Diablerie (13 page)

The winners were my bosses' bosses' bosses. They lived in the Alps or Palm Springs or somewhere else where the world is run from.

Black people in prison, Iraqis blown up on job lines in Baghdad, or Vietnamese peasants in their rice paddies becoming target practice for passing American helicopters—we were all dealt a losing hand.

Finally the lawyer got tired of hearing himself crow and so he said, "And now let me introduce the person you've come to hear tonight: Barbara Knowland."

Fifteen hundred and ninety-eight hands came together for Star, the woman wrongly accused of aiding and abetting a serial killer.

With her peacock shawl fluttering behind her, Star ascended the stairs to the podium. She air-kissed the lawyer and stood aside for him to go down into the audience.

Star was carrying a folded square of paper that she placed on the podium. Then she went about moving the microphone down so that it would accommodate her shorter stature. She unfolded the paper, looked at it, looked up, squinting at the spotlight, and then down at the audience.

She took in a quick breath, as if she was about to speak, but no words immediately followed.

"My name is Barbara," she said at last. And everything else was exactly the same as that Sunday night at the launch party for
Diablerie.

I was amazed at her ability to make even this, her own memoir, a tedious and repetitious task, a deadly dull chore without the slightest variation or added nuance.

I listened to her for half an hour, after which I felt that I could make the same presentation if only someone would lend me a peacock shawl.

After it was over, people gathered in the lobby to buy the book and to line up for her signature.

I bought a copy and waited in line.

Both Mona and Harvard Rollins were standing behind Star. This didn't surprise me, as the ad for the reading had said that it was sponsored by
Diablerie
.

The adulterous couple weren't holding hands or touching in any way but you could tell that they were drawn to each other. They weren't looking into the line or they would have seen me.

"Excuse me, sir," a young woman said. She had Elizabeth Taylor eyes and the plainest of plain faces. She was carrying a small block of yellow stickies and a blue felt pen.

"Yes?" I said.

"Do you want your book personalized?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you want Ms. Knowland to put your name along with her signature?"

"No. No, her name will suffice."

The young white woman found my turn of phrase unsettling. She stared at me and backed away, bumping into the woman behind me in line.

I didn't blame her. There was something off about me, something slightly sinister or even evil. I waited patiently, coming up behind the throng of mostly women—ladies who wanted to touch the woman who had seen and survived the daily, unspoken threat of all women's worlds: malevolent men with sharp knives and manacles who are only here on earth to destroy beauty.

I put my book down when my turn came. Mona noticed me then, but instead of saying something to me, she touched Harvard's shoulder. This gesture would have been heartbreaking if only I had loved her.

The faux detective was turning to see what she wanted when Star Knowland asked, "Do you want me to inscribe your name in the book?"

She hadn't even bothered to look at who stood before her.

"To one of my oldest and dearest friends," I said. "Ben."

Star's head shot up.

"What are you doing here?"

"I thought we should talk, so I came to buy a book and ask you if you'd have coffee with me."

"I thought you didn't want to talk to me."

"I was confused when I saw you. I really didn't remember."

"Do you remember now?"

"Only little pieces," I said. "And most of that might not even be real."

"I'm staying at the Fairweather until Monday," she said haltingly. "Call me . . . and we'll meet someplace." She signed the title page and closed the book, giving me the same stare that the homely woman with the beautiful eyes had.

"Ben," he called as I made my way out the front door of the hall.

It was Harvard Rollins. He caught up quickly and grabbed me by the right biceps.

"Yeah?"

"We need to talk," he said, looking around as if contemplating committing a crime.

"I know everything I need from you," I said.

I tried to move away but he held on to my arm.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Mona told me."

"Told you what?" he asked.

"She said we had to break up because you two were lovers now."

"What?"

"Yeah. She said that you were together at her mom's place and that she asked you to wear a condom but you just pushed her down on her knees and fucked her bareback." I smiled. "Then she said that you made her suck on your thing and that she couldn't have unsafe sex with me if she was having it with you too. Now if1 want to have sex with her, I have to wear a condom. . . to protect you."

There was just enough truth in what I said to make him question Mona. I liked that. I wanted to fuck with him.

He was bothered by my words but he had an agenda that would not be derailed.

"There's somebody I need you to meet," he said.

"I got an appointment."

Harvard's grip tightened.

"First you have to come with me."

It occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to get away from Rollins. He had been a New York City cop and could certainly subdue me. I thought about trying to sucker punch him but I doubted if I could catch the powerful ex-policeman unawares.

"Hey, you guys," someone said.

It was Cassius Copeland, walking over to our isolated part of the granite stairs.

He came right up to Harvard, a big smile on his dark face, proffering his right hand. Then suddenly, when he was in range, he jutted out with his left. He was holding one of those electronic stunning devices. Harvard saw it coming. He released me and made to lunge at Cass. But the stunner hit him in the diaphragm and then Cass socked him in the jaw with a short but powerful right hook. Before Rollins could fall, Cass caught him around the waist.

