Innocent monster

SIXTEEN

David Thompson, the ex-cop doorman, was there in the lobby in all his empty glory, standing guard over his piece of turf. Although I’ve crossed paths with many powerful and influential people in my life, I don’t think I will ever fully understand the appeal of power. Little men, small-minded men like Thompson, thrived on it even if their kingdoms were so tiny they could fit three-fold inside a paper cup and the subjects over whom they held sway were barely human themselves. It was enough that they not be at the bottom of the totem pole. But that was just it; in the scheme of things, no matter how much power you wield or think you wield, you’re always near the bottom of the pole.

“Looks who’s back,” he chortled when I walked in. “Is that your tail between your legs or are you just happy to see me? Martyr told me you tried to play hardball with him. Looks to me like you’re the one who took it up the ass, pal.”

“You seem pretty familiar with that look. You must see it in the mirror a lot?”

“Yeah, you keep talking like that and see where it gets you.”

“You and Martyr seem awfully cozy. Strange pair, the two of you: the artiste and the doorman.”

“Security, pal, I’m no doorman.”

“And I’m the Emperor of Ice Cream.”

“Huh? You fuckin’ with me now? You don’t wanna do that.”

“Whatever. Forget it. In any case, Martyr seems to tell you all sorts of stuff.”

“He trusts me,” Thompson said, thrusting out his chest proudly.

“Either that or he must talk in his sleep.”

“Fuck you, shitbird. Go ahead, say one more thing.”

“He trusts you, okay, I get it.”

“Yeah, he trusts me. His world ain’t like when we was on the job. His world is full of hangers-on and liars.”

“And you’re straight with him?”

“Dead straight.”

“That’s why he trusts you?”

“I guess. All I know is he takes good care of me.”

“Good enough care for you to lie for him?”

“That’s it, motherfucka! That’s it!” Thompson turned, flicked a switch on the desk, then, with amazing dexterity, reached under his blazer and snapped out an ASP, all in one motion. The twenty-one inch long, telescoping steel baton may not have looked like much, but I knew that in skilled hands it could break bones with a single blow or knock your senses halfway back to the birth canal. Although my. 38 was less than a foot away from my hand, I wouldn’t have gotten near it before he broke my fingers. “I just shut the lobby camera off, so it’s my word against yours. I’m gonna t’row you a beatin’ like you never had before.”

“No, you’re not, you dickless piece of shit,” Jimmy Palumbo said, holding a 9mm Sig Sauer aimed squarely at Thompson’s chest. The pistol looked like a toy in his huge hand, but it was no toy.

“Get the fuck outta here, you wouldn’t dare shoot an ex-cop.” Thompson sounded less than convincing.

“You wanna bet? Now there’s two of us and one of you. It’ll be our word against yours and you’ll be dead.”

Thompson was an asshole, but not a stupid one. He dropped the baton and it bounced off the terrazzo floor with a sharp clink. He then about-faced and made to quickly turn the lobby camera back on. Too late. Jimmy had already holstered his 9mm. To the camera we would look like three guys talking football or exchanging recipes. Sashi Bluntstone’s last painting rested against Palumbo’s big leg.

“I’ll borrow this,” I said, scooping up the ASP. I pressed its tip against the floor and it folded up into itself. I placed it in my pocket. “I’ll mail it back to you. Now ring your boyfriend and tell him we’re coming up. And do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Just let it alone. This is about a missing kid. I got no beef with you. I want to do my business and get out of here.”

He said fine, but I knew he was lying. I’d made an enemy. Everybody makes enemies, most of the time without really trying. Most of the time circumstance has more to do with it than anything else. Still, I knew better than to ignore the enemies I made. I’d done that once and it got Katy murdered.

In the elevator, I finally exhaled.

“Thanks, Jimmy. One swing with that thing and he could’ve broken my femur. Good thing I had you along.”

“Come on, that was fun.”

“Yeah, for you maybe. You had the gun in your hand.”

“Good point. You okay, Moe?”

“I’m good,” I lied. It wasn’t so much what had just happened with Thompson that was bothering me. It was just that I couldn’t get my head around my visit with Carney. Specifically, I could not let go of what he’d said to me. He was, as Wallace Rusk had warned, idiosyncratic, but so movingly eloquent on the subject of monsters. When this was all over, I thought, I’d have to see what I could find out about him. One thing was for sure, he was going to get an invite to the grand opening of the new store in Bridgehampton. The Hamptons could always use a little shaking up and it would be worth having Carney there just to see the look on my brother’s face.

Then, when I saw Nathan Martyr waiting for us out in the hall, the saliva practically spilling out the corners of his mouth at the thought of possessing Sashi Bluntstone’s last painting, Carney’s words came back to me once again. There were indeed monsters all around us. Martyr was so grotesque in the role that he was nearly amusing. Nearly. But there was nothing innocent about him and, I thought, if there was proof of original sin, he was it.

“Come on in, gentlemen.”

Martyr’s loft was a beautiful abyss. That’s the only way to describe it. There were paintings and sculpture everywhere: some of it stunning, some of it crap, but all of it probably worth a fortune. The refinished broad plank oak floors left over from the building’s former life were themselves works of art and the huge arched windows provided breathtaking views of the Brooklyn Bridge, the river, and Manhattan beyond. Yet it was as much a junkie’s hovel as an artist’s paradise. The place smelled like a high school locker room where the toilets had backed up. There were empty coffee cups, piles of old newspapers, and dirty, sweat-soaked clothing everywhere. Used cotton balls, alcohol wipes, and empty cellophane syringe packets littered the floor. The sink and kitchen counter were full of dirty dishes and open food containers. I didn’t want to think about the feast the roaches must have had every time the lights went out. But when I looked over at Jimmy, he didn’t seem half as disgusted by the condition of the loft as I did.

