Live Wire

11

Lex is fine,” Myron said.

Suzze and Lex owned a penthouse in a high-rise along the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey. The penthouse took up the entire top floor and had more square feet than your average Home Depot. Despite the hour-it was midnight by the time he got back from Adiona Island-Suzze was dressed and waiting for him on the enormous terrace. The terrace was waaay over the top, what with those Cleopatra sofas and plush chairs and Greek statues and French gargoyles and Roman arches, especially when all you needed-indeed all you saw anyway-was the killer view of the Manhattan skyline.

Myron had wanted to go straight home. There was really nothing more to discuss now that they knew Lex was safe, but on the phone Suzze had seemed oddly needy. With some clients, coddling came with the territory. With Suzze, that had never been the case.

“Tell me what Lex said.”

“He’s with Gabriel recording some songs for their next album.”

Suzze stared at the Manhattan skyline through the summer mist. In her hand, she held a glass of what looked like wine. Myron was not sure what to say about that-pregnancy and wine-so he just kind of cleared his throat.

“What?” Suzze said.

Myron pointed at the wineglass. Mr. Subtle.

“The doctor says it’s fine to have one,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not.”

She looked out at the skyline from the arch, her hands on her belly. “We’re going to need better guard rails up here. What with a baby on the way. I don’t even let drunk friends up here.”

“Good idea,” Myron said. She was stalling. That was okay. “Look, I don’t really know what’s up with Lex. I admit he’s acting a little weird, but he also made a convincing case that it’s not my business. You wanted me to find out if he was okay. I have. I can’t force him to come home.”

“I know.”

“So what else is there? I could keep looking into who posted the ‘Not His’ comment-”

“I know who posted that,” Suzze said.

That surprised him. He studied her face and when she didn’t say anything else, he asked, “Who?”

“Kitty.”

She took a sip of wine.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Who else would want that kind of payback?” she asked.

The humidity weighed on Myron like a heavy blanket. He looked at Suzze’s belly and wondered what it must be like to lug that around in this weather.

“Why would she want revenge on you?”

Suzze ignored the question. “Kitty was a great player, wasn’t she?”

“So were you.”

“Not like her. She was the best player I’d ever seen. I became a pro, won a few tournaments, had four year-end top ten finishes. But Kitty? She could have been one of the greats.”

Myron shook his head. “It would have never happened.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Kitty was a screwup. The drugs, the partying, the lies, the manipulation, the narcissism, the self-destructive streak.”

“She was young. We were all young. We all made mistakes.”

Silence.

“Suzze?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you want to see me tonight?”

“To explain.”

“Explain what?”

She came over to him, spread her arms, and hugged him. Myron held her tight, feeling the warm belly against him. He didn’t know if that was weird. But as the hug lasted, it started to feel good, therapeutic. Suzze lowered her head into Myron’s chest and stayed there for a while. Myron just held her.

Finally Suzze said, “Lex is wrong.”

“About?”

“Sometimes people do need help. I remember nights you saved me. You held me like this. You listened. You never judged me. Maybe you don’t know it, but you saved my life a hundred times.”

“I’m still here for you,” Myron said softly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She held on, keeping her ear against his chest. “Kitty and I were both about to turn seventeen. I wanted to win the juniors so badly that year. Get into the Open. Kitty was my top competition. When she beat me in Boston, my mother went crazy.”

Myron said, “I remember.”

“My parents explained to me that everything is fair in competition. You do whatever you have to to win. To get an edge. Do you know about the Shot Heard ’Round the World? The home run by Bobby Thomson in the 1950s?”

The change of subjects threw him. “Yeah, sure. What about it?”

“He cheated, my dad said. Thomson. I mean, they all did. People think it just happens now with steroids. But those old New York Giants were stealing signs. Other pitchers scuffed up the baseball. That guy who ran the Celtics, the one who drafted you, he intentionally made it extra hot in the visiting team’s locker rooms. Maybe it’s not cheating. Maybe it’s just looking for the edge.”

“And you looked for the edge?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I spread rumors about my competitor. I made her out to be more of a slut than she was. I tried to ruin her focus by adding stress to her life. I told you that her baby was probably not Brad’s.”

“You weren’t the only one who told me that. And I knew Kitty on my own. I didn’t base my opinion on what you told me anyway. She was a mess, right?”

“So was I.”

“But you weren’t manipulating my brother. You weren’t leading him on and then sleeping around with a bunch of other guys.”

“But I was all too ready to tell you about that, wasn’t I?” Suzze nestled her head in closer to his chest. “You know what I didn’t tell you?”

“What?”

“Kitty also loved your brother. Truly and deeply. When they were broken up, her play suffered. Her heart wasn’t in it. I pushed her into partying more. I keep telling her that Brad wasn’t for her, that she should play the field.”

Myron thought back to the happy photographs of Kitty, Brad, and Mickey on her Facebook and wondered what could have been. He tried to let his mind settle on those blissful images, but the mind goes where it wants. Right now the mind was veering back to the video of Kitty and Ponytail in that private room at Three Downing. “Kitty made her own mistakes,” he said, hearing the bitterness in his tone. “What you said or didn’t say made no difference. She lied to Brad about everything. She lied about her drug use. She lied to him about my role in their little drama. She even lied about being on the pill.”

