As Jack Keller stood in front of the building at 487 Duane Street, the only thing he could think of was that he must have the wrong address. The late-afternoon sun was bright and the glare made him squint as he stared up. He was clutching the envelope that Kid had mailed to him and he looked back down at Kid's handwritten return address. He matched it up once again to the number on the twenty-story red-brick building for the third time and, for the third time, it was a match. He put his finger to the buzzer that had the word "Super" printed to its left and rang.
It took several minutes for the superintendent to make his way to the front of the building. He didn't come out the front door but from around the corner. He had a slight accent, Jack thought Russian, and he wore overalls that were covered with paint. Peeking out of one of the overall pockets was a tattered paperback copy of Beckett's The Unnamable. He seemed impatient and Jack wondered if it was to get back to work or to get back to his near impenetrable choice of reading material.
Jack had rehearsed his story in his mind several times, even once in front of his bathroom mirror, but now, translating it into real life, it sounded forced and hollow. He hoped that was just because he'd practiced it so many times.
"I know this is out of the ordinary," he told the super. "But I saw the story in the paper about the suicide."
"Yeah, it was horrible," the super said. The way he said "horrible" convinced Jack it really was a Russian accent. "I was here. You a reporter?"
Jack was tempted to say yes, to improvise a whole new tale, but then he decided to stick with his original plan and see what happened. "No," he said. "It's a little more ghoulish than that – I'm a New Yorker. I'm desperate to live down here and I figured the apartment's free now."
"You want me to show you the dead guy's apartment?" the super snorted.
"That's right," Jack told him.
The super shook his head, almost in admiration. "You gotta go through the agency," he told Jack. "I'd like to help you, but…"
"I've called them already." Jack was prepared for this. "But it's not available yet. I guess there are some legal entanglements." That was a lie, of course. He hadn't called any agency. In fact, the story he'd seen in the paper didn't even give the exact address of the building – a detail which he hoped the super wouldn't realize.
"Well, there you go."
"But that means nobody else has seen it either. I figure this'll give me a head start. If I like it, I can just call the office and make an offer. Sight unseen, so to speak."
"It's a good plan," the super said. "You're a sick fuck and I like that. But I can't help you."
"How about for twenty bucks?" Jack asked. "All I want is a few minutes to look around the apartment."
"Sorry."
"How about a hundred dollars?"
The super cocked his head to the side now. "A hundred bucks to see the apartment?"
"That's right."
"Hey," the super said, "who am I to stop you from getting the place of your dreams?"
– "-"-"THE SUPER TOOK Jack up in the elevator to the penthouse apartment. They stepped out of the elevator and the super steered Jack to the right.
"Two apartments on this floor," he said. "Most of the others have three or four. Some even have five."
He took out a large ring of keys, found a master, and inserted it into the lock. The door swung open and the super stepped aside. Jack stepped into the apartment, stopped cold the moment he crossed the threshold.
"There's got to be some mistake," he said.
"What kinda mistake?"
"The man who… who fell… did you know him?"
"'Course I knew him. He lived here."
"Demeter. That was his name, right?"
"Yeah. Kid," the super said. "Everybody called him Kid."
"And he lived here?"
"Mister, you want to see the apartment or not? This is the place and I only got a few minutes."
The sun coming through the curtains played tricks with the light. The room was covered in shifting shadows. But as Jack stared, one thing was very clear: he was standing in an extraordinary apartment. One that was way beyond Kid's financial means.
Jack stepped through the small entryway to find himself in an enormous living room. The floors were thick pine planks and they had been sanded and then pickled with an off-white paint so it felt as if you were walking on clouds. The furniture, too, was mostly white. Two enormous easy chairs that looked like they came from Shabby Chic. Two full-sized couches covered in a linen with a fine and elaborately stitched pattern. Arranged on built-in, handmade oak bookshelves stood colorful Chinese vases and small modern sculptures. The artwork on the walls was modern, too, several abstract nudes. A few boxes stood in one corner, packed up, some taped shut with industrial tape, some still open. Kid's belongings, Jack thought. Someone's packing up Kid's stuff.
But who?
"You gonna look at the rest of the apartment," the super said now, "or you just wanna take it after seeing the living room?"
