Known to Evil (5 page)

The November sun was just threatening to rise when I, once again wearing that yellow suit, turned south on Broadway. The homeless night people were still out, going through the detritus of the night before: searching paper bags and collecting bottles, hording unfinished cigarettes and the odd coin.

"Hey, brothah," a hale black man dressed all in gray rags said in greeting on Sixty-third and Amsterdam. The street had tempered his body--and cooked his brain.

I nodded in passing.

"You know they comin', right?" he said.

"Who's that?" I asked, slowing.

"Gubment men with their guns an' fake black skins. You know they take white men and use needle dyes to make 'em look like us and then they loose 'em all up and down here wit' guns an' say we doin' it to ourselves."

"Yeah," I said. "Sometimes they don't even need the needles and dyes."

The street messiah smiled at me. His teeth were all there and healthy, yellowed ivory in color and strong. I passed him a twenty-dollar bill and moved along, on my own misguided way.

MY FATHER'S LESSONS, as long as he stayed around, were good ones. He was a sophisticated man, even though he'd been born in an Alabama sharecropper's shack. Self-taught as he was, he had an outsider's take on knowledge.

"People in the Party will tell you to ignore Sigmund Freud," he once told me, a ten-year-old boy. "They say that he's just a bourgeois apologist. Problem is, they're right about a whole lot of what he has to say. All that sex and nuclear-family crap is mostly nonsense. But when he talks about the unconscious, you have to listen to him. Just walk down the street and you can see that most people don't know what they're doing or why. That's the impact of the Economic Infrastructure, but it's still in the living human brain. The ledger informs us but it doesn't make us what we are--not physically.

"So when you decide to do something, anything, you have to wonder what frame of mind brought you to that decision. More times than not it will be a part of your mind that you hadn't considered."

I HATED MY FATHER for many years after he'd abandoned me and killed my mother by walking out on her.

I hated my father for leaving, but his lessons never left me.

Why would I walk downtown so that I'd arrive at the Tesla Building at exactly seven in the morning? I knew that was when Aura got there, that's why. My mind set me up for a supposedly chance meeting with the woman I loved and denied.

And so when I was across the street from the lovely aqua and green Art Deco entrance to the Tesla, I shouldn't have been surprised to see Aura walking arm in arm with a white stranger. He was wearing a dark-blue pinstriped suit which didn't seem to fit him all that well, and carrying an oxblood briefcase. They stopped before the door and kissed.

It was a languorous kiss. The kind of osculation one has after a long night of satisfying intercourse. My unconscious brain told my living heart that I had been running full out for a quarter mile. A cold sweat sprouted across my forehead and down my neck.

The lovers separated, took a step or two, and then, helpless, started kissing again.

I knew I was bound for trouble when I found myself in the middle of the street, heading straight for the pair. My fists were balled and my state of mind was what it was when the bell would ring in my club-fighting days.

I was ready to tear off that sucker's head.

I couldn't stop moving, so I changed direction. I veered off to the left, storming down the street, lucky that no innocent got in my way.

8

I
was on Thirty-fourth a little west of Eighth Avenue before I knew it. Gordo's Gym had always been my refuge. I stood in front of the downstairs door breathing hard, unable to move now that I had come to a stop.

I'm fifty-four years old. At this advanced age I shouldn't go crazy like some teenager. My own lack of control, even more than that kiss, humiliated me. If I were another kind of man I might have fallen into a heap crying--after downing a fifth of bourbon.

It was at that exact moment that I realized the depth of my love for Aura. Before then I might have confused my feelings for attraction or deep friendship. But I knew, there on Thirty-fourth Street, that real love had emerged out of my subconscious--and I had waited too long to recognize it.

The all-purpose bear growled in my breast pocket. I suspected that it was Sam Strange. I had regained enough control to know that I couldn't talk to Rinaldo's legman right then. I would have cursed him and, in doing so, damned myself. So I let the call ring itself out and pushed the door open.

