Nocturne (34 page)

She is not smiling.

This is no joke.

In the kitchen, he can hear the cat demolishing the fish Lorenzo put in her bowl. The sounds are somehow obscene. Cats are
too much like wild animals. One step backward and they would be in the jungle again, hunting.

Svetlana goes on to explain that she has been to see a neurologist who diagnosed a benign tumor on the nerve in her left auditory
canal. Unless this is removed surgically, she will go completely deaf in that ear. But the chances of …

“Well, then of course you must …”

“No,” she says, “you don’t understand. Even if I
elect
surgery … this is what they say, Lorenzo, as if I would be electing a president,
elect
surgery, can you imagine? Even if I were to
choose
surgery,
agree
to surgery, even then …”

She shakes her head.

“I’ve waited too long, Lorenzo. The tumor is very large, they may not be able to save my hearing. The larger the tumor, the
smaller the chance, is what he told me. The doctor. And with … with anything larger than three centimeters in diameter … with
any tumor larger than that …”

And here she begins weeping.

“They might not … be … be able to save my facial nerves, either. Is what he told me. The doctor.”

Lorenzo stands helplessly beside the bed.

“So what’s the use? My hands are already dead, I can’t play anymore. Should I now choose to live without being able to
hear
? Without being able to express feeling on my
face
? Whenever I played, my hands and my face said all there was to say. Do you know what they called me? A tornado. A tornado
from the Steppes. A wild tornado. My face and my hands. A tornado.”

Sobbing bitterly, the words coming out brokenly …

“What’s left for me, Lorenzo? What? Why should I choose to live? Please help me.”

Her hands covering her face, crying into them.

“Please,” she begs. “Kill me. Please.”

He tells her this is absurd.

He tells her that in any case, however slender the chances of success, she must undertake surgery, of course she must. Besides,
a person shouldn’t make decisions when she isn’t feeling right, she’s sick just now …

“See how pale you look!”

… she’ll feel different about all this when her cold is gone. But she keeps shaking her head as he talks, no, no, no, insisting
that she’s given this a great deal of thought, truly, and he would really be doing her an enormous service if he would only
find a gun and kill her.

“You’re serious,” he says.

“I’m serious.”

“Svetlana,” he says, “no.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re friends. You’re my friend, Svetlana.”

“Then kill me,” she says.

“No.”

“Please, Lorenzo. Kill me. Take me out of my misery. Help me. Please!”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“No.”

“I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars.”

“No.”

“Twenty thousand.”

“No.”

“Lorenzo, please. Please.”

“No, Svetlana. I’m sorry, no.”

“Twenty-five. To kill me and to take care of Irina afterward. Take her home with you, feed her, care for her.”

“I can’t. I won’t.”

“I would pay you more, but …”

“No, Svetlana. Please. Never. Not even for a million. Never. Please.”

But that is before he loses the money to Bernie the Banker.

What Bernie is telling him, if he correctly understands his very rapid English, is that he is going to kill Lorenzo unless
he comes up with the money he owes by Sunday morning. Bernie is a Jew, he supposes, but he is beginning to sound very Italian
with all this talk about swimming with the little fishes, very Italian indeed. Lorenzo has dealt with enough bookmakers, both
Italian
and
American, to know that very often they won’t necessarily kill you because then they will
never
get the money you owe them. On the other hand, having your legs broken or an eye put out is not a very cheerful prospect,
either. He listens quite solemnly to what the little bookie is telling him, never doubting for a moment that Bernie himself
or someone Bernie knows will hurt him very badly if he doesn’t come up with the twenty thousand dollars he bet on those fucking
Steelers, what are Steelers anyway, people who steal? The English language is sometimes mystifying to him, but he sure as
hell understands what Bernie is telling him now. Bernie is saying “Pay me by Sunday morning, my friend, or you may have cause
to be very sorry.”

Is what Bernie is saying.

