both times. He’s got no reason to call you a liar, so he’ll go away. Right? Ed, you there?”
“I’m here.” Ed licked his lips, watched his wife watching him in the doorway.
“I’ll go over the messages with you,” George said, and went over them with him. The names, the times the messages came, the phone number on the first message, the times George allegedly phoned him to get the messages. He made Ed repeat them, which he did, Pam frowning at him, and then George said, “I’ll get in touch in a couple days. Now I got to get out of here. Don’t worry about a thing, Ed.” And hung up.
Ed kept holding the receiver to his ear. He knew George had hung up. He knew sooner or later he was going to have to hang up too, but until he did, until he broke the connection at his end, nothing could move forward. As soon as he hung up, reality would break in, Pam would start asking questions, strangers would come to the door. But not till he hung up the telephone.
He stood holding the receiver to his ear.
Five
Midnight. Matt Rosenstein stepped into the sidewalk phone booth and shut the door to make the light come on. He dialed the number, then opened the door partway again, enough to switch the light back off. Then he leaned against the glass wall and listened to the ringing.
Matt Rosenstein was a heavyset man of forty-two with irritable, intelligent eyes and a heavy, stupid jaw. He’d started pushing garment racks around Seventh Avenue in New York in his late teens, and the first crime for money he ever committed was helping punch some people out in an office down on Varrick Street. He never knew what it was all about and he never much cared. He and three other guys got thirty bucks each to go downtown and punch these people out, and they did, and that was it. And it was easier work than pushing garment racks up and down the sidewalk. In the twenty-four years since that incident, Rosenstein had committed most of the felonies on the books — kidnapping was about the only major exception — and every commission had been strictly for money. He’d burned people’s diners down when they wanted a fire for the insurance. He’d stolen, he’d hijacked, he’d extorted, he’d blackmailed, he’d murdered, he’d swindled. Whatever came along, it never mattered. Money was money, and more money was more money, and a tough, thick-skinned guy with intelligent eyes and a stupid jaw could make out in this world.
Until four years ago when he’d met Paul Brock, his personal life had been bare but heterosexual. He’d taken sex the way he’d taken money, where he could get it and any way he could get his hands on it. It had never pleased him as much as money, but it had never occurred to him there might be any reason for that other than his own preoccupation or the dullness of the pigs he invariably wound up with.
Paul Brock was a partner in a men’s boutique on Hudson Street that needed a fire preceded by a robbery, and one of the other partners got onto Matt, and that was how they met. Matt looked at Brock, recorded the fact that he was a faggot, and ignored it. Business was business. But the night before the fire they were alone together in the stockroom, Brock explaining what to take and what to leave, and Matt found himself patting his cupped hand against the back of Brock’s neck. Brock looked at him, and Matt saw the fear in Brock’s eyes, and he shook his head and just kept patting. And Brock sort of went limp, his shoulders sagged and his eyes closed, and he leaned forward toward Matt as though he’d fallen over on his face, and that was how it started.
As far as Matt Rosenstein was concerned, though, he himself was still straight. Brock was a faggot, and the relationship they had was sex-based, but that was just because living with a guy had business advantages and other advantages over living with a broad. Matt was still straight, and when he got a shot at a woman he still took it and it still wasn’t very good, but he was still straight.
Like Uhl’s woman down in Washington this afternoon. Now, she might have been okay. She looked as though she ought to be a real tiger in the rack, but of course by the time she opened her head about Georgy Porgy she wasn’t feeling too frisky anymore, and the way it turned out she lay there and took it when he climbed abroad. So it was fun, but not a hell of a lot fun. Anybody in his right mind would prefer a Paul Brock to something like that. You wouldn’t have to be a fag.
And Paul came in handy in a lot of ways. Like at the moment he was on watch in front of the house. The two of them had been there since about eight o’clock this evening, waiting to see something happen, and nothing had happened. At twenty to twelve the last light went out in there, and that was when Matt said, “Stay here. If he comes out, let him have it in the leg. I’ll be right back.” And he’d driven here, to this phone booth on a corner three blocks away, and now the phone was making its ringing sound in his ear, and after fourteen rings there was at last a click, and then a silence, and than a shaky, small male voice said, “Hello?”
“Let me talk to George,” Matt said.
There was a sharp intake of breath, and then silence, and then words in a rush: “There isn’t any George here. You’ve got the wrong number.”
“No, I don’t, honey. I want to talk to George Uhl.”
“There’s no one here by that name.” The voice was shakier than ever.
Had something got George’s wind up? Had he taken off someplace? Matt said, “Then how do I get in touch with him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know any George Uhl.” The shakiness in his voice called him a liar with every word he said.
Matt nodded comfortably at the phone. “I’m okay, baby,” he said. “I’m straight. I’m Matt Rosenstein. I just talked to George yesterday. I want to talk to him again, that’s all.”
“Matt Rosenstein?” The voice sounded uncertain now.
Matt frowned. Had it been a mistake to mention his name? George would be running from that guy Parker these days, wouldn’t he? Not from Matt Rosenstein. He said, “Sure. George and me are old buddies.”
Still uncertain, the voice said, “He mentioned your name. He did mention your name.”
“Well, sure.”
“But he isn’t here now. I honestly don’t know where he is.” Then, with gathering certainty, “But if you want to leave a message— “
“When did he leave?”
“He never was here,” the voice said very quickly again, and Matt knew he was lying. He’d just said he isn’t here now. “But he’ll be calling here,” the voice said. “You want me to give him a message?”
