Blackout, page 8
‘The rough stuff don’t start until your clock’s run out, Lee.’
Boyle pressed the button that unlocked the street-level door. He heard Raseci climb the stairs. Bigshoes. What was he here for? Boyle opened the door and Tom Raseci entered the apartment.
‘I never been here before,’ he said. He sniffed around, touching this, that, like a goddam landlord checking out the condition of his property. Boyle kept the lid tight on his resentments.
Dressed in an expensive black linen suit, Raseci stared at a couple of titles on the bookshelves. ‘What’s all this shit you read. The Mirror and The Lamp. Is it some kind of thriller or what?’
‘I’ve never met anybody who thought so,’ Boyle said. ‘It’s a book about poetry.’
‘Poetry, huh? I wandered lonely as a daffodil, har har.’ Raseci tugged a volume off the shelf and flicked the pages. ‘Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold. You got some high-tone tastes, Lee.’
‘Souvenirs of a gentler time, that’s all.’ Boyle hadn’t looked at his books in years.
‘Hey hey. Now this is more like it. Confessions of an English Opium Eater. What is this? Like a how-to manual?’
‘You want to come to the point, Tom?’
Raseci sat on the sofa and sifted through the drug paraphernalia on the coffee table. He pushed the hypodermic needle aside with a look of distaste, then rubbed some spilled crystal between thumb and forefinger. ‘Speed? Can’t get off it, huh? I was hooked on dope one time. Then I discovered Narcotics Anonymous. Changed my life around.’
‘My name is Tom R and I am a drug addict,’ Boyle said.
‘Don’t knock it. It worked for me,’ Raseci said. ‘This shit must cost you.’
‘I get high with a little help.’
Raseci held up the baggie in which the crystal sparkled.
‘Be very careful with that,’ Boyle said. He took the baggie from Raseci’s hand and put it in the pocket of his crumpled shirt. He was feeling sluggish, bottomed-out. ‘I was just leaving, Tom.’
‘What it is, Jimmy Plumm hears the word going round that you’ve misplaced your little income machine. Which doesn’t make him happy. He was figuring maybe this chick would be good for some of the money he’s got coming from you. She’s a working girl, after all. Not all of the cash, but a little. A thou, say. A gesture of goodwill that might just buy you another day. Might. Mr Plumm doesn’t really want to see you damaged, Lee. I think he kinda likes your face. So it worries him when he learns your main asset appears to have taken a hike.’
‘That’s street gossip. You don’t want to listen to that stuff. I have that girl where I want her.’
‘So you say. But Mr Plumm keeps an ear real low to the ground. He’s a guy that don’t let anything escape him. And what he hears is that you’ve been running round like a headless chicken looking for your little meal ticket.’
‘Untrue,’ Boyle said. ‘She was doing some high-paid out-call work, that’s all.’
‘Yeah? So explain how come you been asking for her all over the place.’
Boyle nodded at the table. ‘Blame the drugs, Tom. Sometimes they make you forgetful. I sent her someplace, only I don’t remember where exactly.’ He laughed at his own carelessness. Silly me. He wondered if his lie had any plausibility. Raseci’s discolored eye fixed him without expression.
‘You’re saying she’ll be back soon.’
‘Right, right.’
The big man rose from the sofa and wandered the room. He gave Boyle the impression that he was looking for something to break, preferably a visible part of Lee’s anatomy. ‘What I’ve done in the present uncertain circumstances, Lee, is I’ve sold your Porsche.’
‘Sold it? Sold my car?’
‘Following Mr Plumm’s instructions, you understand. There’s a guy paid two grand for it.’
‘Sold my goddam Porsche for two grand? It’s worth seven or eight.’
‘There’s widespread body rust. The engine needs work. Two grand was the top offer. That cash goes directly to Mr Plumm. Comes off your debt, see. Now you’re down to ten. And if your little squaw shows up, let’s just hope she has some bread for you. Which you’ll hand right over to Mr Plumm. This way the debt is whittled down. And you get some breathing space.’
