Mr. Apology Page 27

  “You see it, don’t you?” she asked. “I mean, you grasp the connection, don’t you? She was killed for only one reason. She was killed because of you, Harry. Because of you and your stupid project.”

  He opened his eyes just as she was rising from her chair. He heard her move out of the kitchen, go inside the bedroom. After a moment he went to her. Because of me, he thought. How could I be responsible for anyone’s death? He was very cold, aware of the chill that permeated the loft. No, he thought. It couldn’t be like that. Apology had nothing to do with death. Face the facts, Harry. A dead dancer strangled. A woman who was somehow connected to a telephone company. And now this poor journalist. Now this. They had their links to Apology. Faint threads might have attached them to the project: It was more—they were as much a part of the project as the answering machine. You created this monster, Harry. You created it and now it’s rising up to turn against you. Would these people have been killed if it hadn’t been for Apology? If Apology had never existed? He stood in the bedroom doorway, watching Madeleine put on her coat.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Work,” she said. “I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to keep my mind off this.”

  There’s no way you can do that, he thought.

  “Stay here.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “If I stay here I can only mope.”

  He realized he didn’t want her to leave. He looked at the palms of his hands as if he might find bloodstains smeared against his skin. “Don’t go,” he said again. He didn’t want to be alone.

  “I’m already late, Harry.”

  He could see it. She wanted to be all business. She wanted to be aloof. Above everything. Plunge into the lukewarm water of the everyday world, bask in those shallows where the terrible fact of a friend’s death wouldn’t touch you. He watched her: He realized she had judged him already, found him guilty of conspiracy to kill, sentenced him—to what? he wondered. What is my sentence?

  She was doing up the buttons of her dark coat. Her white hands were trembling. She looked weak, drawn.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I need to get out of here. I need to get away from this place.…” She glanced at the answering machine. There was a look of hatred on her face. He had never seen that expression before. When she walked past him she didn’t kiss him.

  “Maddy, we need to talk about this—”

  “There’s nothing to say, Harry.”

  She was going to the front door. She slid the bolt back, pulled the door open. Then, saying nothing more, she was gone. He watched the door close behind her and heard the faint sound of her footsteps on the stairs.

  He sighed, looked around the empty bedroom.

  You don’t feel exactly right when she isn’t here.

  Like you’re missing a limb. Something vital gone out of you.

  They call it love, Harry. That’s their name for this feeling.

  He sat on the edge of the bed with his eyes shut. There was the ghost of a pain inside him now. He opened his eyes, gazed across the bed. Echoes of Madeleine. Tiny traces. A dark comb on a bedside table. A twisted Kleenex. Her wristwatch, which she’d obviously forgotten. (How could she remember anything on such a day as this?) He had the feeling he was trying to assemble a picture of the woman from the artifacts she’d left behind—like some future archaeologist building pictures of long-dead persons from a few broken articles.

  You even feel sentimental about noticing her belongings on the bedside table.

  Sentimental? You, Harry?

  He rose, wandered around the room, glanced at the answering machine. A red light was glowing. Incoming calls. Messages. He sat down again. Now, for the first time, he created a picture of Jamey Hausermann. He made himself look at it, a movie playing in the dark projection room of his head. He could see her as he’d last seen her, right here in this loft, lighting cigarettes, talking in that quick way she had as though words were things to be bitten off. He imagined he could see somebody strangling her, hands clenched tightly around a thin neck, knuckles rigid and white, he could see her eyes open and the gradual change of her expression from fear to resignation—

  This one is real, Harry.

  This isn’t an old dancer you never saw in your life.

  This isn’t the woman he said he’d drowned in the bathroom.

  This one was right here. She talked with you, wrote an article about your life—

  The bitter connection.

  The sad link that led to her death.

  She wrote about you. She knew your real identity.

  And she was vulnerable because of it.

  She was open to death.

