Downtown

14

Michael thought it was a bad idea to be standing here behind all these dead animal skins. He should have been standing at the table with the weapons instead. Because Alice and her two chums were now fanning out over the warehouse floor, earnestly trying to determine who had left the lights on.

He guessed this was going to be a process of elimination.

This was going to be Gee, it wasn’t us who left the lights on, and it couldn’t have been the moving men, so it had to have been someone else. And maybe the someone else is still in here. Like maybe hiding behind the counter over there, upon which were displayed six Tandberg FM tuners, three Nakamichi cassette decks, and a Denon direct-drive turntable.

A woman came around that counter now.

Alice.

For sure.

The same woman who’d been firing at them from the rooftop.

The long blonde hair and slitted blue eyes, the delicate Michael Jackson nose, the pale ivory oval of her face. In her hand, a gun that looked foreign. She could have been playing a Russian assassin in a James Bond movie. It was bad enough, however, that she was an American assassin in a real-life drama starring Michael Barnes and Connie—

It occurred to him that Connie was no longer at his side.

Before he had time to wonder how or when she’d disappeared, he saw a short, thickset man coming around the sleeve of a chinchilla coat hanging at the far end of the rack. Except for his broken nose, the man looked a lot like Tony the Bear Orso or Charlie Bonano, both of whom looked like Rocky’s brother-in-law. He had a gun in his hand. Michael guessed this was Silvio.

“Hey!” Silvio yelled, if that’s who he was, and Michael immediately slipped between a Siberian yellow weasel coat and a Persian lamb, brushing past the furs and through the rack to emerge on the opposite side where a tall, angular, craggy-faced blondish man who looked like Sterling Hayden in The Godfather was coming around the end of a table upon which was displayed an open coffin with no one in it.

Michael figured he himself would soon be displayed in that coffin, which was made of fine mahogany and lined with white silk and hung with bronze handles.

If the other one was Silvio, then this one was Larry.

So there was Silvio coming through the rack of furs farther up the line now, emerging between a Mexican ocelot and a Mongolian marmot, and here was Larry spotting Michael now and also shouting “Hey!” and here, too, was Alice coming around the home entertainment center display and seeing Michael, and grinning like an African lioness contemplating a warthog dinner. Michael figured this was it. The full deck had been dealt at last and there were no more aces in it.

“Freeze!” the voice said.

It sounded like Detective O’Brien.

But it was Connie.

Standing with a gun in each hand.

Behind Alice and Larry, who had probably heard that word a great many times in their separate careers and who did not move a muscle when they heard it now. Coming through the rack swathed in furs left and right, Silvio froze, too. Connie looked like the Dragon Lady. Cool and beautiful and deadly. Ready to blow away anyone who did not take her by overnight junk to Shanghai. The guns were only .22 caliber revolvers, but in her delicate hands they looked like big mother-loving cannons.

“Help us here!” Alice shouted to the moving men, but they, too, had seen the guns in Connie’s hands and the look in her eyes, and they had heard the word “Freeze!” thundering like a Chinese curse into that echoing space, and when they’d realized that they themselves were not the ones being asked to freeze, they decided this might be a good time to get the hell out of here before someone asked them to move a piano.

There was a rush toward the metal entrance door, now an exit door too narrow to accommodate the sudden traffic. The moving men piled into the doorway like Keystone Kops, wedging themselves there for an impossibly tangled moment, unraveling themselves, and then hurling themselves headlong into the corridor outside.

Larry shook his head in dismay when he heard the elevator starting. Still shaking his head, he dropped his gun to the floor and looked at his watch, probably wondering if Johnny Carson was still on. Silvio raised his hands over his head. He looked like a man who did not have to be told that Chinese people stuck bamboo under your fingernails. Especially Chinese women. Or maybe it was the Japanese who did that. Either way, he wanted nothing further to do with this entire enterprise.

Only Alice seemed undecided.

Michael had his doubts as well.

Which was why he was moving so swiftly toward Connie.

