Brainquake (16 page)

Sitting on the baby’s right, Michelle propped her head against a pillow. Her right ear was cocked to the quiet voice coming from the radio on the bed table a foot away. It was reporting Middle East events.

Sitting on the bed’s edge, Paul’s eyes were on the TV reporter quietly delivering a recap of European news. At Paul’s feet was his bag. Behind the TV a larger sketch of a peg-legged man captioned
PETER STUYVESANT, GOVERNOR OF NEW NETHERLANDS
1647–1664.

The radio voice stopped. A second later:

“
More complications for wife of shooting victim Frankie Troy shortly before midnight last night
.”

Paul darted to the radio, dropping to both knees. They clasped hands.

“
A white male, Albert Cody, 29, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in Michelle Troy’s Manhattan apartment. The victim was found by his brother, Edward Cody, who notified the police. Michelle Troy is being sought by the police for questioning. Lieutenant Zara of Homicide refused to confirm or deny that the murder of Albert Cody was linked to the baby carriage shooting of Frankie Troy earlier this week. Cody’s brother had this to say when questioned by our reporter.
”

Eddie’s voice burst from the speaker: “
I’ll find the person who did this and make her pay for it…
”

The broadcast continued with other news.

Sweat trickled down Michelle’s face, tracing narrow tracks along the caked blood covering her bruises. Paul went into the bathroom, returned with a wet towel to find her dialing the phone. Gently he stopped her. They spoke in whispers.

“I’ve got to call Zara,” Michelle said.

He gently wiped her smeared face. “You’re safe here.”

“I’ll be safer with Zara.”

“Not while Eddie’s looking for you.”

“Why didn’t your boss’ men kill him?”

“Too many cops around, probably.”

“You sure they’ll kill him.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When he’s alone.”

“We’ll hear it on the news?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll take me to Zara?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll tell her you gave me the gun because they said they would kill the baby, too.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll tell her the truth. I killed Al because he was going to hurt my baby.”

“Yes.”

“Then my baby and me’ll be free.”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“Make my drop.”

“Why?”

“I’m no thief.”

“You’re right. You made a deal with your boss.”

“Yes.”

“Won’t she have you killed anyway? For blackmailing her?”

Paul closed his eyes, didn’t answer.

* * *

Dawn fought through the distant treetops of Van Cortland Park. A nervous man and a hooker emerged from room two of the motel. He lifted the garage door. They drove out, passing the yellow neon:
PETER STUYVESANT MOTEL
, and the red neon under it:
VACANCY
.

Another car approached the signs, turned down the driveway to the office. Two kids jumped out, followed by their parents. The mother was carrying a crying baby. The father went into the office, emerged with the key, gave it to his wife. The kids followed her. The father opened the garage of number eight and drove in.

Room nine was on the corner. Its garage door closed. Window shade down. In room nine, Paul and Michelle were asleep. She was still half-sitting in bed, head slumped on pillow, the baby asleep beside her. Paul was still sitting on the floor, his head cradled on one arm across the bed. Soft music was on the radio. A whispered commercial was on TV.

Michelle was the first to stir when she faintly heard her baby crying. The crying got louder. It awakened her. It also awakened Paul. They both discovered her baby was still sound asleep. The crying came from the next room.

Paul turned the volume up on the TV. She did the same on the radio. Paul pulled the shade aside an inch. Sunlight struck his eye. Michelle kissed her baby awake, changed his diaper, gave him a bottle, which he sucked eagerly.

Paul’s exhausted eyes began to close as he sat back on the floor. They shot open again when he heard:

“
This photo of Paul Page was given to the police.
”

He and Michelle stared at Paul’s face filling the TV screen.

“
Police say they have found prints on the murder weapon belonging to both Page and Michelle Troy. Both are considered suspects in the shooting. Arrest warrants have been issued, and the police are urging them to come in for questioning.
”

They were statues. Then one moved. Michelle lifted the baby, held it close.

“My poor, poor baby!”

Paul tried to calm her down. She buried her head against him. The baby in her arms began whimpering. Paul kissed the baby, kissed Michelle, kept stroking their faces.

