Mr. Apology Page 31

  …AND THERE’S NOT A GODDAMN THING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.…

  “What a horrible voice,” George said. “Don’t you think it’s horrible, Bryant?”

  “I wasn’t really listening.”

  “I could tell that.” George was looking at the dictaphone on the desk, his eyes bright, lit. Berger didn’t speak. The voice was horrible. It filled the room with a sense of distilled madness. A crazy deranged voice.

  WE’LL BE TALKING AGAIN REAL SOON, MR. APOLOGY.

  WE’LL BE TALKING AGAIN REAL SOON.

  “I’ll turn the thing off.”

  “Wait,” George said. “Let me listen to it.”

  “It’s so depressing.”

  “Wait, I said!”

  “Of course. Whatever you say.” There—that old harsh edge in the young man’s voice. He watched George move towards the dictaphone and press the REWIND button.

  APOLOGY? APOLOGY, YOU LISTENING TO ME, MAN? IF YOU’RE A GODDAMN MAN AND NOT SOME FUCKING MACHINE.…

  Berger thought: Something about that voice … whatever—it eluded him, a very distant awareness of familiarity. But voices on telephones always seemed nasal, distorted. I’ve never heard it before.

  “George, we don’t need to listen to this, do we?”

  “I want to. I want to listen to it!”

  “Sure.” Berger felt lost all at once—George had become distant, absorbed in these crazy ramblings.

  KNOW SOMETHING? I GET THE FEELING YOU’RE THERE, MAN. I GET THIS DISTINCT FEELING YOU’RE JUST SITTING THERE LISTENING.… WHY DON’T YOU PICK UP THE TELEPHONE? OR IS THAT SOMETHING YOU NEVER DO?

  George stopped the machine. What is it? What the hell is it that so interests him about this nonsense? Berger wondered. And what is this other thing you feel—that the voice is somehow familiar to you, like the distorted version of a voice you know, someone you’ve listened to, someone you’ve heard in the past? What is this uneasy feeling?

  George turned and, with a small smile, a tiny cold expression, said, “I have to make a phone call, Bryant. A very private one. Do you mind?”

  “Who are you going to call?”

  “It isn’t dear Angela. Don’t worry.”

  “I know that.…” The question. The unease. It was a matter of destiny, he thought—you are fated never to overcome the seizures of jealousy. He is calling somebody, somebody he’s going to go see now, a meeting, an assignation. Berger stepped out of his office, closing the door. He felt miserable, wretched, diminished. He just erases me from his mind. He forgets me. How can it be that goddamn easy for him? He paced outside the closed door. The anguish of this. Was anything worth that? He clenched his hands. He went close to the door, listening to the low mumble of George’s voice. A tone, a monotone—there were no words he could distinguish. And then he heard the sound of George laughing. There, he thought, he makes a connection over a telephone and it pleases him, and perhaps it pleases him even more when he knows how badly it affects me. Twist, turn, the passages of a maze. Don’t hurt me, George. I can take anything but that.

  He pushed the door open and looked in.

  George was hanging up the receiver.

  He had a strange look on his face. Berger was reminded of the expression George’d had when he’d been playing with his revolting Swiss army knife. A mean aspect of George, as if whatever generosity and whatever compassion he possessed had suddenly deserted him—and you could see something dark just under the surface of skin.

  “Who did you call, George?” Hating himself, loathing himself for this weakness.

  “You wouldn’t know the person.”

  “Is it a date?”

  “You might say that, Bryant.”

  “Who? Is it someone you’re attracted to?”

  “In a sense.”

  “Why are you being so damned evasive?”

  George was smiling now. He tipped his face back, looked upwards at the ceiling, appeared lost in contemplation. Berger watched him: By lamplight, encircled by the pale splash of white, he seemed bigger somehow, dominating the room. He went across the floor and put his hands on George’s shoulders.

  “Is there somebody else?”

  “Not really.”

  “I know I can’t expect you to be loyal, George.” Pathetic, groveling, as if he were very small and looking up at the young man.

  George kept smiling. Why did it suddenly seem so infuriating? The smile, the parted lips, the white teeth.

  “I know I can’t expect it. I know there are attractive young people out there, people with whom you must have more in common than me.…” He faltered. The begging heart. “It’s just very hard for me to accept the idea that you must know other people.”

