No. The double doors to the terrace were standing open, letting in more heat than the air-conditioning could handle. Walking across the large room to close the doors again, he tried to remember the last time he’d gone out there. Not this morning, certainly; he’d left the apartment first thing this morning, in order to catch that eight a.m. plane. Hadn’t the doors been closed then? But maybe they hadn’t been latched properly, and a breeze had opened them.
What breeze?
Calesian paused midway across the room, and looked around. A professional decorator from Aldenberg’s Department Store had done the apartment for him, the living room in blues and grays with chrome accents, low but heavy pieces, modern yet masculine. Nothing looked different, nothing out of place. That feeling of tension in the air was surely no more than the unexpected heat from outside; he was used to this room maintaining a cool dry atmosphere.
There might have been a morning breeze that opened the doors. There was no reason for anything to be wrong, so it followed that there was nothing wrong. Nevertheless, Calesian gripped the attache case more firmly as he moved the rest of the way across the room and started to close one of the terrace doors.
Al Lozini was outside there, leaning on the rail facing the doorway, eyes squinting slightly in the sunlight. “Hello, Harold,” he said.
Startled, Calesian didn’t say or do anything for just a second. Lozini’s behavior was as strange as the fact of his presence here; he wasn’t being tough or hurried or showing any of his normal feistiness. Instead he was just sitting there, one leg swinging slightly while the other supported him on the wrought-iron railing. His manner was calm, emotionless. The harsh sunlight showed his age clearly in his face, but picked out no emotion there.
Lozini said, “Come on out in the sun. Good for you.”
Calesian stepped through the doorway, cautious and uncertain. He still held the attache case. He said, “You surprised me, Al.”
“I was a burglar when I was a boy,” Lozini said. “That lock of yours is butter. I could back up a truck and strip every television set out of this building in forty-five minutes.”
Calesian had a receding forehead, his black hair thinning badly on top, so that he felt the sun at once. He frowned as much because of that as because of the strangeness of Lozini. “I guess some things we never forget,” he said. “Like getting through locks.”
“Some things you do forget,” Lozini told him. “Like not trusting anybody.”
“I don’t follow,” Calesian said, while thinking. He’s on to us.
“Sit down, Harold,” Lozini said, and nodded at the chaise longue to Calesian’s left.
Calesian hesitated. It entered his mind that with one fast step forward, one shove with both hands, he could topple Lozini over the railing. Nine stories straight down to cement sidewalk.
But there’d be no way to answer the questions that would follow such a death, to protect himself against the investigation. And there would definitely be an investigation; not even Calesian swung enough weight in the Police Department to stifle an inquiry into a death like that. Particularly not with the body right in front of his own building.
And even while he was thinking those things, it seemed to him he saw the thoughts echoed in Lozini’s eyes; as though Lozini had known it would occur to him he might push, and had further known he would realize it was too dangerous to push.
“Go ahead, Harold. Sit down.”
Calesian sat sideways on the chaise longue, keeping both feet on the floor. He put the attache case on his lap, rested his forearms on the case. He tried to be as casual and unemotional as Lozini. “I guess you want to talk to me about something,” he said.
Lozini was silent. He considered Calesian as though trying to decide whether or not to buy him. Calesian waited, keeping a blanket over his tension, and finally Lozini nodded slowly and turned his head to look out toward downtown. “None of those buildings were there when I first moved here,” he said. “The tall ones.”
“There’ve been a lot of changes,” Calesian agreed.
Lozini nodded some more, still looking out away from the terrace. Then he turned his head to gaze at Calesian again. “This building right here wasn’t here,” he said.
“Three years old,” Calesian said. He knew because he was one of the original tenants.
“Sitting here,” Lozini said, “waiting for you, I spent a lot of time thinking about the past. The way things used to be. The way I used to be.”
“Well, everything changes, I guess.” Calesian was listening hard, trying to think ahead of the conversation, waiting for Lozini to touch ground, get to the point.
“I’m about finished,” Lozini said. “Hard to think about it that way, you know? I look in the mirror, I see an old man, I get surprised. Somebody tells me I forgot a thing I always knew, I can’t figure out how it happened. Be like forgetting to put your pants on.”
“You’re still all right, Al,” Calesian said. But he was thinking hard, trying to work it out, and he was wondering if Lozini was maybe saying that he was quitting. Was that it? He’d come here to turn in his resignation, to ask to be allowed to retire with no trouble. Believing that, beginning to feel less tense, Calesian said, “You’re still fine, Al, you’ve got years in you.”
“I’m past the bullshit, Harold,” Lozini said. “I’m almost ready to quit, walk away from it.” His lips curling, he added, “Go play shuffleboard.”
Calesian watched him, intent on every word. “Almost?” he said.
“That’s right, Harold.” Lozini reached inside his jacket so slowly, moving so unemotionally, that Calesian couldn’t believe he was actually reaching for a gun until the thing was out and aimed at Calesian’s eyes.
Calesian’s hands splayed out atop the attache case. He made no head or shoulder movements. He said, “Take it easy, Al.”
“I’ll go out,” Lozini said, still calm, still casual, “but I’ll go out my own way. I won’t get shoved. I won’t get conned and robbed like an old man.”
“Al, I don’t know what—”
“It’s either Ernie or Dutch,” Lozini said. “Can’t be anybody else.”
Calesian blinked, stunned at the names. But with the gun pointing at him, there was nothing to do but go on playing innocent. “Al, you’re miles ahead of me,” he said. “I just don’t—”
“That’s right, you son of a bitch,” Lozini said, with even the insult said in a calm and measured way, “I am miles ahead of you, though you don’t know it. And all I want from you is the name. It’s either Ernie Dulare or Dutch Buenadella, and you’re going to tell me which one it is.”
“Al, if I had the first idea what—”
“I’ll shoot your fucking kneecap off,” Lozini said, his voice finally beginning to harden, to match the words he was saying. “And you can gimp your way to the discotheque with your teenage twats from now on.”
“Al—”
“Don’t deny it again,” Lozini said. “You know me well enough, Harold. I can shoot pieces off you till sundown and you won’t even get to pass out. One more lie and I start chopping.”
Calesian’s mouth was dry. His scalp was burning in the sunlight, all of his muscles were tense and jumping, and he felt he needed time to go away and relax and work out what was best to do here. But there wasn’t any time, he had to do something now.
And he knew Lozini, he knew that cold look in the bastard’s eyes, he knew that Lozini actually would start shooting very soon now. Not to kill, just to hurt and maim. He’d seen the remnants two or three times over the years of men who’d been treated that way; the shot-off parts had come to the morgue in a separate plastic bag. There’d been jokes about it, the spare parts in the plastic bag, but Calesian couldn’t remember any of the jokes now. All he could remember was the plastic bag, with the bloody bites of flesh inside it.