The Havana Room

Nine

"Potatoes!" Allison cried to me on the phone late the next morning. "All over the sidewalk in front of the steakhouse." I'd been lying in my hotel room bed, listening to the tape-hiss of my own head and wondering what to do about Jay, when her call came. "There's a huge green truck up on the sidewalk," she said. "A little old man is inside! And he won't come out. He says he knows Jay. He's drunk or something, says he has to talk to Jay right now. I told him I didn't know where he is, Bill!"

"Is the truck missing a front door?"

"I think so, yes."

It was Poppy. "Can you put the guy on the phone?"

"He won't get out of the truck. I'll take the phone to him."

Which she did. I heard her carrying it outside, the fuzz of the wind cutting across the mouthpiece. "Poppy?" I said when she handed it to him.

"Jay?"

"No, it's Bill, his lawyer. You remember me."

"I ain't talking to no shyster."

"I'll be down there in a few minutes." It was only about ten blocks away. "Don't go anywhere."

"You just bring Jay, just tell him I'm going to say what he don't want to hear, I can't take it no more…" His voice broke into a wretched sob. "I'm sorry, it was never, I'm-"

"Bill?" came Allison's voice. "He's crying."

"Don't let him go anywhere. Take the keys."

"Ha already did."

I told her I'd be there soon, then called Marceno's New York office. Miss Allana answered.

"Let me talk to Marceno," I told her.

"Mr. Wy-eth," came his voice almost immediately. "So you have responded to my inquiries?"

"Marceno, listen to me. Jay Rainey doesn't know what's buried on your land, and I don't, either. But I can tell you who does know, the little old man who worked on the farm."

"The fellow named Poppy?"

"Yes."

A dismissive grunt. "We already asked him."

"You personally?"

"One of my representatives."

"Who?"

"That is confidential, Mr. Wy-eth."

"If it was Martha Hallock, then I don't think you got the whole story."

This bothered him, I could tell. "And why would that be?"

"Because they are related."

"Related?"

"Poppy is Martha Hallock's nephew."

"No one told me that."

"Why would they?"

"This man Poppy knows?"

"He's here in town, at the steakhouse where we did this deal in the first place. He's looking for Jay Rainey and he's not going to find him. But he says he has something to tell him. So I'm going there right now. I suggest you show up, too."

"I was expecting information to come from you or Jay Rainey."

I stood at my window and watched the taxis edge down Fifth Avenue. "Poppy is there now. Right now, a few minutes from your offices. It's the best I can do, Marceno."

"We will see."

"Hey, you're the one with forty-two million bucks on the line, Marceno, not me."

I walked toward the steakhouse, listening to my phone ring in Jay's garage apartment. No answer. When we'd said goodbye the previous evening, he'd offered his hand to me in a gesture of friendship and apology and I had taken it willingly, sad for him, now that I understood the simple emotional logic behind his curious behaviorsall the man wanted was to find and know his daughter. On a Monday morning the city was busy, men and women climbing out of the subways ready to eat pressure and deadlines and phone calls. And the next day I'd be busy, too, finally. I'd report for work at Dan Tuthill's new firm, and from there I'd rent a new apartment- someplace with a real doorman who didn't let thugs up the stairs- and a few weeks later, Timothy would arrive, with Judith.

A block away from the steakhouse, I saw Poppy's half-ton truck bumped up onto the sidewalk of Thirty-third Street. He'd knocked one of the evergreens over. The enormous ceramic pot had broken into a dozen pieces and the tree itself lay on its side, roots exposed to the cold. Ha was out on the sidewalk, picking up potatoes and throwing them back into the truck. The wind lifted what gray hair was left on his head.

"Ha!" I called.

He looked up and nodded. "Miss Allison friend."

"Yes. She called me." I pointed at the truck. "You've got a little old man inside?"

"Every Monday, close for lunch," Ha muttered. "But Ha work anyway. The man is in that truck."

I saw a boot sticking out of the truck where the front door was supposed to be. The limp glove was still taped to the steering wheel. Poppy lay slumped across the front seat hugging a half-empty bottle of whiskey.

"Poppy, you don't look too good."

"I didn't tell them." He licked his lips in a daze. His face was swollen, as if he'd been punched a few times. "You see Jay, you say I didn't tell them."

Allison slipped out the front door of the steakhouse, arms huddled tight, eyes concerned.

"Who is he?"

"This is Poppy. He used to work on Jay's farm."

"Is he drunk?"

"Yeah, I'm fucking drunk." Poppy rolled onto his back, exposing a belly of gray hair. "I'm a lot of things, I'm a drunk and beat up and I also got coffee in me." He vomited into the well of the seat. "Christ," he moaned.

Allison stepped back from the truck. "What am I supposed to do here, call the police?"

"Don't."

"Why?"

"The night that we did the real estate deal, this was the guy who came to the restaurant."

She frowned. "I don't remember him, and believe me, I would."

"You were out with Jay celebrating. He needed Jay to drive east to his land. Remember you asked me to go out there? That night we found an old black guy dead on a bulldozer. He'd worked on Jay's farm for years. The bulldozer had gone off the edge of the cliff. Poppy and Jay and I hauled it back up using this truck, in fact. Jay thought the old guy had a heart attack."

"He did," bellowed Poppy. He pushed himself up and confronted us, his lips wet, nodding portentously, as if being questioned in a court of law. "He did, a fucking heart attack, plain and simple. I saw it with my own eyes. Nobody touched him."

I pulled on his arm to get him up. "You told us you found him."

"No, I saw him!" he growled. "I saw him die."

"You kill him, Poppy, did you kill him somehow?"

He seemed oddly fascinated by this question, distracted even, and didn't answer.

"Sir, we take deliveries on Monday," said Allison. "You're blocking our way here. You're going to have to move."

He didn't respond. I saw a bit of blood on his lip and bruising around his eye. "He needs to come inside, Allison. We can move the truck."

Poppy nodded at this suggestion as if he'd heard it from a great distance. "I'm sick," he muttered. "I'm sick of it."

Allison pulled me away from the cab. "Why didn't you tell me all this, Bill?"

"Jay's got a lot of problems, Allison."

She crossed her arms angrily. "Well, I figured that out."

"No, I don't think you did."

"You should have told me."

"Allison, you asked me to help Jay. Remember?"

She shrugged, holding herself tight.

"A guy is coming here soon, I hope," I went on. "Poppy's going to tell him something, and then at least part of this trouble will be finished."

"I don't understand."

"There's a problem with the land Jay sold," I told her. "The buyer wants to know what it is. He's been threatening Jay and me."

"You can't just drag all this into my steakhouse!"

"Allison, you dragged it into your steakhouse, not me. You told Jay he could finish his real estate deal in the Havana Room. You started this. You thought you attracted him, you let him work you."

"What do you mean?" She was figuring things quickly. "Is this about that woman named O, the woman he sees?"

I shook my head, stunned by how little she knew. "There is no woman named O. Jay picked you out, for something else."

"What?"

It was too late not to explain. "I'm sorry to tell you this, Allison. It's not what you want to hear-"

"Just tell me."

So I did. "Jay picked you out. He figured out exactly where you lived, the floor, everything."

"Why?"

"He wanted to look across the street."

She stared at me, not sure whether to be hurt or furious. "The living room window?"

I glanced at Poppy, then back at her.

"He was always at the window. We used to sit and talk. That's what we liked to do. It was sweet, you know?"

I nodded again, slowly.

"The girl?"

"Yes."

"Who is she?"

I checked Poppy again. He looked cold, a little out of it, munching his mouth in rumination.