  “Do you think I do?”

  “I don’t think about it, George. I try to keep it away. It hurts.”

  “I wouldn’t want to hurt you, Bryant. Would George want to hurt his very dear friend?”

  Berger laid his face against the young man’s shoulder. “When you were making that phone call, when you insisted on privacy, I felt … I don’t know, a kind of hopelessness. Despair.”

  “You want to know who I called, don’t you?”

  Berger nodded. Yes, no, he wasn’t sure.

  “Just an acquaintance, Bryant.”

  “Someone you go to bed with?”

  “Really, Bryant, you think the most awful things about me, don’t you?”

  George pressed the PLAYBACK button on the dictaphone. He turned back to Berger and lightly touched his neck, running his fingertips smoothly over the flesh. Berger pressed his mouth against George’s lips. This is it. This is the place where passion comes back and the senses leave you like summer moths on their haphazard flight into death. Down and down and down in the taste of George, drawn under, blinded.

  HERE’S ALL I GOT TO SAY TO YOU, UNTIL THE NEXT TIME ANYWAY …

  Why was it so loud now, filling the whole space of the office? Why? Berger felt George draw him down to the floor; he felt the young man’s legs wrapped around his own …

  I MIGHT USE A KNIFE. I MIGHT JUST USE MY BARE FUCKING HANDS …

  … and for a short time, a very short time, he entered a world that was without shadow, jealousy, a word with a certain future.

  And then he realized where he had heard the voice before.

  8.

  When he heard the sound of the loft door being quietly opened, Harrison stepped out of the bedroom and looked at Madeleine—the pale face, the deep shadows under the eyes, her mouth a single tired line. He moved across the floor and held her hands, saying nothing, leading her into the bedroom, making her sit down. Her shoes were scuffed and her coat hung open and her blue silk scarf dangled precariously around her neck. He put his arms around her, feeling neither anger nor disappointment but a sense of relief—because all day long he had been wondering if she’d ever come back, if the theft of the tape meant the end of their relationship. He had called her number at the apartment; he had tried the gallery, only to learn that she’d been sent home. Now she was here, silent, distant, but here at last. He listened to her sigh.

  “You know what I’ve done, Harry?”

  “You don’t have to say anything now,” he said, touching the side of her face and finding her skin cold.

  “I took one of your tapes. I went to the cops with it. I gave it to a cop called Stanislavski, who said he’d pass it along to somebody called Nightingale, the guy in charge of the murder investigations.…” She recited these words in a flat way, her face expressionless. She might have been communicating out of a trance.

  “There’s something else, Harry.”

  He didn’t speak. He was thinking about the cops listening to one of the tapes. What could they do about a voice on a cassette? How could it help them catch a killer unless they bugged every goddamn phone booth in the city?

  “Somebody followed me today.” She licked her lips, hesitated.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know who. I was in a bar. I went inside th
e john and somebody came into the next cubicle and looked at me through a hole in the wood and whispered my name.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sitting here making it up, Harry. God damn it, of course I’m sure!”

  “Did you see the person?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe it was somebody playing a practical joke.”

  “Harry, something bad is going on! Something you’ve created and released. And it’s happening to us. It’s not happening to the guy next door; it’s happening to you and me!”

  He heard her words ring in his ears. He got up from the bed and strolled towards the window, where he looked out at the darkening sky. Was she right? he wondered. Was she absolutely correct, beyond all possible doubt? Are you too blind, Harry, too engrossed, to see what Madeleine observes? Is that what it is? He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, making tight fists of them. You just can’t face the sight of your little world of Apology coming apart like fragments of some torn map. You can’t bear the sound of it being unraveled. He turned around to look at Madeleine. Something you’ve created and released. Your own private monster, constructed out of a demented blueprint. Madeleine had risen from the bed and was standing over the answering machine, just staring at it. Then she raised her eyes and looked at the shelf of cassettes.

  Something you’ve created.

  And released.

  And it was killing Madeleine too.

  He moved towards her and put his arms around her shoulders, linking his hands over her breasts. She moved away from him, turned to the window, walked there slowly. Cold, unresponsive. He watched her for a while, saying nothing. Somebody had followed her inside a ladies’ room, uttered her name—was she totally sure? Or was it something she had constructed out of her own fears, out of the terrible shock of her friend dying?