Because it was one thing to have a look on your face that said handling a gun was second nature to you and you’d as soon shoot a person as treat him to an ice cream cone, but it was another thing to be holding a gun as if you’d never had one in your hand before. Connie was holding those pistols the way Crandall had held the .32 last night. They were both amateurs. Michael recognized this because when it came to oranges or guns, he was a pro. But so was Alice. And in thirty seconds flat, she was going to recognize that Connie didn’t know a trigger from a click sight. In fact, the knowledge was seeping into her eyes that very instant, and Michael knew he had to reach Connie and grab one of those guns from her before Alice made her play.

She moved sooner than he’d expected.

Didn’t say a word.

Merely fired at Connie.

And missed.

And was sighting along the gun barrel to fire again when Michael realized this was not a time for dueling in the sun, this was a time for definitive action—like throwing himself at her. He flung himself sideways, hoping to knock her off balance and realizing an instant too late that he was rushing her with his bad side, rushing her with the bandaged shoulder and arm that had been injured by one of those Car 54, Seventh Precinct cops—where were they now, when he needed them? He let out a horrible yell, similar to the “Aiiii-eeeeee!” he’d screamed at Detective O’Brien all those years ago on Christmas Eve, but this one was involuntary in that the body contact with Alice sent arrows of pain shooting from his arm clear up into his skull. There was another gunshot, and he thought, Oh, Jesus, no! and then Alice screamed and he thought it was because his own scream had frightened her the way it had earlier frightened O’Brien. But his hands where he grabbed for Alice were suddenly sticky and wet, and he realized all at once that Connie had actually fired one of those guns, Connie had actually shot Alice, who was stumbling backward now as Michael stumbled forward. He said something like “Watch it,” or “What shit,” and Alice very definitely said, “What shit,” and then both of them collapsed to the floor in a hurt and bewildered heap.

Connie was on them in an instant.

Legs widespread.

Both guns angled down at Alice’s head.

“One move,” she said.

“Don’t get dramatic,” Alice said, and tossed her gun onto the floor.

She was bleeding from the shoulder.

“It went off,” Connie explained.

“I see that,” Michael said.

“Remember when I asked you if it was a crime to steal stolen goods? That’s when I stole them. From the table. Because he who gathers up his nuts need never leave his hole.”

“If you don’t mind,” Larry said, “there’s a lady present here.”

“Get me a doctor,” Alice said.

Michael wondered if Dr. Ling would make a house call all the way over here in the First Precinct.

“Who’s Mama?” he asked.

“Go fuck yourself,” Alice said.

“Tch,” Larry said, and rolled his eyes.

Silvio still had his hands up in the air. “Can I put my hands down, lady?” he asked. “Or shall I go fuck myself, too?”

“You can put them down,” Connie said.

“First promise me no bamboo shoots,” Silvio said.

“What?” Connie said.

“And no MSG,” Larry said. “It’s the MSG gives you headaches.”

“Keep your hands up,” Michael said.

“Who’s Mama?”

“Quién sabe?” Silvio said.

“Are you Spanish?” Michael asked.

“No, I’m Italian. But everybody knows what quién sabe means.”

“Sure,” Larry said. “It’s what Tonto calls the Lone Ranger.”

“Anyway,” Alice said testily, “we don’t know who Mama is, and please get me a goddamn doctor.”

“Why are you trying to kill us?” Michael asked.

“We’re trying to kill you?” Alice said. “This Asian person almost takes off my arm with that weapon in her hand, and we’re trying to kill you?”

“That’s certainly comical, all right,” Larry said, shaking his head in wonder.

“Can I put my hands down?” Silvio asked.

“No,” Michael said. “Who’s Mama?”

“Call a doctor,” Alice said.

“No. Who is she?”

“Call the police, too. I want to press charges against this illegal alien.”

“I’m legal,” Connie said.

“Sure. So’s Mama.”

“Go ahead, tell them,” Larry said, shaking his head again.

“I didn’t tell them anything.”

“You told them Mama’s an illegal alien.”

“No, you just told them.”

“I said Mama’s illegal?”

“An illegal alien, is exactly what you said.”

“Did I say that?” Larry asked, turning to Silvio.

“How come everybody can put their hands down but me?” Silvio asked.

“If I bleed to death here, they’ll deport you,” Alice said to Connie.

