Lieberman's Day (20 page)

“I know you from someplace?” she asked.

“Not that I know of, ma'am.”

“Give me the money. I'll give it to the Indian.”

Her hand came out of the crack of the partly open door.

“Where is Big Bear?” Frankie asked with a smile, looking around the hall to be sure no one was listening.

“Out,” she said. “I'm a friend. I'm stayin' with him. I'll give it to him.”

“I can't,” said Frankie with a sigh. “No offense, ma'am, but I don't know you or what's in your heart. I'd say it's a good heart, but the devil does have powers.”

“I do know you from someplace,” she said.

“Well, now that I see you clear you look familiar to me, too, ma'am,” he said with a smile. “But I can't be sure. Listen. Big Bear and I have a secret place we put money. You turn your back and I'll put it there and when Big Bear comes back you just tell him Frankie was here and left the money in the hiding place. Fair?”

“I don't know,” Angie said.

Frankie's hand was on the door now, applying gentle pressure.

“I'm sorry. I wish I could wait but I just don't have the time and I know Big Bear needs the money, but if you say no, then …”

The door opened and Angie, clutching the top of her purple sack of a dress, backed away to let him in. Frankie came in, closing the door behind him.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now, you just turn your back.”

Angie turned her back to the wall and Frankie looked around the apartment. It was neat, uncluttered. The furniture was old but clean. A faded Indian blanket covered the sofa and on the wall of the small living room was the photograph of an Indian family in full tribal dress. Frankie crossed to the sofa, bent down pretending to stuff something behind the pillows, and then stood up.

“You can turn now,” he said, facing Angie, who shuffled about to face him.

“Wait,” he said, looking at her. “Sure, I know you. You're Angie, met you once or twice at the church in Evanston. You know, St. Catherine's.”

“Yeah,” she said, rocking on her feet and pointing at him. “I thought you looked familiar. You work there or something, right?”

“I do God's work,” Frankie said. “I must go now. I've been traveling, trying to get work. Came back to Chicago to find my wife and boy and bring them to Wyoming, but …”

He shrugged.

“Can't find 'em?” she asked.

He nodded his head yes, his eyes misting, a sincere mist of beginning tears.

“Her name's Jeanine. I heard she was working at a McDonald's, but …”

“Jeanine,” Angie said with excitement “I know her. I know her. I seen her.”

“No,” said Frankie.

“Yes,” said Angie. “Honest to God. On Western, up near what's that street, Granville, something. Working the McDonald's. Right there behind the counter. She's the one who's husb …”

Angie's mouth snapped shut.

“Bless you,” said Frankie. “The Lord must have guided me to you. Repay an old debt and be rewarded.”

Angie's putty face was wrinkled now with thought and the recognition of some memory about Jeanine's husband.

“I'm thinkin' something here. Rememberin', you know. Ain't it that she run away from you, somethin', you know?”

“No,” said Frankie. “I just had to do some traveling. Spreading the Lord's truth.”

“No,” Angie said, pointing at him with one doughy hand, holding her collar closed with the other. “You're the one the Indian said was lookin' for me. Oh shit, God. Christ.”

Angie began to shake, to cry as Frankie came around a small table in the middle of the room and moved toward her. Suddenly, with a yelp like Ab Grunner's dog when the semi ran over it, the old woman ran to the corner of the room and through the door. Frankie lunged after her but was a step too late as Angie threw the bolt on the bathroom door.

“If I had time,” he said, standing in front of the bathroom door. “But I do not.”

Beyond the door Angie was sobbing, an echoing sob. Frankie was sure she was sitting in the bathtub.

He turned, found the kitchen, opened it, and pulled out a half-full jar of raspberry jam. He went back into the living room and, to the sound of frightened sobbing and wails, put his finger into the jam and moved to the wall, where he painted a jagged raspberry cross. He filled it in in the proper places, stepped back to admire it, and strode across the floor and out of the apartment.

O
NE GLASS OF RUM
. That was all Raymond drank and he drank it slowly, sitting at one of the tables at the Biabou Restaurant on Division Street, being sure to eat all of his bean soup and sandwich.