  The telephone rang. He heard the answering machine click on, the sound of his own recorded message. Madeleine swung around, her face filled with pain.

  “No more, Harry. Please. No more of it.”

  He didn’t move.

  The call, he thought.

  The one he wanted to hear.

  He heard his message end, saw Madeleine turn back and stare out of the window.

  The voice filled the room.

  The voice …

  APOLOGY, HOW COME YOU NEVER CHANGE YOUR MESSAGE, MAN? I’M GETTING KINDA SICK OF ALWAYS HEARING THE SAME WORDS WHENEVER I CALL.… HOW COME YOU NEVER PICK UP THE TELEPHONE EITHER? HUH?

  And the laughter.

  Derisive.

  Harrison felt every nerve in his body stiffen, ligaments and muscles tense. He covered the receiver with the palm of his hand. Madeleine was moving back towards the bed. She sat down, hands covering her ears.

  I GOT ANOTHER LITTLE CONFESSION FOR YOU. MAN. I KILLED SOMEBODY LAST NIGHT. I KILLED SOMEBODY BECAUSE SHE WASN’T GOING TO TELL ME WHAT I WANTED TO KNOW, APOLOGY.… I CUT HER TITS. I WENT INSIDE HER MOUTH WITH A RAZOR BLADE AND I CUT HER TONGUE OUT.…

  “Shut it off, Harry!” Madeleine put her face down on the pillow, sobbing.

  I STRANGLED HER WITH A HAIRDRYER. MAN, AND THEN I STUCK THE THING INSIDE HER CUNT.… WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT? SHE WAS AN OLD PAL OF YOURS, APOLOGY … AN OLD PAL.… YOU FUCKER, WHY DON’T YOU PICK UP YOUR GODDAMN PHONE? MAYBE YOU READ ABOUT HER IN THE NEWSPAPERS, YEAH? THEY DON’T GO IN TO THE REAL DETAILS, NOT THE KIND I’M TELLING YOU NOW.…

  “Oh, Jesus, Jesus,” Madeleine was saying, her words broken by tears. Harrison reached across the bed and touched her. Jamey Hausermann… It was more than he could imagine, more than he could envisage. The whole picture was too terrible for him to contemplate. He gazed at the red light on the answering machine. Why did it suddenly seem to flicker, almost as if power were being drained out of the device by the weight of the incoming message? Almost as if this message were too much for the cassette to carry. He shut his eyes, curled his fingers around the receiver. You get an idea, you get a notion, it excites you, it draws you to it, you suddenly think you’ve discovered a new form of artistic expression, those sad messages that come from out there, you see it all as a kind of breakthrough for you, something that might liberate you from past failures and break new ground, you imagine all this—then it turns around against you, it rears up and strikes out and it strangles you in miles of magnetic tape, it changes from dream to nightmare, from expressions of sorrow and regret to outrages, monstrosities—and none of it would have happened if you hadn’t had your crazy vision in the first place.… And you didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to look at it, made yourself blind to what was falling apart all around you.

  I’VE SEEN YOUR LITTLE FRIEND, APOLOGY. I’VE SEEN YOUR LITTLE PAL, YOU KNOW, AND SHE AIN’T BAD-LOOKING.… SHE AIN’T BAD-LOOKING AT ALL.… WHAT’S SHE LIKE IN THE SACK, HUH? HOT AND STEAMY?

  The laughter.

  Harrison looked down at his white knuckles. There was an anger running through him now, a deep dark anger that coursed through the networks of his body.

  HEY, LISTEN … I GOT TO GO NOW, BECAUSE THERE’S THIS GUY WHO’S GETTING ON MY NERVES AND WHINES A LOT AND I FIGURE I CAN DO HIM SOME GOOD BY JUST PUTTING HIM OUT OF HIS MISERY.… KNOW WHAT I MEAN? HIS LIFE AIN’T WORTH THE HASSLE.… I’LL DO HIM A FAVOR … BUT I’LL BE SEEING YOU AND YOUR LITTLE PAL REAL SOON, BECAUSE YOUR OTHER FRIEND JAMEY … WELL, JUST LET ME SAY, SOME PEOPLE WILL BECOME PRETTY GODDAMN TALKATIVE WHEN YOU’RE FLASHING A RAZOR IN THEIR FACE.…

  Again, the laughter.

