“Sounds wonderful. If I had a passport, I’d go with you.”
She smiled. “Well, I’d like that. Next time. And did you say you were going to come out to California?”
I nodded. “Count on it. I’ll give you a week to rest up after your trip, then I’ll be out after that.”
She smiled and I smiled and for one brief second I felt like things were okay, that we’d done the impossible and put the paths of our lives back together. Maybe not on the same road, but so they’d cross each other occasionally and maybe run alongside of each other for a short time. I felt like I had a mother again.
Before she boarded her plane she cried and held me very tight. I felt empty as I walked back to the curb and to Mr. Adams’s limo.
He held the door for me, but I raised my hand. “No, thanks, Mr. Adams. The ball is over and I’m going to turn back into a pumpkin.” I gave him a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Enjoy the rest of the weekend, what’s left of it. You were very good to us.”
“Are you sure I can’t drop you back at your place?”
“No, thanks. I’ll make my own way. I mean it,” I added when he started to insist. “Thanks again.”
He nodded. “If you need a limo...”
“I know who to call.”
He drove off into the afternoon traffic, a sleek, black whale cruising smoothly through a school of darting, fractious fish.
I jumped home.
PART IV:
CHINESE CURSE
Chapter 10
On Monday I dropped my dirty clothes off as usual, jumping to the alley behind the laundry, and leaving them to be done, seventy-five cents a pound, no starch, shirts on hangers. When I stepped out on the sidewalk again the sun was shining brightly, the air felt cold and, for a change, clean. It felt crisp like a bite out of a new apple, fresh from the refrigerator. I decided to walk the six blocks back to the apartment.
Over the weekend, with Mr. Adams driving us, I’d seen more of my neighborhood than usual. It wasn’t without its pleasant aspects, but in early November, with all the leaves gone from the trees and bushes, it looked bleak and dirty. Amazing what a touch of green will do. Also, the nearer I got to my block, the more prominent the graffiti got, the more trash there was.
I wondered if I should move. How would I feel if Millie was staying here, if she had to walk through this area? I found myself looking at the men sitting on the stoops or standing on the corners. They stared back, challenging, until I looked elsewhere. If Millie visits, we’ll stay in a hotel in Manhattan.
It was because I was looking at everyone on the street that I noticed the guys in the car. They were parked three buildings down from my apartment, reading newspapers, the windows halfway down. A paper cup of coffee on the dashboard put a circle of condensation on the windshield. As I passed them, I heard the crackle of a dispatch radio, the kind you hear on cop shows.
I looked at the man on the passenger side. It was Washburn.
He was sipping from another cup of coffee and reading the paper, but at the sound of my footsteps he glanced toward me. When our eyes met, he jerked his head back, surprised. A large dollop of steaming coffee dropped onto his chest and he jerked again, swearing and patting ineffectually at his chest with newspaper. As he did this, I saw his jacket gape open and saw the wood-inlaid grip of his pistol in a shoulder holster.
Christ, he’s a cop? That explained the gun and it explained why the patrol cops didn’t do anything the night I called 911.
I walked on, with hardly a break in step, pleased that he’d spilled the coffee, but not wanting to acknowledge him. Nothing makes a person madder than being stared at when they’ve done something clumsy.
Since they were there, I went through the alley, toward the back gate, and jumped up to the apartment from a private space by the garbage cans. I looked out the window and saw Washburn, complete with coffee stain, get out of the car and walk up the sidewalk until he was directly below. He peered around the corner, into the alley.
I went into the bathroom and took some Alka-Seltzer.
What does he want?
It couldn’t be the bank robbery, could it? The only other crime I’d committed was using a false driver’s license, unless opening a bank account with false ID was fraud or something.
Hell, are they even watching me? Maybe I’m being paranoid.
At 1 P.M. the two men in the car were still there.
