A Manhattan Ghost Story (25 page)

“Why’d you come back here, Art?”

Another grin. “To give myself up.”

“How wonderfully magnanimous,” I said, paused, went on, “But why?”

He shrugged. “Guilt,” I think,” he said. “Guilt can work wonders, you know.” He paused, then added, “And fear, too.”

“Fear? Fear of what?”

Someone knocked at the front door. Art glanced sharply at it. His hands began to shake first—some of the coffee sloshed out of the cup and onto the floor—then his arms and his mouth began to shake. “Jesus!” he whispered. “Jesus!”

I smiled. “I’ll get it, Art.” It occurred to me then that I had grown to hate Art, that as much as I loved Phyllis, I hated him. I wanted desperately to see him hauled away. “I’ll get it,” I said again, and stood. He stuck his hand out so his palm was flat on my chest. “No, Abner. Please. Let me.” He was pleading with me. I sat. “Sure, Art.”

He went haltingly to the door, his cup of coffee still in hand. He grasped the knob. There was another knock, louder and sharper than the first, and it spooked him, he stepped back. Then, apparently, he screwed some courage up from somewhere, because he reached out suddenly and yanked the door wide open.

It was Kennedy Whelan. He had a cigar in his mouth, and his hands thrust into his suit pants pockets. He said, “Hello, Mr. DeGraff?”

Art nodded. Some more of his coffee sloshed out onto the floor.

Whelan took the cigar from his mouth, held it near the middle of his Chest as he talked. “I’ve got a warrant for your arrest on a charge of second-degree murder …”

Art fainted.

I was glad to see it happen. I laughed, in fact.

Whelan looked over at me and barked, “Clam up, Mr. Cray.” I quieted. Whelan leaned over Art—who’d collapsed so he was on his back, with his left arm close to his body, and his right arm out, toward the inside of the apartment, his legs bowed, feet together. He looked pretty ridiculous, too, because his robe had come open. “Help me with him, would you?” Whelan said, and put his arms under Art’s arms. I went over, took Art’s feet, and together, Whelan and I carried him to the couch.

Whelan said, “It happens.”

“What happens?”

“People pass out.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Why are you still here, Mr. Cray? Don’t you find me intimidating enough?” He put the cigar back into his mouth, began rolling it theatrically from one side to the other.

“I live here,” I said.

Art started coming around then. His eyelids fluttered; he groaned a couple of times.

“Uh-huh,” Whelan said. “Well, it’s not important now, is it?” He nodded at Art. “I’ve got him.”

Art mumbled something incoherent, something about Phyllis, I think, something affectionate.

Whelan grinned, as if at a private joke and leaned over him. “Mr. DeGraff?”

Art’s eyes opened. He looked frightened.

“Mr. DeGraff?” Whelan said again.

“Yes?” Art managed.

“Mr. DeGraff, you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you give up these rights—”

Art sat up suddenly, pushing Whelan aside. Whelan started reciting his rights again, and Art waved agitatedly at the air, as if waving at flies. “That’s not necessary.”

“Certainly, Mr. DeGraff,” Whelan said. “Could you get dressed?”

“Sure,” Art said.

“We have to go downtown, sir. We have to book you.”

Art stood, grinned. He looked suddenly very pleased. “Yes,” he said, “I’d like that.” His voice was quivering. “I can’t tell you how much I’d like that, Detective …” He stopped, looked confused. “What’s your name, again?”

“Whelan. Call me ‘Mr. Whelan.’ I prefer being called Mister.”

Art nodded, put his hand on the back of his head.

 “I think I hurt myself.” He rubbed the back of his head.

“Yes, sir,” Whelan said. “We’ll see that it’s attended to.” He looked at me. “Mr. Cray, will you be willing to testify that Mr. DeGraff received this head injury as the result of fainting.”

I said yes.

“Thank you.” He turned to Art. “Now, if you could get dressed, Mr. DeGraff.”

Art started for the bedroom. “Yes,” he said, “I will. I won’t be long.”

Whelan followed. Art said, “Please, let me do this alone.” After a moment, Whelan nodded. “Okay,” he said, and let Art go alone into his bedroom to get dressed. He shouldn’t have done it, of course. He was stupid to do it; I suppose he considered himself a good judge of character (grizzled cop, twenty or twenty-five years on the force, gets to know people awfully well, right?). I suppose he felt pretty certain that Art wasn’t going to do anything, so he decided to give him a final moment of dignity and let him get dressed alone.

