Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery (16 page)

“How do our interests intersect?”

“Tiny Archibald and I used to be professionally associated. At one time, our interests intersected, but he double-crossed me,
and I had to die. I realize that damages my point about intersecting interests, but everything has exceptions and everything changes. I’ve been looking for an appropriate mode by which to reenter Tiny’s life, and this is it.”

Despite its irrationality, I gave that some thought. I leaned back against the wall. “I’ll tell you what. If you keep Barry away from me, I’ll think about it. That’s not to say I’m going after Crystal. I don’t have any experience in such things. I’d be crazy to do something like that.”

“I have a lot of experience.” He grinned.

“Is that beard real?”

He gave it a sharp tug. “Real is as real does,” he said.

“How do I get in touch with you?”

“I’ll be around.”

“In the shadows with the rest of the spooks?”

His eyes twinkled. He stood up. “Remember when we were trying to kill Castro with the exploding cigar?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it wasn’t my idea.”

“I’m much relieved.”

He walked out. On the way, four regulars hit on him. “Want to play a little? For fun?”

Burns sat down with me, holding his cue between his knees. “Say, Artie, I could be of use to you if you got something going. I’m well placed.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean? That’s what they all say, innocently. Those two phone numbers were both from the same place.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Concom International Securities.”

I could tell he was watching my eyes for a reaction. For that reason I felt I should have one, but I didn’t. I’d never heard of Concom International Securities. “Do you have an address?”

“Yeah, Nine Nineteen Third Avenue. I tell you what, Artie. The phone search is on the house, but if you need someone with information at his fingertips, you know who to talk to, right?”

“Sure, Burns. What is this Concom Securities?”

He just winked at me, stood up, and returned to his game, where Lenny was staring at the balls motionlessly.

Jellyroll was enjoying himself in the center of a clot of petters. I felt too tired to move.

FOURTEEN

I
 BARELY SLEPT. Two hours before dawn I looked up “Pools” in the yellow pages. It said, “See: Swimming Pools.” I did. Posh Pools (or variants) was not listed. I hadn’t expected it to be listed in the New York book, but I found a number for the American Association of Swimming Pool Designers and Contractors. I drank coffee and brooded until business hours.

“Hello, I’m trying to locate Posh Pools—”

“One moment, please,” said the receptionist before I could say more.

She came back and said they had five, three in southern California, one in Tempe, Arizona, and one in New Canaan, Connecticut.

New Canaan lay easily within range. “Could I have the New Canaan address, please?”

She told me it was 134 Church Street.

Then I called Jennifer, an ex-girlfriend, the one who told me about the prohibition against visible toe cleavage on fast-track female feet in the business community. A fast tracker herself, Jennifer had objected to my lack of ambition. “You don’t do anything,” she had said to me one morning, as if she’d suddenly recognized the fact, while I watched her dress for work at Sedgwick, Marwick and Hardwick—she liked to wear very naughty lingerie beneath her pin-striped suit. I was vulnerable on that score, all right.

Jennifer viewed most men as frat-boy assholes who learned their masculinity from Bud Lite commercials. That was a hard
proposition to argue with, there being so much evidence to support it. Jennifer intended to beat men at their own game by getting promoted over them for her greater intelligence and diligence. That I lived off my dog made her edgy because it implied contempt for her striving. I didn’t mean it that way. She left me, saying we had “a fundamental conflict of desires for the future.” It hurt me, her leaving, but her reason was difficult to argue with. Frankly, I think she found it harder to part with Jellyroll than with me.

I called Bushwick, Harwick and Warwick.

The receptionist said it was Harwick, Marwick and Sedgwick. I asked to speak to Jennifer Pratt.

“I’m sorry, sir, she’s no longer with us.”

“She isn’t?”

“Can someone else help you?”

I tried Jennifer at home. I felt fondly nostalgic at the sound of her voice. “They laid me off, the frat-boy assholes.”

“Gee, Jennifer, I’m sorry to hear that.” Like other fast trackers who thought it would never end, Jennifer had bought things in the eighties, an expensive condo on Central Park West, a BMW, a place in Fire Island. If I knew Jennifer, she was panicking. But she didn’t want to talk about it.

“What’s up?” she snapped.

“Well, I don’t want to impose, but I wondered if you knew anything about Concom International Securities.”

Long silence…“Why, Artie?”

“Well, a neighbor of mine got in a little trouble, and he asked me to ask around. I thought you might know.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“SEC trouble.”