Jack turned to him and very quietly said, "I'll give you another hundred dollars if you give me half an hour in the apartment."
"Hey," the man said, taken aback. "I don't know… what's the story here?"
"No story," Jack told him. "And I'll make it five hundred. Five hundred dollars cash if you let me have half an hour alone."
The super stepped away from Jack, scrutinizing him. "I don't know if I can do that. Lotta valuables in here. Lotta valuable shit."
"I'm not going to steal anything," Jack told him. "If you want, you can wait right outside the front door. You can search me when I come out. I'm not interested in taking anything."
"What exactly is it you're interested in?"
"Privacy. Half an hour. You want the money?"
This time the super didn't hesitate. "Pal, I always want the money." He put his hand out, Jack handed him five one-hundred-dollar bills, and the guy headed for the front door.
"Wait a second," Jack said. And when the super stopped, he asked, "What's the rent on this apartment?"
"It's not a rental, pal. We're co-op."
"You're saying Kid owned this place?"
"All I'm saying is that I'll be in the lobby while you're in here. And I will search you when you come out. If you're not down in thirty minutes, I'll come up and get you. I could get fired for this, you know."
Jack didn't even respond and the super let himself out, closing the door behind him.
Jack stared for another few moments, still stunned by the splendor of the living room before him, then realized he didn't have a lot of time to waste, so he began a tour of the apartment.
The next room he entered was the master bedroom. The only phrase that Jack could come up with that would do it justice was a rather crude one: he was standing in the middle of one giant fuck palace. There was a huge round bed, covered with large pillows, and even larger pillows were strewn all over the floor. There was thick, plush carpeting, a pale gold, but it was barely visible underneath all the pillows. To the right of the bed was a round glass table with a lamp on it. The lamp shade was thick and crenellated, also beige. Jack guessed that it was more to lend atmosphere than to provide usable light. Across the room from the bed was a big-screen TV mounted into a console with enormous speakers built into either side. To the left of the television, resting only on the carpet, no table, was a CD/stereo system. A very expensive one, in fact. The exact same system Jack had in his own apartment.
He started to leave the room, stopped, went over to the large closet to the right of the TV. It was stuffed with perfectly tailored Armani suits and dress shirts. The shirts were in five different colors – white, light blue, light gray, charcoal and black – and each color grouping had five identical shirts arranged together. There were also about twenty Banana Republic T-shirts, also in different colors, hung up and pressed. Six or seven pairs of Bruno Magli shoes lined the closet floor, along with three pairs of Nikes.
Jesus, Jack thought. Pat Riley could go shopping in this place.
And then his next thought: Who paid for all this?
He heard something then, a squeaky floorboard, and he quickly shut the closet door. He shook his head – what difference did it make if the closet was open or shut? He was in this apartment on false pretenses, he was probably committing a crime just by being in here now – and listened. But the sound was gone. He walked back into the living room, glanced around. Nothing. No one had come in. Doesn't take long to get paranoid, does it, he thought. How the hell do burglars do this for a living? To be on the safe side, he walked to the front door and peered through the peephole. He had heard something. The young couple across the hall were carrying groceries into their apartment and laughing. He could hear the elevator door slide shut and the elevator head back down to the lobby. He shrugged off his attack of nerves and began to explore the rest of the apartment.
There was a second bedroom, set up as a miniature health club. Almost all free wall space was mirrored, which gave the room a slightly surreal appearance and also emphasized the vanity that went into its design. The equipment was almost identical to what Kid had installed in Jack's apartment, as was the layout. There were three seats, one for benching, one for incline presses, and a flat one that could be used for almost any exercise. There was a slant board that attached to pegs built into a wall. There was a row of dumbbells, resting on custom-built holders that ran under and along the length of the windows on one wall. There was a full-sized barbell and a specialized one for bicep curls. There was a Universal leg-lift machine as well as one for benching and incline benching. There was a state-of-the-art StairMaster, a treadmill, and a VersaClimber, which Jack did not have at home. There was nothing in the room other than the equipment. Nothing that seemed personal or relevant to what Jack was looking for – whatever the hell it was he was looking for – so he ran his hand lightly over some of the weights, trying to figure out how Kid could have afforded all this, then he moved on to check out the kitchen and dining room.
