'You're sure it was New York though?'
'Yeah. New York. Look,' she said, 'aren't you pretty old for a lawyer?'
It was as if she'd just looked at him maybe. Okay, Perry Mason he wasn't.
'Sure, but think of all my experience.' He was still sitting in that stupid swinging chair; she was still standing over him like a concerned mother checking for boo-boos. Where does it hurt…?
William got up, but it was like trying to disembark from a moving ship. He teetered, he tottered, he fell back down in the chair.
'Whoa,' she said, taking him by the inside of his arm and pulling him up and out. 'Take it easy, okay,' leading him to the door as if he were Ray Charles maybe. 'It's plenty hot out there.'
Plenty.
'Oh,' William said, 'one thing. We sent a representative down here some time ago, but we never heard if he contacted you.'
'Representative? Uh uh. I didn't see him. But then I've been in and out.'
'Sure,' William said. 'Thanks anyway.'
'Don't mention it. You can keep the card if you want.'
But William was already ahead of her; he had it firmly tucked inside his pocket. He shook her hand, then walked back out into the furnace.
Okay, he wasn't ready to yell eureka. He was still running on fumes; he didn't have much of anything. But he had that card. You follow a list with names on it and none of them are where they're supposed to be. None of them exist. Up till now. Mrs. Winters was on the list, but Mrs. Winters was real. Because someone else had known her too. Someone in New York, someone who liked to send Christmas cards. He didn't have much, but he had that.
Merry Christmas, William.’
NINE
Somehow William managed to make it back from the hooker's apartment in one piece.
Then he made the awful mistake of waking up.
First of all, there was the hangover: Someone had been using his head as a Chinese gong.
Second of all-there was the room: Someone had criminally assaulted someone else and not even bothered to cover up the evidence. Absolutely.
There was that overturned coffee table at the foot of the bed, and just look at his clothes-strewn all over the place as if they'd been ripped right off his body. Of course someone had assaulted someone else-only that someone was him-so was the someone he'd assaulted. He'd beaten himself up-with a little assistance from his good friend Jack. Take a bow please.
He surveyed the crime scene with sober dispassion- okay, almost sober, gazing at his twisted shirt stained with vomit, at his pants, each leg pointing in a different direction, at something caught just beneath the right leg, the tip of it barely peeking out. What's this?
He reached down and lifted it up.
The photograph. Santini, Jean, and himself. Three Eyes. It had fallen out of his pocket.
He stared at it through barely opened eyes. Still, this time he noticed things he hadn't seen before, little things: the very edge of a gun peeking out from the waistband of Santini's pants, a white streak on the toe of Jean's left shoe, and about himself-the way his jacket cuffs didn't match, one being clearly shorter than the other. He remembered now; Rachel was going to take it to the tailors, was just about to do that. But then Rachel had taken his heart to the cleaners instead, and so he'd continued to wear it that way until he'd worn it out.
Of the three of them, Santini looked every bit the detective. He was the only one who did. Jean, on the other hand, resembled a jailhouse snitch loaded with secrets, and he looked exactly like what he was. A fish out of water, someone who'd gone from investigating car accidents to investigating human ones with no particular talent for either.
William went into the shower and hung his head under a cold spray.
He felt like he'd been away-to a foreign country maybe, on some whirlwind tour like the kind Mr. Leonati went on-Mr. Leonati who lived across the hall and always left for these things looking calm and relaxed but always returned from them looking dazed and battered. The hotels had overbooked; the buses had broken down; someone had stolen his money. All those brochures filled cover to cover with pretty pictures of tranquil places had lied to him. It hadn't turned out the way they said it would. And now William, who'd never been on a whirlwind tour, or any tour for that matter, thought that this is what it must feel like.
He'd gone on a journey too-and with similarly false expectations. He'd gone to bury Jean; instead he'd dug him up.
And now he remembered other things-his trip home for instance; she showing him to the door through his stench of vomit, spending most of the nauseating subway ride home replaying what she'd told him, all the while consumed by something. What? Envy, fear, hilarity? Okay envy-from someone who'd been put out to pasture to someone who was maybe still in the race. And just a little fear too-that all the things he thought were far behind him weren't, that the compromises he'd made, that that tidy little armistice he'd signed-were about to be challenged. I know. Silly of him perhaps, but age does that to you. It's the biggest case of my life-that's what Jean said. Between pictures probably.
Poor Jean, he thought, as he trudged out of the shower and spent five minutes over the toilet-courtesy of his nagging prostate. Then back to the comfort of his chair where he downed three Bayer aspirin with a cup of stale orange juice.
Why had he said it? What did it matter? So Jean was down to chasing runaways. Have you seen this child? So Jean had maybe found a rich runaway, at least one with rich parents who'd been tremendously grateful when Jean collared them on the phone. So maybe he was going to get a big reward and retire to a big house where he could tell big stories to Miss Eat Your Heart Out-all about how he used to dig up big-time dirt on big-time people and dish it out to big-time lawyers, occasionally throwing the juicier tidbits to Confidential or certain columnists who'd print it blind. What Park Avenue shyster is tiptoeing through the tulips in very light loafers? What very hot chanteuse is doing the rhumba with what very hot politico? Remember? If not the biggest case of his life-maybe the biggest payoff, and these days maybe that made it the biggest case of his life.
He was an old man, she said. Sometimes that's what old men do. They lie-to themselves, to hookers with crimson tattoos on their thighs.
And even though, as he put forth this perfectly reasonable explanation, as he ridiculed the very notion of Jean back on a case-on any case-even as he knew that in large part it was a story created to appease the storyteller, knowing that didn't alter a thing. Not yet. After all, the storyteller was appeased. Just look at him.
Okay, almost appeased. Ninety-nine percent appeased- ready to stand up to anyone who'd dare suggest- what if what he said is true-and show them the door.
So now, his hangover dulled, it was his shoulder that began to act up. A sign, his shoulder was, a warning, a dear but annoying friend tap, tap, tapping him there to get him to look at himself and remember. Before he got too riled up and maybe started to believe things he shouldn't. And so he did remember. After all, he had the picture filed right under S for shooting, and right after R for Rachel. There.
There's William reading the Daily News. William sipping his coffee from Micky D's. William dozing off on his suddenly comfortable bridge chair like old guys are prone to do, guys who pull night shifts and dream about their wife doing their business partner every way to Sunday on a motel vibromatic off Utopia Parkway. Guys like that. Even as a Chevy Impala with one broken headlight circles Weissman's Auto Parts like someone lost; once, twice, three times around the block till it finally pulls over and lets two black men out onto the pavement. Three black men really-counting the one still sitting in the car-seven empty cans of Colt 45, a stolen sawed- off shotgun, and a spanking-new jigaboo special-.22 caliber to the uninitiated-check the police manifest for further corroboration.
William still dozing, somewhere between Brooklyn and Pimlico by now, although what's this? Clank, bink, boom. Someone being rude enough to ruin his beauty sleep- that's what it is. William opening his eyes and actually hearing someone trying to jimmy open the front door. Imagine that. They hired you as a security guard, didn't they, and suddenly that's what you're being asked to do. Guard. Not sleep, not sample the coffee and donuts from every
