Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery (17 page)

I showed the Posh Pools card to Thumper, Boo, and Randolph. “Could you paint this on both sides of the van?” I asked.

They studied the card. “How big you want it?” Boo wondered.

“The whole side.”

“Hunnert bucks,” he said.

“By tomorrow morning?”

“Hunnert and a half.”

I gave him cash on the spot. He liked that very much. “I’ll get my gear.” He headed for the shack. Jellyroll sauntered off at Boo’s heels.

“How much to rent the van, Thumper?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Artie, that depends on the degree of damage.”

“Damage?” I hadn’t considered damage.

“I don’t ask to what use you intend to put this vehicle. That’s one of the services I offer—lack of inquisitiveness. Therefore, I can’t assess the degree of damage potential till you bring it back. Also the degree of heat. I can’t assess that. If it comes back so hot I got to retire it into the Gowanus Canal, then that’s a total loss, and your total loss is a different matter altogether, feewise.”

“How about if there’s no damage?”

“Just that pool hooey painted on the side?”

“Right.”

Thumper produced a notepad from his pocket and did some figuring. “For you, a hundred a day prorated hourly for any period thereafter.”

“Okay. I’d like to park my car back here for however long I need the van.”

“Sure, we’ll put it near the back outta sight.”

Boo returned, Jellyroll on his heels, with a big carpenter’s box full of paints and brushes. We watched while he taped the card to the side of the van at eye level and then began to grid out his work. Boo seemed full of the confidence of an artist.

“Say, Artie, how about some pool supplies?”

“There’s a thought. What have you got?”

“Skimmers, plungers, pumpers, maybe a sucker somewhere.”

“How much?”

“Well, that again depends on degree of damage and extent of loss.” I didn’t want to keep hearing about damage. “Undamaged, I give ’em to you for free, if you take an espresso machine off my hands for twenty-five bucks. It’s got brass nozzles and spouts, nice I-talian mountain scene in color.”

“Fine.”

He made a note on his pad.

“Oh. Uniforms,” I said. “I almost forgot uniforms.”

“Uniforms. Check. White coveralls?”

“Okay. Put some phony names on the tits?”

“Goes without saying. How many?”

“Uh, three.” I gave Thumper a hundred and fifty dollars down—against damage.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Artie. You too, Jellyroll.”

A car had blown up in the northbound lane of the West Side Highway, so during the miserable bumper-to-bumper lurch back uptown I had time to run my plans over and over in my head. Jellyroll didn’t like the trip, because there was no wind to ruffle his ears. Every now and then, I’d check the mirror for suspicious motorists, but that was ludicrous. How would I recognize a tail in stalled traffic?

The Ninety-sixth Street exit from the Henry Hudson in sight, it took another half hour to get off. People did this every day of
their lives. That made my plans seem sensible and conservative by comparison. I left Crystal’s car in the hands of the downtrodden attendant at a nearby parking garage. He clearly hated me, and after I tipped him five, he still hated me.

I had been recklessly roaming the metropolitan area in a daze all day, in a dream that could turn to nightmare. A nightmare was just a dream with a higher degree of damage. What was Crystal doing right now? Suffering? The fat fuck said she was “restrained.” What did that mean precisely? Tied naked, spreadeagled to a grotty cot, at Henry’s service? Chained in a painful ball? Caged? Hang on, Crystal. I fingered the handle of my ice pick as I took Jellyroll for a quick shit in Riverside Park. Took a special kind of guy…

On the promenade, two testosterone-twisted adolescents swung on a cherry-tree branch until it snapped. They jumped up and down and whooped like crazed cannibals after the kill. I walked down by the river near the tennis courts, because the tennis courts were always crowded. I watched the flotsam and jetsam bob upstream on the tide. Two gulls rested on a floating railroad tie. Corralled in a tidal eddy, errant tennis balls went round and round, turning gray. Three used condoms drifted by, mouths up, like a school of short, dead lampreys. The day was beginning to seem long. Jellyroll picked up an ancient pizza crust and began to chomp contentedly until I told him, “Drop.”

I sat down on a bench, envied the couples playing tennis, and felt sorry for myself. It seemed hopeless. We’d had fun for a time, we were growing to love one another, and then reality interceded, if this could be called reality. Our interests intersected with those of crazies. I thought about our first night together almost mournfully.

