Mr. Apology Page 19

  “Is there something wrong with your throat, Bryant? I seem to have trouble hearing you today.”

  “A cold.”

  “I’ll look after you when you come home tonight. In fact, I’ll pick you up at the station.”

  “That would be nice.”

  She looked at him in silence for a minute. He was conscious of her presence in the room as one great splash of color; everything else around seemed dreary, bleached. She said, “This, my dear, is the very last chance.”

  And then she was gone, leaving the office door wide open. He sat back in his chair and listened to the sound of the bell ring in the gallery.

  3.

  CAN’T YOU SEE THE BIG MOTHERFUCKING HEADLINES? MR. APOLOGY KILLED BY HIS OWN CLIENT!

  Harrison stopped the tape and looked at Levy, who was sitting on the edge of the bed with a bottle of California cabernet clasped between his hands. He was celebrating a business deal, which had something to do with the acquisition of a factory that turned out greeting cards someplace in Mississippi.

  “What do you make of it, Rube?”

  “It’s like I always tell people, Harry, my man. The Big Apple is a friendly city. I’m very proud of the place.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously?” Levy took a drink from his bottle of wine.

  Harrison pressed the PLAY button and said, “Okay, listen to this part.”

  I REALLY GET OFF ON FINDING YOU AND KILLING YOU—BECAUSE THE REAL KICKER IS I CAN APOLOGIZE FOR MURDERING YOU IN ADVANCE.…

  Levy looked thoughtful a moment, gazing at the-label of his wine bottle. At certain times he reminded Harrison of a drunken rabbinical student who’d fallen off a bus during a day’s outing to the Jewish Museum up on Fifth Avenue, stricken on the journey by too much Mogen David.

  “How does that voice sound to you, Rube?”

  “Why do you ask that question, Harry?”

  Harrison stared at the red light on the answering machine. “It’s Maddy,” he said. “When that call came in last night, she was upset.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Levy said. “Of course she’d be upset! It wouldn’t exactly fill her with glee, would it?”

  Harrison rose from the edge of the bed, moved towards the window; a single leaf, rising as if it might have been stripped from the last branch of the last tree in the whole city, floated upwards against the glass.

  “Do you dismiss it as a crank call?” Levy asked.

  Harrison paused before he answered. “I get all these people daydreaming under the guise of anonymity, Rube. I had a guy call this morning who says he knows Hitler’s the super of his building. Another guy tells me there’s a race of giants living in the sewers of Manhattan. The steam we see—that’s their breath. This girl tells me she’s made a pact with the devil and now she can’t get out of it.”

  Levy got to his feet, staggering a little. “Harry, baby. I could have told you. You should have come and asked me before you went ahead with this project. I could have told you this city’s as stuffed with nuts as a kid’s Christmas stocking. But you didn’t come to your old pal, did you? And now you’re worried about this threatening voice.… Well, I’d say you can expect to meet some guy hanging around the foot of the stairs one dark stormy night—”

  “I was being serious, Rube.”

  “So, you think I’m third baseman for the Yankees?”

  Harrison sighed. The look on Madeleine’s face last night, the expression she’d shown when the call came in, the rising edge of her voice—he didn’t like to see her that way, the alarm in her eyes, the tension of muscles in her neck. He didn’t like to see her so suddenly exposed. He reached for the tape machine. He pushed REWIND, then PLAYBACK. The same voice filled the small bedroom.

  THINK I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIND YOU, HUH? YEAH, YOU’RE LIVING IN A DREAM IF YOU THINK THAT, MAN.… ONE DAY WE’LL COME FACE TO FACE.… I CAN PROMISE YOU THAT.…

  He pressed STOP.

  Rube Levy said, “I get the distinct impression, Harry, that the voice is disguised. A put-on. I don’t mean he’s not on the level and I don’t mean he’s talking through a handkerchief or anything like that.… It’s more like the accent’s disguised or something.” He shrugged and pressed the palms of his hands against his wine bottle.

  “You do think he’s on the level, then?” Harrison turned and looked at his friend.

  “I’m hardly an expert on voice patterns. But if I were in your shoes, pal, I think I’d take that tape to the cops. Better still, scrub the whole project.”

  “You know I can’t do either of those things,” Harrison said.

  “Why not? Where’s it written that you need to go on with a project that seems, on the face of it, to imperil you?”

  “No cops. It’s on the handbill. It’s specific. It was built into Apology from the very start, Rube.”