Boyle thought about his Porsche. He tried to reduce its loss to the simple proposition that it was only a car, just metal and wheels and an engine and shit. That didn’t make it any easier, though. He’d had that Porsche five years. And now it was gone, and he was embroiled in the crazy world of Jimmy Plumm’s bizarre accountancy system. ‘So what are you saying, Tom? I have an extra day on account of the Porsche.’
‘That depends on if your girl shows up.’
Boyle felt he’d entered an area of total perplexity. Plumm’s world, he understood, was whimsical, his calendar capricious. What Plumm was doing was fucking with his head. You get an extra day, you don’t get an extra day. Plumm, fraudulent Englishman, played master of the cosmos. He could give you time, or take it away from you.
‘Yesterday I had three days. What have I got now? What’s the bottom line here?’
‘You’re down to two and a bit. That hasn’t changed. Unless the girl shows up with an installment. Or, alternatively, you come up with the whole ten grand, which is what is left after taking the Porsche into account.’
‘Who bought the car anyway?’ Boyle asked. It dawned on him immediately that the question was dumb. He knew the answer and it riled him. He stared hard at Raseci. ‘I hope you get into a serious wreck when you’re driving it. I hope you become one of those veggies on a life-support system.’
‘Tut-tut.’ Raseci produced a familiar set of keys from his pocket and dangled them. ‘I’m keeping the Porsche keyring too. Comes with the deal.’ He rattled the keys in a hugely aggravating manner. Chinkety-chink.
‘I have to run, Tom. So if you don’t mind?’
‘So long as we’re straight on a few things.’
‘Yeah. We’re straight.’ Straight as you could be in Plumm’s bent universe anyway. Two days and a bit and the sands running. Sweet Jesus. My heart beats loud and fast.
Raseci went to the door, opened it. He turned to look at Boyle. ‘One last thing, Lee. Don’t even think about splitting. Because it’s a very small world and Mr Plumm has friends in a whole lot of places. See you.’ Raseci went out, closing the door quietly.
Boyle stripped, showered, shampooed, gargled with a vile-tasting substance reputed to have a curative effect on mouth ulcers. He took a pair of clean blue jeans and a fresh shirt from his closet, where some of Almond’s clothing hung. He fingered the dresses, the skirts. It doesn’t make sense, he thought. These things hanging here like this. Abandoned. A strange kind of loss hit him, made him a touch sad. Where the hell was she?
He brushed his hair. He contemplated shaving, but decided against it. He didn’t trust his unsteady hand with a razor. Looking in the mirror, he remembered that years back some drunken old biddy in a bar had told him he was a dead ringer for a long-ago movie star. Tab somebody. Or was it Troy? He couldn’t recall. A lot of his memories must be wandering the back roads of his head like lost orphans crying for attention.
He cleaned the drug paraphernalia off the table, scooping it inside a leather shaving bag which he squeezed under the sofa. Then a quick snort of Stretch’s crank – whooo – and he was out of here. Zip and into the street. No Porsche. No wheels. He felt stripped of citizenship. The disenfranchised American. Take a man’s car away, you might as well take his goddam democratic birthright to vote while you were at it.
He looked for a cab, but they rarely cruised this neighborhood. He walked several blocks quickly, then he was into the heart of downtown, passing between office towers. Men and women hastened here and there with briefcases, lawyer types and cops entering the hive of City Hall. The everlasting universe of things flows through the mind. He wondered if Shelley had ever shot himself up with speed.
The air he moved through was lifeless. It was like walking inside the cellular structure of a warm wet sponge. He glanced back the way he’d come, scanning quickly for a sight of anyone following him, perhaps a reappearance of Crassman’s ruffians, maybe somebody Plumm had tailing him. It’s a small world. Crowded sidewalks, how could you tell? He skipped past a guy selling hot dogs under a colored umbrella. The stench of onions assaulted him. He turned a corner where a blind man seated on a soapbox was playing saxophone.
He saw the silver and maroon canvas awning of the Rialto Hotel, formerly one of the city’s classiest gathering places, but fallen now on tough times. The Rialto wasn’t exactly a flophouse, but all its airs and graces were threadbare, and the doorman – who had a rummy’s cracked red nose – was missing a brass button.