Which is when he calls Svetlana to say that if she still wants him to do what she proposed earlier this month …

“Yes,” she says at once.

“Then I’m ready to do it,” he whispers into the phone.

“When?” she whispers.

Both of them whispering in Italian like the conspirators they are.

“Now,” he says. “Tonight.”

“No. I have some things to do first.”

“Then when?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Yes, all right,” he says. “Tomorrow night.”

All of this in Italian.

Domani sera?

Sì, va bene. Domani sera.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says.

“Good. Call me. But not in the morning. I’ll be out in the morning. I have some business to take care of.”

“Then when?”

“Early afternoon.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Ciao,”
she says.

“Ciao.”

Two old pals signing off. No mention at all of murder.

It is a little before eleven when he arrives at her apartment that Saturday night. She is wearing a flowered cotton house-dress
and scuffed French-heeled shoes. She tells him she went to the bank this morning to withdraw the money she promised him …

“I hate to take money for this,” he says.

“I would not expect …”

“I’m in serious debt,” he says. “Otherwise I wouldn’t accept this.”

“Take it,” she says, and hands him an envelope. “Count it,” she says.

“I don’t have to count it.”

“Count it. It’s twenty-five thousand dollars.”

He shakes his head, puts the envelope into the pocket of his coat. It is eleven o’clock sharp now.

“I had my hair done this morning,” she says.

“It’s very pretty,” he says, admiring the finger wave. “You look beautiful.”

“I would have put on a long black concert gown,” she tells him, “but I want it to look as if an intruder surprised me. So
there’ll be no suspicion cast on you. We’ll open the window. It will seem that someone came in.”

“Yes,” he says.

He is wondering what kind of man he is, to be willing to do this to a poor old deaf woman. What kind of man? But he keeps
remembering Bernie’s threat. And he rationalizes what he is about to do, telling himself that with the twenty-five thousand
he can pay off the twenty he owes Bernie and with the remaining five can perhaps pick a good horse or two in next week’s races,
parlay the money into God knows how much, a fortune perhaps. Beside, he tells himself he is not really taking a life. He is
only doing what Svetlana herself
wishes
him to do. He is helping her to die with dignity and honor. He is helping her to leave this world with her memories intact.
For this, God will forgive him. This is what he tells himself.

They open the bedroom window.

Cold air rushes into the apartment.

She goes to the bedroom closet and takes from it an old mink coat.

“I want it to look as if I just got back from the store,” she says. “So no one will suspect you.”

His hand is beginning to shake on the butt of the gun in the pocket of his coat. He is not sure he will be able to do this
now that the time is so close. He is not sure at all.

“Would you help me, please?” she asks.

He holds the coat for her as she shrugs into it. He can smell fish on his hands. There is always the stench of fish on his
hands.

He is beginning to shake all over now.

From the table just inside the front door, she takes her handbag, begins searching in it, and at last finds what she’s looking
for, a white envelope with someone’s name written on the front of it.

“Take this to the front desk at the Hotel Powell,” she says. “My granddaughter’s name is written on it. Ask the clerk to send
it up to her suite. Make sure you say suite. She has a suite there, you know.”

He nods, accepts the envelope.

“Promise me,” she says.

“I promise,” he says.

He slides the envelope into the left-hand pocket of his coat, the one containing the envelope with the twenty-five thousand
dollars in it. The blood money. His right hand is in the pocket where the gun is. He is sweating now. His hand in the pocket
is slippery on the handle of the gun.

It is now ten minutes past eleven.

The cat is in the hallway with them now. Looking up at them. First Svetlana’s face, then his. As if expecting to be fed.

“Her carrying case is in the kitchen,” Svetlana says. “On the table. She’s used to it, she’ll think you’re taking her to the
vet.”

He looks at her, nods. Looks down at the cat. The cat is rubbing herself against his leg. It gives him the chills. He is sweating
and shivering at one and the same time.

“Swear to me you’ll take good care of her.”

He says nothing for a moment.

