"What's up?"
"We got to have some words, man," the security expert said. "When?"
"Meet me at the Steak House at five. We don't need a reservation there."
I hung up and turned to Mona.
"I gotta go, honey," I said. "I'll call you later."
"We aren't finished talking."
"For now we are," I said. "Call your boyfriend. Talk to him."
She took a deep breath with which she intended to deny my accusation. But looking into my face she saw that it was useless. Her body went slack on the couch. I got my bag and went toward the door.
"Ben," she called at my back.
"Yeah?"
"Dr. Shriver called. He said that he has an opening tomorrow morning at seven seen."
I went out the door, closing it softly as I left.
The Steak House at Park and Forty-sixth was owned by one of Cassius Copeland's old friends from the intelligence branch of the military police. As long as Cassius ate at the bar, he didn't have to pay for food or wine. And so I was waiting there after checking into the Reynard for a two-week stay.
I had a lot of money in the bank, well over a hundred thousand dollars. I never spent anything, and when Mona took vacations, she liked to stay home because she traveled so much for her job. I could pay for the Reynard and first-class airfare to any destination in the world.
Sitting at the bar I thought that Hong Kong would be a good place to lose myself, or maybe Ghana. I could pack up and be gone before Mona knew what had happened. Cass would help me. He'd been a captain in military intelligence. He'd told me many stories about ways that men could disappear.
"Hey, bro," he said from behind me.
"Cass, we got to stop meeting like this, man."
"You the only Negro I ever met gets to the appointment before me," he said.
I looked at the clock above the bar; it read 4:46.
"Yeah. I got a lotta time on my hands," I said.
Cassius's expression turned sour. He took a seat on the stool next to me.
"Yeah. Uh-huh. That's why we got to talk."
"Mr. Copeland," a very big white man bellowed from the other end of the bar.
"Joey," Cassius replied.
Joey Bondhauser, owner of the Steak House and half a dozen other popular restaurants, was taller than most men and fatter than anyone I had ever known personally. His blue suit was perfectly tailored, however, and his hands and voice gave the impression of great strength.
Joseph Bondhauser had been a senior communications officer for Army Intelligence in western Europe. Though Cass never told me anything particular about his one-time boss, he implied that all Joey had to do was frown and a man could die anywhere in the world.
"This is my friend Ben Dibbuk, Joey."
"Pleased to meet you," the big man said.
I'd seen Bondhauser before but we had never been introduced.
His handshake was powerful. I had the feeling he could have snapped my bones if he wanted to.
"Ben and I got a little business so I brought him here."
"Why don't you take a table in back?" the restaurateur asked.
"Using my Joey-get-a-steak-free card," Cass said with a smile.
"AW, don't be like that, Cassius," Joey said. "You were one'a my best men. Somebody I could trust. Magda. Magda, come over here."
A very attractive brunette wearing the sheerest of blue gowns came over to us. She was twenty-five, no older and, upon closer examination, quite beautiful.
"Yes, Mr. Bondhauser?"
"You know my friend Cass."
"Yes, sir."
"Give him my private dining room. Everything on the house."
"Yes, sir," she said.
I could see the awe and appreciation in Magda's eyes. She beheld in Joey's huge form power and potential in whose wake she was happily drawn.
"Cass, you ready to take a real job somewhere?" Joey asked then.
"I gotta job, man."
"That make-believe, antiterrorist bullshit?"
"Everything's make-believe, Colonel," Cassius Copeland said. "Nothin's for real."
Deep pleasure infused the fat man's face. He nodded and beamed at my friend.
"You are a dangerous man, Cassius Copeland. You see the truth before anyone else. Magda."
"Yes, sir?"
"Give him everything he wants."
"As you say."
"See you later, Cass," Joey said, shaking the security officer's hand. "Nice meeting you, Ben."
Watching him walk away from us, I was thinking about the words
As you say.
They seemed to imbue the restaurant owner with great power. It struck me as odd that the one obeying was also the person who articulated the degree of Joey's influence. This seemed very important to me at the time.