“Let’s talk a deal,” Michael said.

“If you had one wish in the whole world, and you could get that wish by telling us who Mama is, what would that wish be?”

“Could I please put my hands down?” Silvio said.

“Yes,” Michael said.

“You just blew your wish, dummy,” Larry said.

“That wasn’t my wish,” Silvio said, shaking his hands out from the wrists. “That was just a polite request.”

“Just get me a doctor,” Alice said.

“Is that your wish?”

“I wish my mother would go back to Palermo,” Silvio said.

“I wish she’d take my mother with her,” Larry said, and both men burst out laughing. Alice laughed, too.

Blood was trickling from her left shoulder, but she suddenly began laughing along with her buddies. Michael was thinking it would be fun to work with these three if only they weren’t killers. He tried to remember if any of it had been fun in Vietnam. Working with the killers there. He guessed maybe some of it had been fun. Before the baby.

Hell she doing out here? Andrew asked.

The baby crying.

Might’ve crawled out from the village, the RTO said. “Who’s Mama?” Michael said.

“You want to get us all killed?” Larry asked.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” Michael said. “I’m going to make the wish for you, okay? I’m going to wish that I don’t go to that phone on the wall there, and call the police, and tell them to come up here and get you, that’s what I’m going to wish.”

“First Precinct,” Connie said. “I have the number in my book.”

“Go ahead, call them,” Alice said.

“I keep all the precinct numbers handy,” Connie said. “In case I get a weirdo. I know all the desk sergeants down here.”

“Do you know Tony Orso?” Michael asked.

“No. Is he a desk sergeant?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t know him.”

“Tony the Bear Orso.”

“No.”

“I know him,” Silvio said.

“So do I,” Larry said.

“Do you know Detective Daniel Cahill?” Michael asked.

“Go call all these cops, why don’t you?” Alice said. “Tell them your Chink girlfriend tried to kill me.”

“How would you like a punch in the mouth?” Connie asked pleasantly.

“Go ahead, hit me. That’ll look good on your record, too.”

“Detective Cahill?” Michael said.

“Ring a bell?”

“There was a cop up Sing Sing named Cahill,” Larry said.

“No, that was Cromwell,” Silvio said.

“Oh, yeah,” Larry said, and nodded and smiled, as though fondly remembering Sing Sing.

“How about you, Alice?” Michael asked.

“How about me, what? I’m bleeding to death here, that’s how about me.”

“Do you know anybody named Cahill?”

“No.”

“How about Helen Parrish?”

“No.”

“Charlie Nichols?”

“No.”

“Did you kill Charlie Nichols?”

“How could I kill somebody I don’t even know?”

“Charlie Nichols. Mama sent you to kill him, didn’t she?”

“This man is deaf,” Alice said to the air.

“I’m telling you I don’t know anybody by that name.”

“Charlie Nichols. An actor.”

“Is he related to Charlie Belafonte?”

“You mean Harry Belafonte,” Larry said. “I know because his name is almost like mine.”

“Can you sing `Day-O`?” Silvio asked him.

“Charlie Nichols?” Michael said. “Nice little apartment in Knickerbocker Village?”

“Where’s that? Westchester County?”

“The Fifth Precinct,” Connie said.

“Go ahead, call the cops,” Alice said.

“How about Judy Jordan?” Michael asked.

“Call her, too.”

“Do you know her?”

“I don’t know any of these people. Go call the goddamn cops. Just for spite, I’ll be dead when they get here.”

“Good,” Connie said.

“You don’t know any of them, huh?” Michael asked.

“You’re deaf, am I right?” she said, and turned to Larry. “He’s deaf.”

“My uncle in Chicago is deaf, too,” Larry said sympathetically.

“And I suppose you don’t know anything about what happened to me on Christmas Eve, either,” Michael said.

“The first time I laid eyes on you was through a telescopic sight. I was told to put you away because you’d been snooping around Benny’s downtown, and that’s all I know. Mama likes things clean and neat.”

“She’s a neat, clean illegal alien, huh?” Michael said.

Alice said nothing.

“Why would killing me make things clean and neat?” he asked.

“Go ask Mama.”

