“More like a chance of it,” Mortimer said thoughtfully. “Like it could be a guy.”
“Yeah.”
Mortimer nodded. “So, you got a gun, Abe?”
Abe laughed. “Of course not,” he said. He poured Mortimer another drink. “So, what’s new with you, Morty?”
“Same,” he said without emphasis.
“Nothing new on your . . . condition?”
“I’m a dead man,” Mortimer said. “So what?”
“So what?” Abe asked.
Mortimer looked at him without expression. “It ain’t like I got much to lose.”
“It’s harder, I guess,” Abe said, thinking of Samantha again. “It’s harder when you do.”
EDDIE
He blew into his cupped hands, then rubbed them together rapidly. It was nearly two thirty-four in the morning, and he’d decided that if the man in the black suit did not come out again before three A.M., he’d leave. On the other hand, if he reemerged from the building, Eddie would fall in behind him, follow him wherever he went, wait until he came out again, resume the tail.
It was boring labor, especially in the spitting rain that had now begun to fall. It was cold and dark and boring, but that was the price of real friendship, Eddie decided. Helping Tony was something he had to do because he could not imagine doing otherwise. He remembered the day the Towers fell, how his cousin Tommy had survived the collapse, called his wife, Celia, and told her he was okay. She’d begged him to come home, crying all the time they were on the phone together. But Tommy had said no, that there were other firemen buried in the rubble, that he had to stay. Celia had kept crying, and Tommy had finally just hung up on her. It was a little like that, Eddie concluded, this thing he had to do for Tony. Not as terrible as the thing Tommy had gone through, but one of those moments when there really wasn’t a right thing to do, so you just did the thing that seemed less wrong.
A blast of wind struck him, shaking raindrops from the tree above him in a splattering shower. He brushed the shoulders of his old blue jacket, then pulled off his cap and slapped it against the side of his leg. When he returned it to his head, the man in the black suit was already coming down the stairs.
He eased himself behind the tree but saw that it was too late. The man had already caught him in his eye. But so what, Eddie thought. He was just some guy on the street, no one likely to be noticed. And yet the man seemed to notice him, and as Eddie watched, he glanced left and right down the street as if checking to see if anyone else was around, then stepped off the curb and made his way across the street, walking slowly, deliberately, until he made it to the other side, where he stopped, his body in profile under the streetlamp.
He was only a few feet away now, and Eddie could make out the gaunt face, the shimmering white hair. He looked like a guy in the movies, an aging film star, the Cary Grant type, but with a silent, sinister edge. For a moment he stood very still, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of the black overcoat, his collar turned up against the wind and the rain. He seemed to be looking at the brick wall that faced him, staring at it intently, as if reading instructions that only he could see. Then he turned, his face now in full view, so that Eddie could see the curious sadness that wreathed it and gave it the lost, hopeless look of a man who didn’t like the things he had to do.
“It’s over,” the man said.
The words had come so suddenly and with such finality, Eddie wondered if they’d actually been meant for him at all.
“What?” he asked.
The man took two broad steps with a quickness and agility that made it seem as if he’d been blown across the pavement by a sudden gust of wind. “It’s over.”
Eddie stared into the unblinking eyes. “What is?” he asked.
“All your plans,” the man said.
“I don’t know what you—”
He felt the man’s hand at the collar of his jacket, then the sharp bit of a blade at his throat.
“Don’t say a word,” the man said.
Eddie wanted to speak but could think of nothing to say, and so simply obeyed helplessly.
“Now,” the man said. “Come with me.”
FOUR
For All We Know
STARK
To his surprise, he’d stayed the night, something he’d never done before, and which told him that new arrangements were being made, preparations for the moment, that something deep inside him had pronounced the last rites.
“You want to have breakfast?” she asked tentatively.
He shook his head. “I have an appointment.”
It was the only answer he’d ever given, but on this morning, with her eyes upon him so oddly, as if studying some previously unnoticed feature of his face, he felt a curious impulse to say more. “I don’t mean to be so aloof,” he said.
She laughed. “Aloof doesn’t begin to describe you, Stark.”
Her name was Kiko, and she was the only lover who’d lasted. And yet, even with Kiko, he’d maintained his usual distance. She called him when she had a free afternoon, which happened about once a month. They met at her apartment on the Upper East Side, a place that was always immaculately clean and smelled faintly of lavender. The bedroom was small but beautifully appointed, with Kiko’s own small paintings on the pale blue walls, flower gardens that had a vaguely sensuous feel to them, though in a chilly, refrigerated sort of way. Amid these motionless blooms they “did” each other, as Kiko liked to call it, then went their separate ways.
“My father’s pretty sick,” she said.
Stark had never met Kiko’s father, nor anyone else in her family, nor any of her friends. And so it surprised him when he said, “I hope he’ll be okay,” with an unmistakable sympathy.
“He won’t be,” she said.
“It’s like that?”
“Yes.”
He had no words for her, and so walked over to the bed, leaned forward, and kissed her softly.
She looked at him quizzically. “You’re in a strange mood.”
He stepped away and continued to dress.
She watched him somberly for a moment, then cocked her head to the right, almost playfully. “By the way, there’s something I’ve never asked you. Are Asians better? I hear guys think we are.”
He stood by the window, knotting his tie. Outside, a brief autumn rain had come to an end. “I don’t rank women by ethnic group,” he told her.
She propped herself up in the bed. Her hair lay thick as a blanket over her small and perfect breasts. She had flawless skin and gleaming oval eyes. Everything about her was perfect, particularly her forthright acceptance of herself, the utter lack of self-importance.
“Okay, so how do you rank them, Stark?” she asked.
“By how much I care,” he told her.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“So where am I on that list?”
“Second from the top.”
Something in her face changed. “We’ve been together for a long time.”
He gave his tie a final pull. “Yes, we have.”
“What’s our secret?”
“That we’re easy, I guess,” Stark answered. “That it’s no big deal.”