Lee Boyle went through the revolving doors into the empty lobby. He headed across the faded red carpet and into the coffee shop. It was a big room and there was only one customer and she was sitting in the far corner wearing shades and a black velvet jacket. Her hair matched the color of the jacket. Her make-up was white. She gave Boyle the impression of somebody returned from the grave on a temporary visitor’s pass.
Boyle sat facing her. She wore an assortment of crosses round her neck, which were mainly Celtic and chunky.
‘Warding off the evil spirits, I see,’ he said.
‘Plenty around.’ She slipped her glasses down her nose and gazed at Boyle briefly before she replaced them. Her eyes were a very pale blue, which he’d always found unsettling, like looking into a couple of dyed ice cubes. ‘You look as handsome and edible as ever, Boyle. Save for those dark puffy things under your eyes.’
‘I work hard for these dark puffy things, Sartora.’
‘I’m calling myself Cass these days, Boyle. As in Cassandra.’
Before Sartora, she’d been Divina. Before that – what? He couldn’t keep track.
‘You gotta keep altering yourself,’ she said. ‘I’m a work in progress.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘I’m into things like shape-shifting,’ she said.
This babe had a quality Boyle found oppressive, and he didn’t want to linger discussing her weirded-out belief system, so he didn’t ask for details about shape-shifting. He tapped the face of his wristwatch and was conscious of the jerking movement of the second hand.
‘I got your message,’ he said.
‘Oh, yeah, that. The message.’
Don’t go vague on me, Cass, he thought. He leaned across the table. The ashtray was crammed with hand-rolled black-paper stubs.
‘Are you carrying?’ she asked.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I could probably find you something in an hour or so, Cass.’
‘I’d appreciate it, Boyle. I really would.’
‘No problem. Now this message.’
‘Ice,’ she said. ‘I want high-class ice.’
‘I hear you,’ Boyle said. Jesus Christ, tell me about Almond.
‘The best, Boyle. I’m running on fuck knows what adrenalin. And the gauge is way low. So I’m antsy. Also there’s an affair of the heart that’s a total fucking disaster. Which isn’t contributing to my well-being.’
‘I’ll deal with it, Cass. Can we talk about this message?’
She examined her black-glossed fingernails, one of which was broken. ‘She got in a car, Boyle. This was around nine-thirty last night. Quarter of ten.’
‘You know the driver’s name?’
‘I look like a fucking phone book to you?’
‘Okay. What did he look like then?’
Boyle had known Cassandra a long time. She’d stripteased, worked as a call-girl in a few ritzy resorts out west, then slithered somewhat from that summit. She was queen of vague. She perceived the world through a sensory net that was like a blackout blind. He’d hung out with her for a while a year or so back, a casual thing, and although the sex was good and hungry, she was too spacey for his liking, and, besides, commitment – which she valued and needed – was a major chuckle from his point of view.
‘I didn’t actually see any of this transpire, you understand. My days of hanging out in certain places are past, Boyle. I know what’s good for me.’
‘Listen, Cass. I don’t need a guided tour of your learning graph. I need to find the girl.’
‘The person that saw her said she got inside a dark-blue car.’
‘A dark-blue car. That’s truly helpful, Cass. Who was this eyewitness?’
‘You don’t know this individual, and I’m not revealing my sources.’
‘Fuck. Now you’re a journalist with privileges.’ Boyle had a sudden flash. Goddam! She was the fucking eyewitness. Nobody else. She was back hitting the sidewalks and she didn’t want him to know, so she’d dreamed up this fictional observer. Well, well. There was pride at work here. In a calmer state of mind Boyle might have found this little act of deception touching.
She said, ‘Now don’t go all wigged on me, Boyle. I’m trying to help. You score me some dope in return for info. Scratch my back.’
‘I’ll score you the goddam dope, Cass. But I need more than a dark-blue car, you see. The world is filled with dark-blue cars.’
She said, ‘My nameless friend remembers a detail of the license plate. It was nine two K something.’
‘Nine two K something. That’s all your nameless friend got?’
‘That’s all, Boyle.’
Boyle asked her for a pen, which she took out of her cavernous purse. He scribbled ‘92K’ on a paper napkin. It was a beginning. How much of one, he wasn’t sure.