“I will. Where do I find her?”

Alice shook her head.

“Where is she?”

Alice shook her head again.

“You’re that scared of her, huh?”

Alice said nothing.

“Tell me where to find her.”

She just kept staring at him.

“Then it’s the cops, right?” he said. “You want me to call the cops, right?”

“Sure,” she said. “Call them.”

The last time Michael had stood in this hallway outside the door to Judy Jordan’s apartment, he’d been alone. And someone, either Larry or Silvio, had come up behind him and hit him on the head with one of his own guns. Or rather, guns that had previously belonged to Frankie Zeppelin and Arthur Crandall. This time, Connie was by his side. With Connie by his side, he figured he would not get hit on the head again. The only thing that happened to him when Connie was by his side was that he got shot. Or, at best, shot at.

He wondered if the police had ever before walked into a warehouse full of stolen goods to discover a safe full of a million dollars’ worth of crack, and three thieves swathed in furs and trussed with the electric cords from sundry household appliances. He did not think Alice—despite her dire warnings or perhaps promises—could possibly have bled to death by the time the police arrived. An axiom of the killing and maiming profession was that if a person was feeling good enough to laugh he wasn’t about to die in the next ten minutes. He wished, however, that Alice had chosen to tell him who Mama was. It was a little unsettling to know that somewhere out there in this wonderful city there was a woman who wielded enough power to order Ju Ju Rainey’s murder first and next to order Michael’s own, a woman who could generate such fear that three grown thieves had chosen to face the police rather than reveal who or where she was. Michael wasn’t sure he ever wanted to meet Mama. He knew intuitively, however, that before this was over he would have to look her in the face and demand to know all the whys and wherefores. He tried to visualize her.

She would be fat, he knew that. As Connie had suggested, a woman named Mama had to be fat. Bloated and fat and as pale as a slug, a female with a breath that reeked of gunpowder and piss. She would have breasts like dugs, and she would obscenely expose them to Michael, threatening to suckle him if he did not do as she commanded. Standing before Mama, he would search her slightly crossed eyes for some sign that here was reason, here was cause, here was sanity, but there would be none. The .22 caliber pistols he was now carrying in the pockets of the bomber jacket would be of no use to him. He would be staring into the darkest part of evil, and he would be doomed. He did not want to find Mama, did not want to face what he knew was inescapable if this ever was to be resolved—but he knew that he had to. Mama was fate. If you had an appointment in Samarra, you did not drive instead to Newark, New Jersey.

But in the beginning, there’d been Judy Jordan.

Or Helen Parrish, if you preferred.

And to get to the end, you went to the beginning. And prayed that somewhere along the way—

The village looked abandoned at first. Not a soul in sight.

Michael knocked on the door to the apartment.

“Cops listen first,” Connie said.

Belatedly, he put his ear to the door and listened.

He did not hear anything.

“Nobody home,” he said.

Charlie musta flew the coop, Sergeant Mendelsohnn said.

Michael knocked on the door again. And waited. No answer. He studied the locks. Four of them. One under the other. To get into this apartment, you would need a battering ram. He wondered if they should try the fire escape again. But how many fire escapes could you climb before someone yelled fire?

Careful, Andrew said.

An old man had appeared in the doorway to one of the thatched huts. Nodding. Smiling. Scared shitless. Six automatic rifles suddenly trained on him.

“We’d better go,” Michael said.

Cover me, Mendelsohnn said.

Rain coming down. A light rain. Everything looking so green. So fresh. Waiting in the rain. The whisper of the rain. Mendelsohnn talking quietly to the old man. Scraps of Vietnamese, snippets of French, bits and pieces of English. Other gooks peering around doorways now. Women mostly. Some other old men. Watching solemnly. Looking scared. Big American liberators standing in the rain with their guns. All but one of them no older than twenty, scaring women and old men to death.

Says Charlie went through about three days ago, Mendelsohnn said.

All of them listening.

Took all their rice, Mendelsohnn said. Got to be miles away by now.

“Maybe you ought to knock again,” Connie said.

“No,” Michael said. “Let’s go.”

Looka the one in the blue over there, the RTO said.

Yeah, Andrew said.