“Swear,” she says.

“I swear.”

“Swear to me you’ll feed her fresh fish every day.”

“I promise.”

“Swear.”

“I swear.”

“On your mother’s eyes.”

“On my mother’s eyes, I swear.”

The apartment goes very still.

In the kitchen, he can hear a clock ticking.

He looks at his own watch.

It is almost twenty minutes past the hour.

From the same hall table, Svetlana picks up a brown paper bag with a bottle of whiskey in it.

“I drink,” she says in explanation.

“Son’ un’ umbriaga,”
she says.

I’m a drunk.

“Everyone knows that.”

As a matter of fact, he doesn’t know this.

As a matter of fact, he doesn’t know this woman at all.

But he is about to kill her.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says.

She is standing just inside the door. The bag with the whiskey is cradled in her right arm. He removes the gun from

his coat pocket. The cat keeps rubbing against his leg, purring. Sweat is beading his face, sweat is rolling down under the
collar of his shirt, sweat dampens his armpits and the matted blond hair on his chest. His hand is shaking violently now.

“Thank you for doing this,” she says.

He steadies the gun in both hands.

“Take good care of Irina,” she says, and closes her eyes.

The interrogation room went silent.

Q:
Did you shoot her at that time?

A:
Yes.

Q:
How many times did you shoot her?

A:
Twice.

Q:
Did the shots kill her?

A:
Yes.

Q:
What did you do then?

A:
I shot the cat.

Nellie looked at him.

“Why’d you do that?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to take care of her. I know I promised Svetlana. But cats are not to be trusted.”

Men, either, Nellie thought.

“So you took her money …”

“Yes, but only because I was afraid Bernie would do something bad to me.”

“Did you pay him the twenty you owed him? Or did you stiff
him
, too?”

“I don’t know what stiff means.”

“Tell him what it means to stiff somebody,” Nellie said to the interpreter.

“Ever leave a restaurant without tipping the waiter?” McNalley asked.

“I always tip waiters,” Lorenzo said. “What does that have to do with Bernie?”

“She’s asking did you go back on your word with
him
, too?” Moscowitz said. “Isn’t that right, Counselor?”

“It’s close enough,” Nellie said. “Ask him” she told McNalley, who immediately translated the question.

“I didn’t go back on my word with him or anyone else,” Lorenzo answered. “I didn’t
stiff
anybody, however you say it. I paid Bernie his money, and I did everything Svetlana paid me to do. Except for the cat.”

“Except for the cat, right,” Nellie said. “The cat, you shot in the head.”

“Well.”

“Well, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I don’t like cats.”

“Gee, I love them” Nellie said.

And
I’m
the D.A., she thought.

“What’d you do with the other five thousand?”

“I bet it on the horses.”

“Did you win?”

“I lost.”

“All around,” Nellie said.

All during lunch, Priscilla kept complaining about her cheap grandmother leaving her a mere five thousand clams. Georgie kept
thinking about the ninety-five thou hidden in one of the black patent-leather dancing slippers in a shoebox in his closet.

First thing he did when he got back to the apartment was check the stash. There it was, in a spanking-clean envelope with
a rubber band around it, as beautiful as when he’d put it there yesterday, bulging with money. He counted the money. He wanted
to throw it up in the air and let it come down on his head. Instead, he put it back in the envelope and put the rubber band
around it again, and put the envelope in one of the shoes, and then put the lid back on the box and put the box back on the
top shelf. He closed the closet door. The phone on the kitchen wall was ringing. He went out to it.

It was Tony.

“When do we split the cash?” he wanted to know.

“I’ll come by your place before we go to the club tonight,” Georgie said.

“What’s half of ninety-five?” Tony wanted to know.

“Forty-seven and change.”

“How
much
change?”

“Five bills.”

“Bring the change, too,” Tony said, and hung up.

“What we’ve got here,” Moscowitz said, “is a mercy killing, pure and simple.”