  Oh, Christ …

  And the consequence was—

  The consequence was—

  He got up, paced the room, walked to the window. Did you try to save your own life by telling your killer what you knew? Did you do that, Jamey? Did you give him a name and address and everything else you knew? These casual connections. A killer picks up a magazine someplace—he picks it up because he sees Apology mentioned on the cover—he opens the magazine, reads the article, sees the name of the journalist—

  The rest is easy.

  He stared out the window across rooftops. The sun was white, the morning cold. At least it wasn’t raining now. It was the only thing he could find to say about the day.

  He turned, went back towards the answering machine, looked at the red light glowing there. He wanted to hear that voice again. He wanted to play the tape and learn if a new message had come in during the hours of darkness. A confession of murder. Jamey Hausermann’s murder. He pressed the REWIND button, listened to the tape whir back to the beginning. I need to hear him, he thought. I need to know beyond all doubt. Beyond all the possible permutations of coincidence, sheer chance.

  PLAYBACK.

  I GOT A WILL TO WRITE, BECAUSE I’M DYING, MR.APOLOGY. I’M SIXTY-EIGHT AND I SUFFER FROM MELANOMA.…

  A breathless old man. Not the voice he needed to hear.

  FAST FORWARD.

  YOU GOT SUCH A NICE VOICE. I’D LIKE TO COME AND SEE YOU, GET TO KNOW YOU A WHOLE LOT BETTER. I’D LIKE TO GO DOWN ON YOU.

  A schoolgirl’s voice. Some kind of prank.

  FAST FORWARD.

  Somebody sobbing as he talked.

  I’M UNEMPLOYED, MR. APOLOGY. MARRIED AND UNEMPLOYED. MY WIFE AND ME—WE HAD TO LIVE WITH MY FATHER. THEN … I WENT OUT THE OTHER DAY TO CHECK ON A JOB AND I WAS GONE MAYBE THREE, FOUR HOURS AND WHEN I GOT BACK I COULDN’T FIND MY WIFE OR MY FATHER ANYWHERE, THEN I HEARD THESE NOISES COMING FROM THE BEDROOM UPSTAIRS. I KNOW I SHOULDN’T HAVE CLIMBED THE STAIRS, I KNOW THAT, BUT I DID ANYWAYS AND I FOUND THEM TOGETHER, BOTH OF THEM NAKED IN BED, FUCKING.… THEY WERE FUCKING, APOLOGY, MY WIFE AND MY OWN FATHER.…

  A voice filled with devastation.

  He wanted to go on listening to it, he wanted to understand something of this predicament, this domestic horror, but it still wasn’t the voice he wanted, the message he needed to hear.

  FAST FORWARD.

  I TOOK SOME PILLS. IT’S EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING AND I’M IN THIS HOTEL ROOM BECAUSE I WANTED TO TAKE THESE PILLS AND JUST CHECK OUT—THE FINAL CHECKOUT, THAT’S WHAT I MEAN.… I’M JUST SO GODDAMN TIRED AND WEARY.… I HAD AN URGE TO CALL SOMEBODY, BECAUSE THIS IS A HISTORIC OCCASION IN MY LIFE.… JUST THINK, I’LL NEVER MAKE ANOTHER PHONE CALL, NOT EVER.… THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS I’LL NEVER DO AGAIN. THANKS FOR LISTENING, WHOEVER YOU ARE.…

  A young female voice.

  A suicidal girl in a hotel room somewhere. Eight o’clock in the morning and waiting to die. That was almost two hours ago. She might be dead by this time. So goddamn tired and weary.… A sadness touched him; he felt powerless. He couldn’t call anybody; she hadn’t mentioned the name of the hotel, anything personal like her own name.… Don’t think about this now, Harry. Keep searching through this tape. Keep looking for this one voice.

  FAST FORWARD

  NOB
ODY BELIEVES ME WHEN I TELL THEM I WENT FOR A TRIP ON A FLYING SAUCER. THEY WERE VENUSIAN GUYS AND THEIR BOOTS SQUELCHED WHEN THEY WALKED—

  FAST FORWARD.

