“What about Charlie?”
“He said Charlie let his mother rule his life like a dictator because it was easier than stepping out and making decisions on his own. He told Ralph he threw his money away on women so that he wouldn’t have to see if he could really make it on his own. And that Hugo quit school not to take care of his family but because no matter how hard it was hauling those sacks of cement, it was easier than matching his brain up against the suburban kids who thought a college education was a birthright.”
“What about you, Joey?”
“Said that me going crazy and getting myself hauled up to Haverford State was a ready-made excuse for not even trying. Called me crazy as a coward.”
“What did you guys do?” I said.
“We went after him, we all did. I even tried to slug him, but not because the son of a bitch was insulting my integrity. I wanted to slug him because he was right. We were, the four of us, drowning in our excuses, even as we drowned our sorrows in our beer. When it all calmed down, he said he had learned something out there in California. He had learned that we had to do anything necessary to take hold of our dreams, and sometimes that meant taking hold of our lives and becoming something new.”
“Something new?”
“That’s what he said, and then he started talking crazy talk. About ropes and apes and supermen. He said we were hovering over some great hole – an abyss, he called it – and we could either go back to the failures we was or go forward and become something new. He said the only answer was to cross that abyss with a rope. But not any rope. He said we was the rope. He said we had to climb over the losers we had become in order to get to the other side. I didn’t understand a word of it, but it felt true, you know what I mean? It was like a part of the Bible I never heard before.”
“And what was there on the other side?”
“Our fool’s dreams, made real.”
“Someplace over the rainbow.”
“Sure, but then he described them to us in a way that made us believe it all could happen. Hugo was a business school graduate, running some huge company, flying about in the corporate jets, letting the congressmen and senators wait for him in his outer office while some lackey shined his shoes. And Ralph had his own shop, taking orders from all over the country, never touching the metal himself. And his secretary was way hot, and Ralph was banging her on his desktop every lunch hour. And Charlie was running free like a feral cat, doing whatever the hell he wanted, and his mother was happy about it, because he had finally become a man.”
“What about you, Joey? What were you doing on the other side?”
“I was driving the fastest rod on the East Coast, going town to town, racing and winning on makeshift tracks, with my own garage and a staff of forty mechanics to keep my baby humming. And, you know, the way he was telling it, he made it come alive. I could see it there, my future, shimmering in the distance. It was dazzling. I could see it clear, just there, beyond the horizon. I still can.”
“And all you needed was a way to get there.”
“That’s right. And then Teddy, he gave us the way. He said we needed something that purified and burned at the same time, an opportunity clean enough and hard enough to transform our lives. And he said he might have the right opportunity in mind.” Joey took a long drink from his flask. “And he did, didn’t he?”
“The Randolph Trust job.”
“Had it all worked out from the start. And when he was through preaching to us, we was converts, all of us. It didn’t take too much convincing after that to get us on board.”
“The power of Nietzsche.”
“Who?” said Joey.
“Some German philosopher. All that stuff about the abyss and the rope, it came from him. Friedrich Nietzsche, the patron saint of disaffected adolescents who want to cast off their chains and become supermen.”
“How’d it work out for that Nietzsche fellow?”
“Not too well. He declared God dead, had sex with his sister, went insane.”
“Was she hot, at least, his sister?”
“She looked like a turnip. How did Teddy light on the Randolph Trust as the means to perfection?”
“Never knew. This your spot here?”
I looked up. We were on Twenty-first Street now, my street, pulling up to the front of my building. And there was someone waiting by the door. Someone familiar. I squinted at her for a moment before I recognized her.
“Damn,” I said.
“That’s the word for it.”
I shook my head, tried to move from the next crisis back to the current one. “Joey,” I said, “I have to go. Thanks for the ride.”
I opened the door, slid out of the taxi, leaned in the cab window. “You never said why you were cursed?”
“And I never will neither.”
“You see them around, Hugo and Teddy?”
“Hugo left the city a long time ago, I haven’t seen him in the flesh since. And Teddy, that sweet-talking son of a bitch disappeared right after the robbery.”
“Disappeared?”
Joey let out a soft whistle, like the wind flying across a plain.
“You should turn yourself in, Joey, answer their questions.”
“No, sir. I’ll end up just like Ralph, I do that.”
“When I give them the note you found with Ralph’s body, I’m going to tell them how you showed up, took the money, made the 911 call. They’ll still be looking for you, but you won’t be a suspect.”
“Do what you gotta do.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Drive around, pick up fares, support myself like I always done, and sleep in the cab until it blows over.”
“Get rid of the gun.”
“Right,” he said as he took another swig.
“And that’s not helping either. Listen, how can I get in touch with you?”
“Call your father.”
“My father?”
“I’ll check in with him now and again. We could always trust your father.”
“Be careful.”
“You, too, Victor.”
“Joey, one thing more. What was Teddy’s dream? Did he ever say?”
“He was heading for the other side of the world, he was. Said there was a girl he was going to chase. And about that note. Tell the cops they won’t find nothing of interest on it.”
“Why is that?”
“Because ghosts don’t leave no prints.”
30
Ghosts. I was surrounded by ghosts, or at least those plagued by them, because when the haunted man in the cab drove away, I turned to face the haunted woman waiting for me in front of my office. She was wearing the classic Philly combo: red high heels, blue jeans, tight black shirt. My first thought was how damn pretty she was, so pretty it was hard to tear my gaze away. My second thought was how the hell I was going to get rid of her.
“You promised,” I said.
“I promised I wouldn’t call,” said Monica Adair.
“This is worse. Monica, it wasn’t a date. Really. It wasn’t.”
“Okay, I buy that now. It wasn’t a date.”
“I didn’t mean to lead you on.”
“I know.”
“Good, I’m glad that’s clear. Then what are you doing here?”
“Can we talk, like, privately?”
I looked around. Pedestrians were sparse. “This isn’t private enough?”
“Not really. I have a legal question.”
“Monica, this is crazy. Stop it now. I feel like I’m being stalked.”
“Maybe I’m a little confused. You are a lawyer, right?”
“Yes, I’m a lawyer.”
“Then why won’t you talk to me about an important legal matter?”
I closed my eyes. “What kind of matter?”
“Do you always talk about important legal matters on the street?”
“With people who aren’t clients, sure.”
“How do I become a client?”
“Pay a retainer.”
“How much?”
“Depends on the case.”