  “Okay.” Levy shrugged. “No cops. So go the other way. Kill the project.”

  Harrison shook his head. Kill the project. Even as the thought went through his mind he was gazing at the red light on the machine. How could he kill it and leave it unfinished? How could he just haul the machine out of the wall and silence all those voices out there? He moved away from the machine and looked at Levy. “You were the one who accused me of never following through on things, Rube. You were the one who said I didn’t finish things.”

  “I confess,” Levy said. “But this is different, Harry. This isn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be when you first mentioned the idea. Loonies, okay. Right-wing nuts and religious fanatics and people obsessed with various demons and weirdos who imagine Adolf Hitler struts among us—okay to all of that. I could have predicted everything like that. But I didn’t exactly expect to hear an off-the-wall voice threatening you.” Levy paused. “What’s the matter with you anyhow? Don’t you hear the force of the threat? Does it escape you? Or is it something else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you enjoy it?”

  “Come on, Rube. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Maybe you get a kick out of it, huh?”

  Harrison went to the window. A kick, he thought. How the hell could you get any pleasure out of a voice like that? He turned to look at Levy, who was pacing the room with the wine bottle dripping liquid over his hands.

  “Maybe you’ve lost touch a little, Harry. Huh? You’ve gotten too involved in the whole thing to that point where you don’t see what’s right in front of your face. That guy sounds serious to me. He also sounds extremely dangerous. You think you can somehow put on a cloak of invisibility and hide behind your answering machine? He’s wandering the streets, pal. He’s out there and he’s looking for you.”

  Harrison sat on the edge of the bed. The project, he thought. The project has to be undertaken. It has to be completed. The voices have to be collected, the tapes edited. He wasn’t going to step away and give up and scrap everything because Rube Levy and Madeleine had succumbed to obvious fears. And he wasn’t going to be dissuaded by any idiot insinuations that he got his thrills through the idea of being threatened.

  “Pull the plug, Harry.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Levy took a slug from his wine, liquid running into his thin beard. He said, “Then beware. Just beware. Just keep your eye on dark doorways, my friend. And when it starts to touch Maddy, when it starts to rub on the edges of her nerves, you ought to think again.” Suddenly Levy laughed; he threw back his head and laughed wildly. “Finished. Lecture over. Portable pulpit dismantled, vestments packed away.” He crossed the room and hugged Harrison. “Don’t pay any attention to Levy when he’s drunk, Harry. When he’s flushed on the success of a recent business acquisition. Just look to yourself. Okay?”

  Harrison nodded. It was impossible to be angry at Levy for very long. He stepped back from his friend’s grasp and smiled.

  “And look after Madeleine too,” Levy added. “Don’t let anything happen to her.”

  “I never would, Rube.”

  Levy c
lapped him on the side of his arm. “The wine’s finished, pressing business matters are rushing in on my head, my throat’s dry, my head’s beginning to ache, and I have an appointment elsewhere in this burg if I could only remember where and with whom.” Levy picked up his overcoat and draped it around his shoulders. He moved towards the bedroom door, where he turned around. “I’ll be seeing you, Harry. If the bogeyman doesn’t get you first.”

  Harrison could hear him laughing all the way to the door of the loft.

  It was later in the afternoon, sometime after Levy had gone, when the call came in. Harrison had been stacking the cassettes and numbering them in sequence when he heard the familiar voice come across the answering machine.

  APOLOGY … I HAD TO CALL YOU. YOU KNOW HOW IT IS WHEN YOU GET SUDDEN URGES TO DO THINGS … YEAH.… ANYHOW, I THOUGHT I’D GET IN TOUCH AND KEEP YOU INFORMED OF MY SCHEMES, BECAUSE EVERY DAY IN EVERY WAY I AM GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER.…

  The laughter.

  Harrison realized his hands were shaking. There was something different about the voice this time, a quality he couldn’t altogether place; it was as if the caller were enjoying some huge private joke, waiting for the right moment to share it.

  I’M TALKING PLANS. I’M TALKING ABOUT MY PLANS TO GET YOU, MR. APOLOGY.… HEY, HOW COME YOU DON’T EVER PICK UP THE GODDAMN PHONE, MAN? I KNOW YOU CAN JUST PICK UP THE RECEIVER AND BREAK IN ON THESE ANSWERING MACHINES ANYTIME YOU LIKE. CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE? OR ARE YOU JUST TOO FUCKING SCARED? HUH?

  Harrison moved his hand slightly.

  You want to pick up the receiver, don’t you?

