The Caveman's Valentine (27 page)

J
ack Cork came out of the Thirty-fourth Precinct house, hurried down the stairs, turned left, walked up to the corner of Broadway and West 185th.

He stood at that corner for about ten seconds, whistling through his teeth. He thought about how cold it was getting again, and how he hated springs that played these come-on games with you. Then he checked his watch, muttered, “To hell with it,” and started back for the station.

The Caveman stepped out of a doorway. Beckoned Cork with a crooked finger and retreated into the shadows.

Cork stood his ground. He called:

“Come out of there. Right now, asshole! Christ’s sake. I’m freezing to death.”

The Caveman did not comply. They glared at each other.

Said Cork, “All right, fuck you.”

He started back toward the station.

The Caveman emerged.

Cork shook his head and pursed his lips. “Not amusing. Cops and robbers, you think I find that
fun?
To the station,
now.”

Said the Caveman, “I won’t go to the station.”

“You think somebody’ll see us talking in there? You’d rather be out on the corner?”

“The station is linked to the tower.”

Cork growled. Cast his eyes around. His eyes lighted on Cecil’s Bar. Shamrocks in the windows. Shamrock time, rolling around again. Cork used to get a nice feeling when they brought out the shamrocks. Now he felt the headache and the cement stomach even before he started drinking.

He muttered, “Take that pot off your head, and come on.”

He led Romulus across the street.

Saying as he went, “Cops and robbers, cloak and dagger, hound and hare, I don’t need any of this shit. I am a hundred percent fed up to the gills with your shit, Caveman.”

He swung the door to Cecil’s, violently. He walked in and didn’t give a damn whether or not the Caveman followed. But he could smell him, right behind him.

The place was day-lonely, thank God. Cecil gave him a nod. “What’ll you have, Jack?”

“Alka-Seltzer.”

“I’m sorry, Jack, I’ve none.”

“Some kind of fizzy water then. You know? Anything fizzy.”

He walked to the end of the bar and past it. Made for the farthest, darkest booth.

Behind him, he heard Cecil asking the Caveman, “And for you now?”

Without looking around, Jack Cork warned, “If you don’t have any money, Caveman, don’t order. NYPD is not treating.”

Then he sat. Heard the Caveman ask for a cranberry juice.
Cranberry juice.

Cork noticed that the pinball machine across from the booth was called Cloak-and-Dagger.

The Caveman took the seat opposite him.

Said Cork. “OK, what have you got?”

“Proof.”

“Proof of
what?”

“Of Leppenraub’s guilt in the murder of Andrew Scott Gates. Any doubts I may have entertained have vanished. There’s a videotape—”

“Oh Jesus, will you
cut this crazy shit?
All I want to know is, what tree did Matthew Donofrio walk into?”

“He walked into Leppenraub.”

“That’s what he told you?”

The Caveman shrugged. “I can’t reveal what Matthew told me. He asked me not to. But it’s obvious, anyway. Clearly Leppenraub had Matthew beat up to intimidate him, so he wouldn’t talk about the tape.”

“Oh yeah? That’s obvious? You mean that’s where all the
clues
point?”

Cecil arrived with the drinks. Cork threw down a couple of bucks. The Caveman fished around in his coat pocket and brought up a heap of dimes and nickles and pennies and put them on the table and started to count them, by twos.

Said Cork, “For Christ’s sake.”

He slapped another bill on the table.

He said, “Leave us alone for a minute—OK, Cecil?”

“Sure, Jack.”

When Cecil was gone Cork galloped his fingers a moment against the tabletop. Then he nodded and said, “You know, now that you mention it, I guess all the clues do add up. I guess they all point to one man.”

Said the Caveman, eagerly, “Leppenraub had to silence Matthew, or—”

“They all point to
you.”

Now that shut him up good.

“See, Caveman, you’re the only one who’s got a motive for trashing all these deadbeats.”

Watch him tremble. “A motive?”

Cork leaned forward and hissed, “You’re
psycho.
And the only place for psychos like you is that place upstate. What is it? Matteawan?”

He let that one linger.

Black guys, they don’t turn pale. They just go
gray.
Pleasant to see this joker running through the gray scale. A real satisfaction to see the muscles in his neck twitching wildly.