Halfway to the fourth floor a lion roared. That was Twill's assigned ring.

"You just about gave your mother an ulcer last night," were my first words. I was relieved to have someone I cared for to talk to.

"Sorry, Pops," Twill said. "Me an' Bulldog run into these two girls from Belarus and things got kinda hot and heavy."

"Belarus?"

"Yeah. That's part a' Russia. I told my girl I was nineteen. Sorry if we worried Moms."

"Have you called her?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because they knew this artist guy out in Southampton and we came out here to spend a couple'a days."

"Southampton? What about school?"

"You wanna talk to D?" was his reply.

"Dad?" Dimitri said on the line.

"Listen, son," I said, "your brother is on probation. It's against the law for him to leave the borough of Manhattan. What's gonna happen when the school reports him truant?"

"You could call 'em an' say that he's sick. Tell 'em he got the flu or something. I mean, that would really help us out. And, and, and you could call his social worker, too . . . and explain why he's not at work."

I couldn't remember the last time my blood-son had used more than a few words when speaking to me. All the rage and shame I felt sunk down under Dimitri's uncharacteristic behavior.

"You're asking me to lie for you and your brother?"

"It wouldn't be the first time you lied."

"What's going on with you, D?"

"I'm just asking you for this, all right?"

What could I say? Dimitri hadn't so much as shown a smile in my direction in five years.

"When are you two coming back home?"

"Just a few days. I swear."

"Are you in trouble? Do you need me to come out there and help?"

"No. It's nuthin' like that. It's just this girl . . . I like her."

"Okay. I'll make the calls for Twill, and I'll talk to your mother, too. But I need you two to keep in touch with me. You hear?"

"Uh-huh."

"I mean it, D. You've got to call me every day."

"I will. I promise."

It was the longest conversation I'd had with him since the birds and bees.

"Put Twill back on."

"He went outside."

I THOUGHT I WAS over the worst part about Aura and that kiss, but when I'd stripped down and approached the heavy bag the feeling returned. I worked that leather sack the way I would have liked to have beaten on Aura's pinstriped boyfriend. I threw punches until my knuckles were swollen and even the soles of my feet were slick with sweat. And I kept on until my balance was threatened. I was down on points, in a championship fight, in the last minute of the final round, and refusing to let my body rest.

I had been at it for nearly twenty minutes when I finally sank to my knees.

Another cold shower, followed by twelve minutes on the locker room bench, and I was ready to go. I dropped by Gordo's office on the way out. I was so preoccupied coming in that I didn't even say hello to my substitute father.

But the octogenarian wasn't at his desk. Instead a young cocoa-colored man was sitting there: Timmy "The Toy" Lineman.

He was a tallish middleweight whose limbs and torso were corded with long and lean muscles, containing no fat at all.

"Damn, LT," the youngster said. "You go after that bag like you wanted to kill somebody."

"Where's Gordo?"

"Search me. Said he had to go to a doctor or sumpin'. All's I know is that if I sit here from seven to seven I get three weeks off on my locker space."

"He say what was wrong?"

"No," the smiling kid said. "Hey, you know, LT, it's different hittin' a bag than fightin' a brother in the ring."

"Really? That heavy bag fights back more than any middleweight I ever sparred with."

Toy's smile dimmed almost imperceptibly. He knew better than to challenge me to a "friendly" match.

HALF A BLOCK FROM the Tesla Building my cell phone made the sound of a hyena's yip.

"Detective Kitteridge," I said into the phone.

I gave my regular callers special rings so I knew who was on the line. The bear was anyone I didn't talk to on a regular basis.

"What's up, LT?"

"Just feelin' my age, man."

It was an honest reply and so threw the special detective off balance. He was used to more banter with me.

"I hear you showed up at a murder scene last night," he said.

"My father told me that bad news skims over the surface while good deeds sink to the bottom."

"I need you to come in, LT."

"Not unless you got some paper on me."

"Refusing a friendly request only serves to make you look involved."