Michelle’s body was shaking. “What’ll happen to my baby? Oh, God, Paul, they’ll put him in an orphanage!
An orphanage! An orphanage!
”

“They won’t find us.”

She pushed away from him, clinging onto her baby.

“There’s cops everywhere! There’s your boss’ people everywhere! There’s Eddie everywhere!”

“We’ll hide.”

“Where? Where?
Where?
”

“I don’t know.”

“Have to get out of the country.”

“Where?”

“I have an old friend in Paris…grew up with him…”

“Paris, France?”

“Yes.”

“You trust him?”

“With my life. With my baby’s life.” Then she couldn’t stop the horror filling her face. “But how can we get there? Ships, planes, everything will have cops watching. Do you even have a passport?”

“No,” Paul said. “But I know a man who can help us.”

“Oh, God, Paul. Even if we can get there, it takes money to hide.
Money. Money!
”

“I have money.”

“It takes a lot of money.”

Paul lifted his bag from the floor, opened it. She stared at the brown-paper-bound stacks of cash.

“Ten million is a lot of money.”

Sunlight flooded through Johnson’s bedroom window. On the bedstand, a clock, phone, opium pipe. On a shelf by the wall, a plaster bust of Homer he’d found thrown out in an alley near Greenwich Avenue. The base was broken, so he had propped it up with a couple of old paperbacks: a copy of the
Iliad
, one of Stendhal, and some old potboiler with its cover missing.

The ringing phone couldn’t invade his world as he slept above his photo shop. It was a world where opium dulled constant pain, stopped his coughing, gently smashed anxiety. He was having his special dream. He and his friend Homer were in white flowing togas, reclining on a massive moving white cloud, smoking their pipes, discussing opium’s incredible virtues.

“It’s a tragedy,” Homer said. “So few people know that it’s the drug of blessed sleep. I have contempt for cocaine in any form.”

“Or morphine.”

“Or any kind of shit.”

“Or heroin.”

“Detestable, Johnson. Made from crude opium, it dulls the brain. A cheap clone. Have you ever been in an opium den?”

“No, Homer. Have you?”

“No. What is that distant sound coming from below?”

“Just the phone ringing.”

“The what?”

“Never mind.”

“You know, some people prefer opium mixed with camphor.”

“Or with hashish.”

“And they smoke it like a cigarette. How disgusting.”

“That paregoric taste.”

“Disgusting.”

“Ever tried Dover’s Powder?”

“Cheap, cheap clone. They didn’t want to call it opium.”

“I knew a guy who thought that powder would cure his clap. Idiot!”

“Then there’s that barbaric needle…”

“Uncivilized.”

There was a pleasant silence as they smoked.

“That ringing is very annoying,” Homer said. “It interferes with the rhythm of enjoyment.”

The ringing became very loud and persistent. Johnson’s hand probed through the cloud, trying to find the phone. Johnson fell off the cloud. Homer kept smoking. Falling through space, Johnson picked up the phone.

It was Paul’s voice.

Johnson sat up in his bed. Paul was in trouble.

“Where are you?”

Paul told him.

Johnson swung out of bed. “Stay in that motel room till eight tonight. What wheels have you got?”

“Roadster.”

“Plant it behind the billboard in that junk lot two blocks west of my shop. Cover it with busted cartons. Be at my alley door at 9:30.”

Johnson put the phone down slowly but was thinking fast. A good smoke would help calm him down. But a pipe should be enjoyed. Not rushed. Under the shower his mind was thundering faster. He dressed swiftly, hurried down to his back-room studio, pulled up the trapdoor, turned on the light, flew down seven steps into his basement, cracked open what looked like a stone door, pulled the string. A bulb swinging from the ceiling revealed his workshop. He checked his supply of wigs, beards, dyes. The passport typewriter’s ribbon was new. He took out rectangular and circular official stamps, then checked the amount of wig gook he had left in the jar.

He hurried upstairs to his cash register, pocketed all the cash, drove his pickup through early morning traffic, filled the tank at the gas station, bought a secondhand suitcase and a big, secondhand backpack he stuffed into the suitcase.

Then he went on a shopping spree.

