Downtown

1

Michael was telling the blonde he’d never been in this part of the city. In fact, he’d been to New York only twice before in his entire life. Hadn’t strayed out of the midtown area either time.

“But here you are now,” the blonde said, and smiled. “All the way downtown.”

She was wearing a smart tailored suit, gray, a white silk blouse with a stock tie. Briefcase sitting on the empty stool to her right. He figured her for someone who worked on Wall Street. Late business meeting—it was now seven o’clock—she’d stopped off at the bar here before heading home. That’s what he figured. She was drinking Corona and lime. He was drinking scotch with a splash.

The place looked like an old saloon, but it probably wasn’t. Etched mirrors, polished mahogany and burnished brass, large green-shaded lamps over the bar, smaller versions on all the tables. There was a warm, cozy feel to the place. Nice buzz of conversation, too. Through the big plate-glass window facing the street, he could see gently falling snowflakes. This was Christmas Eve, a Tuesday night. It would be a white Christmas.

“What brings you to New York this time?” the blonde asked.

“Same thing that brought me here the last two times,” he said.

“And what’s that?”

“My ad agency’s here.”

“You’re in advertising, is that it?”

“No, I’m in oranges.”

The blonde nodded.

“Golden Oranges?” Michael said, and looked at her expectantly.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“You’ve heard of them?”

“No,” she said.

“That’s my brand name. Golden Oranges.”

“Sorry, I don’t know them.”

“But you know Sunkist, right?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I’m just a small independent trying to get big. Which is why I’ve got a New York agency handling my advertising.”

The blonde nodded again.

“So what do you do?” she asked. “Grow the oranges and everything?”

“Yep. Grow them and everything.”

“Where?”

“In Florida.”

“Ask a stupid question,” she said, and smiled, and extended her hand. “I’m Helen Parrish,” she said.

“Michael Barnes,” he said, and took her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“So when do you go back to Florida?” she asked.

“Well, not till the fourth of January, actually. I’m flying up to Boston tonight. Spend the holidays with my mother.”

“Your mother’s up there in Boston, huh?”

“Yeah. Be good seeing her again.”

“Business all finished here?”

“Finished it this afternoon.”

He realized that her hand was still in his. To the casual passerby, they must have looked like a man and a woman holding hands. Good-looking blonde woman with flashing blue eyes, suntanned man wearing rimless eyeglasses. Dark brown hair. Brown eyes. Average height, he guessed. Well, five-ten, he guessed that was average these days. In the army, he’d felt short. The army had a way of making you feel short. Come to think of it, he felt short nowadays, too. Jenny had done that to him. Made him feel short all over again.

“Do you work down here in this area?” he asked.

“I do,” she said.

Still holding his hand.

“I figured you were with one of the brokerage firms,” he said.

“No, I’m a lawyer.”

“Really? What kind of law?”

“Criminal.”

“No kidding?”

“Everybody says that. No kidding, or wow, or gee, or how about that, or words to that effect.”

“Because it’s so unusual. A woman, I mean. Being a criminal lawyer.”

“Actually, there are three in our office.”

“That many.”

“Yes.”

“Criminal lawyers. Women.”

“Yes. Trial lawyers, in fact.”

“Then you’re a trial lawyer.”

“Yes.”

“Do you like the work?”

“Oh, sure.”

She retrieved her hand gently, drained her glass, looked at the clock over the bar, smiled, and said, “Well, I think I’ll …”

“No, don’t go yet,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Have another drink,” he said. “Then maybe we can go someplace for dinner together,” he said. “I’ve got a rented car outside, we can go anyplace in the city you like. I don’t have to start for the airport till nine-thirty or so. Unless you’ve got other plans.”

“I don’t have any plans as such, but …”

“Then what’s the hurry?”

“Well, I’ll have another drink, but …”

“Good,” he said, and signaled to the bartender for another round. The bartender nodded.

“This doesn’t mean we’re having dinner together,” she said. “I hardly know you.”

“Ask me anything,” he said.

“Well … are you married?”

“Divorced.”

“How long?”

“Nine months. More or less.”

“And on the loose in the big, bad city, huh?”

“Well, my plane leaves at eleven-oh-five. It’s the last one out tonight. I was lucky to get anything at all. It’s Christmas Eve, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. She was looking at him steadily now. Penetrating blue eyes.

“How long were you married?” she asked.

“Thirteen years.”

“Unlucky number.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-one,” he said. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-two,” she said at once.

He liked that. No coy nonsense like Gee, a woman’s not supposed to tell her age. Just straight out thirty-two.

“Are you married?” he asked.

“Corona and lime, Dewar’s with a splash,” the bartender said, and put the drinks down in front of them. “Shall I keep this tab running?” “Please,” Michael said.

