Sorrow's crown

THIRTEEN

The cab ride from JFK to the midtown tunnel took nearly an hour due to a closed center lane, traffic bottlenecking for over a mile at the toll booths. A water main had burst at 33rd and Park Avenue, and the cops had closed both directions. The staccato of blaring horns did nothing to make anybody more pleasant or move any faster through the gridlock. The entire time I had to listen to the Russian immigrant driver badmouthing the Pakistanis for taking over the city, telling me in broken English how they all ought to go the hell back home. I hopped out and took the 6 downtown, and when I came up out of the heat I noticed that another Barnes amp; Noble had gone up seemingly overnight only four blocks from my place.

My store smelled of dust and acidifying paper, an oddly agreeable mixture reminiscent of potpourri and dry leaves. It was ten degrees cooler inside, and the sudden change made a chill ripple up my neck.

There was a nearly desolate sense of vacancy here, I thought, an emptiness in the despondent dark as I snapped on the lights. Again I realized just how much I'd taken my former assistant Debi Kiko Mashima for granted. She not only handled the nearly infinite number of small and irritating daily tasks about the store, but she added a genuine and often blithe liveliness to the place. I wondered if I gave her a twenty-buck raise she'd leave her new husband Bobby Li, the billionaire software writer.

I had less than five hours before the next flight upstate out of JFK. I checked my online orders and found a great deal more than I'd expected, enough to make up for whatever might have been lost by my closing down for the past few days. A part of me wanted to accept the idea that seventy-five percent of my business had nothing to do with face-to-face customer service, and another part of me didn't want to believe that so few people liked to peruse the stacks and smell the books anymore.

I thought about that photo of Teddy Harnes. Alice Conway could have lied. It might not have been him, but his amiable countenance, leaning into the camera, one arm around Alice and the other around Brian Frost's shoulders. Pulling his friends to him gave him a certain credence in my mind, as if he'd been born to make up for his father's lack of descriptive character. Alice had said, "He loved to read, and read everything he could get his hands on. He returned all the books for credit or gave them away."

I checked the art and philosophy shelves, spending a half hour glancing through books and finding nothing. Eventually I realized I had to tackle the storage room, and heartburn started edging through my chest. Dozens of sprawling stacks and a hundred boxes filled with thousands more books stood chest-high, all of it in disarray. My inventory constantly shifted and fluxed, moving in and out of storage with all the order of a lingerie fire sale. Just because some novel sat three feet at the bottom of a box didn't mean it hadn't been brought in only a week ago. Debi had kept on top of changing shelf life, but I'd let it slip into a hopeless snarl of tilting heaps.

I left the door open in case Nick Crummler had returned to the city after killing Freddy Shanks. He wouldn't abandon his brother, but he might've come back to Manhattan to regroup and figure his next step. I tried to beat him to it, but just kept seeing the vacant look on his face that somehow showed the irrepressible contempt he felt when he brought the blackjack down onto Sparky's forehead.

If he knew anything about the Grove at all, he'd know that Lowell would never stop searching for him.

I went to work.

Two and a half hours later I picked up a copy of E. A. Strehlneek's Chinese Pictorial Art, Commercial Press: Shanghai, 1914-a cloth copy I'd originally purchased at a bargain price from an auctioned lot the family of a bibliophile had let go too cheaply-light-blue silk binding over boards with gilt decoration with its original dust jacket and a seventy-three page supplement. In the same box was Raphael Petrucci's Chinese Painters: A Critical Study, 1920 cloth and boards with twenty-five illustrations in duotone. I'd priced each of the books at $200, and must've been dumbfounded to have discovered them returned for credit. It was something I shouldn't have forgotten, but I had.

Teddy had made further extensive handwritten notes in that tiny, clear print, and also drawn on the inside back covers. It amazed me he would write so much about painting and not keep the book to reread later. In the center of the Strehlneek book were several more ink drawings Teddy had done of the same woman.

I looked out at the city I'd tried to make my home despite the jealous and perpetual draw of Felicity Grove. Greenwich Village always had a vigorous disposition, the downtown culture and club kids, students, poets, insane crackheads and homeless crammed to within a few feet of each other. The museum owners, sculptors, and painters keep art in front of your face like soldiers performing a necessary but dangerous duty. Music shops kicked it out into the streets with band names I couldn't even pronounce, and the dogwalkers, Rollerbladers, and professional dominatrixes shopping at the Pink Pussycat kept you busy just making it down the sidewalks.