"Here, let me help you," Cass said, and he supported the weight of the dazed detective until he was sitting on the ground with his back up against the wall.

"Just wait here, Mr. Rollins," Cass said, "while me and Ben get US all a taxi."

Cass took me by the arm and led me away.

Rollins tried to yell something at us as we departed but the shock had debilitated his capacity for speech.

"You want anything else, Ben?" Cass asked me at a little Italian bistro on Sixth Avenue.

"No thanks."

I had ordered a creamy pasta dish with truffles that went for a hundred dollars a plate and Cass had eighty-year-old cognac. It's amazing what you can get in New York.

"How did you know I'd be there?" I asked the security expert.

"I didn't," he said. "I just Googled Barbara Knowland and saw that your wife's magazine was hosting her reading at Cooper Union."

"So you thought you'd check her out?"

"Sure," he said. "Why not? You know she's staying at the Fairweather, room eight twenty-nine."

"How did you get that?"

"Homeland Security, brother. I got some &ends up in there. With just an eight-digit security code you can follow about ten percent of the people in this country at any given moment. Hotel reservations, interstate travel rosters, ATM hits, and credit card purchases."

Cass was beginning to amaze me.

"She could have a heart attack up in there with no problem," he said.

"You'd actually do that for me?"

"Why not?" Cass asked. "You're my &end, right?"

"I need to know more," I said. "I've got to talk to her. She said she'd have coffee with me."

"Don't do that, Ben. Don't meet her anywhere she knows about beforehand."

"Why not?"

"Who was the guy Rollins wanted you to meet?"

"I don't know," I said.

"But it's somebody got to do with this thing Star's talkin' about. You better believe that. You make a meetin' with her and you'll have some serious uninvited guests."

"Yeah," I said. "I guess that's right. But who could it be?"

"Doesn't matter. You okay right now, man. Just keep cool. Let things settle down a little bit. I'll cover you at work. Let me look into this Colorado angle some more and then we'll talk."

Cass paid for the meal and I gave him the number of my hotel.

After that I wandered about until ten or so and then returned to my room.

Lana was there. I'd left her my spare key card but for some reason I believed that she wouldn't want to see me again.

"What would you say if you found out that I was a murderer?" I asked her near midnight. We'd made love twice and were touching each other, tentatively considering a third try.

"What kind of murderer?"

"Are there different kinds?"

"Many," she said, the youthful voice of deep experience.

"Like what?"

"There are men who kill for fun or because they are rotten inside and hate everyone. There are men who kill women. There are soldiers who kill in battle and lovers who kill for revenge. Sometimes mothers kill their babies because they do not wish to see them suffer."

"Is it okay sometimes for a killer to get away with his crime?" I asked, feeling as if I were getting expert testimony.

"No one ever gets away," Lana said in a soft, serious voice.

"No?"

"No," she said, and then she kissed me.

My body seemed to surge up out of itself toward her. We made love again. It was a shuddering kind of passion between us. I couldn't ejaculate, I was used up in that way, but I felt something powerful coming from her. It was a feeling both bitter and necessary.

"Ben?"

I came awake trying to remember the last time a lover had aroused me in my bed deep in the night. I smiled thinking about Lana calling my house, pretending to be from work.

"Yeah?"

"I don't care."

"About what?"

"If you have killed somebody. It is all right with me. You are a good man. You are good to me. I love you."

"Take the couch again, Ben," Dr. Shriver said when I moved toward my regular chair.

I was afraid of the backless brown chaise longue by then, haunted by the memory of that rocky cove and the man dying by my hand, the back of his skull crushed to pulp.

"It's okay," Dr. Shriver said. "I'm here with you. We'll go through this together.''

I sat and then lay down. When I closed my eyes, I thought that I'd be back in that fantasy or memory or whatever it was.

"Tell me about your father," Shriver said.

A rush of calm went through my fearful mind . . .

He was a tall man, or at least that's how it seemed to me, with big black hands and serious eyes. He'd always tell me and my brother how easy we had it.

"When I was a child," he'd say, "I didn't go to school past grade five. I didn't think about ice cream or television or hula hoops. There was only one radio on our whole block. We never knew that there was a stock market crash or a depression. We were already as depressed as we could get."

And he really was depressed. At night he would sit in his recliner drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes. To the world he was a happy guy, always ready to smile or tell a joke. People who met my father liked him, were drawn to him; they wanted to spend time with him and share his happiness.

But that face, the one he presented to the world, wasn't our father.

If Briggs or I got him angry by doing something against him or our mother, he'd whip us with his leather strap. He'd make us strip down to our briefs and lie down on a bed while he lashed us.

I remember crying out, "I won't do it again, Daddy!" and him saying, "I know you won't. Not after I finish with you.''

What did your mother do when this was happening?

My mother fretted in another room, out of sight of the beatings we got. And later on, when we cried to her, she'd say that it wasn't all that bad. A week later she would even tell us that we were imagining it, that our father never beat us.

Maybe she even believed that lie.