  You want to talk to this creep, right?

  Tell him what? Tell him to quit making these goddamn calls?

  But what would that mean? Censorship imposed on the kinds of calls Apology was supposed to receive? Christ, no, you could never do that. His fingertips touched the receiver lightly. Go ahead. Pick it up. Just pick it up, Harry. Tell this clown what you think of him. Tell him to quit scaring Madeleine. What kind of conversation would that be, for God’s sake? Look here, you’ve given my girl friend a severe attack of the willies.… Big deal.

  HERE’S THE DEAL, APOLOGY. I GOT THIS ACQUAINTANCE. SHE DOESN’T KNOW IT YET. I MEAN. SHE DOESN’T KNOW WE’RE ACQUAINTED, BUT PRETTY SOON SHE’LL UNDERSTAND … AND THE BIG THING IS, MAN, THIS CHICK HAS ACCESS TO YOU … ON ACCOUNT OF HER PRIVILEGED POSITION IN LIFE.… YOU THINK I’M BEING MYSTERIOUS, DON’T YOU? YOU THINK I’M PLAYING MIND GAMES WITH YOU, RIGHT? SURE YOU DO.

  Access, Harrison thought.

  Privileged position.

  What did these things mean?

  He rose from the bed and walked to the window; the voice, as if it were growing in volume, followed him. He stared out into the afternoon sky. Leaden. Access. What did that mean?

  I’M ON THE LEVEL, APOLOGY. I’M GIVING IT TO YOU AS STRAIGHT AS I CAN.… YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT ALL THIS? IT MAKES ME HAPPY, THAT’S WHAT. IT MAKES ME FEEL GOOD TO BE ABLE TO CALL YOU, APOLOGY.… YOU’RE LIKE THE BROTHER I NEVER HAD. HEY, I LIKE THAT ONE!

  Harrison pressed his face to the glass pane.

  The brother, he thought.

  Bad blood.

  He turned and looked at the receiver again; then he went back across the room and suddenly picked the thing up and raised it to his mouth and said, “Listen I don’t need this shit,” but he realized the caller had already hung up and the line was dead and the dial tone as monotonous as a wind blowing on a flat empty landscape.

  He put the receiver back in place.

  He realized he’d left a faint film of sweat against the gleaming plastic.

  4.

  Scorpion Scypion claimed he had once single-handedly supplied the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, with amphetamines, real good A-one Black Beauties courtesy of Pennwalt Prescription Products. He also claimed to have shot down a Soviet helicopter outside the town of Nome. He had a tattoo on his chest which depicted a chopper going down in these huge red and yellow flames and he showed this to anyone who asked, as if it were proof of his valor. Gooch wasn’t convinced by any of the Scorpion’s stories, mainly because he made himself the hero of every one. He was the kind of guy who was always talking aloud over everybody else and most of his sentences began with the phrase Hey, that reminds me of the time.…

  Gooch put his glass of Tab down on the counter. They were sitting together in the back room of Frazier’s Gymnasium on Broadway and 10th and there was a smell of wintergreen and sweat in the air. Gooch’s muscles were sore because he’d just finished working out; his arms and chest and groin were covered with sweat. He looked at the Scorpion for a while. He wore dense black glasses and a leather vest; his hair was tied back in a ponytail. What he resembled was an old biker. There were bunches of little tattoos all over his arms and the backs of his hands but there wasn’t one as dramatic as the chopper in flames.

  “So what’s the scoop, Ace?” the Scorpion asked. He was rolling an empty Coke can along the counter.

  Gooch said nothing. He was thinking about Nightingale. For the fuzz, the big fat man wasn’t a bad guy. He could’ve kept himself in shape better, though. You carry around too much blubber and one day, zip, the old pump gives out and they wheel you away in a screaming ambulance. What was the name of the man Nightingale wanted to know about? Billy Chapman? Gooch picked up his Tab and sipped and the stuff tasted like sugary vinegar in his mouth. Billy Chapman. Hell. Maybe the Scorpion knew something—he was always claiming he knew everybody. The problem was how to bring up Chapman’s name in front of Scypion: You needed to work your way around it, be a little subtle, discreet, like Nightingale said. Gooch cleared his throat and put his Tab down. “Scorpion, you know a guy by the name of Billy Chapman?” he asked.

  The Scorpion flicked a fly away from a lens of his black glasses. “Billy Chapman Billy Chapman.” He shrugged and scratched his technicolor arms. “What’s the score? Why you asking, Gooch?”