Magda led us through the dining room and up a slender flight of dark-wood stairs. On the second floor there was a long, narrow hallway that had doors on either side in staggered fashion, so that first there would be a door on the right and then a few paces later there'd be one on the left. At the end of the hall was a double door hewn from solid oak.
Magda took out a key and unlocked the left-hand side. She pushed this open and ushered us in.
The light came on automatically as we entered. There was a large round table attended by four wooden chairs with red velvet seat cushions.
"I'll send up Felix with your menus," Magda said when we were seated.
"I want you to take our orders," Cass said, "but don't bring up anything for fifteen minutes."
Magda smiled and nodded. If the hostess resented the request, she did not show it. She left without another word.
After she was gone, Cass sat back in his chair and stared at me. He did this long enough for me to start to feel uncomfortable.
"What?" I asked at last.
"We got to talk," he said. "But first I'll tell you something about me, something that no one in my everyday life, my real life, knows."
This sudden honesty made me anxious. One of the things about our relationship was that we never talked about our lives at all. Everything was light, impersonal, noncontroversial. I had known for some time that I was probably Cass's only confidant at Our Bank, but even there he was never very forthcoming.
"I'm a man, right?" Cass asked.
"Yes."
"Don't be worried, Ben. Ain't nuthin' wrong here. I'm just tellin' you that when people look at me, they see somethin'. I'm big and strong, tough-minded, and the kinda guy who likes sports. Right?"
"Yeah. I guess that's why I always wondered why you ever even talked to me. I mean, I don't know the first thing about any sport."
"Yeah," he said. "You don't know a baseball from a hockey puck."
We both laughed, though I'm sure neither one of us felt the least bit happy.
"When you told me about the magazines your wife worked on, I went out an' bought some," he continued. "I read her articles. Damn, I read the whole magazines.
"Those are the kind of publications that call a faggot a homosexual, right?"
I had never heard Cass use either word. It seemed odd that he used them then, but I nodded, admitting the truth to his claim.
"My friends, Joey and a hundred like him, say faggot. They laugh at 'em. Some of 'em might kick one's ass if he's in the wrong place at the wrong time."
I was lost by now. What could any of this have to do with me?
"You see, Ben," Cass said then. "The one thing, the only thing, I never tell anybody is that I'm a faggot too.''
I stared at my work friend of five years, feeling blunted and senseless. I shook my head and crinkled my nose.
"I ain't a girly man," Cass said. "I don't wash the dishes or want a relationship. I'm a man's man, a real man. I fight and fart and wear clothes until they fall apart. Everything about me is man. Everything."
"But what about Joany Winters?" I asked.
It was rumored that there had been a passionate affair between Winters, who was married, and Cassius during his first two years on the job. Secretaries gossiped about how Cass would go into her office for an hour at a time and that she would come out with her hair a mess and her clothes all rumpled.
"I fucked that woman so hard that she had to have two abortions," he said. "There wasn't no way she could explain a black baby to her English hubby."
"But you say you're gay."
"No. I said I'm a faggot. It's your wife's magazines use 'gay' and 'homosexual.' Whenever I get anyplace, I find a girl like Joany and do her for a while. I don't mind havin' sex with a woman; it's just that's not my deepest thing. If you come into a place like Our Bank and get that pussy right off, ain't nobody gonna question you after that. They just see you talkin' to a woman and they know you gettin' somethin'."
I had too many problems on my mind to worry about Cass's sexuality. I don't know if I would have worried about it anyway. What did I care?
"I know this don't mean nuthin' to you, Ben," Cass said, as if he were reading my thoughts. "That's why I'm friends with you. I know that if you knew all about me that it wouldn't make you no nevermind. You don't care. You don't care about nuthin'. That's what I like about you."
"Okay," I said. "You're right. But why are you telling me this after five years? Does it matter?"
"A man named Harvard Rollins came to my office this morning," Cass said, and I went cold. "He told me that he had information about you and that his magazine was doing an article based on this information. He didn't want to embarrass the bank and so he was giving me the chance to help him and limit the effect on the company."
