Little Easter

Humpty Dylan

Now I was guilty, plenty guilty. But that was about right. Fifteen minutes of denial is all I’m good for. There was no sense to slapping Barnum. Even the flash of satisfaction I’d felt in doing it had deserted me. All I had left was forever to beat myself up over hitting her. Yet neither that giddy prospect nor the guilt brought any relief.

My bones were cold from the inside out and my head was fat with pain. At least my ribs weren’t barking. I took a handful of aspirins and jiggled them in my fist like craps table dice, then swallowed them with a gulp of bathtub water and submerged my head beneath the remainder. But even there, under the insulating water, something sang into my ears. In my tub the mermaids sang to me. Their lips moved, but I could not read them. The tune was familiar, but escaped me. I knew their song held all the answers, but I could not understand.

The phone snapped me out of my bathtub dreaming. I did not answer. I was in no mood to speak to another human and chose rather to listen for the siren’s sweetly singing. But Bell’s invention had broken the siren’s spell and the answers I could not comprehend now teased me, ate at me like an object just out of reach or a name you know but cannot recall. The mermaid’s song was becoming as annoying as an unscratchable itch.

The phone rang again. I was still in no mood for polite conversation, but I hoped answering the call might relieve my itch. So I dragged myself up from the depths and made my way to the phone, leaving sloppy wet footprints in my wake like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Nothing but a dial tone greeted me. Maybe the caller had simply tired of waiting for my gills and flippers to get to the phone. I’d like to think it was the mermaids trying to snap me out of my daze. In any case, going to the phone had helped. For now I recognized the specter that was taunting me. It was a question. If the Gandolfos had tracked and whacked Azrael and Johnny knew that, why hadn’t MacClough taken his revenge? It just didn’t jive. What was holding him back?

I returned to the bath; the pain in my head a little thinner, my bones slightly warmer and my guilt temporarily put on hold. But just knowing the question wasn’t good enough. It never is, really. The time for answers was coming. I resolved to make it so. Aren’t resolutions silly things? Sure, occasionally they’re kept, but usually they fade with a night’s good sleep.

My resolve, like the snow, had lasted the night. Unfortunately, so had my headache. I chugged down some more aspirin. I chose coffee to transport them. Coffee tasted better than bathtub water. At least mine did. You could not say the same for MacClough’s. MacClough’s coffee tended to taste like untreated sewage or the water at Coney Island beach. But that comparison is grossly unfair to untreated sewage.

I dialed Larry Feld’s office and got his secretary, Madame Sunshine on the phone. She seemed almost as happy to speak to me as having a lung removed. I was just as pleased to speak with her. She put me through to Larry without the standard ten-minute waiting period.

“Klein?”

“Yeah, Larry,” I confessed. “I got-”

“I got for you, too,” he cut me off. “Did you know that reporter you had me check up on was pretty close to getting indicted for-”

“-murder,” it was my turn to cut in. “Yeah, I heard something to that effect.”

“You did?” Lean Larry sounded disappointed. “And I suppose you know about the Pulizer thing.”

“None of the fine points, really. I stumbled onto this stuff after I asked you about it,” I sounded apologetic. “But I need the details the way you get details.”

“Details?”he sounded better. “I got details.”

“Good. We can go over ’em tomorrow when I come to your office for our meeting.”

“What meeting’s that, Dylan?” Feld was too smart to overreact.

“The meeting between you and me and Dante Gandolfo,” I tried my hand at nonchalance.

“Oh, that meeting. Let me check my calendar.” Larry Feld was such a cool son of a bitch. I could almost hear his brain working out all the permutations. He refused to sound shocked or angry or surprised. “I don’t see that down here, Dylan. Refresh my memory.”

“Don’t sweat it, Larry. Let’s just say tomorrow about noon. Yeah, I like that. Noon.”

“And what makes you think my client would be inclined to attend such a gathering,” a faint edge finally appeared on the lawyer’s voice.

“Just give him this message,” drops of perspiration rolled along my sides and gathered on my brow. “Tell him, Azrael is in town and I know how to find her.” I could hardly hear my words for the pounding of my heart.

“Who is-”

“Don’t worry about who she is, Larry. Gandolfo will know.”

“Do you know who you’re fucking with, Dylan?” I could almost make out a bit of concern in his voice.

“I know, Larry. I know.”

“I hope so. If this blows up in your face, I won’t be able to put Humpty Dylan back together again.”

“Just give him the message. ’Bye.”

That really had been concern I heard in Larry’s voice, but I wasn’t fooled. Not after a lifetime of knowing Cassius. The concern was for himself, only himself and not for me. Larry didn’t like being in the dark and that’s squarely where I’d left him. That made him nervous. Little else did. Gandolfo would have lots of questions and Larry wouldn’t have the answers. If he wanted answers he’d have to come to me. That was the idea. Unfortunately, I was only a little less in the dark than Larry.