‘Meet me back here in an hour and I’ll have what you need,’ he said. He started to rise from the table. ‘Incidentally, you didn’t happen to see the guy’s face, did you?’
She stared at him. ‘Oh, fuck you, Boyle.’
‘Old dogs and new tricks, honey. I don’t think this shape-shifting shit is working for you.’
‘Fuck you again.’
‘I take that as, no, you didn’t see his face.’
‘Take it any way you like. Just bring me ice, Boyle.’
He was about to step away from the table when he was assailed suddenly by an unexpected sense of doom. It was as if a hood had been pulled over his head and he was being smothered. This goddam tricky powder that fueled you. He breathed deeply a couple of times and the bad sensation passed. Scary Moments in Lee Boyle’s Life.
‘My pen,’ Cass said.
‘Almost forgot.’ He dropped the pen on the table.
‘One hour,’ she said. ‘Don’t pull a stunt on this, Boyle. I’m in serious need.’
He pointed a finger at her – okay, babe, you got it, you got Lee Boyle’s word, the ice-man will returneth – and then he took a few steps across the room. She called out to him. ‘Hey, Boyle. One last thing. The car was a Chrysler.’
13
Darcy was waiting outside City Hall when Samsa emerged at ten past six.
‘Surprise,’ she said.
‘What are you doing down here?’
‘I ditched my afternoon classes. Don’t you ever get one of those days when you just don’t feel like doing what you’re supposed to be doing?’
‘Sure. All the time.’
‘But you’re too conscientious to defy expectations,’ she said. ‘You don’t break the rules.’
She linked her arm through his and they moved along the sidewalk. Downtown was beginning to empty, stores were closing, office workers were calling it a day. You don’t break the rules. ‘So what did you do instead?’ he asked.
‘I hung out. I just walked around downtown. Looked in some store windows. Nothing special.’
Samsa thought how ordinary this was, a man and his pretty daughter strolling along a city sidewalk in the early evening sun. The proud father smiling. A casual observer might think, That’s nice. I seek the ordinary, Samsa thought. The commonplace. That elusive place where life is humdrum. And secure.
‘So you’re a little down?’ he asked. ‘Is that the message I’m getting?’
‘I don’t know what message I’m sending,’ she said.
She looked gloomy. He wondered if her mood had anything to do with Nick, if something had gone wrong there, but he’d never intruded on that area of her life. Maybe he should have established better links of communication, because love alone wasn’t ever enough. He often thought that Harriet’s years of silence and withdrawal had established a pattern, and Darcy had grown up accustomed to the impotence of language.
‘Sometimes I get this feeling of confinement,’ she said.
‘We all get that, Darcy.’ It wasn’t an adequate response. He knew that at once. Maybe what was really bothering her was this wretched anniversary. It was bound to be somewhere on her mind.
‘Other people expect things from me,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘Let’s start with good grades.’
‘And this is a burden I impose?’
‘Yeah, a little. But mainly it’s teachers,’ she said. ‘There’s other stuff. Like Nick.’
He wondered if she was still a virgin. It was a question he’d relegated to the back of his mind, where he didn’t have to deal with it. Some horny young guy fucks your daughter, how are you supposed to react to that anyway? Outrage was old-fashioned. The age of the shotgun was dead. And he couldn’t summon up shock. He had no rights in the matter.
‘Sometimes he stifles me,’ she said.
They were in the parking lot now. Samsa had borrowed a car from the department pool. It was a late-model beige Chevrolet in need of a wash. He unlocked it.
‘New wheels,’ Darcy said.
‘Temporary. I’ll work out a hire car with the insurance gangsters. I just haven’t gotten round to it yet.’
Darcy sat in the passenger seat. ‘Ooo-eee. Tobacco Row,’ she said, and made a face. The ashtray, stuffed with butts, hung open.
‘If Nick’s stifling,’ Samsa said, ‘maybe you should think about cooling the whole thing.’
She slumped back in her seat, hands in the pockets of her jeans. He could tell from her expression that the subject of Nick was closed for the moment. He saw a distance in her eyes. She was so damn changeable. One moment up, the next down. One minute she was all hugs and kisses, the next she was about as approachable as frozen tundra.