But as he said that last part, something in his own words didn’t mesh. Here Kitty was, on the verge of being the next Martina, Chrissie, Steffi, Serena, Venus-and she ends up getting pregnant. Maybe it was, as she claimed, an accident. Anyone who took middle school health class knows that the pill doesn’t work 100 percent of the time. But Myron had never given that excuse an iota of plausibility.

“Does Lex know all this?” he asked.

“All?” She smiled. “No.”

“He told me that was the big issue. People have secrets and those secrets fester and then destroy trust. You can’t have a good relationship without total transparency. You need to know all your spouse’s secrets.”

“Lex said that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sweet,” she said. “But he’s wrong again.”

“How’s that?”

“No relationship survives total transparency.” Suzze lifted her face off his chest. Myron saw the tears on her cheeks, felt the wetness on his shirt. “We all keep secrets, Myron. You know that as well as anyone.”

By the time Myron made it back to the Dakota, it was three in the morning. He checked to see whether Kitty had replied to his “Please forgive me” message. She hadn’t. On the off chance that Lex had told him the truth-and that Kitty had told Lex the truth-he sent Esperanza an e-mail to see if they could check passenger manifests for Kitty’s name on flights out of Newark or JFK heading to South America. He signed on to the computer to see if Terese was around. She wasn’t.

He thought about Terese. He thought about Jessica Culver, the ex-love Lex had mentioned. After claiming for years that marriage was not for her-the years she was with Myron-Jessica had recently wed a man named Stone Norman. Stone, for crying out loud. What kind of name was that? His friends probably called him “The Stoner” or “Stone Man.” Thinking about old lovers, especially ones you wanted to marry, was never a productive endeavor, so Myron made himself stop.

Half an hour later, Win came home. He was accompanied by his latest girlfriend, a tall modelesque Asian named Mee. There was a third person too, another attractive Asian woman Myron had never seen before.

Myron looked over at Win. Win wiggled his eyebrows.

Mee said, “Hi, Myron.”

“Hi, Mee.”

“This is my friend, Yu.”

Myron held back the sigh and said hello. Yu nodded. When the two women left the room, Win grinned at Myron. Myron just shook his head. “Yu?”

“Yep.”

When Win had first started up with Mee, he loved to share jokes using her name. “Mee so horny… It’s Mee time… Sometimes I just want to make love to Mee.”

“Yu and Mee?” Myron said.

Win nodded. “Wonderful, don’t you think?”

“No. Where have you been all night?”

Win leaned in conspiratorially. “Between Yu and Mee…”

“Yes?”

Win just smiled.

“Oh.” Myron sighed. “I get it. Good one.”

“Be happy. It used to be all about Mee. But then I realized something. It’s about Yu too.”

“Or, uh, in this case, Yu and Mee together.”

“Now you’re in the spirit,” Win said. “How was your sojourn to Adiona Island?”

“You want to hear this now?”

“Yu and Mee can wait.”

“By that, you mean the girls, not us, right?”

“It does get confusing, doesn’t it?”

“Not to mention perverse.”

“Don’t worry. When I’m not around, Yu can keep Mee occupied.” Win sat, steepled his fingers. “Tell me what you learned.”

Myron did. When he finished, Win said, “Methinks Lex doth protest too much.”

“You got that too?”

“When a man does that much philosophizing, he’s covering.”

“Plus that last line about her going back to Chile or Peru in the morning?”

“Throwing you off the track. He wants you to stay away from Kitty.”

“Do you think he knows where she is?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

Myron thought about what Suzze said, about transparency and everyone having secrets. “Oh, one more thing.” Myron fumbled for his BlackBerry. “Gabriel Wire had a guard working the gate. He looked familiar to me, but I can’t place him.”

He handed Win the BlackBerry, the photograph on the home screen. Win studied it for a moment.

“This,” Win said, “is also not good.”

“You recognize him?”

“I haven’t heard his name in years.” Win handed the BlackBerry back. “But it looks like Evan Crisp. Big-time pro. One of the best.”

“Who’d he work for?”

“Crisp was always freelance. The Ache brothers used to bring him in when there was serious trouble.”

The Ache brothers, Herman and Frank, had been two leading Old-World mobsters. RICO had finally moved in and closed them down. Like many of his elder brethren, Frank Ache was serving time in a maximum security federal penitentiary, mostly forgotten. Herman, who had to be seventy by now, had managed to slither out of his indictment and used his ill-gotten booty to feign legitimacy.

“A hit man?”

“To some degree,” Win said. “Crisp was brought in when your muscle needed a little finesse. If you wanted someone to make a lot of noise or shoot up a place, Crisp wasn’t your man. If you wanted someone to die or vanish without raising suspicion, you called Crisp.”

“And now Crisp works as a rent-a-cop for Gabriel Wire?”