The dining room was small, little more than an alcove, really. The table was black marble and there were six black-and-white stuffed, straight-back chairs around it. There was an armoire that held wineglasses and a set of dishes. The dishes were not fine china but were plain and perfectly nice. They looked like they might have come from the Pottery Barn or Williams-Sonoma.
The kitchen was perhaps the strangest room in the apartment because it was outfitted for a gourmet cook. There was a six-burner Viking stove, along with a convection oven and chrome vent above it. All the equipment was stainless steel, black or chrome: a Cuisinart; a blender, also Cuisinart; a Kitchen Aid mixer with all the accoutrements; a regular electric drip coffeemaker as well as a restaurant-quality espresso/cappuccino maker. There was a circular chrome device that hung from the ceiling and dominated one corner – its hooks held expensive pots and pans, cast-iron skillets, and heavy stew pots. To the left of the stove was a small, fifty-bottle wine cooler. Jack couldn't help himself, he checked the labels to find it full of '93 Barolos and Amarones and several superb '85 Burgundies. There were also two bottles of '83 Yquem, which Jack figured at an easy $800 per bottle or more. Next he opened the Sub-Zero refrigerator and by now was not shocked to find one shelf filled with Dom Perignon and bottles of white wine, all Chassagne-Montrachet. The rest of the shelves were largely empty, although there were a dozen brown eggs, several tins of beluga caviar, a large container of plain, non-fat yogurt, a covered dish – which Jack lifted to find several partially eaten soft cheeses – and several jars of Dijon mustard. There were also six bottles of mineral water, three sparkling, three non, and two cans of Bud Light. In the freezer was a bottle of Polish vodka, the kind with strands of buffalo grass flavoring it, and a bottle of an Italian liqueur called Lemoncello. When he went through the cupboards, he found similar fare. He thought of a line from one of his favorite movies, Pat and Mike, with Tracy and Hepburn. He and Caroline owned a tape and used to watch it together. At some point in the movie, Tracy says about Kate, in his Brooklyn accent, "Not much meat on her – but what's there is mighty cherce."
That's what Jack was thinking about this apartment. Not much there, but what there was was expensive and fine. Mighty cherce.
And very un-Kidlike.
Jack went back into the living room now. He still had about twenty minutes – and, if need be, he was sure he could bribe good old Alex for a bit more time. But he wanted to get out of this place; it was starting to give him the chills. The sun was fading now, disappearing behind some of the tall buildings farther downtown, and the swaying shadows made the entire apartment feel as if it were somehow alive.
He sat down on the floor, back to the front door, and began going through the packed boxes.
He began with the ones that were still unsealed.
The first box was fairly uninteresting. More T-shirts, a few pair of jeans and sweats. Some socks. A light jacket that Jack recognized. There were a few other bulky items: a leather football, a baseball glove, a Sony Discman, and about thirty CD's.
The second box was more interesting. It was filled with personal papers, a calendar, and an address book. The first thing Jack pulled out were bank records from Citibank. With a little sifting, Jack found the most recent statement. It was valid as of two weeks earlier. On the first page of the four-page statement, it said that George Demeter had a savings account worth $9,468.72. In his checking account he had $680.
Not the kind of numbers that gets you this apartment, Jack thought. That's not even two months' rent, never mind buying the place. This could go for a million and a half bucks, maybe more!
He began going through more papers, not sure what he was looking for, surprised at how compelling it was to search through another man's life.
He pulled out a black day-at-a-glance calendar and began leafing through it, starting in January. Early in the year, Kid had several notations per day. Some of them were names Jack hadn't heard of – Lydia, Becky, Michele. One notation said "Paul: movie." Nothing much of any interest. In mid-January, he saw a line that just read: "Entertainer." And as he began moving forward in time, there were more listings for Entertainer and regular notations for Samsonite and Mortician. In February, there were several bookings for Rookie. Those seemed to stop in March. Also in early March, the notation "Murderess" started appearing regularly. And at the end of April one date was marked, at seven in the evening, with "Destination." The word "Destination" was followed by several question marks.