I jumped to Forty-seventh Street, bought a tripod, returned, and mounted the video camera on it, at the window. I ran an RCA jack across the room to my television and watched them at maximum zoom, in living color, on my twenty-five-inch screen. A couple of different times one or the other would take a bathroom or coffee break at the Korean deli on the corner.
Are they watching me?
I jumped to the landing outside my apartment door, went down the stairs and out the door. I ignored the car and walked down the block away from them. The street was fairly still, just then. In the distance, I heard a car door shut and then a car start its engine.
At the corner I took a right, then jumped back up to my apartment in time to see Washburn walk briskly up the sidewalk. At the corner, he looked to the right, then held one hand over his ear and moved his lips. I heard the car’s tires squeal, then catch. It went past the apartment and around the corner.
Well, I guess there’s no doubt. I looked around at the apartment, sad. I knew they couldn’t arrest me. I’d be gone before they could open the door, but all my stuff—all my precious books...
Dad wouldn’t let me keep books.
“What’s the big deal—you’ve read it, haven’t you?” Then he’d take them down to the used-book store and sell them for peanuts. He never got anything close to what they were worth. He didn’t like them cluttering up the house, or even my room.
They weren’t going to get my books.
Millie’s apartment complex, on the edge of the OSU campus, had a vacancy. They were surprised to get a tenant in the middle of the semester. The rent, for a second-story, two-bedroom apartment, was less than half of my New York rent and the deposit was only two hundred dollars. To simplify things, I paid the rent through the end of the spring semester, eight months’ worth, explaining that I’d just cashed the scholarship check and that if I didn’t pay for the rent, I’d probably spend it on pizza. They accepted my New York license and my dad’s address in Ohio and let me move in immediately.
I started in the living room of the New York apartment, with my shirt off and my hands sweating. I looked at a bookshelf, then jumped to the Stillwater apartment and chose a wall for it. Then back to the New York apartment. I stepped in to the bookshelf, three feet wide and shoulder-high, gripped one of the lower shelves, and heaved. The ligaments and tendons connecting my shoulders to my neck strained and I felt a strain in my lower back, but the bookshelf, one of my largest, didn’t seem to move. I exhaled and leaned back. The shelf tipped, came off the floor.
I jumped.
In the Stillwater apartment I leaned forward quickly. The bookshelf hit the floor and tipped back, banging into the wall and knocking seven books off the top shelf and onto the floor.
I left them there. The shelf was off the floor for just a second, but it came with me when I jumped. This bore thinking about, but I didn’t want to take the time.
The other bookshelves were easier, but by the time I finished, my shoulders were aching. I took the entertainment center in sections, much smaller loads than the bookshelves. The computer desk was also easy, but I took all the drawers out of my dresser and jumped them separately. I’d done my hanging clothes and I was about to take the bed apart when I thought about the money.
Oh. I started laughing. The more I laughed, the funnier it seemed. There was over seven hundred thousand dollars in the closet and I wanted to save my books. I leaned against the wall and shook, tears streaming down my face, almost breathless with laughter. There may be hope for you yet, Davy.
I jumped to Stillwater and found a li
nen closet in the hallway. It had shelves, but didn’t seem big enough. I looked up, thinking to add a shelf above, and saw an attic access hatch. After retrieving a step stool and a flashlight from the Brooklyn apartment, I found that there was a three-foot crawlspace between the roof and my apartment ceiling. It reminded me of the library back in Stanville.
The attic was blocked off from the other apartments by fire walls, making it private enough for my purposes. I transferred the money in stages, ignoring the rest of my belongings until every dollar was stacked neatly in the crawlspace.
What will they think of my doorless closet? Should I open the door back? I remembered a pointless television special involving the basement of a Chicago hotel and a hotshot broadcast “journalist” who thought he’d found Al Capone’s missing vault. It would be interesting to see their reaction when they broke through. I almost considered leaving a little money, just to confuse them.