Boyle pressed the button that unlocked the street-level door. He heard Raseci climb the stairs. Bigshoes. What was he here for? Boyle opened the door and Tom Raseci entered the apartment.
‘I never been here before,’ he said. He sniffed around, touching this, that, like a goddam landlord checking out the condition of his property. Boyle kept the lid tight on his resentments.
Dressed in an expensive black linen suit, Raseci stared at a couple of titles on the bookshelves. ‘What’s all this shit you read. The Mirror and The Lamp. Is it some kind of thriller or what?’
‘I’ve never met anybody who thought so,’ Boyle said. ‘It’s a book about poetry.’
‘Poetry, huh? I wandered lonely as a daffodil, har har.’ Raseci tugged a volume off the shelf and flicked the pages. ‘Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold. You got some high-tone tastes, Lee.’
‘Souvenirs of a gentler time, that’s all.’ Boyle hadn’t looked at his books in years.
‘Hey hey. Now this is more like it. Confessions of an English Opium Eater. What is this? Like a how-to manual?’
‘You want to come to the point, Tom?’
Raseci sat on the sofa and sifted through the drug paraphernalia on the coffee table. He pushed the hypodermic needle aside with a look of distaste, then rubbed some spilled crystal between thumb and forefinger. ‘Speed? Can’t get off it, huh? I was hooked on dope one time. Then I discovered Narcotics Anonymous. Changed my life around.’
‘My name is Tom R and I am a drug addict,’ Boyle said.
‘Don’t knock it. It worked for me,’ Raseci said. ‘This shit must cost you.’
‘I get high with a little help.’
Raseci held up the baggie in which the crystal sparkled.
‘Be very careful with that,’ Boyle said. He took the baggie from Raseci’s hand and put it in the pocket of his crumpled shirt. He was feeling sluggish, bottomed-out. ‘I was just leaving, Tom.’
‘What it is, Jimmy Plumm hears the word going round that you’ve misplaced your little income machine. Which doesn’t make him happy. He was figuring maybe this chick would be good for some of the money he’s got coming from you. She’s a working girl, after all. Not all of the cash, but a little. A thou, say. A gesture of goodwill that might just buy you another day. Might. Mr Plumm doesn’t really want to see you damaged, Lee. I think he kinda likes your face. So it worries him when he learns your main asset appears to have taken a hike.’
‘That’s street gossip. You don’t want to listen to that stuff. I have that girl where I want her.’
‘So you say. But Mr Plumm keeps an ear real low to the ground. He’s a guy that don’t let anything escape him. And what he hears is that you’ve been running round like a headless chicken looking for your little meal ticket.’
‘Untrue,’ Boyle said. ‘She was doing some high-paid out-call work, that’s all.’
‘Yeah? So explain how come you been asking for her all over the place.’
Boyle nodded at the table. ‘Blame the drugs, Tom. Sometimes they make you forgetful. I sent her someplace, only I don’t remember where exactly.’ He laughed at his own carelessness. Silly me. He wondered if his lie had any plausibility. Raseci’s discolored eye fixed him without expression.
‘You’re saying she’ll be back soon.’
‘Right, right.’
The big man rose from the sofa and wandered the room. He gave Boyle the impression that he was looking for something to break, preferably a visible part of Lee’s anatomy. ‘What I’ve done in the present uncertain circumstances, Lee, is I’ve sold your Porsche.’
‘Sold it? Sold my car?’
‘Following Mr Plumm’s instructions, you understand. There’s a guy paid two grand for it.’
‘Sold my goddam Porsche for two grand? It’s worth seven or eight.’
‘There’s widespread body rust. The engine needs work. Two grand was the top offer. That cash goes directly to Mr Plumm. Comes off your debt, see. Now you’re down to ten. And if your little squaw shows up, let’s just hope she has some bread for you. Which you’ll hand right over to Mr Plumm. This way the debt is whittled down. And you get some breathing space.’
Boyle thought about his Porsche. He tried to reduce its loss to the simple proposition that it was only a car, just metal and wheels and an engine and shit. That didn’t make it any easier, though. He’d had that Porsche five years. And now it was gone, and he was embroiled in the crazy world of Jimmy Plumm’s bizarre accountancy system. ‘So what are you saying, Tom? I have an extra day on account of the Porsche.’