It was a mistake.

When Art had been in the bedroom a minute or two, Whelan said, “Can I get a statement from you, Mr. Cray?”

“About Art’s head injury?” I said.

Whelan puffed on the cigar; he seemed to delight in it. “Yes. For the record.”

A kind of high-pitched grunting noise, barely audible, came from the bedroom. We both looked. Whelan, thinking, apparently, that it was nothing to be concerned about, said, “You’d be surprised, Mr. Cray, at the number of suspects who claim police brutality—” He was interrupted by another grunting sound, louder now.

“Excuse me, please,” he said, and I watched as he strode quickly—and more gracefully, I thought at the time, than I supposed a man his size could—down the hallway to Art’s closed bedroom door, and tapped on it. “Mr. DeGraff?”

Another grunting sound, now as much a screech as a grunt.

Whelan hit the door with the side of his fist. “Mr. DeGraff? Open the door, please.” He tried the knob; the door was locked. He cursed, stepped back, kicked the door very hard just below the knob. The door swung open sharply, Whelan pulled his gun out, took up a position to the left of the door, and bellowed this time, “Mr. DeGraff, please come out of there!”

I had been coming slowly down the hallway all this time, and now I was close enough to Art’s bedroom to see past Whelan, into it. I saw movement inside, though I heard nothing.

Whelan bellowed again, “Mr. DeGraff, come out of there! Now!”

It was a quick and frantic kind of movement that I saw in that room, as if something furious and silent had been let loose inside it.

“Goddamnit!” Whelan hissed.

“Are you going to go in there?” I whispered.

He ignored me. “Goddamnit!” he hissed again. He was obviously very upset, and more than a little nervous. “Mr. DeGraff, I am going to ask you only one more time to come out of there. Please come out of there!”

“I’ll go in and get him if you like,” I offered. I meant it.

He looked at me as if I were a madman, waved at me with his gun and ordered, “Get
out
of the way; get
out
of the way!”

I stepped back a little.

And Art screamed.

Whelan twitched, cursed again, and launched himself, head-first—so he could tuck and roll—into the room. It was very theatrical, and I enjoyed it immensely. He let loose with the gun moments later. I didn’t like that; it was loud, obtrusive—”Christ!” I screamed. “Stop that, you asshole, stop that!” And I ran into the room.

I found Whelan sitting up against the wall to the right of the door, his feet under the middle of the bed. He was still pointing his gun, and his mouth was moving fitfully—small, spittle-laden curses were coming out.

Art was not in the room. His robe was there, lying very neatly on the bed. The window was open; cold air was pushing into the room. But Art was gone.

I grinned. “Great,” I said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I leaned over Whelan. He was flushed; his breathing was shallow, and I guessed that he was in shock, that he had seen something very strange. I patted him several times, softly, on the cheek. It did no good.

I straightened, stared at him a moment. The small, spittle-laden curses stopped; his breathing remained shallow. “Mr. Whelan?” I said. Nothing. I turned and went to the window, stuck my head out, looked down the fire escape, then right and left.

Art was on the sidewalk on East 79th Street. He was dressed only in a pair of dark slacks and a white T-shirt. He was barefooted. Three people—a young, casually dressed woman, a child, a young black man smoking a cigarette—were hurrying him along, left, toward Fifth Avenue. “Art!” I called, and he glanced back. I saw a paralytic kind of fear on his face—stiff, and pale, and wildly incredulous. Then Kennedy Whelan shouldered his way in next to me at the window, stuck his head out, saw Art, too, and yelled, “Stop right there, Mr. DeGraff! Stop right there!” and stuck his arm out, gun in hand, and pointed it in Art’s general direction.

“Jesus,” I said, “what’s
that
for?”

He shoved me aside, leaned farther out the window, and leveled the gun directly at Art. “Stop there, goddamnit!”

I pushed in beside him, looked frantically toward East 79th Street and the tight little group of people that was all but carrying Art away.

“Damnit!” Whelan breathed. He drew back from the window and headed for the phone on a nightstand near the bed. “Please don’t go anywhere, Mr. Cray,” he said. I nodded, and then moved more quickly than I supposed I could have. Out the window, onto the fire escape, and, before starting down, I looked back, saw Whelan running through the bedroom, reaching into his jacket for his gun. “Shit!” I whispered, and clattered down the fire escape to the ground. I heard from above:

“Shit, fuck, goddamnit!”