“The painting,” Martyr said and actually had the chutzpah to snap his fingers at me.

“Jimmy,” I said, “do me a favor and show Nathan what you showed the doorman down in the lobby.”

Palumbo pulled his 9mm and aimed it at Martyr.

“Listen to me, you scumbag. Don’t you ever snap your fucking fingers at me again. I got you your painting and you’re gonna give me that list of names and that’s that. Try and remember that when we’re done here and whether I get Sashi back or not, I know where you live and I know how to get to you. You won’t last five minutes in Rikers and I can pretty much guarantee you a free, all-expense paid trip. So let’s get this over with. Do we understand one another?”

Martyr gulped and said, “Uh huh, I get it.”

“It’s okay, Jimmy, please put that away.”

I handed the painting to Martyr as Jimmy Palumbo put his Sig back in its holster. Martyr treated the painting with great care, carefully slitting the tape and removing the bubble wrap. He held the canvas up before him, his eyes focusing on different aspects of the textured black- and red-speckled painting.

“She was growing up,” he said, grudging admiration in his voice.

“You like it?”

“No, but you can see that she was actually thinking her way through it. This wasn’t just about blue swirls and bright orange sunshine looking pretty for the eye of a little girl. There’s depth in this. Too bad, really.”

“What is?” I wanted to know.

“That the little bitch is dead.”

Jimmy Palumbo, bad knees or not, pounced on Martyr and had a hand almost all the way around his scrawny neck before I could react. If you watch sports on TV, you can’t really appreciate just how profound the difference is between a weekend warrior and a professional athlete, even a retired one. Pros are so much quicker, so much stronger, so much more instinctive that it’s incredible. And Jimmy just reminded me of that difference. I guessed Martyr was learning that lesson for the first time.

“Okay, Jimmy, enough! Enough! Get off him. Let him go.”

But Jimmy wasn’t letting go and Martyr’s face was turning twenty-three shades of red. I didn’t know how much of this the junkie’s body could take. My first instinct was to jump on the big man. Scratch that. Even at the height of my strength and athletic prowess, such as it was, I would have been no match for Jimmy Palumbo. I moved to reach around for my. 38. I scratched that move also. I wasn’t going to shoot the guy and I wasn’t sure he was rational enough to heed a threat. The ASP snapped out as smoothly for me as it had for Thompson and I less than gently laid it across the back of Jimmy’s left hamstring. That did the trick.

“Fuck!”

All the piss went out of Jimmy Palumbo. He let go of Martyr and rolled off the bastard. He rubbed furiously at the back of his leg, trying to work the pain out as if it were a cramp. For his part, Martyr was coughing up a lung and massaging his neck.

“Are you crazy?” Martyr choked out.

“Fuck you.”

“All right, boys, that’s it. Go to your corners and keep your mouths shut.” I helped them both to their feet and they both did as they were told. Sashi’s painting had miraculously survived the scrum intact.

I turned to Martyr. “Now you’ve got your painting. Where’s the list?”

Chastened by Jimmy’s neck squeezing, Nathan Martyr scrambled to find the list he had printed out. He handed the pages to me as quickly as possible. I think the list was probably the only thing he could have found in the chaos that was his apartment without a week’s worth of searching. Well, that, a spoon, and a fresh syringe.

“I highlighted some names for you,” he said. “See, in green marker, like there and there. Those are the real crazies. I also included some of their home addresses, the ones I knew, anyway.”

“Thanks, but remember, if this turns out to be just some junkie scam bullshit, we’ll be back and I won’t stop him from wringing your neck. In fact, he may have to stop me from doing it myself.”

“That’s the list, Scout’s honor.”

“Okay. Come on, Jimmy, let’s go.”

Palumbo, still rubbing the back of his leg, followed me out of the loft and to the elevator.

“Shit,” he said when we stepped inside the car, “did you have to hit me so hard?”

“Honestly, Jimmy, yeah. I thought you were gonna kill him.”

“I guess maybe I would have.”

“You working tomorrow?”

“I get off at three, why?”

I waved the list at him. “We got some people to visit. You up for it?”

“Does the pope wear red shoes?”

“I don’t know. The angels stole Elvis Costello’s.”

“What?”

“Forget it. New Wave humor went out with skinny ties and electric drums.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Okay,” I said, “but you’ve got to promise me no repeat performances of that little neck stretching thing you did with Martyr. The guys we’re going to see tomorrow are apt to be even bigger assholes than he is. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it. So-”

“I swear. I just lost my mind in there a little bit. Man, that guy is a piece of shit.”

“Forget him. It’s these guys we have to think about now,” I said, waving the list at him.

“You’re right.”

“Just let me ask you… that Sig you’re carrying around with you, is it-”

“Registered? Yup. Totally legal. I got licensed when I was playing ball. You know, crazy fans and shit,” he said. “The cops understand that you can get harassed by some pretty wacky people. Then when I got into security, it helped that I already had a carry permit.”

“Cool. Just checking.”

When we got back down to the lobby I could see that Thompson was still stewing over what had happened earlier. Men don’t like getting their toys taken away from them, especially on their own turf. Freud would have said it was a castration thing. With a guy like Thompson, he would have been right. Thompson wasn’t the type of guy to just let things go. I placed the ASP up on the security desk. It wasn’t much, but it was the most conciliatory gesture I could manage on short notice. Needless to say, no thank you was forthcoming. He grabbed the folded baton and stuck it back under his blazer. As Jimmy and I left, I could feel the doorman’s eyes burning a target on the back of my head. He would come for me some day when Jimmy Palumbo wasn’t around for backup. It knew it wasn’t a matter of if, but when.