Jellyroll spotted him coming before I did. He stiffened, pricked his ears. I stood, spun, and backpedaled, putting the bench between me and whatever my watchdog had seen.

A man on crutches was moving at me with alarming speed, swinging his heavy body along almost lopingly. It was Barry! I’d never forget that fleshy, pocked face grinning at me in Crystal’s car, with the Crystal wig on its head.

“Jellyroll, come!” I turned and bolted north—Jellyroll and I could outrun this guy—

“You can run, but you cain’t never hide,” Barry called after us, coming hard, crutches flicking in the setting sun. “I know where you live—”

That was a nightmare of mine—to be hunted down in my own neighborhood, to feel the commonplace take on the air of menace because nowhere was safe, not even my own home. I still had the ice pick in my pocket. I could try to stick him again. He was obviously pissed about the last time, but maybe this time I could stick him somewhere vital to life itself. However, there were an awful lot of witnesses on the promenade. I looked back over my shoulder—was he gaining?

No. Barry slowed, then slowed further. Something was wrong with Barry. I stopped to watch. His head lolled forward, back, but since he had no neck, it couldn’t loll far. I thought I saw his eyes roll as well. He seemed now to be walking in quicksand on crutches. Each step came with comedic deliberateness, just putting one foot in front of…the other foot, move the crutches. Then Barry stopped altogether. He flopped onto the nearest bench. He propped the crutches against the seat, but they clattered to the concrete. Barry couldn’t seem to pick them up again. Eyes open, he sagged sideways on the bench. His head thunked against the wood. He didn’t move again. Nobody looked twice. Tennis players, Lycra-clad joggers, blade skaters, mothers pushing baby carriages—they saw people sleeping on benches every day.

Jellyroll sat at my heels. That’s what he does when he gets frightened. Me, I melt into a puddle, flooding my sneakers. My hand started trembling first, like a bongo player’s at the crescendo.
Something had happened to this Barry. He hadn’t merely gotten tired chasing me up the river on crutches and decided to catch forty winks before he got on with it.

My head darted around, but my eyes didn’t see anything in the watery blur. I stopped it darting, clenched my eyes into focus—

Calabash! He stood on the walkway near the front gate to the tennis courts. I could have blubbered with relief. Calabash was built like a subcompact automobile and weighed only slightly less. He was my friend and bodyguard. Apparently, he had seen what had just happened to Barry. Calabash looked at me and nodded minutely. Then he looked at Barry there on the bench. Calabash’s face was tense.

I sat down about six benches from Barry, mainly because my knees had melted. Calabash sat on Barry’s bench and nonchalantly crossed his legs, a giant Bahamian taking in the sunset over New Jersey. Several passersby glanced at him, but that was only because he was too big to go anywhere without people glancing to him. No one glanced at Barry.

After a time, Calabash reached out—about five feet out—grasped Barry by the back of his neck, and drew him effortlessly up into something like a sitting position. He held Barry like that for a couple of seconds, then he abruptly stood up and walked toward me. He didn’t look at me as he passed. I didn’t look at him either as I stood up and fell into step behind him. We both had similar ideas: get the fuck away from Barry and whatever had happened to him before it happened to us. Jellyroll sniff ed the air in Calabash’s wake.

“Good to see you,” he said without moving his mouth.

“That’s putting it mildly,” I said.

“Dot guy was dead.”

“Dead?”

“Dead.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I only know he’s dead.”

I stopped, placed my elbows on the rail, and watched New Jersey. Calabash stopped a short way on. Here was a dead guy with at least one ice-pick hole in his person, and here was me—a special kind of guy—with an ice pick in my pocket…

Now Jellyroll recognized Calabash, gave out a little snort of joy, and jumped on him. Never seen each other before. Slick. I reached in and covertly extracted the ice pick, flipped it in the river, and watched anxiously to see if it would sink. It did.

A Hispanic guy appeared beside me, but he was too short to lean his arms on the rail. He was built like a fire hydrant. Naw, couldn’t be—the Hispanic guy had beautiful long black hair brilliantined straight back from his high forehead. He had a little black pencil mustache. The Hispanic guy had powder-blue eyes, which twinkled at me.