  HI. MY NAME IS RICHARD STRYKER. I’M A FREELANCE JOURNALIST AND I READ ABOUT YOU AND I WONDER IF YOU’D LIKE TO GET TOGETHER WITH ME AND TALK ABOUT ME DOING A PIECE ON YOU—

  Fame.

  What was the price of fame?

  FAST FORWARD.

  Bits and pieces of garbled messages—the kid blaming himself for his parents’ divorce, a businessman embezzling funds, a guy who knows God’s telephone number—then the tape came to an end. Nothing, nothing from the voice he wanted to hear most of all. He took the cassette from the machine, numbered it, inserted a new one. Why hasn’t he called? Why hasn’t he called to confess? He’s playing a waiting game. He’s working on the ends of my nerves. He knows I’m waiting for him to call.

  He took the numbered cassette to the shelf over the bed where he kept the collection of tapes. Tape #13. Thirteen hours of messages already. You could say Apology was a success, Harry. You could say that. He was suddenly angry now—angry at the idea of some crazy person out there killing people on account of his project, his baby, and threatening to bring it down in one great crashing wreck. Who the fuck did he think he was any how? Who the hell did he imagine he was, tearing at the very fabric of this whole project? Call me. Call me, whoever you are. I want to talk to you.…

  He clenched his hands.

  He looked along the row of numbered cassettes, each neatly marked on the side with a Magic Marker.

  Thirteen tapes. Would there be any more? Was this going to be the end of everything? His anger turned to disappointment. He remembered years of things left undone, his unfinished degree at New Paltz, the works that had either died between the drawing board or halfway to completion; he remembered how past enthusiasms had withered and dissipated themselves, how he had always felt doubts about this project or that—and how Apology had excited him, enthused him, intrigued him. Now it was threatened. It was threatened every bit as much as its creator.

  He surveyed the stack of cassettes. One two four six. Seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen.

  Two were missing.

  Tapes three and five.

  He counted the cassettes. Eleven tapes in all.

  Where were three and five?

  Okay. Okay. Remember. Madeleine gave one to Berger. She had taken him tape number three. He remembered this.

  But what had happened to five?

  He looked along the shelf, pushing books aside, shoving papers out of the way. He checked behind the pillow, behind the bed, under the mattress.

  Nothing.

  No sign of the missing cassette.

  Madeleine, he thought.

  She took that tape!

  Nobody else could have done it.

  She’d taken that tape and—

  She’s going to destroy it. That was his first thought.

  He knew better than that, though.

  He knew what she was going to do with it.

  She’d pilfered the tape, walked out of here with it in her purse.

  Maddy—

  The cops, he thought.

  What else? He slammed his fists together and stared out of the window across the rooftops. The cops. It was what he’d been anxious to avoid from the very beginning; it was a promise he’d given to everyone who had used the Apology line. It had been a form of contract, an undertaking, something he had felt solemn about. He’d always thought that people wouldn’t use the number if they even remotely imagined there might be some vague official purpose behind it, if they even faintly dreamed it might be another trick of a government agency, another devious way of gathering information that might later be used against them in some roundabout fashion. How many people didn’t complete official census forms on the grounds that they were suspicious of such data collection? It was the same thing with Apology—it could never have been associated in any way with any kind of bureaucracy. And now—

  Now.

  He sat down on the bed.

  He shut his eyes and imagined he could hear the wreckage of the whole thing all around him; imagined he could hear the splitting of magnetic tapes, the popping of tiny transistors inside the answering device; imagined he could see faceless people go back and forth across the city, tearing down the handbills wherever they encountered them. A whole insane circus of ruin.

  He opened his eyes, turned, looked at the answering machine.

  Damn it, he wasn’t going to dismantle it now. He wasn’t going to take the plug from the wall.

