The Havana Room

This seemed unlikely to me. Street rumor, false legend. But I was scared anyway. "How often does he come here?"

"All the time, anytime. Maybe like three times a week."

So he probably lived nearby, I thought. "You know anybody wants to make any money?"

He looked at me like I had a dead fish hanging out of my mouth. "What're you talking about?"

I said, "You heard me."

"Tell me that again?"

"I'm saying I'll pay a hundred bucks to know where he lives. Somebody could watch for him, follow him home."

"Come on, what the fuck." He pulled a galvanized roofing nail out of his pocket and began to suck on it.

I wrote down my new phone number. "Here's what the guy does. He follows that guy home. By car, whatever. Doesn't do anything. Nothing. No talking, nothing. Just the address. Then he calls this number"- I handed him the slip-"and leaves the address. Then he tells me how he wants to be paid. I'll come right back out here, if necessary."

"Come on, you kidding me with that shit."

"You're right," I said. "I am. I'm kidding."

The nail bobbed up and down. "Hundred's not much."

"I'll pay three hundred."

"Get out of here, three hundred?"

"Sure. What's your name?"

"Everyone call me Helmo." He smiled with sly pride. "You know, the hair and all."

I nodded. "Okay, Helmo."

"Who are you?"

"Who cares who I am?"

Helmo made scissor fingers and took the slip of paper from me. "Yeah, who cares?"

There was at least a chance that Jay had driven to his new building, so I got off the train at the City Hall stop and walked down Reade Street, past the Mexican guys cutting flowers in the Korean delis, past the delivery trucks and battered cabs. When I got to the building I looked for Jay's truck. Nothing. But a couple of windows were lit in the building. I rang the various doorbells until someone buzzed the main door. Inside I saw new menus and fliers on the floor, as well as a garbage can filled with plaster bits, lathing, trash. Had Jay already started some renovation? The more I thought about him, the stranger he seemed. He'd just bought a three-million-dollar building and here he was whacking baseballs in Brooklyn? A guy with a girlfriend named O and who attended basketball games at a private girls' school? I checked the door to the basement, which was locked, then headed up the high, steep stairs, hoping Jay might somehow be in one of the offices, still in his sweaty baseball clothes. I knocked on the various doors but got no response.

On my way down, the door to RetroTech opened, and David Cowles poked his big head out. "You ring downstairs?"

"I did, yes."

"It's Bill, right?"

"Bill Wyeth."

He said, "I was wondering whom I'd let in."

"Just me. I'm looking for Jay."

Cowles had one eye on a computer screen. "Haven't seen him."

"Has he been around?"

"Yes, in fact he was earlier and we discussed- oh, hell, hold on, that's the phone. Here, come on in while I get that." I followed Cowles back toward his office and when I got there he was standing at the window.

"That's good," he said into the receiver. "All the way through?" He listened and nodded. "Sure, all right." He covered the phone. "This will just take a second, Mr. Wyeth, bear with me. Just here- have a seat. My daughter wants to-" He uncovered the phone. "Yes, yes, okay, I'm putting it on, go ahead."

Then he turned on the speakerphone and I could hear a piano, some sweet and romantic sonata trilling into the room. I might have said it was Beethoven's "Fur Elise," but the sound through the phone was poor, as was the quality of the performance. But Cowles was enjoying it, smiling and looking at the phone and nodding his head with the music. Then the playing stopped. "Good, good!" he called heartily, in the way of an encouraging father.

"You liked it?" came a girl's voice. "I only messed up once."

Cowles smiled at me. "Very good, but keep practicing."

"Daddy, I practiced it five times already!"

"How many times did you get it right all the way through?"

"None."

"Do you want to mess it up tomorrow night?"

"No! What do you think?"

"I think you should keep practicing, sweetie."

"Daddy! You're so mean."

"It's true," said Cowles affectionately. "Nothing you can do."

"Daddy!"

"I have someone in my office, Sally, so I'm going to have to go."

"A pianist," I said after he'd hung up.

"Well, hardly. But she likes to play, and she's got a little recital at the Steinway store."

"The Steinway store?"

"On Fifty-seventh Street? Have you ever been? Amazing pianos! Dozens of them. Ebony, mahogany, everything. Even one of John Lennon's. You're not supposed to touch it but everyone does. They have student recitals there, and of course they don't mind if you buy a piano while you're there. It's quite the setting."

I nodded but wondered if I should tell him that Jay had gone to his daughter's basketball game. He'd ask me what it meant, and I couldn't tell him. But why hadn't I seen Cowles at the game? Of course, he might have been busy, or his wife could have been in attendance and I wouldn't have known.

"Now then," Cowles said, "you were looking for Mr. Rainey?"

"Have you seen him?"

"He was in this morning. About the lease?"

I searched his face. "The lease?"

"My lease? He said you and I'd go over it the next day or so?"

I made a vague sound of recognition.

"He offered me a better rate."

"He did?"

"I agreed to lengthen the lease, which he wanted, but I got him to bring the rent down a bit- only fair, in this climate."

"Was he accommodating?"

Cowles smiled. "For a rapacious landlord, yes. He seems- is he new to all this?"

"Why do you ask?"

Cowles let his eyes drift over his family pictures and out the window to the rooftops of lower Manhattan. "A sense, that's all."

A minute later, I stepped back out into the street. The cold cloak of evening had dropped. The prudent thing would have been to go home, order in dinner, and write down all I'd learned. Worship Chronos a bit. I used to be pretty good with complex problems but now I was stumped. Too many shards of information. Martha Hallock had handled the real estate transaction between Jay and Marceno, to the dismay of her own business partner. She'd probably lied to Marceno to clinch the deal. She knew a lot about Jay. There'd been an accident. Poppy was her nephew. How did these things connect? Mrs. Jones had described me so well I'd been successfully recognized. Or maybe they had a photo of me. Allison Sparks didn't mind snooping into a man's private business. And didn't mind telling me that, either. What else? Jay hung out in Brooklyn and probably dated a woman named O. He had some kind of weird drug habit that involved inhaled adrenaline. His occasional girlfriend, Allison Sparks, didn't mind getting kissed by an unemployed lawyer who'd been forced to watch some world-class fellatio the night before. She didn't mind having his tongue shoved down her throat and she didn't mind telling him that she'd liked it. Watching the fellatio had probably made him more aggressive, too. Under the momentary behaviors rose the hungers, the looming desires. Jay wanting to kill the baseball, Martha Hallock waiting bitterly for death, Helmo willing to spy on Jay for a few bucks, Allison needing satisfaction. You could drive yourself nuts with these things. Cowles's daughter played the piano. Jay had lowered Cowles's rent, presumably to keep him in the building. Marceno was waiting for his information. H.J. was waiting for his money. Both expected me to get these things for them, both had made their threats well known. What else? What other pieces could I torment myself with? Ha, Allison had basically conceded, controlled the Havana Room- which would be open that night.