The Fugitives (25 page)

“Yeah, that may be true. So I’m supposed to add fire to the fire? Give me a break. I want to put it out, the fire. And I’m telling you how.”

Kat waited.

“Look,” said Argenziano. “This is a story you want, am I right? You came here from Chicago because you wanted a big story. Because even a chickenhead like me can go onto the World Wide Web and see that you cover, what, high school chess tournaments? A committee meeting once in a while? You want a big story? You can have a big story. It’s a story about a trusted individual who got greedy and became a thief, a big thief. And I will consent to be interviewed about it, as a consultant to the hotel, and I will instruct the necessary people to give you access to the proper personnel to round out and complete that story, which is that somebody committed a crime, a crime that did not negatively impact our guests, or our fiduciary relationship with the Northwest Michigan Band of Chippewa Indians, or our legal obligation to the taxing authorities, or the Gaming Control Board, or anybody at all but us. We are the victims, the foolish and trusting victims, of that crime. That’s your story. It’s not as big as if it involved those other aspects you mentioned, but it beats covering the Winnetka Junior League. Now please tell me that you understand what I’m saying when I’m saying I’m setting the limits on your story. It would make it so much easier, and more pleasant, because I honestly and truly do enjoy your company.”

“What about things that fall outside of those limits?”

Argenziano chuckled, and leaned forward to grasp her knee and shake it a little. His robe fell open slightly and Kat caught a glimpse of an ugly, vertical scar running the length of his breastbone.

“Nothing’s going to fall outside the limits.” He leaned back. “Don’t be a kid, OK? Let’s get going on this. I’m offering you cooperation, access to all the information you need to make this into a story, rather than the figment of some ex-nobody’s imagination. Look. This could be a wonderful opportunity for you. Or it could be nothing. Something not so wonderful. Do you get what I’m saying?”

They looked up as a man entered the suite and paused at the top of the two steps descending to the sunken living room. Argenziano nodded and the man went through a doorway adjacent to the entry, emerging a few moments later carrying a wooden valet and a folded shirt with a paper band from the laundry around it, a dark blue suit draped over his arm.

“I need to hear what you know about Jackie Saltino,” said Argenziano.

“I pretty much know what you know.”

“I can’t say I’d feel any better even if that were true, Kat. But you know it isn’t.” Argenziano pouted. “You must know something. You’re back here in town.”

“Maybe I’m here to see my source.”

“Maybe you are. And who is she?” He snapped his fingers. “Give me a name.”

Kat smiled. “Maybe I’ve been here the whole time.”

“Maybe this and maybe that.” He raised his chin to address the man. “Don’t wrinkle the suit, Ignatz.” He chopped at the air with his hand. The man nodded and set up next to the sofa, hanging the suit on the valet and placing the shirt on one of the sofa cushions. He left and returned a moment later with socks and a pair of shoes. He stood beside the valet, holding the shoes and socks in his hand. Argenziano stood up. “Excuse me, Kat.”

She watched as he shed the robe. Beneath it he was wearing only a pair of powder blue bikini briefs. The scar was red, about ten inches long, and the ridge it formed was as if the two sides of his chest had been joined by pinching them together like clay or dough.

“I’m not an exhibitionist,” he said, “since I’m wearing underpants. Even partial nudity, unreciprocated, is an interesting thing, though, Kat, don’t you think? I used to take life drawing classes, believe it or not. I remember the models, naked in a crowded room, under everyone’s scrutiny. Am I trying to seduce you? Do I appear vulnerable? Am I at ease? Or does it seem simply as if a busy man like myself is not going to neglect his schedule for the sake of an unsatisfying conversation?”

unnerpance

noodiddy

innaresting

skrootny

suhdooce

skedual

“I don’t know,” said Kat, honestly enough.

Argenziano strode across the room, absently running the fingertips of his right hand down the length of the scar. He broke the band of paper around the shirt, shook out the garment, and put his arms through the sleeves. He began to button it. “It’s a mystery, in other words. So many interpretations. You’ll go away saying, ‘What was he thinking?’ You’ll be having lunch with a friend and you’ll tell the story about how all of a sudden the guy you’re talking to just up and takes his clothes off and you have no idea why. Am I right?” He put the pants on and fastened the waist. He snapped his fingers. “Belt.” The man disappeared into the other room. Argenziano sat on the couch, pulled on the socks, and slipped his feet into the shoes. Almost to himself, he murmured, “Of course I’m right.”

He stood and took the belt from the man and ran it through the loops around his waist, then cinched it. The man took the jacket from the valet and moved behind Argenziano, helping him into it.

“No matter how many times you tell the story, no matter who you tell it to, you’ll always be asking a question as much as you’re telling a story. Why’d he do it? What was he thinking? Totally ambiguous. Now tell me: is there anything ambiguous about what I told you just before this gentleman joined us? Anything at all that you can say, ‘I really didn’t get his meaning,’ where you can say, ‘What was he trying to get at?’ I don’t think so. Brush me off.” He snapped his fingers. The man removed a clothes brush from a shelf on the valet and began to brush Argenziano’s suit, working down from the shoulders as Argenziano stood still, his legs slightly spread and his arms held out from his sides as if he were being frisked. When the man had finished, he adjusted the cuffs of the pants so that they broke nicely over Argenziano’s shoes.