‘That depends on if your girl shows up.’
Boyle felt he’d entered an area of total perplexity. Plumm’s world, he understood, was whimsical, his calendar capricious. What Plumm was doing was fucking with his head. You get an extra day, you don’t get an extra day. Plumm, fraudulent Englishman, played master of the cosmos. He could give you time, or take it away from you.
‘Yesterday I had three days. What have I got now? What’s the bottom line here?’
‘You’re down to two and a bit. That hasn’t changed. Unless the girl shows up with an installment. Or, alternatively, you come up with the whole ten grand, which is what is left after taking the Porsche into account.’
‘Who bought the car anyway?’ Boyle asked. It dawned on him immediately that the question was dumb. He knew the answer and it riled him. He stared hard at Raseci. ‘I hope you get into a serious wreck when you’re driving it. I hope you become one of those veggies on a life-support system.’
‘Tut-tut.’ Raseci produced a familiar set of keys from his pocket and dangled them. ‘I’m keeping the Porsche keyring too. Comes with the deal.’ He rattled the keys in a hugely aggravating manner. Chinkety-chink.
‘I have to run, Tom. So if you don’t mind?’
‘So long as we’re straight on a few things.’
‘Yeah. We’re straight.’ Straight as you could be in Plumm’s bent universe anyway. Two days and a bit and the sands running. Sweet Jesus. My heart beats loud and fast.
Raseci went to the door, opened it. He turned to look at Boyle. ‘One last thing, Lee. Don’t even think about splitting. Because it’s a very small world and Mr Plumm has friends in a whole lot of places. See you.’ Raseci went out, closing the door quietly.
Boyle stripped, showered, shampooed, gargled with a vile-tasting substance reputed to have a curative effect on mouth ulcers. He took a pair of clean blue jeans and a fresh shirt from his closet, where some of Almond’s clothing hung. He fingered the dresses, the skirts. It doesn’t make sense, he thought. These things hanging here like this. Abandoned. A strange kind of loss hit him, made him a touch sad. Where the hell was she?
He brushed his hair. He contemplated shaving, but decided against it. He didn’t trust his unsteady hand with a razor. Looking in the mirror, he remembered that years back some drunken old biddy in a bar had told him he was a dead ringer for a long-ago movie star. Tab somebody. Or was it Troy? He couldn’t recall. A lot of his memories must be wandering the back roads of his head like lost orphans crying for attention.
He cleaned the drug paraphernalia off the table, scooping it inside a leather shaving bag which he squeezed under the sofa. Then a quick snort of Stretch’s crank – whooo – and he was out of here. Zip and into the street. No Porsche. No wheels. He felt stripped of citizenship. The disenfranchised American. Take a man’s car away, you might as well take his goddam democratic birthright to vote while you were at it.
He looked for a cab, but they rarely cruised this neighborhood. He walked several blocks quickly, then he was into the heart of downtown, passing between office towers. Men and women hastened here and there with briefcases, lawyer types and cops entering the hive of City Hall. The everlasting universe of things flows through the mind. He wondered if Shelley had ever shot himself up with speed.
The air he moved through was lifeless. It was like walking inside the cellular structure of a warm wet sponge. He glanced back the way he’d come, scanning quickly for a sight of anyone following him, perhaps a reappearance of Crassman’s ruffians, maybe somebody Plumm had tailing him. It’s a small world. Crowded sidewalks, how could you tell? He skipped past a guy selling hot dogs under a colored umbrella. The stench of onions assaulted him. He turned a corner where a blind man seated on a soapbox was playing saxophone.
He saw the silver and maroon canvas awning of the Rialto Hotel, formerly one of the city’s classiest gathering places, but fallen now on tough times. The Rialto wasn’t exactly a flophouse, but all its airs and graces were threadbare, and the doorman – who had a rummy’s cracked red nose – was missing a brass button.
