Past Due (11 page)

I
HAD A
date the very night of my deposition of Derek Manley with Dr. Mayonnaise of the serious mien and the pretty blue eyes. She was everything I was supposed to want in a companion, the moral and financial rock upon which I could securely anchor my flailing existence. And she was a doctor, a doctor to bring home to my Jewish mother, if I had one to whom I still talked and who gave a damn about more than her next drink. So I decided that I would work at this one, that I’d see if I could build, with the good doctor, something akin to a healthy relationship. It was not something I was good at, building healthy relationships, but I was determined to give it the old community college try.

We met at my favorite restaurant in Chinatown, with its barbecued mallards hanging in a row at the entrance, and everything should have been right with the world. Yet, as I pawed with my chopsticks at the tofu stir-fry, tofu because Karen, which I discovered to my utter delight, was a vegetarian and we were sharing, I found myself scheming of ways to get the hell out of there.

Maybe I was simply a coward. Yes, I was afraid of committing myself to a healthy relationship, whatever that was, and yes, I was intimidated by anyone with a richer past and a brighter future than my own, which included most of the known world and certainly included a doctor, and yes, I was paralyzingly afraid of earnestness and
sincerity. I was a coward, that was undeniable, but maybe what really got to me was the sight of the heaping platters of duck and beef and chicken and shrimp passing by our table as I pawed at the tofu. This is what I have learned of life from eating in Chinese restaurants: The meal that would make me most perfectly happy is always being served at the table next to mine.

“After dinner,” said Karen slowly, seriously, as if making a statement of great portent, “let’s say we go back to my place.”

I punched my chest as a soft piece of soy curd caught in my throat. “Excuse me?”

“I want you to meet my little family.”

Her family? Back at the apartment? Waiting to meet me? “Don’t you think it’s a bit premature?”

“I don’t hide anything from them. They saw me getting ready to go out, they’ve been wondering where I’ve been.”

“You live with them?”

“Of course.”

“They came from Ohio to live with you?”

“Why wouldn’t they. I’m sure they’ll like you, and, if they approve, we can all cuddle together.”

I stared at her and the furrow between my eyebrows must have canyoned out because she said, her voice ever serious, “Victor, I’m talking about my cats.”

She had four of them, and they swirled around her like she was a great piece of catnip and she spoke to them like they were cute little babies. I forced a wide smile onto my face as she told me their names, their idiosyncrasies, the adorable things they did. I sneezed when one of the little critters hopped on my lap and when Karen offered to show me her photos I sneezed again. Later, as I tried to wile my way out of there, she held one close to her face and snuggled while making big baby eyes at me and I wondered if maybe the Chinese didn’t have it right after all.

I was walking home from Karen’s apartment in the art museum area, heading south along a deserted commercial stretch on Twenty-third, beneath the Kennedy Boulevard overpass, when I spotted the
car, long and black, following me slowly; about fifty yards behind but matching my pace. I sped up my step: the car sped up too. I began to sprint, looking behind as the car gained on me, and turned my head just as I ran smack into a broad expanse of bright green broadcloth.

I bounced off an elbow to the ribs and fell back, threw out my arms to protect myself, jammed my wrist hard as I hit the pavement. I looked up at a big piece of beef in the green sport coat, his jaw huge, his nose pinched, his short black hair sticking up from his head as if repelled by the dim but violent thoughts careening around his cranium. I knew this guy and he knew me.

“How are you doing there, Leo?” I said.

Leo leaned down and flicked my forehead.

I let out an “Ow.”

“You going somewhere, Victor?” he said.

“Home?”

“You asking or telling.”

“Telling?”

“Then say it like you mean it.”

“I’m going home.”

“Good. We’ll give you a ride.”

“That’s not really necessary, Leo,” I said. “I can walk, but thanks, awfully, for the offer. It’s been a real treat seeing you again. And congratulations on your win at Augusta. The jacket looks marvelous.”

A long black Lincoln slid beside me, the back door opened. A voice came out of the back of the car, a soft voice with the slightest lisp. “Shut your mouth, Victor, and get in.”