Others around him, all black, many with the accent of the Islands, ate chicken or fish, drank, and laughed amid photographs of the white Monastery of the Ancient Order of St. Benedict, a steel-drum band on the docks greeting tourists, and the Coroni Swamp, where he had seen oysters growing on trees, crabs crawling on branches, and pink-white egrets plucking shrimp from the shallow, murky waters. The one photograph that he did not like and that he was always careful to have behind his back and out of sight when he ate at the Biabou was of a street in the old section of Port of Spain, with its red-rusted roofs and wooden fence. It was like the street on which he had spent the first twenty-one years of his life. It was an image that he had been painfully erasing during the ten years he had spent in the United States, the last eight years of which were as an illegal alien.

Raymond knew that he would have to return to work soon, that he would need to act as if nothing had happened, that he would need to blend in and wait.

He looked at the book propped open before him to ward off conversation. The problems of Sammy Glick seemed less than meaningful.

Raymond felt very tired. Was it yesterday, only yesterday when he had not yet committed a violent crime, had not yet killed one man, possibly two?

He needed another rum, but the Biabou served no liquor, only food. You had to bring your own bottle and Raymond had done just that, but it was a bottle he had taken from the apartment, a bottle with but two small servings left in it, and it was now empty and he was still feeling pain.

“You not eatin' enough,” Henriette said, standing over Raymond, who looked at a couple at the next table trying to get their children to eat.

“I'm not hungry,” said Raymond.

Henriette, large, young, very black, and dressed in colorful Islands pink and red, shrugged. Like many other girls from the Islands she had a fancy for Raymond, but even if he were not worrying for his life, Henriette wouldn't interest him, never had. Too young, too round, happy outside, ready, he was certain, to weep at the slightest cause. Raymond could not abide crying women—or crying men for that matter.

“You want me to take de bowl?”

“Take the bowl,” said Raymond.

“What happened to your friend?” Henriette asked, cleaning away the dishes.

“Friend?”

“Big fella. You know. George, from Trinidad. You come in with him few days back.”

“Just someone I ran into,” Raymond said uncomfortably, trying to coax a few more drops from his bottle of rum. “No friend of mine.”

“No matter to me,” Henriette said, shrugging again. “Mama and Doc-Doc said they seen him with you this morning in you car and he be wearin' a furry hat and a look on his face like a scared owl.”

Raymond didn't bother to answer.

Henriette shook her head and carried the dishes away toward the kitchen.

All I need, Raymond thought. All I need.

He got up, paid with some of the money he had taken from the body of the dead man, and headed for the door, almost bumping into two Latinos, one big, dumb, looking for a fight, the other nervous, thin, hair brushed back. Raymond avoided them as they headed for the kitchen. When their backs were to him, Raymond saw that the big dumb-looking one had an octopus painted on the back of his leather jacket. The thin Latino turned suddenly, looking toward him, but Raymond managed to avoid his eyes and step into the cold.

The sweet smell disappeared behind him in the crackle of icy air. Raymond's ears went cold and he reached into his pocket to fish out the red earmuffs.

The car was around the corner past a grocery that sold both Islands and Chinese food. He had once bought a bottle of Chinese medicine in the store when he had a headache. It had cured his headache and every other headache he got until he ran out of the pills. When he had gone back to the store, the Chinese woman had said they could get no more of the pills from China, that they had a substitute. The substitute had not worked. Raymond had never gone back into the store.

He slid into the car and turned on the heat. The gas gauge showed almost empty. The fan barely turned, sending in air almost as cold as the outside.

He had no choice now. It would be dangerous, but he had to go to the hospital, find her. He had things he deserved in life. Raymond had been cheated too many times by his own bad choices and the promises of others.

George was gone. Raymond deserved to be safe.

He would go to the hospital and when he did what he must do he would walk out into the nightmare of winter with some hope for the future.

Raymond drove. He would drive until it was time. He would not go back to the apartment until it was safe, until he had dealt with the woman. Yes, he would wait until late, work out the details of his plan.