Said the Caveman, “I was classified once, long ago, by a pair of fools, as
schizophrenic.
It is not the case. I lead a complex life. I live well. I am
not
—”

“Why are you so nervous, Caveman?”

“What would my motive—”

“Your motive is you don’t need a motive. You’re nuts. That’s the beauty of it.”

“But what proof—”

“Ha! Look at you—you’re a mess. You’re turning into jelly there. How long do you think it’ll take me to get a full confession? Half an hour?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“No sweat. Look at you. I could get you to confess to whacking McKinley.”

“But why would I—”

“Who cares? For some psycho reason you decided Scotty Gates was the fucking Antichrist. So you
did
him.”

“Talk sense.”

“I’d rather talk psycho. And the
clues,
Caveman, think of all the juicy clues. For example—
you
were the one who found the body—yes? And it’s goddamn very suspicious, how you took off on your little vacation just about the time your buddy Matthew walked into that tree. Oh, it’s suspicious as hell, all these homeless guys coming up to your neighborhood to get clobbered. Huh? Goddamn flood of clues, am I right? So what do you say, Cavey? You want me to write all this up so you can sign it?”

He took a sip of his fizzy water, then looked down at it distastefully.

Said the Caveman, “Are you arresting me, Detective?”

Cork gave him a dull stare. “Arresting you? Why would I do that?”

“You just said I killed Scotty Gates.”

“I didn’t say you killed Gates. I said that’s what your
fucking clues
say. Didn’t I tell you I pay no attention to clues?”

Suddenly the Caveman remembered his cranberry juice. He drank it all down thirstily. He drew a deep breath. Slowly the color came back into his face. He smiled back at Cork and said suavely, “Well, but how can you be sure I
didn’t
kill Scotty?”

“Oh fuck you. A minute ago you were wetting your pants, you were so scared. Now it’s Holmes and Watson again. How do I know? Cause I know.
Nobody
killed Scotty Gates. He froze to death.”

“So then who beat up Matthew?”

Cork shrugged.

“That’s a good question. Local punks? Yeah, but I doubt they’d drive him around. Gay bashers?”

Cork squinted thoughtfully into the middle distance. Waggled his fingers.

“Naw. It’s fishy. You know what? I think it
was
you.”

He rose. Threw a dollar on the table for tip.

Said the Caveman, “Wait a minute. I’ve got to talk to you about—”

“About the videotape? Let me guess. It’s a beaut, its better than
3-D Zombie Strumpets
—but you don’t quite have it in your possession.”

He grinned and said, “Did I take the words right out of your mouth there?”

Then he leaned in till his chewed-up Irish nose was an inch from Romulus’s nose.

“It was you, wasn’t it,
Psychoman?”

T
he vacant lot on Avenue C and Seventh was cold tonight. Also chilly. Romulus ambled up to the barrel fires, he smiled warmly, he greeted friends with big hellos, but what he got in reply were nods, grunts, and a petering out of conversation till he moved on.

He saw shadows in Chore’s tent, and he stuck his nose in. They had a grease fire going in a coffee can. Burning blubber, like Eskimos. Hot as the dickens in here—but still chilly. Penny lay in her sleeping bag, reading the poems of Adrienne Rich. She never raised her eyes. The others nodded, grunted.

Conversation went to zero.

Romulus wondered aloud, “Anybody got any spare space for me, for a night or two?”

Nobody did.

“Just a little place to stretch out?”

Somebody muttered, “Why don’t you dig a cave.”

Chore said, “I got a blanket if you want to borrow a blanket.”

Romulus thanked him but shook his head.

Presently he moved on.

He sat on a stoop across from the lot, and watched the spikes go by. Coming out of a spike bar on the corner, headed to their spikes’ nests south of Houston Street.

Chore came and sat beside him. And said quietly, “Where you been, man? I thought you was dead.”

“Why’d you think that?”

“You ain’t come around in a while.”

“I like it up in my cave. Anyway, I was here just a few weeks ago.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“So why’d you think I was dead?”

“If you like it up in your cave, why don’t you stay there?”

“Crime wave up there.”

They watched the spikes go by.