"Showing up at the goddamned door did that. But I didn't have anything to do with it and I told Bonilla everything else."

"I'll expect to see you in my office at three," he said before disconnecting the call.

9

I
pondered Kitteridge's request on the elevator ride up to the seventy-second floor. Carson was a good cop, maybe the only completely honest senior cop in the NYPD. Turning him down would cause trouble, but walking into his office without a full grasp of the situation would probably be worse.
I
didn't even know why I was at the murder scene. I was sure that Alphonse Rinaldo didn't want me talking to the cops about his business, and crossing Rinaldo was a mistake that no one had ever made twice.

I realized that there was a scowl on my face because when the walnut elevator doors slid open on my floor I smiled. I almost always grinned upon the lovely features of the Art Deco hallway that led to my offices. It was a wide hall with light fixtures of polished brass and a multicolored, marble-tiled floor.

Obtaining the eight-room suite of offices in the Tesla was the one crime I never regretted.

WHEN I TURNED THE corner I saw her: pretty and pale, slender, and not quite of this world. Mardi Bitterman stood in front of my oak door, an apparition of her own suffering. She wore a green and black tweed business suit that would have been more appropriate on a woman of fifty--fifty years ago.

The teenager smiled when she recognized me.

"Good morning, Mr. McGill," she said softly. "I guess I was a little early."

If this was a job interview it would have been over then. A young employee who comes in early is a rare commodity in twenty-first-century New York.

"How are you, Mardi?" I asked.

"Fine, thank you. Twill helped me get an apartment from some friends of his in the Bronx. Me and Marlene moved in last week."

I was busy working keys on the seven locks of my door.

"And you want to work for me?"

"Yes, sir," she said. "Twill said that you always wanted a receptionist, and I studied office sciences in high school."

I pushed the door open and gestured for her to go in.

"Are you planning to go to college?" I asked.

"This is beautiful!" She was referring to the reception antechamber of my suite.

There was an ash desk backed up by a trio of cherrywood filing cabinets. The double window looked out over New Jersey, and the walls were painted a subtle blue-gray.

The desk even had a little plastic sign that read RECEPTIONIST.

"I thought Twill said that you never had a secretary," she said.

"I haven't. But I've always wanted one. It's just that the kind of work I do means that somebody would have to give a little extra effort. I mean, it's not easy working for a guy like me."

Mardi was running her pale fingers across the white wood.

"I'd love to have this job, Mr. McGill. The lady, Mrs. Alexander, who lives in the place downstairs, said that she'd look after Marlene if I was ever late, and I know about the kind of work you do."

"How old are you now, Mardi?"

"I turned eighteen last May."

Thinking of the terror and humiliation that Twill's friend had endured, the words of my father came to me:
Tragedy either makes or breaks the will of the proletariat.

I had planned to pawn the child off on Aura when Twill made his request the night before. But now I couldn't imagine talking to my ex. And seeing the resolve in Mardi's face, I believed that she might well be made for a job like this.

"Let's try it out," I said. "We'll talk salary and hours later on. There's a laptop computer in the bottom drawer of the desk and an Internet connection in the wall. Why don't you set that up and make yourself at home."

I went to the fireproof brown metal door that led to my inner offices and entered a code on the digital keypad.

"There's a code to this door," I said before entering. "If you last two weeks I'll give it to you. For today I'll just leave it unlocked in case you need to come down and ask me something. And, oh yeah, whenever you walk in the front door three hidden cameras take pictures for about eight minutes. Just so you know."

I left the girl looking up at the ceiling, trying to find the secret eyes.

MY OFFICE DESK WAS made from ebony, its back to a window that looks south, on lower Manhattan. It was a clear day and you could make out the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

I tried my virtual answering machine but the growling bear from before had left no message.

For a while I counted my breaths, making it up to ten and then starting over. After maybe fifteen minutes I called information on my cell phone and they agreed to connect the call for no additional charge.

"Oxford Arms," a severe woman's voice said.

"Mr. Strange, please."