  IT WON’T BE TOO LONG BEFORE I SEE YOU, HARRISON. HARRY HARRISON.

  Harrison…

  Madeleine raised her face and stared at him with red eyes.

  Harrison…

  He knows who I am.

  He knows.

  He fumbled the receiver to his mouth but the line was already dead.

  SEVEN

  1.

  Nightingale rubbed his eyelids and looked across the office at Moody. The Boy Wonder was going through a folder of papers. He raised his face, pursed his lips, and made a humming sound. Then he said, “Jamey Hausermann must have talked with everybody in this whole metroplis, Frank. Listen to some of this stuff she wrote about. An article on the New York Knicks. Another on some PLO hitman living in Brooklyn. A guy trying to raise money for Northern Irish rebels. Mayor Koch. A lottery winner. Norman Mailer. The future of rapid transit. There’s a whole bunch of stuff here, Frank.”

  “Lemme see it,” Nightingale said. Moody crossed the room, dropped the folder on Nightingale’s desk. Nightingale picked it up, flipped the pages. She’d covered a really broad spectrum of New York people and events and issues. There didn’t seem to be anything she hadn’t touched. The paperback revolution. Richard Nixon, lawyer. The Mr. Apology line. “Hey, Doug, here’s your old pal. Mr. Apology.”

  “Yeah, I noticed it.”

  “Maybe we should start there.” He scratched his nose and shrugged.

  “Nah. Start with Norman Mailer. Maybe he got violent or something.”

  Nightingale smiled. He was about to start making little tickmarks beside the list of names and subjects, on the grounds that perhaps something she’d written about might provide a clue to the killer, when he heard the office door open. He looked up to see Eddie Fodor come in. Eddie wore a three-piece pinstriped suit, the kind of suit Nightingale thought he hadn’t seen since the middle of the 1940s.

  “Eddie, how are you?”

  “Doing just dandy, Frank. You?” They shook hands.

  “I’ve had better days.”

  “I heard you got something pretty bad down here. Some stranglings.”

  “Yeah, with bells on,” Nightingale said. “Double-breasted, huh? You don’t see that a whole lot these days. Pretty smooth, Eddie. They must pay real well in Narcotics.”

  Moody was sitting on the other side of the room. “What it is, Frank, a whole lot of contraband never makes it to trial. It has a way of mysteriously disappearing. Six pounds of heroin just seems to evaporate until there’
s only three left. Where does it go? you ask yourself. Now take another look at Eddie’s suit and maybe you start to have this feeling just kind of dawn on you.”

  Eddie Fodor, who wore his slicked-down hair center-parted, laughed. “I like your partner’s style, Frank. He’s a laugh a minute.”

  Nightingale nodded sourly. Why did Moody have this unfortunate knack of saying things out of turn every so often? Maybe it was his strange sense of humor or something. He glared at Moody and then turned back to look at his old partner, Eddie Fodor.

  “You haven’t changed much, Eddie. I’ll say that.”

  Eddie Fodor said, “I keep myself trim, you know? I work out. I get some jogging in.” He winked at Nightingale, then nudged him. Eddie had always been a terrific nudger. “Nookie helps as well, Frank. Remember nookie?”

  Nightingale tried to suck in his paunch.

  There was a silence in the room for a moment, then Eddie Fodor slid down from the edge of the desk and paced towards the window. He had a jaunty way of walking, a feisty manner, as if he were trying to keep his balance on a storm-struck boat. He stared out, hands tucked inside the pockets of his vest. “This place sucks, Frank. It’s crummy. You should see the office they gave me. I got chrome chairs and a decent desk. Scandinavian style. Plain wood, very fashionable.”

  “Well,” Moody said. “All the glamour’s in drugs nowadays. All that undercover posturing. TV glorifies the narc because he’s always coming on like Serpico or something. It’s a bunch of bullshit.”

  Eddie Fodor looked at Nightingale. “He’s like sour milk, Frank. What’s his beef?”

  “My beef is I’m tired of a killer running loose out there,” Moody said. He picked up a file, flipped it open, and lapsed into a dark silence.