Calabash was circling around behind him, but the Hispanic guy saw him doing it. He offered Calabash his hand. “Norm Armbrister—” he said.

“Calabash.”

“Calabash?”

“Dot’s a fruit.”

“Don’t I know it. Where you from, Calabash?”

“De Bahamas.”

“I thought so. Like whereabouts specifically?”

“De Exhumas.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve been all around down in there, the wife and I. Poor Joe Cay—”

“You been to Poor Joe?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Did you kill dot guy on de bench?”

“No other way to reason with men like him. I’m trying to convince your friend Artie to take me along when he goes after his girlfriend. That’s probably why you’re in town.”

Calabash looked at me.

Norm Armbrister was a silent killer, a spook who killed, how, by sheer force of will? That was just the sort of man I needed.

“How can I get in touch with you?”

Norm handed me a card with a phone number penned on it.

“I’ll call you at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell you where we’ll pick you up.”

“Security?” He giggled.

He went south, we went north, leaving Barry on the bench. I wondered if Barry had friends or loved ones who’d miss him. Probably not.

FIFTEEN

S
HORTLY AFTER FIRST light, I took jellyroll for a walk in the park. The homeless still slept on the hillside in cardboard boxes and refrigerator crates. Some stirred, peeked out of their crates for a glimpse at the new day that held nothing new for them. Others would probably never wake up. Due to the cutbacks, the city didn’t collect the dead with regularity. I picked up Jellyroll’s shit—healthy—with a Chinese-restaurant menu, and as I dropped it in the basket, I felt intense melancholy for those in the crates, for the city, for myself, and for Jellyroll. This might be the last shit I’d be around to shovel. Who could predict what would happen out there in the wilds of New Canaan? Back at the apartment, I kissed him good-bye, and I could tell he was wondering, What’s the big deal about today? Dogs love routine, but today was decidedly different.

I phoned Norman Armbrister at precisely nine. I told him to meet us—on foot—at the Riverdale side of the toll bridge across the Harlem River. He giggled at my security measures and said, “Okay, Captain, I’ll be there.”

I was acting by rote, paying the man behind the bulletproof glass for the overnight garaging, starting Crystal’s car in the gloomy garage recesses, and driving it toward the light. Like my dog, I’ve always been fond of normalcy. There could be no more normalcy. Here I was, an eccentric hermit who habitually thought through even the simplest of day-to-day actions from all possible perspectives before deciding to do nothing; any other decision
seemed too complicated. Now I was leading a covert incursion against a racketeer’s suburban mansion to rescue my lover who may or may not be there. I didn’t hold out much hope of success. Hopelessness—yes, that was the feeling I was trying to repress by living in the moment—step on the gas, step on the brake, as needed, don’t wreck the car driving around to Broadway to pick up Calabash. At least stave off the ludicrous.

It had taken most of last night, a bottle of rum, and more than one gasper to explain the events of the past several days to Calabash. I told him about Trammell’s disappearance, Bruce’s beating, Crystal’s kidnapping, my own kidnapping, about Chet Bream and the tape. Then we began to talk about the plan.

“Hmm,” said Calabash after I’d finished. I didn’t take that “hmm” as a sign of enthusiasm. He began to unpack lethal objects from his black gym bag, to clean and load them. Hmm…

Calabash was clutching that gym bag when I picked him up on Broadway. He scrunched into the Toyota, his head bent against its roof. We drove south on the Henry Hudson in light traffic. I almost missed the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance. Tunnel entrances require a degree of driving precision.

“You okay?” Calabash reasonably wanted to know.

“Oh, sure, fine, great.”

“We don’ want to get killed on de way.”

“Still a little tacky,” said Boo, his head cocked, touching his work with his index finger.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Yeah, it come out pretty good.” He nodded approvingly. “But that one palm tree there, it could be some better. Palm trees is tough. It’s the fronds, you know. Fronds is hard. You don’t have time I can do it over, do you?”

I tipped him fifty bucks.

The van rode like a stagecoach. It shimmied and shook and pulled to the left. Before we left Thumper’s place, we’d checked the brake lights and such, so we wouldn’t get stopped for minor infractions, but there was no time for a test drive. “I been in ten-foot seas calmer den dis,” commented Calabash. An ominous grinding sound from the stern made my teeth itch.