concrete, steel and artificial space. I saw it all around. I saw it from space. How thin it was from there. How God with a shovel, a spade, a can opener, could peel it off and toss it in the sea, if he so wished.
How fragile it all was.
I saw a woman on a rooftop. She wore a long brown overcoat. She stood at the edge of the roof. She had something in her hand. I couldn’t make out what it was. She didn’t move. She was thinking, too. She’d been hurt, like me. Hoping to take some solace from the view. Letting her imagination create a world from a detail on the horizon. Yes. That could be me. Living there. In that building, way up north. The thirty-third floor of that building there. There’d be children in that home. Happy, playing children. And paintings on the wall. And phone calls from friends. A life. A place.
A home that gave her more than pain and dread and solitude.
My father spoke to me.
A man did not give up.
I shook myself. I resolved to do my job. I had a client. My client needed me. He sure as hell needed somebody. Soldier on, I said. Be right. Be good. The rest will take care of itself.
I wasn’t sure I really bought into it. But I couldn’t resist it, either. I didn’t have much choice. I wasn’t suicidal.
I loved my misery too much to give it up.
I sat and thought.
Strange, I mused, that FitzGibbon would insist that I stay on. If he was involved in something, it could only mean he figured I was incompetent enough to cause no harm. Not beyond the realm of possibility. Though I preferred other theories. That he wasn’t. That he could see that he needed a man of my sterling abilities to get his only natural son out of this mess.
The problem being, of course, that everything pointed to the opposite conclusion.
I gathered up my four-by-six index cards, with the scribbles and lines. I untacked them from the walls. I put them in my jacket pocket. I took the elevator down. I went out the revolving door. I walked down the avenue. I stopped at Michel’s. Last time I’d be there for a while. I sat at the bar. I had a steak. Onions fried in butter. Fuck cholesterol. A glass of Australian Shiraz. Another. Three. I placed the cards on the bar, in groups of five. I looked at them. I read the words. I followed the lines. I wrote in the margins. I drew more lines. I’d stolen some colored pens from the office supply closet. A man of action thinks ahead.
When I got bored with the colored pens, I made a list:
Larry Silver is dead. •
His body was found in an alley three blocks from Jules’s loft; blunt trauma to the head; his body had been covered with a cardboard box. •
The perp was probably right-handed, and Larry was probably sitting down when he got whacked. •
Jules is right-handed. •
He smokes my brand. •
Larry Silver was a lowlife and a snake, a penny-ante drug dealer, a small-time scam artist with pretensions to more. •
In other words, he probably deserved what he got. •
Jules is a bit of a nutcase; he disfigures himself; has some kind of samurai fetish; might be suicidal. •
He has a girlfriend, Lisa; she is a nutcase too. •
But rather sexy, in a tiny green-eyed junkie kind of way. •
She has a dragon tattoo. •
Jules has a lion tattoo. •
Absolutely nobody is telling me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. •
But then, isn’t that always the case.
I thought. I pondered. I came to a conclusion.
I didn’t know a fucking thing.
70.
I drifted in and out of sleep. I stayed suspended in that dreamy state. To live a half-life, suspended between dream and blissful blank sleep, alive and not alive, I mused. Maybe death was something like this. Dreaming, I thought, not for the first time, might be practice for the afterlife.
I finally dragged myself out of bed. Out of the house. It was closer to eleven o’clock than ten. I felt vague and dirty.
At the corner, waiting for the light to change, I remembered. Where was I going?
Things were different now.
I walked back to the house. I sat on the couch.
It made me uncomfortable. It was someone else’s couch.
I got up.
I sat in the armchair.
I considered the options.
I couldn’t go to work. I couldn’t stay in the house. The ghosts would suck me dry.
There was only one option. I packed up the laptop. I stuffed my index cards into the computer bag.
I went to Starbucks.
I was surprised to find one of the big plush armchairs free. I plugged in the laptop. I set my papers on the chair. To discourage interlopers. I went to the counter. I ordered a tall skinny latte. I smiled at the fellow at the cash. I cooed at some babies in strollers. I nodded at my fellow laptop geeks. I eavesdropped on some chatter from the three girls studying for the bar exam. I took my coffee to my chair. I fired up the computer. I thanked the Lord for wireless access. I checked my voice mail, e-mail. Nothing urgent. I opened the Times. I sat back. I looked around.
Hey, I thought. This isn’t half bad. I could get used to it.
I was halfway through the Times when the laptop beeped. E-mail. I opened it up. It was from a name I didn’t recognize. There was an attachment. Virus warnings went off in my head.
My cell phone rang. I picked it up. It was Butch.
Don’t delete it, he said.
What?
Download it.
Okay.
Butch hung up.
I downloaded the attachment. Opened it up. PDF files. I took a look. Scanned documents. Old. It didn’t take me long to recognize them. The trust file.
Shit. Had to love that Butch.
I spent a few hours reading musty documents. Without the must. This time I had the luxury. It was my only case. What else was I going to do? I plowed through it all. Every page. Every dusty word of every convoluted clause of every will and trust deed, until I got back to the FitzGibbon trusts again. ‘Twenty million dollars to his issue, upon reaching their maturity.’ An old-fashioned word, ‘issue.’ Babies issuing from the womb. Women as vessels. From which issued the fathers’ progeny. Very quaint. I could hear the protests, if someone used it now.
I called Dorita. Gave her my new office address. She said she’d come by later. But only after five. She had stuff to do.
Damn. Stuff to do. Never thought I’d feel a twinge of jealousy at those words.
I was edgy. All those lattes. I didn’t want to leave my comfy chair. Some pregnant woman would purloin it, the second I got up. But I had to get out of there. Take a walk. Air out the pores. Come back at five. Where to go, though?
Might as well drop in and see how the client’s doing. Sure. Why not?
Jules was there. I was a little disconcerted. I didn’t really have anything to talk to him about. I didn’t want to