Jack realized there were quite a few notations that just said "Butcher." They were almost all early in the morning and it took Jack a few moments before he understood that this was his own nickname. Kid had dubbed him the Butcher.
Son of a bitch, he thought, a vague smile crossing his lips. The nicknames were carefully chosen – that's what Kid had said. Is that what Kid had thought of him? After all was said and done, underneath it all, he was still a butcher, back at Dom's, back in his youth? Back with Kid's father?
In a sudden inspiration, Jack turned quickly to the month of June and checked the page for the date of Kid's death, but it wasn't there.
The entire page had been torn out of the book.
Jack frowned, set the calendar aside, found similar date-books from the two years previous. For the prior year, the notations were fairly similar. A lot of appointments with the Butcher and with Mortician, Samsonite, and Entertainer. There were a few other nicknames that Jack hadn't heard of – Catwoman, Cayenne, and Ginger – and he realized these women had been part of the Team before Kid had shown up in his apartment or else he'd stopped seeing them before he'd begun discussing the situation with Jack.
He went back one more year and there were a few nicknames that showed up, but more real names, almost all women. It made sense – Kid was not doing as much personal training then so there was no need to assign nicknames. The name Charlotte appeared quite a few times. And the nickname that came up most often was Destination.
Jack didn't know what to make of all this. It seemed interesting but there was no discernible pattern and nothing that led him anywhere concrete. The fact that the last page in Kid's book had been torn out certainly seemed ominous. But what the hell did any of it mean?
In another box – he had to rip the tape off the top of this one – he found Kid's frequent-flyer statement. At first he tossed it off to the side but then, for some reason, went back and picked it up. He knew that Kid hadn't traveled much, but he was curious nonetheless. When he glanced at the statement, his curiosity changed to amazement. Over the past year – the period when he was working with Kid on an almost daily basis, when he was sure he'd learned almost everything there was to know about Kid – Jack saw that Kid had accumulated thirty thousand miles. In the last two months alone he'd been to Bermuda, Palm Beach, and St. Bart's.
This is impossible, Jack decided. Something's way off here. Way, way off.
Kid wouldn't have gone away for two days and not told me. He told me everything he did. He'd have to have mentioned taking off for fucking St. Bart's, for God's sake!
He glanced at his watch and began rummaging more quickly through this last box. In there he saw a travel agent's itinerary for two tickets to Bermuda. The date of the tickets was mid-April, six weeks earlier. There was a credit card receipt attached to the itinerary and the credit card seemed to belong to something called Grave Enterprises. There was no signature; it had been charged and accepted over the phone. Jack stuck the receipt in his pants pocket and looked at the final, unopened box.
He was trying to decide if he had time to open it or if he should go down and check with the super. That's when he heard another noise behind him. Similar to the one he thought he'd heard before. The apartment was darker now, the shadows had sunk deeper into the woodwork, and he couldn't help himself, he felt his mouth go dry.
He was being ridiculous, he knew. It was nothing. Once again it was nothing. Or it was the super. The guy had said he'd come back up and get him if Jack didn't go down in time.
So, feeling silly, still on his knees, he half turned toward the front door, knowing he'd see nothing. And as he turned he decided that he'd open the final box, let the super come and get him if he wanted to.
But the super didn't have to come get him. And Jack didn't get a chance to open the last cardboard box. Because as he turned, he saw two men standing not three feet away from him. They were standing very still. They wore business suits and ties. Drab outfits. Were they police? Had the super called the police? He was going to ask them who they were but he didn't get a chance. Before Jack could say or do anything, one of them moved.
It was a fast movement, sudden, mostly his arm, although there was some body in it, too. Jack didn't know what the guy was holding in his fist, a pipe, maybe. Or a blackjack. But it had to be more than just a fist because the pain was startling the way it exploded behind Jack's eyes.
Jack didn't have far to fall, he was already in a crouch. But the man was very fast because he had time to hit Jack again before he toppled onto the pickled white floor. He didn't need to hit him a third time because Jack was not moving now. His breathing was heavy and labored and very slow and he was not moving at all.
He didn't move for quite some time. Not until long after the two men were gone, having taken the boxes and calendars and papers and all other traces that Kid Demeter had ever been inside the building on 487 Duane Street.