Maybe an hour later Katrina said, “Are you still up?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a life insurance policy? I’m just worried for the kids.”
“I got better than that. I got a life insurance philosophy.”
“What’s that?” Katrina asked.
“As long as I’m worth more alive than dead I won’t have to worry about banana peels and bad broth.”
Katrina sighed and Leonid climbed out of the bed.
Just as he got to the small TV room Twill came in the front door.
“It’s three in the morning, Twill,” Leonid said.
“Sorry, Dad. But I got into this thing with the Torcelli sisters and Bingham. It was their parents’ car so I had to wait until they were ready to go home. I told them that I was on probation but they didn’t care-”
“You don’t have to lie to me, boy. Come on, let’s sit.”
They sat across from each other over a low coffee table. Twill lit up a menthol cigarette and Leonid enjoyed the smoke secondhand.
Twill was thin and on the short side but he carried himself with understated self-importance. The bigger kids left him alone and the girls were always calling. His father, whoever he was, had some Negro in him. Leonid was grateful for that. Twill was the son he felt closest to.
“Somethin’ wrong, Dad?”
“Why you ask that?”
“ ‘Cause you’re not ridin’ me. Somethin’ happen?”
“An old friend died today.”
“A guy?”
“No. A woman named Gert Longman.”
“When’s the funeral?”
“I, I don’t know,” Leonid said, realizing that he never wondered who would bury his ex-lover. Her parents were dead. Her two brothers were in prison.
“I’ll go with you, Dad. Just tell me when it is and I’ll cut school.”
With that Twill got up and headed for his bedroom. At the door he stopped and turned.
“Hey, Dad.”
“What?”
“What happened to the guy slammed you in the jaw?”
“They had to carry him out.”
Twill gave the father of his heart a thumbs-up and then moved into the darkness of the doorway.
Leonid was at work at five. It was dark in Manhattan and in New Jersey across the river. He’d put twenty-five hundred dollars in Katrina’s wallet, dropped the film off at Krome Addict Four Hour Developing Service, and bought an egg sandwich with Bermuda onions and American cheese. He didn’t turn on the lights. As the morning wore on the dawn slowly invaded his room. The sky cleared and then opened-after a while it turned blue.
Carson Kitteridge came to the door a little before seven.
Leonid ushered him to the back office where they took their regular seats.
“Did you and Gertie have a fight, Leo?” the cop asked.
“No. Not really. I mean I might’a got a little fresh and she had to show me the door but I was sorry. I wanted to take her out to dinner. You’re not dumb enough to think that I would have killed Gert?”
“If somebody gave me information that you were involved with John Wilkes Booth I’d take the time to check it out, Leon. That’s just the kind of guy I think you are.”
“Listen, man. I have never killed anybody. Never pulled a trigger, never ordered a job done. I didn’t kill Gert.”
“You called her,” Kitteridge said. “You called her from that phone on your desk just about when she was getting killed. It speaks to your innocence but one wonders what you had to talk to her about at that hour, on that night? What were you apologizing for?”
“I told you-I got a little fresh.”
“And here I thought you had a wife.”
“Listen. She was my friend. I liked her-a lot. I don’t know who did that to her but if I find out you can be sure that I’ll let you know.”
Kitteridge made a silent clapping gesture.
“Get the fuck out of my office,” Leonid said.
“I have a few more questions.”
“Ask ‘em out in the hall.” Leonid stood up from his chair. “I’m through with you.”
The policeman waited a moment. Maybe he thought that Leonid would sit back down. But as the seconds ticked by on the wall clock it began to dawn on him that Leonid’s feelings were actually hurt.
“You’re serious?” he asked.
“As a heart attack. Now get your ass outta here and come back with a warrant if you expect to talk to me again.”
Kitteridge stood.
“I don’t know what you’re playing here, Leon,” he said. “But you can’t put out the law.”
“But I can put out an asshole who doesn’t have a warrant.”
The lieutenant delayed another moment and then began to move.
Leonid followed him down the hall and to the door, which he slammed behind the lawman. He kicked another hole in the wall and marched back to his office, where his gut began to ache from whiskey and bile.
“Yes, Ms. Brown,” Leonid was saying to his client on the telephone later that afternoon. “I have the photographs right here. It wasn’t an older woman like you suspected.”
“But it was a woman?”
“More like a girl.”
“Is there any question about their, um… their relationship?”
“No. There’s no doubt of the intimate nature of their relationship. What do you want me to do with these pictures and how will we settle accounts?”
“Can you bring them to me? To my apartment? I’ll have the money you put out and there’s one more thing that I’d like you to do.”
“Sure I’ll come by to you if that’s what you want. What’s the address?”
Karmen Brown lived on the sixth floor. He pressed the number she gave him, sixty-two, and found her waiting at the door.
The demure young thing had on a dark brown leather skirt that wouldn’t keep her modest if she sat without crossing her legs. Her blouse had the top three buttons undone. She wasn’t a large-breasted girl but what she had was mostly visible.
Her delicate features were serious but Leonid wouldn’t have called her brokenhearted.
“Come in, Mr. McGill.”
The apartment was small-like Gert’s.
There was a table in the middle with a brown manila folder on it.
Leonid held a similar folder in his right hand.
“Sit down,” Karmen said, gesturing toward a blue sofa.
In front of the couch was a small table holding up a decanter half-filled with an amber fluid and flanked by two squat glasses.
Leonid opened the folder and reached for the photographs he’d taken.
She held up a hand to stop him.
“Will you join me in a drink first?” the young siren asked.
“I think I will.”
She poured and they both slugged back hard.
She poured again.
After three stiff drinks and with a new one in her glass Karmen said, “I loved him more than anything, you know.”
“Really?” Leonid said, his eyes drifting between her cleavage and her crossed legs. “He seemed like kind of a loser to me.”
“I would die for him,” she said, gazing steadily into Leonid’s eyes.
He brought out the dozen or so pictures.
“For this louse? He doesn’t even respect you or her.” Leonid felt the whiskey behind his eyes and under his tongue. “Look at him with his hand under her dress like that.”
“Look at this,” she replied.
Leonid looked up to see her ample mound of pubic hair. Karmen had pulled up her skirt, revealing that she wore nothing underneath.
“This is my revenge,” she said. “You want it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Leonid answered, thinking that this was the other thing she wanted him to take care of.
He had been half-aroused since the last night he saw Gert. Not sexy but prey to a sexual hunger. The whiskey set that hunger free.
She got down on her knees on the blue sofa and Leonid dropped his pants. He didn’t remember the last time he’d been that eager for sex. He felt like a teenager. But push as he would he couldn’t press into her.