"Who is she, Bill?"

I turned back to Allison. "His fourteen-year-old daughter."

She was a proud woman, Allison Sparks. She had a big job and an independent life, plenty of money, and a funny little drug habit, so basically she thought she knew the score, especially when it came to men, because, I supposed, she did not at heart trust them. And so here was proof that her vanity and passion had hidden the truth from her, which was that a man she'd liked a great deal had not found her attractive, but had let her think so, simply so that he could look out of her window. "Oh God," she muttered, dropping a hand against the hood of the truck. "He told you this?"

"I sort of figured it out, then he admitted it."

She stared dumbly at the windshield.

"Let's get Poppy inside, let's get this done with," I said.

She didn't have it in her to protest.

"All right, Poppy," I told him.

"Can you move this?" Allison asked Ha, pointing at the heavy, old truck.

Ha nodded. "I park it down the street."

Poppy let me lift him up. The bottle fell to the well of the truck, the liquor pouring out of it. He didn't notice. I wanted to get him inside until Marceno came, try to get him sobered up a bit so that Marceno would believe him. I took both of his arms as he stood and slipped a hand under him. He leaned heavily against me, and he smelled bad. But he made it over the pavement.

Allison opened the front door. We lurched into the foyer. Poppy leaned over the maitre d's lectern.

"Gimme something to- wait, wait-" Poppy pointed to the Havana Room door. "In there, I want privacy."

I looked to Allison.

"Well, we're closed for lunch Mondays."

"But do you have staff coming in, to clean or whatever?"

"Not until much later, four o'clock. We open at six for dinner. It's just me and Ha here now. Of course, this is exactly what I was hoping to do on my only morning off!" She looked at her watch. "I mean, I didn't leave this place until one o'clock last night."

She unlocked the Havana Room door. "Can you make it down the steps?"

"Of course," Poppy groaned.

But he couldn't, not really, and I kept him up as he staggered down the stairs. The long room was dark and I smelled smoked-out cigars. I found a light. The enormous nude loomed over the bar, her dark eyes considering me. Poppy slumped into one of the booths, his head down. "Gimme something to write with."

"I think you need some coffee, maybe something to eat."

Poppy lifted his eyes. "Forget that. Give me a pen or something." He pulled an embossed HAVANA ROOM napkin from the holder. I turned on the sconce light near his head, leaning close enough to see the broken capillaries in his nose, then handed him my pen. He had trouble holding it, more trouble than the first time I'd seen him. He looked at his hand and couldn't seem to make a fist. "I mighta broke this."

"How?"

He looked up, eyes half closed. "I tried to fight back yesterday, for a minute. They found me. They knew right where I was."

"Who?"

"Some-" He looked at the pen and threw it aside. "I got no hands!" he bellowed wetly. "Come on, gimme something-"

Allison came down the stairs and turned the light on over the bar. She seemed to have regained her composure. I studied her back in the mirror, the curve of her shoulders, her neck. Despite myself, I remembered her curled up in her bed. "I have pens, pencils…"

"No!" Poppy cried, eyes almost shut, head bobbing a bit. I wondered if he was suffering from a concussion. Hard to say, with the whiskey in him.

Allison seemed to think the same thing. "He looks bad, Bill. Like he's half asleep or something. Maybe I should call an ambulance."

Poppy showed his rotten yellow teeth. "Don't call no one."

"Here, here." Allison fished in her purse and produced a gleaming gold tube of lipstick. She popped off the top and twisted up half an inch of the red stick.

"Wait," I said, "I want you to tell somebody else this, not us."

"I ain't got time." Poppy took the lipstick and leaned over the napkin like a tired but obedient child trying to do homework he didn't quite understand. "I'm leaving this for him, then getting out of here. I got money and coffee and I'm going for a little drive."

"Where?"

"Don't know. California, maybe. Florida's warm."

"In that truck?"

"Sure, sure. A little drive. Ain't been to Florida in years." Poppy made a quick upward stroke that left a line an inch long. This was followed by three more strokes- creating the four sides of an uneven rectangle. He coughed pensively. "I didn't tell them. No pity for a old man, neither. No class, just a bunch of lowlifes."

"Who?"

Poppy made three X's in a row on the napkin. The rectangle looked catty-corner to the last X, but I was too far away to see it well.

"Who?" I repeated.

"Them boys who done this to me." He examined his drawing with simian curiosity, then folded the napkin in half. "Oh yeah." He unfolded it. "Almost forgot." He looked at Allison plaintively.

"Yes?" she said.

"See there." He stabbed at the box. "I want you to write this for Jay so he will know."

Colin Harrison

The Havana Room

"Sure. Where? Here?"

"Anywhere in there is fine!" He handed her the red lipstick. "First put C."

"Okay, C."

He rolled his head strangely, like he had water in his ear. "No, no, make it a K. It's a K!"

Allison made the correction.

"Then R, like ring-a-ding-a-bing."

"R, yes, okay."

He opened his eyes. "Then, uh, put O."

Allison caught my eye, her expression suggesting that we humor him. He seemed to be getting worse. "Okay, Poppy, you're doing very well. We have K, R, O. What's next?"

He shut his eyes again. "Put a W. Like whiskey woman. I knew a whiskey woman."

"That's it? KROW, like crow, the bird?"

"Now L-A," he insisted, eyes opening. "Just like the city."

"Pronounced la or lay?"

Poppy smiled at me malevolently. He seemed not just drunk but either crazy or brain-damaged. "I seen lawyers like you. I used to beat on guys like you."

"I'm sure you did." I leaned over to look at the napkin.

"Hey!" Poppy put his hand over it. "Take your eyeballs out of here, mister."

I leaned back. I'd see it later, I assumed. "That's it?" I asked. "The whole thing?"

"I said L-A, right?"

"KROW-lay? KROW-la?"

"Yes."

It sounded like the beginning of a Polish surname, something like Kowalski or Krawczyk, and I remembered that a number of Poles had settled in eastern Long Island in the early part of the twentieth century. Or maybe he had the spelling wrong and it was some other word, French perhaps. "What's it mean? Is it somebody's name?"

Poppy shook his head. "That's for Jay. I didn't come here to tell you."

"The word makes no sense," I told him. "Krow-lay?" How could we tell this to Marceno?

Poppy handed the napkin to Allison with tender formality. "Will you give it to him, miss?"

She nodded anxiously and tucked it into her purse.

"Allison," Ha called down the stairs. "Some men here to see you."

"Okay," she called, "send them down here."

We heard footsteps. "This is a guy named Marceno," I told her. "The man who bought Jay's land. Lucky Poppy's still here."

"But I'm going," Poppy announced. "Before they come."

Ha appeared inside the Havana Room, eyes wide open. "Miss Allison-" he began, then stumbled forward.

"Keep going, Buddha-boy."

H.J.'s two men followed Ha down the stairs, with guns pointing at the floor. They looked around, took in the room. I remembered the taller one as Denny. "Get back inside."

"Who are you?" Allison asked.

"You may call me Gabriel," said the other man, who wore a necktie and a rather good watch. "We are seekers of mislaid persons." He motioned with his gun. "I suggest you all have a sit in this lovely wee underground bar."

Denny pulled out a cell phone.

"Tell his greatness the fat one that his underpaid hoodlums are in the restaurant, that the great American artist named Wyeth is here and that he should come have a look."

Denny punched in a string of numerals.

"Lucky day," Gabriel said to me. "And thank you," he said to Poppy.

"For what?"

"You did just as we hoped, old man."

"I did?"

