make good food go to waste.”

“This is very hard to cut,” Larry said.

“Hold it with the fork,” Alice said.

The black man began untying the ropes. He was no better at untying than he was at jimmying. In the other room, they were silent now. Michael figured they were concentrating on slicing the slice of pizza into three even slices, which was probably more difficult than untying a man tied to a bed. He hoped. He wished they would say something in there. The silence was somehow ominous. Maybe they had already sliced the slice of pizza and already eaten it. Maybe they were at this very moment loading pistols instead of slicing—

“Listen,” he whispered, “don’t you have a knife in that satchel?”

“This’ll only take a minute,” the black man whispered.

He had finally untied the first wrist. That left two ankles and a wrist to go.

“Get the ankles,” Michael said. “I’ll try the other wrist.”

“Did you hear something just then?” Larry asked. Silence.

Oh, Jesus, Michael thought.

“No,” Silvio said. “What did you hear?”

“Like somebody talking,” Larry said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Like next door.”

They all listened again.

The black man had untied Michael’s left ankle and was now working on the right one. Michael was plucking at the knots in the rope holding his left wrist to the headboard. He figured that in about two minutes he would be a dead man.

“I still don’t hear anything,” Silvio said.

“Are you going to finish these Cokes, or what?” Alice asked.

“I’m done,” Larry said.

“Me, too,” Silvio said.

“Me, too,” the black man whispered.

So was Michael.

He yanked his left hand free of the rope, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and went immediately to the window. The black man was right behind him. As they went out onto the fire escape, Michael heard Silvio saying, “Let’s go do him.”

The black man’s name was Gregory Washington.

The name of the club was the Green Garter.

Gregory told him that this was where Connie had said she would meet them. He also told Michael that the club was sometimes known as the Green Farter because it attracted a very old clientele.

Michael looked around the place and did not see anyone who looked older than thirty. But Gregory was only nineteen.

A lot of the women standing at the bar, or sitting in the booths or at the tables, seemed to be wearing only lingerie. Garter belts and panties and seamed silk stockings and teddies and negligees and stiletto-heeled shoes that made them look a lot like either the redheaded detective named O’Brien, who’d mistaken him for a cheap hold-up artist, or the redheaded hooker named Hannah, who’d mistaken him for the man in the Carvel commercials. Michael wondered if Frankie Zeppelin had yet found someone to kill Isadore Onions. He wondered whose thigh Isadore’s girlfriend had her hand on now. He wondered if all the women in New York City walked around in their underwear at Christmastime.

“You have adorable buns,” Gregory said.

“Has anyone ever told you that?”

Which was when Michael began to suspect that both Gregory and the Green Garter were what you might call gay, and that all these underdressed women were in actuality men.

One of them winked at him.

“Oh, look,” Gregory said. “Phyllis has her eye on you.”

He sounded like Eddie Murphy doing his gay bit in Beverly Hills Cop. In fact, he even looked a little like a younger Eddie Murphy, if there was such a thing as a younger Eddie Murphy. It seemed to Michael that nowadays there were no male movie stars who were his age. All the male movie stars up there on the screen were twenty years old. Making love to stark-naked women who had to be at least in their thirties. The only twenty-year-old movie stars Michael believed were the ones in war movies because in Vietnam almost everybody was twenty years old or younger. Even the lieutenants were twenty years old. The only people who weren’t twenty years old were sergeants.

Phyllis winked at him again.

Phyllis was wearing a blonde wig, a red silk blouse, and a green silk skirt with high-heeled pumps to match. Most of the people in the room, Michael noticed, were dressed in either red or green in honor of the yuletide season, except for the ones who were wearing swastikas and chains and jeans and black leather jackets bristling with metal spikes and studs. They looked tougher and meaner than any man Michael had ever seen in his life, but he guessed they were gay, too, otherwise what were they doing here?

Which was probably what Phyllis, who needed a shave, was wondering about him.

“What time did Connie say she’d be here?” he asked.

“Soon as she does what she has to do,” Gregory said.

“What is it she has to do?” Michael asked.

“Find out who the corpse is.”

“And how does she plan to do that?”

“At the Gouverneur Hospital morgue,” Gregory said. “On Henry Street. ‘Cause the corpse was found in the Seventh Precinct, and that’s the only hospital in the Seventh, so she figured that’s where they could’ve took it. She knows a man there works with the stiffs.”

“So that’s where she is now,” Michael said.

“Lucky her,” Gregory said, and grinned.

“Excuse me,” Michael said, “but how do you fit into all this?”

“Oh, very comfortably,” Gregory said, and looked around the room. “I been comin’ here since it opened.”

“I meant, how did you happen to get the job of rescuing me?”

“Oh. Connie asked me to climb on up there.”

“Why you? Are you a burglar?”

“No, I’m a dancer.”

“I still don’t understand how Connie knew I was in trouble.”

“Well, from what she told me, she was waiting outside the Amalgamated when she saw this man carrying you out of the building. Unconscious. You, not the man. So she followed his car to this warehouse near the Fulton Market. The fish market. On Fulton Street. And that’s how come you’re sitting here with me now, doll.”

“Connie just ran into you, is that it? And asked you to …”

“No, she called me on the telephone.”

“And you ran on over with your satchel …”

“I borrowed the satchel from my brother-in-law.”

“Is he a dancer, too?”

“No, he’s a burglar. But he’s white, you wouldn’t ‘spect him to have no rhythm.”

“So Connie called you …”

“Right, and asked me to meet her at this warehouse, where she was waiting outside.”

“How’d she know what apartment I was in?”

“It isn’t an apartment building, it’s a warehouse. She watched the elevator needle. And I went up the fire escape to the fifth floor, where I found you, aren’t you glad?”

“You mean to tell me Connie just picked up the telephone, and you ran on down to meet her?”

“I owe her,” Gregory said, and left it at that.

“Well, I’m grateful to you.”

“How grateful?” Gregory said, and was putting his hand on Michael’s thigh when Phyllis walked over.

“Won’t you introduce me, Greg?” she said.

“Michael, this is Phyllis,” Gregory said, and squeezed Michael just above the knee.

“Care to dance, Michael?”

Michael figured he could do worse.

“Do you come here often?” Phyllis asked.

She was a very good dancer.

The jukebox was playing “It Happened in Monterey.” Frank Sinatra was singing.

“My first time,” Michael said.

“You have adorable buns,” Phyllis said.

“Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Michael said.

“Oh my, she’s modest as well,” Phyllis said.

Her beard was scratching against Michael’s cheek.

“Are you married?” Phyllis asked.

“Divorced,” he said.

“Oh, good,” Phyllis said.

“But very serious about someone,” Michael said quickly.

“Oh, drat,” Phyllis said.

“May I cut in, please?” someone asked. The someone was Connie.

“I said the Green Garden,” she said.