I sat at my desk inside a room empty except for ten billion words, and put my head back against the window and listened to the street humming as though everyone were reading aloud. Two kids in NYU sweatshirts walked in and hunted around the back stacks. I watched them grab and scarf comparative theology texts and science fiction, skimming and discussing content the way I usually did myself when I found somebody who cared. They spoke resolutely but with the absorbed manner of people in love. Enamored with each other, and with thought, and perhaps art. I could have spoken at length about C. S. Lewis and Henri Daniel-Rops, Spider Robinson, Alfred Bester, and Roger Zelazny. When they left I locked up and hailed a cab for the airport, carrying Teddy's books under my arm. I thought of the woman he kept sketching.

Who was she?

The hot breeze blowing across Lake Ontario felt like Santa Ana winds coming off a desert. In winter, the Lake Effect chill added a dozen feet of snow to the area, but in spring there were odd thermal drafts that swooped over the country and brought on stifling heat. I got off the plane already sweating, my mouth dry and thoughts full of Teddy's artwork, knowing I had to return to Panecraft.

Crummler had been trying to warn me and give up answers, and some of the slippery pieces seemed to be sliding together, if only I could hold on to them long enough.

I walked into the airport lobby to get a cab and spotted Theodore Harnes' white Mercedes limousine waiting at the curb.

Jocelyn stood on the sidewalk, facing me resolutely, holding the car door open. Sunlight caught her at just the right angle to make the slant of her hair, cheeks, and chin shimmer. She wore a silver top and black skirt slit up the side, and a businessman spun and marched into a SkyCap. Every guy within eyeshot was walking with a staggered step and looking back over his shoulder at her. She motioned for me to get into the car.

"Not even a please this time?" I asked.

The dead gaze didn't waver. "Please allow us to drive you home."

"No," I said. "I don't think so."

She simply continued staring, those lips flattened with just the right sheen laid on by her tongue, glowing and faultless as though they'd never been kissed or chewed or touched with makeup, not even once turned into a pout. That face like nothing so much as cloth or canvas, smooth and maddeningly beautiful. Her flesh so perfect. I kept searching for a solitary crease in her skin, a mark of violence or lust over the years. Had she fled Hong Kong and been a virgin on the streets of Bangkok or Rangoon or Hanoi, sold into prostitution to the highest bidder? Those hands had never been used to sew or stamp in any of Harms' factories. Did he plan for her to be the mother of more of his children? Had she been mistress of the erotic arts, used to teach Teddy the finest points of pleasure?

"Please," she repeated without inflection. "Allow us."

"No. Thanks, anyway." I got a step closer, and another, and one more until we were nearly nose-to-nose. Even her nostrils were alluring. She scratched her thigh lightly along the slit of her skirt, but didn't even leave one of those fine, chalky lines on her skin. The draft from the limo's air conditioning blasted against my legs. I could make out the silhouette of Theodore Harnes in the far corner of the back seat, sitting rigidly with his hands laid across his knees.

"Get into the limousine you annoying pissant fool," she told me.

"Well," I said. "Since you asked nicely."

I got in and she slipped in beside me. I held tightly to Teddy's art books but nobody noticed. Sparky's seat seemed entirely too empty, and I wondered if Harnes would find another malicious guard in Panecraft to act as a replacement in this entourage. The driver appeared even more spectral than before-starved perhaps, the poorly fitting black suit draping off his scrawny frame. He smelled worse, too, and there were scabs on his throat like he'd gone for exploratory surgery. I realized he must have cancer, and the chemo and radiation weren't delaying the inevitable.

Harms continued to stare straight ahead as we pulled out, his hands still hanging open. Jocelyn smoldered beside me, or at least I hoped she did, though her voice hadn't changed at all, even when insulting me. The two of them looked as in-organic as the portraits at the top of Harnes' grand stairway, like all the dead women from his past.

The living pressure known as Theodore Harnes kept exerting itself upon me as we drove toward Felicity Grove. I thought about how he'd allowed Anna to run him over, as if he couldn't quite comprehend that the physical laws of the world should ever be impressed upon him.

Jocelyn glanced over at me, and the dying driver glared into the rearview mirror, but no one said anything. This might have made a good Sergio Leone spaghetti western, lots of close-ups on our squints, each noise magnified on the soundtrack. The chauffeur drove effortlessly, even when abruptly caught up in a coughing fit. I slowly became aware of Harnes' breathing, as though it was only within the last few minutes that he'd learned how to do it, or even needed to do it. I knew we didn't quite share the same reality.