Givin’ us the eye.

Give her some big Indian cock, Long Foot said.

Let’s move it out, Mendelsohnn said.

The rain still falling lightly.

A breeze coming up over the rice paddies.

They were coming down the steps when Michael heard the footsteps below. Coming up. Moving up toward them. Another tenant, he thought. Or maybe—but no, that would be too lucky. But why not? Judy Jordan coming home. By her own admission, she’d been naked the last time he was here, probably dressing to go out, it had been only ten o’clock. So she’d put on a robe and peeked out into the hallway to find nobody there, this city was full of mysteries, and she’d finished dressing, and had gone out on the town. But the night had vanished all at once, and this was now one o’clock in the morning on Boxing Day, and here she was, folks, home sweet home again, coming up the steps to the second floor, reaching the second-floor landing just as Michael and Connie came down from the third floor, hand on the banister, hello there, Judy, long time no—

But it wasn’t Judy Jordan.

Or even Helen Parrish.

Instead, it was—

“You!” Michael shouted.

The man looked at him. His mouth fell open, his eyes opened wide in his head.

“You!” Michael shouted again.

And the man turned and started running downstairs.

Michael took off after him.

The streets were deserted. It would have been impossible to lose him, anyway, because he was wearing a yellow ski parka that served as a beacon, which Michael thought was extremely considerate of him. He was fast for a big man, but Michael was faster; he’d had practice chasing Charlie Wong all the way from the subway kiosk on Franklin to the fortune-cookie factory someplace in Chinatown on Christmas Eve, and it seemed to him he’d been running ever since. He wanted very badly to get his hands on this son of a bitch in the yellow ski parka, and so he ran faster than he’d ever run in his life, arms and legs pumping, eyeglasses steaming up a bit, but not so much so that he couldn’t see the yellow parka ahead, the distance closing between them now, ten feet, eight feet, six feet, three feet, and Michael hurled himself into the air like a circus flier, leaping off into space without a net, arms outstretched, reaching not for a trapeze coming his way from the opposite direction, but instead for the shoulders of Detective Daniel Cahill, who had called him a thief after stealing his money, his driver’s license, his credit cards, and his library card to boot.

His hands clamped down fiercely on either side of Cahill’s neck, the weight and momentum of his body sending the man staggering forward, hands clawing the air for balance. They fell to the sidewalk together, Michael on Cahill’s back, the big man trying to shake Michael off. Michael was tired of being jerked around in this fabulous city, tired of being shaken up and shaken off. He allowed himself to be shaken off now, but only for an instant. Rolling clear, he got to his feet at once, and then immediately reached down for Cahill and heaved him up off the sidewalk. His hands clutched into the zippered front of the yellow parka, he slammed Cahill against the wall of the building, and then pulled him off the wall and slammed him back again, methodically battering him against the bricks over and over again.

“Cut it out,” Cahill said.

“I’ll cut it out, you son of a bitch!”

“Are you crazy or something?”

“Yes!” Michael shouted.

“Ow!” Cahill shouted.

“Detective Daniel Cahill, huh?”

“Damn it, you’re hurting me!”

“Let’s go down the precinct, huh?”

“Ow! Damn it, that’s my head!”

Michael pulled him off the wall.

“Speak,” he said.

“You’re a very violent person,” Cahill said.

“Yes. What’s your name?”

“Felix. And I don’t have your money, if that’s why you’re behaving like a lunatic. Or anything else that belongs to you.”

Felix. Big burly man with hard blue eyes and a Marine sergeant’s haircut. On Christmas Eve, he’d sported a Miami Vice beard stubble, but now—at a little past one A.M. on Boxing Day—he was clean-shaven. On Christmas Eve, he’d been wearing a tweed overcoat and he’d been carrying a detective’s blue-enameled gold shield, and he’d sounded very much like a tough New York cop. Tonight he was wearing a yellow ski parka over a brown turtleneck sweater, and he sounded like a frightened man protesting too loudly that he did not have Michael’s—

But didn’t he know that Michael’s identification had been planted alongside the dead body of Ju Ju Rainey?

“Felix what?” Michael asked.

