got ’em all convinced I’m a monster. You follow me?”
“He’s not the only blow dealer in New York, is what I’m saying. You gotta know somebody else.”
Jeez. He was still fixated on getting his coke. “No, Mike,
“I’d go a hundred,” Mike said, putting the singles with the fives.
“Try the car service on Avenue D. Go talk to Hector.” Hector was most likely in Rikers, but Harry was hoping Mike would run into some desperate crackhead and get robbed. “Otherwise, First Avenue, 8th Street, 9th Street. Those guys are always open.”
“Scrubbing powder,” Mike said. “Pure, unadulterated street garbage. I don’t put that trash in my body.”
Ah, yes. It was the cheap stuff that hurt you. “You remember the last time you saw her?”
Mike said, “Who?” He was halfway through a stack of tens, and had to start over. His totals were bound to be miles off. “Oh, yeah. That tall girl with the dark hair. What’s her name?”
“Julia, Mike. Her name is Julia.”
“Right, Julia. You gotta be careful of girls like her.”
“Seen her lately?”
“She was in, I don’t know, one night last week. Why? What’ve you got going with her?”
“Was she alone?”
“She came in alone and got guys to buy her drinks until her boyfriend showed up. You know the guy.”
“I know what guy?”
“The boyfriend. Kind of a big nose, real Italianlooking. You used to be friends with him.”
Harry said, “Who?”
“Jimmy,” Mike said, “Jimmy De Steffano.”
Harry was right. Hector was still on the good-boy bench, and the car service was shuttered, but Hector’s cousin Junior had moved the operation, and he was running it out of a bodega on 2nd Street. Junior carved him a gram of rock from his private stash. For old time’s sake, he said.
Harry bindled the gram into a fifty, and that more than got him past Felix, the four-till-midnight doorman at Julia’s co-op. After Harry assured him he’d keep his name out of it, Felix slipped him in with keys he should’ve been fired for using.
The apartment was basically one big room with an arched, wall-length window that faced east and let in lots of light but didn’t offer much of a view. In another part of town, the pad would’ve passed for a loft, the rambling space split into rooms by furniture, about twenty-five percent of it plasterboarded into a bedroom, and through there, the bathroom.
Julia’s estimated time of arrival, one half-hour. To get showered and changed and telephone vicious, half-true gossip to friends about other friends who were either in or out of their dinner plans. He hoped she showed up alone. He didn’t want to deal with De Steffano, not right now. Jimmy no doubt did backflips to convince Julia how tough he was, and if he felt any pressure to put his money where his mouth was, Harry’d have to kick his ass for him, and he didn’t want to do that.
Irish Mike’s tidbit stung Harry. He was wounded, but not because De Steffano had scooped up Julia. All anybody ever did was act according to his character, and Jimmy was always the kind of guy who’d get your girl in bed the second your back was turned. No point expecting him to change now.
But De Steffano’d had a golden opportunity to come clean. Instead, he’d let Harry find out through somebody else. That’s what got him. Julia wasn’t his girl anymore, and what he had to keep in mind, the one thing he did not want out of this life or any other, was Julia Stencyk hanging around his neck like a stone. But De Steffano could at least have told him.
Every bill was due. Phone, three months worth of cable TV, Con Edison. A charge account had been turned over to a collection agency, one of Julia’s financial managers having fallen down on the job.
Harry sorted through Julia’s jewelry box for a pair of diamond-stud earrings he’d bought her during a flush period. He found them easy enough, slipped them into his pocket, and started opening dresser drawers. There was a copy of his birth certificate in here somewhere, and he wanted it.
He should’ve avoided the drawer where she kept her photographs, but he didn’t. There were recent photos of Julia with Jimmy, among the same faces and in the same places that she used to hang out in with Harry. He dug through stacks of snapshots and landed in the Harry era, Harry and Julia with some castmates from her sitcom, all grown up and doing pretty badly. Harry and Julia flanking the old man after a gig. Harry looked pretty drunk in that one.
What do you know, Miami Beach. Harry and Julia entwined on the sand, the ocean rolling behind them. That must have been their first day there. Wait a minute. Behind them, featured in a series of three photographs of Harry and Julia kissing — he recognized this girl, the deep suntan, those shoulders. It came to him slowly. She was the girl from Manfred’s room. Jennifer.
He heard the locks clicking and walked out to the front room to meet Julia, who let out a little yelp and dropped the shopping bags on the floor.
“How did you get in here?” she said.
He held up the picture of Jennifer and said, “How do you know this girl?”
“What are you doing here? You want your stuff? Take it. I’ve been saving it for you.”
“Answer my question,” Harry said. “How do you know her?”
“How dare you go through my things? I should have you arrested right now.”
She picked up the phone and started pushing buttons. Harry grabbed the receiver out of her hand and smashed it against an end table, a contained explosion that sounded like a shot.
“This girl,” he said, “was in Manfred Pfiser’s hotel room on the day he got shot. I made a delivery for him, and when I got back to his hotel, this girl was gone and Manfred was dead on the floor. Who is she and what did she have to do with it?”
Julia said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She got a cigarette situated between her lips, and sent out the search party for a match. But she didn’t have one. She never did.
“For an actress, you’re a terrible liar.” Harry got up close to her, and dug his fingers into the fleshy part of her arm.
“You’re hurting me.”
He squeezed, and it buckled her knees. “Julia, honey,” Harry said, without raising his voice, “I’m gonna do a lot more than that if you don’t start giving me some answers.” He applied more pressure, then let her go.
“I met her in Los Angeles on a job, and she was in Miami when we were there. Her name is Vicki. She’s an actress.”
The white marks from Harry’s fingers had turned to red.
“What do you know about a guy named Leo?”
“Leo Hannah? They’re friends. He and Vicki and Lawrence Lendesma. They’re Miami people.”
“So you were in on it, too.”
“In on what? Have you lost your mind?”
Harry took a step toward her and Julia put up her hands. “She called me in March. She wanted to know when you were getting out of jail.”
“And you fucking told her?”
The cigarette quivered in Julia’s mouth. She walked over to the stove, held back her brand-new Cleopatra hairdo, and hunched over a burner. Straightening up, she took a deep drag.
“She said Leo wanted to make contact with you, that you two met in jail, and he was looking forward to seeing you when you got out.”
“How did she find out about Leo and me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Julia—”
“I swear to God, Harry, I don’t know.”
Harry brushed past her. All the things he’d wanted to say to her, everything he’d wanted to get back, none of