Warm air was coming through the vents now. The air had an angry burnt smell to it and Raymond was beginning to feel drowsy. The two glasses of rum did not help. Well, in one way they did. In another, they made it difficult for him to drive through the narrow, unplowed, ice-layered streets.

Though he had wanted to distance himself from Trinidad, calypso music, and steel-drum bands since he stepped on the boat to New York a decade ago, at times of weakness he found himself remembering snatches of songs he had despised as a teen. One particularly haunted him. It had been created by Lord St. John-Pelly and on more than one occasion he had heard Lord St. John-Pelly sing it on the street. “A man he trusts a woman trusts his faith to the wind. A man he trusts a woman is lost before he can sin.”

Frankie almost missed his wife.

The six o'clock shift was just coming on at the McDonald's on Western near Granville where Jeanine worked. He saw her through the window, wearing a stupid uniform that made her breasts stick out. There she was smiling at men, taking orders, serving burgers and fries and drinks. On display. People could just look at her, even touch her hand.

He had found a spot in the parking lot where he could watch the counter and where Jeanine was not likely to see him. She had no reason to be looking for him, no reason to know that he had a pickup truck, that he was back. And if she did spot him, he would have to take her right there, make her tell him where Charlie was. If anyone tried to get in the way, so be it. Frankie touched the chill barrel of the shotgun. The Lord would take his hand and people would die, and if they were good Christian people the Lord would take them unto his bosom.

But Jeanine did not see him. She moved behind the grill and disappeared. He considered getting out of the truck, making his way through the dinnertime crowd to be sure he knew where she was, but that might be dangerous and it probably wasn't necessary.

He was sure it wasn't necessary when Jeanine, wearing a heavy, furry-looking coat he had never seen, suddenly appeared about a dozen yards to his right talking to a guy dressed in a bulky jacket.

Jeanine was laughing.

Frankie slunk back into the corner of his seat, into the shadows behind the steering wheel.

“And when Burns told me to take the mop,” the young man said, “I said, ‘Sure, who you want me to take it to?'”

Jeanine laughed. It hadn't been funny, what the man-kid said, but she had laughed to please him.

From the shadow Frankie watched the young man open the door of a Ford Festiva parked two cars away. Jeanine got in and the young man came around quickly to let himself in. He had trouble getting his Festiva started. Even with a car between them and a grinding engine, Frankie could hear Jeanine laugh.

Frankie prayed for the car to start, and eventually it did.

Following them was easy. Watching them as he followed was hard. Did she move toward the man? Touch his arm? It was hard to see through the slowly defrosting window of the Festiva, but was she laughing, talking? Jeanine's mouth was opening and closing fast. He had never known her to talk a lot or to laugh, but she was doing both now. He was sure of it. What else was she doing? What else had she been doing?

They drove straight south on Western. Frankie had to run a red light on Lawrence to keep up with them because he was keeping two cars back now. Then, at Wilson, the Festiva signaled for a turn. Two cars went around the turning car and Frankie was on his tail again, but keeping his distance.

They drove past a hospital, turned right, and went two blocks before the Festiva stopped. Frankie pulled into a spot five cars behind them in front of a fire hydrant and quickly turned off the lights and the engine.

Was it a minute? Two? The passenger door opened and Jeanine stepped out, laughing. She reached back in with the door open. Touching the man's face? Shaking his hand?

And then she withdrew, the door closed, and the Festiva sat, motor running, while Jeanine crossed the street, moved through a low iron gate, went up on the porch of a small, well-lighted house, and fumbled in her pocket for a key. When she found it, she smiled and held it up to show the man in the Festiva.

Only when she was in the house and the door closed did the Festiva pull away.

Frankie waited, counting to two hundred, praying, wanting to plan but unable to think of anything beyond getting his wife and son, having them next to him even if he had to tie them down, and heading west.

Frankie got out of the car and looked both ways. There was no traffic on the residential street. Cars filled the spaces on both sides. Frankie crossed the street about forty yards from the front of the house Jeanine had entered. He walked slowly, watching the door of the house, listening for the sound of approaching cars or footsteps. Nothing but the distant swoosh of tires on Wilson Avenue two blocks away.