I took a break, then, and had supper at Fraunces Tavern, in the financial district. This was a mistake. The service is leisurely, and by dessert my back had stiffened and my body seemed one dull ache from the top of my neck to the calves of my legs.
I tried walking along the water in Battery Park, to loosen up, but the cold wind off the mouth of the Hudson seemed to make things worse, adding a headache to my other ills.
Stupid police!
I jumped directly to the bathroom of the Brooklyn apartment, to take some ibuprofen. The room was dark, and I reached out to flip the light switch, but stopped.
Someone was in the apartment.
How’d they get past the drop bars?
The bathroom door was half open and I stepped quickly behind it, to peer though the crack by the hinges. The front door was six inches ajar and there was a blackened, irregular oval hole cut in the steel door. On the floor, just inside the doorway, was an acetylene-oxygen rig, with small tanks and a cutting torch. A decal on the oxygen tank said PROPERTY NYPD.
Down the hallway a uniformed policeman was helping a man in a suit examine my bed. They were probing the mattress with something that looked like hat pins, thin needles about six inches long. From the kitchen I could hear pots and pans clanging as someone moved them around.
I wondered if they had a search warrant.
Do you want to ask them, Davy? “Oh, excuse me, Officer. Do you have a piece of paper that lets you perform acupuncture on my bed?”
I decided to get the ibuprofen someplace else. I stood there, though, fascinated in some perverse way. I felt, almost, as if I was witnessing my own violation. I heard dishes clatter together and clenched my fists. The dishes in the kitchen were handmade pottery that I’d bought for five hundred dollars from a specialty shop in the Village.
At least the books are okay.
The phone rang. I looked at my watch.
Oh, Christ! Millie.
I hadn’t moved the phone or the answering machine. There hadn’t been a reason—there wasn’t even electricity at the Stillwater apartment, much less phone service.
The phone was in my bedroom, just visible on the bedside table. The man in the suit picked up the phone before the answering machine switched on.
“Hello,” he said, tilting his head toward the hallway. It was Washburn. He’d managed to change his shirt since the morning.
“No, you have the right number. This is David’s apartment. This is Sergeant Washburn of the New York City Police Department. Who am I speaking to?” He held his hand over the mouthpiece and said to the uniformed cop, “Call dispatch and get a trace.” The uniformed cop took a radio from his belt and went into the living room.
Washburn uncovered the mouthpiece. “No, to the best of my knowledge, David is all right. He left this apartment sometime this morning. He doesn’t seem to have been back. Have you known David long?” He listened. “Trouble? Well, that remains to be seen. We want to talk to Mr. Reece about a couple of things.” He listened again, then said, “Well, we have a search warrant—that’s why. Could you please give me your address and phone number, Ms. Harrison?” He wrote in a pad that he took from his jacket pocket. “Oklahoma? But you’re in the city right now?... No? Well, if you hear from Mr. Reece, could you please have him call Sergeant Washburn at the Seventy-second Precinct.” The uniformed cop came back into the bedroom and showed Washburn something written on a pad. Washburn compared it with his own pad and nodded.
“No, you have the right apartment. David’s rental lease says Rice, but his bank account says Reece. We don’t know whether Reece or Rice is correct. That’s one of the things we’d like to talk to him about. Please have him call. Goodbye.”
He hung up the phone. The other plainclothes cop stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Well?”
“Girlfriend, maybe. In Oklahoma. Talks to him every night. She seemed surprised and upset. Sounded like she didn’t know anything about his Reece persona. The number she gave us was legit.”
“I wonder if she knows where he gets his money?”
“Well, we can get hold of her later, if we don’t find out here,” said Washburn.
“Are you sure this is worth all this trouble? I mean, the only thing we have on the kid is illegal identification.”
“Shit, Baker! What about assault? Where does he get his money? The Social Security number he gave belongs to some grandmother in Spokane, Washington. The IRS wants to know about that. None of the people named David Rice or David Reece on their books have this address, so he’s probably never paid income tax. To me, that says drugs—drugs and drug money.”