Satisfied he had enough clothes, he bought more transparent tape, staples, scratch pads. Put everything in the suitcase except the staples and scratch pads, which he put aside in the small plastic bag they came in at the store.

He drove off. It would be some time before he’d see Paul again after tonight. Perhaps never. Ten years ago Paul had made his first drop with Johnson—one of his first drops, period—and that very first time he had found Johnson in trouble, lying halfdead on the floor. Paul knew the rules about finding a drop on dope, but he didn’t report Johnson to the Boss.

Paul had covered for him many times over those ten years. Johnson had told him he needed the drop fee to buy more and more opium. Paul had never said a word.

Johnson didn’t fear death. But he hated it. It would mean the end of enjoying the pipe. Paul had given him years of life, years of enjoyment. He owed him.

He parked his van in front of a diner, sat at the counter, ordered ham and eggs and black coffee and knew that soon his day of reckoning would come. Without Paul around, it would come sooner. Stepping out of his skin, he stood away from himself and looked at himself and saw what a failure he had become because of the pipe he loved so much.

Born on the Bowery, he got his first high on glue when he was nine, putting together a small model plane his bartender father had given him on his birthday. His father died in the saloon fire, his mother of leukemia a year later, and his own ambition, which he had forgotten, also died. So he became a cannon, got arrested, and wound up in a cell with Harlem Davenport, a passport forger who used to work in a photo shop that was a front for all sorts of illegal activities.

They became friends. When both were released, Harlem opened his own photo studio uptown, gave Johnson a job, taught him passport forgery and got him hooked on the pipe.

When Harlem closed the deal to use his shop as a bagman’s drop, he found a more lucrative photo shop in Detroit, used the up-front fee to make a downpayment, and left the New York shop to Johnson to run. It was Johnson’s responsibility to keep the shop doing business and to collect his $500 a week from Pegasus for keeping their bags circulating.

A man sat down next to Johnson in the diner and ordered cereal with milk, read his paper. Johnson saw Paul’s picture on the front page.
GUN WIDOW AND TAXI DRIVER SOUGHT FOR MURDER
was the headline.

When Johnson approached his shop, Officer Benson was looking at the photos in the window. Johnson swung into the alley, parked his van, got out carrying only the small plastic bag.

“Morning, Officer.”

“Morning, Johnson.”

Johnson unlocked the door. The cop followed him in, closing the door. Johnson walked behind his counter, took out the scratch pads and box of staples from the plastic bag. Behind the counter was a stack of leather photo albums in different colors for sale. Next to the albums, a file box with customer names. Next to it, a box with yellow envelopes holding pictures ready to be picked up.

Officer Benson picked up a can that had a slit on its top for coins, studied the sticker:
DAMON RUNYON CANCER FUND
. The can was old. The sticker was old. Officer Benson shook it. Coins rattled. He dropped a quarter through the slot.

Office Benson said, “I never thought this kind of shit would hit the fan.” He unfolded a newspaper, planted it on the counter. Page one, with Paul’s three-column photo. The same headline as the paper in the diner. “What the hell do you think made him snap?”

“Why’re you asking me?”

“You knew him.”

“Not well. Hardly said two words to me, any time he came in.”

“Thought he was a decent sort. Turns out he’s just a thief with a hard-on. Couldn’t resist all that cash he carried every day. He’s made it rough on all of us.”

“It’s going to be rougher on him.”

Officer Benson dropped another quarter through the slot. “We’re all up shit creek if a kosher cop nails him before the Boss does.”

Johnson hoped Paul got to Omaha Beach safely. Hoped even more that it didn’t show in his face.

Officer Benson ripped off the top sheet of the scratch pad. He wrote down a number. “A hotline’s been set up. You hear anything about that thief, phone this number.”

He gave the sheet to Johnson.

“Memorize it. Burn it. The price tag on him is five hundred grand.”

Five hundred. Jesus.

Johnson couldn’t help himself from asking, “And if he’s got the loaded bag on him?”

“An additional million.”

In the bright full moon, the Boss was driven along the waterfront. A slim man was waiting for them near a small motor launch. Max stopped the car. They looked at each other. Both knew what the result would be. But she had insisted. The longer she could postpone the hunt for Paul, the more time he would have.