Lee Boyle went through the revolving doors into the empty lobby. He headed across the faded red carpet and into the coffee shop. It was a big room and there was only one customer and she was sitting in the far corner wearing shades and a black velvet jacket. Her hair matched the color of the jacket. Her make-up was white. She gave Boyle the impression of somebody returned from the grave on a temporary visitor’s pass.
Boyle sat facing her. She wore an assortment of crosses round her neck, which were mainly Celtic and chunky.
‘Warding off the evil spirits, I see,’ he said.
‘Plenty around.’ She slipped her glasses down her nose and gazed at Boyle briefly before she replaced them. Her eyes were a very pale blue, which he’d always found unsettling, like looking into a couple of dyed ice cubes. ‘You look as handsome and edible as ever, Boyle. Save for those dark puffy things under your eyes.’
‘I work hard for these dark puffy things, Sartora.’
‘I’m calling myself Cass these days, Boyle. As in Cassandra.’
Before Sartora, she’d been Divina. Before that – what? He couldn’t keep track.
‘You gotta keep altering yourself,’ she said. ‘I’m a work in progress.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘I’m into things like shape-shifting,’ she said.
This babe had a quality Boyle found oppressive, and he didn’t want to linger discussing her weirded-out belief system, so he didn’t ask for details about shape-shifting. He tapped the face of his wristwatch and was conscious of the jerking movement of the second hand.
‘I got your message,’ he said.
‘Oh, yeah, that. The message.’
Don’t go vague on me, Cass, he thought. He leaned across the table. The ashtray was crammed with hand-rolled black-paper stubs.
‘Are you carrying?’ she asked.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I could probably find you something in an hour or so, Cass.’
‘I’d appreciate it, Boyle. I really would.’
‘No problem. Now this message.’
‘Ice,’ she said. ‘I want high-class ice.’
‘I hear you,’ Boyle said. Jesus Christ, tell me about Almond.
‘The best, Boyle. I’m running on fuck knows what adrenalin. And the gauge is way low. So I’m antsy. Also there’s an affair of the heart that’s a total fucking disaster. Which isn’t contributing to my well-being.’
‘I’ll deal with it, Cass. Can we talk about this message?’
She examined her black-glossed fingernails, one of which was broken. ‘She got in a car, Boyle. This was around nine-thirty last night. Quarter of ten.’
‘You know the driver’s name?’
‘I look like a fucking phone book to you?’
‘Okay. What did he look like then?’
Boyle had known Cassandra a long time. She’d stripteased, worked as a call-girl in a few ritzy resorts out west, then slithered somewhat from that summit. She was queen of vague. She perceived the world through a sensory net that was like a blackout blind. He’d hung out with her for a while a year or so back, a casual thing, and although the sex was good and hungry, she was too spacey for his liking, and, besides, commitment – which she valued and needed – was a major chuckle from his point of view.
‘I didn’t actually see any of this transpire, you understand. My days of hanging out in certain places are past, Boyle. I know what’s good for me.’
‘Listen, Cass. I don’t need a guided tour of your learning graph. I need to find the girl.’
‘The person that saw her said she got inside a dark-blue car.’
‘A dark-blue car. That’s truly helpful, Cass. Who was this eyewitness?’
‘You don’t know this individual, and I’m not revealing my sources.’
‘Fuck. Now you’re a journalist with privileges.’ Boyle had a sudden flash. Goddam! She was the fucking eyewitness. Nobody else. She was back hitting the sidewalks and she didn’t want him to know, so she’d dreamed up this fictional observer. Well, well. There was pride at work here. In a calmer state of mind Boyle might have found this little act of deception touching.
She said, ‘Now don’t go all wigged on me, Boyle. I’m trying to help. You score me some dope in return for info. Scratch my back.’
‘I’ll score you the goddam dope, Cass. But I need more than a dark-blue car, you see. The world is filled with dark-blue cars.’
She said, ‘My nameless friend remembers a detail of the license plate. It was nine two K something.’
‘Nine two K something. That’s all your nameless friend got?’
‘That’s all, Boyle.’
Boyle asked her for a pen, which she took out of her cavernous purse. He scribbled ‘92K’ on a paper napkin. It was a beginning. How much of one, he wasn’t sure.