"I did not appreciate your attendance at my home," he said.

"No," I said. "I imagined you wouldn't."

"You sought only to provoke and irritate me."

"That sounds about right."

"Why do you pursue in this aggravating manner?"

A man who enjoys a standoff.

"Whatever I've been doing it's been getting me a lot of nice rides in this limo."

The sound of breathing became displaced for a moment, and suddenly I became aware of Jocelyn's chest rising and falling, as though they shared one pair of lungs and couldn't use them at the same time. An undercurrent of tranquillity and calamity ran through the car, each of them feeling different things at different times, in perfect counterpoint to one another. She seemed to be getting angry now even while he calmed. In a way I was reminded of how things worked between me and Anna.

Harnes flexed his fingers, once. "Let us talk of the untimely death of Freddy Shanks."

"I thought it was pretty timely myself. Any later and the bastard would have killed me."

"I do not believe you," he said.

"I've still got the lumps to prove it."

He had no people skills. "Tell me what occurred that night."

"If you already don't believe me then what's the point?" I asked.

"Be that as it may, I require you answer my questions.”

“You didn't ask any."

That tickled him, almost. Something crawled around in his eyes, and his fists opened once more and then shut. "Tell me all that happened."

I told him.

"I do not believe you," Harnes said.

"I sorta figured you'd say that."

My attention snapped to Jocelyn as though caught on barbs. I watched her frozen visage for a moment, wondering how much hate or love might be hidden there, if any, and if so, for whom. The charge flowed and returned to Harnes.

He said, "My son is dead and the man who murdered him has been put away. Why do you persist in involving yourself in my affairs?"

His calm demeanor rattled me. The car seemed to roll and crest with sodium pentathol, all of us unable to lie about anything. The stink of death rising from the driver perhaps lulled us toward our own ends. My heartbeat tripped along. Theodore Harnes had enough wealth and influence to build, buy, or steal whatever he might want, but chose to converse pleasantly about a boy who'd had his face cut off, an innocent man locked in an asylum, and a sadist dead on the floor with his brains spilled. I started to sweat. I imagined how many of his enemies might be cowering in restricted areas D and E of Sector Eight in Panecraft, gazing down at me as I stood looking up.

And Crummler, locked away, still waiting for my help, too terrified to think of happier things because it was so much easier to survive that kind of sorrow if you accepted hell as your fate.

"Why did you send Shanks to kill Brian Frost?" I asked.

"I did no such thing."

"I don't believe you."

Only the barest movement from those hands, as they closed slightly to cup his knees. "That does not concern me.”

“Does anything?"

"Nothing you could know."

"You're probably right." It was my turn to breathe as we hit the outskirts of town. "Alice Conway was blackmailing you."

"Indeed not," he said, so sedate that I looked at his eyes to see if the pupils were dilated. "She performed a poor masque meant to threaten me. It did not. Hence, by definition, there could be no blackmail."

"Still, she was making the attempt."

"I found her company pleasant, for a time. As did my son. There is nothing more to say on the matter."

"She was going to have Teddy's kid. Didn't that matter to you?"

"No," he said.

I took a breath. The air had come back around to me. "You're a real piece of shit."

A brutal growl ripped up the back of Jocelyn's throat and she stirred in her seat and slapped me. The heel of her hand drove into my jaw and my skull flared with that now familiar spatter of color and pain. Even while my mouth filled with blood I felt a genuine sense of hope, and even grinned as I turned with the expectation of seeing a frown or sneer, her lips marred and curled by unsheathed anger. Even just a single misplaced strand of hair, anything, a casual crease around her eyes, or dimples in the chin. I smiled and blood flooded against my teeth.

Absolutely nothing had changed in her face.

The driver stopped at a red light on Fairlawn, four blocks from the flower shop. I said, "Let me off here."

"Enjoy your day, Mr. Kendrick," Harnes said.

I wiped the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand. "You, too," I said. "Thanks for the ride."

"You are most welcome."

"One more thing," I told him. "Stay away from my grandmother."

"No."

My face tightened as I grew flush, and my fingers flexed, once, the same moment his did. Jocelyn got out and I followed. I stood on the corner as the stink of the dying driver wafted out on the air conditioning. Jocelyn got back into the Mercedes and I held the door open before she could shut it.

If Harnes didn't believe that the physical laws of the world were meant for him, then what could he possibly think of moral precepts? We waited like that for a while.

Finally, at long last, he looked at me.

"Did you murder your first wife and unborn child?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

Jocelyn slammed the door, and the limo pulled off.