I looked up. Whelan had started down after me, but had gotten the front bottom edge of his suit jacket caught in the fire escape.

I ran to East 79th Street. Behind me, from the fire escape, Whelan called, “You asshole, you fucking asshole!”

I reached the sidewalk. In front of me, a yellow cab came to a sharp halt. The cabbie leaned over, rolled the passenger window down and said, “Cab, sir?”

It was Matthew Petersak.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Keystone Cops

Behind me, Whelan had freed his jacket from the fire escape and had reached the ground.

“Cabbie,” he yelled, “I am a New York City police officer and I am ordering you to halt!”

I opened the front passenger door of the cab, hopped in, glanced at Whelan. He was running toward us with his gun pointing skyward and was yelling again, “I am a New York City Police Officer, goddamnit, and I am ordering you to bring your cab to a halt!”

“Jesus!” I breathed.

A quick, hollow chuckle came from Matthew Petersak.

“Jesus!” I said again. Whelan was within fifty feet of the cab now. “Can we
go?!
” I said to the cabbie. “Please, can we
go?!
”

Matthew Petersak chuckled once again. He opened his door, put one foot out onto the pavement, stood, and yelled to Whelan, over the top of the cab, “Yeah? Well
I’m
a New York City dead man, and I don’t give a fuck!” And he laughed.

Whelan stopped. His gun still was pointing skyward, but now his mouth was open.

Ahead of the cab, traffic had come to a standstill—another of New York’s traffic jams—though, in the opposite lane, traffic was sparse.

Whelan leveled his gun at me. I leaned far forward, noticed, before my head went below the level of the window, that the barrel was tracking me.

“Stop right there, cabbie!” Whelan yelled.

And Petersak hit the accelerator. “Madeline wants to see you,” he said.

Whelan fired.

I heard a noise to my right, like a hand slicing into water. I looked. I saw a very small, yellowish hole in the side of Petersak’s head, just below and behind his temple.

“Jesus!” I breathed again. “Jesus, Jesus—”

“Hurts,” Petersak said, winced, and swung the cab hard around so we were in the opposite lane. I straightened, saw a car brake furiously, heard someone yell a curse.

“Hurts,” Petersak said again. He brought the cab to a halt, put it in reverse, backed up, stopped, put it in first. I heard another shot. Several square inches of dashboard shredded in front of me.

“Hurts,” Petersak said.

Outside the cab, people were cursing all around us.

“Hurts,” Petersak said.

“Please,” I said, and slid down as far as I could, so my rear end was nearly on the floor. “Please, let’s go,” I said.

Petersak hit the accelerator.

Madeline was very angry.

“You are stupid, stupid man, Mr. Cray. You cannot, I repeat, you
cannot
interfere with these people. Do you understand that? You cannot!”

We were in her living room; she was in the same chair she’d been in the last time I saw her, and she was wearing the same blue nightgown. Gerald was standing beside her, grinning. The cat scratch at his jawline was terribly inflamed. Madeline went on, “Do you think you can actually
find
Phyllis Pellaprat? Is that the delusion under which you are laboring, Mr. Cray?”

“Is it a delusion?” I asked. I was seated on the rococo settee near the two tall, narrow windows halfway across the big room from her.

She stared at me a moment, in much the way that Whelan had and Serena Hitchcock had. “Yes, it is.” She said it very slowly, her enunciation crisp.

“That’s not what you told me the last time I was here,” I said.

 “I don’t give a hoot or a holler or a tinker’s damn—” She stopped and composed herself. At last, she nodded toward Gerald, who was looking blankly at me. “This, Mr. Cray,” she said, “is all that you can expect. No more than this.”

I leaned forward in the settee. “No,” I said. “I don’t believe that. I’ve seen evidence—”

She cut in, “The house on East 80th Street, Mr. Cray? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Sorry?”

“The whorehouse on East 80th Street, damnit! Do you know what you did there? Do you have any idea at all what you did to those poor creatures?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, “I hadn’t really thought about it …” I faltered.

“You probably imagine that you
helped
them in some bumbling way.” She stopped, thought, went on, “Suffice it to say, however, that you didn’t. Just as you did not help the man in the ragged T-shirt or, for heaven’s sake, that poor boy selling puppies. Don’t you realize, Mr. Cray, that they are in
transition
and that you cannot
do
anything for them. You cannot do anything for
any of them
, including Phyllis Pellaprat. She is in transition. Just like Gerald. You may love them and you may even
need
them, but you cannot
help
them. Do I make myself clear?”