“Hooper. And I’m telling you the truth. I gave everything to Judy. And she still hasn’t paid me, by the way. I mean, I think it’s demeaning for a person to have to come to another person’s apartment at one in the morning to ask for his money, don’t you?”

“I assume you mean Judy Jordan.”

“Yes, of course, Judy Jordan. Your friend Judy Jordan who owes me a thousand bucks.”

“How do you happen to know her?”

“We’ve worked together in the past.”

“Stealing things from people?”

“Ha-ha,” Felix said.

Michael looked at him.

“I am an actor, sir,” Felix said, proudly and a trifle indignantly. In fact, he tried to pull himself up to his full height, but this was a little difficult because Michael still had his hands twisted into the throat and collar of the parka. “I was asked to play a police detective,” Felix said. “I’d never played one before. I thought the role would be challenging.”

“You thought stealing my …”

“Oh, come on, that was for a good purpose.”

“A good …”

“In fact, you should have been delighted.”

“Delighted? Do you know what Judy did with those things? My credit cards and my license and my …?”

“Yes, she had them blown up as posters.”

“She what?”

“For your birthday party.”

“My what?”

“How terrible it must be,” Felix said.

“What?”

“To be born on Christmas Day, do you think you could let go of my collar now?”

“Born on …?”

“It’s like being upstaged by Christ, isn’t it?” Felix said. “I really think you’re closing off an artery or something. I’m beginning to feel a bit faint.”

Michael let go of the collar.

“Thank you,” Felix said.

“So that’s what she told you. Judy.”

“Yes.”

“That my birthday was on Christmas Day …”

“Well, her friend’s birthday. She didn’t tell me your name.”

“And she was going to have my credit cards blown up as posters.”

“Yes, and your driver’s license, too. To hang on the walls. For the party.”

“Which is why you went to this bar with her …”

“Yes. And waited for her signal.”

“Her signal?”

“She said she would signal when she wanted me to move in.”

“I see.”

“She would hold out her hand to you, palm up.”

Asking for the ring back, Michael thought.

The ring. Please, I don’t want any trouble.

“And that was when you were supposed to come over and do your Detective Cahill act.”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you get the badge?”

“A shield. We call it a shield. I bought it in an antiques shop on Third Avenue.”

“You were very convincing.”

“Thank you. I thought so, too. Did you like it when I said, `This individual is a thief?` That’s the way policemen talk, you know. They will never call a person a person, he is always an individual.”

“Yes, that was very good.”

“Thank you.”

“But why’d you steal my money? If Judy wanted the …”

“I don’t know why she wanted the money. She said your money and all your identification. Which is all I took.”

“Which was only everything in my wallet.”

“Well, that was the job.”

“Which you did for a thousand dollars.”

“Yes, but I’m between engagements just now. How was the party?”

“Mr. Hooper, do you know where all that stuff ended up?”

“No. All I know is that I still haven’t got my thousand dollars.”

“That stuff ended up alongside a dead man.”

“That’s a shame,” Felix said. “But I’m sure it had nothing to do with my performance.”

“Do you know who Mama is?”

“No. Is that a riddle?”

“Did Judy Jordan ever mention a woman named Mama?”

“No. Mama who?”

“She didn’t say, did she, that it was Mama who wanted that stuff taken from my wallet?”

“No.”

“Did she ever mention a man named Arthur Crandall?”

“Arthur Crandall? The director? The man who did War and Solitude? What are you saying?”

“Did she tell you it was Crandall who wanted my …?”

“Oh my God, was I auditioning for Crandall?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to find out if …”

“Crandall, oh, God, I’m going to faint.”

“Would you know if …?”

“Why didn’t she tell me? I mean, I hardly even prepared! I mean, I went on cold! If I’d known I was doing it for Crandall …”

“Well, that’s what I’m trying to …”

“I’ll kill her, I swear to God! Why’d she give me that story about a birthday party? Crandall, I’m going to cry.”

“No, don’t cry, just …”

“I’m going to die, I’m going to kill her, I’ll go kill her right this minute.”

“You can’t, she isn’t home.”

“Then where is she?”

“I don’t know where she …”

“The theater!” Felix shouted.