“Figures.”

“Why?”

“I’ve heard rumors.”

“Rumors?”

“I’ll make a couple calls for you, but that’s all I can do.”

“Thanks a lot. Do you need cash, Jennifer?”

“…No, I’m fine. Goddamnit, Artie, I was a top producer. They kept guys who sat on their thumbs and rotated all day. They laid me off. I’ll get back to you.”

I wished her luck.

I was on the road before the rush hour was over, heading north against the traffic on the Henry Hudson in Crystal’s Toyota. Incoming commuter traffic, one person to a car as if it were still 1962, had congealed and halted entirely, festering in its own pollutants. Jellyroll hung his head out the window, ears and tongue flapping in the wind. He loves car trips; he doesn’t need to give a shit about the folly of the American road. I felt stiff and sore and pissed. I put WBGO on the radio and listened to the seminal musical genius of the century, Thelonius Sphere Monk: “Crepuscule with Nellie,” “Epistrophy,” “Lulu’s Back in Town,” and afterward I felt a little better, clearheaded at least. I took the Henry Hudson to the Cross County, thence to the Merritt Parkway. Forty-five minutes later I had my choice of three New Canaan exits. I took the middle one.

Car commuting as a way of life was born in these suburbs along the Merritt—Weston, Westport, Wilton, Greenwich, New Canaan—after World War II. They spared trees in those days, and from most of the winding roads mature oaks and maples hide even the existence of homes. There are New England rock walls, quiet lanes, and produce stands, but rustic charm is the style, not the reality, of these places. They exist in their present form because New York, from where all blessings flow, lies forty Mercedes miles down the road.

I asked two adolescent suburban urchins throwing rocks into a little roadside brook how to get to Church Street. They didn’t know, so I drove randomly until I came to a Sunoco Station, where I repeated the question. The young attendant, decked out
like a surfer, neon-green baggies, ponytail, and peace-sign earring, told me I was on Church Street, what was I looking for?

“Posh Pools,” I said.

“Two lights up, be on your right in a little shopping plaza.” Long Island Sound surfing must be really exciting. Hey, dude, surf’s up, medical waste down. I was feeling surly again, so I searched the dial for some jazz, vainly. Fuck it, I was here.

Nobody seemed to be following me as I pulled into the parking lot, but I sat in the car and waited for a while. I should have worn a disguise, I decided. Perhaps a Long Island surfer—Ray Bans, toxic-waste suit. Posh Pools, Ace Hardware, and Gilbert’s Lawn & Garden Supply shared the little strip, all the needs of suburban life except the gin. I knew that wasn’t a fair view, but I didn’t care.

Posh Pools was painfully air-conditioned. The smiling young woman who called me sir when she asked if she could help me wore a down vest, as if this were Maine in midwinter. The place was loaded with gear: strainers, skimmers, ladders, diving boards, umbrellas, raft s, water wings, bathing suits, goggles, tanning lotion and other unguents for the outdoor life. The walls above the display racks were lined with two-foot-square color photos of pools, which Posh apparently dug themselves. They had titles like “Ionion Motif,” “Tahiti Revisted,” “Traditional,” and “Kidney.”

“You folks do pool maintenance, don’t you?” I asked the chilly young woman. “Chlorine levels, frogs, and so forth?”

“Oh, we’re a full-service pool company.”

“Yes, I see. You come highly recommended. I think Mr. Archibald is a client of yours. He says you do terrific work.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” But there was no recognition on her face, so I tried again.

“I’m new to the neighborhood, just transferred in from Seattle, and my wife wants a pool in the backyard. Archie says you’re the folks to dig it.”

“Maybe you’d like to speak to my father. He’ll here any minute now. He’s the expert on digging.”

“I’m particularly interested in your ‘Olympic Racer’ model.” I pointed to the photo over our heads. “Well, I’ll stop back with the wife. Actually—it’s kind of embarrassing—I’m on my way over to see Archie’s pool, but I’ve lost the address. Maybe you have it in your records. He’s an old customer of yours.”

“What did you say his name is?”

“Archibald. A largish fellow.”

She went behind the cash register, heft ed a big loose-leaf notebook onto the glass counter, and thumbed pages until she found my old friend Archie. “Yes, he has a full-service contract with us. Number Seventeen Sylvan Brook Road.”

“Where is that, please?”

She gave me a truncated set of directions. “Welcome to New Canaan,” she said.