He lifted his glass. She lifted hers.

“To a nice evening together,” he said. “Till plane time.”

She seemed to be looking through him, or at least past him, toward the other end of the bar, almost dreamily. She nodded at last, as if in response to a secret decision she had made, and smiled, and said, “That sounds safe enough,” and clinked her glass against his and began sipping at her beer.

“But you didn’t answer my question,” he said.

“What was your question?” she said.

“Are you married?”

“Would it matter?”

“Yes.”

She waggled the fingers on her left hand. “See any wedding band?”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’m not married,” she said.

“Divorced?” he said.

“Nope. Just single.”

“Beautiful woman like you?”

“Ha.”

“I mean it.”

“Thank you.”

“So what I’d like to do,” he said, “you must know a lot of good restaurants …”

“Slow down,” she said smiling. “You didn’t ask me if I’m engaged, or involved with anyone, or …”

“Are you?”

“No, but …”

“Good. Do you like Italian food?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, and put down her glass, and slid her handbag over in front of her, and reached into it for a package of cigarettes.

“Well, if you know a good Italian restaurant, I’d like to …”

“All right,” she said suddenly and coldly and somewhat harshly, “you want to give it back to me?”

He looked at her.

Her eyes had turned hard, there was no longer a smile on her face.

“The ring,” she said. She was whispering now.

“Just give it back to me, okay?” She held out her right hand. Nothing on any of the fingers.

“The ring,” she said. “Please, I don’t want any trouble.”

“What ring?” he said.

“The ring that was right here on this finger before we started holding hands. A star sapphire ring that was a gift from my father. I want it back, mister. Right now.”

“But I don’t have it,” he said. He realized there was a foolish grin on his face. As if she were in the middle of a joke and he was smiling in anticipation of the punch line.

She looked at him. Eyes as blue and as hard as the star sapphire she claimed was missing from her hand. Eyes somewhat incredulous, too. She’d told him she was a lawyer, a criminal lawyer, no less; was he some kind of idiot to have stolen her ring? This was in her eyes.

“Listen,” she said, her voice rising, “just give me the goddamn ring, and we’ll forget …”

“I don’t have your …”

“What’s going on here?”

Michael turned on the stool. Big, burly guy standing there at his right shoulder, between the two stools. Tweed overcoat. Shoulders looked damp. Crew-cut hair looked damp, too. As if he’d just come in from outside. Beard stubble on his face. Hard blue eyes. Tonight was a night for hard blue eyes. If you had brown eyes tonight, you were out of luck.

“Detective Daniel Cahill,” he said, and opened a small leather case and flashed a blue-enameled gold shield. He snapped the case shut. “This man bothering you?” he asked Helen.

“It’s all right, officer,” she said.

“I’d like to know what’s happening here,” Cahill said.

“I don’t want to make any trouble for him,” she said.

“Why? What’d he do?”

It occurred to Michael that they were both talking about him as if he were no longer there. Somehow this sounded ominous.

“If he’ll just give it back to me,” Helen said.

“Give what back, miss?”

“Look, officer,” Michael said.

“Shut up, please,” Cahill said. “Give what back?”

“The ring.”

“What ring?”

“Officer …”

“I asked you please to shut up,” Cahill said, and suddenly looked around, as if aware for the first time that there were other people in the bar. “Let’s step outside a minute, please,” he said. “You, too, miss.”

“Really, I don’t want to make any trouble for him,” Helen said.

“Please,” Cahill said, and gestured slightly with his chin and his raised eyebrows, which seemed to indicate he had some concern for the owner of the place and did not want to make trouble for him, either. Which Michael considered a good sign. Helen got off her stool and put on her overcoat and picked up her briefcase, and Michael followed her and Cahill to where he’d hung his coat on the rack to the left of the entrance door. He was digging for the coat under the pile of other coats on top of it, when Cahill said, “You won’t need it, this won’t take a minute.”

Together the three of them went outside, Helen first, then Michael, and then Cahill. It was still snowing. Bigger flakes now. Floating gently and lazily out of the sky. The temperature was in the low thirties, Michael guessed, perhaps the high twenties. He hoped this little conference out here in front of the bar really would be a short one.

“Okay, now what is it?” Cahill said. Sounding very reasonable.

“He has my ring,” Helen said. Also sounding very reasonable.

“Officer,” Michael said, “I never even saw this woman’s …”

“Over here,” Cahill said, and indicated the brick wall to the right of the bar’s plate-glass front window. “Hands flat against the wall, lean on ‘em,” Cahill said.

“Hey, listen,” Michael said.

“No, you listen,” Cahill said. “The lady says you’ve got her ring … what kind of ring, lady?”

“A star sapphire.”