  He was going to wait until he heard the message he needed to hear.

  The one he was determined to hear.

  He was going to wait for that.

  2.

  Clear skies, sidewalks damp from the night’s rain; a watery sun struck the windows of high-rises, burst against the towers of midtown. A fine day of late fall, crisp and clear, and yet somehow it was all wrong; there should be rain and clouds and the threat of a storm. Madeleine stepped inside the gallery, looked across the room at the open office doorway, saw Berger sitting motionless behind his desk as if he were a figure carved in wax. The large room, the depressing rainbows, the muted overhead lighting—these elements seemed to converge, to spin and turn in a dizzying way. She paused, trying to keep her balance. Hyperventilation, nerves, shock. Hold on, she told herself. Just hold on and see if you can go through the motions of the day even if you know you’re never going to make it. Even if the same dreadful fact keeps assailing you, forcing itself into your brain. She opened her eyes, continued towards the office.

  Jamey. Jamey.

  She had to keep it from forming in her mind and welling up there like one huge tear.

  She saw, as if in a dream, Berger rise from behind his desk and smile at her and then his expression changed to one of concern, worry.

  “My dear, what is it?”

  It shows on my face, the way I move. It shows. She went inside his office and slumped in the chair that faced his desk. She felt the need to cry again. She was conscious of him coming around the front of his desk, holding her hands, patting the backs of them lightly.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  His voice echoed, rolled away from her, words turning to meaningless noises she couldn’t interpret. She was aware only of the solicitous way he behaved, his avuncular manner.

  “You’re white as the proverbial ghost, dear. Didn’t you sleep? Didn’t you manage to get any sleep?” Then he was talking about how surprising it was anybody ever slept anymore, given the amount of sensory bombardment we all had to endure these days. He’s trying to be kind, she thought. But she felt as if she might have fallen through some flimsy surface and hit a murky, sticky substance someplace below, something viscous. The room swayed. The light from the window shimmered like a pool touched by wind. Don’t keep thinking about Jamey. But how could she not? They had known each other for such a long time; they had been close friends, almost like sisters at times—how could she keep Jamey out of her mind? She stared at her purse: Why was the day so filled with hollows? Why was the quality of light so changeable? Think about the cassette you took from Harry. No, not took. Stole. You stole it from Harry because—

  “Maybe you should go home, put your feet up, watch soap operas,” Berger was saying, still patting her hand.

  She stared into his face.

  Some nasty little virus, perhaps … His voice sounded so soothing. She hoped he wouldn’t stop talking.

  A virus of fear, she thought.

  A cold aura around the heart.

  The death of my friend. Because of something I was involved in. Because of me and Harry, Jamey Hausermann had to die.

  Stark details. Name, age, profession. Means of murder: Strangulation. And then nothing more than these bare facts. The essence of Jamey Hausermann distilled into a few sentences from the mouth of a radio announcer.

  He’s out there now. He’s out there,
getting nearer.

  Searching dark corners. Scurrying along dark streets. Foraging for the name and address of Mr. Apology.

  Jamey knew it. It was the last thing Jamey knew.

  The sickness fevered inside her brain. Hot waves, scalding pulses, tiny fissures crisscrossing her mind and throwing up columns of burning steam. I am sick. I am very sick, she thought. She made to stand up. Berger caught her as she swayed to one side.

  Distantly, it seemed, the telephone was ringing.

  Berger answered it, then held the receiver towards her.

  “It’s for you, Madeleine. Do you want to take it?”

  Harry, she thought. It could only be Harry.

  She hesitated.

  She took the receiver and whispered, “Hello.”

  Silence. Nobody.

  She heard the click of a dead line.

  She dropped the receiver and said, “There wasn’t anybody.”

  “He asked for you, my dear.”

  “He just hung up,” she said. “What did he sound like?”

  “There wasn’t any particular accent.…” Berger shrugged, still watching her with deep concern. “You should go home. Please.”