Said Romulus, “You getting around to laying something on me, Chore?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What is it?”

“Just . . . I think you’d be happier finding some other place to hang. That’s all.”

“You afraid I’m bringing trouble?”

“I don’t know nobody
likes
trouble.”

“That’s true.” Romulus shrugged. He said, “OK.”

He stood.

“But if I go, will you tell me one thing? Man to man? Nobody’s ears but these?”

“Sure,” said Chore. “Fact, I’ll tell you
two
things, Caveman. ’Cause that’s how many there were, two of them, two bizarre fucking bozos, wearing masks. Looking for you. They did a number on my head. I don’t want to
ever
see them again.”

“Did you tell them? Where to find me?”

“They didn’t ask
me.
They asked Matthew.”

“Would you have told them?”

“Never in a million years. Of course I’d have fucking told them. Much as I know. Your cave’s in Inwood Park somewhere, isn’t it?”

“You think Penny would have told them?”

“Never in a million years.”

“Manuel?”

“Never in a million years.”

“Anyone would have told them, right?”

“Right.”

“I mean,” said Romulus, “it’s not like I’m the hardest man in the city to find. It’s not like I’ve got rottweilers and bodyguards, and I sleep in a different bunker every night, is it?”

“Uh-uh.”

“If they wanted to find out where I was, they just had to ask. They didn’t have to do what they did to Matthew. My Lord.
Fuck
this son of a bitch.”

H
e could not go back to the cave. He knew if he did, Stuyvesant’s No-faces would find him and kill him. So he went that night to stay in the men’s shelter on Ward’s Island.

They took his name and he waited in line about an hour and they issued him a towel. Then he waited in another line for another hour and he took a shower.

Later there were NYU students who came around and asked people if they’d model for sketches. A kid asked Romulus if he’d model and he said OK and he sat on a bench for ten minutes till his patience ran out. He went and wrote on the kid’s sketch, on the brow of his own image:

RL

One Who Fathoms the True Nature of Z-rays

Then it was lights out, and he put his shoes under the legs of his cot so nobody would steal them. He put the silk underwear, which he had not worn since Moira had returned it, under his pillow.

He stayed awake and listened to all the moans, maunderings, and typhoon outbursts in the sea of beds around him.

He knew that in truth he did not fathom jack shit about the nature of Z-rays.

All he knew about Z-rays was that he hadn’t felt their presence in a long time. And that he missed them.

He was strung out on Z-rays. In their absence, he was quickly breaking down. He was losing the threads. There were so many threads, and they were hopelessly tangled up and knotted, and he was tired, and there was
no evidence of murder,
just phantoms. All the phantom witnesses who wouldn’t come forward, the phantom videotape that couldn’t be exposed to the light of day. There was no daylight anywhere.

No more shimmering green lawns for you, asshole. No more sweeping vistas and sudden breakthroughs.

Just this chamber of horrors. The smell of flesh roasting in the shelter furnace. But then, this is more like it, isn’t it? This is more your style.

You’ve been seduced, misled, fucked with, and discarded, and your home’s been thieved away. Hope you had a good time. Now run along and get back to your miserable life.

Oh, and before you go, here’s a little nightmare to remember your glory days by:

He dreamed all night of the suffering of Scotty Gates.

I
n the morning he walked down to the little playground where he used to take Lulu, where she’d dug in the sandbox for pirate treasure. He sat on a bench and slept some more, dreamed some more torture. When he woke he could see Stuyvesant’s tower, just across the river, glittering in the light. A yellow bolt of Y-rays shot out. Old-fashioned Y-rays, aimed somewhere on Long Island. Romulus was sitting here in plain sight but Stuyvesant wasn’t concerned with him.

Romulus Nobody, former Caveman, failed composer, failed prophet, failed detective, burned-out old Z-ray junkie, why waste any energy on him?

Stuyvesant had bigger fish to fry.

Then Romulus crossed the pedestrian bridge over the East River, back into Manhattan. He walked to Central Park, found a bench and again tried to sleep. A cop on horseback came by and told him to move on. The cop had silver spurs and the spurs were tipped with blood.

Homeless. Nowhere to go. Everybody always said he was homeless, well they were right, weren’t they?