“So you just put your hands on the wall here and lean on them, and spread your legs, and if you ain’t got her ring, you got nothin’ to worry about.”

“You’ve got no right to …”

“Then you want to go down the precinct? Okay, fine, we’ll go down the precinct, we’ll talk there. Let’s go, my car’s up the street.”

“Why don’t you just give me the ring, mister?” Helen said. “Save yourself a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t have your goddamn …”

“Okay, fine, let’s go down the precinct,” Cahill said.

“All right, all right,” Michael said angrily, and leaned against the wall, his arms spread, his legs spread, his fingers spread, “let’s get this over with, okay? I don’t have the ring, you can search me from now to …”

“Fine, we’ll just see what you got,” Cahill said.

Michael’s immediate impulse was to attack; the army had taught him that. But the army had also taught him never to start up with an M.P. Indignantly, angrily, he endured the frisk. Cahill ran his hands up and down Michael’s legs, and then tossed up Michael’s jacket and reached into the right hip pocket of his trousers, and took out his wallet. Behind him, Michael could hear him rummaging through the wallet.

“This you?” Cahill asked. “Michael Barnes?”

“Yes.”

“This your driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“You from Florida?”

“Yes.”

“These your credit cards?”

“Yes, everything in the wallet is mine.”

“Okay, fine,” Cahill said, and put the wallet back into Michael’s hip pocket and then began patting down the pockets of his jacket.

“If you don’t mind,” Michael said, “it’s goddamn cold out here. I wish you’d …”

“Well, well, well,” Cahill said, and his hands stopped. Michael felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Cahill was reaching into the right-hand pocket of Michael’s jacket. “What have we here?” he said. Michael held his breath.

“Off the wall,” Cahill said, “off it! Turn around!”

Michael shoved himself off the wall. He turned. Cahill was holding a star sapphire ring between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

“This your ring, miss?” he asked Helen.

“Yes,” she said.

“Officer,” Michael said, “I don’t know how that got in my pocket, but …”

“Let’s go,” Cahill said, “we all three of us got some work to do down the precinct.”

“Could I have my ring, please?” Helen said.

“This is evidence, miss,” Cahill said.

“No, it isn’t evidence, it’s a gift from my father, and I’d like it back, please.”

“Miss, when we get down the precinct …”

“I’m not going down the precinct …”

“Miss …”

“… or up the precinct or around the …”

“Miss, this individual here stole your ring …”

“Yes, but now we’ve got it back, so let me have it.”

“Miss …”

“I told you I don’t want to make any trouble for him.”

“This individual is a thief, miss.”

“I don’t care what he is, just let me have the ring,” Helen said.

Cahill looked at her.

“I do not wish to press charges, okay?” she said. “Do you understand that?”

“That’s how criminals go free in this city,” Cahill said. “Because people are afraid to …”

“Just give me the goddamn ring!” Helen said.

“Here’s the goddamn ring,” Cahill said sourly, and handed it to her.

“Thank you.” She put the ring on her finger.

“Good night,” she said, and walked off.

“You’re a very lucky thief,” Cahill said, and walked off in the opposite direction.

“I’m not a goddamn thief!” Michael shouted to the empty air.

The words plumed out of his mouth, carried away on the wind, the vapor dissipating into the lazy swirl of snowflakes. His dark brown hair was covered with snow, the shoulders of his brown jacket were covered with snow, he had not been in a snowstorm for a good long time now—since before his mother sold the hardware business in Boston and loaned Michael the money for the groves in Florida—but now he was up to his ass in snow. Well, not quite. Not yet. Only up to the insteps of his shoes so far. He realized all at once that he was shivering. He shoved open the door to the bar.

Mahogany and brass, green-shaded lamps, the gentle chink of ice in glasses, the buzz of conversation, the friendly sound of laughter. Everything just as it had been before the blonde accused him of stealing her ring. Shaking his head, still amazed by what had happened, he went back to where he’d left his glass on the bar. He downed what was left of the scotch in two swallows and signaled to the bartender for another one.

The bartender scooped ice into a glass, began pouring from the bottle of Dewar’s.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“Don’t ask,” Michael said.

“Was that guy a cop?”

“Yeah.”

“What was it? The girl hit on you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was he Vice?”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

“‘Cause I thought maybe she was a hooker …”

“No, she was a lawyer.”

“So what was it then?”

“She said I stole her … look, I don’t want to discuss it,” Michael said. “It’s over and done with, I don’t even want to think about it anymore.”

Shaking his head again, he picked up the fresh drink and took a long swallow.

A man sitting three stools down the bar said, “I was watching the whole thing.”

“With the hooker, you mean?” the bartender said, turning to him.

“She was a lawyer,” Michael said.