"You drove into Manhattan and found your friends, your intentional community." He pointed at me, then looked around. "One could make a lot of noise down here and no one would hear it."

We sat for ten minutes, saying nothing. I studied Gabriel and Denny, watched how fast they breathed. Normal, for the most part. Used to situations like this.

"I'm afraid that I have to use the bathroom," Allison said.

"Too bad."

"There's one at the end of the room."

"You'll need someone to go with you."

"All right," she sighed.

Gabriel followed her to the men's room, looked in, then let her inside. He kept the door open with his hand. "No, keep the door open there, too," he told her.

I heard some small voice of protest.

"I don't care about your bloody privacy." Gabriel stood, watching her. "That's it. Very tasteful underwear, miss, quite expensive I'd say. Victoria's Secret?"

"Is it?" called Denny, looking back and forth.

"Can't tell."

"How's her female equipment?"

"Standard. Working order." He followed Allison's actions. "Now the paper, hurry along, please."

A moment later Allison emerged. "Hope you enjoyed the show," she said.

"Sit next to Buddha-boy there," said Gabriel.

We heard a noise upstairs, a knocking. Maybe this would be Marceno.

"The boss?" said Gabriel. "Already?"

Denny stood and went upstairs. Then we heard footsteps coming down. A tall black man in a heavy coat entered, checked out the room, and stepped aside for H.J., who arrived with expectant aggression, face wrapped by sunglasses and roundly enormous, his head a thick ball of shaved flesh.

"Lamont, I like this place!" H.J. announced, looking around, teeth gleaming. "Very comfortable." He fixed on me. "The white dude lawyer! I told you to get my money, and you didn't and now you see we got a problem." He looked at Allison and lifted up his sunglasses. "Mmm, and who are you?"

"I'm the manager."

"You can manage me." He pointed at Ha. "Who's the old Chinese?"

"He works here," Allison said. "He has nothing to do with any of this."

"What's he do, clean the white man's toilets?"

"He's an excellent cook. A trained chef."

"That right? Got a specialty?" But he didn't wait for an answer, instead waving his hand at the room, enjoying his power. "All right, this is where we goin' to do business today. We goin' to get to the bottom of the whole damn thing. My uncle is sittin' in his little box of ashes waitin' for me to get this done. His ghost is tellin' me, Boy, make this right. Man works sixty-somethin' years, he ain't supposed to freeze to death. My aunt just sit at home and cry and say I got to do somethin' for the family. They puttin' a lot of pressure on me. Now I'm puttin' it on somebody else. My aunt say somethin' bad went down, somethin' ain't right. She don't like the explanation the police gave her. She say she got nobody but her nephew. So I got obligation in all this, y'all hear what I'm sayin'? I don't care how long it takes, I got the whole day. I'm goin' to Philadelphia later but right now I got the whole damn day." He looked at me again, smiled at my discomfort. "You remember me, right? Remember my anti-fuckin'-social tendencies?"

"Yes," I said.

"Good. So, where's your man at?"

"Rainey? I don't know."

"Well, call him."

"I could do that."

I pulled out my phone and dialed Jay.

H.J.'s newest man, Lamont, held his gun on Allison and Ha. Gabriel kept his on Poppy. The phone rang. No answer.

"Not there," I volunteered.

"You that Poppy I keep hearin' about?" asked H.J., pulling out a gold-plated automatic from the pocket of his coat.

Poppy shrugged. "I already told everything I got to say."

"You the man who killed my uncle Herschel?"

"It wasn't like that."

"My aunt say he was frozen to a bulldozer."

Poppy lifted his gaze. "I was working on the bulldozer. He came by and said what are you doing. He did some bulldozer work a week before. He thought I was messing it up. He thought I was doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing. I said nothing that's your business. And we had a big argument. He's bigger, got good hands. He jumped up on the Cat… I guess he got a shock and had his heart attack."

H.J. smiled hatefully. "That don't smell too good." He pointed the gun at me. "Lawyer-boy, you believe that?"

"He was driving by," moaned Poppy. "I already told this! He saw me and wanted to know what I was doing."

"That's why Herschel stopped?"

Poppy lay his head on the table. "Yes. I was adding some earth."

H.J. looked surprised. "Why?"

"Because I didn't want anyone to know what's down there."

"What is down there?" I asked.

Poppy's eyes closed. "I'm not telling you."

H.J. moved over to Poppy and put his gun directly into his ear. "My uncle Herschel see you diggin' around the field when he go drivin' by and then he stopped and got out and said stop doin' what you be doing?"

"Yes."

"Please don't shoot him!" exclaimed Allison.

H.J. jolted the gun deeper into Poppy's ear. "Why? Why he do that? On a cold and snowy day?"

Poppy started to lift his head but felt the gun. " 'Cause I was messing up the field!"

"So he said let me get up there on the tractor? This ain't makin' any sense. I ain't getting any of this."

I remembered that the tractor had been found on the sea cliff set in reverse. "Poppy," I asked. "You let him get on the Cat?"

"I didn't let him do anything. He's bigger than me."

"He got on the Cat."

"Yeah."

H.J. removed the gun, interested in this sequence. "Then what?"

"He asked what I was doing and I was so mad I told him, I told him the truth."

"Then what?"

Poppy lifted his eyes. He was a sad guy, and he didn't have time for any more lies. "He had a heart attack. He grabbed his chest and fell back."

"You told him and he fuckin' had a heart attack?" H.J. shook his head at the seeming absurdity of this tale. "You gotta do much better than that, old man."

"Is it a straight shot from wherever you were working with the bulldozer to the sea cliff?"

Poppy looked at me. "Yes, but-"

The problem, I realized, was that H.J. still did not know that the bulldozer and Herschel had been recovered from the sea cliff and moved to a barn on the adjoining property.

"Why you ask that?" said H.J. "They didn't find him in no field!"

But before I could answer, Poppy pushed himself to his feet. "I'm leaving," he announced. "I told you enough." He gestured at Allison. "Give that napkin to Jay. I can't do it."

"You ain't goin' nowhere!" said H.J. "Get back there." He waved at his bodyguard to stand in front of the door. "Lamont?"

"I'm going out to my truck-"

H.J. straightened out his arm, the gun three feet from Poppy. "You know who I am?"

"No, and I don't care," slurred Poppy. "I'm going to Florida."

"You're stayin' till I get my satisfaction."

"Nope."

"Sit down, Poppy," I warned. "These guys are serious."

"You got no reason to hurt me." Poppy held out his hands.

"Get back, old man!"

"I can't take no more," cried Poppy, unsteady on his feet. "I'm tired, my head hurts." He lurched toward the door. "I ain't been to Florida in-"

"Get back!"

"Come on, fuck you, I'm just-"

Lamont shoved Poppy backward. He hit the wall. It didn't appear to scare him, and he measured the distance to the doorway.

"Sit down, old man," said Lamont, sticking his gun out. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I'm walking out of here," said Poppy, and he did- or started to, when there was a terrible noise, and his neck exploded in blood. Allison screamed. Poppy fell over, head loose.

"Get back!" yelled Lamont, swinging the gun around at us.

Poppy lay hunched to the floor, blood spraying over the black-and-white tiles. His face grew pale, followed by a sucking sound from the neck wound, and then he went soft and died before us.

H.J. looked at his gun. It hadn't fired. He looked at Lamont, who was holding a pistol. "Shit, Lamont," said H.J. "What you do that for?"

"He was getting too close to you, boss."

"Oh God," moaned Allison as smoke drifted above us. "He's an old man! Do something."

But there was nothing to do. H.J. held us in place. "Y'all stand back," he ordered, looking around. "Fuck, Lamont! Now we got a problem, nigga!"

