“Something bothering you?” Stark asked now.
“Me?” Mortimer laughed nervously. “Nothing.”
Stark peered at him intently. “Something’s bothering you, Mortimer.”
Mortimer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, there is this.. other job… but I don’t know if you’d want to do it.”
Stark eased himself into the chair opposite Mortimer. “Brandenberg again?”
“No. He had this Arab, but I know you don’t want no foreigners.” He took a sip from the glass. “But this other thing come in.”
“What is it?”
Mortimer seemed hesitant to go on. “It’s kind of personal,” he said. “A friend from the old days. He called me a couple hours ago.” He took another sip. “The thing is, his wife run out on him.”
“That’s hardly new in life,” Stark said. “I’m sure you told him that in most cases the woman returns.”
“Yeah, I did,” Mortimer said. “But the thing is, he’s set on tracking her down. He figured I might be able to help him.”
“Why would he figure that?”
“He figures I know people,” Mortimer answered. “I mean, not you. Just people who… do things.”
“What do you know about the woman?”
“Nothing. And the thing is, it’s embarrassing, you know? To my friend. He don’t want nobody to know about it. The neighbors, relatives, people like that. So what information I get, it’s got to come from him. He don’t want no asking around.”
“How much information can he give me?”
“I don’t know. He’s getting a few things together.”
“I can’t work on thin air,” Stark said.
“I know,” Mortimer said. “Believe me, I know that. And there’s something else. This guy, he ain’t got much money. I mean, fifteen grand at the most. I know you don’t work for less than thirty but.. ”
“You said he was a friend of yours.”
“Yeah,” Mortimer answered. “But like I said, we’re talking fifteen
…”
“I’ll take it,” Stark said. “As a favor to you.” He waited for Mortimer to finish his drink, then escorted him to the door.
“Good night,” Mortimer said as he stepped into the corridor.
Stark nodded. “This friend of yours, you vouch for him, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Okay,” Stark said.
“Well, good night, then,” Mortimer said, returning his hat to his head.
“Good night,” Stark said, and closed the door and returned to his chair as well as to his thoughts of Marisol.
SARA
“Della, it’s me.”
“Sara?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Just a sec, honey. Mike’s sleeping. I’ll go to the other room.” A pause, then, “Tony’s looking for you, Sara. He sent a guy over here and the guy saw me, and he made me go in the house and look for you. He said Tony had been calling you, and didn’t get an answer, you know, and so he sent this guy. So, what happened, Sara? You have a fight, you and Tony?”
“I better go now,” Sara said. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m okay.”
“No, wait, Sara, where are you?”
“I have to go, Della.”
“But-”
“I have to go.”
“But… wait… listen… you’re not coming back?”
“No.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Yes.”
“He hit you, Sara? Tony hit you?”
“No, but… I have to go, Della.”
“Yeah, okay,” Della said quietly. “Sure, honey.”
“So… take it easy, Della.”
“Yeah. You too.”
Sara hung up. A quick metallic click. That was what it sounded like, then, when someone dropped out of your story.
She put down the phone, turned on the television, then turned it off, and walked down the stairs and out into the night, along the Promenade, her eyes drawn to the glittering light show of Manhattan. Time passed. She was not sure how much time.
“Lady?”
She whirled, her gaze now fixed on the badge, staring at it with the same fear she’d first experienced on that summer afternoon when Sheriff Caulfield had pulled her over. Got a broke taillight there, girl.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the policeman said. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
She drew in a shallow breath. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
The cop studied her for a moment, then touched the rim of his cap with a single finger. “Okay, good night, then.”
“Good night.”
She watched as the policeman moved on down the Promenade, waiting for him to turn around, head back toward her, the way Sheriff Caulfield had on that distant afternoon, down a dusty country road, moving slowly and without fear, superior to his prey. She felt his hand on her shoulder, drawing her from the car, confused, frightened, a teenage girl in a car with a broken taillight, eased out into the crystalline air. Just do what I tell you and you’ll be on your way.
But this time the policeman didn’t turn back toward her, and once he was out of view, she returned her gaze to the Manhattan skyline, avoiding the empty space where the Towers had once stood. They’d been like her, she thought, just standing there in the open, weaponless and vulnerable.
The memory of a sweet, liquored breath swept into her face, and suddenly she heard the wind in the corn, saw herself glancing back to where both taillights remained intact. But… Sheriff… my light isn’t broken, then saw him step over to the back of her car, take out his pistol, and shatter the left taillight, sending little shards of blood-red plastic onto the dusty road. Now it is.
The memory of that moment filled her with a burning ire, the way she’d promised herself that she would never let it happen again. Next time, Kill him, the voice had whispered, and she had vowed, I will.
TWO
“So what are you gonna do, Abe?” Jake lifted a glass, examined it for spots.
Abe looked up from yet another pile of bills. “Do?”
“You know, about Lucille. You gonna replace her?”
“Yeah,” Abe said.
That Lucille was dead still seemed unreal to him. He’d seen her body hauled away and yet he expected her to walk through the door at the usual hour, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.
“ ‘Blame It on My Youth,’ ” he said. “Lucille didn’t sing that until she was forty-six, remember?”
Jake swiped the counter with a white cloth. “Made it seem like only old broads could sing that song.”
“Yeah,” Abe said. Then, because he could find nothing else to do, he walked to the piano, placed his fingers on the old familiar keys. “What do you want to hear?” he called.
“That peppy one she liked. I mean, when she wasn’t in a mood.”
Abe knew the one Jake meant, and so began a bright, up-tempo version of “Your Feet’s Too Big.”
When he finished, he returned to the bar. Susanne had come in by then, another book by one of what she called “the great minds” under her arm. She was a philosophy major at NYU and peppered her drink deliveries with pithy little aphorisms from her latest readings. Abe had heard scores of them during the few months Susanne had worked for him, but the only one that had stuck came from some Greek whose name he couldn’t remember. Courage in a man, this Greek had said, was simply this, to endure silently whatever heaven sends.
He thought of Mavis, then of Lucille, and finally of that fucking cat, Pookie, the one he’d found dead on the kitchen floor three weeks after Mavis’ abrupt departure. No, he thought, that Greek got it wrong. Courage was to endure silently whatever heaven takes away.