“That would be a no,” Win said. “It’s a small island. Crisp got tipped off the moment you arrived and then awaited your imminent arrival. My theory is, he knew you’d take the photograph and that we would figure out his identity.”

“To scare us away,” Myron said.

“Yes.”

“Except we don’t scare easily.”

“Yes,” Win said with only a small eye roll. “We are so very macho.”

“Okay, so first we have this weird post on Suzze’s board, probably put there by Kitty. Then we have Lex meeting up with Kitty. We have Crisp working for Wire. Plus Lex hiding out at Gabriel Wire’s place and probably lying to us.”

“And when you add those together, what do you come up with?”

“Bubkes,” Myron said.

“No wonder you’re our leader.” Win rose, poured himself a cognac, tossed Myron a Yoo-hoo. Myron did not shake or open it. He just held the cold can in his hand. “Of course, just because Lex may be lying, that doesn’t mean his basic message to you is wrong.”

“What message is that?”

“You interfere with the best intentions. But you interfere nonetheless. Whatever your brother and Kitty are going through, perhaps it isn’t your place. You haven’t been part of their lives for a very long time.”

Myron thought about that. “That may be my fault.”

“Oh, please,” Win said.

“What?”

“Your fault. So when Kitty, for example, told Brad that you hit on her, was she telling the truth?”

“No.”

Win spread his hands. “So?”

“So maybe she was just striking back. I said some horrible things about her. I accused her of trapping Brad, manipulating him. I didn’t believe the baby was his. Maybe she was using the lie to defend herself.”

“Boo”-Win started playing air violin-“hoo.”

“I’m not defending what she did. But maybe I messed up too.”

“And, pray tell, how would you have messed up?”

Myron said nothing.

“Go ahead,” Win said. “I’m waiting.”

“You want me to say, ‘by interfering.’ ”

“Bingo.”

“So perhaps this is my chance to make amends.”

Win shook his head.

“What?”

“How did you mess up in the first place? By interfering. How do you intend to make up for it? By interfering.”

“So I should just forget what I saw on that surveillance camera?”

“I would.” Win took a deep long sip. “But, alas, I know you can’t.”

“So what do we do?”

“What we always do. At least in the morning. Tonight I have plans.”

“And those would again be between Yu and Mee?”

“I would say bingo again, but I so hate repeating myself.”

“You know,” Myron said, choosing his words carefully, “and I don’t mean to moralize here or judge.”

Win crossed his legs. When he did it, the crease remained perfect. “Oh, this is going to be rich.”

“And I recognize that Mee has been a part of your life for longer than any woman I remember, and I’m glad that you seem to have at least curtailed your appetite for hookers.”

“I prefer the term ‘upscale escorts.’ ”

“Super. In the past, your womanizing, your being a cad…”

“A rakish cad,” Win said with a rakish smile. “I always liked the word ‘rakish,’ don’t you?”

“It fits,” Myron said.

“But?”

“When we were in our twenties and even thirties, it was all somewhat, I don’t know, endearing.”

Win waited.

Myron stared at the can of Yoo-hoo. “Forget it.”

“And now,” Win said, “you think my behavior, for a man of my years, is somewhat closer to pathetic.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You think I should settle down a bit.”

“I just want you to be happy, Win.”

Win spread his hands. “So do I.”

Myron gave him the flat eyes. “You’re referring to the Yu in the other room again, aren’t you?”

The rakish grin. “Love me for all my faults.”

“Again, by me, do you mean, uh, Mee?”

Win stood. “Don’t worry, old friend. I am happy.” Win started moving toward the bedroom door. He stopped suddenly, closed his eyes, looked troubled. “But you may have a point.”

“That being?”

“Maybe I’m not happy,” he said, a wistful distant look on his face. “Maybe you’re not either.”

Myron waited, almost sighed. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“So perhaps it’s time to make Yu and Mee happy.”

He vanished into the other room. Myron stared at the Yoo-hoo can for a little while. There was no noise. Win had mercifully soundproofed his room years ago.

At seventy thirty A.M., a mussed Mee came out in a robe and started making breakfast. She asked Myron if he wanted something. Myron politely declined.

At eight A.M., his phone rang. He checked the number and saw it was from Big Cyndi.

“Good morning, Mr. Bolitar.”

“Good morning, Big Cyndi.”

“Your ponytailed drug dealer was at the club last night. And I tailed him.”

Myron frowned. “In the Batgirl costume?”

“It’s dark. I blend.”

That image came and thankfully fled.

“Did I tell you that Yvonne Craig herself helped me make it?”

“You know Yvonne Craig?”

“Oh, we’re old friends. You see, she told me that the material was one-way stretch. It’s sort of like a girdle fabric, not as thin as Lycra, but not as thick as neoprene. It was very hard to find.”

“I’m sure.”

“Did you know Yvonne starred as the superhot green chick on Star Trek?”

“Marta, the Orion slave girl,” Myron said, because he couldn’t help himself. He tried to get them back on track. “So where is our drug dealer now?”

“Teaching French at Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey.”