The directions fled from my head when I spotted a Posh Pools van parked near Crystal’s car. I circled it. It was a tan van. The logo—crossed palm trees and “The Full-Service Pool People”—was painted on both sides.

I drove down endless unnamed, tree-lined streets while Jellyroll sat beside me, his head pivoting this way and that as if he, too, were looking for Sylvan Brook Road. I came upon the two urchins still throwing rocks into the water. Could their target be Sylvan Brook? I asked them.

“Yeah, this is it. Who you looking for?”

“Archibald.”

The boys looked at each other blankly. “The fat guy?” one muttered. “Oh, yeah, the fat guy,” said the other one. “That’s his driveway back there. You can see his mailbox.” I could hear them giggling (“Fat, fat, the water rat—”) as I turned around.

I pulled to a stop on the berm beside Sylvan Brook. I couldn’t see the house from the road because of the mature forest in the
way, but the country-style mailbox said Archibald on the side. The flag was up. What more could I ask for? I resisted the temptation to drive up the gravel road to have a look.

I retraced my route back to the city, but I continued down the West Side, took the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, and emerged back aboveground near Red Hook. From New Canaan, Connecticut, to Red Hook, Brooklyn, was a journey to the polar extremes of American society. From posh pools to chop shops, from Sylvan Brook to the Gowanus Canal. Red Hook rotted in the shadow of the elevated Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, its gigantic concrete support columns poking out the heart of the neighborhood, leaving it gutted, demoralized, vicious. Here I didn’t feel so inclined to ask directions of strangers, and I didn’t see any towheaded youths chucking stones into minor tributaries. After some experimental turning, I found Thumper’s place.

It was a fenced lot that ran along the Gowanus Canal, waterfront property. A twelve-foot-high chain-link fence topped by spirals of razor wire surrounded the lot. It took me a while to find the front gate. There was no sign. I drove right in. Two black guys in coveralls with nothing visible underneath sat on the hood of a wheelless pickup truck.

I didn’t know Thumper’s real name, and I hesitated to call him Thumper, the appellation Outta-Town Brown had laid on him. “Hello,” I said. “Is the owner around?”

“Hey, Thumper,” called the smaller guy.

At that moment, Thumper was hobbling out of a rickety wooden building, no more than a shack, which I hadn’t noticed until then. Dodging puddles of oily water, he carried a silver tray of demitasse cups.

“Artie, welcome,” called Thumper. Jellyroll ran at him. Thumper placed the tray on a bank of welding gas tanks, did a little jig, and clapped his hands together. Jellyroll jumped to kiss him. Thumper knelt to accept. Greetings winding down,
Thumper said graciously, “Artie, these are my associates, Boo and Randolph.” The two black guys slid off the hood in unison. “This is my friend Artie Deemer. And do you know who this is? This is the R-r-ruff Dog.”

“No shit?” said Boo or Randolph.

“None,” I said.

“Lookit that. That dog’s smiling!”

And he was, too.

“Coffee, gentlemen?”

Tractor-trailer traffic roared sixty feet overhead.

“I got a batch of new espresso machines. Nice ones. Scenes of It’ly painted on ’em.”

I turned down coffee, because Thumper had only three cups on the tray. “However, I could use a van.”

“We have vans. What kind of van could you use?”

“A tan van.”

“A tan van. Yes. Have we got a tan van, Boo?”

“Got a brown van.”

“What shade, Boo?”

“Shit.”

“Hey, boss,” said Randolph, sipping, “this ain’t outstanding mud.”

“Maybe you got to have a knack with the valves and spouts.”

“Maybe we got burned on the beans.”

“Maybe,” said Thumper. Then to me, “I bought four hundred pounds of coffee off an associate of mine. He said it was one hundred percent Kona.”

“He lied,” said Randolph.

“Well, let’s us go see the van,” Thumper suggested. They threw their coffee into the dirt.

We walked down a dirt path between rows of vehicles. Some were reasonably new, with paint still intact, and some were rusted hulks, wheelless and forlorn. Not only did he have cars and trucks, but speedboats, snowmobiles, forklift s,
backhoes, pile drivers, golf carts, motorized wheelchairs, even an ancient Zamboni machine, and around the machinery, under it, among it, there was a substrate of decaying metal objects, most gone beyond recognition. Five hundred years after his death, Thumper’s place would be a career-making find for some Brooklyn College archaeologist. There were three vans similar to Posh Pool’s full-service vehicles, but none the exact shade of brown. Shit-brown was the closest.