He certainly did, three people not his own- Allison, Ha, and mewho'd seen what his bodyguard had done. We were the problem. He looked at Allison. "You know where Rainey lives?"

Allison shook her head.

"You?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said. "But I doubt he's there. He didn't answer before."

"You know where he lives?" asked Allison.

H.J. looked at Ha and Allison. "Yo, people! You got to tell me what's goin' to get this guy to come here and give me my money, and tell me what I need to know, because otherwise we got a even bigger problem, you know what I'm sayin'?"

The room seemed hot, wheeled with a dark feeling. Four people could kill three easily enough. Things happened like this in the city from time to time. You read about it in the metro section of the paper with your coffee, shake your head at the strange carnage, then check the stock tables. The men could pull a truck up to the sidewalk doors and load out anything and no one would ever know.

"I want some answers to my question!" bellowed H.J. "I want to know what happened to my uncle and I want money for my aunt! We live in a fuckin' country where every college and university over a hundred and fifty years old, all those railroads and banks, got slave money in 'em, slave money built 'em up. Martin Luther King only got it half done. Jesse Jackson, he sold the fuck out, Clarence Thomas, he no good. White man still makin' money off the black man every day. Who owns those companies buildin' prisons, who owns the fuckin' NFL? It ain't my uncle, you see what I'm saying? Now I want to find out why he died, why he have a heart attack!"

I sat in the booth stunned, Ha next to me, his head bowed in submission.

"Boss," said Gabriel finally, his tone pacifying, "I think Lamont shot the man who could help you with that question."

H.J. told his men to clean up. Gabriel and Denny found some garbage bags and laid them out a few feet away from Poppy. Whatever had been in his lower intestines had started to seep out of him and we could smell it. They lifted him, feet and armpits, onto the bags in one motion. The blood had traveled to the grout between the tiles. Gabriel hunted around behind the bar and found some twine, which Denny used to bag up Poppy. Then the men laid him behind the bar. They found the closet behind the bar and wet-mopped the tiles. "Use the cleanser," ordered H.J., keeping his gun on me. "Not one speck. And clean the wall, too, clean it good."

They did. Fifteen minutes later, it was as if nothing had happened. The floor gleamed. Ha watched, his eyelids low, face without expression.

"What we going to do now?"

"We's goin' to think, is what we's goin' to do." H.J. straightened his shirt. "Hey," he asked me, "how we going to get this boy?"

"I really don't know."

Gabriel put his gun to Allison's head. "Talk to the man. Tell us how to find your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend!"

"Whatever you call him, miss, your penile escort, I don't care, tell my boss where to find him!"

"I don't know, I don't know!"

Gabriel made a pinched face. "Nothing comes of nothing, miss."

"I don't know. He used to come over to my apartment in the afternoon."

"Sounds romantic," prompted Gabriel.

"It was," said Allison softly, to herself.

"Pity," noted Gabriel, voice droll. "Please continue with your emotionally charged testimony."

With that, Allison lifted her head, eyes angry, mood defiant. "So yes, he came over to- well, it certainly wasn't to be with me, I see that now, it was to see-" She glanced at me, including me in her fury. "Well, there's a girl who lives across-"

"Don't!" I yelled.

"— the street. She'll be walking home in forty-five minutes along Eighty-sixth Street. She comes home at 2 p.m. from school. That's why he used to meet me at my apartment! That's the time! His daughter. If you can get his daughter you can get him," said Allison. "She'll be wearing a blue-and-white school uniform and probably be carrying some kind of backpack. She's about fourteen or fifteen and dark-haired and quite pretty."

"That's wrong," I said quickly. "The girl's in basketball practice all afternoon."

Gabriel looked at H.J.

"See?" Allison said bitterly, pointing her finger at me. "He knows. He's in on it. He knows who she is."

"You?" said H.J.

I shook my head. "She's got nothing to do with all this. She's just some kid."

"Get her," said H.J. to Gabriel.

"I'll tell you where Rainey lives," I said. "That's better."

"We know where he lives," Gabriel said.

"You do?"

"Sure. Brooklyn, Seventeenth Street. We followed you. Watched it some. Broke in, fished around. Bit of a creepy setup, no?"

I was trying to think of a way to avoid involving Sally Cowles. "Did you find the box of cash he has?"

H.J. swung his gun at Gabriel suspiciously. "Answer the man."

"No, no, we didn't find a box of cash."

"He had cash there. You were inside."

"What?" said H.J., studying Gabriel. "What's the man talking about?"

"I helped Rainey with a deal," I said quickly, "there was cash. Two hundred and something thousand. He put it in a box and took it home. I know that. I was there a few days ago and the box was empty. Your guys just admitted they were inside. I guess they didn't tell you they found the cash-"

"That's a fucking lie, Mr. Wyeth, and I'll gladly shoot your face off to prove it," said Gabriel.

H.J. was inclined to believe Gabriel, I could see, but with a margin of doubt. Which was good, because I was lying. If I'd really led Denny and Gabriel to Jay's apartment, then they couldn't have been the cause of the empty cashbox I'd found. "You ever go in that building downtown, that place my aunt talked with him?" he asked his men.

"We did once," answered Denny.

H.J., I could see, was plainly worried. The crazed aggressor who'd confronted me in the hip-hop club was absent; this H.J. was taciturn and analytical, watching each of us, then studying his cell phone on the table before him, then watching us again. Was he expecting a call from someone? Did he need to make a call? Why he was forcing this game toward whatever conclusion awaited us was not clear to me. "No, get his daughter," he ordered, looking at his watch. "We got her, then we got him. Then he has to deal with me. He has to talk to me, he gots to give me my money. And if he don't have it, then you boys got a problem."

A minute later they had bundled me into the white limousine waiting outside. It was the same one as before, late model, spotless, smoked glass. Denny and Gabriel sat across from me, each with a gun drawn. The car rolled smoothly through traffic. The heater was on, the row of little floor lights elegant. I was worried about Ha and Allison, despite her betrayal of Sally Cowles.

"Stop thinking," Gabriel said.

"I'll try," I answered.

"If it was up to me," he announced, "I'd put a wee fucking bullet in your head right now."

I didn't doubt him. "You guys are insane for doing this," I said. "Just in case you didn't know that."

They didn't listen. The driver turned on a smooth jazz station. We glided up Sixth Avenue, past Bryant Park, past Forty-second Street, past the dense corporate cliff-dwellings, offices piled into the sky, every third person on the sidewalk talking into a phone, past Radio City Music Hall, then east at Central Park, past the Plaza Hotel, and on up toward the Upper East Side.

Where could Jay be, I wondered, dreading our arrival at Sally Cowles's school. If we could go to Jay directly, then we could bypass Sally Cowles. There was still time to turn around. Where would he be? Not in his sad apartment. What interested him most? Sally Cowles. But when she was in school what did he do? He didn't work. Did he hang around outside the school? Looking in the windows? That was not a good idea and probably didn't satisfy his needs. He needed to be near oxygen, of course, needed to have access to it. Yet he was secretive about this, too. There had to be an answer, but I didn't have it.

We slid up Park Avenue, drawing closer. I wondered if I could somehow jump to the door, scramble out. Not likely. Gabriel and Denny remembered the school from the basketball game and told the driver to pull over across from the main gate.

"She'll be coming out right here," Gabriel said.

So we waited. Several mothers congregated to one side, each dressed for the occasion, if not every occasion, their lipstick perfect, sunglasses darkly aloof, hair fabuloso. I was reminded of Judith, picking up Timothy from school.