‘Meet me back here in an hour and I’ll have what you need,’ he said. He started to rise from the table. ‘Incidentally, you didn’t happen to see the guy’s face, did you?’
She stared at him. ‘Oh, fuck you, Boyle.’
‘Old dogs and new tricks, honey. I don’t think this shape-shifting shit is working for you.’
‘Fuck you again.’
‘I take that as, no, you didn’t see his face.’
‘Take it any way you like. Just bring me ice, Boyle.’
He was about to step away from the table when he was assailed suddenly by an unexpected sense of doom. It was as if a hood had been pulled over his head and he was being smothered. This goddam tricky powder that fueled you. He breathed deeply a couple of times and the bad sensation passed. Scary Moments in Lee Boyle’s Life.
‘My pen,’ Cass said.
‘Almost forgot.’ He dropped the pen on the table.
‘One hour,’ she said. ‘Don’t pull a stunt on this, Boyle. I’m in serious need.’
He pointed a finger at her – okay, babe, you got it, you got Lee Boyle’s word, the ice-man will returneth – and then he took a few steps across the room. She called out to him. ‘Hey, Boyle. One last thing. The car was a Chrysler.’
13
Darcy was waiting outside City Hall when Samsa emerged at ten past six.
‘Surprise,’ she said.
‘What are you doing down here?’
‘I ditched my afternoon classes. Don’t you ever get one of those days when you just don’t feel like doing what you’re supposed to be doing?’
‘Sure. All the time.’
‘But you’re too conscientious to defy expectations,’ she said. ‘You don’t break the rules.’
She linked her arm through his and they moved along the sidewalk. Downtown was beginning to empty, stores were closing, office workers were calling it a day. You don’t break the rules. ‘So what did you do instead?’ he asked.
‘I hung out. I just walked around downtown. Looked in some store windows. Nothing special.’
Samsa thought how ordinary this was, a man and his pretty daughter strolling along a city sidewalk in the early evening sun. The proud father smiling. A casual observer might think, That’s nice. I seek the ordinary, Samsa thought. The commonplace. That elusive place where life is humdrum. And secure.
‘So you’re a little down?’ he asked. ‘Is that the message I’m getting?’
‘I don’t know what message I’m sending,’ she said.
She looked gloomy. He wondered if her mood had anything to do with Nick, if something had gone wrong there, but he’d never intruded on that area of her life. Maybe he should have established better links of communication, because love alone wasn’t ever enough. He often thought that Harriet’s years of silence and withdrawal had established a pattern, and Darcy had grown up accustomed to the impotence of language.
‘Sometimes I get this feeling of confinement,’ she said.
‘We all get that, Darcy.’ It wasn’t an adequate response. He knew that at once. Maybe what was really bothering her was this wretched anniversary. It was bound to be somewhere on her mind.
‘Other people expect things from me,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘Let’s start with good grades.’
‘And this is a burden I impose?’
‘Yeah, a little. But mainly it’s teachers,’ she said. ‘There’s other stuff. Like Nick.’
He wondered if she was still a virgin. It was a question he’d relegated to the back of his mind, where he didn’t have to deal with it. Some horny young guy fucks your daughter, how are you supposed to react to that anyway? Outrage was old-fashioned. The age of the shotgun was dead. And he couldn’t summon up shock. He had no rights in the matter.
‘Sometimes he stifles me,’ she said.
They were in the parking lot now. Samsa had borrowed a car from the department pool. It was a late-model beige Chevrolet in need of a wash. He unlocked it.
‘New wheels,’ Darcy said.
‘Temporary. I’ll work out a hire car with the insurance gangsters. I just haven’t gotten round to it yet.’
Darcy sat in the passenger seat. ‘Ooo-eee. Tobacco Row,’ she said, and made a face. The ashtray, stuffed with butts, hung open.
‘If Nick’s stifling,’ Samsa said, ‘maybe you should think about cooling the whole thing.’
She slumped back in her seat, hands in the pockets of her jeans. He could tell from her expression that the subject of Nick was closed for the moment. He saw a distance in her eyes. She was so damn changeable. One moment up, the next down. One minute she was all hugs and kisses, the next she was about as approachable as frozen tundra.