The uniformed cop said, “I don’t find nothing in this mattress. What put you onto this guy, anyway?”
Washburn said, “Shut up and keep searching.”
“Jeez, Sergeant. What’s the big deal?”
Baker stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Washburn has the apartment downstairs. He’s been watching this Reece/Rice kid for a while, and the kid must have got wind of it. He and some of his friends jumped Washburn, knocked him out, and left him in Central Park.”
“Christ, Sergeant, why didn’t you press charges?”
Because it didn’t happen.
Washburn shrugged. “I’d rather he went down for something big. Besides,” he admitted, grudgingly, “there were no witnesses and I didn’t see his help. They jumped me from behind. But there’s something going on here. I checked with the landlord. The kid paid the deposit and first several months’ rent in postal money orders. Finally, he starts paying by check, but the name is different from the one on the lease. Last Saturday they see a limo drop the kid and a woman here. A limo, in this neighborhood? We check the license number on the check and, lo and behold, this isn’t the address on the license, so we check that address and we find another David Reece—one with a different face, but the same driver’s license. So, we put a tag on this David starting Sunday, but he loses us at Kennedy. We were afraid he’d skipped, but he comes walking back to his apartment Monday morning. Later that afternoon he walks out of the apartment, around the corner, and disappears again.”
Baker, in the hallway, said, “Next time we see him, we’re arresting him. He’s too good at dropping a tail. That’s why Ray and your partner are downstairs.” He went back into the kitchen.
The uniformed cop asked, “Who was the woman?”
“His mother. That’s what the limo driver told us. The kid paid in advance, in cash, for the weekend, and tipped the driver an additional hundred at the end. They picked her up at La Guardia and dropped her at Kennedy. The driver didn’t get her name or either of the flight numbers. Says the kid just told him what terminal and when. Possibly she brings his drugs in.”
Leave my mother alone! I considered jumping down to the street and torching their cars, perhaps smashing the windshields. The anger just made my head hurt more.
I jumped to Stillwater, where I bought ibuprofen at a convenience store and washed it down with 7UP.
What am I going to do about Millie?
Sherry, Millie’s roommate, answered
the door. The expressions that her face went through when she recognized me told me volumes.
“Hang on a second,” she said. She didn’t ask me in. She didn’t say hello or ask how I was doing. She pushed the door closed in my face.
The headache and the anger returned. When Millie opened the door, my face was red and my pulse was pounding in my ears. She looked scared.
“Davy, what are you doing here?”
I shrugged. “I need to talk to you. Since I’m not welcome inside, perhaps we could take a walk.”
She swallowed. “I’m not sure I want to walk with you.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” She flinched and I went on in a quieter voice. “Sergeant Washburn didn’t say I was violent, did he? Surely he would have told you if I was suspected of murder or something.”
“How did you know...? Well, okay. I’ll get my coat.”
She joined me on the porch a minute later, her hands stuck deep in the pockets of her coat, her eyes remote, her face still.
I walked out to the street and she followed a few paces behind. We started slowly down the sidewalk. The sky was cloudy, the temperature right above freezing, and a thin mist, more than fog and less than rain, left surfaces slick and wet. I could smell woodsmoke.
She broke the silence first. “Why are you walking like that? Are you hurt?”
“I was lifting furniture. I overdid it a bit, but I was in a hurry.”
“Right....”
Her tone of voice stung. “It’s the truth!”
She turned her head sharply, her jaw set. “Ah, truth! That’s an interesting subject. Let’s talk about truth!”
I exhaled. “All right. Why don’t we.”
“Let’s start with names, Mr. Rice, or should I call you Mr. Reece. What is your name?”
“Rice. I’ve never lied to you.”
She jerked her head up, her mouth open. “Oh? And who do you lie to? Do you confine your lies to bank tellers? Are girlfriends exempt from lies?”