"Couple of these yummy-mummies look insufficiently serviced," noted Gabriel.

Denny looked. "Think so?"

Gabriel nodded. "You can tell by the shoes. Women needing service tend to obsess about their shoes."

Denny smiled. "You're a sick fucker, Gabriel."

"Indeed."

Now a gaggle of girls in school uniforms left the school. Boys, too, in their coats and ties. Timothy could've been among them.

"How we going to tell which one?"

"Mr. Wyeth will advise us."

"No way," I said.

More girls were coming out of the school.

"Mr. Wyeth, recognize any?"

"Go fuck yourself."

"Well, if you don't look out of the window, then will you look at this?"

I looked. And was surprised. Gabriel was holding a picture of Sally Cowles, the one that had been on Jay's wall.

"Where did you-" I stopped myself.

"Thank you very much," said Gabriel. "That's excellent. Thank you. Yes, this is her," he said. "Figured."

He looked from the photo to the school to the photo. "No one is going to think twice about a limo pulled up outside of this school." And indeed there were other limos pulled up outside, and not a few of them.

"That's her," said Gabriel suddenly. He checked the picture, looked up again.

It was Sally, walking along Eighty-sixth Street with a friend.

"Ease along behind," Gabriel told the driver. "Stay back." The car pulled along slowly. "Say goodbye to your little friend, Sally," he narrated.

The two girls came to the corner.

"Don't turn, go straight," ordered Gabriel. "Make the light, make the light!" The limo jumped across the intersection. "Now slow, slow! We're ahead of her." He looked back through the rear window. "That's it. They're saying goodbye, very good, yes, see you tomorrow, pimples and all, that's it, right along here. She's coming-" He turned to me and stuck his gun in my face. "You say one word and I'll blow your nose off, right here, in the car."

"I know where to find Rainey," I told him. "I just figured it out. We can go there. He's in his building, he's-"

"Bullshit."

"No it's not. He's at 162 Reade Street."

"We looked there, do you think we're idiots?"

"You didn't look in the right place."

"We went through the boiler room."

"Did you go upstairs?"

"We knocked on a few doors."

"I know where he is, right now! You don't have to grab her!"

"Yes we do. That's our instruction," Denny said.

"You ready?" asked Gabriel.

"Yes."

Gabriel showed me his gun. "One word from you and you'll never play catch with your boy again-"

"My boy?"

"— and his lovely mother. In Italy now, right?"

I fell backward, cursing Jay Rainey, and myself. The car stopped. Gabriel threw open his door just as Sally Cowles passed by.

"Excuse me, miss," he called with theatrical friendliness, "we're rather lost."

"Oh," she said, with a bit of an English inflection.

"I'm looking for Sixth Avenue."

She came close to the car, reassured that it was a limousine. "Well, Sixth Avenue isn't nearby, really."

Gabriel stepped out of the car, leaving the door barely cracked open. I could see part of Sally's back. He showed her a New York City street map. "We're from out of town," he said apologetically.

"It's okay," came Sally's voice, cool and sophisticated for a fourteen-year-old, "it's sort of a complicated city."

I was about to yell. But Denny shoved his gun into my armpit, then reached around and rammed three fingers into my mouth.

"See, Fifth Avenue is here," explained Sally. "And Sixth- hey!"

Suddenly she was inside the car, backpack falling in front of her, Gabriel shoveling her forward, jumping in and slamming the door behind him. "Go!" he said to the driver, locking the door. "But easily. Roll forward."

"Hey! What is this!" cried Sally, her eyes angrily studying the men, then the windows and door locks, her distance from escape. "What're you doing?"

"Mind your manners, luv," Gabriel told her. He lifted his gun and flicked his tongue against the barrel, smiling with such frank sadism that Sally lowered her head in terror, knees locked together.

"Back downtown!" Gabriel ordered the driver. Then he turned to me. "All right, time to make good on your promises."

The limo headed south along Fifth Avenue. Sally dared to steal a glance at me. "Where are we going?"

Denny shook his finger. "Confidential, miss."

She ducked her head again, her hair curtaining her face, and a moment later I saw she'd started to tremble.

"Not a sound!" bellowed Gabriel. "Not a bloody whimper! Do you understand?"

She nodded, her back starting to heave.

Maybe there's still a way out of this, I thought, leaving her unharmed and not knowing about Jay.

"Where are you taking me?" Sally sobbed, face hidden.

"Why, Sally, lass," announced Gabriel, "we're taking you to your father."

We arrived at the building on Reade Street. Sally recognized it.

"He's upstairs. I know exactly where he is!" I said. "I'm sure of it!"

"Don't hurt my father!" cried Sally. "Please!"

"Out," Gabriel said to me. "Nothing funny or they drive away."

He stepped out first, a hand on my neck. "Thought you were clever with that box of money business."

"There's a pile of cash, I'm telling you."

"You better hope so."

I pondered this, the threat in it.

"You're thinking," Gabriel said. "I can feel it. Thinking about running, doing the quick squirrel."

"No."

"Don't do it, Billy-boy."

"I could do it."

"No you couldn't."

"I'd be down the street, I-"

"I'd get one clean shot. Might hit you, too. Might blow out your dream factory. Then your son wouldn't have a dad."

We got to the front door. Gabriel took out a set of keys. Stolen from Jay's apartment, I guessed. "Don't touch the buzzer, either."

He pulled open the door and pushed me inside. The same Chinese menus as before lay on the floor.

"Upstairs," I said. "Quietly."

On the fourth floor I stopped.

"Open that one," I said, pointing to the door opposite Cowles's.

Gabriel slipped a key into the lock. Tried another. It worked.

We stepped into an empty office suite. It needed paint. You could still see the indentations on the carpet where desk and chairs had been, a ghost layout. I saw papers on the floor. Some sort of e-commerce scam.

"Where is he, Bill?" asked Gabriel, pushing me forward.

In the next room I stepped past food wrappers, cans, bottles, and newspapers. Some clothes. Somebody had been living there. Spending a lot of time, anyway. A small oxygen bottle lay among the refuse. Bits of plaster had been tracked all over the carpeting.

Then, turning the corner to the next room, I saw a wide section of a party wall had been torn out, right where a heating duct rose from the floor below. The duct serviced both the office we were in and the one next door- Cowles's office- its vent set at a height of about eight feet. Plaster and old lathing and sheet metal lay strewn heavily over the floor. Jay had cut out his side of the heating duct, vent and all, and built a hooded observation structure in this torn-out space, about the size and height of a linesman's chair at a tennis tournament. The hood's black fabric, crudely attached with a staple gun, completely enclosed the chair so that no sunlight from the windows could penetrate within. In this high position, I understood instantly, Jay could peer through the vent that serviced Cowles's office. A second vent had been exposed six feet away, and several lipstick-sized cameras had been jammed into it, their cables feeding a computer humming on the floor. But that was not all. A phone cable, no doubt a secret splice off of Cowles's office line, hung down through a broken dropped-ceiling panel and split into two wires, one of which led to a phone sitting on the floor. The other arrived at the same computer that serviced the lipstick cameras. Jay was recording everything Cowles did in his office. Every gesture, every word, every breath.