“Hookers will often claim to be lawyers, bankers, university professors, what have you,” the man down the bar said. He was tall and lanky, with a Lincolnesque face, a pronounced cleft in his chin, and a thick mane of white hair brushed back from a widow’s peak. He was in his early to mid-fifties, Michael guessed, wearing a dark gray suit with a red-and-black silk rep tie. Brown eyes. Long-fingered hands. A deep, stentorian voice. “I’ve been chatted up by hookers who claimed to be investment counselors, architects, delegates to the U.N., and even children’s book editors. They are all nonetheless hookers.”

“It’s hard to tell a hooker, this day and age,” the bartender said, nodding in agreement.

“Until they name their price,” the tall, thin man said, and then got off his stool and came up the bar to where Michael was sitting. Taking the stool the blonde had vacated, he said, “Arthur Crandall,” and took from his vest pocket a business card made of very thin black plastic. The lettering on the card was in white, and it read:

CRANDALL FILMS, LTD.

Arthur Crandall, Director

In the lower left-hand corner of the card, there was a New York address and telephone number. In the lower right-hand corner, there was a Beverly Hills address and telephone number. The card looked and felt like a strip of movie film. Which Michael now realized was its intent.

“Michael Barnes,” he said, and took a little leather card case from the right-hand pocket of his jacket, and slipped a card free, and handed it to Crandall. The card was illustrated with an orange tree that grew out of the right-hand corner, its branches and leaves spreading upward and leftward across the top of the card, its oranges overhanging green lettering that read:

GOLDEN ORANGE GROVES

16554 Fruitville Road

Sarasota, FL 34240

In the lower right-hand corner was Michael’s name, followed by the word “President,” and below that his telephone number.

“Pleased to meet you,” Crandall said. “You grow oranges, I see.”

“That’s what I do,” Michael said.

“I grow ideas, so to speak,” Crandall said. “A writer comes to me with an idea, and I nurture it along until we have, voilá, un film!”

“Would I know any of your movies?” Michael asked.

“War and Solitude?” Crandall said, and looked at him expectantly.

“Uh-huh,” Michael said.

“You’ve heard of it?”

“No.”

“That was my most recent film. War and Solitude.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know it,” Michael said. “I think I’ve seen almost every movie ever made …”

“I see,” Crandall said.

“Either in an actual theater or else on cable or on videocassette …”

“I see,” Crandall said again.

“… but War and Solitude doesn’t ring a …”

“But you know Platoon, right?”

“Oh, sure.”

“War and Solitude was about the U.S. intervention in Nicaragua in 1926.”

“Uh-huh,” Michael said.

“It played art houses mostly,” Crandall said.

“That must be why I missed it,” Michael said.

“We don’t have too many art houses in Sarasota.”

“It was meant to be a parable of sorts,” Crandall said. “The film. But, of course, Platoon picked up all the marbles.”

“It was a pretty realistic movie, I thought,” Michael said. “Platoon. I was only over there for a little while, but …”

“Vietnam?”

“Yes. But I thought …”

“In combat?”

“Yes. I thought he really caught the feel of it. What it was like being there.”

“You should see my movie,” Crandall said.

“You want the feel of war …”

“I’ll look for it. Maybe it’ll come to Sarasota someday.”

“I doubt it,” Crandall said.

“Well, you never know.”

“Well, I do know, as a matter of fact,” Crandall said somewhat heatedly. “Since the film was made eleven years ago, and it didn’t make a nickel then, it sure as hell isn’t going to be re-released now after Platoon got the girl, the gold watch, and everything. Which, by the way, the reason I was so fascinated by the conversation between you and the girl was that it read like a movie script. A classic Hooker-John scene. Until she accused you of stealing her ring. That threw me. I found myself thinking if this hooker is trying to land this guy, why is she all at once accusing him of stealing her ring?”

“Yeah, well.”

“Very puzzling,” Crandall said.

“Anyway, she got the ring back, so I guess …”

“What do you mean?”

“It was in my pocket.”

“It was?”

“Yeah.”

“How did it get in your pocket?”

“I guess she put it there. At least, that’s what I thought until she refused to press charges.”

“Then why’d she put it in your pocket to begin with?”

“That’s just it. Listen, who the hell cares? She got her ring back, the cop let me go …”

“Well, aren’t you curious?”

“No.”

“I guess that’s why you grow oranges and I make movies,” Crandall said.

“I hate to interrupt this discussion,” the bartender said, “but do you want me to keep your tab running?”

“No, I better be on my way,” Michael said. “What do I owe you?”

The bartender handed him the bill. Michael glanced at it, took out his wallet, opened it, and reached into the bill compartment. There was no money in the bill compartment. There were no credit cards in the various little slots on either side of the wallet. His driver’s license was gone, too. So was his card for the Sarasota Public Library.

“Shit,” he said.