“I can’t control...” Lewis started.
“I don’t care. Spike doesn’t care. Do you, Spikey?”
“I want to visit with you again,” Spike said. “I like guys that will beat up a twenty-one-year-old girl without even knowing why.”
“If anything happens to her,” I said, “you are dead.”
Spike opened his coat wide enough so that they could see the big Army .45 he was wearing. Nobody said anything.
“Go,” I said.
The two men went to their car. Sal was walking uncomfortably. Spike and I watched them drive away.
“I’ll drive you to your car,” I said.
Spike looked at me as if he was about to say something serious.
“Spikey?” he said.
“I try to remain girlish,” I said.
Spike grinned. “Me too,” he said.
28
I wanted Spike to meet Sarah for future reference. So after I dropped him off at his car, he followed me back to my loft. I used my key to enter downstairs. But the loft door was bolted and I had to knock. There were quiet footsteps and then silence while Leonard checked us through the peephole.
“Who’s with you,” Leonard said from inside.
“My friend Spike, it’s okay.”
“What’s my name?” Leonard said.
“Leonard.”
The bolt slid back, and the door opened.
“Clever,” I said to Leonard. “If Spike were the enemy, I could have let you know by saying your name was Arthur or something.”
Leonard nodded.
“You all set now?” he said.
Rosie rushed down the length of the loft, and I crouched to say hello.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Leonard.”
“Thank Tony,” Leonard said, and left.
Spike looked after him.
“What a fine-looking man,” Spike said.
Rosie did a couple spins and wagged her tail rapidly and made a little squeak. Sarah sat on the couch, smoking. She was staring at Spike.
“Fine,” Spike said.
I stood. Spike bent over and scooped up Rosie and gave her a series of rapid kisses on the nose.
“Everything okay, Sarah?” I said.
“Yeah. It’s okay. That guy Leonard doesn’t talk much.”
“Might be a good thing,” I said. “This is Spike.”
“He’s the one I’m supposed to call if you’re not here.”
“Who you gonna call?” Spike said, and put out his hand.
Sarah took it languidly.
“Girl,” Spike said, “you have a handshake like a noodle.”
Sarah shrugged.
“We found the men who beat you up,” I said.
“What happened?”
“We spoke to them firmly,” I said. “And they agreed not to bother you again.”
“You spoke to them?”
“Yes,” I said.
“The tough guy? The one with the tattoos?”
“Yes. His name is Sal Brunelli.”
“What did he do?”
“He bounced,” Spike said.
“What?”
I smiled. “Spike picked him up and banged him on his car.”
“You picked him up?”
“I did,” Spike said. “Actually, I’ve picked up quite a few men in my life.”
I smiled. Sarah stared at Spike. It might have been awe.
“What would you have done?” Sarah said to me.
“Without Spike?”
“Yes. I mean, you’re a woman.”
“Hear me shout,” I said. “I had a gun.”
“Would you have shot them?”
“As needed,” I said.
Sarah was silent. Spike and Rosie had settled on the couch beside her. Rosie was on her back, and Spike was rubbing her stomach. Sarah watched this for a moment, and then looked back at me.
“How can you do this?” she said.
“This?” I said.
“Be a detective and face bad guys and stuff... and you need a man to protect you.”
“Good heavens,” Spike said to Rosie. “A feminist conundrum.”
There was coffee left. I poured some.
“It’s good to know your limitations,” I said. “I weigh one hundred twenty-six pounds. Sal Brunelli, tattoos and all, weighs... what, Spike? You picked him up?”
“A hundred ninety-two and a half,” Spike said.
“That’s a significant disparity,” I said to Sarah, “but a common one. Most men are bigger and stronger than I am. So I need an equalizer.”
I put my coffee down and got my purse and opened it and took out the short-barreled .38 I carried.
“This is one,” I said.
Sarah stared at the gun. I put the gun back and walked over to Spike and touched his shoulder.
“And this is another. One reason I sometimes prefer Spike is that his, ah, equalizing capacity can be modulated. The gun tends to be pretty black-and-white.”
“You brought Spike with you so you wouldn’t have to shoot them?”
“Think of it this way,” Spike said. “I wasn’t there to protect her from them. I was there to protect them from her.”
“Did you have a gun, too?”
“Yes,” Spike said. “Most people I meet are not bigger and stronger than I am. But they might have an equalizer, too.”
Sarah was drinking her coffee black and was lighting one cigarette from the butt of the other.
“Did they have guns?” she said.
“The lawyer-y guy, Lewis Karp — who was, by the way, a lawyer, nice call.”
“He had one.”
“Yes.” Spike reached into his coat pocket and held it up.
“It’s small,” she said.
“Big enough,” I said.
Sarah was silent for a time. Tears began to well.
“People with guns,” she said. “I have people with guns in my life, and people beating me up, and all I’m trying to do is find out who I am.”
“I think you can go back to school,” I said. “I’ll drive you there, and I’ll talk with campus security. No one will bother you.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough for me to find out who you are.”
“You believe me? That those people aren’t my parents?”
“I believe that something is quite wrong in your family,” I said.
29
I called the number Karp had given me for Ike Rosen. Answering machine. I called Information. There were about seventy-five Isaac Rosens. I gave them the phone number and asked for an address. The number was unlisted. They couldn’t give me an address. I called my father.
“Can you get me the address,” I said, “if I give you the phone number?”
“Of course.”
“Wow,” I said, “even though you’re retired.”
“I’m retired, not dead,” my father said. “I’ll call you back.”
It took him five minutes. When the phone rang again, I picked it up and said, “Is this the great Phil Randall?”
“The man and the legend,” my father said. “Your man Ike Rosen lives and, I assume, works on West Ninety-second Street.”
He gave me the address.
“Same phone number?” I said.
“Yes. He’s listed as an attorney.”
“Any other phone numbers?”
“No.”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“Captain Daddy,” my father said.
“Yes, sir.”
After I hung up, I called Rosen again. Same answering machine. I didn’t leave a message. I couldn’t think how to rephrase, “Did you arrange to have me beaten up?” Rosie was asleep on my bed, between two pillows, so all you could see were her back feet sticking out. It was almost five o’clock in the afternoon. I went and got a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and brought it with a glass to the breakfast table. I poured some and had a sip. Everything was so quiet that I could hear my wind-up alarm clock ticking by my bed near the other end of the loft. Outside, it was raining, and I looked out my window for a time and drank my wine and watched it.