I returned my attention to the large hooded chair and stepped closer to it. What was hidden behind the fabric? I lifted the flap a bit and saw a leg and a man's shoe dangling. I dropped the flap in surprise. Dead? A suicide? Maybe Jay had heard us coming, maybe- I pulled the flap back, ready for any murderous horror- and here Jay was, in the chair, wearing a jacket and tie, leaning forward against the wall, asleep, an oxygen bottle set in a crude cradle built for it, a tube rising toward his head. A plastic breathing mask covered his nose and mouth. For a younger man, he looked enormously tired, as he was of course, dragging himself everywhere with not enough air. His lungs took shallow, too-rapid breaths, like a child with a fever. How many hours had he silently peered through the vent- studying Cowles, watching him, living his life vicariously, studying the cameras' digital footage? What did this prove to him? The impossible distance that lay between him and his daughter, now captive downstairs? Was he studying the man who would care for her after he himself was gone? And, ridiculous as it sounded, was it for this reason that he'd bought the building in the first place, unable to resist further acts of voyeurism? Or had the idea lived in the shadows of his unconscious? It didn't matter. Here he was.

"Wake him up," Gabriel told me.

I put my fingers to my lips.

"If you want this done quietly, then let me do it," I whispered. "He's liable to react. If you make a big noise, you'll have more problems."

Gabriel conceded nothing, just motioned with the gun that I should wake Jay. I leaned forward and positioned one eye behind the vent.

There was Cowles, in his suit, talking on the phone. Papers on his desk.

"Yes," he said, "we'll get it over to you. Brilliant." He hung up. His assistant came in. Cowles handed him a piece of paper. "These are the numbers for the Martin thing."

"Okay."

"What's happening to the euro?"

"Up a bit."

"How big are the blocks?"

"Varies."

"Are the Japanese buying?"

"Can't tell."

"I'll come look."

Cowles followed his assistant out of the office, and I took this opportunity to wake Jay.

"Hey," I said softly. "Jay, wake up."

I would have expected him to be startled but he wasn't, instead opening his eyes slowly and lifting his head.

"You found me," he said softly, not seeming to mind.

"Wake up, guy."

He shifted in his chair.

"You need to come downstairs," I said, handing him his coat.

"Why?"

"They've got Sally."

"Sally?"

I nodded.

"I don't get it."

"You will."

That was Gabriel, stepping forward, gun up.

Outside, the limo door opened as we approached.

"Get in," said Gabriel, and Jay and I did as we were told.

Sally, pressed between Denny and Jay, looked at each of us, stricken. She didn't recognize me, or Jay, for that matter. "What's going on? What're you going to do with me?"

I answered, trying to sound as firm as possible. "Nothing is going to happen to you, Sally."

"Something already did." She began to cry again. "How does everyone know my name?"

"If anyone touches you," said Jay, "I'll kill him."

But this, I saw, didn't comfort her, just scared her further. She looked frantically from one man to another, lips tight, hands gathered tightly over her school blouse. "Are you- am I going to be-?"

"Okay, Gabriel," I said, "you can let her go now."

"We need money first."

"Jay?" I said. "The man needs his money. Where's the cash?"

No answer. He hadn't taken his eyes off of Sally. But for the moment he'd stood behind her at the Steinway hall, he hadn't been this close to her since she was an infant. "I want to talk with her."

This only scared Sally more. But I wondered if somewhere deep within her she might sense her connection to Jay. You could see him in her. You could see the fierceness in her eyebrows and her good shoulders. She was leggy and would be more so.

"Do it fast, then," said Gabriel.

Jay leaned toward Sally. She pulled backward, frightened by his scrutiny, turned her head to one side.

"Easy, Jay," I said.

"Are you happy?" Jay asked his daughter.

"Who are you?" she said.

He breathed heavily. "Are you happy?"

"Well, not now."

"No, I mean-" Jay coughed violently. "I mean- in life."

Even Sally understood the absurdity of the question, under the circumstances. "Yeah, sure."

"Very nice chitchat," interrupted Gabriel. "But we have to-"

Jay turned toward Gabriel. He wasn't afraid of Gabriel, and Gabriel saw this.

"A minute," Gabriel conceded.

Jay turned back to Sally. "You have a nice family?"

"Yes."

"You miss your mum?"

The girl looked at him, blinking. "Who are you?"

"I was an old friend of hers."

She was suspicious. "When?"

"Years ago."

"You knew her?"

"Sure." Jay smiled, painfully.

"I miss her," she admitted. "I think about her lots."

"You look like her, you know."

"Yeah. But it just makes me sad."

Jay nodded, gnawing his lip.

"Okay," called Gabriel. "That's it!"

"Listen," Jay said to Sally Cowles, his voice hoarse with sorrow. "I've got to ask you a little favor."

"What?" She looked around to check on the others. "Is this what all this is about?"

"Hurry up, Rainman," said Gabriel.

"I want to ask you if you'll let me feel the inside of your ear. Real quick."

"That's pretty gross."

"A little, yes," Jay agreed. "That's the last thing I'll ask you."

"Well, I guess." She flipped her hair back behind her ears and leaned forward a little.

Jay took a deep, troubled breath, then reached out with his right hand. His daughter jerked in surprise when he touched her. "Easy," he murmured. His fingers touched her ear in front of her long hair, and his thumb gently ran along the inside ridge of cartilage. She looked at him and at me.

"Duck your head down a bit," he instructed.

This she did, trying not to cry.

"It's okay," I said.

Jay rubbed his daughter's ear.

"Is this-" Sally began, pulling away.

"Don't move," Jay commanded. "There." He closed his eyes, remembering, measuring the time since he'd last touched his daughter. Thirteen-odd years earlier, in a park in London, Eliza already married to Cowles, already stolen away. Jay let his fingers fall from Sally's ear.

"Yes?" I said gently.

He nodded in silence.

Sally hunched fearfully, cutting her eyes back and forth.

"Sally," Jay began, his voice grieving.

"Don't!" I said sharply. "Don't do it, Jay."

"Why?"

"Because there's no need." I matched his gaze. "It only amounts to cruelty."

Sally looked back and forth between us. "What's everyone talking about?"

"Nothing," I said. "Nothing you need to worry about."

"The money," Gabriel said.

"In a leather tool bag," answered Jay. He pulled a single key from his pocket. "Utility closet, first-floor hallway."

"Hold them here," Gabriel told Denny. He took the key and left the car.

We waited. I watched. I watched a father study his child. Jay's eyes traced the line of Sally's forehead, then her eyes, down her nose, across her lips, under her chin, caressing, holding, knowing her. "Your mother was a fine person," he said finally.

Sally didn't answer.

"And-" He coughed, then gathered something from deep within, a certainty, a will. "And, your father- your father loves you very much."

Jay had said it, had brought it forth out of himself.

"Thank you," Sally said, trying to sound cheerful and appreciative. "I love him, too."

Gabriel returned, carrying the bag. He was on the phone as well. "Bring him anyway? Fine. She can go?" He hung up.

"Miss," he said brusquely, "leave us immediately."

"I can go?" said Sally.

"Yes, get out of the car, now." He tossed Jay's keys into the car, hitting me in the head. He told me, "Here, put your fucking fingerprints all over these. Every one."

"Okay," Sally said, grabbing her backpack. "Actually, my dad works right here."

Gabriel looked to Jay and then me in confusion.

"Let her out," I said, taking the keys in my hand.

He opened the door. "Scram."

Sally leapt past him, landed on the sidewalk, and turned around to be sure she wasn't pursued. I could see that the whole episode baffled her. She'd been kidnapped for perhaps half an hour only to be delivered to her father's office. So it hadn't quite turned out like a kidnapping, really, just a bizarre episode. The anxiety drained out of her face, replaced by loveliness and curiosity. She actually bent at the waist and peered back into the car. I think she was looking for Jay, and he returned her gaze, his eyes sad.

Then the door shut and we were on our way.

Jay turned to his interrogators, coughing. "What do you need us for?"