  “I just kinda heard his name someplace.…”

  “Yeah? Well. I might. I might not. Depends.” The Scorpion stopped scratching. “I knew a Wally Chapman one time. We was running guns across the Mexican border. This was back in sixty-five, sixty-six, sometime like that. We hauled M-16s to the bandits, Gooch. A good scam at the time.”

  “This ain’t a Wally Chapman. This is a Billy.”

  “A Billy,” the Scorpion said. “He live around here or what?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So why you want to know?”

  “I’m curious,” Gooch said.

  “Yeah, I agree with that estimate,” Scypion said and laughed.

  Gooch sipped his drink again, wishing he’d gotten Gatorade instead. Another of the Scorpion’s drawbacks was the sneaky way he’d try to bounce snide little remarks off your head, try to run them right past you before you noticed. Gooch sometimes felt a little riled by these comments until he remembered he had something over the Scorpion—the fact that he was one of the few people who knew Scypion’s real first name was Hubert. Now and then, when he wanted to get back at the guy, he’d drag Hubert out and use it and watch with amusement as Scypion got pissed off.

  “So do you know this guy or don’t you?” Gooch asked.

  “I know lotsa people, Gooch. I go up and down the street, man, and I’m always getting stopped by somebody. You got to figure I know hundreds of guys. And I don’t always put a name to a face, see.”

  Gooch nodded his head. “If you can remember, I’d be real pleased.” He was imagining Nightingale smiling and slipping him twenty bucks or so when he told him where to locate this sisterfucker. Mainly he liked to see Nightingale smile, because he felt real good when he was able to please the fat man. He felt like he was an honorary member of the force. It was a secure kind of feeling. He finished his drink and looked at Scypion. “I don’t think you know that many guys,” he said. It was pretty cunning, this approach; now the Scorpion would have to start putting his money where his mouth was.

  “Yeah? Sure I do. I just need time to remem
ber, is all.”

  “Tell you what. You call me when it comes back to mind, okay, Hubert?” Gooch got down from his stool and picked up his blue Nike bag, which contained his shorts, tanktop, sneakers, and a big bottle of liniment he always got from an athletic supplies store on Lafayette Street.

  “I’ll call you, Gooch. You sure it ain’t Wally Chapman, though? Wally Chapman’s out in Amarillo these days herding cattle, from what I hear.”

  “It’s Billy. Billy Chapman. Bee aye ell …”

  “I know how to spell it.”

  Gooch hoisted his bag against his shoulder and went outside, where the afternoon rain began immediately to soak through his navy blue sweatshirt.

  5.

  Nightingale’s apartment was located on the upper floor of a building on 84th Street, which was a bad pain in the ass because of the climb.

  Since Sarah had gone, the place was sloppy, the bed never made; the laundry lay spilled across the bedroom floor and reached, like some tenuous living thing, into the bathroom. The wood floor creaked in such a way that he always imagined the building was sinking into the street. He unlocked the door and stepped inside the apartment, listening to the sound of Moody breathing hard behind him.

  “You’ve never been here before,” Nightingale said. “I just realized that. Excuse the … living alone.” He shrugged, closing the door behind his partner. They went inside the living room. “Sit down. Just sling the newspapers off a chair.”

  Nightingale lowered himself into the armchair by the unlit fire. Naugahyde stirred beneath his body as though it were a creature rearranging its flesh. The place was a bit bleak, he realized. It lacked her touch, her presence.

  Moody said, “If I was training for the Olympics, I’d want to live here, Frank. What a fucking climb.”

  Nightingale looked at his watch. 5:35. More than thirteen hours had passed since they’d discovered the corpse of Henry Falcon. Thirteen inconclusive hours. He stared up at the mantelpiece: Sarah’s picture—she always looked so benign in photographs, so beatific; you could see some of that inner serenity he had always loved in her. The calm center of the woman. He realized he was tired and frustrated. A long day of questions. Neighbors. A confusing maze that had no entrance, no exit, nothing in the center. He watched the Boy Wonder rub his jaw, then knead the muscles of his face with his fingertips. He said, “Some days just don’t go anywhere. You get that feeling? Some days are just fucked before they begin, Doug. So let’s have a drink. I think I’ve got some Black Label somewhere.” He rose slowly, moaning at the way his bones ached, then dragged himself into the kitchen and looked inside the liquor cabinet. He poured two glasses of Johnny Walker and carried them back inside the living room, passing one to Moody.