I couldn’t see a face in the gloomy interior of the car, but I didn’t need to. “You didn’t waste any time,” I said.

Leo, in the Masters’ jacket, grabbed my shoulder, hoisted me off the sidewalk, shoveled me into the car, where I ended face-to-face with Earl Dante.

A few years back I had found myself in the middle of a war for alleged control of the alleged mob. It was all very medieval and unpleasant but I survived, which, believe me, was no sure thing. The winner of the alleged war was a pawnbroker with a shop on Two Street, the Seventh Circle Pawn, the very shop where twenty years
before Joey Cheaps had pawned a stolen watch. The broker was a black-suited figure of the macabre, with a sharp dark face and small white teeth. It was the kind of face you expect to see when the door opens after that final elevator ride takes you down down down and the smell of sulfur fills your soul. The door opens and the man with that face and those teeth smiles darkly and says,
“How grand that you’ve come. We’ve been expecting you for ages. Right this way, please. And don’t forget your baggage.”

Earl Dante.

“I thought I cleaned you off the bottom of my boot, Victor, but here we are again,” said Earl Dante as we cruised slowly south in his big black car. Leo was in the front passenger seat. A short pencil-necked man with a long, sharp nose was driving. “I am not happy with your lawsuit against Derek Manley. I am not happy with what happened today in your office. I am not happy to see Derek Manley in a state that can only be described as apoplectic. I am not happy.”

“They have pills for that now.”

“Shut up. This is not a dialogue. Derek Manley and I are partners of a sort. He owes me money that he cannot possibly repay. As a result he performs favors for me. How valuable it is for a man who sends his trucks to department stores all over the northeast to owe me favors is impossible to overstate.”

“I am collecting a valid debt.”

“I don’t care about your valid debt. But tell me this. Who is behind the debt? Who is behind the questions?”

“It’s confidential.”

“Give me the name.”

“I can’t. Professional ethics.”

“Ever the comedian, aren’t you? Jacopo. You know what Jacopo means in Italian? It means fool. Or it means dead man. It all depends on the intonation. This thing that happened twenty years ago, this thing you brought up today, I want to hear no more about it. Nothing, do you understand? It is not your business.”

“Joey Parma was a client.”

“Yes. Poor Joey. It was a shame what happened, a crime.”

“Twenty years ago he pawned a watch at your shop.”

“I remember.”

“I had no doubt but you did. Twenty years ago he pawned a watch and twenty years later, because of how he got that watch, he was killed. I’m going to find out why. He was a client. I have an obligation.”

“You make me weep with your obligations.”

“Do you know his mother?”

“Her veal Milanese is extraordinary.”

“I represent her. I’m going to sue the hell out of whoever it was who killed him.”

“A jealous husband, I heard.”

“Is that what you heard?”

“Or maybe I heard something else. But you have a different theory, is that it? You think it was Derek Manley behind it?”

“I’m just asking questions.”

“Let me say this about your questions, Victor. Derek Manley doesn’t piss unless I tell him to unzip, understand? Derek Manley asks my permission each time he gives his girlfriend the pump, understand? May I ejaculate on her tits, Mr. Dante? No, Derek, not today. Then I won’t, Mr. Dante, thank you for your guidance, Mr. Dante. That’s the way it is between Derek Manley and myself. Derek Manley didn’t take out Joey Parma because he didn’t ask me first. Mr. Raffaello kept the peace by controlling the violence. It is a lesson I have taken to heart.”

“How is the old man these days.”

“He’s painting. Seascapes and flowers. Awful things.”

“And how’s it going for you, Earl, how does power taste?”

“Pretty damn good. Like a perfectly grilled sirloin, charred on the outside, raw and bloody on the inside.”

“You should try tofu. It’s good for the heart.”

“Do you understand what we discussed here? Are we finished with this nonsense?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Oh yes, it is, Victor. Yes, it is. What happened to Joey Parma is a matter for the police only. What happened twenty years ago is of no concern of yours. Derek Manley’s trucking company is to be left alone. What could be simpler?”

“There is a debt. I need to collect something.”

“What do you want?”

“He owns cars. Can I take his cars, at least?”