"Boss wants a final word," answered Gabriel. "Every key," he said to me. Then he inspected the bag of cash. "Very beautiful, the sight of money," he said. "Causes optimism in human beings." He reached under his seat and slid out a leather case and nudged its lid open with his foot. Inside were small boxes of ammunition. He grabbed one and slipped it into his breast pocket. Then he noticed me watching.

Ten minutes later the car glided up to the restaurant. Gabriel had Denny make sure the heavy door was open. Lamont came out and hustled Jay and then me inside.

The main dining room was empty, all the places set perfectly, awaiting the roar of customers in a few hours. Would the restaurant's staff start to arrive as late as four, as Allison had said? Somebody had to put the wine in the cooler, start counting out steaks.

"Down the stairs, gentlemen," Gabriel directed, and we descended the nineteen marble steps.

In the Havana Room Jay confronted the sight of Allison and Ha in the far booth, H.J. waiting. Something passed between Allison and Jay that I didn't understand.

"All right," H.J. announced. "We are almost done. What time you got?"

"Two fifty-eight."

"What time your waiters start coming?" he asked Allison.

"Soon," she said. "Four."

"That's a long time. I'm hungry."

"Boss, we should just go," said Gabriel. "You should go. Denny and I will finish up here."

"Not until I get my answer about my uncle Herschel," said H.J. "I'm workin' off a debt here. That man visited me in prison like fifty times. Drove all the way upstate." He pointed at Jay. "Your man Poppy said my uncle had a heart- wait, wait, dag, I'm hungry. You got anything to eat, any decent food?"

"Boss," said Gabriel. "Listen to me!"

"I'm hungry. Can't think without calories. Brain uses the most, you know that? I'm fat but I'm dangerous, yo. America loves the fat black man, thinks he ain't dangerous."

"What?" said Lamont.

"Hey, George Foreman, he's fat and rich, you got Bill Cosby, you got Al Roker, the weatherman, you got Sinbad, you got that fat guy in the beer commercials." He looked at Allison expectantly. "All these black men rich because the white man ain't scared of a fat black man."

"We don't have much down here," said Allison. "We've got some bar food, nuts, pretzels, things like that."

"Fuckin' paste," said H.J. "No good for you."

Denny pointed. "There's a little kitchen behind the bar."

"Does the gentleman like fish?" asked Ha.

Allison stared at him. "I don't know," she said slowly, though the question had not been addressed to her.

"Fish? No shit. You got fish?" said H.J.

Ha looked dryly at Allison. "We have good fish here, very fresh."

H.J. pointed at Ha, head hung meekly. "You said he can cook?"

Allison glanced at Ha. "Yes, his specialty is fish."

"What, swordfish? Tuna steak?"

"What do you have, Ha?" asked Allison, her voice a confection of sincerity.

Ha nodded, as if in thought. "I have the special fish, very good delicacy. Makes sushi."

"You do? In a steakhouse?" asked H.J.

"Very good, yes. We have the fresh fish in the aquarium you see, behind bar, under shelf."

"I need to fill myself up," said H.J. "Fish ain't goin' do that."

Denny went around the bar. "It's here." He bent down for a moment and we couldn't see him. "Goddamned ugly fish!"

"But it's a specialty," said Allison. "Sort of Chinese sushi. Ha was Mao Tse-tung's chef, you know that?"

"I'm hungry, too," admitted Denny.

"The old Chinese guy, the emperor or some shit?"

Ha nodded humbly.

"Gimme that fish you used to make for the Chinese emperor," said H.J. "We'll get some burgers on the road." He pointed his gun at Jay. "Then I'm going to talk to this guy. 'Cause it ain't just about the fuckin' money." He looked back at Ha. "Get started."

"If you wish."

"Yeah, we're hungry here." H.J. smiled at Lamont. "Got to keep up the strength. We got a big party tonight."

Ha lowered his head. "I work very fast, you see."

He stood up from the table where he'd been sitting and shuffled under the bar bridge. He disconnected the bubbler in the tank and rolled back through the bar. Then he laid his table piece on top of it and retrieved the rolled white cloth filled with knives. "Before I open this," he said, "I have to tell you, these very sharp knives. I need these to prepare fish. Please do not shoot Ha. These knives just for fish."

Denny nodded impatiently. "We know. That's fine."

He trapped the fish in the tank, then speared it through the nose.

"So, I take this-" Ha deftly slit open the wriggling fish. "We were going to have this fish served for tonight," he said, setting out his little bowls for the different organs.

"People pay a lot for this fish," Allison said, "you'd be surprised."

"H.J.," Gabriel said, watching Ha's progress. "I've worked for you three years, okay? I've been loyal and true. I only argue when I think I should. I think we should go. You should go. You got a problem Denny and I got to deal with. These people saw everything."

H.J. shook his head. "We got ten minutes, maybe, we got time. Traffic's already bad. I'm going to get my fish first." He pointed at Jay. "Then I'ma deal with you, muthafucka."

At once a silence hung over us. I noticed that Jay was the only one in the room who seemed unafraid. The strangeness and danger of the room had no effect on him. Then again, he did not know about Poppy, who lay trussed and bagged and stiffening on the other side of the bar.

Jay looked at me. "They made you tell them about Sally?"

I glanced at Allison. "I made a terrible mistake," I said. "I told Allison."

"On the other hand, I wouldn't have met her," Jay said. "Not yet, anyway."

"I guess not."

"Your daughter?" asked Allison, voice subdued.

Jay regarded her. I could see that he lived still in the brief minutes he'd had with Sally. "Yes," he answered. "My daughter."

She wanted to be angry with him, Allison, she wanted to hate him, but instead tears came as she looked at Jay, then at me, then away, trying to hold on to her pride. "Why didn't you tell me?" she said, facing Jay. "Why?"

"I didn't think you'd like it."

"It wouldn't have mattered," she cried. "Don't you understand, don't you see how much I-?" She looked away, unable to say it.

"You what-?" Jay began.

She struggled to respond, not used to making statements of satisfaction and happiness. "It was nice."

Nice. A word that counted, after all. She withdrew the napkin from her purse and handed it to Jay.

"What's this?" he asked, taking it.

"Poppy drew that for you," I said. "He told Allison to write the word."

Jay took the napkin. It was small in his hand, already a little rumpled, and he studied it a moment, lips pressed together, eyes wincing. Confusion- then total recognition. Total shocked recognition. He dropped his head as if he'd been clubbed.

"What?"

Jay studied the napkin, folded it, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his jacket. He turned to me. "Sally's gone, right? She's okay?"

"Yes," I said, "but-?"

"How we comin' with my food!" announced H.J.

"Very fast," Ha narrated suddenly, with greater energy, "a little rice and seaweed, for the very good sushi… I cut this… and roll on the finger…" Within the minute he had prepared eight identical pieces of sushi. I watched his knife movements through and around the bowls of organs, where the poison was, but I could not be sure what he'd done. Eight pieces was more than the standard number of portions. Then again, as I recalled, there was plenty enough poison in the fish's organs for eight pieces.

"Who will be having some of this, please?" Ha asked.

H.J. pointed at his men. "We'll split it."

"I don't like fish," muttered Lamont.

"So, some for each? Two each?" said Ha, carefully laying out the plates and putting two pieces of fish on each one.

"Yeah, whatever," said Gabriel, reaching for the first plate.

