The tiny room contained a single chair behind a little walnut desk carved with sleeping faces on the corners and the legs. A laptop incongruous amid fountain pens in display holders, a blotter and a crystal inkwell and a green bankers light. A framed photograph of Niko with his brother Van. Here is Niko eighteen or nineteen, thickly bearded, hair long ringlets. His little brother tall and gangly, closecut hair a cap of curls, sixteen or seventeen if he’s a day. Both of them smiling as they pretend to punch each other, playing at a rivalry that really did exist. Van how many times have I awakened screaming because I saw you there unseeing? And to think I laughed at first. Watched the red bloom unfold in your eyes and slow blood trickle out your nose. My brother I was mean to and played army with and rode a bike beside, whose underwear I threw out in the rain once at the municipal pool, and this is the picture I am left of you. Van what would you say if you could see where all that spun forth from that awful day has led? You were there at the start of it all. You were the start of it all. The horrible bloodflower in your eye. I didn’t kill you but I was why you died and all my life I’ve been ashamed. Driven, driven down. Are you waiting for me there across some bridge of penance? I will find out soon enough.
Niko sat at the desk and slid out a drawer and removed a document. Sixteen yellowed stapled pages. Courier tenpitch type, floating caps archaic evidence of a manual typewriter, every lowercase e gummed in at the top. Every word of it tattooed upon his mortgaged heart.
He glanced at the date and shook his head. A life ago yet only yesterday as well. He turned to the last page. His signature still there of course, scrawled in red gone russet over time. He still owned the pen he’d signed it with. A 1920 J.G. Rider pearl and abalone pump action fountain pen with a 22-karat gold medium nib. The contract’s lower right side smudged brown where his hand wet with blood not his had rested when he signed.
His nervous fingers riffed the contract pages. Should I bring it? To what end? I know every word of it by heart and still am not sure what my options are.
But he took the contract with him when he left his secret room.
Back in the study he called Jemma’s father. The CAT scan went fine, Hank. She’s sleeping now, they gave her Percoset. We won’t have the results for a couple of days but I’ll call you soon as we do. No reason to panic yet. You bet. I’ll tell her. Take care. Talk soon. Then he stared at his phone and thought about who he had to call up next.
II.
CROSSROAD BLUES
HE WENT DOWN to the Crossroads with his contract by his side. His burgundy Bentley Continental GT Speed sat idling in the empty lot while he stared through the sloped dark windshield at the restaurant.
Crossroads of the World had been built to look like a paddle-wheeler and it almost did. Driving along Sunset Boulevard near Paramount Studios Niko had passed it many times over the years and paid it little attention apart from noticing its ugliness and vainglorious name displayed in bright blue neon on a retrofuturistic steeple. He never would have set foot in it were it not for his meeting here today.
He took a deep breath and let it out and switched off the ignition and grabbed his vintage Hermes valise and got out into what passed for winter in Los Angeles. The car door shut with a reassuring and expensive sound and Niko headed for the restaurant. Behind him the Bentley chirped like a fat contented budgie.
THE CROSSROADS WAS crowded and bustling and loud. Glasswalled and sunny. Waitresses older than the architecture hurried about bearing unreasonable burdens on serving trays to men in designer jackets and two hundred dollar T-shirts sitting proprietarily in their booths and at the counter and gesturing violently at no one as they argued into cellphones or ignored their boothmates while they texted.
Niko glanced outside. But for his car the lot was empty. He frowned at the crowded restaurant and clutched the valise tighter.
A waitress hurrying by with an armload of steaming food nodded at the sign near the register that said PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF. Niko walked to a booth as if moving in some whitewashed dream. A waitress with shellacked hair and librarian glasses and a name badge that read MADGE gave him a menu and took his order for coffee.
The two men in the booth in front of his scribbled in red ink on a yellow legal pad they passed back and forth. “No no no no,” said the one facing him. Sallow and cadaverous with perfect hair and trim black coat, white arrowcollar shirt, dark wraparounds. He jabbed his lit cigarette at the legal pad. “You can’t put it like that. What’s in it for us if you put it like that?”
Niko tuned them out. L.A. coffeeshops see more deals than a Vegas blackjack table.
The man with his back to Niko looked like some Sunset Boulevard glamrocker throwback. Longhaired and strongjawed and skinny. Black boots with silver caps and heels and chains and everything but chrome exhaust pipes. Once upon a time Niko had looked like this guy’s second cousin.
While Hair Boy spoke, Trim Coat nodded and smoked and looked as if he had better things to do. Niko considered moving to another booth. Like a lot of former smokers, drinkers, catholics, and whores, being near the source of previous pleasure could be a royal pain in the ass.
But damn near everyone else in here was smoking too. Gouts of it rose above the booths. Behind the counter two ancient waitresses faced each other with unfiltered cigarettes pinched in their fisted fingers like Gestapo interrogators, their makeup straying outside the lines like kindergarten coloringbook drawings. L.A. restaurants had long been smokefree zones.
Niko fidgeted in the booth and Madge brought his coffee and said Ready to order hon?
“Just coffee for now. I’m waiting for someone.”
“Aren’t we all.” Madge pocketed her order pad.
The scalding coffee tasted even worse than he’d expected and he almost dumped in a load of cream but then stopped himself and lifted the lid on the little metal pitcher and sniffed and put it back. He drummed his fingers on the seatback and stared at the empty seat across from him. Conscious of the valise beside him. As if it held a coiled viper.
The lunch rush picked up and the Crossroads got crowded. Madge headed toward him with a determined look. Niko wondered if he were vain and foolish enough to leave without the meeting taking place.
The waitress reached his booth with pad in hand and opened her bright red mouth to tell him Sorry hon but I can’t hold the booth any longer but a figure stepped in front of her and eased into the seat across from him and adjusted the cuffs of his cream-colored raw silk jacket and beamed at Niko from behind dark sunglasses. “Mexican omelette, beautiful. Rye toast burnt, hash browns extra crispy. Coffee of course. If it’s the bottom inch of the pot and it’s been on the burner at least an hour you’ll make me one happy camper—” he glanced up at her name badge “—Madge.”
The waitress smiled. “And you sir?”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine.” The trendy retro shades looked him over. “Nick-o, look at you. You’re wasting away.” And smiled up at the waitress. “You make an outstanding chicken fried steak as I recall.”
“Best in town.”
“He’ll have that.”
She scribbled and nodded smartly and left.
The man watched her go. “I do love waitresses. Always pamper you, always have that cash on hand. It’s that mom thing I suppose.” The smile turned on full wattage. “So.” Flatware rattled as he paradiddled the table. “What brings us here before our appointed time, Niko-teen?”
Niko sized him up. The precise scruff of hair. The uniform tan with not a zit or freckle to be seen. Retro shades perched on a model nose. White linen shirt not too pressed and not too rumpled. A Rolex Oyster Perpetual Daytona Cosmograph occupied his left wrist. The outfit had changed with the times but Phil had not aged a day in the quarter century since they’d first met.