Dante sucked his teeth for a moment and then shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you know how a zero coupon bond works, Victor? The interest on a debt isn’t paid out yearly, it accumulates, accumulates, grows ever larger until the note becomes due.”

“This financial message brought to you by…”

“Joseph never reclaimed that watch. I still have it. I consider the pawn price an investment. What happened twenty years ago is a tragedy for some, but for me it is a zero coupon bond. Don’t get in the way of my payout, Victor. Gerald, stop here. Victor will walk the rest of the way home.”

The car stopped, Leo jumped out, my door opened, Leo’s hand alighted on my lapel. I don’t know if I stepped out or he pulled me out, but I was out.

“Before you go, Victor,” said Dante, from inside the car, “tell me one thing. Here we were, sitting in a long black car, dividing up another man’s life—you take the cars, I take the business—carving him up like a roasted goose. So this is what I want to know. How did it taste?”

Back in my apartment, I stripped off my clothes and turned the shower on as hot as I could bear it and I let out a yelp as the water flayed my skin and brought the blood to the surface. I rubbed my sore ribs, my sore wrist. I tried to think it through.

As soon as Derek Manley mentioned Dante’s name at the deposition I knew Dante would be around for a chat. And funny thing, I believed him about Manley having to ask permission before he unzipped his fly. So Manley hadn’t been behind Joey Cheap’s death. Then who was? And what was that financial lecture on zero coupon bonds all about?

I stayed in the shower until the water cooled and then I stepped out and roughly toweled myself down.

Clean now, and ruddy from the heat, I walked over to my desk, dropped into the chair, opened a drawer, took out the envelope. They were inside still, the photographs of the naked woman found in a dead man’s pocket. I went through them one by one by one, the images so haunting even though they now were so familiar. The taut skin, the long legs, the beauty mark on the breast that seemed to glow in my imagination. Stare at something long enough and it becomes the model for perfection. Dr. Mayonnaise, despite all her evident qualities, was not the woman in the photographs. Dr. Mayonnaise had a face, she breathed and moved, she had the kind of daily concerns the woman in the photograph seemed to never know, and maybe that was the core of my disappointment in Karen, not the tofu or her sincerity or the cats, but her very concreteness. Right now, I was certain, I’d be disappointed in anyone other than her. The her of the photographs. Her.

Looking through the stack I had a strange idea. I rose and went to the area beside my bed and quickly pinned one of the photographs to the wall. A thigh, gently curving as it rose toward the rear. Then I pinned up another, a calf. Then a foot. Then a hip. Then a breast. One by one I pinned the photographs to the wall, in a rough order. There was no real shape to it, the photographs in no way matched up, each was as individual as a flower, but I did my best, reaching for a photograph, examining it carefully, twisting to pin it in its proper place, as absorbed in the task as a painter before a giant canvas. Picture by picture I created a sort of cubist montage of perfect body parts. And as I worked, something miraculous happened, the disparate parts came together in my mind, this ankle, that shoulder, that finger. As I put the parts of her body together, in my mind, I saw the body move and stretch and turn and bend.

When I was finished, when all the photographs were arranged on my wall, I sat on my bed and stared, and as I did, fear dropped like a black crow onto the base of my spine, sending out spurts of adrenaline that set me to shaking. There was something coming down on me, something handed to me by Joey Cheaps and kept alive for me by some strange unknown entity, something bigger than I ever could have suspected that first day in La Vigna when Joey Parma disclosed to me the darkest spot in his muddied past. It had
cost Joey his life and sent Kimberly Blue my way and caused Earl Dante to threaten me in his smooth hissy lisp. It was huge and I was in the middle of it, for good or for ill, and I had to find my way into its heart before it swallowed me whole. And it seemed, somehow, that these pictures would lead me there.

These pictures, yes, and something else, a question, the question that Earl Dante had asked, trying and failing to hide the keenness of his interest.
Who is behind the debt?
he asked.
Who is behind the questions?
He wanted to know, and so did I. It was time to find out. It was time to meet Eddie Dean.

But before I did, I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with, I needed to peer into a dead man’s past.