"No, no, please," said Ha. "I am not done! But you will be first." He edged the plate back to himself and appeared to crimp the ends of the sushi a bit, give them an extra roll, and like a portrait artist, he sight-checked his subject, calculating, I guessed, Gabriel's weight and age, all in a glance, as meanwhile his small knife dipped softly into one of the organ bowls, then darted back to the plate, wiping the two pieces of sushi quickly while his other hand garnished the plate with a flowered carrot- a kind of magic act of misdirection and flourish. "There!" Ha said. "Now."

Gabriel slid the plate down the bar in front of himself, but seemed disinterested.

Meanwhile Ha decorated two more two-piece servings of Shao-tzou. I watched the knife dip into the organ bowls each time while the other hand manipulated seaweed and rice. Again the misdirection and fanning, the flickering fingers. He set the four pieces of sushi on two small plates and Denny picked them up, handed one plate to H.J., then quickly shoved a piece of fish into his mouth. "Good," he announced with his mouth full.

"Who will have left over?" Ha asked the room. "Two more pieces. Allison?"

"No thank you, Ha."

"Mr. Jay?" asked Ha.

"Sure. But I also want a cigar."

"A cigar?"

H.J. pointed at the wall of cigars with his gold-plated automatic. "Get the muthafucka a cigar, he been no trouble. Let him smoke it while I smoke him, smoke the goddamn truth out of him. You ready for my questions, boy? I got lots of questions, like how come nobody fuckin' knows what happened to my uncle."

Denny walked down to the wall of cigars, drew out one, replaced it, drew out another, then returned to Jay, handing him the cigar. "Montecristo," he advised. "Very good."

"I mean," H.J. continued, his face a righteous scowl, "what kind of man was this Poppy dude? He got them worried eyes, like he got something he always thinking about! How come I think he just some kind of lying cracker? Can you tell me that? Can anybody tell me that?"

No one could. Meanwhile Ha finished Jay's piece. I watched his knife. It seemed to do what it had done before. He placed the plate in front of Jay. "One piece left over. This is just right," he said to me. His hands were a blur, pinching the strip of flesh and rolling it up in rice, dipping a knife into one bowl then the next. "For you."

I must have looked startled as he put the plate before me.

"Do not worry, Mr. Wyeth." Ha's old eyes disappeared into amused slits but his gaze stayed fixed on mine. "Just enjoy. Ha is giving you very good fish today. You know this, you see this fish before, you must show the others it is very good to eat."

I took the piece of sushi, looked at it. Ha shuffled out from the bar and toward H.J. and Gabriel, who had not eaten any fish. "Please, it is very good. Protein. Very strong." Then he turned back to me. "Is it good?"

I watched Jay set his cigar on the table next to his plate. I saw Allison watch me. I popped the piece of fish in my mouth. I chewed.

"Hmm," I told them, "that is terrific."

"Yes."

"Are you sure there's no more?" I said. "I could eat a boatload of this stuff."

Ha bowed his head in apology.

Denny ate his second piece, Gabriel tasted his first. We needed a pause, a lag of a minute. I listened, and thought I heard the first footsteps of the staff arriving upstairs.

Allison looked at her watch.

"What's that?" demanded H.J.

"The restaurant is opening," she said. "I've got waiters and waitresses arriving, sous-chefs, busboys, everybody."

"Can't you close it?"

"No," said Allison. "I'd have to call thirty people."

We heard a vacuum cleaner start up.

"You lock that door at the top of the stairs?" asked H.J.

Gabriel nodded.

"Nobody can get down here?"

"No."

"What time will everybody leave?"

"Maybe one a.m.," said Allison. "That's a long time from now."

"Big night planned?" I said to Allison, trying to kill time. Jay was studying his cigar.

"Convention bookings, two waves. Insurance salesmen or something. They'll be there all night."

Ha busied himself with cleaning up. Now it seemed there was a lot of spit in my mouth. I glanced at Gabriel; he'd eaten his second piece, H.J. his first. Jay had lifted his piece, examining the skill of its creation.

"I'm feeling poorly," Denny announced. "Numb. My eyes don't move." He tried to grasp the bar but toppled over, heavily, right in front of me, gun loose in his hand.

"Denny?" Gabriel lifted his gun as he watched Denny's legs shake queerly. But then he himself was blinking rapidly and began to wave his hands around his head as if to stop a pestering fly, wetness spreading across his crotch. He fell down on one knee, pitched sideways.

"What the fuck?" cried H.J., mouth full. "Denny? Gabriel?"

Ha remained stooped over the bar, the portrait of servility. Mournful, almost. I wanted him to look up at me now, because of course I had eaten the fish in good faith, in all the faith that I had, and I needed- as I was feeling odd- I needed to know that I hadn't eaten too much, that Ha had only served me the right amount, just enough and no more. I felt oddly disconnected from my thoughts, unafraid, in fact, to reach down and take Denny's gun from his hand.

"Hey!" yelled Lamont, noticing. He pointed the gun at Ha, at Jay, at me.

"I'm sick," called H.J., lurching toward the doorway. "Get me out of here."

Lamont swung his gun at me.

I pointed Denny's gun at him and fired — then felt a kind of electric zipper running up the back of my throat. I wondered about my eyes, and I lifted my hand to touch them, but it was too heavy to lift. I fell sideways in my booth and the room broke into crooked planes. Maybe Ha wanted to kill all of us, maybe that was the truth. Jay had his piece of sushi in his fingers. About to put it in his mouth. "Fish," I coughed, pointing.

"What?"

But if he ate the fish or spat it out, or if H.J. made it up the stairs, or if Lamont was shot I didn't know, for I slumped in the corner of the booth, staring at the salt shaker. The roof of my mouth now itched terribly, and my toes and hands began to tingle and turn numb. I could not move or refocus my eyes. Perhaps they had closed, I didn't know. Some time may have passed… in the meantime I felt my breath within my chest, moist, my whole life in there, as it is with everyone's, and I felt a peacefulness at the thought of death, perhaps even a willingness to die, if it was really so easy as this, but then I either saw or imagined that I saw Jay bend forward coughing, at first violently and then weakly. Had he eaten the fish? Allison may have rushed to him. I became fascinated by her hair, a wig of translucent snakes that convulsed rhythmically above her head. Allison knelt to the floor, and I watched Jay get up or not. But whether this was dream or truth is lost to me now… a cascade of sparks froze against the surface of my face until it caramelized and cracked into distinct jigsaw shapes of numbness, and they fell out and away from my face piece by piece and it was then that I believed I heard- what sounded most distinctly like- another gunshot, and I saw or believed I saw the speeding bullet appear before me, the slo-mo rotation of the slug trailing an elegant thread of blue smoke, and just as the slug approached my face one of the melted jigsaw puzzle pieces fell away, and the bullet- still rotating to perfection- pierced it, making it shatter like glass, yet silently, and then continue into and through the empty place on my cheek. Of course this was impossible. I had the sensation of falling into myself, folding downward, heart collapsing into my lungs, lungs into my intestines. Then I went blind. It was not the sensation of darkness but of nothingness, like trying to see the world when one is asleep, and I felt something large twitch in my ear and it must have been my eardrum reacting to a loud human sound, and I sensed heat or, more accurately, smoke, some smoke or burnt vapor spiraled up my nose, familiar yet ominous, and there was a scream that seemed to take forever against the same eardrum, and only afterward did I understand it was a woman's scream, and who she was I did not know. You cannot know the usual things when you have eaten Shao-tzou fugu fish from China. You cannot know who people are, including yourself. You can only hope that there is still a breath in you somewhere, a faint glowing in the lungs, and perhaps too you know that you have fallen in dumb paralysis to the cold black-and-white tiles of the Havana Room, which would seem the first step toward being permanently dead.