"What did he want to know?"
"Did we have any information about any criminal investigation against you? And if we didn't, could we help his magazine,
Diablerie,
I think, in asking for Colorado records."
"Did he say why they were doing this or what they were looking for?" I spoke deliberately, softly.
"He wouldn't tell me, not exactly, but he did say that it was a crime that they were looking into, a serious felony, he said."
I sat back in my chair thinking about Mona, about her asking Harvard Rollins what he was going to do about me. She wouldn't even tell me. After all those years of marriage she wouldn't even warn me about some chance that I'd be arrested.
"Did you rob a bank or kill somebody?" Cass asked.
"No."
"What did you do?"
"I don't know. I mean . . . when I lived in Colorado, I was a drinker. Every night I did in a bottle of something—whiskey, brandy, gin. A lot of those nights I just don't remember."
"You'd black out?"
I nodded.
"And you wouldn't remember a thing?"
"Sometimes I did. Most times I'd have a general notion of where I'd been, but people would still tell me things that I had no recollection of whatsoever."
"Shit," Cass Copeland said. "Well, you didn't rob any bank during a blackout. How about cars? Did you ever get into a fight when you were drunk?"
"A couple of times I showed up at home beat-up or bruised with some cuts, but I don't remember anything serious. Except one."
"What was that?"
"I ran off the road once. I was drunk."
"That doesn't seem newsworthy," my friend said.
Cass sat across from me, staring into my eyes, shaking his head.
"How long ago did you leave Colorado?"
Twenty-four years."
"And you've never been back?"
"No."
"Then why all of a sudden would they get on you?"
I stared into Cassius's eyes, wondering if I should share what I knew with him.
"Ben," he said. "The reason I told you about me was because I wanted to tell you that you could trust me. If it got out what I was, if my family ever heard about it, I'd have to kill myself. My father used to tell us boys when we were children that if he ever found out that we was that way he'd kill us with his own hands."
I believed him. I didn't think that he was plotting against me. After the passage of an extremely long minute, I told him what Barbara "Star" Knowland had said to me at the
Diablerie
party.
"Listen, Ben," he said. "If it's just this witness, we could do something about that."
"Huh? What?"
Cass just stared at me, the look on his face as blank as death.
"I need to think about this, man," I said. "I appreciate what you're saying. And you know I would never betray your confidence. But you can see how confused I am. I don't even know what it is I'm being blamed for."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's when you don't know what's cornin' you get the most worried. But hear me, Ben, whatever this is I will try and help you. I'ma string this Rollins guy along for a while and act like I'm his friend."
"Thanks," I said. "Listen, I'm not hungry. I'm going to head out."
Cass held out his hand to me. It felt like a lifeline, maybe my only chance for safety. I didn't want to let go. He waited patiently until I had the courage to stand up and walk out of there.
"Hello?" Lana said later that night when I called.
"Hi, baby. I'm just calling to say that I'm not gonna make it tonight."
"You are home?"
"Naw. At a hotel. I just need a night alone."
"I could come and visit for a while," she suggested.
"No," I said. "I'm just gonna lay up here and watch some pay-per-view movies and try to get some sleep."
"Are you mad about something?"
"No. Not at all. But you know I'm going through a lot of stuff right now. I'm trying to figure it all out."
"If you leave her," Svetlana asked, "will you come to me?"
How could I tell Svetlana where I might go tomorrow? I had no idea where'd I'd been or if maybe I'd be in prison later. But she read something else into the silence.
"Please talk to me, Ben, darling."
"Don't worry, Lana. I'll take care of you. I promise."
"Is that what you think I want?" she said, suddenly angry. "You think I am worried about your money? I know men who have much more than you who want me, who tell me that they will give me anything I want."
"It's not that, honey," I said.
But she hung up on me.
I didn't have the strength to call back.
There was nothing I could do. Mona had betrayed me many times over. I didn't mind that she had a lover—but to turn me over to his criminal investigation? And he wasn't even law enforcement, just an investigator for a sensationalist rag.