Linger Awhile

6 Irving Goodman

6 January 2004. Almost two months and still no word from that treacherous bastard. Some people can’t be trusted and inevitably they find idiots who trust them. I’ve always been stupid that way from childhood onward. When I swapped with other kids I always got the worst of the bargain. And was the victim of choice for bullies as well. ‘Four-Eyes’, they called me, and knocked off my glasses. That’s part of it — Fallok wouldn’t try it on with someone who wouldn’t stand for it. He thinks I can’t do anything to stop him but we’ll see about that.

I started hanging around his place to keep an eye on his comings and goings or his lying low, whichever. The blind was down so you couldn’t see into the studio. There was a note on the door with a phone number. I called the number and a husky female voice said, ‘Hello.’

‘Who’s this?’ I said.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘Irv Goodman, I’m a friend of Istvan’s. And you?’

‘Grace Kowalski. He said you might call.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s away.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’

‘When’s he coming back?’

‘Didn’t say. You know Istvan — when he doesn’t want to say he doesn’t say.’

‘Where is this number that I’m talking to now?’ I said.

‘It’s my shop, All That Glisters.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘In Berwick Street, towards the Oxford Street end, I’m between Black Dog Music and the Raj Tandoori Restaurant.’ She gave me the number.

‘Can I come round to see you?’

‘If you like. I can’t tell you any more than I’ve already done but maybe you can tell me something.’

She sounded like vodka rather than scotch so on my way I bought a bottle of Stolichnaya at Nicolas in Berwick Street and proceeded to All That Glisters. Berwick Street was still busy with foot traffic, cars, taxis, foodsy smells and people with guidebooks looking in restaurant windows. Grace Kowalski’s shop was closed by now. Expensive-looking jewellery, strange designs in the window behind the grating. Lights upstairs. I rang the bell and she came down carrying a baseball bat. Tall woman, gaunt, in her sixties I thought, grey hair in two long plaits, denim shirt not tucked in, jeans, bare feet. Her feet looked open-minded. ‘Hi,’ she said. We shook hands and I followed her upstairs to the flat which was partly studio with a workbench and a lot of tools and clutter. Various craftsmanlike smells: metal, soldering flux, blowtorch etc. She leaned the bat in a corner. ‘Why the Louisville Slugger?’ I said.

‘I always carry a bat on the first date,’ she said.

‘I always carry a bottle,’ I said, and gave her the Stolichnaya.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘How did you know I liked vodka?’

‘You sounded like vodka. In the nicest possible way.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’ She got two glasses. ‘Tonic with it?’ she said. ‘Ice?’

‘Just as it comes,’ I said.

‘My kind of drinker,’ she said, and poured.

‘Here’s looking at you,’ I said.

‘And here’s looking right back.’ We clank and drank. ‘What’s this all about?’ she said. ‘Do you know?’

‘I don’t know where Istvan is, if that’s what you mean. You said you didn’t either, but do you?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t lying. I haven’t a clue.’

‘Istvan hasn’t told you about Justine Trimble?’

‘No, who’s she?’

I told her everything I knew and my suspicions as well. Grace shook her head. ‘That bastard,’ she said. She tilted her head to one side and studied me for a few moments. ‘You’re the kind of guy who gets pushed around, aren’t you.’

I nodded.

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘You and Istvan …?’

‘You could say we had some kind of understanding. Or rather, that’s what I understood but maybe he didn’t.’ She’d been pouring steadily and drinking a good deal faster than I. ‘Sometimes all you can do is make the best of a bad sitsatuation,’ she said. ‘Sisuashion. You know what I mean.’

‘Absolutely. As the I Ching says, “When the river dries up, the superior woman drinks vodka.”’

‘I’m drunk. Would you like to take advantage of me?’

‘Very much. I regret that I am no longer a player.’

‘Don’t regret. There’s more than one way to skin a cat and you look like an imaginative guy.’ She lifted her shirt tails and dropped her jeans.

‘If you put it that way,’ I said, and got imaginative.

In the morning we both woke up with no way to hold our heads that didn’t hurt and we had coffee while considering what would come next. ‘Are you going to do anything about Istvan?’ said Grace.

‘So far,’ I said, ‘I’ve got nothing to go on but his absence and my suspicions.’

‘Which are probably correct.’

‘Have you got keys to his place?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you been inside since he left that message on the door?’

‘Yes.’

‘And …?’

‘Come with me and see for yourself.’

We went round to Fallok’s place and down the steps to his grotto. Inside were a rank and earthy smell and various devices that I hadn’t seen before. Conspicuous among them was an oil drum half full of what smelt like some primordial soup. Close by was a cardboard panel about six feet high with two slits side by side half-way up. I recognised it from high-school experiments as a diffraction grating. There were wings that could be folded to support it in an upright position. I stood it up and switched on what looked like a special kind of projector. On the cardboard Justine appeared in a still from Last Stage to El Paso. Beyond the diffraction grating on a white board was the interference pattern.

‘What do you think?’ I said to Grace.

She said, ‘I don’t like the way that thing is looking at me with its two slitty eyes.’

‘OK, but apart from that?’

‘I think he left all this in place because he wants us to see what he’s doing.’

‘Which is?’

‘What you told me: reconstituting Justine.’

‘And you believe he wants us to know about that?’

‘Istvan’s a funny guy. Maybe he’s afraid of what he’s got into and doesn’t want to lose touch with the straight world.’ She was clinging to my arm. ‘Do you think he’s done it? Reconstituted Justine Trimble?’

‘If he found that he could, he certainly would.’

‘Why do the two of you have the hots for this twenty-five-year-old dead woman?’

‘A dirty old man is the only kind of old man there is, Grace, and age brings out all kinds of strangeness.’

‘I don’t mind strange. Would you stay with me tonight?’

‘Sure, but let’s go to my place. I want to check my e-mail and set the video timer.’

‘What are you going to record?’

‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.’

‘Has it got a happy ending?’

‘Not in the usual sense.’

‘I like happy endings.’

‘I have two machines. We can watch Dead Letter Office on the other one. That has a happy ending.’

We were heading for Oxford Circus when I saw Istvan Fallok coming towards us in Marshall Street with someone on his arm — a woman I assumed. She was wearing a blue anorak with the hood up, tight grey jeans, and black-and-white cowboy boots. ‘Cowboy boots,’ I said. ‘Black-and-white.’ Balaclava and dark glasses under the hood. And gloves. When they saw us they stopped.

‘Wotcher, Istvan?’ I said. ‘What do you hear from El Paso?’

‘I hear that the last stage left a while ago,’ he said. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, there are times when four’s a crowd.’

‘And two is one too many,’ said Grace. ‘But at least you could introduce us to your friend.’

‘Not just now,’ said Istvan. ‘We’ll see you around.’

‘Maybe in Technicolor next time,’ I said as he and his silent companion walked past us and away.