“There’s nothing ambiguous about it,” she agreed.

“Good. I like to be understood.”

“But I still don’t know any more about him than you.”

Argenziano shook his head and chuckled. “Maybe it’ll come to you. Are you here for a few days?”

“Maybe.”

“Again with the maybes. I can easily have these things checked out, you know.”

“Creepy.”

“Not creepy. Creepy is something else. This is base-level due diligence. Your profession, you ought to know all about it. You pop up out of the blue with a story that could threaten my livelihood, my employers, my client. It’s not creepy.
Thorough
is the word I would choose. Don’t even think about taking it personally. But I would take it seriously. Thorough people should always be taken seriously. One way or the other I’m going to find out from you what it is I want to know.”

Kat watched the man return the valet to the room off the entryway.

“Take a couple of days to think about it. From all angles. I think you’ll see that what I’m suggesting is for the best.”

“What happens if you find Saltino?”

Argenziano smiled. “We’re going to give him a good talking-to.”

The man opened the door and held it. Argenziano stepped into the pastel corridor outside. Behind him, an Indian in a white jacket and dark pants moved carefully along the corridor carrying a tray containing covered dishes. He glanced into the room and caught Kat’s eye, then averted his gaze.

Argenziano said, “Come on, Kat. I’ve got somewhere to go.”

She got up and walked out of the room and down the corridor without looking back. The Indian smiled up at her as he knelt to place the tray on the floor beside a door with a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign hanging from the knob. She passed without acknowledging him.

Indians all over the damned place. As she crossed the lot to her car the biggest Indian she’d ever seen shambled out of a beat-up pickup, slugging a Pepsi. It looked pretty good.

20

T
HE
dutiful grotesque of Checking In With Justin awaited her back at the Holiday Inn. If it were only just the pointless habit of asking how was your day, but it was also, it was always, the nerve-wracking experience of actually having to listen to the answer. She was surprised, and relieved, when his voice mail picked up. She left a quick message and then, with a pang of what she identified, with irritation, as guilt, switched her phone off. Well, she tried. She could deal with him later. In the drawer of the nightstand she found a binder holding menus and brochures from local restaurants and attractions, encased within clear plastic sheet protectors. A microbrewery was nearby that didn’t sound too bad. She grabbed Mulligan’s books, still in their plastic bag from the day before, and took off.

SHE WAS SITTING
at the bar with
A More Removed Ground,
eating fried lake perch and finishing her third glass of wine, when she noticed that the man on the stool beside hers had turned to face her and was studying her.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Ambit,” he said. “Good little bookstore. I almost feel bad for them.” He indicated the plastic bag, next to her on the bar, on which the store’s name was printed.

“Why would you feel bad for them?” she asked.

“Andy,” he responded, sticking out a hand.

“Why would you feel bad for them, Andy?”

“Because I’m here to put them out of business,” he said. He smiled. He had curly black hair and he wore a tattersall shirt, untucked and with the sleeves rolled up, over a pair of jeans that were a beautiful and expensive-looking shade of blue.

“How are you going to do that?”

He took his wallet from his back pocket and extracted a card from it that identified him as Andrew Meisler, Regional Director of Development for Shields & Fine, Booksellers. He put it on the bar between them.

“And so?” she asked.

“We’re leasing forty thousand square feet. I came out to finalize it yesterday. Neither rain nor snow.”

“At the mall?”

“Forget the mall. Let me get you another.” He ignored her protest as he signaled the bartender.

“Why forget the mall?”

“Nobody goes to a bookstore in a mall. They go to the movies. They sit in a vibrating chair. They, I don’t know, they eat nachos. We’re closing mall locations left and right. People come in to use the rest rooms. They pee on the toilet seats and then leave, empty-handed. They’re not serious about what we sell. They don’t even know what we sell. People have a different head in the mall. They go there to forget, not remember. New research shows that people prefer to buy things at malls that they consume there, on the spot. Failing that, they like things they can bring home in a pocket, that they can throw in a drawer and forget about, or, better yet, give away. What a shock, huh? Everybody has visions of these shopping sprees, unselfconsciously materialistic people laden with bags, trampling over each other to get to the cheap microwaves, but secretly they want to forget they were there, forget they threw away their money. You know what a flashbulb memory is?” He took her untouched glass of wine by the stem and slid it toward her. “A flashbulb memory is a memory that’s seared onto the mind in exquisite detail. Place, time, weather, smells, sounds, what the newscaster said, his bodily attitude. Where were you when you heard about the World Trade Center, I was eating a bowl of Cracklin’ Oat Bran when suddenly the phone rang, that kind of thing. New research shows that people have flashbulb memories about large purchases just as vivid as they do about historic events. You buy a bed, you buy a washing machine, you remember buying it the way old people remember the Kennedy assassination. Well, guess what? Sellers of durable goods are running from malls like the plague. You know why? For middle America, the mall is supposed to be a palace of sin. People go there to have fun wasting their money. They don’t go there to exchange their money for stuff they
need,
stuff that displaces other stuff that they’d rather have, stuff that reminds them of how much money they used to have before they bought it. Now, you could argue that a book isn’t exactly like a washing machine.”